Дэймон Найт - Orbit 12

“Can our poor cobwebs of brains counterfeit a picture as vivid and perfect as this? Yet it is merely a passing beam of light! The lens in the roof has a better mastery of experience than I! Why should a man—what drives a man to compete against Nature itself? What a slave I am to my hopes!”

As he bewailed his lot, I stared at the scene laid out so curiously and captivatingly on the table. From the perspectives of the rooftops, we looked down on a stretch of track outside the castle, where the Toi ran beside a dusty climbing road. By the river, resting on grass and boulders, sat a group of people as dusty as the road, their mules tethered nearby. So enchanted was I to observe them, and to overlook such details as an elderly man who mopped his bald head with a kerchief and a widow woman in black who fanned her face with a hat, that it was a minute before I identified them as a group of pilgrims or penitents—evidently embarked on a long journey and making life hard for themselves.

“You see how they are diminished, my friend,” said Dalembert “We see them as through God’s eye. We believe them real, yet we are only looking at marks on a table, light impressions that leave no stain! Look, here comes my wife, toiling back up the hill—yet it is not my wife, only a tiny mark on the tabletop which I identify with my wife. What is its relation to her?”

“If you knew that, you would hold the secret of the universe, I daresay.”

His great brows drew together.

“She has been copied by a master painter, who uses only light.”

I watched as the small figure of his wife, in climbing up toward the castle gate, slowly traversed an inch or two of tabletop. I did not answer Dalembert, not having his religious convictions; but he never needed prompting to speak.

“We stand—our generation, I mean—on the verge of some tremendous discovery. All things may be possible . . . And yet, what man can say if we aren’t ourselves little more than reflections of light-

“Or shadows, as Plato says in the seventh book of his ‘Republic’ . . . As an actor, I’ve often thought it—I seem most substantial when I’m being a fictitious creature.”

“Actors—they’re nothing, they leave no trace.”

“If that is so, then they are like Plato’s shadows on the wall of his cave.”

“Those that observed the shadows were captives, chained where they sat since childhood. That much at least is not allegory.”

“Shall we go down to greet your wife?”

“She has nothing to say. She probably has nothing to eat either, poor jade!” As if to dismiss her, he stepped back and turned a handle, causing the lens or mirror attached to it to be moved. At once, the labouring woman and the penitents were swept away. Rooftops and gables appeared in our enchanted circle, and then an inner court.

The sharp diminution, the steep perspective, and the amazing brilliance of the scene gave the buildings so novel an air that at first I did not recognise where we were. Then I uttered a cry of surprise.

All at once the whole panorama was known and interpreted. Minute birds flittered here and there. These were the very cavorts I had watched with my sister. I could even see a haze of cats fur, spread out like a web and stirred by the warm circulating breath of the courtyard. I looked for my bedroom window. Yes, there it was, and on the open sill Poseidon herself, glaring out at the creatures who were making so free with her abandoned coat! How bright and minute the colours were, like some living Schwabian miniature in enamel! The entire window with its parched woodwork was less than half the size of my little finger’s nail, yet I saw every detail of it, and the cat, to perfection. What images of peace! I was watching them still when—with startling speed—the whole view was blotted out by a rapidly growing bird, which rose and rose, as if from the depths of the table, until it blotted everything out A scrabbling sounded overhead, and a cavort fluttered down between Dalembert and me.

“Wretched creatures! How clumsy they are!” Dalembert said, lumbering about and striking at the bird—nearly clouting me in the process. “This isn’t the first time one has tumbled in here. Get out of the way while I kill it!”

I descended the ladder while he hit out at the luckless bird, circling round and round in the darkness.

Below, the children were all crying in delight. Their mother had just entered by the street door. She greeted me wearily and sat down.

She was a heavy woman. Her face was withered now and had lost much of its former beauty. Her name among men was Charity; she was, in fact, a flying woman. Our laws in Malaria governing the flying people were very strict, but Charity, as child and young girl, had been one of those favoured few allowed to nest on top of the campanile, on account of her great beauty. I could recall her being pointed out to me as a boy, flying with some of her sisters—a lovely and remarkable sight, though the subject of lewd boyish jokes, for the flying people scorned clothes.

Now Charity kept her pinions folded. Since marrying her lover, Dalembert, for whom she had modelled, she never flew and had perhaps lost the art.

Seeing me, she rose and offered a hand in welcome. The children tugged at her robe so vigorously that she sat down again before pouring me a glass of wine. I accepted gladly—her husband had been too mean to offer me one.

“I hoped you would come to see us, Master Prian. Your good sister told me you were almost recovered from your fever.”

“I would never come to Mantegan without visiting you and Nicholas. You know that. As ever, I have a great admiration for your husband’s work.”

“How do you find Dalembert?”

“As bursting with genius and ideas as ever!”

“And as religious, and as despairing?”

“A trifle melancholy, perhaps . . .”

“And as unable to paint a wall!”

Picking up a couple of the children, she went over to the water bin, dipped a ladle, and drank from it. The children then called out for a similar treat, and she gave to each in turn, the boys first and then the girls. Over their clamour, she said, “He is too ambitious, and you see the results. I’ve just been out washing for a wealthy family to earn enough to buy bread. How we shall manage when the winter comes, I don’t know. . . .”

“Genius seldom cares to earn its bread.”

“He thinks he will be famous in two hundred years’ time. What good will that do me or his poor children, I don’t know! Come, I must find them something to eat. ... I shouldn’t complain, Master Prian; it’s just that I don’t see matters in the same light as Dalembert, and the road up to the castle grows steeper week by week, I swear.”

As I leaned against a wall, sipping the wine and watching how she managed to work while keeping the children entertained, I wondered if she still recalled the aerial views she had had of our city as a young girl—how enchanting it must have looked before she had to walk it! But I said nothing; it was best not to interfere.

It seemed as if the artist had forgotten me. I heard him pacing overhead. He would be working again at his figures.

Passing her the empty glass, I said to Charity, “I must go and rest now. Tell your husband that I hope to come and see him again before I leave the castle. And I’ll ask my sister if she can get Volpato to pay him a little more money.”

She shook her head and gestured dismissively with her hands in a gesture reminiscent of her husband’s.

“Let well alone! Don’t do that! You may not know it, but Volpato has threatened to throw us out, frescoes or no frescoes, if he is pestered ever again on the subject of money.”

“As you wish, of course.”

“It is not as I wish but as I must”