The Mirror Thief(72)
Contarini reappears, sweeping majestically into a chair, and now della Porta stands at the lectern. Senator Contarini, he says, most eminent ladies and gentlemen, my esteemed friends, I thank you for your indulgence in permitting me the opportunity to demonstrate this afternoon some principles of scientia that have been of enduring interest to me. I should say before we begin that the images you are about to witness may be shocking to some of you, and that any women present, or persons of delicate constitution or infirm mentality, may wish to absent themselves. I can assure you, however, that everything you see here today is produced by only the most virtuous application of natural magic, and brought about by my own reverential understanding of the hidden processes of the Divine Soul of the World. At this time I will offer no further explanation beyond referring interested parties to the expanded edition of my book Magiae Naturalis, widely available from your fair city’s superior booksellers. The text from which I read is a verse narrative of my own composition. Extinguish the lights, please.
Della Porta begins to orate a self-important prologue concerning the past glories of the Republic, and Crivano’s attention is snuffed out with the candles, wandering to the girl, to Contarini, to the other guests, to the gilt splendor of the room, to the odd trunk on the floor, back to the girl again, until a sudden thump issues from the cloaked windows and a weird panorama materializes across the canvas screen.
Gasps rise from the nearby seats, along with a few muttered curses; the girl seems to tense, to draw somewhat closer. It is as if the wall before them has dissolved to reveal a shadowy landscape: a glade ringed by misshapen trees under a sunless sky. The image is so clear and so dynamic in its color and detail as to make the best efforts of the most adroit trompe-l’oeil painters seem like the scribbles of feebleminded children. And now the leaves of the phantom trees are indeed moving, rustled by a slight breeze. The audience’s gasps are renewed.
After the initial shock, Crivano thinks of a chapter in della Porta’s book—and also a similar, greatly superior discussion of the same topic in the writings of Ibn al-Haitham—and he grins, pleased with himself. It’s a camera obscura, he whispers. That box on the floor. It is merely the courtyard beyond the wall that we see.
For a long time the girl does not reply. Thereafter spake wise Dandolo, della Porta drones, his fervor undiminished by his years.
But we’re facing the courtyard, the girl whispers. And the image is not upsidedown, as it should be.
Shhhh, Contarini hisses over his shoulder.
The girl is correct: this is no camera obscura, or at least not simply that. Crivano reviews his knowledge of optics and finds it wanting. A second lens? he wonders. A convex mirror?
A crash of cymbals and the eerie bray of a shawm banish these thoughts. Two parties of armored men come into view, their broadswords and bright helmets strafing the room with fantastic flashes. They take positions on either side of a rampart that emerges from the murk—Byzantines to the left, Crusaders to the right—and shake their weapons fiercely at each other.
The Neapolitan continues his labored narration of the familiar tale: the blind doge’s fanatic assault on the walls of Constantinople. And lo, the other princes looked, and saw the courage of this ancient man, and greatly were they shamed, for he whose deeds they witnessed had no sight. Despite the inept verse and the fanciful images, Crivano finds himself less amused than disturbed. Something in the dreamlike aspect of della Porta’s projection spawns in him clouds of violent memories, unmoored to anything but one another, which reach his mind’s eye from nowhere and fade as quickly as they come. The Gulf of Patras red with blood, its surface aflame, choked with arrows and shields and hacked-off limbs and white turbans. A barn in Tiflis filled with corpses, steaming in the cold. The Lark reloading on the quarterdeck, singing a rude song, and then the thunderclap, and the smoke, and gone forever. Captain Bua lashed to a post in the Lepanto town square, screaming, flensed to his shoulder. The tanned hide of Bragadin upon the bailo’s desk. Verzelin’s white hand poking from under the sackcloth. The Lark again, unfolding his battered matriculation certificate in the firelight. My mother will never believe I’m dead. If you give her this, then maybe she’ll know.
The rampart splits, the Crusaders overwhelm the Greeks, and the audience cheers and applauds. Della Porta steps forward with a smug bow, bends over the wooden trunk—his spindly hand aglow for an instant amid a swarm of motes, its shadow huge across the canvas backdrop—and shuts its angled lid. The panorama goes dark.
The girl is murmuring something about apertures, biconvex lenses, mirrored bowls, but Crivano excuses himself and stumbles from the room. In the great hall, the servants are removing the curtains and panels from the windows, letting the light through. The children pour in from the courtyard, laughing and shouting, wearing bits of their fathers’ armor, waving their dull swords. Crivano sweeps between them to the peristyle, stepping over their sham plaster rampart, filling his lungs with warm air.
More servants are clearing away the banquet table; he passes them on his way to the courtyard’s far end, where low box-hedges form concentric rings. An oval sundial stands at their center, polished broccatello on a gray limestone base; its iron gnomon, set near the analemma’s top, puts the hour near the twenty-first bell. The breeze has picked up and the haze has dissipated; a few scraps of high cloud fleck the sky, moving toward the horizon with surprising swiftness. Crivano is suddenly weary. He seats himself on a curved bench and watches the gnomon’s shadow creep across the glittering marble until the girl finds him again.