Salamander (13 page)

In the morning the requested cases of new type arrived from Venice, along with a tarnished spoon, and a letter.

She stood beside him, her hands cupped together, waiting until he swam up out of his thoughts and became aware of her.

– I didn’t hear you, he said, rising from his chair.

– I know, she said, nodding to the lines and angles he had been drawing. You were in the land of geometry. I found something down in the cellars. Something I think you’ll like.

She lowered her hands to the desk and opened them. On her palm sat a small, shiny creature, like a frog but with a tail. Its S-shaped body a glossy black speckled with bright yellow spots. He realized he had never seen a real, living salamander.

– She’s a beauty, he said. Or
is
it a she?

– I’m not sure. We have Linnaeus’
Systema Naturae
, but it wasn’t much help.

– Oh, yes. The Swede who’s invented categories for all living things.

Irena nodded, her eyes brightening with amusement.

– He suggests animals be classified on the basis of whether or not they have breasts.

In the silence that followed they both examined the creature intently.

– She led me a merry chase though, Irena finally said, stroking the salamander’s back. They live among the steam engines and the gears, where the dungeons used to be.

– It’s not moving, Flood said. Is it … ?

He extended a tentative finger. Before he could touch it the salamander writhed out of Irena’s palm onto the desk and disappeared into a surf of loose paper.

– Where did it … ?

– There –

– Got you!

Flood’s hand rose with a flourish. Between his thumb and forefinger was a short stub of yellow-and-black tail. He grimaced.

– I’ve dismembered the poor thing.

Irena shook her head.

– She’ll grow herself a new tail. If you’d pulled off her leg she could grow that back, too.

– Not even the mythical salamander can do that.

– I read about it, in Pliny.

She closed her eyes.

–
An … insectivorous batrachian, that springs from some unknown Source, appearing during great Rains, or, according to ancient Authorities, arising from the Midst of the most ardent Flames. When seiz’d by their Enemies, these Creatures elude Capture by leaving a Leg or a Part of their Tail behind, the Missing Extremity soon replaced by the growth of another –

She broke off as the salamander emerged. Flood gently scooped the creature up and returned it to Irena’s hands.

– I should take her back where I found her.

There was a stutter of gears as the castle started into motion again, a hiss of steampipes venting, a long groan of metal against
metal, and then silence. Irena leaned over the balustrade of the gallery and peered down into the depths.

– Has your father returned, Countess?

– I am expecting him any day.

– Do
you
ever leave here?

– My father trusts only me to maintain things in his absence. At least until the day he perfects his system.

They heard a muffled shout and saw, on the far side of a lower gallery, Turini the carpenter with his arms around Darka, the contortionist. She was trying to squirm free, her face flushed with delight.

– My father’s dream, Irena said, is a completely self-regulating mechanism, like the spheres of the planets. He sees the castle, long after he and I are dead, without a living soul in it. Walls and floors and furniture making their transits in silence. Forever.

Flood argued that nothing in this world lasts forever. Metal rusts. Gears wear down. Wooden beams warp, rot, get gnawed by insects. And people never leave anything alone. They will always pry, and interfere, and try to improve, correct, or tear down what is supposedly finished and perfect. That was why printing was so difficult. The press was a nearly flawless invention, almost capable of working on its own, but it produced as much opposition and interference as it did pages.

She asked him why, if he believed that, he persisted in printing.

– My father liked to say that by multiplying the number of books in the world we multiply the number of readers. And with each new reader the ranks of the book-burners thin out a little more.

– Is that why you’re here? she asked him. To escape the book-burners?

– I’m here because of a letter, he said. I wanted to find out who had written it.

She slowly turned away, cradling the salamander in her hands. He sat for a while after she had left, astounded at himself, and then craned his neck over the balustrade. He caught sight of her now and then as she made her way in a meandering spiral down into the depths of the castle.

He turned back to his drawings, took up his pen, and traced the curve of her movements.

A spiral
.

