A case of curiosities (33 page)

NOW THAT CLAUDE was on his own, and beginning to satisfy long-suspended aspirations, his mood changed as quickly as one of his mother's fir-branch hygrometers. The twin demons that had haunted him — Alexandra in the domain of love, Livre in the domain of work — were forced away. The pains of mistress and master were exchanged for the simple pleasure of crafting toys for local sellers of bibelots, preparation for more substantial work.

Claude started off by supplying Sieur Granchez, a merchant who ran the Petit Dunkerque, a fancy-goods store on the Quai de Conti. Granchez took an instant liking to Claude and his creations, which exuded an uncommon elegance. "Even when flawed," he observed, "they evoke an irresistible drama."

Granchez's store displays were unique. While neighboring jewelers and goldsmiths highlighted a single special piece, the Petit Dunkerque gloried in abundance. The visitor's vision was continually ravished by piles of costume jewelry, game tables, tobacco boxes that hid jets of water, painted oddities, regiments of musket-bearing dragoons in lead, mermaids, small porcelain drinking wells filled with brandy, flower boxes that blossomed at the push of a button, New Year's gifts, Oriental articles, charms of all sizes, crystal containers for sweetmeats and snuff, English sewing bags, brocaded drawstring purses.

One month after he convinced the proprietor of his talents, Claude's first commercial creation appeared among these wondrous objects. Between the dragoons (7 livres 4 sous the dozen) and the English sewing bags (2 livres) appeared notice for Claude's Magic Chinese Tumblers (4 livres). Six sold in the first week, fourteen in the week that followed. Granchez knew that he had found a young man of profoundly profitable dexterity. Patrons were charmed by the acrobats who spun and righted themselves by virtue of some secret weighting.

Orders quickly outstripped Claude's manufacturing ability, and he sold the secret — a bead of mercury in the torso of the tumbler — to Granchez for a tidy profit. After that, Claude fashioned a series of pinwheels that would have made Velazquez's cross-eyed jester jealous, spinning as they did on double axles that caused curious optical effects. Then came a small caoutchouc-coated drum. When it was turned over, the simple passage of air through a thin tongue of hammered brass produced the sound of a cow. Claude called the device a moo-moo. Granchez sold so many moo-moos, at 3 livres 2 sous, that drawing rooms throughout Paris soon sounded like one of the larger Tournay cow barns.

The wit and elegance of the mechanisms soon atttacted the attention of connoisseurs who commissioned Claude to come up with more complex creations. A banket paid a substantial sum fot a doot knocket. With the pull of a cotd, an atchet would let fly an attow that ticocheted off a bell to announce the attival of customets. A man connected to the coutt of the King had Claude ctaft a mechanical witch in silvet that hobbled some thtee yatds without tewinding. On a mote ptactical level, Claude developed a paddle-wheel teading machine that allowed its uset to consult twelve books with a ctank of the handle. The volumes wete ctadled on gimbaled shelves that stayed hotizontal as they turned.

Claude was paid well fot his devices, and he spent his earnings on stocks and stotes that could inspite new inventions. While he was not gtowing wealthy, he was moving, with the steady detetmination of the silvet witch, towatd his gtand scheme. He would have statted teseatching its consttuction had ominous news not knocked him down fout months afcet he left: the Globe. He fell like one of his actobats denied its dtoplet of metcuty.

The tumble came one day when Claude heatd youthful footsteps in the staitwell. He opened the doot befote the visitot had a chance to knock. He was expecting one of the wet nutse's btothets, who wete fotevet playing ptanks ot offeting objects pulled ftom the muddy stteets of the quattet. Instead, he found he was stating at a youth he did not tecognize weating a vest that he did. He looked up and down at the twelve ivoty buttons. The new bookstote apptentice paused to catch his bteath, peeting beyond the gattet doot at the inttiguing mass of half-assembled divetsions.

"You must wotk fot Livte," Claude said.

The apptentice nodded. "My mastet sent me with this." He handed ovet a folded and sealed clipping Livte had neatly excised with the petfotatot. Claude took the clipping and btoke thtough the monogtammed seal. As the messengers bteath calmed, Claude's acceletated. He tushed down the wobbly stait-case thtee steps at a time to announce to Pieto the necessity of a hasty depattute.

