A case of curiosities (39 page)

"I must admit, I smell the exotic verity of its origins. It is like nothing that has entered my holdings." He repeated Claude's earlier observation. "It almost seems to move."

The barter was transacted without incident. A length of reindeer tendon, which the surgeon called Lapland wire, two rare volumes that had once belonged to the Abbe, and various jarred items were exchanged for the cornopard, to the satisfaction of both the Abbe and the surgeon. Claude did not share in the contentment. He was furious that no real revenge had been exacted. Once outside the Staemphli residence, beyond view of the surgeon, Piero and the Abbe laughed uncontrollably.

"What is so amusing?" Claude asked. "You have given that butcher another precious item. You call that retribution?"

"Yes, I do," the Abbe said.

"You do?"

"Yes. Claude, do you remember how we insisted you treat the cornopard delicately while we were traveling in the carriage?"

"So?"

"And," Piero added, "do you remember how cautious we were in taking it out for inspection?"

"Yes."

"And do you remember how the surgeon said he could almost feel the movement?"

"I remember all that. I had the same reaction."

"I cannot say we are surprised," the Abbe said.

Piero, at last, explained. "It was not my skills that caused the cornopard to appear to move. It really was moving. You see, there is a kind of grub—you can ask the Abbe for the specifics — that is far more insidious in its pursuit of organic matter than the hungriest moth. These larval vermin destroyed two of my finest works—a puffin done for the Academy, and a ray destined for a still life—in less than a week. Our cornopard was stuffed with a large and voracious colony of the disgusting creatures. We tamped it tight as a pistol. From horn to hoof, the cornopard is filled with insects that love to nestle in preserved flesh. Now do you understand?"

"Do you mean . . . ?"

"Exactly," Piero said. "They will take very little time to eat their way through the pelt. I stitched it with weak threads of poor-quality gut. Then they will eat through the rest of the rooms. You can be confident that we will be three of the last visitors to see the Staemphli collections intact. No matter what he does, his holdings will be reduced considerably."

Claude joined in the laughter. And after meeting up with the coachman at the Three Kings Inn—these were not the Wise Men of biblical fame but Henri IV, Frederick of Prussia, and George III painted in profile wearing riding boots—the travelers celebrated.

One last task had to be performed before the coachman pointed Lucille in the direction of the Paris turnpike. Stopping at a post house, Claude dispatched the jarred anomalies he had retrieved from the shelf of the misbegotten, all except his finger. He sent them by mail to the residents of Tournay, care of the Red Dog Tavern.

47

The Bell

Back in PARIS, Claude expected to find the gattet grotto in the state of abandonment he had left it. To his sutprise, Matguetite had neatened up the tooms duting his absence. She had oiled the wood, gteased the cotds, and blacked the links to ptevent tot and rust. And she had made small, almost imper-ceptible changes that gave the attangement of mechanical devices a mote hatmonious feel.

Pieto inspected the patts of the attangement he knew best and declated all winged cteatutes, the linnet included, ftee of gtubs, "though the spital casings on the floot suggest that ter-mites now inhabit one of the beams."

The Abbe, aftet catching his bteath ftom the climb up the staits, was much imptessed by what he saw. Ttacing the path of the pulley lines, he intettogated Claude in the mannet of a teachet who knows his favoted student has excelled beyond expectation.

"How is movement activated?" the Abbe asked.

Claude lifted the dootmat and pointed to a metal plate which ttiggeted a spting catch.

"Clever, indeed. And I see ovet thete you have bottowed ftom Heto of Alexandra."

"Theorem XXXVIII," Claude replied.

"And the otgan work of Solomon de Caus."

"What we know of it."

"This water basin of yours, my young friend," the Abbe declared, turning the tap, "should earn you the chair of Hydrodynamics at the Academy of Architecture."

Claude was uncomfortable with the praise. "The space hete is limited, and so are the possibilities of construction."

"Nonsense." The Abbe dismissed the excuses. "Do not fret about the size of the attic. Do not be ashamed. Didetot conceived his magnum opus in a filthy attic. Vernet has painted expansive works in a space smaller than this. Some of Frago-nard's pictures have been done in quarters quite at odds with their subjects. Cramped spaces, Claude* allow the mind to wander."

