A case of curiosities (42 page)

"I have learned to be suspicious of such projects," said a coffee merchant, whose dismissal was typical of the reactions the Abbe endured. "And I am not alone. You see, there was a fellow who promised the fabrication of a pair of shoes that would allow him to walk across the Seine. All the great minds of Paris joined that subscription, so I added my name to the list. To be sure, the flotsam in the river lent credibility to his promise. Still, the promise went unfulfilled. I lost a great deal more than money. I lost pride. I will not lose my pride again."

The Abbe started bringing Claude to his meetings. This strategy proved more successful. Even when potential investors were puzzled by the explanations, they were amused by the sight of a handsome and generally optimistic young man being goaded to revelation by a sneezing ex-cleric. As a team, they put on a good show, explaining the plan in falsified terms.

The falsification served two purposes. First, it allowed for visual amplification of theories that most potential patrons could not hope to comprehend. As the Abbe observed, "It is better to convince them that they understand what they do not understand rather than clarify the fullness of their ignorance." Hence the wildly popular electrical machines that were inconsequential to constructing the head itself. The second reason for the falsification was to confuse those suspected of spying. There was talk throughout Paris, especially in the Marais, of a competitor who was skilled in consonants.

After a month of begging, Claude and the Abbe secured the financial commitments of two wealthy aristocrats. The first came from the Duke of Vrilliere. His support was not surprising. The Abbe had introduced him to Pierre-Joseph Laurent, the engineer who later constructed the Duke's mechanical arm. The second was a certain Madame de Crayencour. Madame de Crayencour's most noteworthy characteristic was a passion for porcelain, a passion loathsomely popular among women of her rank. Surveying her blanc de chine menagerie, the kind of bric-a-brac generally imported from the East packed in layers of loose tea, she explained that porcelain cats and dogs did not meow or bark or break household goods (such as, presumably, porcelain cats and dogs) and as a result were pleasanter than any living pets. After being treated to all sorts of mathematical, optical, and philosophical displays that dazzled with bubbles and sparks but served no worthy purpose, Madame de Crayencour agreed to provide partial funding.

"As long as the head is made of the finest Dresden," she said.

That was certainly acceptable. Claude had reached the same decision before the rendezvous.

But the real breakthrough came as a result of the Abbe's rereading of Bion's classic on the construction and uses of mathematical instruments, in the expanded translation by Edmund Stone. One line jumped out at him: "The chief and most necessary tool is a large vise."

The Abbe yelled out to no one in particular, "Vice, of course! Vice." He read the sentence aloud to Claude. "You do not understand, do you? Bring me my note-roll."

"Which one?"

"The one that will enrich us. Fetch the Hours of Love." The Abbe sneezed and laughed as he scanned the entries. "Tomorrow we will profit from our ancient patrons of perversion. With this roll of annotated commitments, we will have the ears of the powerful, and I do not mean in jars."

The distinction between extortion and rightful compensation is sometimes negligible, as Claude soon learned. When the Abbe knocked once more on doors that already had been closed to him, and made reference to certain secret watch orders, customers who had previously been too busy to be disturbed now showed no uncertain kindness and attention. They were fearful that gossip about their private passions would fall into the wrong hands. As if by magic, the project gained newfound support.

When the Count of Corbreuil commissioned Niece on Swing with Dog, he had specified a bouledogue. The niece was less important; it was dogs that the Count truly loved. This was evident when Claude and the Abbe were ushered into the Count's spacious apartments. A tube-shaped canine of German origin snapped at their feet, while a more fearsome and unseen cur barked from behind a door.

The erotic watch had been a diversion, but then, so had the whole of the Count's life. He was too stupid to pursue inclinations seriously. Wealth masked his limitations. He was a vain man who worried, foolishly, that revelation of his predilections for unconventional sexual congress—a predilection already well known and remarked upon callously by his dearest friends— might tarnish his reputation. He was a royalist since king and country allowed him to live a distracted life. When not feeding carrots to his squat dog, Hercules, to keep his auburn coat glistening, the Count toyed with recreational machines, scientific apparatuses, and a collection of antique playing cards. He had over thirty rare illuminated decks.

