• • •
There is nothing William Cloverdale can do about this—his customers sucked, every Wednesday week, into the inexhaustible maw of Thomas Argument, Showman; into the voyeuristic thrill of all that plummeting, scorching, drowning, exsanguinating humanity, projected onto a neutral wall in a glasshouse; all those thrilling, glowing, palpitating fades, enhanced by rolling voile screens or shades of fine muslin; and later, when the more sensational subjects have begun to pall, those that settle more gently beneath the banner of education and enrichment: sunrise over Tintern Abbey, or, Napoleon, at sunset, facing his men.
• • •
My father’s glass eyes, even those containing, in secret, my mother’s initials, are no competition for this. This is the full emanation, after all, of Thomas Argument’s mania, his passion, and his anger. All that flame and hot lava! The raging floods! The secret unveilings! From behind Cloverdale’s grimy windows my father watches, surreptitiously, the crowds that gather across the street.
• • •
He is looking for her.
She isn’t there, of course. All showings, for her, are private.
• • •
Cloverdale is watching, too, although for different reasons. He gazes narrowly, disapprovingly, upon the ebb and flow of Argument’s public. William Cloverdale dislikes the magic lantern in principle, just as he dislikes kaleidoscopes, stereoscopes, praxinoscopes, thaumatropes, dioramas, panoramas, spectacles in particular and entertainments in general—all of it, in William Cloverdale’s opinion, goes beyond the bounds, just as the idea that there is a place called Venice where latticino glass is made goes beyond the bounds. Such things, for Cloverdale, enter rapidly into the realm of the not possible. We can’t have this, Mister Dell’oro, Cloverdale’s grey glance, cast over, above, and across the mountainous bulk of himself, coming at last to rest upon my father, seems to say. Mister Dell’oro, something must be done!
It is almost as if he knows—He knows!—that it is all Leopold’s fault, as if he knows—He knows!—that Clotilde Dell’oro is at the root of it. Leopold must do something—must mend it. Customers, drawn to Church Street by William Cloverdale’s Gazette advertisements—Master Glassmaker! Exclusive—from the Continent!—are being diverted by Thomas Argument’s poster. They come, they see the poster, they are drawn in. They enter Argument’s Glasswares and they never return. And it is Leopold’s fault. He must do something. But what can he do?
There is nothing. Nothing he can do. He is helpless. This he knows.
My father, beneath the presumed accusation of Cloverdale’s glance, begins sweating, runs his finger nervously around and around inside the too-tight collar of the dress shirt—the one dress shirt he owns, the one Gentilessa bought him, which he wears regardless the state of the weather because it is all he has and what’s more, because he feels safest that way. All buttoned up, my father, just like his father before him. All buttoned up at the lamp, at the oven, at the window, regardless the heat. All buttoned up so as to prevent—?
• • •
Cloverdale shakes his beefy head and saunters away, whistling. Those that got holes in their heads will always need glass eyes, no matter what, Mister Dell’oro, he says. That is what he says.
The only accusation my father’s, against himself.
Against her.
Or perhaps there is an accusation of a sort. Those that got holes in their heads will always need glass eyes.
Leopold reluctantly departs his station at the window, returns to his lamp, to the creation of a hazel eye for a farmer’s wife who lost hers in an accident in the fields. Thresher threw a stone. That is how it happens. The thrown stone, the shattering glass, the slip of the knife, the splash of acid, the fall downstairs, the punch in the face. Diseases. Or some are born that way. The gap. The lack. The fissure.