A case of curiosities

by Kurzweil, Allen

  "Our troubles began soon after he agreed to care for my spiritual, intellectual, and yes, physical development. That was the reason for my initial departure for the Indies. The Provincial thought travel abroad would weaken the bonds we had formed, but, of course, distance did not weaken anything at all, especially not desire. When I returned, after nearly six years, we renewed our friendship and our work. The Provincial was off bettering the world. We were left to deal with the Provincial's assistant, a socius who was forever looking for reasons to separate us. In the first months after my return, we gave him little opportunity. We kept quiet and did little besides concentrate on Everard's mechanical plans, he as my master, I as his assistant. That is how we expressed devotion to each other and to God.

  "You might wonder what business a Jesuit has worrying about clockwork when there are more pressing matters to confront. Let me say this: patience and faith are essential to watchmakers and clerics alike. It should come as no surprise to you that the priesthood has a long tradition of invention. Who brought the first clock to China? A Jesuit. Who gave the world the magic lantern? Do you remember?"

  "Of course," Claude said. "Athanasius Kircher. A Jesuit. Livre had a fine copy of his Ars Magna. I consulted it regularly. It recalled the time we spent in the color cove looking at the slides of the nebulous jaw."

  The Abbe continued. "Everard, while in Rome, had been lucky enough to tour the Kircherianum itself. He would keep me up for hours with descriptions of the mechanical and hydraulic apparatuses amassed by the much misunderstood German. He judged Kircher's collection of animalia to be finer even than that of the Maurists in Paris, which, as you must know, is fine indeed. He used to tell me, 'I think Noah might have picked up a thing or two walking through Kircher's.' But again I've digressed. Where was I?"

  "The mechanics of Jesuit faith."

  "Oh yes, that's right. What of Camus? He was bound for the priesthood before he started making playthings for the king. And Pierre Jaquet-Droz? A student of theology, ready to toy with religion before he realized he should make a religion out of toys. The Company of Pastors in Neuchatel may have lost a foot soldier in the army of God, but the world was made a happier place. All to say, it is not strange to find two Jesuits — one young, the other old — spending their time filing and hammering for the greater glory of the Creator."

  Claude moved his stool closer.

  "The first substantial project we pursued after my return was a Nativity scene. We stated our intentions to the socius, who, suspicious of enthusiasm, tried to encumber us. He couldn't. There were pockets of support for Everard's talent, and I was insulated from innuendo by the substantial donations my family made.

  "The Nativity took its inspiration from the Spiritual Exercises. This was not to be a boring manger scene. We paid full and lasting tribute to St. Ignatius's meditation on the Kingdom of Christ. Do you remember it?"

  Claude and the Abbe repeated the lesson of the first day of the second week, alternating phrases.

  The Abbe started: "The first point is to see people, of this and that kind . . ."

  (Claude took over) ". . . and first of all those on the face of the earth in all their variety of garments and gestures ..." . . some white and others black. . ." . . some in peace and some at war. . ." . . some weeping and others laughing. . ." . . some healthy and others sick. . ." . . some being born and others dying. Yes," the Abbe said, "we even put death in our mechanical manger, as a full expression of Loyola's spiritual teachings. We had all sorts of humanity doing all sorts of things. The other fathers were amazed to observe that when a coin was placed on a balance pan, the heads of the Three Wise Men nodded, and six wooden arms raised to a glimmering Star of Bethlehem — actually, a piece of rock crystal cleverly lighted.

  "Then came the criticism, which seems even more ridiculous in retrospect than we thought it was back then. The visage of the Christ child did not please the socius. He told Everard to give it 'more piety.' (The idiot didn't recognize himself as the stablehand mechanically heaving a pitchfork of manured hay.) Everard was so annoyed that the day before public display he purposefully dropped the baby Jesus on the steps of the altar. It was too late to repair him. When the congregation inspected the Nativity, they saw the Savior as nothing more than a beeswax candle overpowered by the other wonders, outshone by the rock crystal star.

