The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre (30 page)

Louis took to the country lanes. He walked briskly, tripod over his shoulder, flushing birds and rabbits from the downs. At first he was stultified by the thought of what to capture. His doomsday list now seemed false, an exercise in self-indulgence. He wanted to capture ordinary objects: an orange against wood grain; a cup of coffee gathering a dying afternoon in its brown bowl; a brindled cat asleep in the barn; a piece of chocolate on waxed paper; a smoking pipe on a yellowed edition of
Le Gazette de France;
the skeletal frame of beech trees against snow. He would search for the minuscule and the uncelebrated, the unlikely structures of elemental form—the helix inside honeycomb, the symmetry of a thyme leaf, the arciform of a daylily. Perhaps the whorl of the cosmic mind was contained in a nutshell.

He set up a workshop in the barn. He had a few dozen remaining copper plates, ten pounds of mercury in a flask, plenty of iodine and carded cotton. The spirit lamp had survived the maelstrom ride from Paris. One night he held the exposed plate of a hawk feather over the mercury bath. It was his first exposure to mercury in a month, and the metallic cloud stung on its way into his lungs. He felt its acrid breath on his windpipe, the gossamer veil it placed over his thoughts.

When the image was fixed, he set it on a bed of straw. The picture showed a bone-white quill cut through crosshairs of brown. He went outside into the cold of night. The cottage was yellow-lit and seemed to float through the dark. He could see Isobel and Chloe eating in the kitchen. Isobel left his meals on the veranda with the stable hand’s. Pathetically, he looked for signs of hope in the soup and the fish—a sprig of rosemary set upright, a heart carved from a fillet of sole. He saw himself as an old man standing outside a widow’s house, afraid of having squandered his love, unmoored by the continued rotation of the earth.

The fresh exposure to mercury had made his head ache, and he returned to the barn to lie down. He climbed the ladder to the barn loft and felt the pressure in his head get worse; his pulse throbbed behind his eyes and in his teeth. Panting, he sunk down on his straw bed. The stableboy, sitting beneath a hanging kerosene lamp, was cleaning a rifle with an oil cloth. Louis stared at him. He was a blunt-faced lad, smelled of saddle soap and leather, spoke few words but was known to have a soprano voice and a penchant for singing to horses. His hands were rough and blistered, but his fingers were precise. He polished the barrel and then held a bullet between two fingers—Louis saw it in profile, something as perfect as a basilica dome—before kissing it and pressing the bullet gently into the chamber. Was the boy going out to join the revolution? As Louis watched, his peripheral vision dimmed; suddenly, it was like looking through a keyhole. Everything seemed to move away, blink, recede. An empty feeling rose from the pit of his stomach and settled behind his shoulder blades.

The boy looked up from the rifle. “Are you all right, sir?”

“If Degotti sees you with that rifle in the dormitory, he’ll make you sweep the floor for a year,” Louis replied. “Do you understand me? We are painters, not soldiers.”

Smiling, the boy looked back down at his rifle, set it aside, and blew out the kerosene lamp. In the darkness, Louis heard him say, “We’ll never win the revolution if the Parisians are always drunk!”

Isobel and Chloe brooded over a meal in the kitchen. Chloe sat idling her potatoes. Isobel looked at their twin reflections, ghostly and warped, in the kitchen window. She hated the insufferable silence but felt pinned by it. The past had ransacked her house.

Chloe watched her mother cut her potatoes with a surgical precision. When Chloe’s voice filled the house, she realized neither of them had spoken since breakfast.

“When the roads clear, I will return to Paris also,” Chloe said.

“I see,” said Isobel.

Some silence. A gust at the windowpane.

The thought returned to Isobel, the image of sixteen-year-old Chloe descending the stairs. She said, “When you were in Paris, did he really try to save you?”

“Yes, like I told you. He paid me to model so that I would quit working in the brothel. He would have done anything to make me stop.” Her mother’s face startled her—the tight, withheld mouth, the hostility in the eyes.
This is the face I will someday inherit.

Isobel nodded almost imperceptibly and looked around the room. “And he never touched you?”

“Never.”

