“Do you play?” she asked, not hearing my question.
“No, I don’t. Did you say a Mittenwald?”
“Yes. We bought it for Elsa in Bavaria. They are the best violin-makers in the world. She had such a gift for music.”
I smiled, and leaned back on the sofa.
“She could sing, too,” she added. “There was one song she used to sing all the time. I wish I could remember the name….”
I knew immediately what song it was. I could practically hear Mittenwool’s voice singing it to me now. Suddenly, everything became very clear. But I didn’t say anything. I let her words fade into the air like a lullaby.
Molly came back into the room. She opened the daguerreotype to show it to the old woman, who pursed her lips and waved her away. Molly handed it to me. There I saw, for the first time other than in my dreams, what my mother looked like. From the shiny mirrored image, her face looked out at me. Luminous eyes, daring and curious. She was probably about the age I was now. She was so beautiful, so full of life, it moved me to tears.
“Thank you,” I said, hardly able to find my voice. I cleared my throat. “My father had no pictures of her. Sometimes I think that’s why he became a photographer. To make up for the portrait he never took.”
The old woman coughed. I think she did it because she did not want me to discuss Pa. So I got up quickly.
“Well, I should be going now,” I said.
She wasn’t expecting that.
“Oh, well, is there anything else you want from me?” she hastened to say. “I’m all alone now, you see. My boy died a long time ago. And then Elsa left us. And my husband’s been gone for years now. You look like him.”
“No, I don’t think so. I look like my pa,” I answered quickly, wiping my eyes with my knuckles. I put my dapper derby back on and tilted my head courteously. “You asked if I wanted anything. There is nothing I would like, but if you would grant me the pleasure of walking on your grounds a bit, I would be very appreciative. Jenny told me about a pond out back that my mother used to swim in. I would love to see that, and the gardens where my mother spent her youth.”
My grandmother, for I suppose this is what she was to me, motioned to Molly to help her stand up, which she did.
“Of course,” she said feebly, waving the back of her tiny hand at me. “Go where you’d like.”
I thought I was being dismissed, so I began to leave, but as I passed the old woman, she put her hand out and touched my elbow. I stopped, and she, still looking down, gripped my arm. Then, without a word, she pulled me to her, and climbed her withered hands up my arms like she was ascending a ladder. She had more strength in her than I thought she would, as she wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her cheek to mine. I felt like she was breathing me in, and I wrapped my arms around her frail body like I was holding a delicate seashell.
5
I RODE PONY AROUND THE grounds for several hours. It was a beautiful estate. The main house was a red-brick Georgian mansion with white-shuttered windows, and in the back there was a large greenhouse and a cherry orchard. The fishpond was at the end of the orchard, down a slope between a cluster of weeping willows.
I was far from the house by now. It was late in the afternoon. The sky was beginning to purple. The sun seemed to set the grass on fire. I could not help but think of that first night on my travels, when I was approaching the Woods. The landscape had looked ablaze then, too. Behind me, where the sun was setting, the world I had known was in flames. I had left my old life behind then, never to return. And yet here I was, in a way, continuing that same journey, like a pilgrim who has found the road again when they thought they had lost it. I had not lost it. I had not lost anything.
I dismounted and sat down on the bank of the pond and looked around. There was not a soul in sight. Only Mittenwool, who was sitting on a large rock looking at me. We had not said a word to each other for days. He was my companion, as always, and I loved him, as always. We did not need to talk.
I opened the violin case. It was the first time I had opened it in several years. The violin was as beautiful as I remembered it. The dark maple wood glowed in the golden-hour light, and the ivory pegs sparkled. I pictured my mother’s hands playing, and it filled me with regret that I could not hear her voice singing the melody in my mind, even in my memory.
Then I lifted the violin out of the case, and looked through the fine filigree cutouts. There, on a label attached to the inside back panel, was the name of the violin-maker: Sebastian Kloz, anno 1743, Mittenwald. I had never noticed it before. Never thought to look for it. But there it was. This whole time. I inhaled, and let out a long breath. Then I set the violin down on the soft grass.
