A Cabinet of Curiosity

by Bradford Morrow

  2 Were I writing the story today, definitely I would have made the invading boy black—but at the time, that seemed falling too much into racial stereotypes of the exotic. So I made him the redheaded nemesis now there in the text—who surely has his visual origins in the representation of Kid Death, from my 1966 novel, The Einstein Intersection. But, in terms of the event, it comes from that gang of seven/eight kids looking for someone to mug (and failing spectacularly) out on the bridge walkway that August evening.

  The Unsent Letters of Blaise and Jacqueline Pascal

  Kelsey Peterson

  BLAISE PASCAL WAS A FRENCH MATHEMATICIAN and Christian apologist born in 1623. He was very close with his younger sister, Jacqueline, born in 1625, a poet who became a nun. Both were considered prodigies.

  Brother,

  I saw a perfect circle today. The yellow disk at the

  center of an anemone bloomed early and whose white

  petals had curled back in the wind. I marveled at its

  humble perfection, springing forth from some

  superabundance of the unrelenting spring. I am

  curious if there is an equation for such a flower, the

  formula to project its arcs and angles, its radii and

  planes. But I think: what an excessive, joyful thing.

  Let us smell it and give glory to God.

  Jacqueline,

  Printed in the Gazette today there was a poem of

  some merit, and I wondered if you still write. To

  harness the imagination to your whimsy—it’s a

  dangerous, even dangerously useless gift, but you

  had have it.

  Port-Royal has seen a premature yield of flowers and

  herbs, some eager but underdeveloped fruit. I have

  been apprenticing in our little school, but Mère

  Angelique wants me acquainted with all of our

  abbey’s operations, especially before I take my vows.

  I don’t doubt that Mère Agnes has dissuaded you

  from practicing it. Instead, you must be mending

  socks. The clink clink of your needles.

  M. D’Andilly is a master gardener. He’s cultivated

  rows of espaliered pear trees, their branches tamed to

  grow flat and straight as boulevards. As he trains the

  young trees, tying their soft bendable limbs against

  the trellis, he pulls and lashes them quite firmly.

  I’m writing because it’s been six months since

  you left, and I thought—

  I am far gentler, afraid they will break, but he knows

  the stuff of which they’re made. It’s this intimacy,

  more than any of his knowledge, that tells me he’s a

  master gardener.

  Dear Jacqueline,

  I wait for your letters, in the pattern they once

  arrived. I wonder how often you must pray to

  God.

  From my room, I can sometimes smell the garden, if

  the wind is strong enough.

  As you rise, your voice still hoarse, your face

  puffy.

  In those moments, my happiness is greater than my

  own two arms spread wide.

  Noon, your mind cast ahead to the thoughts of

  the day, back to what was left undone. At dusk,

  languor setting in.

  Then I think: brother.

  I am curious.

  Are you still trying to measure the air?

  Do you ask him questions?

  Are you still perfecting your triangle of chance?

  Does he answer you?

  Do you believe God can be found out?

  I don’t doubt that you believe he does.

  Blaise, my brother,

  I began to write you a letter, but I lost it. You might

  wonder how, with so few possessions to my name, I

  could lose something. The truth is I carried it with

  me into the swamp.

  Were we to speak as we once did, I would tell

  you about magic numbers.

  8

  1

  6

  3

  5

  7

  4

  9

  2

  Sometimes I can feel what you describe as the

  atmosphere in the swamp. I can feel how it is

  different from in town. It’s as though the air is holding

  in water, bloated, sleepily weighed down, slumping

  against the earth.

  In this array of numbers, every integer in every

  direction adds up to the same number. This

  number is called the magic constant. The magic

  constant here, if you haven’t figured it out yet,

  is fifteen.

  Somehow, I lost your letter in the swamp.

  This arithmetic originates with the Chinese,

  who believed magic squares mirror some

  essential balance in the universe. They are

  inherently satisfying to produce, as if you’ve

  discovered some mystery that is, while invisible

  in the world, the very stuff that undergirds it.

  I began to write again, a little ditty. I know you

  despise Poetry, but you don’t despise my poetry. When

  I see the words on the page and hear in my mind the

  well-ordered, lilting lines of verse, I feel a small dose

  of the pleasure I’m sure God felt when he fashioned

  us out of dust and saw that we were good.

  But I could not speak with you about this now.

  I remember when I appeared before the queen and the

  princess. I was so young then. You were banging

  against our pots and pans and scribbling your

  thoughts on acoustics. Meanwhile, I had my own

  thoughts on acoustics: the flow and cadence of words

  confined to lines, bursting from lines, refracting each

  other’s sounds as water does light.

  You would condemn me.

  I remember improvising verse for her highness, an

  exercise like embroidering in my head, a more

  satisfying reward in itself than the treats they gave us

  to follow, the tart lemonade and the shining cherries.

