A case of curiosities (10 page)

He was forced, ultimately, to reject the musical notations of the bell ringers and the descriptive methods of the naturalists. With the Abbe's approval and help, Claude worked out a cryptic set of signs that registered skylark and thunderbolt alike. This produced an unexpected revelation, one that gave Claude some measure of comfort and even a sense of newfound commitment. By scrolling through his notes, he could match up the symbolic notations of unconnected phenomena. In so doing, he was able to reproduce certain sounds artificially.

Feet Walking Through Snow was indistinguishable from the noise made when Rochat the baker squeezed a sack of cornstarch. Crackle of Fire and the sound produced by brushing fingers through broom straw were identical. Hawk Wings Flapping matched the sound made by the cobbler smacking together two pieces of leather. Song of Marsh Titmouse could be imitated by whetting a saw. (Of course, the reverse was also true. To replicate Whetted Saw, one had only to find a marsh titmouse willing to sing.) Correlativeing an inexpensive pitch pipe that at one time had served to tune the mansion-house harpsichord, Claude discoveted that the yew-tree owl always hooted in B-flat.

IT WAS DURING the study of steam sounds that matters at the mansion house went terribly wrong. So wrong, in fact, that Claude was forced to abandon his phonic investigations and return to the art of the sable brush.

The Abbe and Claude had assembled the mansion house's considerable range of distilling apparatus — retorts, alembics, a pressure cooker—to create as many heat-genetated hissings, splutterings, and spumings as they could. The assumption was that liquids bubbling in differently shaped pieces of copper-and glassware would augment the seventy-four entries already recorded in the section on Vaporous Bruits. Additionally, the Abbe could take the opportunity to evaluate personally a method of gin production recently outlined in the Transactions .

Because of the experimental commotion—the hissing was all but deafening — the testers failed to hear the pteemptive warnings of Kleinhoff, who shouted from a fruit tree while fighting an onslaught of dread smotherflies. Nor did the testers hear the battle cry of Catherine, who interrupted her conversation with Marie-Louise to alert the pair. And because steam rising from the testing pots filled the workroom alcove with a thick mist, neither Claude nor the Abbe observed their enemy until it was too late.

"Aha!"

Claude, in shock, dropped a glass pelican on the stone floor.

Amid the liquid chaos, outraged at the deception, stood the accountant. "Caught you, have I? Failed to set up the falsified image of The Enameler's Art? I am incensed! Your plots and conspiracies are over." The accountant bubbled with a ferocity that rivaled that of the heated liquids. "We had an agreement, drawn up for your benefit. What of your creditors?" The accountant was too angry to withhold confidences, and so Claude learned the gravity of the Abbe's finances. "Discrepancies, very serious discrepancies, fill the books. You agreed to use this boy for the Hours. Where are they? Where are the designs you promised? Livre the bookseller is yelling in Paris. The Duke is yelling in Milan."

"And you are yelling," the Abbe interjected, "in my residence. That I cannot permit."

"Yes, I am yelling as well! And by my rights I shall continue. In the last year you have spent more than twice your annual income. And for what? Fossils and artists' supplies. I have yet another Cherion invoice right here."

The accountant accounted: "2 reams post paper; 3 bottles poppyseed oil; 1 handrest . . ."

"It was only two bottles of poppyseed oil," the Abbe said.

"Very well, I will make a note." The accountant pulled out another invoice. "You were granted credit from the Globe on condition you sent Livre piecework Hours you have not yet produced. There are bills for instruments of measure, curiosities of nature, and extravagant comestibles. You must have entertained an army."

"There is an overdraft?" the Abbe inquired.

