The Glass Ocean (19 page)

•   •   •

Perhaps also, though, Thomas Argument is afraid. Perhaps he senses a truth that he seeks to avoid:

William Cloverdale is teaching my father.

My father is learning.

•   •   •

This possibility makes Thomas Argument angrier. In the place inside him where my mother resides—where he fears my father will overtake, will surpass, him—he is angry.

•   •   •

Thomas Argument is a man who does not like to be bested. It is only a matter of time, therefore, before he must respond to the provocation across Church Street.

•   •   •

It comes quickly. One morning my father, approaching Cloverdale’s shop, with, as usual, his mind elsewhere (he has had another letter from Harry Owen, containing a request for further drawings), finds himself entangled on the sidewalk in front of Argument’s window with a crowd of admirers who have gathered to read a poster plastered up on the glass:

Argument has obtained the new double magic lantern of Negretti and Zambra, and will use it, on alternate Wednesdays, to show, in dissolving view, glass slides he has created himself, using a new and secretive process of etching and enameling: Vesuvius erupting by moonlight, image dissolving into a lurid, rubble-strewn Pompeian dawn; the Great Fire of London gradually reducing St. Paul’s Cathedral to ashes; the flood of the Huskar Pit overwhelming the child laborers of Silkstone . . . fade to a particularly affecting view of the seven mass graves in bright July sunlight . . .

•   •   •

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.

The missing piece.

Those that got holes in their heads will always need glass eyes.

As he works, my father thinks about the people on the sidewalk in front of Argument’s Glasswares. He pictures
her
among them, until the image in his mind becomes so real that he believes it. He can feel her there. It is a strong feeling, palpable as a touch. It mounts in him until he is almost crazy with belief.

Were he to look, though, she would not be there. She is at home, in the Birdcage.

He resists. He longs to look, but he resists. This time.

He diverts a strand of honey-colored glass to form the initials CGD’O.

Sometimes my father also thinks or imagines that William Cloverdale has noticed these small acts of simultaneous self-destruction and homage. Sometimes Cloverdale smiles in a manner that suggests it—a sly, confidential smile. A wink. But Cloverdale never says so—just fishes the finished piece out of the crucible, measures with his calipers, looks at the color, checks it against his slips of paper, nods.
Very pretty, Mister Dell’oro. A good fit. Once again.

And smacks his lips.

Cloverdale does not know.

He knows nothing about Clotilde, about Argument, about the state of Leopold’s marriage. There is no secret wink.

It is in my father’s mind, all of it.

•   •   •

The most recent letter from Harry Owen, though, is not in his mind.
My Dear Leo, having received from Hornsby of the British Museum, Zoological Divisions, a commission . . . am very pleased to be able to ask of you further drawings, and to offer this small remittance for your considerable labors; and also to request further information in re: your suggestion, of the possibility of reproducing, in glass . . .

•   •   •

Here is a place for my father to disappear into, when he finds himself thinking too much about my mother, or about the volcanic emanations of Thomas Argument. A bolt-hole.

He is finally positioned to try it. He has the lamp, the rods of glass. William Cloverdale has taught, and my father has learned. He is timid though. His collar is still buttoned up tight.

Hornsby is skeptical but will pay . . .

Emerging into Church Street, into Thomas Argument’s crowd, my father feels something quicken inside him.
Eruption of Vesuvius! Destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii!

The crowd shifts and murmurs in front of Thomas Argument’s window. They are buying tickets, already, for Wednesday next. Leopold threads his way through and between and among, feels the anxiety, the indrawn breath of the waiting, the shift and surge and ebb of it, the hoping for a seat at Argument’s spectacle.

She
is not there.

Perhaps it would be better if she were. If it were for her, too, a public thing, a matter of tickets, of crowds, of waiting on sidewalks. But she is at home, in the Birdcage. Thomas Argument may be there as well.

•   •   •

It is a goad.

Dear Harry, while the materials are somewhat lacking . . .

•   •   •

Leopold is tepid. He is timid.

•   •   •

Dear Harry, though the materials are somewhat lacking and the tools imperfect . . .

