A case of curiosities (37 page)

"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 explore. Tomorrow we will chart your itinerary." The Abbe sneezed prodigiously and spent the rest of the afternoon complaining about his gout.

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.)

The letter continued: "There has been some sadness and frustration in the trip. Old Antoine is now blind. But even with this handicap, he has shown me how to take my cues from natural phenomena. He says, 'One must understand nature before one approaches artifice.'

By the time the first letter reached the Abbe, the briefly mentioned sadness and frustration had intensified. In those towns where Claude hoped for the most assistance—localities heralded for their nurturance of mechanical wizards—he received no assistance at all. Outside the communities in which the Abbe's name was known and honored, Claude met with silence or, worse still, open hostility. The initial shouts of welcome were replaced by shots of lead. Bigger towns only yielded bigger disappointments.

In Basel, Claude carried a letter of introduction straight to the Bernoulli residence, where he was told by a typically long-faced relative that the papers sought would not be made available. Good day. The Eulers were only slightly more helpful, showing Claude an old epidiascope once employed in the study of opaque and transparent bodies. The Bauhin collection proved vast but uninspiring. Even when the locals appeared generous, they offered little in the way of truly helpful information. The coachman observed, while eating a biscuit, that the disposition of the locals was captured in the name of their most highly esteemed dessert, a vanilla cream concoction called "silk gruel."

Three days were all that had been scheduled for travel from Basel to Neuchatel, but a storm hit, and Claude and the coachman were stranded in Lucille's interior for two extra days. They played cards until their fingers were immobilized by the cold, then turned to the composition of mythical menus. (It should be obvious who thought up the latter diversion.) When they finally reached Neuchatel, they were tired and hungry. Claude read aloud from a guidebook that noted the attractions of the principality. " The residents of Neuchatel are known for the making of lace, buckles, escapements, hobnails, complicated locks . . .'

"... and wine," the coachman interjected.

' They are a model of industry, thrift, modesty . . .'

". . . and tedium," the coachman added.

During his first walk through the center of town, Claude was impressed by the visible craftsmanship: the ingenious fountains, the delicate bootjacks at the thresholds of the buildings, the angelhead shutter latches. In the Rue des Halles, he came upon a sturdy Renaissance tavern and deposited himself in its glassed-in oriel. From that vantage, overlooking the square, Claude scribbled in his copybook. The coachman joined him to drink the local wine but complained of its bite. He was told by the proprietor that if dissatisfied, he had only to leave. He stayed instead, to grumble. That evening, they secured lodgings at a reasonably priced residence catering to students, in the shadow of the mighty Collegial. Claude fell asleep full of hope that Neuchatel would be better than Basel.

If anything, it proved worse. As he made the rounds among an Old Testament of watchmakers (two Ezekiels, a Moses, a Jonas, three Daniels, and four Abrahams), he received the same response: "We are too busy." An especially devout old man encouraged Claude to attend the sermons of Guillaume Farel and ask God for guidance.

Claude sent a second letter back to Tournay. "I know now why impenetrable locks are a specialty of Frederick's principality." The coachman, for his own reasons, concurred with Claude. After sampling the unsatisfactory offerings of the Golden Head, Golden Apple, and Golden Lion, he concluded, "There is nothing golden about this town, except perhaps the prices."

Claude did not see Jaquet-Droz or Leschot. An assistant informed him they were away in Spain negotiating an automat for the King. In keeping with the rest of his bad luck, Claude was denied access to their workshops, so he took a daylong trip to Le Locle and another to La Chaux-de-Fonds.

In La Chaux-de-Fonds, he caught up with a craftsman who had helped with the construction of the Jaquet-Droz-Leschot writer. "You would not have seen much," the craftsman said. "I will grant that Droz is capable of marketing mystery" — the phrase used was commerce de creation —"but for true ingenuity, you should study the early works of Vaucanson."

"I would like to."

"Then you shall."

This was Claude's greatest investigative success. The craftsman, speaking slowly in Germanic French, detailed how he had sketched the Vaucanson models when he had seen them as a journeyman in Paris. He said he still had the notes. (The German in him.) After some digging, he produced a few sheets that detailed the mechanisms hidden beneath the carapaces of gilded copper. The notes were beautifully illustrated. (The French in him.) Claude listened as the craftsman expanded on the sketches of the duck and the flute player.

"I never saw the shepherd," he said, "but I was told it, too, was remarkable."

