Ingenious, is it not? These mirrors, you see, magnify the scene, these others multiply it, creating the appearance of infinite horizon . . . It was made in the seventeenth century, in Amsterdam, by a Jesuit named Kircher, a master of illusions. I purchased it there myself from a collector I know . . .
Oh.
Clotilde has turned pale; Argument helps her to sit down.
I am sorry, he says. My mirrors have upset you again. I am being inconsiderate. You see, I am so fond of my toys, and so eager to share them . . . and I so seldom have visitors . . .
It is just, Clotilde whispers, I just thought . . .
But what does she think? Uncertain, she falls silent. Before her mind’s eye: deserts, dunes, cliffs of red sandstone, ancient bones turned to rock, to clay. In the distant steppe, the camels stride.
I should go.
He does not try to keep her—he is too shrewd for that. With one hand cupped protectively beneath her elbow, stooped, obsequious, a very tall man embarrassed by his height, he leads her into the passage that will take them from the house where he lives alone, with just a housekeeper, across the yard, and into the rear of his shop, passing en route first through the glassworks itself. Argument walks this passage very often, walks it automatically now, even at night, when he is alone—especially at night, especially when he is alone. He follows a habitual path. His limbs know it, follow it, almost without the active intervention of his will. But for Clotilde it is new. For her it is all revelation: the heat, the darkness, the fiery furnace with its sulfurous hiss, the colored rods of glass, the men with their blowing irons and shears and punties, the sight of Jack Rose, Argument’s gaffer, swinging a black metal rod upon which a blossom of red-hot molten glass bursts, suddenly, to form the open bud of a drinking vessel. Men and boys seem to hurry everywhere, barefoot, bare-legged, nets drawn over their faces, bearing red-hot fiery masses of glass. A boy runs past too close, flush with the heat, carrying, at the end of a pronged stick, a goblet shaped like a fish, mouth agape, ready to receive, to pour . . . Pardon, madam! Pardon, sir! The object quivers in the pincer’s grip, flashes close beside Clotilde’s muff, disappears into the crimson maw of the lehr.
Argument yanks her aside with a tug so sharp that for a moment—for a moment only—she falls against him, and then, laughing, he chides the boy, who has already disappeared. You, sir! Take care! ’Tis hot!
The boy is lucky. Because my mother is there, Thomas Argument will not strike him, not this time. Not while she is there.
• • •
It’s like hell, that glasshouse. The heat. The stink. The fire. A revelation of hell.
Clotilde thinks of my father right away.
• • •
You make it here?
• • •
Now she has realized—now she has her idea. Argument feels her sudden small start of excitement. It puzzles him; he cannot understand it; nonetheless, he responds smoothly, as always.
Yes. We make most of our glass here, good English lead crystal, the best. Some I purchase abroad. Specialty items. Venetian pieces, ice glass, latticino, opaline . . . Inferior items, but ladies like them . . .
It is a small shop—a dozen men, four boys—but I have plans—expansion—a gas furnace—in time, a factory. There’s a bit of land near Thirsk I’ve got my eye on—
If she can see or sense the smokestacks belching on the horizon of his words, Clotilde gives no sign. She says nothing, merely nods; yet Argument can still feel, through his cupped palm where it touches her elbow, the nervous throb, like an electrical impulse, of her quickened interest.
But she only says, It is very hard to breathe—