A case of curiosities (32 page)

The moment for the next deadly sin had arrived.

Claude had a highly developed, if theoretical, sense of whoredom. Though he had read much of what was published during an especially pornographic age, and knew the Prostitutional section of the Curtain Collection intimately, he had always avoided paying for his pleasures. Terror of disease restricted his curiosity.

Madame Rose's establishment was located hard by a butcher shop, a contiguousness Plumeaux thought apt indeed. Claude sobered up slightly as they entered the brothel. The sitting room was draped in tasteful silks, and the proprietress, a handsome woman of some forty years, welcomed Plumeaux with a familiarity that left no doubt about the regularity of his commitments. The bedswervers sat and stretched in a variety of poses.

The proprietress whispered to Claude as she took his token, "Does the young man like his tarts hot and crusty?"

"Please, Madame," Plumeaux interceded, "allow me to make the presentations." He introduced the women using their noms de lit.

"This is the pony," he said of one who threw back her hair.

"Because of her beautiful mane?" Claude inquired.

"No, it is another aspect of cavalry—the employment of certain leathers—that has earned her the sobriquet."

"Do you know," Claude said, drunkenly raising the subject of his lover, "that Alexandra applied such devices, and canthar-ides, besides. I saw them in her cabinet."

"The woman had bad counsel," the proprietress said. "Flies can cause blisters. There are other ways." She removed the stopple from a decanter and touched a drop of creme de menthe to her lips.

Plumeaux redirected Claude's attention. "Let us continue. Here is the crab. She has been given the appellation because her legs clamp down on patrons like pincers." The journalist whispered, "But there is another reason, too." He scratched his groin by way of explanation. Maintaining a hushed tone, he said, "That one stooped in the corner is the vulture. She lunges straight for the genitals. This one I call Angelique. She inspired the line — do you remember it? — in my Xanas." Plumeaux quoted himself: "Angelique was not a shy girl. She would hike up her skirt as if it were a choirstall seat and give the whole world a peek at the angel." The prostitute corroborated the phrase with the gesture.

In the end, Claude chose none of the women presented but took instead a young Bretonne whom the journalist did not know. The proprietress said she was new and special. For the pleasure of her clients, she acted out fairy tales in ways that were far more graphic than the high-toned moralities of La Fontaine. "In the hours ahead," the whore said, "I am sure you will live happily ever after."

She was right. But the following day, Claude awoke sick from his intemperance, despondent that Alexandra had dismissed him and his mechanical concerns. In addition to all this, it was Monday and he would have to face the tyrannies of Livre.

THE impotence trial received a good deal of notoriety. Factums proclaiming the ruling, printed in the hundreds, covered church notice boards throughout the quarter. Cheaply printed vaudevilles carried on the tradition of The Ballad of the Impotent Man. Even if Claude had wanted to forget Alexandra, he would have been unable. His pains became less obvious but no easier to deny. Two months after the final fight and desperate act of love, the coalescent smell of passion — that potent mix of jonquils and sweat — still lingered in the garret. He found long blond hairs (both hers and her wig's) everywhere. One rogue strand even pulled tightly around his neck during a night of fitful sleep. When a light-haired woman in a tightly corseted polonaise one day crossed the Rue St.-Jacques, Claude rushed in unthinking, hopeful pursuit, only to find himself face to face with a shrewish grandmother surprised by confrontation. Each time the name "Alexandra" was shouted in the streets — not an uncommon occurrence, to judge from the birth records of the city — Claude would turn around in wrenching expectation.

He was, in short, a man obsessed. He smelled her, felt her, saw her, heard her everywhere. He dreamt of her in dozens of settings. Often he saw her writing out a note of reconciliation in the manner of a Fragonard fiancee, but no billet-doux ever reached his door.

All he had were the paper pearls. The end of the liaison with Alexandra revived the servility and humiliation suffered earlier at the Globe. Claude was again made to brush out the Mysteries, required to polish windows, to dust and arrange, to dash here and serve there. He was reacquainted with the tools of supplication Livre had so liberally employed in the past. Livre called the quality of his work lackluster, and it was exactly that.

