The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre (7 page)

“It won’t matter before long.”

Arago did not react to this comment. He rose, put his hands in his pockets, and poised an eye behind the telescope. He rested there for several moments, cigar in his mouth, squinting through the eyepiece.

“How are the stars these days?” Louis asked.

“Still there. You wouldn’t believe the idiocy we endure. Paris is full of madmen, I tell you. When we announced that Neptune had been proved, a man came to us declaring that the world was still flat and showed us a map of Atlantis. Off the coast of China, it was.”

“If Atlantis were real, Napoleon would have tried to colonize it.” “The emperor may have been a little hotheaded, but he got things done.”

“Beheadings, mostly,” Louis said.

Arago took his eye from the telescope and they looked at each other, leaned into this old disagreement.

Arago took a notebook and pencil from his desk, looked at his watch, and wrote something down.

“What are you doing?” Louis asked.

“Take a look for yourself.”

Louis crossed to the telescope while Arago held it in place. He positioned his eye and looked out onto a rooftop where a very old Muslim man stood in a tunic on the edge of a prayer rug. The man bowed slowly, his head down, before moving into a kneeling position. There was something otherworldly about this feeble man suspended above Paris, facing Mecca, and moving with a halting reverie. Everywhere people were preparing.

“He prays five times a day, and I have been writing down the exact time of three of those prayers for years. Midday, late afternoon, and just after sunset. I have no faith of my own, but it gives me a great deal of comfort to watch this man. We keep time for all of Paris, and in some strange way, I keep time from this man’s prayers. I have a precise record of his devoutness.”

Louis straightened and took the notebook from Arago. It was meticulously ruled, and each prayer time had its own column. He returned to the eyepiece and watched as the man pressed his nose and mouth to the rug.

Arago said, “One day he’ll die and I’ll be very sad not to see him out on his rooftop.”

Louis felt he was witnessing something deeply personal. He pictured Arago watching from this spot, measuring time by another man’s prayers, and understood that his friend was full of regret. Arago had waited his whole life for greatness to arrive; he dressed like a man who expected to discover a planet. Louis felt impossibly sad that Arago’s hopes and ambitions would come to naught, that darkness would descend from the very sky he’d spent his life studying. Louis backed away from the telescope, keeping his face down.

“François, before I take the daguerreotypes of the sun and moon, there is a favor I’d like to ask. There isn’t much time.”

“Please, sit.”

Louis returned to his seat. “I am looking for a storage area for my portraits, and I was wondering if I might get access to the catacombs via the observatory basement.”

Arago returned to his chair and thinned his lips in speculation. He was a man who counted right angles and noticed a wall out of plumb upon entering a room. “But surely it’s too dusty and filthy down there. Our revolutionary brothers are buried below.”

“Yes, I’m aware. But I need somewhere protected. The daguerreotypes will all be under glass, so the dust won’t damage them.”

“I see.” Arago tapped his fingers gently on the edge of his desk. “You realize that access to the catacombs is controlled by the crown. They are off limits to citizens.”

“I didn’t realize.”

“Of course, we have a key to the gate because—and this is not widely known—one of our founders is buried down there. Cassini, the man who mapped the moon. The key is in this very drawer. But this is madness. Your images belong in museums, not catacombs full of bones.”

“The circumstances are special.”

“The truth is special.”

Louis looked into Arago’s face. A perfect meridian ran vertically down his forehead; he was a scientist kept awake by the great questions of his time. Louis wanted to confess and warn.
François, take your family to an abbey and pray with the monks, leave your scientific post and go to Venice, learn how to paint and rise each morning while the stars are still white-lit against the dawn. Be a boy again. Play cork-penny in the lane and set paper boats afloat on the Seine. The time is upon us.

Instead, Louis Daguerre said this: “The truth is, I fear they will be stolen from me. As you know, there has been jealousy on all sides, claims that independent inventions were made earlier. I need them in a safe place.”

“You imagine that someone will rob you?” Arago asked.

“I am sure of it. In fact, there has been one attempt already.” The lie was effortless, and it filled Louis with a salesman’s confidence; he was sure Arago would acquiesce. For good measure, he added, “I could lose my entire collection, my whole life’s work, if I don’t find a safe place to store them.”

Arago folded his arms. “Well, these
are
special circumstances. But we must keep this a secret. You tell me when you want access, and I will arrange it.”

“Many thanks. I owe you much kindness.”

