A case of curiosities

by Kurzweil, Allen

  "It was an intriguing conceit, one that occupied my thoughts all the way back to Tournay. I determined soon after settling into the rhythms of the mansion house to make a life box of my own. For a week, I strolled around the grounds, through the laboratory, in and out of the library, gathering up objects charged with personal significance. But when I looked at the items, I recognized a bitter truth about the life of Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Robert Auget, Abbe, Chevalier of the Royal Order of Elephants, Count of Tournay. There were so many competing ideas, formulas, images, and objects that I would have needed a dozen drawers to accommodate my superficial predilections."

  Claude interrupted. "You overlook the virtues of that encyclopedic lust. I have always found the plurality of your passions exhilarating."

  "Lust, as you know, is a sin."

  "An odd declaration for a man who renounced the notion of sin and fled the Church in disgust."

  "Touche."

  "My point," Claude said, "is not to win an argument but to force you to recognize a quality you are unwilling to see."

  "My eyesight has failed in recent years." The Abbe tapped his Nurembergs.

  "You have always been blind to your talents as a teacher. You have the gift of instruction."

  "But what of obstruction?" the Abbe replied. "I could not even assemble a life box by myself. All that I have ever done has been done in conjunction with others. Never alone."

  "So? You have told me often that even ingenuity in isolation is a collaborative act."

  "Have I said that?"

  Claude could not remember if the Abbe had made the remark, but he had certainly implied as much. "Yes, I am sure of it."

  "Well, I was wrong."

  "You were not wrong."

  "I was. Age has allowed reflection. I have found that I am no better than the Staemphlis with their precious bottles, or the Livres with their precious books."

  "I had a teacher once who taught me that reflection can distort," Claude said.

  "Enough counterpointing. Please, let me finish what I wish to say. All my life I tried to keep moving from one chamber to the next and couldn't. My metaphor was poorly chosen but apt. I have learned, in corresponding with a Dutch malacologist, that the chambers of the nautilus do not connect to one another. My false assumption is significant, given the supreme importance I granted to that creature of helical perfection. So much for the guiding metaphor of my life."

  "Stop this self-pity," Claude said. "The fact is, I need you, and I need your learning. I need your singular opinions, and I need your scattered pursuits. Perhaps it is true you have not accomplished all that you hoped. Neither have I. Who that you respect has? We still have time."

  "Time to do what?" the Abbe asked.

  "To do what?" Claude held his breath and gathered his thoughts. He exhaled significantly. "I will tell you what we have time to do."

  At last, the btoad outline of a plan long kept secret was tevealed. It was stunning, ambitious, philosophical, whimsical— Claude incarnate. The Abbe's glaucous eyes twinkled as they had not twinkled for quite some time. He contemplated the young man's dreams. He moistened his prunish lips with another sip of Tokay and said, "You will do it!"

  "No," Claude cottected. "We will do it."

  The Abbe wiped his nose on his cuff. "In any case, I will put you in touch with the gteatest minds and hands of Europe. They will assist you, I am sure." The Abbe lowered his glass and snatched up a dusty note-roll that registered his correspondents. The teacher in him was reborn."We must go through the roll and make up a list.

  He paused. "I must emend an observation I once made. Long ago, I told you that we must all choose our metaphors. I was wrong. We do not choose our metaphors." He stopped to give the reworked epigram a little bit of drama. "Our metaphors choose us."

  43

  IT WAS CATHERINE the scullion who informed Claude that the mansion house was impoverished. "The accountant," she explained, her feet propped against the chimney of the kitchen, "forced the Abbe to sell off his possessions, at least the ones that could be sold."

