If I were to wear them very often, says Clotilde, equally often would I fall down, disgracing myself and all who know me. Have you anything more?
More! Madam wants more? She is difficult to satisfy . . . this he says more to himself than to her, and strokes his chin in pretend perplexity.
My Papa sometimes said I was, says Clotilde.
Your Papa is a wise man, says Thomas Argument.
Yes, says Clotilde, very serious now, almost stern, almost defiant, lower lip thrust out. My Papa is a wise man!
Argument registers this—the sudden seriousness, the defiance, the stern self-correction, the emphasis, as if in reminder to herself, on that present tense is . . . Registers it, and, being himself a shrewd man (if not a wise one), says nothing. Instead he retreats into a corner, and brings forward, from behind the desk, a polished cabinet, longer than it is wide, made up of six hinged wooden panels, four long, two short, standing on a painted wooden pedestal of Dutch design; he has picked this up, despite its size, despite its awkwardness, and carried it forward, pedestal and all, carefully—gracefully, even (with surprising grace, given the disjointed appearance of his long, agile limbs)—before finally setting it down at the center of the carpet, near Clotilde’s feet.
Madam, he says, observe.
Clotilde does observe, for a moment, in silence; then she begins to laugh.
Why, it is just a silly box, she says, with a window in it!
It is, says Thomas Argument, not at all nettled, my theatre catoptrique—my splendid show-all. Look!
He gestures toward the pentagonal peephole centered in one of the shorter end-panels of the cabinet, and Clotilde, willing despite her scorn, leans over to peer inside, pressing her eye, unsteadily because she is still laughing, as close as she can to the glass.
Abruptly her laughter ceases.
Oh! she says. That is all. And then once again, rapturously:
Oh!
She stands quite still, leaning forward, blond hair tumbling over her shoulders, unable to look away.
She sees an impossible paradox, a panorama inside a box, a vast desert stretching infinitely forward, sand dunes of red and gold undulating toward a distant horizon, mysterious stony obelisks, cliffs glittering with quartz, an endless ochre dome of sky; she hears—or thinks she hears—the familiar, the beloved voice—
In the distant steppe, the camels stride . . .
But, she cries, how—?
If you will allow me . . .
Thomas Argument gently draws a reluctant Clotilde away from the cabinet, smoothly turns a metal crank in its base. Look now, he commands.
She looks again, and finds herself, this time, in the midst of a snowy forest of dense pines through which stealthy figures glide, always just slightly out of sight—the white tip of a fox’s tail retreating at the periphery of her vision—dark mountains beyond . . .
But—I don’t understand!
I will show you.
With sensitive fingertips Thomas Argument probes the join where the cabinet’s long top panel meets its side, folds it open upon its hinges to reveal a catacomb of mirrors—sixty small mirrors, at least, attached to five of the cabinet’s six sides; on the sixth side, the bottom or floor, is arranged a minute scene, a cluster of miniature pine trees made from wax, painstakingly painted to achieve an admirable realism; on the left edge is a tiny cork fox with a brush made from real hair. He turns the crank; the bottom panel flips over, and here is Clotilde’s desert, the dunes glued sand, the obelisks a scattered handful of stones, the cliffs tiny quartzes, the ochre sky a painted illusion . . .