  "After that, Everard said, 'If it's a Christ imbued with piety he wants, it is a Christ with piety he shall have.' That is when he started work on a full-size figure. You can imagine the reaction. The socius tried to prohibit the project, but Everard prevailed, making handy use, once again, of the Exercises.

  'As Jesuits,' he said, 'we are obliged "to see and to consider the three divine persons . . . how they look down on the whole face and rotundity of the Earth and all the people who are in such blindness, and how they die and descend to Hell." ' Since Everard justified his tinkering theologically, he was granted a kind of spiritual building permit. He gave himself three months. He said, 'Our Christ will be ready for Easter Sunday.' '

  "The day of resurrection," Claude said.

  "Precisely. Our mechanical Savior was to be a tribute to Kircher, to Camus, and to all the other disciples of the Watchmaker God. Not that it was simple watchmaking. There was much more to it than that. Everard had a nickname among the novices: 'The Man of the Cloth — and Resin and Ivory and Gold.' I won't bore you with the details of his research."

  "Please!"

  "Very well. As I said, it was to be life-size, that is to say, five feet tall. We were determined to give motion to the head, arms, feet, and fingers. All of that wasn't too daunting. Everard even came up with a clever system that allowed His eyes to roll up toward Heaven. What caused us headache was the means of fluid transport, the channeling and pumping of the blood and tears. After much experimentation, we devised a system of vascular tubing made of India rubber — and this, I should say, was before Macquer published his study of caoutchouc resin. We worked though a cold winter, and the tubes kept cracking. It was not until early March that we finished our first successful test for the transport of teardrops, which were, in point of fact, beads of whale oil. We were feeling quite confident, when we were visited by not one but both of our adversaries: the socius and the Provincial himself, back from a troubled trip to Peru. The two fools inspected the work in progress. They poked about but kept quiet until the end. That is when the Provincial turned to Everard and said, 'Christ did not cry on the Cross.'

  " 'A detail in the expression of God's wonderment.'

  " 'Hardly a detail," the Provincial said. "A blasphemy. You must take away the tears."

  "Everard tried to argue, but the Provincial was adamant. He quoted chapter and verse and informed us that the whole project would be stopped if we did not remove our tear ducts. Unfortunately, the Provincial had a point. We were forced to toss aside more than a month of labor. That left us with the flow of blood. If there was one undeniable fact, it was that Christ bled on the Cross. So we expanded our network of blood channels. For blood, I remember, we used a cochineal mixture, since tests of pig's blood led to unpreventable clogging. We spread the channels from the bottom of His nail-pierced feet to the top of His thorn-bound brow. The reservoir was controlled by an Archimedes screw connected to a spindle." The Abbe spiraled his finger upward. "The rest was very simple. The screw went to a hollow piston rod. When it turned, the chamber closed, and the piston advanced, forcing the blood out of the appropriate wounds. We tested Him more than once, in various conditions. He worked quite nicely.

  "On Easter Sunday, Everard's masterpiece was ready for the general admiration of the congregation. We cranked up the Mechanical Christ to the requisite tension, a tension that was almost as great as our own.

  "The parishioners couldn't keep their eyes off the purple drape in front of the altar, though they didn't know what it was covering. Only His fingers poked out. Everard was no dupe. He was aware that suspense wins half the battle.

  "The Provincial's Easte
r sermon was ignored more than usual that year. At the end of the pieties, we were called forward. Everard removed the drape, and all eyes fell on the Mechanical Christ, which was modeled upon an especially bloody Crucifixion that Everard had seen in Rome. We waited a few moments for the gasps to die down. Then Everard allowed me the honors. Everything went flawlessly. I turned the two crank handles at the base of the cross and released the pressure. The tearless eyes rolled up and then down, the head tilted, and the blood began to flow.

  "The blood. First it came out of the left foot, then the right foot, the left hand, then the right hand. The most distant wounds — the tiny punctures around the forehead — bled just as the parishioners thought the miracle of hydraulics was complete. One of the richer observers quickly pledged a substantial sum to the Church. At this point, the Provincial felt he should take some of the credit for the magnificent tribute. He stood up and chanted the A.M.D.G. — Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, the motto of the Society.