In the back of the violin case, under the burgundy velvet lining, was a small secret pocket I had only recently discovered. I imagine it was intended to hold extra strings, but that is not what it held. From inside this pocket, I removed a folded piece of paper. I opened it. It was a carefully drawn map, and on the back of it, in Pa’s elegant scrawl, was written:
My dearest Elsa,
Now that I have told you everything, it is as if the greatest weight has been lifted from my soul. That you love me, still, is all I need as proof of the divine nature of the human heart. All I can offer you is a world of fresh starts and honest labor, but I will endeavor every day to be worthy of your love. And if, by chance, you decide on a different path, do not worry, my darling. For if I cannot be with you in this world, I will find you in the next. Of that you have convinced me. Love finds its way through the ages.
Yours,
Martin
I turned the page over and looked at the map, and saw the careful drawing made with all the scrupulous detail only my father could have noted. He, with his prodigious memory, would remember where every willow tree was planted, and the shape of the pond, and where the cherry orchard ended and the gently sloping hills began. It was all there, precisely drawn in black ink. My father was an artist in every way. He had been a skilled engraver once. A designer. A genius.
In red ink over the intricate map was a dotted line, which I followed now. It ended between the two willow trees at the far end of the pond. There, equidistant between these two trees, was a large X with a circle around it. I counted the steps between the trees, and then halved them and marked the spot with my boot. I pulled out the small pickax I had brought with me, but didn’t need it. The ground was soft as I began to dig. I did not have to go too far before I hit it. A brass-framed trunk, which I pulled out of the earth. It was heavy but not impossible for me to manage on my own, as my father must have once. I had the key for it, too. My father had pressed it into my hand as he lay dying. He must have been keeping it in the secret chamber of his boot heel for all those years. I had not known what the key was for, but I kept it hidden away, and didn’t tell anyone about it. Until now.
I put the key in the lock of the trunk, and turned it. The lock clicked, and the lid popped open. Inside, the gold coins sparkled. I leaned back and closed my eyes for a long time. A part of me had not wanted to find this, but if it was to be found, I had wanted to know. And now I did. Were my parents planning on coming back for it someday? Or not? That part, I will never know.
I opened my eyes and called Pony over with a click-click of my tongue. He came. Into the four leather satchels hanging from all four corners of his saddle, which I had brought with me for just this purpose, I distributed the gold coins evenly. They were not too heavy for Pony. Then I put the trunk back in the earth, and covered it over so that no one would ever find it again.
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Mittenwool, who had come up beside me as I walked with Pony away from the pond.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But it will be something good. I promise you that much.”
“Oh, I know, Silas
. I know.”
I had kept a single gold coin for myself, and fidgeted with it for a bit before putting it in my pocket.
“He was a good father to me,” I said.
“Yes, he was,” he answered sweetly.
“Whatever else he may have been, he was a good father.”
“When you see him in Ithaca, do not expect to find him perfect.”
“Yes. Yes. So true,” I answered, clearing my throat. “You understand so well.”
He patted my arm. He was smiling, but I could tell he was lost in his own thoughts.
Two dragonflies suddenly appeared out of nowhere and, after doing an aeronautic dance around us, disappeared over the pond. The surface of the water glowed red in the sunset, as if it had been painted by light.
“You remember this pond, don’t you?” I asked him gently.
He nodded, without looking at me.
“It’s coming back to me,” he said. He breathed in deeply and closed his eyes. “I remember her pulling me out of the water, right over there.” He pointed vaguely in the direction we’d come from. “I was visiting her brother, I believe. I was a schoolmate of his, I think?” He shook his head and looked at me. “Those kinds of details, I don’t recall much now. It was so long ago.”
He bit his bottom lip, like he always did when concentrating on something.
