The list making was interrupted when the Abbe, turning the handle of the planetarium with excessive force, caused Mars to fly out of orbit and roll under the table. Just as Claude was trying to restore order to the universe, the Count of Corbreuil entered.
"We have met before," he said abruptly.
"Yes, sir, at the bookstore of Lucien Livre," Claude replied, quickly standing up. The Abbe sensed that the Count had little interest in his presence. It was Claude who might attract support. The Abbe remained silent behind a table covered with glassware.
"My companion," Claude said, nodding to the Abbe, "is the man who crafted the Niece on Swing with Dog."
"Let us say nothing more about that watch I ordered," the Count said to Claude. "It was a mistake. It will be our secret. I have my reputation to maintain."
"The subject is forgotten."
"Why have you come?"
"To minister to your commitment to the mechanical reproduction of sound. You had expressed interest in the matter before."
"Perhaps. If so, I have forgotten. It was so long ago."
"Then I hope you will allow me to reacquaint you with the subject."
The Count blandly agreed.
Claude kept his description lyrical, turning it into a travelogue of discovery. "In the huts of mountain farmers, I saw machines in which metal and wood melded as naturally as the mountains meet the sky. In dissecting rooms just across the river, I observed the vocal cords of dead men playing mournful little tunes. I have even heard woodwinds speak. I hope to integrate all of these investigations, Monsieur le Comte, into one grand scheme."
"Disparate researches, but I do not find fault in that."
"My mother," Claude said, "told me that there is more profit in the masterly cultivation of one crop than the slovenly conduct of many. But she was also appreciative of the virtues of the specialty garden, where diversity is pursued on an intimate scale."
"Show me, then, this intimate scale."
Claude produced some copybook sketches. The Count feigned comprehension. He asked a few questions that were not at all pertinent, and Claude responded as if they unlocked the very essence of his work. The Count mentioned certain conditions he would affix to the support, and Claude readily accepted. He had no choice.
Feeding a carrot to Hercules, the Count said, with self-satisfied benevolence, "Very well, you will have your talking head."
He rang for his secretary. The handsome fellow scurried in with a pantograph under his arm. The Count dictated, the secretary penned, and two sets of wooden arms produced additional copies of reduced size. The contract was short but exacting. It stated the terms of funding, the method of payment, the conditions of payment. No mention of the Count's involvement was to be made without prior approval. "My reputation, you know."
The key paragraph in the manuscript document read: "I will fund the construction of an artificial head that will, through gears and pulleys and the availabilities of science, speak. The talking head must proclaim, in its repertoire of sounds, the words that unite our nation: Vive le Roi, Long live the King." A time limit of nine months from signing to date of completion was superscribed, and the agreement was signed by the Count, countersigned by the secretary, and witnessed by the Abbe, whose scrawled signature is difficult to make out.
5 3
The trip to the Rue St.-Severin could have been made by foot. But Claude and the Abbe decided to hire a coach.
"Hurry! The others are waiting for us," the Abbe said.
"You told them about the meeting?"
"I was confident of our success."
During the ride back, they talked about plans in the shorthand of specialists — the joint mechanisms, the disposition of the piping, the wheelwork, the tempered steel. But upon reaching the courtyard, the Abbe stopped the conversation. "We must now put these matters aside, at least for a day. Remember what your mother observed: 'Work and pleasure in equal measure.' '
Madame Page's homiletic recitations had never included such simple-minded sentiments, but Claude was too happy to argue. The Abbe screamed from the courtyard, "Journaliste! Empailleur! Nourrice!" The heads of Plumeaux, Piero, and the wet nurse, who was holding Agnes, poked out of the dormer. Claude said nothing, choosing instead to raise a full purse high in the air. The heads disappeared. There was the sound of clumping clogs (the wet nurse), hobnails (the journalist), and tawed ostrich skin (Piero, who often fashioned patches from scraps close at hand).