The bookseller wore away Claude's confidence as a butcher wears away a block, by a thousand daily slices. Claude tried to ignore the attacks. He could not. All he could do was dream of disappearing, of ending his apprenticeship. When he composed a mental checklist and divided up the pour and the contre, the reasons to stay put — financial and contractual obligations, pride, fear — were far outnumbered by reasons to leave — Livre's cynicism, peevishness, and gastric gurgles, the general deadening of his brain, the physical assaults, the verbal attacks, and the denial of mechanical talent.

Plumeaux and the coachman commiserated. So did Marguerite and Etiennette. Claude complained to Plumeaux. "1 feel like one of Livre's pearls, hanging from a string."

"Leave, then. We have all told you to do so before."

"What of my indenture?"

"What of it? There are ways, especially with Livre, to break the agreement."

"And what of my pride?"

The journalist shook his head. "Pride is the downfall of the weak, self-esteem the mastic of the mighty, the fixative that will allow you to hold on to your art even when it looks hopeless. Your talents, the mechanical wonders that clang and whirl in your garret grotto, could be your livelihood if you chose to extricate yourself from the Globe. It is in invention that you should posit self-esteem. Sell tickets to the apartment. Entice the curious. I will produce a little booklet if you wish. Perhaps then you can undertake a subscription campaign."

Claude allowed himself to dream, but only momentarily. "How could I break away from Livre?"

"You once described to me the principle of the pendulum," Plumeaux said. "Adapt that principle to your predicament. For every error Livre punishes, respond in equal measure. Do it subtly so that he considers you incompetent and not malicious."

"I don't see what that strategy has to do with pendulums."

"Never mind the definitional problems. What matters is that you free yourself from his grip. You have to get Livre to want to get rid of you. Do you understand?"

"Go on."

"Diminished efficiency. When you line up the books, they should be crooked on the shelves, but only slightly. Be inventive with your alphabetization. Slice pages improperly, spill ink with flourish. Fail in your polishings."

"You mean leave smudges on the windows?"

"If pushed to such desperate acts, yes."

Claude followed the plan to the ill-artanged letter. His mood picked up as he watched Livte grow'livid. The hotsehait whisk hurt less, the exotic curses meant nothing. Livre called him a bumbling Patagonian, a tin-head (a tribute to Claude's fascination with metalwork), a de-brained Bucephalus. Claude learned to ignore the assaults and insults, performing his tasks with exacting incompetence. The end of his apprenticeship came six weeks after the plan's initiation, during a weekly meal. Claude chose the setting with care. Livre would be so preoccupied by the quality of his food and the methods of its preparation that his defenses would be lowered.

At first, Claude simply watched. Livre cautiously inspected his potatoes — he was back to potatoes — making sure they had been properly peeled, overcooked, and sieved. He bent over the plate and, clearing his nose, sniffed around the rim. He sucked his teeth, as if something were stuck between them. He lowered his nose again and took another sniff. Then he pressed his finger into the potato mush. Having looked at it, smelled it, and touched it, Livre was now ready to do what seemed almost incidental. He ate like an unhappy child, nervously and without the slightest pleasure.

As Livre consumed the tubers, Claude contemplated the plan of attack. Plumeaux, who had outlined the strategy, called it the Kartoffelkrieg, the Potato War, though it was not nearly so complex an engagement as the Battle for Bavarian Succession. Still, there were risks. Claude would have to mask rejection in feigned respect. At last, he began.

"I cannot, sir, keep quiet any longer. For some time, I have noticed that you have been dissatisfied with my work. I have not maintained your standards. The fault is mine."

"Of course it is yours. Who else should assume responsibility? You have forgotten how to serve your master. But I will whip you back into shape — and I do mean whip."

"I am thankful for your attentions, but I think, sir, that I would be better suited to some other activity."

"You are a bookseller's apprentice, Claude Page. I knew that from the first day we met."

"If so, I am not a very good one. I find that I display greatet talents in the field of the mechanical arts."

"Nonsense. I thought we tesolved that long ago. The subject is closed."

Claude pushed on. "Then it must be teopened."

"What do you lack? My Bibliopola offets you employment in a Globe filled with wotds."

"And yet, sir, I find that proximity to knowledge is no guarantee of its acquisition. Touching books does not mean that they touch you."

"Perhaps. But it is not just books that you have touched while working at the Globe."

Claude ignored the oblique reference to Alexandra. "I now realize that in wielding tools, in creating objects, I have a commitment and competence I lack here."