“Yes, so you keep saying. Next time I want to reach you, I’ll hire a town crier to come and stand outside your door.” Arago laughed at this, dabbed a scuffed patch on his calfskin boot, and said, “Now, shall we go look at the sun?”

Louis followed Arago out into the hall. They climbed to a rooftop observation platform above the eastern tower where various telescopes were set up. Louis saw that his equipment had been piled by a railing. He placed the camera obscura on the tripod and prepared a copper plate with carded cotton and powdered pumice. The day was growing hot and Louis loosened his collar.

“Are you still using quicksilver to fix your images?” Arago asked.

“The marriage of mercury and silvered copper is a lasting one.”

“Few marriages last forever,” Arago said absently, peering off at the Paris rooftops. “I thought perhaps you’d found something less abrasive.”

“It’s destined to stay in the process. It’s a noble metal, neighbor to gold.” There was a high pitch of vitriol in Louis’s voice. “Hardly an accident that it plays a role. And Priestley never would have discovered oxygen without burning mercury oxide. Where would the observatory weather station be without mercury in your thermometers?” He looked back at the plate and rubbed it with carded cotton. The threat of a cough made him regret the cigar.

“I was merely asking.” Arago leaned against the railing and looked high overhead at the sun. “Did you know the king has granted my eleven o’clock curfew on the new moon? People in this neighborhood are not permitted to burn candles or lamps after that hour.”

“Excellent news,” said Louis. In truth it sounded trivial, a royal concession to the trifle of stargazing. Louis aimed the camera obscura skyward. His face was flushed and he could feel sweat on his back. “Do you have any specific instructions? I’m using a filter to diminish some of the glare.”

“For both the sun and moon I require only one thing—some indication of their surfaces.”

“And do you mind if I make two plates and keep one for myself?”

“Not at all. I didn’t realize you were interested in the heavenly bodies.”

“I find of late I am more and more interested in what goes on up there.”

Louis positioned himself behind the camera. The sun floated almost directly overhead and appeared more white than yellow. He would use a very brief exposure on account of the sheer brightness. He opened the diaphragm and started to count, staring into the sun. The solar flare triggered something. He felt a prickle at the back of his neck, a raked sensation in his fingers. His eyes began to smart, but he couldn’t look away from the tin-hued glare. He thought he could see thermal waves, whorls of hydrogen. Then a burn, a scalding in the back of his throat. He looked down at the ground and closed the diaphragm just as the seizure nabbed him by the neck. He knelt, shuddered, fell to the floor. His head hit the wooden planks. Arago was at his side, calling his name as if through a tunnel. The seizure passed quickly and left Louis staring up at the angry white sun. There were spectral colors in his vision, spirals of red and yellow. He made no sound. A bright and throbbing pain swelled up in his mouth.

“My God, Daguerre, are you all right?” called Arago, bending down. “Did you faint?”

“No, no, I’m fine. The sun blinded me for an instant.” There was a slight sputter in his voice. He smoothed his tongue against his teeth to investigate. Arago squatted beside him. Louis tasted the sulfur of blood in his mouth, a warmth pooling behind one cheek. At the same instant the two men looked a few feet away and saw one of Louis Daguerre’s teeth on the observatory platform. It was a front incisor, yellowed by age and diet, and with a delicate recess of blood in its crown. Arago looked at it with a mixture of disgust and disbelief. Louis fought a desire to grab it and put it back in his mouth.

After a long pause, Arago said, “Is that your tooth?”

Louis took out his kerchief and wadded a portion of it into his mouth. He saw himself as Arago might: the blood on his waistcoat, the maw of some wild animal crouched on the timber boards of the Paris Observatory. Louis gave in to a series of nods designed to control his own astonishment and repulsion at the sight of his tooth.

“A serious artist must give of himself for the work,” he said. But neither of them laughed, and Louis had no choice but to acknowledge the moment by picking up his tooth with his kerchief.

“You must see a doctor. I insist,” said Arago.

“That tooth has been loose for some time,” Louis found himself saying. “The sun saved me a few francs at the tooth puller’s.”

Arago helped Louis to his feet and called for a clerk, who came hurrying with a chair. Louis recognized him as the reckless man who had unloaded his equipment from the carriage. He felt a burst of anger in his chest. “Get this man away from me. Don’t let him touch me!”

“He’s trying to help,” Arago said.

Louis looked squarely at the man. “I remember you. We know each other, you and I.” The man shrugged and Arago gestured for him to leave the chair. Louis reluctantly sat and watched the man withdraw a few paces. Louis mumbled, “No man is safe from the fury of the end.”