"How can you ask? There's enough debt to bury Mont Blanc. Have you forgotten the conditions of your tenure under crown lease? You have not been granted any fiscal immunities. In the neighboring parish a full third of the peasants' gross incomes is paid out in obligations. What are your figures? Recall that you receive no mark of office, no prebend, no support at all from the Church. When I agreed to take over the finances of the mansion house, I proposed a reasonable course of action. Agriculture. I provided a detailed breakdown of the costs to manure the nearby close. You ignored it. I wanted to exploit the three W's—wine, wheat, and wood. You laughed. What was your reply? You said, 'The only W I am willing to plant is wonderment.' The practical outcome of that witticism is that your fields are rich in nothing more than weeds."

"It is true that my stay has not produced great profit by your standards."

"By no one's standards. Profit indeed." The accountant was offended by the Abbe's misuse of a term quite dear to him. "The only thing you have planted is that damned orchard. I have the bill for the pear grafts obtained on the English exchange. Seventy pounds! Only three of those grafts survived, thus providing you, if Kleinhoff is to be trusted, with twelve pears. Including incidental costs, that would come to nine pounds a pear."

"That is enough of your badgering," the Abbe said. "You stand by your calculation. I stand by mine. Our goals will never converge. You didn't see the pears, or taste them. Worth every halfpenny paid. You wish to put a price on beauty at the current rates of exchange. You cannot. Nor can you diminish the significance of a single, extraordinary pear, a pear nurtured by a dedicated gardener who nourished each tree with a mix of hog's dung and loam in warm months, stiff horse dung in cold, who protected the fruit from aphids, wasps, and snails, all for the delectation of the table and the advance of the botanical arts. So you keep your crop rotation of turnips-barley-clover-wheat, turnips-barley-clover-wheat. I will be happy with my pear."

"It will not feed you very long, that pear of yours. You must boost your income. You brought the boy in for the Hours, and so far no Hours have been produced. Why?"

"We will get to the Hours in good time."

"Is that wordplay? If so, it is inappropriate," the accountant said sourly. "You have no choice but to have your apprentice start at once if you are to avoid your creditors. And I need not mention that, as one of them, I will happily exert my legal rights to ensure payment of what monies are due."

"Enough!" the Abbe yelled. "I will have the Hours done. You may go. You may go to—" The Abbe didn't finish the phrase, but the destination was clear enough.

The Abbe tore a piece of paper from a journal of experimental philosophy. "A test is in order, Claude, to register the progress of your studies. Have you made advances on the Rule of the Thing?"

Claude nodded, as well he should have. When informed, somewhat incorrectly, that the origin of the Rule of the Thing was Arabian by way of Persia and Persian by way of India, the young student embraced its complexities with fervor.

Struggling through the exotic formulas stimulated recollections of his father and certain private myths not generally associated with algebra.

The Abbe handed the scrap to Claude, who sat at the ready, his fingers curled around a soft-lead pencil—a Cherion, to be sure—in anticipation of the test. The Abbe began with a simple problem and then moved to ones of graduated difficulty. Claude would calculate and announce a solution, calculate and announce, diligently appending to his answer the rule used to uncover the variable quantities. When the Abbe had deemed Claude's mind thoroughly limber, he introduced a question designed to reveal the secret nature of the Hours. "Suppose I were to tell you that if the foreskin of my manhood were multiplied by three-quarters of the member's length, the result would be equal to the length as a whole; further, that my foreskin represented one-twelfth of that whole; could you tell me the length in inches?"

To diminish Claude's perplexity, the Abbe added, "A hint: the third, second, and seventh rules."

But the confusion was not algebraic. The query pushed beyond the bawdy humor that sometimes peppered the Abbe's speech.

"You are frowning," the Abbe observed after Claude had finished his figuring.

"I must have made an error."

"Why is that?"

"By my calculation, the length would be . . . sixteen inches."

"And that is what you should have. For an answer." The Abbe chuckled. "Are you shocked?"

Claude chose his words with care, lobbing his response back to the Abbe as if it were a tennis ball arcing on the penthouse of the great hall. "Shocked more, sir, by the magnitude of the answer than by the nature of the question."