Entering the study, the Abbe and Claude were informed by a handsome young attendant that the Count would be delayed. The Abbe stared into a latge pond of mercury, 150 pounds by his estimate, and then ctanked up a mechanical planetarium that was resting on a stand. Claude, as was his habit, made a mental inventory of the room's contents: a collection of concave and convex mirrors, a burning glass mounted on a window, four electrical machines (double and single), such common instruments of philosophic inquiry as microscopes, barometers, hydrometers, hygroscopes (not nearly so accurate, Claude guessed, as the fir twig used by his mother), a shelf of fluttering aerometers, some looking like silver shuttlecocks, others like Chinese rockets, and one like a royal orb. Claude was glad he had persuaded the Abbe to leave their fake apparatus at home.

The list making was interrupted when the Abbe, turning the handle of the planetarium with excessive force, caused Mars to fly out of orbit and roll under the table. Just as Claude was trying to restore order to the universe, the Count of Corbreuil entered.

"We have met before," he said abruptly.

"Yes, sir, at the bookstore of Lucien Livre," Claude replied, quickly standing up. The Abbe sensed that the Count had little interest in his presence. It was Claude who might attract support. The Abbe remained silent behind a table covered with glassware.

"My companion," Claude said, nodding to the Abbe, "is the man who crafted the Niece on Swing with Dog."

"Let us say nothing more about that watch I ordered," the Count said to Claude. "It was a mistake. It will be our secret. I have my reputation to maintain."

"The subject is forgotten."

"Why have you come?"

"To minister to your commitment to the mechanical reproduction of sound. You had expressed interest in the matter before."

"Perhaps. If so, I have forgotten. It was so long ago."

"Then I hope you will allow me to reacquaint you with the subject."

The Count blandly agreed.

Claude kept his description lyrical, turning it into a travelogue of discovery. "In the huts of mountain farmers, I saw machines in which metal and wood melded as naturally as the mountains meet the sky. In dissecting rooms just across the river, I observed the vocal cords of dead men playing mournful little tunes. I have even heard woodwinds speak. I hope to integrate all of these investigations, Monsieur le Comte, into one grand scheme."

"Disparate researches, but I do not find fault in that."

"My mother," Claude said, "told me that there is more profit in the masterly cultivation of one crop than the slovenly conduct of many. But she was also appreciative of the virtues of the specialty garden, where diversity is pursued on an intimate scale."

"Show me, then, this intimate scale."

Claude produced some copybook sketches. The Count feigned comprehension. He asked a few questions that were not at all pertinent, and Claude responded as if they unlocked the very essence of his work. The Count mentioned certain conditions he would affix to the support, and Claude readily accepted. He had no choice.

Feeding a carrot to Hercules, the Count said, with self-satisfied benevolence, "Very well, you will have your talking head."

He rang for his secretary. The handsome fellow scurried in with a pantograph under his arm. The Count dictated, the secretary penned, and two sets of wooden arms produced additional copies of reduced size. The contract was short but exacting. It stated the terms of funding, the method of payment, the conditions of payment. No mention of the Count's involvement was to be made without prior approval. "My reputation, you know."

The key paragraph in the manuscript document read: "I will fund the construction of an artificial head that will, through gears and pulleys and the availabilities of science, speak. The talking head must proclaim, in its repertoire of sounds, the words that unite our nation: Vive le Roi, Long live the King." A time limit of nine months from signing to date of completion was superscribed, and the agreement was signed by the Count, countersigned by the secretary, and witnessed by the Abbe, whose scrawled signature is difficult to make out.

The trip to the Rue St.-Severin could have been made by foot. But Claude and the Abbe decided to hire a coach.

"Hurry! The others are waiting for us," the Abbe said.

"You told them about the meeting?"

"I was confident of our success."

During the ride back, they talked about plans in the shorthand of specialists — the joint mechanisms, the disposition of the piping, the wheelwork, the tempered steel. But upon reaching the courtyard, the Abbe stopped the conversation. "We must now put these matters aside, at least for a day. Remember what your mother observed: 'Work and pleasure in equal measure.' '

Madame Page's homiletic recitations had never included such simple-minded sentiments, but Claude was too happy to argue. The Abbe screamed from the courtyard, "Journaliste! Empailleur! Nourrice!" The heads of Plumeaux, Piero, and the wet nurse, who was holding Agnes, poked out of the dormer. Claude said nothing, choosing instead to raise a full purse high in the air. The heads disappeared. There was the sound of clumping clogs (the wet nurse), hobnails (the journalist), and tawed ostrich skin (Piero, who often fashioned patches from scraps close at hand).

