The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque by Jeffrey Ford Read Free Book Online

out, and at the bottom, where it held the huge lens that was like a circle cut from the frozen lake, it was wide enough to encompass the entire board."
    "Lu?" I asked, interrupting the flow of her story.
    The Twins
    "Luciere," she said. "I was named after my mother."
    "Forgive me," I said. "Please continue."

Page 17
    "My father would gently turn the knobs of the huge machine, and the gears would lift and lower the long bar-rel holding the lenses. As he did this, I would hear him grumble and hum. His favorite saying when he would dis-cover one of the certain flakes we were searching for was
    'Eureka.'
    You must understand that, although he took his work seriously, he was not beyond a sense of humor about himself and his profession. As for my part, I would applaud to encourage his efforts.
    "Once he sighted a worthy specimen, he would descend from the chair. Fitting a jeweler's loupe into his eye and taking out one of the toothpicks he kept handy in his shirt pocket, he would lean over the black velvet. This was my sign to run and fetch the atomizer filled with a precise mixture of clear plant resins. This noxious mixture had to be prepared in the house, each batch cooked for two hours on the stove so that it would remain in a liquid state for the course of that day's investigations.
    "With the care of a surgeon, he would single out the flake in question and then, after licking the end of the toothpick, very carefully touch its tip to the very center of the frail and minuscule six-pointed star.
    Once he had it on the point of wood, he would lift it away from the board and hold it up in the air for me to spray. Usually he had singled out more than one for preservation. Since the black velvet absorbed heat that would alter the forms of the crystals after a brief period, we could not leave the flakes on the material for too long a time. In answer to this problem, my father had perfected the ability to hold up, at one time, as many as twenty toothpicks between his thumbs and forefingers. This was a delicate process, and I had to pump the atomizer ball with just the right amount of force so that the mist would cover the samples com-pletely but not blow them away. It was a point of pride for me that I was expert at this technique.
    Every time I successfully lacquered another crystal, my father would praise me to the heavens.
    When I
    failed, he would shrug and say, There are more where that came from.’
    "The flakes were then cast in the coating of resin, which dried quickly in the cold air. What was left was a perfect, unmelting replica of the flake. Have you ever seen the skin shed by a snake and how that skin is exactly the form of the snake? This was how precise our models were. Once in this form, he would not have to rely on his mem-ory or his questionable abilities as a sketch artist but could take them into the house to his study and begin to deci-pher their meaning.
    "Father's study was at the back of the house. It had a large window that offered a view of the lake, and its own fireplace that was always stoked and roaring. What with the smoke from his pipe, the scent of burning logs, and the ever-present smell of the resin, the place had a very dis-tinctive aroma. In the corner was a comfortable old couch with broken springs and stuffing peering from tears in its fabric.
    Many an afternoon I'd come in from a long time out in the cold and the warmth of the room would over-come me, and I'd drift off to sleep on the couch. My father sat in his chair, much like the one you are now sitting in, at his desk, surrounded by cabinets overflowing with tiny boxes that held our manufactured fossils of snow.
    "In addition to all this there were the books, hand-written tomes holding the charts and formulas necessary for translating the idiosyncrasies of each flake into a meaningful unit of knowledge.
    While at his desk, he would examine specimens through a magnifying glass, all the time flipping through the reference works penned by his