Curiosity (11 page)

My father shook his head. “As far as I know, he has never returned.” He made a shooing motion with one hand. “You must go now, Rufus, please. We can't risk your being infected.”

He wouldn't let me embrace him, and he took the food I'd brought only because I vowed not to leave until he did. I'd meant to divide my ill-gotten gains evenly with him, but now that I saw how badly off he was, I pressed most of the food on him, keeping only a chunk of cheese and a few apples for myself. He readily accepted the writing paper, but declined the Carcel lamp.

“It wouldn't survive more than a few days around here.” He gestured at the guttering candle. “Anyway, the keeper gives me all his candle stubs. He used to lend me a pipeful of tobacco from time to time, but not since the contagion began. Well, you can't blame him. Go, now. You may come back in a few weeks, when the cholera has run its course.”

It had occurred to me that Jacques might pay a midnight visit to the privy while I was gone. To my relief, the earth closet contained nothing but the layer of sawdust and shavings I had spread there. As I pulled myself up through the toilet hole, I could hear Jacques thrashing about and crying, “
Mes jambes! Mon Dieu, mes jambes!
” My legs; my God, my legs.

I made a wide detour around his bed and found my own. My stomach, which had been shriveling up for several days, had been revived by the bread and cheese and was demanding more. I ignored it and shoved my sack of food beneath the sack of shavings that was my mattress. There was no telling how long it might have to last me.

I
N THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, EACH TIME
Jacques left me alone in the workshop, I sneaked a little sustenance from my hidden hoard, just enough to keep me going. Maelzel continued to check on me daily, to see whether I'd changed my mind. He was clearly baffled and frustrated, so much so that he condescended to speak directly to me. “I know you are hungry, boy. All you have to do is agree to come back to work, and we will feed you.”

“But will you pay me?”

“I
would
have, but now you have made me angry. I cannot allow my workers to dictate terms to me.”

“I'm not trying to. I'm only trying to collect what I've earned.”

He shook his head in disgust. “You know, I gave you credit for more intelligence than this. You think you are being very clever, but in fact you are being very stupid.” He stormed out of the workroom and slammed the door behind him.

“He is right,” growled Jacques. “You are being stupid.”

“I don't think he's being very smart, either. Every day the Turk sits idle, he's losing money—a lot more than he'd lose by paying me.”

“He does care for money. But he cares more about getting his own way, about showing who is
le
patron
—the boss.”

Well, as I have said, I was used to getting my own way, too.

Though Jacques scoffed at my stubborn stance, he didn't try very hard to talk me out of it. I believe that, underneath the contempt and the cursing, he grudgingly respected me for it. That evening, when he returned from the Oyster Cellar, he tossed me something wrapped in greasy paper. “If you tell Maelzel,” he said, “I will give you some new bumps to phrenologize.”

I unwrapped the object. It was a roasted potato, still warm.

Mulhouse had warned me once that, in business matters at least, Maelzel could be ruthless. I had thought that starving me was ample proof of that. But I soon learned that the man was capable of much worse.

The following afternoon, after yet another Turk-less performance, he burst into the workshop with a fierce scowl on his face. “People are clamoring to see the celebrated mechanical chess player! I assured them that his absence is only temporary, that he is undergoing minor repairs, but I do not know how long I can continue to put them off before they lose interest!”

I tried to make myself inconspicuous; it did no good. He turned on me, snatched the mallet and chisel with which I had been practicing my carving skills, and flung them to the floor. “I do not know how you have survived this long, boy, but I promise you, if you continue to defy me, you will not survive much longer!” He seized the front of my shirt and nearly lifted me off the floor. “Now! Will you or will you not return to work?”

“I will,” I replied shakily. With a smug smile, he released me. It took me a moment to find the breath to add what I had meant to add: “If you pay me.”

Maelzel roared something in German and, drawing back his arm, delivered a sweeping blow that nearly knocked my head from my shoulders. As I lay curled up in the sawdust and shavings, he kicked me in the small of the back with one of his shiny imported shoes, then did it again, and again, each kick more savage than the last. I feared that he would break my frail frame beyond repair.

Then, abruptly, the attack ceased. I rolled onto my back and wiped the tears and blood from my face. To my surprise, it was not Maelzel who stood over me now; it was Jacques. But he was not threatening me; he was turned away from me, facing Maelzel and gripping a piece of oak the size of the Turk's arm. “That is enough, Mr. Maelzel,” he said, in a voice that was restrained and yet carried an unmistakable warning.

Maelzel glared at him. “You are forgetting your place, Jacques.”

“
Non
, you are forgetting yours. You may be his boss, but you do not own him, body and soul.” Something in the way he said it made me suspect that he was talking as much about himself as about me.

They continued to eye each other like two chess fanatics, each trying to convince the other to concede. But, like any good player, Maelzel knew when he was beaten; he also knew that losing one game did not mean the match was over. He shrugged and gave a strained smile. “Perhaps you are right.” He straightened his frock coat and his mussed hair. “So. You think I should pay him, then?”

Jacques nodded. Maelzel reached inside his coat, drew out a leather wallet, and unfolded it. “And just how much would you say he is worth?”

“That is up to you.”

“No, no, you have taken it upon yourself to defend him, to speak for him. Tell me how much he should get.”

“All right, then. Five dollars.”

