The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre (15 page)

But Baudelaire ignored him and addressed the other guests.

“Herodotus describes how the Scythians gathered piles of hemp seeds on which they threw stones heated in a fire. It was a steam bath of sorts, with far-reaching medicinal and meditative effects. This plant, which is scorned by most of our countrymen, is being accepted in some quarters of the medical establishment. Our esteemed Dr. Aultisse is conducting research that may prove, once and for all, the benefits of this plant for the insane, for those with chronic maladies, and so on.”

At the conclusion of Baudelaire’s comments, the doctor handed each of the participants a saucer with a smear of the green paste and a vermeil spoon. Louis formulated a plan in which he would spoon the paste into his kerchief when nobody was looking. But when the Turkish coffee—black and with the grounds left in—was dispensed by the doctor, it was clear that he intended to inspect the mode of ingestion. Monsieur Girou ate the green paste and swilled his coffee with the expression of a man tasting an uncertain vintage. To Louis’s horror, the others began applauding, and the doctor, his arm crooked as that of a Right Bank waiter, said, “Very nice indeed.” Eggshell went next. Her mouth bittered at the hashish, then she swallowed her coffee with her eyes pinched shut. She waved a hand in front of her mouth and gestured to the water jar. She drank some water and recomposed herself. Baudelaire spooned his hashish into his coffee and downed the concoction with a swift throwback of the head. The doctor sidled around to Pigeon, his face demure, lost in a kind of ministerial efficiency, and watched her drink the coffee.

“Will I see things?” she asked.

The doctor remained silent and gestured to the Japanese saucer. Pigeon filled the vermeil spoon and brought it to her mouth. When she swallowed, she placed a hand to her throat. The doctor returned briefly to the side table, then came and stood next to Louis, who saw the small wooden spatula the doctor carried in one hand. Everyone was watching him—passengers pulling away from a train station. He thought about outright refusal, but he didn’t want to seem antiquated, especially to Pigeon, whom he regarded as more suitable to his photographic task as the hours passed. He tried to formulate some scientific interest in the plant, draw some allegiance with the Greeks and their hemp baths, but in truth he found the whole enterprise childish. The world was slipping away while men sought their salvation in the solace of wine and the balm of crazed nettles.

“We’re leaving without you,” said Baudelaire.

“Sir,” the doctor said in a genteel, professional way.

Pigeon gave Louis a brief, encouraging smile.

“In the name of science,” said Louis. He picked up his coffee in one hand and his spoonful of paste in the other and in two movements consumed both substances. He felt a slight convulsion in his stomach.

In a short while, the doctor served a meal. Louis had a brief coughing spell that left his fingers tingling and a cold sweat on his back. No one seemed to notice. He looked down at the table. The silverware was agleam, laid out as if for surgery. Nobody spoke as the doctor came around with slim-necked flasks encased in raffia, German steins, Flemish water jugs, earthenware plates arranged with sausage and buttered asparagus. Louis was relieved to find that he had an appetite. He noticed that his companions had been transformed in the candlelight—their pupils dilated and ominous as owls’, their mouths like mail slits in old wooden doors. They ate in a silent reverie, the silver arc of their utensils cutting through the half-light.

Louis watched Pigeon cut her sausages into little logs and swim them through her butter sauce. He wondered whether now might not be the time to ask her to be his model. He wanted to go downstairs and begin his search for Isobel. Suddenly, he became aware of Girou and Baudelaire engaged in conversation. Baudelaire smiled over his plate of food, cutlery poised, and said with some delicacy, “I suppose you realize, Monsieur Girou, that you have a very large head?”

A long silence. Louis heard the Utrecht velvet sway on the double doors.

“I beg your pardon?” said the astronomer, spittle in the corners of his mouth.

Pigeon and Eggshell erupted into laughter.

“I am merely commenting on the size of your cranium. It’s a behemoth. I suppose you are accustomed to people commenting on it.”

Louis looked at Girou’s head and noted its size; Baudelaire seemed riveted by its sheer volume. Louis held back a colossal urge to snicker.

The astronomer scratched a wrist and cocked his head to one side, a planet shifting on its axis. Louis laughed despite himself.

“My head is the normal size for my body,” said Girou plaintively.