“Surely a man who wants to look at naked women cannot have honorable intentions.”

Chloe set down her silverware and moved her plate to the center of the table. “Mother, you’ve been asleep since 1800. The world is different now. Artists command the cafés and the brasseries in Paris. Painting a nude model is a form of philosophy, a religion, almost. They pay twice as much as a man who wants to sleep with a whore—so why would he bother if it weren’t legitimately about art?”

The logic of it caught in Isobel’s throat. How she wanted to bellow, to shatter the windows with a single held note.

“Do not use the word
whore
in this house,” she said. A moment later, she added, “Ever.” Her voice was sharp, even to her.

Chloe said, “You hate me. I can see it when you look at me.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“And you hate yourself—that much seems certain. You are terrified of being loved.”

Isobel perched her fork halfway between plate and mouth.

Chloe said, “You’re the most indulgent woman I’ve ever known. What is this cross you bear? I knew women in Paris who sold their children to eat. How dare you. Your biggest burden is that a man has loved you his whole life.”

Isobel set her cutlery on her plate. “No, my biggest burden is that my daughter has ruined her life. And as for that lunatic of a man, I never asked for his love.”

“No, and frankly, you don’t deserve it,” Chloe said. “I would give anything to have a man love me like that again, just once.” She stood and left the table.

Isobel watched her daughter move through the lamplight of the hallway. She had a brief sensation of time slowing, of the silent intervals between Chloe’s footsteps. The bedroom door opened wildly, as if it might swing off its hinges. Then it closed with a stiff wooden shudder. In its aftermath, she sat, looking down at her empty plate, gripped by the enormity of the silence.

Later, they were both awakened by a loud crack from the rear of the house. They rose and hurried down the hallway, Isobel holding a candle in front of her. In the herbarium, the night lamps cast a paraffin pall on the miniature trees and the potted herbs. Behind a bamboo plant culled for stakes and stirrers, a windowpane had cracked—a splintered vein that ran the course of the whole panel.

Isobel ran her fingers carefully along the crack, tracing it down to the bottom of the frame. She saw that a bamboo shoot had grown into the glass, pressed into the liquefacient surface like a specimen in a microscope plate. “Even the plants want to escape this house,” she said.

They both stood there for a moment.

“I’m going to stay up for a while,” said Isobel. “I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”

“I’ll go back to bed,” Chloe said.

“Good night, then.”

Isobel picked up her pruning scissors and scanned the foliage for the errant tendril or leaf. She trimmed the stalk of a miniature myrrh tree, its resin coating the bark in amber tears. She used it as a cure for digestive complaints, but she recalled that the Egyptians had used it to embalm the dead. If only she could believe in something beyond the rectitude of plants—the goodness of men, the benevolence of God, the efficacy of science. There was time, her plants, the spool of the seasons. She pricked her finger on the sharp end of a myrrh branch. A speck of blood appeared under her fingernail. Thwarted, she wrapped a cloth around it and retired to bed.

She tossed and turned, the cut pulsing like a beacon.
You are terrified of being loved.
The thought gathered around her. As a child, she’d avoided the boys for whom she had real affection; Gerard had been a widower unable to love. The closest he had come was unbridled kindness, a tenderness that flared sometimes on a birthday or anniversary, and she had been safe, satisfied with knowing all she had to give was wifely camaraderie, a kind of connubial friendship. She opened her mouth to yawn only to find herself in tears. Her hand went to her mouth to stifle the sob—the slapping hand, knuckled with age, with a wedding ring from a dead man she had never loved. She took off the ring and placed it on the night table. Somehow, its removal allowed her to weep freely.

Her sobs floated through the house, passing through the timber walls. Chloe woke to the sound. She had not heard her mother cry in many years. Even at her father’s funeral, her mother had been stern-lipped, already assuming the icy pose of the dutifully stricken widow. Chloe stood in her darkened room and, without lighting any lamps, went to her mother. She fumbled towards the iron bed frame and felt the contour of Isobel’s body. Her mother lay curled, pillows clutched to her stomach and face. Chloe said nothing. She sat down next to her and took hold of her hand. She could feel her mother’s pulse throb between her fingertips. Isobel, her voice cut with fatigue, said, “I can’t live like this anymore.” Chloe made no reply. She lay down beside her mother. They passed in and out of sleep, their hands intertwined.

