A case of curiosities (15 page)

When, the following morning, Claude tried to paint what he had dreamt, to apply the face to scenes taken from the copperplates of The Wandering Whore, he found himself incapable. He could not graft this pious mystery of Paris to the commonplace perversions supplied by Lucien Livre. The mechanical apparatus posed no problems. He fashioned a little plunger that pivoted the woman's body into the loins of a muscular, rust-skinned Moor. (The color was composed of saltpeter and feces of vitriol.) But painting the face, usually so easy, proved impossible. He could not replicate the image of the btowbound beauty. For houts at a time, he sat in a ptecarious position, his heels resting on a bookshelf, the miniatute in one hand, the sable brush in the othet. He was disttessed by newly awakened urges. He fidgeted and stared and sctaped his teeth with the handle of the btush. Aftet every stroke, he called out to Henri nervously. "What color for the inner thigh?"

"A massicot, I would think."

Claude disagreed violently. "Too yellow for such a tender and untouched thing!"

"We have that English stock of white lead."

Claude shook his head. He bickered with the storekeeper over colors until he settled on antimony. When the Abbe, overhearing the choice, made a joke—something about alchemist's tongue on the inner thigh of a Parisian beauty—Claude erupted with such force that all three knew that he had discovered that most blind of emotions, infatuation.

The Abbe took Claude aside. "You have reached an age prone to excitements of both mind and member. I can help you only with one pursuit, though I'd like to help you with both."

Claude asked bluntly, "Have you been in love with the unapproachable?"

"The unapproachable, favored first vizier, is all I have known. Your Caliph has been denied the harem." As he had so many times before, the Abbe took Claude by the arm. "My passions have never found true satisfaction. Not in work, and not in love. One day I hope to overcome this failure. I will, in time, explain."

"Still more secrets?"

"Of course. But they are all, truth be known, a single secret slowly revealed. I told you long ago, my life is a series of hidden chambers. There is always one more waiting to be entered."

"And when will your unsatisfied passions be revealed to me?"

"Which ones?"

"I was thinking in particular of Madame Dubois." "Madame Dubois?" The Abbe was surprised that Claude knew "Madame Dubois is not a passion but a burden. And I suspect the two of you will meet after your trip to Lyon."

The Abbe's timing was off, though not by much. It was on the eve of a trip, and not afterward, that the encounter with Madame Dubois, an encounter long and vigorously denied, was quickly and brutally revealed. The trip to Lyon, with a stop in the workshop of a Republic watchmaker, had been planned to amplify Claude's mechanical expertise and broaden his appreciation of what St. Ignatius called "people of this and that kind, in all their variety of garments and gestures."

"Imagination," the Abbe added, "demands stimulation, and nothing will serve better than a trip."

The four-day itinerary received the approval of the accountant only after it was determined that Claude could carry three finished pieces—a Nun Defrocked and two Bucolic Frolics, relative classics in the inventory of the Hours—to Geneva and carry a commission from there to Lyon. (Recently the mansion-house enterprise had suffered the hazards of illicit transport; a porter had stolen a Niece on Swing with Dog.)

The Abbe contended that Lyon would provide wonderful examples of the alchemy of the common man. He spent an entire evening, Tokay in hand, ruminating on the wonders of the roof tiler, the bookbinder, the wine seller, the silk thrower, the bas-ketmaker. He waxed enthusiastic on the work of the tallow chandler, sang the praises of the criers, sellers of pins and soap.

"And yet none of these, including the tallow man, holds a candle to the miracles that you perform and the skills that you possess," the Abbe said.

Claude interrupted the praise. "Perhaps we could discuss the travel route." He was a patient disciple but had learned the necessity of channeling the flow of his mentor's enthusiasms.

The itinerary, the Abbe explained, was simple enough. Geneva could be reached by cart. There Claude would present himself and the watches at the offices of the accountant, who would provide coach fare for the trip to Lyon.

The Abbe gave Claude the watches and a long-abandoned traveling wig. "That won't be all you will take," he said. Fumbling as he spoke, he fished out a book he had stored under the misericord of the coffin-confessional. "The trip to Lyon can be tiresome, so I suggest you carry this with you." It was an octavo volume titled De Cristos Mecantca. The frontispiece depicted a crucified mechanical Christ. Books in Latin held little attraction for Claude, but from what he could discern of the dense text, it contained much that could benefit his craft.