  "The tithe plate at the first service filled well beyond the expectations for the paschal holiday. When the donations had been collected, we were told to turn Him off. I released the pressure, closed the valves, and put the drape — a cassock provided by a bishop in sympathy with the project — back over His holy frame.

  "We had a hard time emptying the church. Flocks of children, normally the toughest and most impatient members of the congregation, wanted to stay for the next service. And I can assure you, this had nothing to do with the oratorical skills of the Provincial. Just as everyone was moving to the door, a young fellow poked his nose under the cassock. He noticed something wrong. 'Look!' he shouted, pointing to the dark stain on the cloth. I removed the cassock to inspect. I should have waited until the church emptied." The Abbe shook his head.

  "I do not know why, but the blood would not stop flowing. It flowed and flowed and flowed. I tried to cover up the Mechanical Christ as quickly as I could, but the young fellow yelled out, 'It cannot be stopped. It cannot be stopped.' The mood grew anxious. Prayers were mumbled, hands reached for rosaries. The Provincial marked the points of an invisible cross.

  "The blood never could be stopped. Only after the reservoir was completely empty did the trickle end, and by that time the blood had dripped onto the altar cloth and had stained the marble floor.

  "At the next mass, the church was filled. Not for the sermon but to see our Mechanical Christ. He wasn't there. The only traces of His visitation were the red stains that dotted His departure through the vestry door. We had been forced, between sermons, to carry off the Savior. The Provincial yelled at Everard. He said the matter would be resolved after the services were completed. To no one's surprise, the tithe plate at the second sermon was substantially lighter than from the first.

  "That evening, we tried to make light of the mishap, but the Provincial was in no mood to accept our excuses. Here was his chance to censure Everard, whose intelligence and wit he envied. We received a mighty sermon and were accused of profanity. Everard tried to reason and even apologized, though without much heart. The apology was not accepted. The Provincial's casuistry was worthy of an anticlerical comedy by Voltaire, who was, by the way, also enduring Jesuit education at the time.

  "There was to be no resurrection of our invention. The Provincial said, 'I want it destroyed.' That is when Everard exploded. He shouted, 'In the manner of a medieval heretic, I suppose!' The Provincial was so angry that he gestured wildly and knocked Jesus's head off. It rolled under a chalice stand. Everard responded with a long string of curses, mostly in Latin, and stormed out.

  "I spent the rest of the week washing the stains out of the cassock, altar cloth, and marble. There was more to my penance. I was not to see my mentor. Two weeks later, Everard was defrocked. My punishment, because of my family wealth and my age, was less severe; but I could not live without my teacher's guidance, and so I chose to leave. Everard lost fervor and faith. He even lost his tools. The Order kept them, a deprivation I am sure you can appreciate."

  Claude nodded knowingly.

  "Everard's anger was contagious. I quickly learned to despise the Church. After leaving the college, we stayed together. Or, should I say, strayed together. We moved among a loosely formed company of bitter ex-theologians. Our motto: 'Christ died for our sins. Must we die for His?'

  "I tried to raise my mentor's morale by editing the notebooks he had rilled while testing his inventions. For nearly two years, we struggled to decipher what he had written, but the calculations never seemed to work out. You see, Everard had acquired Kircher's infuriating habit of not bothering to mention what was obvious to him. Then forgetting. Lucien Livre was the sole publisher willing to handle The Mechanical Christ.

  "The book was printed at my expense. Did it create a stir? No, none at all. Occasionally the frontispiece was denounced as irreligious. The mechanical content, however, was wholly ignored. This lack of interest ultimately killed Everatd. Following the example of his greatest cteation, he bled himself to death in a damp cellar near Dijon. I was left with a barrel of unsold Mechanical Christs and a feeling of desperate isolation. Research provided some comfort. I was wealthy enough to avoid pain. Or, at least, to try. I spent huge sums on whatever interested me, until it was no longer possible. The reasons for that curtailment of curiosity are already known to you. So are the reasons I was forced to reestablish my links, out of financial necessity, with Livre.