The friends appeared in the courtyard dressed for celebration. The wet nurse had even rented a complicated, if somewhat dated, dress that constrained her in wholly unaccustomed ways and places. After much discussion, Claude and Company agreed to visit the festival grounds.
The group left soon after, hand in hand: an unsteady Agnes gripping a single delicate finger of the wet nurse, the wet nurse holding the chapped hand of the hay stuffer (too much arsenical soap), the hay stuffer holding Plumeaux's inky fingers, which in turn held the Abbe, who leaned on Claude for support. The chain remained unbroken even at the archway, where a door of mean dimensions made it difficult for them to pass. Still linked and laughing, they scrambled into the waiting coach.
On the periphery of the festival ground, the group bought some pickles and a loaf of bread made from rolled oats. Claude caught sight of the one-man band he had seen on his first day in Paris and noticed that an instrument had been added to his orchestra, a jingling Johnnie. Though it intrigued Claude, he turned away. He did not want acoustic obsessions to intrude on the celebration. Work, as the Abbe said, would start in earnest the following day.
Agnes pointed to the distant arc of a juggler's pin. The group tried to make its way over but was stopped by the crowds in front of a tented pavilion. A barker was promising the marvels of funambulists and tumblers. The group passed a puppet fiddler attached to its human master.
"Look!" Claude said to his daughter. "The puppet is making that man play a song."
Near a fire eater reeking of spirit of sulfur, another barker was proclaiming the virtues of the Man with the Tail of a Monkey. "Newly off the boat," he announced. From where wasn't specified. "Not for the ladies, not for the gentlemen. Descended from a tailed race of galley slaves whose benches are holed to accommodate astonishing protuberances. A tailor's nightmare, a lady's dream." To amplify the vulgarity, the barker thrust his frock between his legs.
The group observed the Fellow of Depraved Hunger. "A man who eats with avidity whatever object he is presented," read a sign painted with images of his previous meals. Agnes pointed, and Claude itemized: a candlestick, a splatterdash, a set of napkins, a padlock with ornamental hasp, a butter tub, two pocket-knives, a bricklayer's scutch, a horse tail, a pot of herbs with pot included. The performer's current feat of all-consuming greed: the collected works of Rabelais.
"Bound in calf," Plumeaux noted.
"I wish Livre were here to witness this," the Abbe said. "He always hated voracious readers."
"I think the coachman would appreciate it, as well," Claude observed.
They laughed at the thought of their absent friend, who was stuck at the ferry crossing down in Trevoux. They passed the African, an exotic man with a mournful manner who spoke to himself in a series of clicks and whistles that amused most onlookers. Claude said, "I once read that the violin most closely resembles the human voice. I suspect that the author hadn't visited this poor fellow's native land."
At last, the group reached the juggler's ring. The performer displayed exceptional talent. The crowd was already four deep, and it took a bit of maneuvering to find a place to watch. The juggler tossed in the air a number of unlikely objects taken from spectators — most memorably, a fish and a leather boot hot off the foot of a willing passerby. Catching sight of Agnes, the juggler plucked the pretty cap from her hair and added it to the circuit. The crowd applauded. Claude dug into his purse and pulled out a small coin. He was pleased to play the role of benefactor.
The juggler lighted three torches and tosse
d them high in the air. He then added a frying pan that he had pressed between his legs. From a vest pocket he produced an egg, and soon it, too, was going round and round. Another egg was introduced. The circuit grew larger and larger. The juggler appeared to have an increasingly hard time manipulating the objects. He bent his knees, pulled back his head, tightened his neck muscles. Sweat dripped down his cheeks. As the spectators were about to applaud, the juggler lost control. The eggs, the torches, and the pan came crashing down. A wave of sighs spread through the crowd until, a moment later, faster than one could say hocus pocus—or hiccius doccius, as was sometimes said back then— a solitary set of hands began to clap. The crowd looked again. The torches had landed on some unnoticed kindling, with the pan on top of them. The eggs had smashed in the pan and were soon frying up quite nicely. The spectators dropped money in a cap, and left clutching their valuables to prevent unadvertised and illicit feats of levitation.
