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

eyepiece.
    "Without humming or grumbling, he finally came down the ladder and took out two toothpicks.
    As he posi-tioned the loupe in his eye, I noticed the most incredible thing, which prevented me from running for the atomizer. He was sweating. 'Hurry, Lu,' he shouted, not in his usual good humor. I came to and jumped at his command. When I returned, he had the two picks out in front of him. He saw that he had made me nervous, and said, 'All right, girl, take a deep breath and be your best.'
    "I lacquered the two perfectly at once with a single pump of the ball. 'You're a genius,' he told me, and I smiled, but it became clear to me that he was not joking. As soon as the specimens had Page 19

    dried we went inside.
    "At his desk, he did not bother to scribble but simply held up the two flakes we had transfixed, and stared at them through the magnifying glass. I sat on the couch watching him, noticing that he still seemed nervous. After quite a while, he put them down and got up out of his chair. He crossed the room to the window and stood in silence with his hands joined behind his back, peering through the darkness into the blinding storm that now raged. Only then did I register the ferocity of the wind, like the wailing of ghostly children.
    "When he finally went back to his desk, he called me over to him. He held up the two new samples and posi-tioned the magnifying glass before them. 'Tell me, Lu, what do you see here?'
    he asked. I was concerned by his behavior, but at the same time I felt something akin to pride, since he was asking my opinion. I peered through the glass and immediately noticed the most astonishing thing.
    " 'They're identical,' I said.
    " 'Impossible but true,’ he said.
    "I looked at him, and his face was a mask of worry. There was also something about his eyes, a peculiar lack of light that could only be described as hopeless-ness. In that moment I had a premonition, like a sudden bright flash in my mind, of the supply team trapped in the blizzard on their way down the mountain. A few days later, the Twins, as my father and I had come to call the identical crystals, began to exhibit their strange qualities."
    Mrs. Charbuque fell silent then, and for the first time since her story had begun, I looked down at my sketch-book and saw that I had drawn nothing. The page was as white as a blizzard.
    The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque
    "The Twins—," I said to her, but had no chance to fin-ish my question, for as I spoke the door behind me opened and Watkin said, "Your time is up, Mr. Piambo."
    Dazed, I rose and slowly left the room.
    The Viziers Court
    After leaving Mrs. Charbuque's, I walked over to Central Park and entered at Seventy-ninth Street.
    As it was a weekday and bitterly cold, the place was fairly deserted. I headed south, toward the lake, on a path lined with barren poplars and strewn with yellow leaves. Once there, I sat on a bench at its eastern shore and gave myself up to considering all she had told me. The wind rippled the water, and the late-afternoon sunlight slanted through the bare branches, adding a golden patina to the empty boat-house and esplanade.
    My first question was, of course, whether or not she was to be believed. "Crystalogogist," I said to myself, and smiled. It sounded almost too bizarre to be fiction. She had spoken with the facility and authority of truth, and I had clearly seen in my imagination, plain as day, her father's thick muttonchops, his riotous eyebrows and kindly smile. I had felt the bitter cold of the laboratory and peered through the glacial undersea glow. My mind was a whirl of imagery—snowflakes, lists of numbers, iced machinery, toothpicks, black velvet, the frozen lake, and reflected in it the drawn, dour face of the mother.
    When I again noticed the water before me, I was smoking a cigarette and reasoning that if Mrs.Charbuque had lived some part of her early life during the heyday of Malcolm Ossiak, she was most likely close to my own age. This did