In the morning Chloe got up and made a pot of coffee with chicory, the way her mother liked it. She brought two cups into the bedroom. Isobel sat up in bed and took an earthenware mug. They sat on the bed, drinking coffee, letting the morning take hold of them. Chloe opened the bedroom window a little. They looked out at the slow stain of morning. The smell of acacia and lime came into the room. The present began to reveal itself.

Twenty-Four

Dear Louis,

These last weeks have brought me an impossible sadness. I confess I felt a real betrayal and violation at seeing the naked portrait of my daughter. But it seems there is nothing to be gained from dwelling on the mistakes of the past. I acted horribly and never should have struck my daughter. I regret you witnessed such appalling behavior. So much has passed between us and I don’t think myself capable of offering anything but well-intentioned friendship. Chloe and I would be glad to receive a visit from you, if you are so inclined. Please come out of the barn and join us.

Sincerely,

Isobel Le Fournier

Twenty-Five

L
ouis paced on the back stoop. He waited a long time before knocking. Isobel appeared within seconds of his rapping so that he wondered whether she’d seen him poised on the steps.

“Louis,” she said. She appeared sallow and worn.

“The Paris road has opened. I’ll be leaving in the morning.” He looked at her hands, at her bandaged finger.

“I see,” she said, looking out at the marsh.

“Thank you for your note,” he said.

“Of course.” She dabbed her nose with a kerchief.

“Are you unwell?” he asked.

“My lungs play up in the early spring.” Looking at her kerchief, she said, “Would you share a meal with us before you leave?”

“Today I plan to visit the old estate, and I’ll leave from there in the morning. A silly errand, I know. I can’t seem to shrug nostalgia. It’s dogged me my whole life.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a fondness for the past,” she said.

“Perhaps an acceptance of the present is better.” He touched his chest—the threat of a cough.

She held on to the rim of the doorway.

“I’d like to say goodbye to Chloe as well, if that’s all right.”

“Of course. She’s gone for a walk, but I’ll send her over when she gets back.”

“Thank you.”

“Louis?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll make you some food for your trip.”

“Don’t go to any trouble.”

“It’s the least we can do. I’ll send it over with Chloe.”

“Goodbye, Isobel.”

She looked at his mouth. “Yes. Goodbye, then.” She closed the door hurriedly.

He turned and descended the stairs.

She walked slowly into the living room and watched the fire. She noticed that the fireplace bricks were stained black. She sat down in a chair. A cold, bereft feeling came over her. She saw her days stretched before her, the afternoons lined up like soldiers. She got up from the chair and moved to the window. His carriage stood in front of the barn. He was nowhere in sight.

From the front of the house came the sound of the door. Chloe came in with flowers. She was breathy, flushed in the cheeks. “It’s such a beautiful day out there.”

“He’s leaving today. He’s going to the old estate, then on to Paris.”

Chloe came and stood beside her at the window.

Isobel said, “I told him we’d make him some food for the trip.”

“We can’t let him leave, Mother. Not after all this mess.”

“He’s set to leave.”

“I can’t know your heart, Mother. I don’t think you even know your heart anymore. But it’s not right to watch your oldest friend disappear. You will never see him again.”

“I know. I can feel it in my bones.” Isobel put her hand against the chill of the glass.

“You can’t let him leave without a proper mending of ways. I’ll go talk to him.”

“No, you mustn’t.”

Chloe moved towards the door, flowers still in hand.

“Chloe, I’m begging. Don’t. This is for the best.”

“Well,” Chloe said, “these flowers are for him, and I intend to deliver them.”

She went outside. Isobel watched her daughter move across the farmyard. Louis appeared from inside the barn. Chloe held the flowers in front of her and Louis stood uncomprehending, hands at his sides. Slowly, his hands came out to receive them and his face washed with a smile. He bent his head to smell them. Isobel moved from the window and went into the herbarium. She stood looking at her plants. A short time later, Chloe rushed into the house and Isobel reached for her scissors and began pruning.