A case of curiosities

by Kurzweil, Allen

"I would caution against renewing the acquaintance," Plumeaux said. The words "pedant" and "exploiter" figured in the description that followed. "Do not pursue his assistance."

  Claude, however, was desperate. "I only want him to direct me to a mechanician's workshop. He has published on such matters in the past."

  "That was long ago," Plumeaux said. "As you know, he has since changed his line."

  Claude would not be deterred. He wove his way through the streets of the printing district, searching for "L. Livre at the Sign of the Globe." He passed oblivious through lanes teeming with hawkers of jest books and inexpensive merriments until he found the store. The front of the establishment bore an outdated terrestrial map that denied the antipodean discoveries of Captain Cook and La Perouse. Inside, Claude could see elegant shelving and, naturally enough, books. The onetime mansion-house guest was arranging a display dominated by a copperplate picture of a bird. Claude took it as a good omen that he knew the winged creature's story. Piero had told him of the much-discussed Si-murg, a Persian bird said to have the power of speech and reasoning. The explorer who captured it did not speak or understand Simurgian, and, more tragic still for the ornithologists and linguists of the day, the bird had died before reaching Paris. Piero had been invested with the honor of stuffing the unique specimen. Claude had remembered all of this because it provided a link to his father's Oriental anecdotes.

  The bookseller emerged from his shop to arrange a stall outside, his meticulously shaved jaws and oversized wig moving independently of each other as he bent down to give order to the books disrupted by passersby. Livre was exempt from even the most minute messiness in his attire. Yet there was something coarse about his neatness and something coarse about the man. Perhaps it was that he paused more than once to spit prodigiously into the street. (He saved his handkerchief for more formal occasions.) Claude reintroduced himself to the man the Abbe called the Phlegmagogue.

  Livre sputtered a bit and said, "Ah yes, Page, I remember. Wait here." The bookseller entered the shop and pulled from a cubbyhole in his desk the thin-ruled octavo booklet Claude had seen at the mansion house. He reemerged, saying, "Page, Claude, apprentice to the Count of Tournay. The boy of genius and talent." He sucked his teeth and looked Claude over. The bookseller was sharp enough to conclude that there was a little too much eagerness in his manner to suggest anything but a request. Claude was Need incarnate. Livre withheld the obvious questions or offers of assistance. Claude kept looking at the print of the bird, and Livre, as he had hoped, asked, "What does the genius make of it?"

  Following advice Plumeaux had dispensed in another context, Claude tossed humility aside. He praised the display and the quality of the engraving. Then he recited an embellished history of the Simurg—its manner of feeding, a description of its organ of generation, and its nesting habits. "I find it of considerable interest that it mates on the wing." He described the circumstances of the bird's capture and the nature of its near-human call. "Birdcalls are an ancillary interest of mine." Claude squirted out knowledge the way his mother worked the teats of the family milch cow.

  Livre asked Claude into the shop. "And brush your feet on my doormat." There was a spotless but frayed rectangle of sisal into which the monogram of the bookseller had been woven.

  Claude thought he had wiped enough, but Livre, through a series of wheezes and coughs, expressed a contrary opinion, and so Claude returned to the mat for some supplementary twists and scrapes.

  A bell rang as they entered the Globe. Claude looked around and found that the doormat motif was repeated throughout the shop. Double L's appeared on a bowl, a stack of bookplates, a small rug.

  Books were arranged by size and subject: quarto with quarto, folio with folio, mechanical opuscule with mechanical opuscule. There were no precarious, pyramid-shaped temples rising from the floor. Books stamped with grotesques and curlicues were arranged so that the gilded spines formed neat patterns against the walls. Even the potentially awkward stacks of unbound material were brought under control. The various decrees, addresses, acts, laws, and letters to the King were all constrained by ribbon. The shelves proclaimed more than the categorical rigor that characterized the century. Here was the apotheosis of Order and Discipline, the product of Homo hierarchicus in his most advanced state. Here was Lucien Livre.

  In the middle of the shop, on a floor of white-and-black hexagonal tile, rose an alley of cabinets topped by a set of glazed display cases. "My windows," Livre said. "They give my books a worthy home, though, as you know, most of the special works are held out of view. Behind that curtain." His finger pointed to a length of serge flanked by two massive globes.

