The Mirror Thief(152)
Yes. That’s a favorite subject of his.
After dinner, his argument was dissolved by a famed Neapolitan scholar who inadvertently demonstrated that lenses can produce spectacles to match or exceed in frivolity any yet conjured by silvery glass.
Well, I can only pray that our mirror-mad friend Trist?o de Nis was present to see that demonstration, Ciotti says, and narrows his eyes appraisingly. If I may ask, he says, what did you make of the Nolan’s performance last night?
Crivano shrugs. If his intent was to demonstrate his prodigious memory, he says, then I suppose he succeeded. If he sought to impart some definitive judgment on the subject at hand, then I confess I came away unenlightened.
Ciotti leans back in his chair; his right hand comes to rest atop a shallow wooden tray on the table beside him. It is a rare rhetorical gift, he says, that permits a man to speak knowledgeably about a topic and still deliver his audience into a state of enriched confusion. At times I think this skill chiefly defines the profession of magus. The Nolan has it, I think you’ll agree. That said, I cannot dismiss him as a charlatan.
From what Trist?o had told me of the fellow, Crivano says, I expected either a trickster or a madman. As if these categories must be exclusive.
Ciotti nods; the wooden tray clicks beneath his fingers. It’s divided by slats into square compartments, and each compartment is filled with short slender pieces of dull metal. Their sound recalls the rattle of bone dice in a cup. Tracking Crivano’s gaze, Ciotti scoops a few metal bits from the tray and offers them with a pinched, beaklike hand. Here, he says. Have you seen these before?
Crivano takes them. They slide on the ridges of his creased and calloused palm. Each is cuboid, smaller than a newborn’s finger, cast from a lead alloy. Each has a Greek letter—Λ Η Θ Η—in low relief on one of its smallest ends. Movable type, Crivano says. I saw a printing press once in Bologna. But I’ve never seen loose pieces like these.
We call these sorts, Ciotti says. They’re bound together into a forme, from which a page is printed. That work is not done here. I pay a printer to do it, and he generally casts his own type. He’s discreet and reliable, but he lacks facility in Greek. I recently took a commission to print the Enneads of Plotinus, so for that I had to have my own type made. When I first began, all I ever used was the Latin alphabet. But after the Brucioli had such success with their Hebrew books, such trade became difficult to ignore. Some of my guildsmen—I refrain from naming them—have even secured the privilege to print in Arabic, and now turn profits by selling Muhammadan holy books to the Turks.
A hopeful gleam appears in Ciotti’s eye—an invitation, perhaps—and Crivano suppresses a wince. He saw Frankish Qurans from time to time in Constantinople: inert, graceless, full of shocking errors. Their shoddiness didn’t scandalize the muftis so much as the very fact of their existence: the idea of God’s final message propagated not by the living breath of the Prophet and his companions, nor by the motions of a calligrapher’s hand, but by the uncanny iteration of soulless machinery. Crivano opts not to explain this to Ciotti. He stretches forward, dumps the sorts back into the Sienese’s cupped palm.
Ciotti looks at them himself, prodding them with his forefinger, like a farmer evaluating a handful of seed. I thought of these last night, he says. Something the Nolan said reminded me. He spoke of the world shown by the mirror, and how it differs from this world. How did he put it, exactly? Do you recall?
Crivano does not. He’s opening his mouth to reply when a soft knock comes at the door. Ciotti rises to pull it open, and the pale boy’s face appears in the gap. A Turk is here to see you, maestro, the boy says.
Very good. Please show Messer bin Silen in.
Sweat beads in Crivano’s armpits when Ciotti pronounces the name, his heartbeat quickens, but his face remains placid, his posture relaxed. He’s wary, but not afraid. Some part of him has expected this.
Ciotti isn’t looking at him anyway. He’s pushed the door shut, and now stands facing it, his nose a palms’-breadth from its knobby wood. The metal sorts are still trapped in his left fist; he shakes them absently. Their soft chime fills the room like the sound of a distant riqq, muffled by palace walls.
The man who originated this way of printing, Ciotti says, was a mirrormaker first. Or so the story goes. Did you know that? This was many years ago. He was a German goldsmith, and he made small mirrors for pilgrims visiting the chapel at Aachen. It was thought by simple folk that these mirrors could catch and contain the invisible blessings that emanated from the relics there. By the standards of Murano they were unimpressive, I’m sure. Made of lead and tin. Similar to my sorts, in fact, in their composition. But they were flat, and therefore whatever images they caught would have been reversed. I like to imagine that this is what gave the German goldsmith the idea for typesetting: tiny backward letters, lined up in rows. The mirror-image of the page-to-be. The reflection never shows the world as it is, as the Nolan told us. But it does show us things about the world. In this way, too, perhaps it is not unlike a book.
A second knock at the door. Ciotti tugs the wrought-iron handle. Messer bin Silen, he says. Thank you for the loan of your expertise. I am Giovanni Battista Ciotti. Welcome to my modest enterprise.
50
Entering the room, Narkis seems stiff and weightless, propelled by a force outside himself, like a straw man at a fair. He’s wearing blue trousers and an embroidered caftan the color of boiled quince. Even in his turban he’s barely taller than the boy who escorts him. His large eyes are focused on a point on the floor about six feet ahead: the signature attitude of an expatriate Turk in an unfriendly city. He speaks softly in his bestial croak. Good day to you, Messer Ciotti, he says. I thank you for your hospitality.