He scribbled a set of numbers, took up his rule, and drew a rectangle. Inside the empty frame he inscribed a single character:

He thought back to his father’s lessons.
Are you listening, Nicholas? The golden section. A proportion based on a ratio in which the lesser value is to the greater as the greater is to the sum. It can also be found in nature …

In the spiral of a seashell, for instance, which is itself only a fragment of a greater spiral of increase. An infinite one.

Yes, Father. I remember now. Thank you
.

Having the entire library filed in her head, Irena knew she had never seen this little volume with
Desire
gold-tooled on the spine. It had to be a creation of Flood’s, even though she had warned him not to place anything on the shelves without her father’s permission. Perhaps he had thought to conceal his indiscretion by tucking it away here.

That night she took the book to bed with her and by candlelight skimmed through the sermon it contained.

After several pages of this she shut the book, set it on the night table, and blew out the candles, disappointed. He had hidden the book where he did, she was sure, to let her know it was a message. But not the message she had expected. Was he warning both of them not to go any further?

She became aware of a faint illumination against her eyelids, and staring into the darkness saw a pale green glow along the book’s fore-edge. She sat up and opened the book again. In the spaces between the lines of the sermon, repeated on page after page in unbroken cursive pica, she read her own name.

She was in bliss and torment at the same time. Unable to gather her thoughts, her first impulse was to hide this confession that lit up the curtains of her bed. As she reached down to tuck it under her mattress, the book slipped out of her hand and hit the floor with a terrible bang. Irena climbed from her bed, letting it trundle on without her while she crept back along the passage. The incriminating volume lay splayed open, bathing the walls and ceiling with its spectral glow.

Stooping quickly she picked up the book, wrapped it in her arms, and started off after her bed. Her mind and her feet were not pursuing the same course, and after a while she discovered she had managed to accomplish the unprecedented and lose her way. She stood still, listening, her bare feet chilled by the
icy stone of the floor. Something was approaching, and soon she saw that it was her father’s bed. He was not there, she knew, but still she backed slowly against the wall, holding her breath and hugging Flood’s book tightly to her breast as the bed rumbled past and slowly vanished.

The next morning she kept
Desire
with her, concealed in the folds of her gown, breathless at the thought that she was leaving an unaccounted empty space on one of the shelves, a flaw in her father’s system. Whenever she could steal an unobserved moment during her daily rounds, she opened the book and turned its pages, mouthing the bituminous phrases of the sermon with secret delight.

At the end of the day she returned the book to its place on the shelf, having decided upon her fate. Taking a ring of keys from her apron pocket, she unlocked a trapdoor in a remote passageway. Glancing around quickly to make sure she was unobserved, she climbed down a ladder into the dank underneath of the castle and in an instant was swallowed up by steam and darkness.

In the evening she brought the printer coffee on a silver tray. As she passed Ludwig at his post beside the press she tickled his jutting porcelain chin. Djinn was dozing on a settee, wrapped in Flood’s threadbare bombazine coat. He stirred as she went by and mumbled words in one of his half-remembered languages.

Irena set the tray on the work table at Flood’s elbow. Beside the coffee decanter lay the small octavo volume of
Desire
.

Flood stared at the book without daring to look up into Irena’s eyes.

– When the clock tells a quarter past three tonight, she finally managed to whisper, my bed will pass yours.

She turned and went back the way she had come. Flood sat, frozen, then reached out and put his hand on the cover of the book.

That night, as the striking of the great clock reverberated through the draughty halls of the castle, Flood, in shirt and breeches, leaped barefoot, like a pirate boarding a galley, from his moving bed to Irena’s. He found her sitting at the head with her arms around her knees, eyes glittering. She was still dressed in her blue silk gown, but her long russet hair had been released from its pins and lace and spilled about her shoulders.

Just as he was about to move towards her, he stopped. Her face was contorting, her eyes squeezing shut, her mouth dropping open — Was she about to weep, or scream … ?