  The front of the shop was dominated by the bookseller's dovecoted mahogany desk. A piece of twine ran across the top and was hung with little slips of paper that looked like the ensigns of some naval vessel or a Lilliputian's laundry. (A translation of Gulliver's Travels was part of the Globe's permanent collection.)

  Livre said, "Since you have brought neither news nor watches from the Count, I assume you no longer are in his employ. Just as well. He has breached his agreements with me and owes a substantial sum. He did not even send back the Portrait in Little, for which I am held responsible. His creditors will catch up with him soon enough." Claude contained his pleasure at learning of the Abbe's misfortune and approaching prosecution, even if for a lesser crime than murder. He briefly considered handing Livre the Portrait, but decided that that would raise too many questions.

  Claude tried to emulate the bookseller's stilted speech. "As you note, I am no longer in his employ."

  Livre said, "I also assume you have come because you are desirous of a new position. Is that so?"

  Claude nodded.

  "Just as I thought. I may be able to help."

  Was it to be that easy? Would the bookseller direct him immediately to a watchmaker?

  Livre justified Plumeaux's accusations of pedantry: "I will not undertake to assess the veracity of your comments regarding the fabled Simurg. The veracity matters little to me. Let me see that hand." Livre winced. "We will have to cover up its horrendous malformation. How tall are you?"

  Claude had a hard time following the motives behind the bookseller's inquiry but did not wish to jeopardize the potential patronage. He answered, "Two and a half feet."

  "Come again? By what measure?"

  "By the measure of the mansion house. We employed the Constantinopolitan foot."

  A woman's voice rose from the back of the store: "That would be roughly twice as long as the Paris foot, if I remember my tables."

  Claude saw a plume moving behind the terrestrial globe, just off the coast of India.

  Livre shouted, "Just tell me how tall he is here, in Paris."

  A quill scratched, and after some calculation, the woman's voice announced, "A bit over five feet, by the measure of the city."

  "The enumerator in the back," Livre said by way of introduction, "is my cousin Etiennette." He called out, "A cousin who has too much work to intrude upon our proceedings!" He turned to Claude. "She serves as bookkeeper to my Globe and has a few additional chores to justify the huge wages I pay her. So, just over five feet. That is fine. You will fit into the livery."

  Claude's confusion ended when Livre stated what had been, until then, implied: "You are pleasing enough, I suspect, to attract the attention of the ladies. Your accent declares your non-Parisian roots, but that can be eradicated. As I said to your former master, a Page belongs in a bookseller's shop. You seem worthy of my attentions. I will petition the guild for your apprenticeship. Since I have no indentured assistant at the moment, I do not think approval will be difficult."

  Claude shot back, too forcibly perhaps, "I am not seeking employment here. I was hoping that your knowledge of watchmaking and mechanics — the Abbe informed me that you have published on such matters—could provide me with an introduction to a master craftsman in search of an eager and competent worker."

  "As the Abbe must also have to
ld you, I switched my attentions some time ago. I currently limit myself to the philosophical."

  Claude stated his desires openly. "I wish only to be an engineer."

  "Nonsense. No guild acknowledges such activity. I doubt very much the word even appears in the dictionary." Livre consulted a massive tome on a mahogany bookstand. "You see. No entry."

  But Claude knew otherwise. He had stumbled upon the word long before, during his Tournay studies. "You might look under the entry for 'machine.'"

  They read together, one from memory, the other from the text. "Machine, of Greek origin, meaning invention, art. And hence, in strictness, a machine is something that consists more in art and invention than in the strength and solidity of materials; for which reason it is that inventors of machines are called ingenieurs, or engineers."

  "How very ingenious of you, Claude Page." Livre did not appreciate being challenged and was intolerant of correction. "Young man of genius!" he declaimed. "You were undertaking the watchmaker's craft when I was in Tournay. If you are now a journeyman, show me the documents to prove it. If you are not, grant your future master the respect he deserves."