Maelzel raised his eyebrows. “You drive a hard bargain, Monsieur Jouy. Perhaps you chose the wrong career; you should have been a lawyer.” He pulled several banknotes from the wallet and held them out. “Go ahead. Take it.” When Jacques hesitated, Maelzel grabbed his free hand and stuffed the bills into it. “There. I expect the boy to be inside the machine, ready to perform, by half past one tomorrow.”

“Am I to feed him in the meantime?”

The German gave a harsh laugh. “He has plenty of money, now. Let him buy his own meals.”

When Maelzel was gone, I raised myself painfully from the floor and brushed the sawdust from my clothing. Jacques thrust the banknotes at me, spat into his crude cuspidor, and went back to his workbench. As I bent over the washbasin, cleaning the blood from my face, I said, “Thank you for standing up for me.”

“I did not do it for you. I did it for myself.”

I turned to him with water dripping from my hair. “I don't understand.”

“Shut your face and get back to work!” he snapped. “Do you understand
that
?”

“
Oui.
” I set about the never-ending task of sweeping the floor. No matter how carefully I plied the broom, I always stirred up great quantities of dust that got me coughing. “Do you mind if I open the window a little? I could use a breath of air. I mean, if we're not working on the Turk, it wouldn't hurt for someone to see in, would it?”

I took his silence to mean that he didn't object. When I pulled up the sash, to my surprise I spotted a dark-clothed figure on the far side of the street, gazing at the Masonic Hall in the same spellbound way she had stared at the Parsonage. I still couldn't make out her face, thanks to a lacy veil that hung down the front of her black bonnet.

How strange that she should turn up twice in such a short space of time, and in two such different places. It was almost as if she had followed me here. But that made no sense— unless perhaps it was Fiona after all. But in the light of day, this woman didn't resemble Fiona as much as I'd thought. Though she was about the same height, she didn't have Fiona's sturdy build; she looked rather frail, in fact. Of course, if the last several months had been as hard on Fiona as they were on my father and me, she might not be as sturdy as she once was.

But the encounters might be pure coincidence, too. There were always a few unfortunate, distracted men and women who wandered the streets of the city like lost souls, with no apparent purpose or destination. She might merely be one of those.

As I peered through the narrow opening at the dark, slender figure, thoughts of another mysterious woman entered my mind. I turned to Jacques. Though I knew I was treading on dangerous ground, my avid curiosity couldn't be denied. “Did you—did you know Mademoiselle Bouvier?”

He turned to glare at me. “Who told you about her?” he demanded.

Immediately, I wished that, as he'd so often suggested, I'd kept my
grande gueule
shut. “I—I—”

“
Ça fait rien
,” said Jacques. “I know. It was Mulhouse.”

“Well, he mentioned her name once, in passing. I was just curious about her. I mean, there aren't many women who play chess well.”

Jacques snorted contemptuously. “Nor did she. Maelzel should never have hired her.”

I wanted to ask what became of her, but that ground
did
seem too treacherous to tread on. “What did she look like?” I asked.

Jacques's scowl grew even more fierce. “Why do you want to know?”

“I just thought that perhaps—” I turned and glanced out the window again. The woman in black was gone. “Never mind,” I said. “Forget that I asked.”

“
Non,
I will not.” He shook his chisel at me. “But I advise
you
to forget that you ever heard of Mademoiselle Bouvier.”

“I will,” I promised. Wincing from the pain in my back where Maelzel had kicked me, I pulled the sash closed and went back to work.

Though I now had money, I was forbidden to leave the workshop during daylight, so I still had to rely on Jacques to feed me. That evening, he brought me another roasted potato and a good-sized piece of fried fish. When I offered to pay him, he waved the money away. “Keep it.
Those are left over from my meal.”

I had stretched my aching body out on the sack of shavings. As I struggled to sit up, Jacques said, “Your back hurts, eh?”

“That's nothing new. It's been hurting most of my life.”

“You have been that way since birth?”

I nodded, very carefully. “I guess I didn't want to be born. The doctor had to yank me out with forceps.”

“Did they never put
un appareil
—a brace—on you?”

“No. Nobody ever even mentioned it.”

Jacques gave a disgusted grunt. “American physicians are still the Dark Ages. In France, they have been using them for years.”

“What are they like?”

“
Très simple
.” He tore a piece from the roll of brown wrapping paper that he used for sketching designs and made a quick but well-rendered drawing of something that looked a lot like an instrument of torture. “You see? You put these clamps over your shoulders and buckle this belt around your waist.”

“Interesting. Where could I get one of these?”

“
Qui sait
?” He gave me a sour glance. “Perhaps the same place you get those
maudit
lamps you mentioned.”

“They're called Carcel lamps. And in case you thought I was making it up—” Groaning with the effort, I pulled the flour sack from beneath my mattress and fished out the lamp I'd reclaimed from the Parsonage. “
Voilà
.”

“Where did you get that?” Jacques demanded.

“I—ah—I asked Mulhouse to find one for me.” Which was true, if a bit misleading.

Jacques examined the lamp. “
Ah, oui.
I have seen these before. The clockwork mechanism pumps oil into the wick,
non
?”

“That's right.”

“What sort of oil?”

“Colza. It's pressed from the seeds of the
Brassica rapa
plant.” Just one of the many arcane facts I'd learned in my years of voracious reading. “It's thicker than paraffin oil and a lot less smoky.”