The tour around the garret might have gone on happily had it not been for the arrival of Plumeaux. The journalist exchanged only the briefest salutation and condolence before he announced, "I met Livre at a guild function. He asked after you with a pretended lack of interest that suggests a contrary sentiment. He said that when I saw you next I might, if it occurred to me, suggest you visit the Globe. He said he had information that you might wish to know—information that might even be considered urgent. Those were his words."

"What does the Phlegmagogue want with Claude?" the Abbe asked. He was angered by the interruption.

"I do not know," Plumeaux said, "but I must warn you, he was pleased."

Lucien Livre was more than pleased, he was triumphant. And by a private and pathetic equation of misery, his own pleasure and triumph had to be balanced out by another person's anguish and defeat. Hence the conversation that took place at the Globe the very day of Claude's return.

The bookstore bell rang as Claude entered the dustless kingdom he had joyfully abandoned many months before. Etiennette offered a doleful smile. Livre rose from his desk but did not bother to reply to Claude's formal greeting. He went straight to the matter at hand. "I have news that will be of interest to you, young man." He refused to employ the title of Monsieur and would certainly not call him by name since Claude had forsaken the obligations of a Page.

"The last time you contacted me, sir, it was with grim information. Now what have you learned?"

"From her servant, I discover that Madame Hugon is not well. In fact, she has been taken to the Hotel Dieu."

The mention of Alexandra jolted Claude. He still felt a desperate attraction toward his former mistress. The image of the Portrait in Little, both before and after it shattered, was never far away.

"Why is she there?" he asked. It made no sense that a woman of her means would be in a paupers' hospital.

Livre stepped back to gather in the full effect of the news. "I would not know fot cettain, my fettile ftiend."

The booksellet always chose his words with care, hiding in them all softs of ultetiot significance. Claude made a quick calculation. Less than a yeat sepatated him ftom his last and most combative encountet with Alexandra. Livte's mention of fertility was clear enough. She was pregnant.

"They do not know the name of the father," Livre said. "Perhaps you do?"

Before Livre could relish the response, Claude was out of the Globe, down the Rue St.-Jacques, over a bridge, and standing, out of breath, at the door of the Hotel Dieu. A nursing sister refused entrance. She made Claude wait in the corridor among the recent arrivals.

"Hotel Dieu" was an inappropriate name. Even the most wicked of men would not have filled a house of God with the bundled and bandaged agonies, the shivering visions of death Claude now observed. Through a damp, urinous mist that deprived the sick of sleep, he saw a student doctor approach. The student agreed to take Claude in. As the two passed covered beds containing patients packed like pilchards, the student glanced with professional interest at Claude's mangled hand. He mentioned that Saviard had documented a case of an infant born with forty fingers and toes, adding gratuitously, "That is twice the normal number." But Claude wasn't interested in discussing supernumerary digits.

They reached the archives. "Hugon?" the registrar said. "There was a Hugon. But she has left us." The upward glance implied everlasting communion with God. A ledger was consulted."She died six weeks ago." Claude's attempts to extract more information were interrupted by the screams of a patient who had to be tied down.

The student inspected the ledger. "Ah, I remember. Very interesting case, really. I was present when Hugon was brought in."

He eagerly explained the nature of her death. She had entered the hospital only hours before childbirth, in a state of premature labor. She had tried to disguise her burden with corsets. This only added to the problems. She struggled fiercely to prevent her clothes from being removed. After much effort, the staff cut away the cloth and corset. The whalebone dulled three knives. Having stripped her, they discovered that Hugon's torso was covered with scars made not by the corsets but by a whip. In her humiliation, she wept, and revealed that she had been mutilated as a child by her uncle, an overzealous Jansenist.