The Abbe said in a rather sad voice, "I had it published in Paris. It was a tribute to one of those failed passions I was telling you about. Printing it is what first brought me into contact with Livre." Indeed, the name of Lucien Livre as well as the symbol of his bookstore appeared on the title page, a convention he was forced to suspend when printing his pornography.

"Does Livre still publish on mechanics?"

"He did, but no longer. Try to make sense out of the book on the trip. It is unfortunate that some of the plates weren't stitched in."

The pupil took the volume to his room and showed it to Henri, who was falling off to sleep and consequently uninterested. Besides, Henri's Latin was limited to the labels on the apothecary bottles and enameling pots. By the light of a single candle, Claude pored over the gift, his knees propped up, the chevron of his legs supporting the chevron formed by the book covers. The text was difficult to penetrate. The flickering light and the snores of the slumbering Slug distracted Claude. And without the plates, he had a hard time visualizing AF intersecting SF, and the angle JAL tangent to LH. His mind wandered until he noticed that the balance of the book covers was all wrong. The weight in front was more substantial than in back. He looked more closely. Marbled endpapers covered the slots that normally held the Abbe's reading spectacles. Over the corner, the Abbe had scribbled: "For a young man of uncommon vision." From the spattered ink, Claude surmised that the dedication had been interrupted by a sneeze.

He ran his nail against the cover and grew intrigued. He groped for a piece of soft charcoal from his paint box and rubbed it across the inside of the cover. A long curve emerged that looked not unlike a nose. The candle flame went out. He relit it, trying to control his excitement. He took the charcoal and again rubbed against the cover. The lines revealed a forehead and chin and a whorl of hair. Combined, they formed the pulpy and familiar features of the Bourbon king.

With his erasing knife, Claude sliced away the endpaper. He saw now why the covers were so unevenly weighted. The slots cut for the Nuremberg spectacles had been filled with two coins: a louis d'or fresh from the French mint, and a rix-dollar that widened the book's numismatic representation to include the Kingdom of Prussia.

Claude took hold of his wealth, cupping the image of Louis XVI in one hand and that of Frederick the Great in the other. He considered waking Henri, whose nocturnal breathing had accelerated to a tempo inconsistent with the slowness of his daytime condition. But what would he have said? What would the revelation have produced? Consternation, jealousy, or, more likely still, that special Slug-like mix of sloth and sadness, a demeanor as refined as the pestle-pounded colors he blended for the Hours of Love.

Claude chose to glory in good fortune by himself. He let out a little yelp, wiggled his feet uncontrollably, and then planned the next day's adventure. He was going to Lyon, and going with money in his pocket. Throughout the night, anticipation agitated him. The hay in the pallet itched more than usual, and the wish list he wrote out in his dreams unfurled like the carpet of a Turkish potentate. Claude would acquire every piece of equipment mentioned in Berthoud's masterly Essay on Watchmaking. He would buy supplies of red gold, ruby pallets, stocks of polished steel. He would rent a carriage and secure as its only passenger the inspiration for the Portrait in Little. (Here the dream turned to less mechanical desires.)

He was awakened by Henri's stentorian snore. Unable to sleep, Claude decided to get out of bed and thank the Abbe. He moved from one room to the next, but the Abbe could not be found— not in the great hall, not in the workrooms, not in the zigzag of alcoves that linked together the chambers of the mansion house. Suddenly Claude heard the distant plinking of a musical instrument. It sounded like the untuned harpsichord in an alcove outside the library but was different enough to require inclusion in the S-roll. He investigated. The music stopped intermittently, and when it did, Claude could pick up the sound of talking.

He ttaced it to the chapel. He knew, even before he de-ptessed the lozenge in the bookcase panel, that the Abbe was meeting Madame Dubois. This was soon continued. He could see the Abbe and his guest through the retedos that hid the Abbe's most sectet chambet. The light of an oil lamp silhouetted the gouty build of the Abbe. He was talking to Madame Dubois, who was seated.

Fot the second time that night, Claude obsetved a pait of heads in profile, but these wete fat mote intetesting than the faces of the numismatic kings. Especially Madame Dubois's. Het nose dipped and rose with gtace. Het neck dropped gently to an inconsequential chest. Het head was topped by a gteat mass of hait, which Claude guessed was temoved nightly. She wote a pannieted robe and held, in het long and agile fingets, two tiny mallets, which she dropped on an open-cased hatpsi-chotd. Het lowet vittues could not be seen, obscuted as they wete by the insttument.