Arago loosened Louis’s neck cloth and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing the large emblem of the Legion of Honor. Arago and the clerk looked on as a single drop of blood spilled from Louis’s mouth onto the nation’s crowning symbol. He looked down at his chest. “On my way to get it resilvered.”

Arago paused, his eyes locked on his friend’s chest. Louis thought he could see, in that instant, an immense contempt wash over Arago’s face. Was the sight of the cross on his bloody chest an act of desecration? Did he think Louis was an embarrassment to a noble tradition?

Arago recovered and said to the clerk, “Fetch him some water and a clean shirt from my study.”

Louis said, “No, nothing from him.”

The man hauled off. Arago put his hand on Louis’s shoulder. “You’re acting very strangely. You must have really smashed your head.”

Louis shrugged with elaborate indifference. He put the kerchief to his mouth. “I got the sun. If you’ll leave my equipment set up, I’ll return tonight for the moon.”

“There will be other full moons,” said Arago.

“I insist. I feel perfectly fine. That tooth must have been a little rotten. I’m too much with the black-currant brandy these days.”

The clerk returned with water and the shirt. Louis took the water, imagining it an act of contrition. He made a few tentative swallows. The blood seemed to be slowing.

“You can dress in the library. Nobody is in there,” said Arago. “You’ll come to it at the base of the stairs.”

Louis moved uneasily across the platform. The sight of his own blood brought the smell of ether into his nostrils. He followed the stairs down to the library and closed the door behind him. Arago’s shirt was made from broadloom cotton, the kind of shirt one wore sailing. Louis removed his bloody neck cloth, cravat, waistcoat, and shirt. He wiped the tooth with his kerchief and placed it on one of the shelves, next to a clothbound volume on celestial orbits. An odd sensation of satisfaction, of shedding bone, settled over him. He put his tongue into the newly created socket. It was on the bottom right and probably wouldn’t show during a smile. Arago’s shirt felt cool and smelled of lime starch. He tucked it into his breeches and walked back towards the observatory platform, holding the bundle of his clothes to his chest. Arago was pacing the rampart, occasionally looking up at the sun. He walked with his hands behind his back, shifting between the cardinal directions.

“Thank you for the shirt. I will return it this evening when I come,” said Louis.

“I’ll leave instructions with the guard to let you in. Are you certain that you are in good enough health?”

“As I said, an old rotten tooth.”

“Well, I must get back to my dossiers. Very good of you to come, Daguerre,” Arago said, patting him on the shoulder. Something had changed. Could you see a man spit out a tooth and take him seriously? Louis took out the exposed copper plate, wrapped it in hessian, and went downstairs to his carriage. He threw the bloody clothes next to him on the box seat and took off at a pace.

He didn’t know which was worse, the humiliation of losing a tooth before one of France’s fathers of science, or the scalding embarrassment of Arago seeing the Legion of Honor cross around his neck. He was a boy playing dress-up. He remembered with further humiliation that he’d left the tooth inside the observatory library—a bloody morsel of himself at zero latitude. Louis had almost brought himself to laugh at this when he saw a flash of brown disappear beneath the carriage wheels. He heard a high-pitched yelp and drew the carriage to a halt. He stepped down and looked beneath the gig. He’d run over a small dog that now lay, broken-limbed, panting in the dirt. The day could get no worse. The animal was a motley hound, a reddish-brown cur of the type found slinking behind wine barrels and feeding on alley scraps. Its eyes were a dazzled yellow and it looked at Louis while attempting to scoot forward on its two front legs. As a boy, Louis had cared for lame sparrows and frogs rescued from the jaws of cats and now he found himself fetching a felt blanket for the injured dog from the wagon. When he crouched beside the animal, it halfheartedly snapped at him before allowing itself to be bundled in the blanket and placed in the carriage. One of the hind legs appeared to be broken and rested at a strange angle. Louis covered the dog with the blanket and rode back to his studio slowly, trying not to pain it further. He carried it up the long flight of stairs and placed it on his divan. Then he went back for the hessian-covered plate. An hour had almost passed and he would have to fix the sun’s image rapidly. The thought of ruining the plate after his degenerate display at the observatory was gruesome. He heard Arago’s voice at parties—the patriarch’s baritone—as he lamented the passing of another great man into obscurity.
Daguerre, yes, he was where it all started. Pity he lost his mind. Mad as a hatter. Lost all his teeth.
Louis went into his darkroom and lit the lamp beneath the mercury bath.