"A fine reply. In fact, even better than the solution." The Abbe returned the volley with two quick flicks of his hand. "Come with me."

As they walked together, the teacher's nervousness infected the student. Claude knew he was about to confront another unknown variable in the life of the Abbe.

"I must introduce you to the Hours of Love," the Abbe said, directing Claude to a table that was topped with a chest. He opened it and revealed another chest, of slightly smaller dimensions. It, in turn, contained another chest, which moments later yielded still another. As the chests diminished in size, Claude's excitement grew, so that by the time the Abbe held up the last chest, which was, appropriately enough, of carved boxwood, Claude was staring fiercely.

"You have been enameling for some time now. Your progress has been exemplary, even if your enthusiasm has waned a bit. Yes, I have noticed. But from this day forward, work will carry an additional burden. No more fanciful designs for your own purposes."

The Abbe removed an object from the chest. "Take a look at this."

Claude did not need to be told twice. It was a watch, or, more precisely, a watchcase, since the mechanism was missing.

"For a certain nobleman. What do you think?" Claude inspected it more closely. He was disappointed. The enamelwork was not terribly noteworthy, demonstrating skills inferior to those he already possessed. The case depicted a man and a woman standing side by side. They looked out with a blankness that suggested profound boredom and matrimonial allegiance. The man was costumed in the uniform of a French lieutenant, with some crudely painted epaulettes dropping off his shoulders. The woman wore a matronly gown and a ridiculous bonnet. They kept their hands behind their backs.

"I can see from your expression that you are not impressed. It is not like the fardels of mechanical wonderment your father took to Turkey." The Abbe continued to talk, denying Claude the chance to succumb to the reverie of camel princes. "And it is true the enameling is poor, crazed by improper tempeting. Still, I think you should look more carefully."

Claude looked again.

"No, not there. There."

Claude discovered, on closer inspection, a discreet protrusion not unlike the extended wing of a lady bug.

"Push it," the Abbe said.

Claude pushed it. The back of the case popped open to reveal the same husband and wife, only this time ftom behind. They no longer wore the costumes seen on the front of the watch. No epaulettes for him, no lace bonnet for her. In fact, the husband and wife were naked. "The backside for their backsides, eh?" the Abbe said.

The hands of the officer now found prominent display, used as they were to caress his mistress. (Perhaps unfairly, the assumption of marriage was dropped.) Specifically, the lieutenant was stroking his partner's buttocks, whose shape reminded Claude of Kleinhoff's bastard musks.

The Abbe displayed another watchcase, this one with an enamel nun bent in prayer. The white mantle over dark-brown habit and the roughly painted face could leave no doubt that it was Sister Constance. The Abbe handed the piece over. "I call it The Defrocked Nun. Use your clasp knife to prize open the screen."

Claude lifted a smartly recessed screen and gawked at the disrobed Sister. She was receiving extreme unction from a well-endowed, if aged, prelate whose high station in the hierarchy of the Church was identifiable only by the miter perched on his head.

The Abbe took back the watchcases. "These, Claude, are the Hours of Love, discreetly ordered watches hiding indiscreetly disordered passions. They will be the object of our future manufacture. Let me explain. For years, I pursued my research without attention to cost. I inherited wealth and spent it willfully and at times extravagantly. I did my little experiments, built my big library, bought shells, apparatus, and, on a lark, the Wunderkammer of a minor Saxony prince. That is how I acquired the narwhal tusk, by the way. None of this would have diminished my legacy. You see, my father's avarice had made me a very rich man. Unfortunately, I discovered that I was not the only one speculating. My bankers were also conducting tests of diffusion and evaporation—with my inheritance. Expected overcharges and mismanagement were compounded by less acceptable forms of dishonesty and more spectacular examples of greed. They reduced my funds to little more than what I hold around Tournay.