Claude wanted to thank the Abbe fot the gift but knew the inviolability of the wotld behind the scteen. He could not decide if he should entet. He watched as the Abbe insttucted his sectet music student. Madame Dubois hammeted out the statt of the tune, but aftet just a few notes she stopped.

The Abbe moved to het side and gently admonished het. "My lovely cteatute, you should play with mote spirit." He tepositioned het hands and mallets ovet the strings of the hatp-sichotd, bent ovet, kissed het. "Let us begin once more."

She turned towatd the keyboatd and again hammeted out the statt of the tune. Thete was little improvement in her technique. Tty as she did, Madame Dubois was unable to produce a sound equal to the delicacy of het looks.

"Do not stop," the Abbe scolded. But she did stop.

The Abbe turned abusive. "Fool, idiot. You have learned nothing."

Madame Dubois maintained silence. Though she played again, she failed to plink out the last notes of the melody. The Abbe exploded. "I tell you not to stop, and yet you insist on teasing me with yout hesitations!"

The bitterness in the Abbe's voice shocked Claude. It betrayed a rage usually reserved for religious tirades. He did not know whether to stay, whether to push in on the disputatious scene, or whether to return to his room.

He stayed.

More plinking and berating followed. "I have spent years trying to make you into a fine musician. For what? You couldn't earn a crust if you feigned blindness and played on the steps of the richest church in Paris." The Abbe's exasperation was now greater even than the time he sneezed a crucible of gold dust over the flames of an open hearth. "Once more," came the short-tempered command.

At the moment Madame Dubois reached the problem note, she did exactly what she had done before—nothing. She stopped with her hands held teasingly over the wires, waiting for the Abbe to bark. The Abbe turned toward his secret pupil and pulled one of the mallets from her hand. He rapped Madame Dubois twice on the arm. "You will play through," he said, adding, "if not for me, then for Claude." Madame Dubois did not utter a word. Claude, however, jumped at the mention of his name.

Again he considered entering but could not do so. Again he considered leaving but could not do that, either. He was like an autumn moth frozen against a winter windowpane. He hoped the mood behind the screen would calm down. It did not.

The Abbe said, "This time play the interlude correctly or else I will, by the God I once followed, end your playing forever." Madame Dubois lifted her head, lowered her hands, and began the piece. Her tempo was poor—intentionally so, Claude thought. She once more refused to finish. This was too much for the Abbe. He grabbed a mallet and brought it down upon Madame Dubois with surprising force. She slumped forward and hit her head against the strings. The fall released a plangent minor chord in the upper register of the instrument. These were the last notes she played. There was silence after that, though only briefly. The Abbe, distraught by the consequences of his uncontrolled fury, started to sob. He repeated the words "What have I done?"

Claude stumbled out of the chapel and ran back to his room, where the Slug still slumbered. If Henri couldn't be counted on to share in rapture, he was certainly not one to approach in despair. Claude was gasping. He felt like the ringdove the Abbe had once placed in the pneumatic pump duting a study of asphyxia. He needed air, and in a daze he found himself climbing the tower steps two at a time, seeking comfort in altitudinous isolation. It was at the highest point of the mansion house that Claude reached the depths of dejection. In previous visits to the tower, he had tossed stones at imaginary Vandal and Turkish invaders. Such youthful enthusiasm was absent now. Contemplating a murder he had unwillingly witnessed, he squatted in darkness until the sun rose.

But was he unwilling? The deadly shadow dance played itself over and over in his head. With each motion, he stopped to consider his passive observance. Couldn't he have stopped the wrath of his mentor and friend? Friend, indeed. Claude felt both betrayal and culpability. He was as criminal as the criminal himself. He considered swearing out a complaint against the Abbe before the Republic's lieutenant of police. After all, he would be in Geneva the following day. The Abbe would be confronted by a silver-topped baton or more vicious police impedimenta, fitting justice given the method of the Abbe's attack. Claude's thoughts became a blur of music and violence. He kept seeing stains of blood on ivory. He transported the Abbe to the sugar mines. A workshop dictum resurfaced: "Be gentler with the metal, it feels the pain and passion of the beater." Would the police lieutenant's baton beat gently? Unlikely. And if the murderer weren't sent to the Pompelmoose Atoll but was kept instead in the prisons of Geneva, what instrument of inquisitorial torture would be used — thumbscrews or the iron maiden?