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

grandfather. Upon locating the appropriate principle, he would lift his pencil and jot down a long string of numbers. An abracadabra of addition, division, and multi-plication would follow, capped off by the subtraction of the digit one hundred forty-four, the numerical constant for human error.
    He would never tell me what the final verdict was for any of the flakes but would record his find-ings with neat penmanship in black ink in a leather-bound journal.
    "All snowflakes have the same basic form—six points emanating from a design of either greater Page 18

    or lesser com-plexity at the center. The first rule I learned from him about crystalogogistics was that no two snowflakes were exactly alike. Either the center pattern exhibited an extra concentric device or the spindles were burred with fewer pegs or the tips were barbed or flat, but each one came from above a unique creation. I did pick up a few hints about how to read them from the times he would let slip a word or two that would betray his knowledge. For instance, I knew that a spiderweb design in the center por-tended treachery, and a rounded tip a time of plenty. So this was my life when I was nine years old."
    "And what of your mother?" I asked.
    "Mother had nothing to do with our work. She had no understanding of its importance, and I could tell even then that she considered my father a fool. I think she stayed on with us simply because she had come from a poor family and Ossiak saw to it that we wanted for nothing. She also relished the opportunity to move amid society's elite when in April we traveled back to the city to confer with father's employer on our findings. Then she would come alive with a sense of self-importance. I would not say she was a mean person, but as a child, when I came to her with some hurt or fear, instead of warmth or comfort, all that her cold demeanor inspired in me was an unsettling sense of awe. I never did hear the story of how they came together in their younger days."
    She was silent for a moment, and I pictured her, strangely enough, as myself, floundering in one of those brief periods of confusion that result from my thinking too much. "I believe you were going to tell me about some change that had taken place in your life," I said.
    "Yes," she said. "I hadn't thought of all this for some time, save for in bits and pieces. Each remembered image tugs at me, wants me to follow it off in another direction."
    "I understand," I said.
    "Now that I have set the scene for you, I can address your question," she said. "It was soon after Ossiak's men had come with sleds hitched to mules, which was the only viable means of moving stores up through the difficult passes of the mountains. They came each midwinter to replenish our stock of firewood and to bring other sup-plies. For a few nights previous there had been strange lights in the sky, not the aurora, which we sometimes saw and were used to, but a kind of pulsating brightness. The captain of the supply team mentioned it to my father and asked him what it might be. Father admitted that he was equally bewildered by it. That night it became a moot point, because the clouds had moved in and it was obvious a great storm was brewing.
    The supply team set off with-out waiting until morning, hoping to make it down the mountain before a blizzard struck.
    "When the snows started, although it was late, my father insisted that we take a sample. This we did with great difficulty, since the wind was high and the temp-erature more bitter than I had ever felt it.
    Inside the laboratory we went through the usual routine, setting up and lighting the viewing stage, my father ascending the ladder to his seat. I stood looking up at him, awaiting pronouncement of the word that meant we had been suc-cessful, but it never came. Rarely did we not garner at least one spindled star. I thought perhaps this was due to the severity of the weather. Instead, he seemed very agitated by what he saw through the