  "The Hours of Love fit perfectly with the Curtain Collection. Mechanically speaking, the work we did was gimcrack compared to my earlier efforts, but I needed the funds. Besides, in you, Claude, I saw a chance to develop talents I never had. I decided I would slowly present to you everything I knew. That is why I worked on Madame Dubois. It was one last attempt to show you the skills that the Church had tried to suppress. My plan failed. I was still the bouget. I still had energy. But that energy was diffused among my indulgent note-roll interests. I was scattered. I had lost the faith needed to produce automats— a faith I suspect you have."

  The Abbe ended his story. He had brought Claude through the last chamber of his life, which was an account, in effect, of the first.

  Claude could think of only one thing to say. He paused a moment before he said it. "Thermal expansion."

  "What?" The Abbe returned the trumpet to his ear.

  Claude raised his voice. "I said the problem was thermal expansion. Your Mechanical Christ needed backlash to compensate. He needed a small passage to allow air to get behind the piston. To prevent uncontrollable suction in the capillary path." Claude sketched out what he meant, and as he did, small tears, tears denied the Mechanical Christ, filled the Abbe's clouded eyes.

  4 2

  AFTER THE TEARDROPS, it was words that began to flow. Claude and the Abbe talked long into the night.

  Conversation moved from subject to subject, caracoling first one way and then the other. They finished each other's sentences and communicated, more extraordinarily, without speech at all. Like true lovers, they used gestures known only to themselves. There were differences between them, of course. Whereas the Abbe's talk was fragmentary and hesitant, Claude spoke with the confidence of a young visionary. The Abbe recognized this distinction and recognized, too, that he was listening to a disciple whose wizardry now far outstripped his own.

  "Claude," he said in one of many confessional moments, "I long ago confronted my limitations. I will never do anything more with my life than gather up the ingenuity of others. I am perfectly capable of observation, of training my eye on whatever it is that should be observed by the light of a clear and steady flame. But that is where my abilities end. I know how to seek but not how to find. In that, we are different. I am immobilized by possibility; you, my dearest friend, are liberated by it. You, Claude, are a discoverer — like your mother, you have intensity. She read the valley like a book and knew its plants with the intimacy of the botanical scholar. She snipped and pruned in a way that proved that the movements of the eye and hand constitute a language as rich as that
of the tongue. I remember how she would venture out at night and dig up roots under the light of a waxing moon." The Abbe paused. "Or was it when the moon was waning?"

  "Waxing. The roots are most potent then."

  "Oh, yes. And your father — he was also a discoverer, though you were not old enough to know. He made advancements for his craft and for his family. You would do well to appreciate that watch, the one that was sent back from the East."

  "I was so distraught at the moment of my departure that I left it behind," Claude said.

  "I know you did." The Abbe ran two fingers along the simple thong of leather that was attached to his vest. He gave the thong a tug. "Here." The Abbe handed the watch to Claude, who fiddled to undo the knot. The two men were briefly tied to each other.

  "I was forced to sell my better repeaters and took to using your father's clever timepiece," the Abbe said. "It was a link to you, I suppose. You know, I thought of you often." He patted Claude on the shoulder as he had so many times in the past.

  Claude asked him what he was thinking, in the manner of a nervous lover.

  "Nothing of consequence, really. But if you must know, observing you holding your father's watch reconfirms my own deficiencies. It evokes memories of a stop I once made at a tavern near Sumiswald. In that tavern, there was a simple bureau drawer nailed to the wall. Its compartments were filled with objects of no great worth. I asked the proprietor what it was. He looked at me as if at a fool and said, 'Why, it's a life box. My daughter made it.' And seeing that the explanation had not enlightened me, he said, 'It's the story of her life.' The box, known more formally as a memento hominem, contained a tiny and mysterious world — mysterious, at least, to everyone but the tavernkeeper's daughter. I can remember the objects precisely. There was a silk ribbon, a wooden lamb, a mug for ale — representing her father the tavernkeeper, one supposes — a key, a barrel, a broom, and a doll. Each little object in its own little compartment.