A case of curiosities (43 page)

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.

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."

Plumeaux stood up and said, "We have been raised with a false assumption that the worlds of work and love forever compete and collide. I have found in Marguerite and Claude no such unhappy collision. I'd like to think that the domains are two globes. One globe celestial—after all, Claude's work soars in the stars. One globe terrestrial—the couple's love, as neighbors are quick to attest, is quite earthy. Can the two worlds coexist? I think, indeed, they can."

By the time the Abbe rose to speak, the Tokay had taken effect. He said, "Love is not simply what is said but what is acknowledged. Love comes with the strength to live with replies. And, as everyone knows, Claude is blessed with exquisite hearing. It is of no consequence that one of the betrothed has been married before. Virginity before the sacrament of marriage can be a doubtful proposition. A fish bladder filled with the choleric humor of sheep properly applied on the wedding night can restore purity to even the most experienced bedswerver, though a peach skin is a less complicated alternative." The table grew slightly anxious, fearful the Abbe's vulgarity would intensify. It did not. "And finally, I would like to toast the work that is done in this room when we do not fill it with our little speeches. It satisfies me to know that as I become more useless, slowed as I am with gout, other things—extraordinary things— gain movement each and every day."

Throughout the evening, the coachman chomped, the Abbe drank and sneezed, Plumeaux talked, the twins played practical jokes, Madame V. served, Agnes burbled, the baker's wife sobbed, and everyone, at various moments and in various combinations, laughed. There was even a little screaming.

"Philippe! Jean-Pierre!" The baker's wife was furious. Her boys had played a wicked prank. Jean-Pierre had sneezed into a handkerchief, and Philippe had said, "Let me see." After careful inspection, he deemed the contents worthy of consumption and slurped up the glutinous mass, to the horror of his mother. Thus, the shriek. Only later did the twins reveal that they had placed an oyster in the handkerchief. The two rapscallions next took to using spoons to catapult peas. Conventional efforts to quiet them were useless, so Claude conspired with Piero to bring them under control.

Piero encouraged the boys to continue their pranks.

Claude said, "I think they should be a little less boisterous."

"Ridiculous," Piero replied. "They need to play their harmless games."

"They should allow the others to eat."

"Let them have fun."

"Let us have calm."

The twins grew quiet as the dispute between the two adults escalated. Piero became so perturbed that he grabbed the stuffing knife he had used on the pig and thrust it down into Claude's hand. The twins were horrified. In fact, the whole table was repulsed. Claude feigned panic as Piero hacked through the finger and tossed it at Philippe. After a moment of extreme distress, the disputants laughed. Piero had aimed his knife at Claude's hand where there was nothing but a glove ringer filled with flax.

The evening ended with an extravagance arranged by the Abbe. He covered the eyes of the wedding couple, then called in a musician. They were serenaded by an instrument Claude had never heard before. After twelve bars, he could not hold back his curiosity. He pulled down the blindfold.

"What is it?"

The musician responded, "A tenor oboe."

"But it is known by another name as well," the Abbe said.

"Which is?"

"What else but vox humana."

Claude looked around the table. He stood up and made a toast of his own. "To the sound of the vox humana. To the sound of the human voice."

Husband and wife shared hairbrush, gesture, smell, food, jokes, fears, hopes, desires (especially desires), soap, nightshirt, anguish, shoeing horn, tenderness, soup spoon, language. The Abbe was the first to notice that Marguerite had picked up the lilting speech of Tournay and that Claude peppered his talk with Parisian slang. The coachman added his own observation on the couple's conflation: "The two of them even fart the same." There was general agreement on this point, and Piero, always analytic in matters of digestion, attributed the gastric similarity to Marguerite's unyielding devotion to the kidney bean.

Differences between them were endured with a minimum of complaint. Marguerite laughed at Claude's habit of smelling his stockings before going to sleep. Claude, for his part, gently poked fun at Marguerite for the facial investigations she conducted with a pocket mirror and for the time spent combing through the trellis of hair under her arms. Other differences were even encouraged. Marguerite was pleased to have Claude seek out the cool parts of the bed in anticipation of her arrival, and pleased, too, that he would wrap himself around her body like a quotation mark around its mate.

It was in bed that the two lovers shared their most intense and collaborative pleasures. The months that followed the wedding feast added substantially to the range of Amorous Bruits in the S-roll. Like the birdcalls, these sounds changed from one season to the next. In the hotter months, when the heat pushed down from the roof, their bodies would lock in languid passion so pungent as to suggest the reason the French language uses a single word— sentir —for the senses of touch and smell. After such summertime exertions, Claude often connected the pock-marks on his wife's back and traced the constellation of stomach freckles to ticklish and stimulating depths. Marguerite reciprocated with lingual explorations that recalled the first night of button biting.