  At first, dispersals were quite painless. The Abbe rid himself of six panels of stained glass — an Adoration scene — and the carved church furniture that had not been modified for his chapel workshop. These were acquired by a merchant who had purchased a castle, land, and title forty leagues away. But other sales caused greater distress. Gone was the marvelous new planetarium from London, the one that included Herschel's recent discovery of Uranus, known as Georgium Sidus in honor of King George III. Gone were the pneumatic pump and the harpsichord and the better pieces from the shell collection. The accountant had even tried to sell the lightning pole for scrap, but no one wanted it. The most valuable books from the library, at least those the Abbe had not scrawled over, sat in a Geneva storehouse awaiting sale on -consignment. And the colors! All packed off in ironbound casks. The dispersal of the stocks had turned Henri into even more of a slug. (The Abbe said at one point, "Poor Henri. He is destined to become living proof of the law of inertia.")

  The changes were felt beyond the spiral gates of the mansion house. The good-natured, if quirky, approach to session-day payments ended. The Abbe no longer could barter against the curiosities found by the local population. The accountant controlled the rent books and calibrated his demands to the figures in his profit tables.

  "The only thing that has remained the same is right here in the kitchen," Catherine said. She pointed to herself and Marie-Louise, who was minding a solitary pot that bubbled, like everything else in the mansion house, equivocally.

  "Things are not the same here, either," the cook said. "No visitors. No real meals to prepare. Look at this!" She was doleful as she lifted a lid to reveal some boiled beef broth. "That gout of his doesn't make any of us happy."

  Later in the day, while Piero padded about the library, the Abbe confirmed all that Claude had been told. Sitting by a fire, his feet wrapped in boots of oiled silk and padded wool, the old man bemoaned the inflammation of his joints, which he denied had anything at all to do with the Tokay. He then revealed his plans. "You have given me just the incentive I need to counteract dissipation," he told Claude. "If you will have me, I would like to come to Paris. I will make arrangements for the sale of Tournay, and your family cottage as well if you wish. With the proceeds from the properties we will find lodging for me and use the rest of the funds to support your work."

  Claude resisted at first but ultimately embraced the offer and the Abbe himself. "You are a generous man," he said.

  "Nonsense."

  "You are even too generous to admit it."

  "I would not say that. It is I who am getting the better of the deal."

  The frozen ground, as Claude suspected, meant that the victims of the fire could not be buried until the thaw. He decided that during the wait he would make full use of the mansion-house library, or what was left of it. Though many of the finer books were gone, Claude made some happy discoveries amid the dustballs and neglect. Halfway down one abandoned pyramid, he found the soup-stained Battie, and at the bottom of another pile, the dog-eared Berthoud. Rereading the works, he recognized in himself a mix of anticipation and impatience. Many of the works were far less evocative to him now than in the past. He decided to limit himself to the scrawl of the Abbe's note-rolls. Piero took over in the library, excavating among the abandoned stacks. This was not because he was an avid reader; he hardly read at all. But the Abbe had, at one time, used the heavier tomes to preserve specimens of the valley's insects. By shaking open the books, Piero was treated to a bounty of pressed butterflies and moths. As he pursued lepidopteran investigations, the Caliph and his vizier talked of gears. Though Claude's initial discussions with the Abbe were diffuse, he soon imposed a certain rigor and, with his teacher's help, composed a plan d'etudes.

  "It is imperative," the Abbe said, "while we wait for the snows to melt, that you undertake a voyage of discovery. A nautical term, I know, but one not inappropriate for the domains you seek to e
xplore. Tomorrow we will chart your itinerary." The Abbe sneezed prodigiously and spent the rest of the afternoon complaining about his gout.

  44

  BERNOULLI?" CLAUDE QUERIED. "Of course, Bernoulli," the Abbe replied. "He may be dead, but his papers are still around. And if Basel is Basel — which it most certainly is—and if the Bernoullis are the Bernoullis — which they most certainly are—then the papers will be meticulously preserved and indexed. Mark him down. Pinpoint Basel."

  Piero plunged a pin into an unfolded map of Europe.

  "What is this?" Claude asked next, struggling to read the Abbe's penmanship with a makeshift magnifying glass, a loupe picked up in the chapel.

  "It is plainly written," the Abbe said, though he himself frowned for quite some time before triumphantly deciphering it. "The Kunstkammer of the Hessian Landgraves."

  "Is that in Kassed?"

