A Shadow All of Light (11 page)

I would assent to this latter assertion while envying the fact that one in Rutilius's station could become an adept of shadows without enduring the physical discomforts the discipline was inflicting upon me.

Astolfo seemed to have overheard my thought. “You must not think him some soft-handed, sweet-scented dilettante. He is an expert swordsman, an avid huntsman, a canny and alert man of affairs, and a fearless pugilist. Of his prowess with women I have heard nothing. Perhaps one of your town wenches has whispered to you thereof.”

I shook my head.

“Well then, we understand that whatever commission he may propose to us must be a tangled one, because the man himself is so very able and has such deep resources to command.”

“Yes,” I said, “and from these resources he can well afford whatever toplofty fee you may ask.”

“It is for that reason we have come,” Astolfo said, “for I am past the age when mere difficulty itself is an attraction.… And so, here are we.”

The carriage rolled to a stop, the driver opened the door and assisted us down the gilt steps he had deployed, and we stood in a pleasant greensward before the great oaken doors of the château.

*   *   *

We were brought into the presence of Rutilius in a foyer almost immediately inside the doors. The foyer spread large, with a high, arched ceiling of cedar wood, and enclosed a circular area three steps below the main floor. This sunken space contained a small pool lined with blue tile in which red and silver carp wafted long, gossamer tails. Flowers and trailing vines spilled from the mouths of sand-cast urns. From an adjoining room a lute not visible to us was being played with gentle and pensive hand.

I had thought that the mansion of Astolfo, where it stood with its gardens and lawn and stable near the center of the port city of Tardocco, must be close to the apex of luxury. Now I knew that however large the fortune Astolfo had amassed, it was to the fortune of Rutilius as a sower's handful of seed is to a granary.

Rutilius showed himself, however, as no pompous or overbearing sort. A slender, sandy-haired man in his late thirties with a manner easy and open, he seemed sincerely pleased to acquaint himself with us, though he did not offer his hand. Yet his ease in his bearing was so confident that this oversight bore no hint of arrogance. A footman approached to offer the customary welcoming glass of wine, as fine as any I have tasted since.

The preliminary conversation consisted of our host and Master Astolfo trading reminiscences and guarded confidences about mutual friends and acquaintances. Ser Rutilius was sounding out Astolfo for his society connections, inquiring about the health of Princess A and the new foal in the stable of Count Z. The shadow master bantered his way through this testing, showing familiarity with the persons and affairs of one and all, but without giving impression that he gossiped.

Rutilius broke off these preliminaries. “Have you some inkling why I desired to meet you?”

“I have supposed that you wished to acquire my services.”

“Do you know in what regard? You must answer this question truthfully.”

“I have no slightest notion,” Astolfo replied mildly.

An expression of relief passed over the face of the baron. “I am pleased to hear you say so. I have feared that my comportment of late has given me away. There are those unfriendly who observe me closely for any sign of weakness.”

“Ah then,” said Astolfo, “now I shall suppose it is some affair of the affections. I must tell you straightway, Ser Rutilius, that I am no mender of broken hearts. Nor, come to that, am I a broker of mended hearts.”

“In neither case could I use your skills,” Rutilius said. “But come along with me to another room. Let me fill your glasses once more and you shall fetch them with you.”

“Thank you. It is a inspiriting vintage,” Astolfo said.

Rutilius led us from the foyer down a long, tapestry-hung gallery and brought us into a small salon. Intricate carpets smothered large areas of the parquetry floor, ensuring a sleepy degree of quiet. Large windows admitted southern light and gave an impression of openness to the room. But it was the walls that we had come to see. Paintings and drawings covered them in close profusion. Some paintings were life-size portraits; some drawings were not much larger than the leopard's-head belt buckle that clasped Astolfo's broad belt.