  For the next hour or so, the bookseller lunged and withdrew, piercing Claude's youthful hopes, wounding his youthful pride. He wished to humiliate Claude, to leave him with the belief that Paris would offer him nothing, a conclusion he had reached independently.

  "The Count's superficial teachings will not feed you," the bookseller argued. 'The only trade* you have started to acquire—and I must emphasize the pathetically rudimentary nature of that acquisition—is in Bibliopola, the city of books. That is what I told you when we first met; that is what I tell you now. I cannot help you with your mechanical aspirations."

  Claude had nothing to say.

  The bookseller softened his tone, "For some, Claude, the state of being unemployed is a life at leisure, a mode of idleness. Here it is different. Unemployment in Paris consumes more time than any job."

  Desperate search for work had confirmed the aphorism, and so by the end of the conversation, Claude Page had agreed to apprentice at the Sign of the Globe.

  2 3

  The first order of business was the laborious act of formal registration. The bookseller took Claude to the back rooms to change into the livery—a velvet vest with twelve ivory buttons and a pair of kidskin gloves. The vest hung from the frame of a thin woman who had one of Livre's oversized wigs on her head. Otherwise, she was naked.

  "The demoiselle," Livre said.

  The demoiselle had three arms, which held out a mirror, a washbasin, and a sconce. She was a bizarre piece of furniture, a cross between a hatrack and the lay figure Claude kept in his garret niche. She had a wheeled base and a helical pole, which reached up to the barber's block that held the wig. Livre told Claude to take the vest from the wooden dress dummy, then pulled a pair of kidskin gloves from a pegboard on which a half-dozen other pairs hung limply. He ordered Claude to put the gloves on. They did not fit his long fingers, but Livre did not care. "Your malformation is to be covered at all times."

  As the two walked to the notarial office, Livre discoursed on the unsteadiness of mankind and the need for the contractual formalities of indenture. Claude, recalling the Abbe's resistance to anything that smacked of apprenticeship, was willing to accept whatever conditions Livre imposed.

  They passed under the royal escutcheon of the notary, and Claude was asked to swear, before witnesses, that he was who he said he was, the son of Michel Page, watchmaker, deceased, of Tournay, and Juliette Cordant. He did so. Then Livre had to swear, before witnesses, that he was who he said he was. Livre did so as well, thus revealing that he was the scion of a scullery maid from Loudeac and an unnamed father of unknown ancestry.

  The bookseller paid the notarial fees and took Claude to the guildhall, where all had been prepared. To have the university rector overlook Claude's ignorance of Greek and currencies, Livre was forced to pay out a small sum. This he marked down in his booklet, along with the incidental fees levied by the assistant to the lieutenant general of the police. There was also the matter of "the consideration," the sum Claude was to provide Livre for the bounty of knowledge he promised to bestow. This, too, was registered in the booklet for payment at some future date. No proviso for accommodations appeared in the serving papers. In that, Livre supported the prerogatives of the age. Claude was to work in the store, but where he slept was his own concern, not his master's. The papers also stated he was to pay for his own laundering, lighting, and food, though he would share one meal with his master each week. The last clause was inserted to extend his hours of labor. Grave oaths were taken, grave bits of paper were signed. The ritual ended with affixed testimonies and the smell of sealing wax.

  To celebrate, Livre invited his new apprentice back to the shop for a supper served promptly at eight. Until then, Claude's Parisian meals had been dominated by the tasty economies of Madame V. This meal was different, the first in a succession of encounters that both fascinated and repelled him. Livre's gustatory habits in Tournay had been memorable enough; long after his departure, Marie-Louise had been furious over the demands for overcooked turnips.

  Livre was, if anything, even more persnickety in Paris. There were some significant changes, however. Instead of turnips, potatoes now dominated the menu. Livre explained he had consulted an English empiric who had convinced him of the intestinal virtues of Parmentier's favorite tuber.

  Etiennette doubled as a serving girl and brought out the various platters, then excused herself quickly. Livre's nose hovered, sniffed, snorted, and sniffled. He inspected the food suspiciously, cursing under his breath. The reasons for his fears were never stated openly. He spat into a handkerchief left prominently on the table, then itemized the menu. There was boiled potato, mashed to the consistency of an enamel paste Claude had once pestle-pounded with Henri. There was potato skin, uncooked and looking like discarded belt leather. And there was potato bread, leaden and crumbly in texture.