The journalist caught sight of one last tent he wanted to see. It contained the copying machine of a man specializing in silhouettes. After a brief and friendly dispute with Agnes, Marguerite pushed open the heavy curtain to satisfy the curiosity of her two-year-old charge. They settled themselves in the darkened room while Claude asked the man overseeing the execution of the silhouette about his equipment. The man explained that the reflecting mirror was broken, and so the image would be drawn upside down. "The law of optics," the man said gravely. He adjusted the focus and captured the reflection on a plate of ground and gridded glass. He slipped a piece of oiled paper under four clips. A cap was removed, and light entered. The wet nurse and Agnes appeared on the glass. The man said he would let them settle in before tracing the shapes. He used black lead pencil, which, he said, was vastly superior to chalk.
But Claude did not hear. He was too entranced by the scene in the reticulated frame. He observed Marguerite playfully holding his daughter, then bringing her lips to the little girl's cheek. It was a gentle kiss, an instant of tenderness that touched the young father. Seeing the motherless child and the childless mother suggested a religious painting, a Madonna and Child, though, because of the law of optics, a Madonna and Child upside down. He wondered what it felt like to be kissed by Marguerite.
He did not wonder too much longer. That night, when he lowered his drawbridge bed, Claude received a visit from the wet nurse.
54
The Button
IT was Marguerite who made the first gesture. She had felt Claude's attentive eye all the way back from the festival, but she knew him well enough to know that he did not act upon desire. Without saying a word, she stayed in the garret after Agnes fell asleep. Then she took off all her clothes.
The disrobing began with the removal of the rented redin-gote. She stretched her arms in a gesture that recalled the tight-chested calico worn by Catherine in Tournay. Next, she took off a length of muslin that had been wrapped around her shoulders. She hung it over one of the chains that ran to the drawbridge bed. Her hand paused momentarily on the first eyehook of the polonaise before undoing the rest. She released the cords that controlled the cumbersome panniers. They fell to the floor. She removed a stomacher and modesty piece and other bits of lace. Off came the petticoats. She was still wearing her corset. The combination of whalebone, gut, and leather that had reshaped Marguerite's body fascinated Claude. A few more motions were needed before she freed herself fully from the encumbrances of her rented attire.
Claude looked at the marks that crisscrossed her tender torso. "It hurts, I suppose."
"Yes," Marguerite said. She put Claude's gloved hand against the indentations of her skin. He tracked the marks that ran around her waist and back, and up over her breasts, where the grooves were the deepest. He suddenly realized, by a surge of pelvic pressure, that he was still wearing his presentation clothes: gloves, buckled shoes, breeches, and ironed shirt.
Marguerite redirected her efforts to Claude, often using her mouth to undress him. She lingered on the buttons. Since the days of the velvet vest, buttons had been a nemesis for Claude. They now became a delicacy, an enticement. Buttons necessitated anticipation and slow, periodic revelation. Marguerite finished her task, except for a solitary button that was securing Claude's breeches. She bit it off" and held it briefly on her tongue before placing it beside the lay figure. "Like the woman in your tale," she said.
"My tale?" Claude did not remember the story he had shouted to his neighbors while renovating his lodgings.
"Yes, bitten off by a harlot in a instant of uncontrolled excitement."
Claude blushed. Marguerite smiled gently at his tardy modesty and took him in her arms.
As a mansion-house enamelist, Claude had touched some five hundred bellies and twice as many breasts. He had hovered over the genitals of milkmaids, dogs, and queens, placed beauty marks on whores and horses. As a bookseller's apprentice, he had committed to memory the picaresque exploits of Peter Pickle and Dom Pederast and other irrepressible rakes populating the Curtain Collection of Lucien Livre. But the surface life of painting and printed word, and even the liaisons with Madame Hugon, were nothing like the sensations he now felt. Throughout the night, Claude rubbed away the monstrous demands of fashion he had found etched on Marguerite. She responded by turning her hourglass body over and over in timeless pursuit of a lover's stimulation. The couple filled the courtyard with vertiginous ecstasies that outmatched any of the conventionally shrill exclamations of the milliners on the floor below. They provided their neighbors with a selection of new and unprintable nicknames and sounds that even Claude would never have been able to chart. With Agnes asleep in her new wine barrel — the kilderkin had gone the way of the firkin—only the lay figure perched in his niche was witness to the movements on the bed, floor, and workbench. Only briefly during the night did the couple pause to regain strength before returning to their collaborative declarations of love.