The friends appeared in the courtyard dressed for celebration. The wet nurse had even rented a complicated, if somewhat dated, dress that constrained her in wholly unaccustomed ways and places. After much discussion, Claude and Company agreed to visit the festival grounds.

The group left soon after, hand in hand: an unsteady Agnes gripping a single delicate finger of the wet nurse, the wet nurse holding the chapped hand of the hay stuffer (too much arsenical soap), the hay stuffer holding Plumeaux's inky fingers, which in turn held the Abbe, who leaned on Claude for support. The chain remained unbroken even at the archway, where a door of mean dimensions made it difficult for them to pass. Still linked and laughing, they scrambled into the waiting coach.

On the periphery of the festival ground, the group bought some pickles and a loaf of bread made from rolled oats. Claude caught sight of the one-man band he had seen on his first day in Paris and noticed that an instrument had been added to his orchestra, a jingling Johnnie. Though it intrigued Claude, he turned away. He did not want acoustic obsessions to intrude on the celebration. Work, as the Abbe said, would start in earnest the following day.

Agnes pointed to the distant arc of a juggler's pin. The group tried to make its way over but was stopped by the crowds in front of a tented pavilion. A barker was promising the marvels of funambulists and tumblers. The group passed a puppet fiddler attached to its human master.

"Look!" Claude said to his daughter. "The puppet is making that man play a song."

Near a fire eater reeking of spirit of sulfur, another barker was proclaiming the virtues of the Man with the Tail of a Monkey. "Newly off the boat," he announced. From where wasn't specified. "Not for the ladies, not for the gentlemen. Descended from a tailed race of galley slaves whose benches are holed to accommodate astonishing protuberances. A tailor's nightmare, a lady's dream." To amplify the vulgarity, the barker thrust his frock between his legs.

The group observed the Fellow of Depraved Hunger. "A man who eats with avidity whatever object he is presented," read a sign painted with images of his previous meals. Agnes pointed, and Claude itemized: a candlestick, a splatterdash, a set of napkins, a padlock with ornamental hasp, a butter tub, two pocket-knives, a bricklayer's scutch, a horse tail, a pot of herbs with pot included. The performer's current feat of all-consuming greed: the collected works of Rabelais.

"Bound in calf," Plumeaux noted.

"I wish Livre were here to witness this," the Abbe said. "He always hated voracious readers."

"I think the coachman would appreciate it, as well," Claude observed.

They laughed at the thought of their absent friend, who was stuck at the ferry crossing down in Trevoux. They passed the African, an exotic man with a mournful manner who spoke to himself in a series of clicks and whistles that amused most onlookers. Claude said, "I once read that the violin most closely resembles the human voice. I suspect that the author hadn't visited this poor fellow's native land."

At last, the group reached the juggler's ring. The performer displayed exceptional talent. The crowd was already four deep, and it took a bit of maneuvering to find a place to watch. The juggler tossed in the air a number of unlikely objects taken from spectators — most memorably, a fish and a leather boot hot off the foot of a willing passerby. Catching sight of Agnes, the juggler plucked the pretty cap from her hair and added it to the circuit. The crowd applauded. Claude dug into his purse and pulled out a small coin. He was pleased to play the role of benefactor.

The juggler lighted three torches and tossed them high in the air. He then added a frying pan that he had pressed between his legs. From a vest pocket he produced an egg, and soon it, too, was going round and round. Another egg was introduced. The circuit grew larger and larger. The juggler appeared to have an increasingly hard time manipulating the objects. He bent his knees, pulled back his head, tightened his neck muscles. Sweat dripped down his cheeks. As the spectators were about to applaud, the juggler lost control. The eggs, the torches, and the pan came crashing down. A wave of sighs spread through the crowd until, a moment later, faster than one could say hocus pocus—or hiccius doccius, as was sometimes said back then— a solitary set of hands began to clap. The crowd looked again. The torches had landed on some unnoticed kindling, with the pan on top of them. The eggs had smashed in the pan and were soon frying up quite nicely. The spectators dropped money in a cap, and left clutching their valuables to prevent unadvertised and illicit feats of levitation.