  "I will forsake my Seltzer tonight. The festive nature of the occasion calls for a truly special treat." Livre poured out the murky contents of a bottle. "It is known in some parts as mobby." Claude did not need to taste the drink to guess its principal ingredient.

  The food was not spiced, nor were salt and nutmeg placed on the table. The only garnishment was the gurgling that came from the bookseller's throat. Something damp and globular seemed forever trapped in the deep of his chest. The cough and the phlegm rolls of Tournay were only a prelude to the impressive efforts to which Claude was now treated. At his own table, Livre felt free to hack away, to gasp and wheeze and smack his lips. The sounds tested both Claude's stomach and his symbolic annotation. He made a mental note to compare Livre's repertoire to the effect of a saturated loaf sponge thrown against the wall.

  Livre launched into monologue: "The word 'indenture,' Claude, comes from the toothlike marks of a torn piece of paper. The dents." He tapped a greenish tooth in a mouth still filled with potato mash. "Half the contract held by master, and half by apprentice, to protect against forgery."

  Claude's thoughts wandered. How different this was from Tournay. Work with the Abbe had been activated by nothing more than a smile, a touch, and a challenge. What had the Abbe said? "I will teach you to teach yourself." Now he was to be bound by a ripped piece of paper.

  "Order, Claude, is essential. One of my pearls states, 'A place for everything and everything in its place."' He uttered the adage the way the faithful recite a paternoster. "Everything has its place. Not just the books on the shelves, or the gloves on the peg board, but the apprentice in the shop, the peasant in the village, the king in the court."

  Claude considered the credo. "A place for everything and everything in its place" was a phrase spoken by a man uncomfortable with change. And yet Livre was equally ill at ease with his own position, a nasty irony that made him at once a purveyor and critic of the status quo.

  "Your predecessor was, I might add, worthless when
it came to our better patrons," Livre said. "He did not tecognize that the sale of books is an act of seduction. Patrons are less concerned with what's in a book than what is around it. We can provide calf, full and half, morocco, and other leathers besides. And, of course, false covers for the works in the back."

  Claude was again distracted until he heard Livre say, "It is all a matter of proportion. Folios were meant for rooms of grandeur, but now that rooms are often built at reduced scale, book dimensions must diminish accordingly. Which is fine for our profession. With smaller books, we turn a nicer profit. If, that is, we are careful about the margins. Children's primers are especially good business. Small books for small eyes yield big profits. Oh, that has a making of a pearl." Livre took out his booklet and wrote down the observation.

  The talk and gurgles ceased and the meal was pronounced over. Livre turned back to his booklet and went through the list of clothing he expected Claude to wear: the velvet vest when inside the shop, the frock coat when outside tunning errands, the coatse black gloves when cleaning external dirt, the coarse brown ones for internal dirt, the white ones fot book dust, the gteen ones when polishing the copper and the btass.

  "I will deduct the vest and gloves from your wages. The errand frock you must buy yourself." Livre totaled up Claude's debts. Feeling generous, he said, "I will bear the cost of today's meal and supply you with the pair of gloves you are now weat-ing."

  It was now Claude's turn to sputter. "I do not have the funds to pay for the other items."

  "Nonsense. No genius leaves a man of such woeful generosity as the Count of Tout nay without tecompense."

  "I have spent what I had."

  "Do you still have your tools?"

  Claude nodded.

  "Then it's quite simple. Sell them. They will not be needed anymore. Just sell your tools."

  There is in the pawnbroker's shop a profound and illicit sadness, a concentrated dose of private failure. One looks around and wonders: What were the circumstances that forced the musician to sell his violin? The nobleman his favorite watch? And what of the copper bedpan, or that doll of human skin? The tragic mood is suggested by the method of display. In hanging the objects by bits of rope or by placing them in cages, the pawnbroker suggests that there is a certain criminality associated with transacting business in his shop. After all, hanging or imprisonment is the destiny of the turnpike thief.