  "In Kassel, Claude. Kassel. Where else would it be? Pinpoint Kassel. It is an essential stop. We will write a letter of introduction to the Inspector. I think his name is Doering. At least it was Doering. No, better yet, we will direct our correspondence to Oberhofmarschall Veltheim. He will arrange a special tour. My advice to you is not to get caught in the celebrated part of the collection—the sword of Boabdil and that piece of celadon brought from China by the Count of Katzenelnbogen. And by all means, avoid the ridiculously large collection of ivory! You will have enough to do in the rooms that house the mechanical, hydraulic, and hydrostatic models." The Abbe rubbed his hands together. He clearly enjoyed the role of intellectual navigator.

  "Kassel is pinned," Piero said. "What is the next destination?"

  "Professor Lunt in Leyden?" Claude suggested.

  "Leyden would be a waste of time. There is no reason to visit the apostles of Boerhaave. Ruysch's collection, on the other hand, is worth a stop. Pinpoint Amsterdam. Next."

  "We are now turning to locations that are closer to Tournay. Jaquet-Droz and Leschot," Claude said, with some reverence. "Do you know them personally?"

  "Know them personally? Of course I know them personally. We were introduced when they toured the musician, the draftsman, and the writer, that sacred trinity of overpraised automats. Little more than unimaginative clockwork prettied up. The virtues of your device will put their constructions to shame. Still, you must pay homage. You may even learn something. Piero, add Neuchatel and La Chaux-de-Fonds to the route."

  The roll call filled the better part of a day. Claude, loupe in hand, scanned the ledger of correspondents. The Abbe, sitting in the confessional chair, passed judgment. Piero, bent over the map of Europe, cupped a packet of pins for quick and ready puncture.

  By the time they had finished, fifty little markers were planted on the Continent and in southern parts of England. Some half-dozen other centers of learning beyond the Bosphorus were represented by wooden saltshakers (Smyrna and Baghdad) and emptied specimen bottles (East Indies ports) placed on the edge of the plankboard table.

  The Abbe's revived enthusiasm had gotten the better of him. There was no way Claude could venture to all the cities cited or consult all the men the Abbe knew. (The K's alone— von Kempelen, von Knauss, Kratzenstein, Kriegeissein, etc.— would have taken more than a year.) In the end, the voyage was not nearly so ambitious as the pinpricks promised. The itinerary was reduced by both the constraints of time (the unpredictable nature of the thaw) and the limits of funds (the predictable expense of foreign travel). England was out. Amsterdam was out. Rome and its Kircherianum were absolutely out. "To negotiate with the Papal bureaucracies would take a lifetime," the Abbe said. The merchant centers of Turkey, which had fascinated Claude since his youth, would, the Abbe concluded, "remain names and nothing more—but, then, that will be enough."

  The radius of travel diminished, and the ring of research closed on itself. Only the pins in Swiss and French border towns remained on the final itinerary: Neuchatel and the surrounding communities, Basel, and smaller villages too numerous to name. Some of the unvisited experts would be contacted by post. Under the Abbe's guidance, Claude wrote letter after letter, describing specific technical problems without revealing the general nature of his plan. "We must keep the project quiet until we can keep it quiet no more," the Abbe warned. For three days, the smell of sealing wax declared Claude's epistolary efforts, as small bundles of international correspondence were carried off by the postman, who announced to anyone who would listen, "That Claude Page. He wtites . . . letters!"

  Claude knew only one addtessee personally. "We must contact this coachman friend of youts, this Paul Dome," the Abbe had said, "and insist he take you on your voyage. It will save expenses and facilitate encounters by freeing you of scheduled transport. After which, he can coach us back to Paris. We shall double his wages to entice him," the Abbe said.

  But Claude took control of his mentor's habitual extravagance. "That will not be necessary. I know a less costly means of attracting his attention." Claude wrote a short letter, at the end of which he noted, quite casually, "We can provide normal wages in addition to Marie-Louise's boar's-head soup and a substantial store of pears—magdalenes jarred in heavy syrup." The gastronomic pledge was enough to assure a visit. The coachman reached Tournay with Lucille and a sturdy team just ten days after the letter was posted, having intercepted it outside Lyon.