I marveled at them. Portraiture of shadows is one of the most demanding and delicate of the pictorial arts and the most skillful of artists might labor an arduous season to produce even a mediocre rendering. Here every example was a masterpiece. One or two I recognized from engraved reproductions in books, but all the others were new to my eyes and this first impression of them all together made the hairs stand up on my wrists.

Astolfo, though his constant watchword was
nil mirari,
gave over to rapt admiration, going from one frame to another, stepping forward and back, cocking his head to one side, and shading his eyes with his left hand. I had never before seen him so avidly engaged and wondered if this display might be partly a show of manners, a way of complimenting Rutilius on his taste.

I also noted that the baron observed Astolfo attentively and seemed gratified when the shadow master kept returning to one drawing. Among the other, more imposing pictures, this one at first looked none so remarkable. It was no larger than a sheet of foolscap, a rendering of the shadow of a female in graphite and chalk. But the more I looked at it, the more it unfolded not only its artistic beauties but also an ineffable, intimately personal charm that must have derived from its subject.

In spite of all the instruction Astolfo had set me to—the examination of scores of paintings and drawings in the collections of his clients, the volumes of prints and engravings, the crabbed treatises on the pictorial art—I have not sufficient knowledge to speak with any wisdom. I believe anyhow that pictures speak for themselves and much that is said in their presence by ink-smeared daubers and chalky schoolmasters is so much vain bleating. I would rather hear a goat fart than to listen to doddering know-alls speak of composition, impasto, contrapposto, and the other drivel.

From Astolfo's scattered remarks, however, I learned some good, practical sense, especially in regard to the picturing of shadows. First, he told me, your shadow artist must learn how to show
volume,
the dimensions of bodies in space. It is a childish error to see shadows flat, as unlit two-dimensional strips adhering to surfaces. The first task is to see that for all their seeming insubstantiality, shadows have volume and extend round in three dimensions, to which—unlike solid bodies such as stones and trees—they add another surface borrowed from the ultra-mundane source to which they are allied. At the time, I could not see what he was asking me to see, but to this simple-seeming drawing his words fitly applied. The contours of the figure seemed to rise from the sheet on which they were limned. The shadow was modeled on paper as if it were a study for a sculpture in bronze or glass.

Astolfo spoke to Rutilius in a voice even milder than usual. “I take it that these works represent properties in your possession.”

“All but a few are renderings of shadows I have gathered,” Rutilius replied. “There are one or two works I acquired for their excellence as art. Some of those are quite old.”

“Indeed,” Astolfo said, “for I see that some were signed by the artists. There is a Manoni by the door and in the painting next to it the little salamander scrawled into the corner of the canvas is the sign of the celebrated Proximo. But the newer ones are unsigned.”

“Shadow artists discovered that noising their names abroad was unsafe practice,” Rutilius said. “They are bound not to disclose the identities of their models, but some viewers who become obsessed with one image or another would not scruple to extort this knowledge by violence, even by torture.”

“Yet there are some so skilled, so deep-thoughted, so individual that their work speaks their names. For instance, that drawing of the young female's shadow must have come from the hand of Petrinius. He is our contemporary genius of shadows, and his touch is unmistakable.”

“You are correct.”

“I see too that this drawing is fresh. You must have come by it recently.”

“He completed it only a sennight past.”

“And the shadow itself is in your possession?”

“It is.”

“I congratulate you. That shadow is a treasure to make any collector proud.”

“Proud, perhaps. But not entirely happy.”

“The reason?”

“I have a great, an overweening, desire to know what woman cast this shadow and where she is.”

“Did not your purveyor tell you these things?”

“He did not know, for the one he got it from did not. It is possible that it passed through many hands before it came into mine.”

Astolfo stepped forward and leaned in for a closer view of the drawing. “Perhaps. It is difficult to tell from a drawing. If I were to see the original—”

Rutilius said, “Before I chance showing the property I shall need to know if you accept my commission and what your terms may be.”

“You wish me to find out about the person who cast the shadow?”

“I want you to find her, the woman herself, and tell me who and what and where she is.”

