A case of curiosities (14 page)

"I am not allowed pea soup," he said.

Marie-Louise bravely continued to lift covers, revealing haricots, artichokes, and a grilled chicken in a mushroom sauce, She left briefly and returned with some warm white bread that powdered the hands. Claude loved Marie-Louise's bread.

Livre shook his head in despair. The food, all of it, was wasted on him. He said, "I am sure I mentioned in my letter, for I make mention of it wherever I travel, that all I require is four well-cooked turnips. The rest of this fare is incompatible with my gastric condition." Livre spat into his handkerchief.

Marie-Louise retreated in a huff. She emerged a few moments later with the turnips he had requested, which she had boiled, but which she could not bear to serve. When the turnips reached the table, Livre indicated additional displeasure. "Undercooked. I can tell without even tasting. Take them away and cook them thoroughly."

"They have been on the fire all afternoon," the cook said.

"Using a Papin's Digester, as I specified?"

"No," the Abbe apologized. "We had to make do with a Genevan pressure cooker."

Marie-Louise again left, but not before rolling her eyes. While the turnips cooked, the two men once more attempted to converse.

The Abbe started. "Claude, bring me the Battie we were transcribing."

Claude excused himself and came back, after much rummaging, with a book. As the Abbe started reading, Livre indicated a new, nondietary distress.

"What have you done to that book?"

As with many of his favorite volumes, the Abbe had carved two disks and a connecting arch out of the inside cover to accommodate a pair of spectacles. The bookseller shuddered at the sight of the damaged volume.

"That was a full-grain morocco you destroyed." His tone was censorious.

"I need to have my spectacles to read. Without them, the book would remain unread, and a book unread is like cathedral glass that hides its beauty from all who do not enter." The Abbe allowed himself this religious metaphor, since in matters of learning he was quite devout.

"Nonsense," Livre said. "Books are bought less to be read than to be owned. You forget that I am an agent of their distribution. There is nothing finer than an old, perfectly preserved book. Read or unread doesn't much matter.''

The Abbe defended his position. "It is you who are speaking nonsense. The highest praise for a book is i( it has been cracked through renewed contemplation. Let it have scribbles and scrawls in its margins. Let its corners be dog-eared. Let the binding be cracked." The Abbe held up the battered Battie.

"I find such an attitude intolerable. I would rather see a child's spine break. And as for finding a book postiled in the margins, that is worse than branding the flesh of a virgin."

"You have been reading too many of your philosophical," the Abbe said.

The situation worsened when, in the middle of the verbal skirmish, the Abbe inadvertently struck the tureen. Pea soup channeled past a sauceboat and saltcellar, and hit the Abbe's freshly ironed cuff. From there, it found its way to the book in question.

The Phlegmagogue rolled his phlegm in disbelief.

The Abbe wiped the soup from the page. He was determined to read, if for no other reason than to alleviate the tension. "I came across a passage in Battie that I think is an apt description of our goals. Where is it? Ah yes, here. It's too lengthy to read in full, so I will summarize. The author concludes that we are part of a community of philosophers who spend our days and nights in unwearied endeavors without closing our eyes. We attempt to reconcile metaphysical contradictions, to discover the Longitude (well, we've done that) or the Grand Secret (we're close to that one, too) and, by excessive attention of body, strain every animal fiber. What is so distressing is that Battie is describing the obsessions of the insane, of those who can be said to have cracked their brains by filling them with chimerical visions. I wonder if we are part of that company of infirm and shattered philosophers to whom he refers."

"You say the author's name is Battie?"

"Yes. An Englishman and an expert in insanity."

"Ah." Livre's interest grew. "Appropriate. Another confirmation of the force of one's family name."

"Eh?"

"Name is destiny, my friend. I study the subject. I know. You would be astonished by the number of people whose occupations are revealed in their names."

"There are others besides Battie?"

"Hundreds. I am gathering up a list for publication. My most recent discovery is Descartes."

"Did you find he was a cardplayer?"

"No. That would be too obvious. But he did represent his geometrical considerations on playing cards. I have, in fact, seen des cartes de Descartes." In most contexts, this observation would have been taken as a bad pun and nothing more, but for Livre it was a small part of a large theory.