In less than an hour, Claude had packed various items — a spare shirt, underclothes, and gifts (a feather fan for Fidelite, a moo-moo for Evangeline) — in a capacious horsehair bag. (The faithful cowskin satchel had been nailed to a wall for use as a storage container.) Marguerite was charged with watching over the garret during his absence.

That night, Claude and Piero sat in a coach moving in the direction of Tournay. It was a coach with none of Lucille's clever appurtenances, but its harsh and unpolished feel offered an appropriate setting for Claude's harsh and unpolished feelings. He clung to the clipping that reported news of a fire that had swept through Tournay. Information was sketchy. The name of the town and even the region were misspelled.

Claude knew that he would learn nothing until he arrived. All he could do was stare out at the passing countryside. The motion of the carriage dislodged distant memories of his approaching home. He recalled the spring washings, the vicious-ness of the Vengeful Widow, the dank smell of the Red Dog. He remembered Christine Rochat, the pyromaniac, and wondered if she had sparked the conflagration. And there were memories of the mansion house and all that it contained.

The coach hit a bump, and a Parisian recollection intruded: the picture Livre had placed in the window on the last day of his apprenticeship. It was of a man, not quite dead, not quite alive, a living corpse, more bone than flesh, holding a scythe in one skeletal hand and a clock in the other. Combining the most terrifying aspects of Christian and Humanist iconography, the print was chosen by Livre to mock Claude's commitment to watchmaking. It was Livre's repudiation of the gear-filled world Claude had decided to enter. As the coach wheels turned, Claude considered the tragedy to which he was traveling. The Chronos figure in the print took on a more sinister, if conventional, meaning.

While the coach lurched toward Tournay, Claude was relatively calm, his thoughts deadened by the monotony of the motion. Only the occasional sound of the jostled moo-moo broke the tedium. But when the coach stopped for inspectors who needed bribing or for horses who needed feeding, Claude became uneasy. At a standstill, he noticed that his legs cramped, that his groin itched, and that his neck had broken into a rash. Fears of death buzzed about him like the burrelflies that surrounded the unhitched team. After changing from the coach to a wagon, and from a wagon to an even more precarious form of vehicular transport — a flimsy, two-wheeled horse cart — Claude and Piero reached the outskirts of Tournay.

The sun shone low and bright. It was one of those fall-winter days in which some oaks still cling to their leaves, while others are already bare. From the back of the tumbril, Claude told Piero of the childhood hikes, first with his mother and father and then with his mother alone. He pointed to the alpine teeth that rose in the distance. When he felt the cold air burn his nostrils, he said, "I suspect it will soon snow."

The initial indication of the extent of the fire came a league outside the town. Wagons were arriving with supplies of turnips, bread, and cheese. Claude caught sight of the Widow Wehrli tending to her ancient milch cows. He waved, and she waved back. She recognized Claude and smiled. Then, a moment later, she grew somber. She turned to her cows as the tumbril passed, and crossed herself discreetly. A Golay, one of the brothers forever fixing a fence, limped up to the side of the road, removed his hat, and bowed. A woman gathering pinecones in her apron muttered and looked away. Sensing their sadness, Piero feigned interest in a pair of circling crows.

The tumbril passed the bend, and Claude observed the devastation. The fire had moved through the whole of the village but had concentrated on the valley-side structures. The Page cottage was among the worst hit. Its burnt and exposed framework poked skyward like a beached ship or the skeleton of a decomposing animal. The smell of charred wood still lingered. Reaching the remains of the front door, Claude did not need to enter to see that the building was unoccupied. He left Piero, crossing the road to make desperate inquiries. A woman he did not know said, "You will find the Pages at the church. They are all there with Father Gamot."

Claude now ran excitedly. His mother, he told himself, was probably discussing structural repair with the priest. This delusion did not last long. Before he reached the baptismal font, he knew.

He walked under church beams hung with garlands — white cuttings shaped like gloves and ribbons twisted into roses — tributes to the honor of the young women of the village who had died virgins. He searched for his mother and his sisters. They were not standing among the mourners.