  Dear Sister,

  You won’t believe it, but I sold another one of

  my machines—the “Pascaline”! I know you

  found it, I believe your words were, “as

  cumbersome as a cow in labor,” but I believe the

  gentleman, a tax collector in Paris, will find it

  perfectly functional.

  Brother,

  I am so hateful. I am—I hate myself. I write a poem

  and I am smitten, as though I were the one who held

  the waters in a span and with a look tamed the

  Leviathan. And then! I return again to the pen. Like a

  dog to its vomit.

  There are times when, as I draw close to

  numbers, as I learn to fine-tune and predict

  them, I find there is no knowing them. Numbers

  are immortal. They sprawl.

  Living water will never issue from my pen. All I set

  down will be dried up. And while I am agog in my

  poesy, I am oblivious to the one who makes the sun

  to shine and gives the flowers growth.

  I come close, as one comes close to a person,

  only to realize, on the physical level, I will never

  consider each hair and freckle on their body, and

  within those tissues and follicles, blood rushes

  and humors balance, and within those, atoms

  break into tinier iotas;

  But most hateful—I must let go this hate—is that I left.

  and then, on the spiritual level, there are

  though
ts and subthoughts I will never know;

  even the memories and ways of thinking that

  create those thoughts; even the structures of the

  mind and the hidden waxings of the soul that

  produce those impressions …

  I left without saying goodbye. In the morning, as

  though for a walk, before you had woken.

  And so, accepting that I will never know a

  person—let alone distance, abandonment,

  death—I turn to the world of numbers, thinking

  I can surely know them; they are still, steadfast,

  immutable;

  I made my promise to Father that I would stay until

  he passed. And so I did. And then, beyond that, I

  remained with you, for your good. But I am not the

  means to your well-being, although you may—I know

  you can—think so.

  but they prove just as eternally, minutely

  recursive, and forever, frustratingly teeming.

  What is my love unto God if my hands and feet, my

  body and soul, are unto you—

  I think: what am I to do.

  soaking cloths in brandy for your constant, constant

  ailments, spooning food into your mouth,

  I think: I have made this machine. I have

  tinkered and prodded, set levers just so, produced

  an object that without me will produce.

  and once you’re well, sweeping the hall while you

  disappear to salons, returning to regale me with

  visions of turkey rugs, stacked porcelain chips, silver

  tureens lifted to reveal steaming pheasants.

  Surely, others will create machines more

  complex, capable of dividing and then some,

  perhaps even grasping the whole world of

  numbers.

  There are two loves, Blaise.

  But will a machine be in awe of that world?

  One for God, one for self.

  Will a machine delight in such emergent, barely

  perceptible knowledge, the way the sun appears

  as a mirage of golden gel on the water before it

  rises?

  Mère Agnes told me I must hate my genius.

  They will never know what it is to know

  something new. To be made new by knowing

  something.

  I showed her my latest ditty. And I think,

  Our God is hidden. He rewards those who seek

  him.

  I do hate my genius—my needy, clamoring genius.

  But I love him it too.

  Sister,

  Brother,

  I don’t understand the opposition to the

  existence of a vacuum. My experiments,

  especially with Florin’s help on the Puy de,

  Dôme, provide incontrovertible evidence that

  they exist. One would think people would

  sooner deny their ability to see—see the silver

  mercury dip in the long glass tubes as they

  were carried, precariously, tilting, up the

  mountainside—than they would revise their

  prior way of thinking.

  Christ showed himself to children. I learn more about

  him through crude acts of daily routine than I do

  reading the volumes M. Arnauld copies from Latin.

  Our Lord was a carpenter, not a scholar. His hands

  knew the grain, knew splinters; they were not soft.

  Come. Let us say God could not create a

  vacuum. Let us say God could not even sustain

  a vacuum, for how can he be everywhere when

  not everywhere allows him to be?

  I lift myself from sleep, I fill my bowl with pottage.

  Now. In the beginning, we are told, God created

  the heavens and the earth ex nihilo.

  I adjust my veil, I wipe sweat from my chin.

  What were his materials? Nothing. What was his

  model? Nothing. What have we to fear when he

  tells us to fear nothing?

  I quench my thirst with beer.

  I fear not lack of certainty—for who in this life

  has certainty?—

  I sprinkle my parchment with pounce.

  I fear God has forsaken me,

  I grind thistle leaves to powder.

  as you have.

  I suck my thumb from jamming it in the door.

  I fear all I have accomplished is a vapor.

  I throw my shovel in the wet earth. I hold a girl’s foot

  by the heel, I wipe away the pus from an open sore.

  I wish you would not think of me as a vapor. As

  something that should not be held.

  I dry my socks on the back of a chair. I wake in the

  night from a dream, and I cannot feel my arm.

  If you can, think of me not as your brother.

  Think of me not as the diseased, as the

  gambling, as the genius.