“I forgot to take my shoes off,” he continued quietly. “Went down like a stone the second I jumped in. She tried to save me. She tried so hard. And when she couldn’t, how she wept over me. She’d only just met me that morning, but she wept so much. Oh, Silas, it moved me.” He put his hand over his heart. “When my parents came to get me later that day, she was so gentle with them. So kind. She held my mother’s hand while they wrapped my…” His voice faded.
He looked up at the pond again, and took in everything around it.
“She played the violin at my funeral,” he added. “It was so beautiful. It stayed with me.”
“And you stayed with it,” I answered slowly.
His mouth opened a little.
“I guess I did,” he whispered, nodding. “Someone asked her about her violin. It’s a Mittenwald, she told them.”
He looked at me, and for the first time in my life, I saw how young he was. Just a child, really.
“A Mittenwald,” he murmured, his eyes opened wide in astonishment. Then he laughed a little, and covered his cheeks with his hands, almost like he was embarrassed.
“It’s so strange, the things we cling to, Silas!” he continued, his voice trembling. “It was the first word I said to you, when you were born. It was the only word I could recall for a long time.”
“Do you remember your name now?”
He took a deep breath. “Was it John, maybe? I think it was John.” His eyes filled with tears. “Yes. John Hills.”
We stopped walking.
“John Hills,” I whispered.
“No.” His voice broke. “It’s Mittenwool to you.”
“You have been such a good friend to me, Mittenwool,” I said quietly.
He looked down.
“But if you need to go now, it’s all right,” I continued. “You can. I’ll be fine.”
He looked up at me and smiled slightly, almost shyly. “I think I will, then, Silas.”
I smiled, too, and nodded. Then he hugged me.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.”
“I will see you again someday.”
“I am counting on it.”
He inhaled deeply, started walking toward the pond, and turned to wave one last time. Then he was gone.
A silence settled over the meadow. I stood there, looking all around me, as night fell. For the first time in my life, I was completely alone. But I was fine. The world was spinning. Dazzling. Beckoning me. And I would go to it.
I got on Pony, and nudged him gently down the slope.
“Off we go, Pony,” I said.
And we went.
From the Boneville Courier, April 27, 1872:
A country gentleman of twenty-four, recently come into the inheritance of his late grandmother’s estate in Philadelphia, has announced plans to convert the sprawling grounds into a school for orphans. The gentleman, only two years out of college, where he distinguished himself with the highest academic honors in physics and astronomy, cites as his inspiration the experiences of his immigrant father, which were hampered by misfortune, and his own reminiscences of becoming orphaned at the age of twelve. Longtime readers of this periodical may recall the story of a boy from Boneville who was struck by lightning many years ago. It is this same young man. The name he has chosen for the school is the John Hills School for Orphaned Children, named for a child who had died on the grounds years earlier. For the emblem, the young gentleman has chosen the image of a lightning bolt, emblazoned on the head of a bald-faced pony.
The End
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I don’t know what’s to come, but I’ll stay beside you,
I’ll stay beside you through the ages.
—Cloud Cult “Through the Ages”
I spent many years researching this book, and I hope none of it shows.
My family will tell you that my favorite place to be in the world, other than home, is in antiques shops. Artifacts of the past, with all their scratches and broken hinges, are deeply moving to me. I see them not as remnants of history as much as conduits to it, as I can almost hear the stories they have to share.
This book is a result of those artifacts, and a dream my older son once had, which he related with all the vividness a twelve-year-old can use to tell a story. That dream-story of a boy with a half-red face sparked, through a very circuitous route, the story that resulted in this book.