Six coffins lined the apse. Claude pushed toward them, oblivious to the awkward condolences. He peered into the first coffin and saw his friend Ruth, the hairless lacemaker. She looked oddly at peace, though in the confusion of the fire her wig had been lost. Perversely, given the nature of her death, Ruth's eyebrows were not lined with burnt cork. The next coffin revealed Therese, the woman who had cooked for the Red Dog and slept with its proprietor. Clutched in her gray arms was a grimacing infant. A niece, Claude heard someone whisper. The family had been unable to pry the infant from the aunt's arm, and so the two were to be buried together in the position in which they had been found. Claude passed quickly over the next coffin, since it contained a body he did not recognize. His fears were brutally confirmed when he crossed to the other side of the apse. Evangeline, Fidelite, and his mother were all there. His younger sister had been placed in an ornate coffin that looked familiar. The other two rested in simple plank boxes.

Piero said nothing when he caught up with Claude, knowing he preferred not to share his grief. Embraced by people he barely knew, Claude had a hard time working up even the smallest response. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists and fell into abstract, bitter prayer.

He removed a pall that covered his mother's face, and touched her cheeks. They were heavily veined, like a leaf of lemon balm. The ravages of the fire had blistered her ears and singed her hair. Claude was confused by the cuts that appeared on the sole of her right foot. Piero said he would use his skills to mask the devastations of the fire before the Pages were buried, but Claude did not hear.

He took out the gifts he had brought from Paris. He placed the feather fan in Fidelity's crossed arms and the moo-moo in Evangeline's. He had nothing for his mother. Father Gamot, after drawing himself into a hand-clasped posture of piety, provided some words of comfort. He then explained the cuts on the foot. "It was your mother's wish that a test be performed before the conclamatio, before death was declared official."

Claude fled from the church back to the Page cottage. When he crossed the threshold, he again felt that he had entered the carcass of some vast beast. The attic in which he had played and slept, and in which he had hidden from sibling squabbles and intangible fears, was completely gutted. The fire had been so hot that it had melted the pewter mug, the same mug that had served as inspiration for the drawing of Fidelity's ears. Other debris included a few playing cards and some burnt herbs. The iron pot in which Madame Page mixed her decoctions was still hanging from a hook, as was a string of her beloved morels. Claude recalled an aphorism she had uttered when his father had disappeared. "Death," she had said, "is a condition of the living."

He could not evoke her voice. It was now lost and irretrievable, like his father's. She would soon be reduced to little more than a collection of stories and sayings, as flat as the cards on the floor.

Grief finally hit him. It came in waves, as tears flowed and his body convulsed. He pounded his hands against the mantelpiece, mindlessly muttering, "Why? Why?" He would have continued in this lamentation had the notary not approached to announce he had received intact the documents kept in the iron box near the chimney.

"We are fortunate these were saved," the notary said, ignoring Claude's suffering. "The Are destroyed the archives. Most of the records are gone. There is talk of Tournay being absorbed by the adjacent parish." He directed his attention to a rolled-up document. The testament confirmed what the priest had told Claude. Madame Page, fearful of premature burial, stipulated that she not be placed in a coffin for at least two days, and then only after various tests had been performed. She insisted that her foot be scratched with a sharp lancet to stimulate resurrection. The will also revealed that she did not want surgical incursion after death. The notary read aloud: "I desire and wish that my body not be opened for any reason whatsoever, even with a view to preventing certain temporal accidents in others." The notary moved on to more pertinent matters, the hereditaments. The one substantial asset—• the pension payments purchased by Michel Page before his last trip to Turkey— ended with Madame Page's demise. The notary explained that the cottage was of no value, though the land could be sold. As it happened, he, the notary, knew of a buyer. "Lucky, indeed, no?"

Claude, disgusted by the avarice, dismissed the notary abruptly. "I need time to put my thoughts in order," he said. He left the cottage and walked down the charred village road, pushing away, as much as he could, the intruding associations. That became impossible when he reached the portals of the Red Dog. He entered and was confronted by the past.

The appearance of the tavern had changed little in his absence. It was still filled with a tannic stink and scattered plates of salted peas. Like the villagers on the road, the patrons of the Red Dog were unable to reconcile the pleasure they took in seeing Claude with the mournful circumstances of his return. A pattern of dramatic masks — smiles and grimaces — tracked him around the room. There were more pats of comfort and mumbled condolences. Only one fellow, a man made irreverent by wine, talked directly of the fire.