Livre grew uneasy. He picked up a knife and cursed its dullness. "What would you do if you were not my apprentice?"

Claude said, "I hope to be an engineer."

"You choose your words lazily. There is a great difference between the ingenue and the engineer." Livre had forgotten their previous battle over this very word.

"Not so great as you suggest." Claude turned the word game back on the grammarian. "Both, after all, share roots in ingenuity."

Livre lost his temper. He rolled his phlegm and said, "Your logic is every bit as deformed as your hand. What training do you have? Under whose authority will you tinker? You cannot work simultaneously in wood, metal, and glass without obtaining a permit from each corporation. How will you circumvent the guilds?"

Livre had played into Claude's hands. The last query allowed the apprentice to dispense his first veiled threat.

"I have learned from you, sir, that the rules of a corporation are as malleable as copper. You have managed quite admirably to avoid regulation." Claude looked in the direction of the Curtain Collection to clarify the innuendo.

"Even if you find yourself another apprenticeship, you will still be turned into an ame damnee, a mindless worker ignorant of his own salvation. I suggest you reconsider your foolish desires. Most masters will exploit you."

"Indeed, I know quite well that masters are prone to take advantage of their apprentices," Claude said.

Livre flushed. He flattened his potatoes, tilling even furrows with his fork. "So you will throw yourself toward an academy, is that it? Throw yourself toward one of those nurseries for the learned? And what will you invent? A mechanical equivalent to Sieur Vicq's Unalterable Always-Fluid Argon Ink? Will you compete with facial creams and shoeshine waxes for royal approbation?"

"I will, sir, humbly try to learn by your example."

"Reconsider your misplaced desires. It is unlikely that you will find another Lucien Livre."

"Of that I have no doubt."

"You will join the floating population of the unemployed, and I can assure you that what might float at first, in the end sinks like a stone. The world is filled with unneeded talent. You will be reduced to begging alms. And next to a legless veteran, your pathetic deformity will earn you very little."

Livre pulled an ivory toothpick out of its sheath and proceeded to excavate bits of potato from the gaps between his teeth. The dispute lasted a few more minutes before Claude said, "I must leave the Globe. I am not deserving of all you have done."

Livre tried one last gambit. "If it were up to me, I would accept your dereliction. But the regulations of indenture do not allow it."

Claude was ready with a rebuttal. "I feel obliged to quote from one of your pearls, a remarkable piece of insight: 'Rules exist only for those who cannot master them.' Certainly, you have mastered the rules of the guild. After all, consider the dangerous nature of the illicit material you handle."

This last threat worked.

Livre said, "I will draw up the necessary papers." He marked the end of the meal by spitting into his plate, the way other diners might roll up their napkins. He rose in silence and retired to a back room, where he perched atop his Mysteries.

Left alone, Claude was so happy that he danced, out of view, a Moorish dance with the wooden demoiselle. The Kartoffelkrieg was over.

The following week, Claude appeared at the guild hall with his master. After paying some fees (once more taken out of his wages) and making the customary declarations, he was discharged of his duties. The apprentice was now an ex-apprentice.

The divestiture was to be literal. Livre demanded that the gloves and the vest be returned to the store "in a perfect state of cleanliness, the twelve ivory buttons intact." Claude dutifully accommodated his erstwhile employer. Marguerite, handing the washed and ironed vest to her neighbor, said, "You have outgrown it." Indeed, he had.

Claude said good-bye to Etiennette awkwardly and gave her a kiss on the cheek. He would miss her. In his final moments with Livre, he had planned to maintain a posture of maturity. He could not — not after he noticed Livre had made yet another gibe by selecting a disturbingly dismissive image to fill the most prominent window of the Globe. He said nothing to Livre. That does not mean, however, that he did not reply. One last time, Claude cleaned the Mysteries. Brush in hand, he emptied the closestool, wiping its interior clean. The only modification in the completion of the task was that he deposited the contents on the sisal doormat, making sure that the urine and feces penetrated the faded bristles of the interlocking L's. He then tossed the Mysteries into the Globe and slammed shut the door. The bell rang like the triumphant turlututu of the King's royal trumpeters. With that, Claude Page ended his apprenticeship under Lucien Livre at the Sign of the Globe, and at the age of sixteen went off to pursue a profession that had no formal name.