"That is why I have been forced to bow to the punctiliousness of the cursed accountant. He has explained that I can no longer withstand debt beyond the powet of tepayment, which is a roundabout way of saying I am all but bankrupt. He long ago attempted to turn this land to profit. Those attempts, as you have heatd, failed. We detetmined mote than two years ago to putsue the Houts, but Henti ptoved incapable of supplying the necessaty dextetity. Then I saw yout copybook. I knew you could do what Henti could not. Yout line is fat mote delicate, and yout visions, ftankly, ate fat mote odd. I contacted Lucien Livte, the Patis book dealet, and tekindled a dubious telation-ship. He agteed to supply me with erotica—books and ptints— in tetutn rot Defrocked Nuns. The accountant advanced funds fot the ventute in exchange fot a shate of the profits. That is an-othet teason he must be enduted. In otdet to putsue out own wotk, we must paint these watch faces. You must paint them. I have alteady agteed. I was forced to agtee. Too much land has alteady been sold off. I will attend to the mechanisms. It has been an intetest, a passion, since my wotk in the Society. You will paint the cases."

With that, the Abbe left Claude in front of the licentious matetial and scuttied out, mumbling about some diopttic experiment that needed his attention. Claude leafed through the books that were to serve as inspitation fot the Houts. He was not shocked. Quite the conttaty, he found the wotks rathet boring. Absent wete the bamyatd explotations of the two hapless Golays, who, amid a latge gathering of childten, sought bodily fissutes nonnally coveted ovet by clothing. Absent were Jean the cheesemaket's putsuits of bovine pleasutes, putsuits that had enlatged the meaning of the tetm "animal husbandly." Absent was the view Claude once took in from a hillock: the penettation of a distant telation by a local goathetd. (That last scene, though pattially obscuted by fog, provided a glimpse of a boisterous coupling made all the mote exttaotdinaty by the young goat tied to the leg of the topside participant. As the lovets attempted to synchronize theit actions, the tetheted kid pulled in a conttaty mannet.) And absent was the tactile understanding Claude had acquited when his whole family shared the box bed in the cottage. No, it must be said that Claude's memories wete a gteat deal gtittiet and fat mote intetesting than the ones in the etchings he inspected.

Claude was sketching out one of these tecollections—the scene of the goat and the young couple—when the Abbe returned and said, "Bring that note-roll over here." He pointed to an encased spindle with an ornate H carved into one end.

"This is the ledger of the Hours. In it, you will register the work you do. The watchcases are all numbered, their designs detailed. It is the only note-roll that I keep locked in its container." The Abbe undid the brass clasps and unrolled a portion. "Can you read my crabbed hand?" It looked like the trailings of the snails that invaded the fruit trees.

"I think so. I have managed before." Claude read aloud from the order log:

One case, in copper, Defrocked Nun, for the Bishop Monceau.

One case, in silver, Niece on Swing with Dog, a la Frago,

for the Count of Corbreuil.

One case, in silver, Military Dress, for the Duke of Milan.

The Abbe interrupted him. "That's fine. As you can see, the H-roll contains numerous secret commissions. They must remain so. But, then, there is nothing wrong with secrets. Our most profound fears and our loftiest hopes are best secreted away. Our filth, our agony, our shame, our passions, and our joys — all the truly important nominations of life—are best kept secret. But secrecy implies a perception, a perception that is shared selectively."

The Abbe continued. "A secret is a part apart, outside general knowledge. And what is outside general knowledge comes closest to Truth. Everything you learn in our work must be kept between us. The others know only in the vaguest terms what goes on. No one except you is privy to the full scope of the Hours. If I teach you nothing else, I will teach you that the simplest face, whether on a man or on a watch, can hide the most complex scandals." The Abbe snapped shut the case.