The artifacts themselves have also found their way onto these pages. I’ve been interested in photography since I got my first Pentax K1000, when I was in the seventh grade, and have been collecting daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, and entire Victorian-era albums full of cabinet cards since I was a teenager. I used daguerreotypes and ambrotypes in the chapter openers of this book because they literally inspired some of the characters in this story, and helped form them physically and, in some ways, emotionally. A daguerreotype, because it has no negative, is a one-time-only keepsake, and if it’s been separated from its keeper, it becomes an anonymous relic of another time. There’s no way of knowing who these people were, which is perhaps why I find them so haunting, and can’t help imagining stories for them. The daguerreotype at the beginning of this book, for instance, practically sums up this entire novel. A young father. A baby son. No mother in the picture. Some photos can speak a thousand words. Some, more than sixty thousand.
My love of photography is by no means limited to photographs. I am fascinated by the entire apparatus, both the physical machinery of cameras themselves, as objects, and the luminous science at work inside them. To research this book, I took a class in wet collodion photography at the Penumbra Foundation in New York City, which was invaluable in helping my understanding of early photographic processes and cameras.
The history of photography reads as one of the greatest thrillers ever told. It is not a linear history, but, like most sciences, a complicated and nuanced chronicle of groundbreaking discoveries happening simultaneously all around the world. Especially helpful to me were The Evolution of Photography by John Werge, 1890; The Silver Sunbeam: A Practical and Theoretical Textbook on Sun Drawing and Photographic Printing by John Towler, 1864; and Cassell’s Cyclopædia of Photography, edited by Bernard Edward Jones, 1912. One has only to look at the scientific discoveries of a single year, let’s say 1859, which are available in the Annual of Scientific Discovery for 1859, as well as other resources, to see how many great minds throughout history
went to work on the same challenges, arriving at similar solutions, with varying degrees of success. Progress is measured by these successes and tends to overlook the failures, even though one cannot exist without the other. The scientists themselves are often reflective of these benchmarks, some achieving fame and fortune within their own lifetimes, and others not. Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot, for instance, inventors of the daguerreotype and the talbotype, respectively, were household names in their own time, revered and well compensated for their considerable contributions. Frederick Scott Archer, on the other hand, who invented the wet collodion process in 1851, from which all modern photography is derived, died in poverty, having spent most of his meager funds on his own research. In Pony, Martin Bird’s irontype is based on Archer’s discoveries, as well as Sir John Herschel’s argentotype, invented in 1842. Martin’s proprietary sensitizer includes tartaric acid, a component that would, in real life, become part of a formula patented thirty years later as the Van Dyke process. There is no reason to believe that a man like Martin, a genius without the benefit of ample opportunity, who had to rely on his own ingenuity his whole life, could not have come upon this formula himself. Martin is the representation of so many people in the world whose successes have been lost to history. There are many unknown geniuses out there just like him, including my own father.
The advent and evolution of the science of photography coincided, curiously, with the rise and growth of the American spiritualism movement of the mid- to late-nineteenth century. This movement did not come out of any specific religious tradition, per se, but was a result of reports, often documented in books and newspapers, that went “viral” at a time when it took years, and not TikTok seconds, to become famous. The rise of spiritualism was abetted by the practice of borrowing scientific vocabulary and phenomena to explain what was generally accepted as unknowable. It used terminology similar to that found in photography, often referencing “mysterious agents,” whether chemical or spiritual, through which something previously unseen becomes seen. In photography, that mysterious agent is sunlight, which in 1827 Nicéphore Niépce used, along with bitumen of Judea, to permanently “fix” a latent image on a pewter plate. In spiritualism, there was no equivalent fixing solution to capture the invisible world, though similar-sounding verbiage was often employed to ground it as a pseudoscience for its adherents. For a fascinating glimpse into that world, track down a copy of Catherine Crowe’s 1848 bestseller, The Night-Side of Nature, Robert Dale Owen’s Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, 1860, or Charles Hammond’s Light from the Spirit World, 1852. I thought the themes of photography and spiritualism tied together nicely, which is why they feature so prominently in this story. In the end, of course, it comes down to “faith in the great unknown,” to quote a lyric from Cloud Cult’s The Seeker. To each their own unknown.
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