5 5
The coachman and Madame V. were of two minds about the marriage feast. It was the coachman's hope to replicate the banquet image Claude had put in Livre's window during one of the happier moments of an unhappy apprenticeship. He set about pricing latticework breads, truffle-stuffed ducklings, and fruits to be arranged in pyramids. He had no reason to assume the ducklings were stuffed with truffles, but he was not about to deny himself an indulgence.
Madame V. had very different intentions. She wanted to organize the celebration along more ftugal lines. "The latticework breads are possible, since Marguerite's patents ate bakers. As fot the test, absolutely not. Almond cookies are enough of an ex-ttavagance."
The two argued, but the coachman was on shaky ground. The cost of replicating the window display was prohibitive. And where to find a cake shaped like a hussar's hat? Or the outmoded powder horns and bugles? The coachman came up with an alternative menu. "We will statt with thtee extremely simple hors d'oeuvres, of which one must be a frog fricassee. Then for the first service: two soups and a roast beef in the middle of the table. When the first service is removed, we will bring the second: the veal toast bonne femme —I tefuse to sit thtough a ttuffleless wedding—duck, capon, and lamb chops with basil. When the second service is finished, we will bring in the remains of the first service concurrently with the third. The third is to be two more roasts, but these, naturally, more lightly ptepared. Aftet the third is finished, we will cleanse the system with some salads. And finally, the fourth service: a bowl of fresh fruit, a compote of pears—the Abbe and I are keenly committed to pears—a plate of biscuits, another of chestnuts, some goosebetty jam, and apricot conserves. That is all. Except, of coutse, for the wines and spirits—Tokay and brandy must accompany the meal. Followed by port. And did I mention the bowl of hulled sttawberries? If not, considet them mentioned now. A modest menu, no?"
"No!" Madame V. said, as outtaged by the second effort as by the fitst. "You make your Lyon run and leave the preparations to me."
The coachman returned two weeks later with a cache of purloined port and worries
about Madame V.'s niggardly natute. He need not have worried. The dinner was not so much a meal as a spectacle, an urban variation on the tough-and-tumble, head-splitting, pan-banging chativaris that accompanied the weddings of Tournay. It was a triumph.
Madame V. resorted to an old-fashioned ambigu, a medley of dishes brought out simultaneously, the kind of potluck that does away with servants and thus reduces cost. At her insistence, Marguerite's family had brought braided and curlicued breads. Some of the loaves were so long and delicate that care and calculation were needed to bring them up the narrow stairwell. As with everything else that now happened in the garret, the wedding feast was infused with a certain amount of adaptation and invention. It was probably the first time a crucible had been used to serve potage.
Present for the event were the parents of Marguerite, hair powdered with flour not because of fashion but because of metier; Piero, who happily cut into a pig with the blade of his stuffing knife; the Abbe, granted a place of honor at the end of the table, content to play the role of patriarch ("No broth and bread for me today," he kept saying, "just pass along the Tokay."); Marguerite's two younger brothers, who fired off imaginary ammunition from their pistol-handled forks; Agnes, rocking in the corner, sticking a finger and then a nose through the taphole, much to the amusement of the coachman and Plumeaux; and, of course, the wedding couple themselves, dressed simply and embarrassed by the speeches their loved ones felt obliged to make.
The baker avoided the memory of his daughter's first and tragic marriage. He gave a long glance at Claude like a merchant checking the goods one last time. Then he said, "May the two of you join together like kissingcrusts."
A case of curiosities Page 35