The staff knew from the start that the child would not survive. Still, they had hopes for the mother. They decided to accelerate labor through drugs and surgical intervention. To that end, a nursing sister inserted a pessary up her uterus, and a surgeon, encircled by colleagues and students, prepared to operate. An argument arose just before the intervention. A junior member of the staff questioned the use of Levret's tire-tetes and suggested trying forceps of English design, which were generously padded with soft kidskin. This was rejected by the surgeon in charge. A jealous colleague came to the junior fellow's defense, and at a moment when their efforts might have been more wisely directed at the patient, the specialists bickered over techniques of fetal extraction. All present finally agreed that Levret's would be used. Everyone, that is, except Alexandra Hugon. She died on the table shortly after the child was born, a victim of surgical pride.

Claude asked if the infant had been buried in its mother's arms. The image of Therese and her niece in the coffin still haunted him. The student corrected the misunderstanding. 'Tike certain insects, the mother died to give birth. Much to the surprise of us all, the infant lived." He showed Claude the notation in the ledger that indicated a baby girl had been transported to a nearby foundling hospital.

Less than half an hour later, Claude was in a hospital that had little in common with the Hotel Dieu. The occupants were starting, not ending, their lives. The screams were high-pitched, the treatments predictable. The room was not filled with overhanging limbs or pans of blood and phlegm. Cradles were aligned with checkerboard precision.

There was, however, one similarity. Here, too, nursing sisters were in charge of the ward. One in particular caught Claude's eye. She was suckling a child through the folds of her habit. The image confused him, though he did not know why. He found the Mother Superior and explained his circumstances.

"Yes," she said, "the infant of Madame Hugon is hete, and yes, it will be located. Her name is Agnes." This was no reflection of the administrator's memory. She had taken to naming all the girls in the foundling hospital Agnes.

As the presumptive father walked down the long alley of hungry Agneses and Roberts (the name dispensed to the boys), the Mother Superior said it had been a bad year for abandonment. "Not quite like '72, when we were taking in a child every hour. But still busy."

Claude stopped at a number of the cribs to inspect the mementos parents had attached to their offspring: cut coins, torn playing cards, twists of wife—reminders of renounced affiliations. The markers were meant to diminish the distress of the abandoners, to provide a promise, however dim, of reunion.

He was taken to a distant cradle, where a child neither slept nor cried but gazed up through bright-green eyes. The eyes had his color but Alexandra's shape, and thus were both bright and beguiling. What were the last words his mistress had dispensed before leaving the garret? "I suspect we shall never set eyes on each other again." She had been wrong.

Claude did not know how to respond. He kept asking himself, Is the child mine? He wondered how many green-eyed lovers Alexandra had taken after their abrupt separation. Agnes opened and closed her diminutive hands. Claude looked more closely and found that she was free of the digital anomaly that characterized some Pages, and he could tell nothing from her ears. She stirred. That is when Claude heard the sound. A delicate tinkle. He reached into the crib and found, tied around her neck, the tiny brass keepsake he had given Alexandra on one of their strolls through the Palais-Royal. Though the Mother Superior was not fully convinced of Claude's paternity, there was a surfeit of infants at the foundling hospital. Agnes was handed over.

No formal record exists of the communion between the inventor and his child on that day. All we have is a copybook sketch marked "First Night." It shows a little girl sleeping in a drawbridge bed and clasping her father's ear.

Parenthood started the following morning, well before dawn. The tenderness that marked the end of Claude's search was replaced by an infant's declaration of hunger, a declaration Claude would later learn was produced by the rapid contraction and expansion of the voice box and an irregular stream of air.

He had vaguely expected such an outburst. The babies tended by Marguerite provided regular demonstrations of neonatal distress. Proximity to her expert care calmed him. He was confident that his neighbor would offer up the necessary breast. She was forever dispensing kindness in small and simple ways.

The wet nurse, however, did not come to his aid; she was not there to hear the knocking on her door. Claude noticed that her windows were shuttered and that no laundry was hanging from the drying wheel. He tried to bundle Agnes as best he could, while Piero, commissioned to distract the baby, frantically waved an ostrich feather over her nose. She was unimpressed. The two adults hurried with the half-wrapped baby through the streets as the successive clattering of shutters and shouts for foods and services proclaimed the start of a day. The cris de Paris, however, were nothing compared to the cris a*Agnes. By the time Claude and Piero reached the Bureau des Nourrices, the child was emitting a continuous wail that was suppressed, though only temporarily, with an application of diluted cow's milk.