I clapped my hands. ‘You are more than an artist! – You are an actor! Like me, you take the poor shadowy thing of real life and magnify it and add brighter colours to delight your audience … But what do you want me here for? I can’t handle a paintbrush .’
He stood pulling his lower lip and squinting at me.
‘People come in two kinds. Either they’re too clever or too foolish to be trusted. I can’t reason out which group you’re in.’
‘I’m to be trusted. Everyone trusts Perian de Chirolo – ask Kemperer, for whom you once worked, who knows me minutely. His wife will also say a good word for me.’
He brushed my speech aside, stood gazing into the distance in very much a pose I have used for Blind Kedgoree.
‘Well, I need a young man not too ill set-up, there’s no denying that … The older you get, the more difficult things become …’
At last he turned back to me. ‘Very well, I shall take you in my confidence, young man; but I warn that what I tell you must not be repeated with nobody, not with your dearest friend, no, not even with your sweetest sweetheart. Come, we’ll walk in the exhibition gallery while I will explain my invention and my intention …’
He drew back the curtains, turned down the lamp, and led me back to the workshops. We climbed some steps, went through a door, and were in another world where disorder was forgotten. We had entered the elegantly appointed gallery itself, the walls of which were lined with thousands of glass slides, aligned on racks for easy viewing. The slides could be hired for varying amounts, depending upon quality and subject. There were long sets of twenty or thirty slides which told in pictures heroic stories of old, as well as vivid portrayals of brigandage or disaster, which were most popular. Well-dressed people were walking about and gazing at the pictures; Bengtsohn kept his voice down.
‘Despite this place stinks of privilege, it preserves a part of the cultural thought of Malacia as well as Count Renardo’s state museum. Andrus Hoytola exploits cheap labour, no use to deny that – a class enemy if there was one – yet he is not a merchant just but also an artist and a man of foresight. However, to my invention …’
There was a secretiveness about him which did not suit my open nature. He manoeuvered me into a corner, saying he would lecture me upon matters not generally understood.
‘It has long been known through the learned alchemists that there are certain salts what have an empathy with or aversion against the light, so that some say they are fallen from the sun or the moon. I have developed here a process whereby a judicious mixture of silver iodine will secure on a slide of glass an image of whatever is placed before the zahnoscope. A second process involving oils of lavender and heated mercury fixes the image permanently on the glass. This is painting without hands, my dear de Chirolo …’
When he beamed at me, he looked years younger.
‘Why tell me your secret?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not mine but Nature’s. All what wish can share it. You do not realise the oppressiveness of the state what we live in –’
‘I love my native city.’
‘I what am a foreigner should not criticise? Nevertheless, any such scientific processes what I describe are suppressed … Justice is denied – and beauty.’
He snatched from one of the exhibition racks a slide which he urged me to hold up to the light. It was a volcanic eruption. I stared through a volcano in full spate, with streams of lava furrowing its snow-clad slopes – to see one of the most beautiful faces I had ever come across, a face with a high-bridged nose, two dark-golden eyes, a mouth that was flashing a brilliant smile – though not in my direction – and a delicate head of cultivated unruly hair, jet-black and tied with a length of blue ribbon at the back.
Even as this face materialised through the volcanic eruption, it turned into profile and then went into eclipse, with only the tresses and ribbons at the back of the head available to my view. Even that was thrilling enough; but never had I seen a profile so adorable, or so originally designed, with the entire physiognomy depending from that patrician nose, without the nose being too large even by one delicious millimetre.
Lowering Mount Vesuvius slightly, I regarded the body to which this fabulous head was such an exquisite adjunct. Though I beheld it only from behind, I saw that the waist was slender, the hips generous, and the buttocks altogether matchless enough to put the snowy slopes of any volcano to shame. The whole enchanting figure was sheathed in a long, crisp dress of apricot-coloured silk which swept to the floor. My aesthetic senses, roused by the proportions of the face, were overtaken by my carnal ones and I resolved to approach this beauty at whatever cost.
All the while, Bengtsohn was talking in his cracky way, mistaking the subject of my absorption, ‘… this beautiful view was never touched by human hands …’
‘Glad I am to hear you say it.’
‘The exciting effect of fire and snow in conjunction …’
‘Oh, yes, and that conjunction …’
‘Yet this is but an imitation of an imitation …’
‘No, that I can’t believe! This is the real thing at last.’
‘You flatter me, but the zahnoscope can be made to capture the real thing, to go straight to life rather than art …’
I put the slide down. The vision was preparing to leave the gallery; I might never see her again and my happiness would never be complete.
‘You must excuse me, Maestro – I do have more preference for life than for art, just as you do. You must manage your affairs and I mine –’
Seeing I was making to go, he grasped my arm.
‘Listen, please, young man. I’m offering you work and money. All-People can’t be mistaken. You have not work or money. I want to do a new thing with the zahnoscope. I want to mercurise – that’s how I call it – I want to mercurise a whole story on slides, using real actors, not just paintings. It will be a dazzling new success, it will be revolutionary – and you can take prominently part in it. Now, come into the workshop and let me explain properly all.’
‘I’ve just seen a friend – who’s the fair creature at the far end of the gallery?’
He answered sharply. ‘That’s Armida Hoytola, daughter of the gallery-owner, a difficult, flighty girl. She’s a parasite, a class enemy. Don’t waste your time –’
‘A thousand thanks for for the meal, but I cannot work for you. All-People looked at the wrong constellation. There is other work more fitting …’
I bowed to him and left. He drew himself up, folding his arms over his ancient coat, with the funniest expression on his face.
At the far end of the gallery, beyond the counter, was a doorway into a coffee lounge. My fair creature was making her way through it with a friend. No chaperons that I could see. The friend was about the same age as – Armida? – Armida! – and striking too in her own way, a plump girl with chestnut ringlets. On an ordinary day she would certainly have attracted one’s attention; her only fault was to be caught with the divine Armida. They made a pretty pair as they moved into the lounge, although I had eyes for only one of them.
Pausing in the doorway, I wondered whether to appear tragic or cheerful; the poverty of my clothes decided me on the latter course.
The two of them were settling at a nearby table. As Armida sat back, our eyes met. Streams of animal magnetism poured across the room. On impulse, holding her gaze, I went forward, seized one of the empty chairs at her table, and said, ‘Ladies’ – but I addressed myself only to her –