“Balderdash, it’s a good three sizes too large. You must have your own hatter. I don’t mean it as an insult, because surely it indicates a very large brain. But I wonder,” Baudelaire said, glancing at the near-hysterical Eggshell, “if you find that you’ve developed certain eccentricities on account of your head. I have a good friend who has a very large nose, a proboscis of sorts, and he’s modified his personality accordingly. He wears very colorful waistcoats and cravats—you see my point? A kind of camouflage.”

The doctor, poised at the sideboard, scribbled something in a leather-bound book. The scratch of the nib on the paper filled the room, a knife blade on whetstone.

Girou said, “I don’t wish to continue this conversation. I was under the impression that I was a guest here, not a source of ridicule.” He took a swallow of brandy and left the table, shuffling over to a divan against one wall.

Louis could feel the man’s humiliation; for a moment he
was
Girou, sitting on the divan, flummoxed and sour. “Leave the man alone,” he said.

Baudelaire set down his cutlery. “He’s a fraud. The sun could be rising and setting inside his own anus and he wouldn’t know it.”

“Charles, the ladies,” said Louis in a curt tone.

Baudelaire looked up from the table, his eyes softened, and said, “I am sorry.”

“You should apologize to your guest,” said Louis.

Baudelaire nodded gravely and stood. He walked and sat next to the sulking astronomer on the divan. Eggshell rubbed a drop of wine into the side of her neck.

Pigeon leaned close to Louis and said, “His head is not so terribly large. I’ve seen bigger. Poor man.” He looked at her. The drug had flushed her cheeks and brought dimples into her smile, added conspiracy to her tone. She said, “Perhaps Baudelaire’s point is merely an aesthetic one.”

“You don’t sound like a cabaret dancer,” Louis said, regretting it instantly.

“Because I have opinions and speak proper French?”

“I meant no offense.”

Pigeon cut another sliver of sausage and put it in her mouth. Louis looked briefly at his fob watch: it was past eleven. Pigeon stood and crossed to a window in the rear of the room. He followed her. They came to a double window that overlooked the rooftop terrace and the Paris night. Great blue clouds plodded slowly over a silhouette of weather-vaned rooftops and church steeples. The stars and the gas lamps of theaterland pinholed the grayness.

“Those clouds are like the great thoughts of the century, waiting to be had,” said Louis. He heard his own voice from a distance.

Pigeon said, “My hands are humming.” She loosened the latches and opened the window. A light breeze, cut with almond blossom, came in. “It makes me want the countryside,” she said.

“I grew up in the country,” said Louis.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” It was a question that wanted no response. She closed her eyes as the light wind blew in over the terrace. There were a number of poets out there, sitting in Gothic armchairs, drinking from goblets. Louis could hear a sporadic conversation about Shelley and Keats. He looked out at the cindery darkness, at the array of chimney cowls and ivy-laden turrets. The scene was maritime, the mastheads and riggings of a flotilla. He was about to offer this insight to Pigeon—whose eyes were still closed—when he heard someone approach. He turned and saw the doctor walking towards them with his leather book.

Louis said, “Madame, I have some rather delicate business to discuss with you.”

Her head now swaying slightly from side to side, Pigeon said, “I’ll do it. Baudelaire told me. A hundred francs for an afternoon.”

Louis didn’t know what to say. Finally, he said, “I will be in communication.” Isobel was downstairs; he was certain of it.

“Baudelaire knows how to find me,” Pigeon said matter-offactly. “I’ve done it before. Modeling, that is.”

The doctor was upon them, leafing through pages, dipping the nib of his pen into a little ink bottle he carried in one hand. “How are things progressing over here?” he asked.

“I feel quite wonderful,” said Pigeon.

“And you, sir?”

Louis turned on one heel. “Doctor, I have to take my leave. I hate to mention this, should it invalidate your research, but the dosage seems to have had little effect on me. Perhaps there is a question of potency.” He liked the way
potency
sounded; it was the conferring tone of a fellow of science. Surely the doctor and he fished in the same waters, believed in the secret destinies of certain chemicals, in the ability of nature to provide poison, antidote, and cure. Louis pulled curtly at his waistcoat.

The doctor said plainly, “Sir, you have a soup spoon in your lapel.”

Louis looked down at the spoon, impeached. The doctor returned to his side cabinet.