  Paul Dome quickly fell into the spirit of the mansion house. He added a certain balance—"weight" was the term the Abbe jokingly used — to the arrangement. "Older men like us," the Abbe observed in one of their early talks, "will provide stability to the youthful vagaries of Claude and his friend Piero." The men forged an attachment born from more than their obvious admiration for Claude, which, by itself, might have been divisive. They shared a strongly held belief in the physiological principles of Epicurus (both loved food) and they took pleasure in the language they shared (both were incorrigible punsters).

  "Your nasal explosions are more wicked than the local winter wind," the coachman said when he heard the Abbe sneeze.

  "Perhaps so. But, at least, I am not a walking law of aerostatics," the Abbe replied.

  "How is that?" the coachman asked, with an anticipatory smile, a willing victim to the Abbe's counterattack.

  "Did you not know? Levity increases exponentially with size. Your girth and mirth confirm it." The Abbe gave the coachman a poke in the stomach, and they both laughed. Then they spent the better part of an hour mocking each other's dress. The coachman found the Abbe's costume ridiculous. "Replace that faded vest of yours and remove those crusty ruffles."

  "You are one to talk. With all the objects hanging from your belt, you look like some detanged traveler." The Abbe dug up a print of Linnaeus returning from Lapland wearing a leathet band that held clothes, inkstand, pens, microscope, and spyglass. "All you are missing is the reindeer-skin tunic."

  "I have never denied that I am deranged," the coachman said. "Now, get up on your gouty legs, old man, and inspect the vehi cle of my derangement." And he introduced the Abbe to Lucille. "Behold the chariot that will take our Claude to greater glory."

  Sitting in the coach, they traded gout stories, though social class should have denied the coachman the right to call his indigestion gout. "Tried Portland powder? I paid a fine sum for some," he said.

  "Madame Page made up a batch once," the Abbe replied. "Mixed together some ground pine, leaves of gentian, and a stem of birth wort. It was worthless."

  "And iodine?"

  "Did nothing at all. What, my dear fellow-sufferer, are we to do?"

  "Bathe with electric eels?"

  "No. I prefer to eat them."

  "I share your preference."

  "There is a thought."

  "A feast?"

  "Why not?"

  "Why not, indeed? A fine idea. I do hope Marie-Louise has not forgotten her craft."

  "I share your hope."

  Marie-Louise had not forgotten. The cook outdid herself, offering up much more than the promised boar's-head soup and pears. She
served a nettle potage, loaves of powdery bread, an arm's length of blood sausage stuffed with garlic. The coachman paid high compliment to the treats by finishing off the remnants with an attentiveness the Abbe called "worthy of Souf-flot's excavation of Paestum." The meal wound down over a substantial bowl of magdalenes accompanied by the kind of boastful talk that comes after consuming too much food and wine. Piero informed the others that he would have no trouble busying himself during Claude's absence. He gave the Abbe a conspiratorial wink. The Abbe said he, too, would try to make himself useful. The sale of the property would fill much of his time. "But not all." He winked back at Piero.

  The four men pledged their loyalty to one another and drank some more Tokay. They were now a team, not just the Abbe and Claude but Piero and the coachman as well, all joined by a bold if nascent plan. Only Henri stayed away from the raucous displays, content to sit silent in bashful isolation.

  45

  The first STOPS on the journey were at the humble residences of the valley, where the Abbe's contacts proved pleasant and, at times, invaluable. Pleasant because the guests were fed and provided with box beds filled with soft winter hay. Invaluable because the farmers, who spent the winter months fashioning crude but clever timepieces, had come up with devices Claude could adapt to his own plans.

  "We have been treated with much kindness," Claude wrote in his first letter to the Abbe. "I have learned to keep my eye trained for 'watch windows' in the northern sides of otherwise nondescript lodgings. These tiny apertures often open up onto benches at which agile hands work quiet and unexpected magic." (Claude was warned not to reveal anything of consequence in the notes he sent back.)