"Surely, that is just a coincidence, nothing more than happenstance," the Abbe said.

"No, I must insist that name is destiny. I will show you. What's his name?" The bookseller pointed at Claude, who was startled by his unexpected inclusion in the conversation.

The Abbe answered, "Claude Page."

Livre considered for a moment. "Do you like books, Page?" Claude nodded. "Of course he does. Proves my point. The boy should be in my care, not yours. What's a bookseller without pages?"

"Yes," the Abbe allowed, "he may indeed like books, but I must inform you that he is destined for other things. Claude is the fellow who makes the Hours. This young man already demonstrates a genius, a talent . . ."

Livre interrupted. He had lost his patience and could feel his stomach grumbling. He picked on the Abbe's choice of words. "Though I do not wish to quibble," he quibbled, "I must say that the qualities you equate are very different, my dear friend. Very different. Talent qualifies one for some peculiar employment. It is a commonplace manifestation of external capability of execution. Genius is a rare gift, the possession of the powers of invention. Thus, we have a genius for poetry and painting; but a talent for speaking and writing. Those who have a talent for watchmaking may not have a genius for mechanics."

"I have not followed everything you just said, but regarding the genius for mechanics, this fellow has it, as well as the talent for watchmaking. You need only considet the animated painting he fixed for you to see that he btidges your distinctions. Talent and genius were twinborn in him. He will some day be known for both. And while we are playing with the meaning of words, I might add that Claude's genius links him to the genii of Muhammedan lore." He gave Claude a wink.

Claude was wise enough to keep quiet. This was the first time the Abbe had expressed publicly his pride for his recent efforts in the mechanical arts. And while some of the praise might have been provoked by the pedantry of the bookseller, it was praise Claude was ready to accept.

Conversation stopped. Livre withdrew a writing kit and booklet, a handsome, thin-ruled leather octavo with interlocking L's embossed on the cover, and noted the reference to Battie and his Treatise on Madness (London, 1758, two shillings and sixpence). He was so angry that he allowed the ink to run. He spat in disgust. A blemish in the booklet was an intolerable offense. He pulled out a perforator, a modified engraver's roulette. He ran the wheel of the instrument up and down the margin to excise the offending page and rewrote the citation, all the while making disgusting sounds—sounds Claude thought could be replicated by a rasp file brought against a piece of wood. Claude pulled out the S-roll to register the homophony before it would be forgotten.

"What is it that you are noting down?" the bookseller asked.

"I study sounds," Claude said, with as much humility as he could muster. "The Abbe has a wonderful sneeze, and you . . ." He did not know how to finish the comment without appearing impertinent, so he didn't finish it at all. Fortunately, the tension was alleviated by the arrival of the turnips. Livre mashed them with the tines of his fork and sniffed around his plate. He took a taste and, after making a few more burbling sounds, nodded with reluctant approval.

Supper was interminable, as were the gastric rumblings. Everyone at the table watched as the guest of honor chomped. The Abbe inspected the grooves left in the tender base of the artichokes' scaly impalements and wondered aloud if he should study the diversity of human dentition. Claude was curious to know what commissions Livre had brought, but he kept his curiosity to himself.

At last, Livre finished. The Abbe motioned for dessert to be brought. The overcooked turnips had appeased the bookseller, and so, when his host suggested some pears, he agreed. "Though I certainly do not make a habit of eating uncooked fruits." Kleinhoff excused himself and returned with a platter of exquisite bastard musks. Livre ate his fruit with knife and fork, leaving most of the center flesh untouched. The Abbe and Claude gripped their pears in hand and removed the skins helically, bringing their knives across the surface of the fruit with great concentration, in the manner of Gabriel Metu's The Apple-Peeler. They did not, however, perform the ritualized comparison of peel length that usually preceded the consumption of fruit. They knew Livre would find it objectionable.

The Abbe begged that his guest taste an applejack that rivaled the output of Normandy. (The Tokay, he decided, would be saved for more pleasant circumstances.) Livre declined. His stomach had launched a new assault. "I have my own drink. Page, would you bring the small shagreen case."

"I could provide you with something to quiet your digestion," the Abbe said.