“Good evening, Pigeon,” said Louis.

“Oh, yes, a delight,” she said, roused from the armada of rooftops. “By the way, my real name is Chloe. Chloe Le Fournier.”

Coincidence increases as the day grows near, the web tightening.

Then,

Isobel is not in this city. Perhaps she is dead.

Pigeon pushed off the sill and stood erect. “Do you take such offense at my real name? Chloe isn’t so bad, is it?”

“No, no. I’m sorry.” He would simply abandon the search. Foolishness had led him to imagine he still occupied a place in Isobel’s mind. There might be a hundred Le Fourniers in France and another thousand in heaven and hell. Reunions could wait until the afterlife.

Then she said, “I’m from Lyons.”

A silence uncoiled through the domed room.

Louis fiddled with the brim of his hat. “And your parents are—” The tremor in his voice was absurd.

“My father died about five years ago. And I don’t speak to my mother. She is dead to me.”

“How so?”

“That is a long and complicated story, monsieur.”

“I see.” There was no way of asking for the mother’s first name without prying. Daguerre put his hat on his head, then, a second later, removed it. “What profession did your father engage in? I am merely curious. As you know, I am somewhat of an artist, and family histories take their place in my portraits.”

“Suddenly you’re all questions.”

“Yes, I apologize.”

“He was a banker.” She turned towards the window. Louis thought of how he would find another model, how this moment existed only for him and that no one could ever pinpoint the intersection of their lives if he turned and went out into the night. Louis stood still, aware of his tight-fitting shoes and the seam of his pants, the neck cloth pressing against his artery. He saw himself the way God might, from above and with affection; here was a man prone to pride and vanity, but with a profound belief in good works and progress.
Surely I will be shown compassion.

“Is your mother happy?” he blurted.

“What?” She wheeled around.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me.”

Pigeon blinked slowly, another wave of cannabis on its way out. “I haven’t spoken to my mother in five years. But no, I don’t think she is happy. How could she be?”

“Good night, Chloe,” Louis said.

“Don’t forget to arrange my portrait. Truth be told, I need the money.”

Louis turned and left her by the window. He walked towards the crushed-velvet doors. Baudelaire and the astronomer were staring up at the domed allegory. Baudelaire had his hand cradled around his amber-tipped pipe as he spoke. “This is my favorite part. You are seated and you are smoking and you think that you are sitting in your pipe and it is you that your pipe is smoking; it is yourself you exhale in the form of blue clouds.” The astronomer had a hand extended towards the ceiling, a finger pointing lithely at some shadowy nuance. Eggshell was lying on the Persian carpet beside them, tracing her fingers across the arabesque of worn thread. Louis did not say goodbye. As he opened the velvet doors, he heard Baudelaire say, “…the world loosens and everything sings. You feel a part of other men.” He walked out into the long hallway and descended the stairs to the second floor. The two teams of men were still hurling young boys between the floors of the mansion.

Ten

T
he kiss on the stoop of Notre Dame unburdened Louis, at least for a time. The certainty of Isobel with another man’s child sealed things off, divided his life into eras. And this was the era of finding fame. His painting took a turn. The memory of life on the glade, of Isobel, had given his cloud work and trees an impressionistic shimmer; now, with her banished, there was a kind of indignation, a sharp-edged realism.

A dozen years after his apprenticeship, Louis was the head designer for the second-largest theater in Paris. He lived behind the flower markets, in a terrace apartment. At work in his rooftop garden, he stretched bolts of canvas from post to wall, preferring the noonday sun to the perennial twilight of the theater. Deliverymen took his rolled canvases back to the stage. From his rooftop, he watched flower women carrying baskets of dahlias on their heads, barges hauling Montreuil peaches up the Seine. He watched gentlemen play backgammon in shaded courtyards. The city inspired him—the bustle of the boulevards, the way a winter dusk seemed to rise up out of the river and settle all at once over the shopfronts.

At the end of each day, he brought his canvases inside. His apartment was well lit but disheveled. It smelled of whitewash and turpentine. Rustic furniture rose out of a sea of tracing paper and canvas. The copper pans in the kitchen ruminated with purple and orange paint. He rarely cooked. But sometimes, especially at the end of a performance run at the theater, he invited his colleagues to his rooftop for a late supper.