“I can accept your tender only provisionally,” Astolfo said, “because I cannot foresee what may be involved. A tedious, long search might be necessary, and might well prove fruitless.”

“True enough. Yet you are the most experienced hound in the kennel to set upon the trace. Your renown must have been well earned. And you should be fitly rewarded.”

“Provisionally, then—yes. Let us see the original. Then I may say more.”

*   *   *

Ser Rutilius unlocked the heavy door with a key he kept in his sleeve and we entered.

In this other smaller salon that opened off the collection room, I watched Astolfo to try to discern how he judged the way in which Rutilius tended his shadows. Many collectors and dealers believe that shadows should be put away in secret recesses—closets, armoires, and cellars—so that the surrounding darkness might keep them fresh. But darkness drains them of vitality, gradually absorbing a little of their natural vigor. A dim light is best, light that is not a steady glow but a fluctuating or flickering convergence of beams. These varying conditions keep the shades exercised, furnish them tone, and lend them suppleness. Their odors keep cleaner in a light like that of an overcast morning, and their edges are less likely to lose definition than if they are stored away in some dank hole.

For his most dearly prized shadow Ser Rutilius had ordered the construction of a special cabinet. It was a hand taller than myself and its glass sides enclosed an array of lightly smoked mirrors, together with bright ones, wherein the shadow floated in an ever-changing, vague light. These mirrors revolved slowly by means of a clockwork mechanism attached to the side of the cabinet. The shadow hung amid their surfaces like the carp wafting in the tiled pool in the foyer.

Astolfo walked three times around this cabinet, leaning this way and that to see the different angles. I could tell that he was considering how he might improve the construction of our storage mirrors in the manse. I noted too that his gaze often left the glass box and its shadow to take in Ser Rutilius.

The baron must have looked upon this sight some hundreds of times, yet now he stood transfixed, again devouring it with his eyes. He had hooked his thumbs into his brocaded linen sash and his fingers played restlessly, hungrily, upon the band of cloth.

Ah …

It drifted there in ineffable beauty. There was about it such refinement and grace, such a lilting freedom, that it lightened the heart. Astolfo has described some of the most beautiful of shadows as being music, and, to speak in that vein, this one was a cool, clear soprano aria of purest tone. I was not so deeply enamored of it as our host; my taste is for the darker shade, the more satinlike texture, and the deeper fabric. But for those who prefer the shadow that verges on the edge of disappearance, an image that is but the whisper-echo of an image, this shade was paragon. And it required some moments well after Astolfo had finished his examination before our host was able to tear himself away.

“Any collector,” Astolfo began, “of the greatest wealth or noblest blood, would consider this shadow his crown jewel.”

“And so for me it is—and more than that,” Rutilius replied.

“Your love for the object has persuaded me,” Astolfo said. “I will accept the commission, as long as I am not bound to guarantee favorable result.”

“And your fee?”

“I cannot tell that yet, but it will not discommode you.”

*   *   *

In the coach as we rode back to our manse, Astolfo said, “This is to be a delicate business. We must tread gently. Perhaps we shall require from Ser Rutilius a bond for our safety from his hand.”

“Why should he wish to harm us?” I asked.

“Because lovers are madmen and may do violence in a passion. Did you not see how he looked upon the thing? He is in love.”

“With a shadow?”

“In his mind he sees beyond the shadow.”

“How so?”

“He has imagined the woman who shed upon the air so graceful, so lissome, so lyrical a shade, and this picture he has imagined has fastened upon his heart like a kestrel taking a sunfish.”

“You make him out a blushing virgin,” I said, “but someone of his position—”

“A man who has had his fill of women in the flesh, who has tired of their jangle in his ear, their depletion of his purse, their weight upon his loins, may perhaps seek a different and nobler experience with a shadow-woman.”

“The caster is no shadow. She is flesh and bone like the rest of us.”

“Flesh and bone, yes—but not like you and me.”