The epigrams confused and seduced Claude. The reasons for confusion were obvious enough; the connection between a secret and Truth with a capital T was tenuous. As for the seduction, it came from entering the Abbe's confidence. Introduced to the Hours, Claude was that much more a colleague, that much more an equal. It was the first time the Abbe had expressed a need for Claude. The prospect of enameling did not excite him, true. And yet, as Claude pasted into his copybook the scrap on which he had calculated the length of the Abbe's hypothetical member, he imagined himself in the specialized field of erotic enameling, hoping that the strengthened collaboration would provide contentment he hadn't had before.

Claude's first efforts appeared on disks of alloyed copper. Within circles no larger than a louts d'or, he reproduced a standard, if uninspired, selection of milkmaids in amorous embrace, dainty ladies imitating dogs in heat, dogs in heat imitating dainty ladies. Over time, and timekeepers, he painted doctors, notaries, and clerics employing their professional apparatus (enema pumps, brightly plumed feather pens, gem-encrusted scapulars) in unprofessional ways. He painted hills and valleys of human flesh — thighs and bosoms and the bellies that separated them. His anatomical knowledge, at least in certain domains, soon rivaled that of Adolphe Staemphli.

The "philosophical" works transported from Paris provided models of bidet bathers, cherub voyeurs, flagellants, and an assortment of more obscure perverts. Many of the images were culled from a series of steel engravings originally intended for a bordello and interleaved among the pages of a tedious religious primer. There were stiffly executed Sabine scenes and sex-charged illustrations of Aphrodite and her child, Eros. The designs improved when Claude started to draw from personal experience. He combined sketches from his copybook with the printed erotica. He put the faces of villagers on the bodies of mythical beasts. He did a Lady in Lace that bore a strong resemblance to Catherine the scullion. The heads of the Tournay butcher and blacksmith were attached to the bodies of Greek and Roman gods. The vaporous vulgarity of Fragonard was given a certain immediacy when the village paver peeked up the dress of the girl on the rope swing, especially since the girl was his sister Fidelite. How could Claude resist?

The novelty of even these designs faded, however. Aftet painting mote than a half-hundred Hours, he found he could keep up his interest only by concentrating on technique. He experimented with a set of four-cornered chisels and, helped by Henri, widened the spectrum of available colors. This did not diminish his boredom. Outside, by the dovecotes, digging for saltpeter, he confessed his mood to the Abbe. Unfortunately, the Abbe underestimated the depth of Claude's dissatisfaction, perhaps because it would have provoked dissatisfactions of his own.

"More sound research. Is that it?" the Abbe queried. "No? What then?"

Claude did not know.

"I cannot understand why your talent does not please you. Other artists often acquire the quality of the enamel they make; that is, the enamel cracks and the worker cracks, the enamel runs and the worker runs. Not you, Claude, not you. You have faced the kiln and tamed the vehemence of fire."

Soon after this declaration, the Abbe decided the boy's skills should not be wasted on less than noble alloys. The Hours would be done exclusively in silver and gold. The accountant accepted this decision. After working through the figures in his profit tables, he was pleased to find that the more costly metals translated into proportionally higher returns, and that for the first time since his arrival in Tournay, the Abbe was inching toward financial stability.

Claude, though happy about the Abbe's improved circumstances, was still uninterested in the tasks he performed. He retreated to the observatory high in the turret. The low-ceilinged enclosure, with its medieval fenestration, provided a sense of security absent since he left the attic of the family cottage. The thin slotted windows, no wider than a hand, allowed Claude to take in the world while keeping himself hidden. He looked out on the trees dropping pears and the dovecotes filled with flutter. It was in the observatory that Claude spent much of his thirteenth year. He watched the seasons pass, watched the summits of the surrounding hills lose their snow and look like the tonsured pates of the Franciscans. He observed birds begin their assaults on the springtime bud-life. The views calmed his nerves and distilled his thoughts. Perhaps it was the altitude, or maybe the isolation. For whatever reason, the tower allowed Claude to recognize that while his skills in enameling might continue to improve, his passion would not.