"I have tried all known remedies."

"The mansion house has a large selection of curatives. Henri here can fix you a simple digestive, or some white of whale."

"Both have been tried. As well as blackberry infusions, citrine pomades, and innumerable syrups."

"And enemas?"

"Over the years, I have had pumped up my fundament anodynes, laxatives, lenitives, and astringents, to say nothing of emollients and carminatives. Most recently I tried a smoke-of-tobacco enema. It's an English remedy, and a bad one."

Claude returned with the case. Livre took it and removed a silver-topped bottle. After a few gulps and a deep breath, he appeared slightly restored. "Nothing is so efficacious as the water of the Lower Seltzer." He tapped the bottle proudly, as if it were an altogether different kind of offspring.

The Abbe said, "The Transactions include an account of Dr. Patrick Brown's assay of the mineral water from Montserrat."

"I am not familiar with Dr. Patrick Brown. I will stay with my Seltzer, thank you."

"Perhaps you might consider the Bishop of Coyne's Chain of Philosophical Reflections Concerning the Virtues of Tar-Water."

"I have read the Bishop of Cloyne. My Seltzer will suffice."

"A toast then, to the waters of the Lower Seltzer."

Glasses clinked. The table was cleared, and the two men turned to the pornographic commissions to which Livre had referred in "Purpose of Stay."

"Have you finished the fornicating frogs?" Livre inquired.

"It should be done by the end of the month," the Abbe replied.

The bookseller spat and said, "I hope by your use of 'should' you do not mean to suggest doubt. You have delayed shipment twice, much to the annoyance of the patrons I serve."

The Abbe ignored him. "It will be finished soon. We will need the new material."

"I have brought The Wandering Whore. I have marked the plates on which commissions have been obtained, on a separate piece of paper. Also, I have secured a new, if odd, order that is not like the others. The man is a regular patron placed in a difficult situation that requires special discretion." Livre whispered the details to the Abbe, who responded first with shock, then amusement.

The bookseller said to Claude, "It is to be a bawdy scene of your own design. Just make sure that the face is hers." Livre removed a small package wrapped in the brown paper he clearly favored. "This will test your talents."

"Yes, and your genius," the Abbe added.

The bookseller harrumphed and placed the package on the table. "It is a Portrait in Little painted on ivory."

Talk of business wound down soon after, and Livre excused himself from the table. He said he would be leaving before dawn the following day. Then he carried off to bed a set of books that bore the title The Mysteries of Paris.

"WHO IS SHE?" Claude asked. He was intrigued by the beauty of the young woman on ivory. The H-roll entry gave only the most skeletal information: "One case, in silvet. Portrait in Little, unspecified design, fot Monsieur Hugon."

The Abbe replied, "Her name is Alexandra Hugon. She is the wife of a Paris wigmaker. Livre informed me that though she has long shared her husband's bed, she remains a virgin. The commission is an attempt to provoke conjugal duties she refuses to fulfill. We are to construct a mechanism and case that will, in Livre's words, 'stimulate her marital obligations.' She is a rather lovely Madonna without Child, is she not?"

Claude nodded. Indeed, he had never seen such a face. The portrait was for him a lodestone imbued with some irresistible magnetic force. The chin was soft, the lips full and pouty. But the woman's true strength emerged in the region above the ever-so-slightly bulbed nose. Two glistening eyes of a color somewhere between the special glows of cobalt and Prussian blue announced an unsatisfied sensuality. This was intensified by the eyebrows, which were not tired arcs enslaved by the shape of the orbit but exquisitely defiant, truly supercilious. The face was framed by blond hair, perhaps her own, and garlanded with the tiniest of wildflowers.

Claude borrowed the Portrait in Little and contemplated its beauty under the covers of his pallet bed. A pleasure tent rose around his belly that would have betrayed to Henri, had he not been asleep, the nature of his restlessness. Claude's lust, the confused lust of a young man, was accentuated by the expertise he had gained making the Hours of Love. In his dreams, he attached the face to the bodies he had painted on snuffboxes, card holders, tweezer-and watchcases. He worked his genitals crudely, in a manner wholly at odds with the delicacy of his daytime manipulations.