  I find in my hair a dead spider.

  Think of me as a student you teach. Think

  of me as knowing nothing, yet knowing

  everything. Think of me as innocent, yet guilty.

  Think of me as before my time, yet hurtling

  toward it.

  I give, to a girl, a pair of socks. I lick from my lips the

  sweet wine from the cup.

  Think of me growing old, then growing young.

  Think of me gaining strength, then losing it.

  Think of me groping toward knowledge, yet

  knowledge evading me. Think of me hating, yet

  loving. Think of me hating myself, yet loving

  myself. Think of me hating the world, yet loving

  the world.

  I see my reflection in the still water of the bog. I

  squeeze my eyes against a headache.

  Think of me dying, yet living.

  Lord, run to me.

  There are two loves, Jacqueline.

  That is my prayer.

  One for God, one neighbor.

  Lord, run.

  Think of me as your neighbor.

  I will take my vows.

  Dear Jacqueline,

  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

  I will stake my life on it.

  Untitled or Not Yet

  Sarah Blackman

  Twyla is looking at a sculpture. Conceptual. Underwhelming. She is waiting for it to work on her, this thing made of weights suspended in net bags at varying heights from a nail in the gallery wall. A heating-vent breeze spins the mobiles that hang from the ceiling, but the sculpture is not stirred. Twyla herself is not stirred. Around her the gala ebbs and flows. People are so excited—their shoes are so exciting, their clothes, their hair, their snacks!—that they might conceivably begin to run back and forth across the room in a noisy, excited flock as they used to do in the long-ago days of school dances beneath the DJ’s gibbous moon. She has been standing here too long, so out of the night’s current, she is no longer even eddied around. The evening is progressing apace without her in it. She is stuck.

  But still: the nets. The still nets and their weights that are metal, she reads on the tag, but they look like blond, rounded stones of the sort one might find along the edge of a geologically significant lake. Twyla imagines herself a geologist. She envisions the Wellingtons, the pants with many pockets, the waterproof hat. The lake is a typical significant lake: becalmed, majestic. To get there she would have had to leave her car by the side of a logging road and hike; she would have had to commune in silence with her breath for a long, unpunctuated time. She pictures herself picking up those geologically significant rocks and slipping them into collection nets, hanging the collection nets all about her person until, rocks banging her knees, she finally wades out into the lake itself. Her curiosity is fed by knowledge—she is, after
all, an expert—and yet there remains the child inside who insists each stone flipped by the tip of clumsy Wellington might reveal, impressed by an epoch of geological conspiracy, the ghostly evidence of … alien intervention? … sci-fi society inside earth’s hollow core? … thumbprint of almighty God? … Could be anything is the point. Anything at all just a little farther out into the water. And then what? Twisting an ankle? Slipping down the slithery edge of an underwater precipice into the dark, still, cold … the water so cold it was more like a gas … outer-space water … star water … into the heart of the lake where all those significant rocks would drag her down into cold, dark, still … What would look back at her? What would blink its eyes?

  Twyla shudders. That is a nightmare. She is having a nightmare right here in the gallery with a glass of wine in her hand and wine shrinking on her lips like a kind of purple lipstick that is one size too small for her face. Anther is at her elbow as usual and feels her quake. “What is it?” he says, scanning the crowd with an arch to his eyebrows as if he is looking over the top of a pair of spectacles. What are those called? The ones with a handle that a person can hold over their face like a mask? Anther can make his face look like it is looking through almost anything. A camera. A partially raised window. A poked-out knot in a pinewood fence. It is a gift, that face. Tonight he has trimmed his mustache so tightly it seems likely he has drawn it on. It makes him look like Salvador Dalí, but younger and pinker and blonder and plumper. Souther. Salvador Dalí as a southern queer. In seersucker pants. With a pimple behind his ear.

  Everyone is here. All the old art weirdos, all the bankers. All the young art weirdos, each weirder than the next, and their nervous dates. They are fund-raising—a new wing on the art museum to be used as a local hero’s reliquary, starting with the collection of the very same local hero, recently deceased, who had designed the chicken-foot mobiles above Twyla and Anther’s heads and painted both the monumental and the teeny-tiny canvases that line the walls. Each painting is of the same person, though none can be called portraiture. Her daughter, someone says. Cancer, says someone else and shakes his head. Oh, she was a pistol, says a third, who is drunk and shoots off her fingers from her hips like pow pow pow. She is aiming for the kneecaps, Twyla notices. Aiming to maim. Everyone ignores the auctioneer, who is getting desperate and offering a hot-air balloon ride over the city with four new Michelin tires for the low price of $1,000 smackeroos.

  “Smackeroos,” the auctioneer says. “I mean, I’m telling you people. This is a steal.”

  “Lorgnette,” says Twyla.

  No.

  “But they’re not even real stones,” says Twyla.