•   •   •

Where does it come from, this fearfulness of my father’s? The timidity, the hesitation, the acquiescence plus qualifier? The materials are lacking, the tools imperfect. And so, too, the maker. This, I believe, is what my father is thinking. But will not say. He remembers Felix Girard’s
It is wrong here. And here
. He would rather hide than expose himself in an error. He does hide, feels himself hiding as he pushes through the crowd in front of Argument’s Glasswares. Head down. Shoulders hunched. If he doesn’t see them then maybe they can’t see him. But of course he sees them, feels them, strikes against them, collides, no matter how small he tries to make himself he cannot be small enough, in this crowd: shoulder jostling shoulder, elbow prodding waistcoat, fingers brushing silk, brushing velvet, brushing serge. The ubiquity of ladies’ hats, his face menaced by bristling feathers plucked with savagery from the New World. The intimate and inescapable intrusion of their perfume. GREAT ERUPTION IN THE YEAR 79! DESTRUCTION OF HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII! It is another cold day, spit of rain and stink of sea, the sky above him a ceiling, pressing down. He feels himself constrained, in his collar, in his coat, in this town. Making his way, once again, home to the Birdcage where he will find—what?

•   •   •

Dear Harry, though the materials are lacking and the tools imperfect, I will attempt the experiment, making no guarantee as to the outcome . . .

•   •   •

He is earlier than usual (a trick? a trap?), but he finds her alone. Of Thomas Argument there is no sign, beyond the growing profusion of gifts, which have edged in among the beloved mementos of Felix Girard. No
immediate
sign, then, of the hated rival, though the proximate signs remain to provoke my father. And they do provoke him. The house is chilly, damp, the old stones wet with the rushing of the river, and yet there is no fire. Leopold, adding enamel capillaries to glass eyes, subtracts from Clotilde’s coal. This, perhaps, is part of his anger, but if so, then he does not know it himself. My mother knows it. Of course.

I had a letter from Harry
, he says.

She pinks with excitement.

News of my Papa?

No—n-no news. He asked me to make—he sent m-money—

He holds out the coin to show her.

But it is no use, already she has subsided, she barely listens, news of her Papa is all she wants to hear. She holds in her lap Thomas Argument’s yellow glass bird, strokes it as if it is a real bird, the imaginary plumage soft and warm beneath her palm. Her own hummingbird, the one that belonged to her Papa, has disappeared somewhere among the curtain rods; she has not seen it for several days, but she continues putting out sugar water for it regardless, and the water is drunk, which seems, under the circumstances, enough.

If he hoped to impress her with the news of his commission, to overwhelm and blot out with his new money the drama of Argument’s Vesuvius, he has failed. Clotilde, it seems, no longer cares about money, at least not about his money. What
does
my mother care about? It would be difficult, at this moment, for Leopold to say. He senses that a new quality has entered into her typical reserve, a quality of concealment as determined as it is fragile. She is herself and is not herself, simultaneously. It seems to him as though she has a secret that she holds fast. She would rather break than reveal it, that is what he thinks, even though the act of holding back might, in itself, shatter her into a thousand pieces.

Yet she does not break. She will not. She is determined. She is stronger than my father thinks. Her secret is not what he thinks it is.

Of course he has imagined what she must be hiding. There has been that whiff of scent, the stifled laughter, the trailing familiar edge of skirt behind the closing door, thoughts that torture him. My father’s imagination (on this subject) is, in the end, an impoverished one, rushing to the obvious conclusions.

•   •   •

I w-will have to work m-more
, he says.
But it will mean m-more money
.

•   •   •

My mother barely glances up at this statement, the towering irony of it. The icy pallor has returned. She does nod, though, and her mute acceptance seems to him another indication of that which he has already accepted as true, as inevitable.

•   •   •

She does not care what he does. If he works more, so much the better for her. His absence will be to her advantage. That is what my father, lacking in imagination, assumes she thinks.

•   •   •

And so he will begin.

•   •   •

He is surreptitious at first. In spite of what he has told Clotilde—that there will be more money—at first, in fact, there will be
less
: he takes what glass he needs, surreptitiously, from that which William Cloverdale has supplied for the creation of the prosthetic eyes. As he is paid by the piece, fewer pieces from more supply means greater cost to Cloverdale, therefore less money not more: less coal, fewer petticoats, scanter food, no tea, this being, perhaps, one expression of my father’s anger at my mother, although he does not think so. He does not tell her what he is doing. Simply, it happens that there is less. Nor does he tell William Cloverdale what he is doing. Instead, each day, he sets aside, surreptitiously, a few rods of glass, in various colors. This he will do, each day, until he has enough. It is clear that there will be problems. As he has said to Harry Owen,
materials are lacking
. There are severe limitations of color, and, what’s more, he can only steal so much. This is, after all, what he is doing—stealing—although he does not think of it that way. He has other ways to think of it. He thinks, for example, that it is all a matter of expediency, a temporary arrangement, until he can find a better. He is merely conducting an experiment, and when the experiment is completed, he will cease to borrow (this is the word my father uses, in his mind) from William Cloverdale. He practically expects his experiment to end in failure, in which case there will be no further need for borrowing anyway. The situation is, by definition, short term. And so forth. So he thinks.