He was unhesitating in his help. And just as he had finished showing Claude a method of modifying a conventional cam to expand the possibilities of differentiated movement, a bearded dealer in mechanical games named Perec entered the shop. He added to the conversation a description of the figures he had seen in Augsburg: a zebra that rolled its eyes, an eagle that flapped its wings, and a starling that opened its beak to sing a tender aria.

Claude left the town in such charged spirits that he decided to repay the craftsman's kindness by drawing a sketch of thanks. Back in Neuchatel, he went to his favorite tavern and seated himself in his favorite spot. He was halfway through the drawing—a host of angels flying off their latches—when a walnut-sized hailstone hit the window. Another fell, and then another. Gouts of rain descended on the town. Claude watched through the oriel as the coachman and Lucille pulled up to the side entrance of the tavern. Claude acknowledged the rain's significance with a simple nod.

Neuchatel would be the last pinpoint on the itinerary. Though there was still much to do, the hailstorm and rain implied the arrival of the thaw. Claude would be needed back home.

The thaw had started by the time they reached Tournay. The river was overflowing its muddy banks, the ground was soft underfoot. Claude went straight to the church, knowing the villagers would all be assembled. They were adamant about immediate burial. The smell of putrefaction had already begun to compete with the incense that wafted through the church. Claude moved toward the coffins. The bodies were laid out as tightly as weights in a goldsmith's weightbox. He turned Evangeline's moo-moo one last time and repositioned the feather fan that was clasped in Fidelity's hands. He spent an interminable minute gazing at his mother. He suddenly realized what someone— Piero—must have done. Madame Page's burned flesh had been covered with sheets of velum. Her cheeks were dusted with plaster. The singed hair had been cut away and replaced with a wig. What could not be fixed was hidden beneath the delicate lace pall that framed her face. Claude added to this last coffin a string of dried morels, a tribute to her talents. The gesture provoked tears among the villagers.

The whole of the community had known her. She had treated half the valley's horses for worms with a recipe of green hellebore. She had used her dandelions for much more than salad, providing tisanes to the sick and the merely restless. She had mixed salves from the petals of daisies for those who had trouble with their eyes.

The weeping in the church was soon overpowered by the sound of hammer upon nail. There was a slight scuffle over who would carry Madame Page's coffin and the coffins of her two daughters before the procession moved to the cemetery. The Pages were buried under the large yew Claude had once adorned with water rats. Father Gamot cleared his throat and said what priests are expected to say. Then the Abbe spoke.

"Fire," he said, "is an elastic beast. Those who perished on that frigid night did so in a moment of great heat and cold. Among metallurgists, this is known as tempering, and its effect is supposed to strengthen. I have no doubt that our tragedy will make the victims, those living and those departed, stronger."

Father Gamot was made uncomfortable by this unorthodox discussion of the afterlife. He ended the Abbe's speech and the service with a smile and a curt clap of his hands. A large group of mourners moved toward the mansion house to express condolences. There was a rumor that food and drink had been laid out. The Abbe ended the rumor. "I am sorry. The mansion house no longer belongs to me. I am no longer your Count. Everything has been sold."

The sale had been concluded during Claude's absence. The accountant had negotiated the various permissions from the various authorities. He took possession of both the Page cottage and the mansion house. The religious community was joyful but solemn. "The ex-cleric is now an ex-count, as well" was Sister Constance's response. The Abbe invested half his funds in a pension. The other half was set aside, as promised, for Claude.

Lucille was packed hastily, her panniers loaded with bundles that included tools, a half-dozen jars of pears in heavy syrup, pressed butterflies, and replies to letters sent before the winter voyage. The Abbe told Claude that they contained answers to countless queries: the price of porcelain commissions in Dresden and glasswork in Saxony, a long and cordial note from a reed grower in Languedoc. Claude was eager to read them all.

The Abbe sneezed his thanks to each of the servants, who, in turn, responded with bows and hugs. Perhaps the most unexpected sight came just as Lucille was passing the gates. Claude poked his head out of the coach and observed a man running wildly, holding what looked like a baton.

"Henri!" Claude shouted in shock.

The Slug raced with extraordinary speed to catch the departing coach. He narrowed the gap until he could pass the baton—one of the Abbe's overlooked note-rolls — into Claude's outstretched hand. With that done, he slowed his pace and watched Lucille and her passengers roll away ftom Tournay.

One hour into the trip, Claude noticed an oddly shaped object among the bundles.

"What is it?"

"Something Piero and I were working on while you were away," the Abbe said.

"What is it?" Claude asked again.

The Abbe was evasive. "You will find out soon enough. Just treat it gingerly. We will be trading it for some important materials on our way to Paris."