I opened the latest fortepiano: “The soundboard is composed of spruce flitches, glued and sanded. Each checked for knots or pitch pockets. See under the strings? Swiss pear hammer-heads and -shanks, escapements, damper jacks, and back checks — the fortepiano’s action. All the anatomy between the key and the string.”
I ran my hand over the walnut veneer.
Sanson sat and played the opening theme of an overture. The sound — Cécile, you remember the instrument we delivered? — a tone similar to the lute, but rounder, more resonant. Rather than the pluck of a finger, this was a cushioned blow of felts (we no longer used leather to pad hammers) that touched the strings for only an instant. Blanchet instruments demanded a patchwork of finesse, and I’d spent hours on that one: a metallic rattle silenced by a pinch to the kapsel arms; the replaced prell hinge eliminated a wooden thunk; constant ringing corrected by fluffing the chamois with a needle; adjustment to let-off prevented a hammer blockage—
I sat on a bench, then stood again at a sound from upstairs.
“Who’s there?” Taskin held a candelabra in the stairway from his apartment above the workshop. It was late, and he was dressed to retire. I should have realized he’d stayed in town rather than at his estate (or with you in your Paris townhouse, Cécile. By then you’d long been mistress to him, to me, and I suppose to your Comte).
“Tobias, what—” He saw me first, and then crossed the room and held the candles to Sanson’s face: ridged nose, flat cheekbones and chin, and a wide-spaced, almost bovine expanse between the eyes that gave him a calm but pensive expression.
Taskin, recognizing Sanson, stepped back. His eyes looked wet and prominent in the candlelight. “Get out.”
“You’d criticize a civil servant for his career?” I said.
“You should know better — ‘civil servant’?” Taskin swallowed whatever he would say next.
Sanson took his time, finished his wine, buttoned his jacket — rouge d’Andrinople, the jacket had belonged to his father and grandfather, and would be worn by Sanson’s son when he inherited the post. (The great-grandfather had a black coat with puce sleeves and gallows embroidered in gold front and back, but Sanson’s uncle burned that bit of history in a fit of disgust — or was it thankfulness? — after Paris’s final quartering.) He straightened his wig and stowed his cello in its case. Taskin kept calm until I closed the door.
“I hired you for inlay,” he said. “To apprentice, and then as journeyman — you were a child.” He turned to the fortepiano and I thought that might be it, he might have finished the reprimand, but he went on. “You taint the name of Blanchet with that bourreau.”
Light shone through Taskin’s ratty nightshirt and showed his body — his potbelly, the shadow of his sagging chest, the hairs on his thighs. Cécile, I saw how his cheeks and neck drooped and had a soft, pocked texture. His hand on the brass candelabra column was lined with scars.
“Be serious.” I topped my wine. “How would you explain my dismissal?”
“You’ll see.” Taskin embarrassed, in a rage. “Get out. Go on. Last time you, or any other Low Country shit, makes his mark on the King’s harpsichords.” He waved the flames near my face and I jerked back from the sputtering wax.
“But since the aerostat—” I started. I’m still not sure what I meant, other than we were sharing a mistress — you, Cécile — and not just a company; that I’d made a name with Blanchet’s and that Taskin and I were (or I’d thought we were) friends. “Your finishing quality will go down.”
“Tobias.” He’d managed to calm down and added: “You know, I heard Madame Saint-Huberty displayed her breast on stage.”
“Is this about Cécile?” I drained my wine and he said nothing. Though Cécile, I’d heard the gossip — the whole country knew of it. That opera, Iphigénie en Aulide, where you had designed the costumes yourself—
At first the audience had been charmed by the loose togas of the chorus — Thessalian guards, Greek soldiers, women from Aulis, slaves from Lesbos, and attendants on the princess sang and danced on stage. The singers were envied, even, as the chorus was certainly more comfortable in light clothing than the audience were in their layers and wigs, and seated at close quarters under the heat of the candles. It could have been a success, Cécile, until you, singing the titular role of Iphigénie, rode to centre stage half-naked on a chariot. Your waxed legs, your breast and small pink nipple welcomed the gaze of hundreds of opera patrons for three long Acts.
After the first performance, the King had forbidden the new costumes, and you were returned to the corset and panniers. Lewd sketches appeared in the streets (your likeness, though the size of your breasts and thighs were exaggerated) and the opera forced you into smaller roles. Your confidence fell. Your voice had difficulty with the higher register. You retired from the stage and accepted a different type of patronage — Cécile, we were both outcast.
I left Taskin to his rage and walked by your Paris townhouse, thinking I’d stay with you, since my home had been above the Blanchet workshop. Your townhouse was lit with chandeliers and music, and I let myself in. If you don’t recall that masque, that’s fine; it was one of many, with everyone in costume. The men wore crimson or black cloaks. Women pierced their wool-filled hair and wigs with jewelled scratching sticks. Everyone was covered in lace and brocade, and on their breasts, cut-glass gemstones caught the light and threw it laughingly back. The tables were covered in porcelain gambling chips, dancers took over the foyer, chamber players and music sounded at the top of the stairs, and drunken riddle games made little sense in the parlour. Your personal chambers were empty. In the garden, I saw only shadows that leaned toward each other behind bushes and the gazebo. At the pond, a fountain frothed into the pool and silver carps mouthed the surface.
Cécile, if I found leaving my father and brother and the Low Country difficult, expulsion from the Blanchets’ instrument shop was devastating. Over the next week, under the guise of repairs and at the expense of restoring painted landscapes and Chinoiserie, Taskin scraped my signature from every Blanchet instrument in Paris. After hearing the news, I dragged myself to Sanson — his wife withdrew to the house, his son and apprentice Young Gabriel to the shed to clean the tools of the trade, and Sanson and I sipped water and played a game of backgammon in his garden.
“In the old days,” he offered, “when a newsmonger caught my father with a bowl of broth in a bouillon, his presence bankrupted the restaurant. These days, if I go to a market and touch a melon, the fruit is tossed to the street. Not even the swine are allowed it. My wife has only her sister for friendship, and that in secret.”
“Very nice,” I said. “Bienvenue — welcome, fellow pariah!”
“Here’s a distraction,” he said, and presented a problem — Dr. Guillotin and the Assembly had determined France needed a unified method of execution. “But can you see nobility at the gibbet? Or the reverse: an apple-vendor standing for the sword?”
“Easy.” I sketched a simple combination of gallows and blade. Le Mécanisme. La Monte-à-regret, le Moulin-à-Silence, le Rasoir National, la demi-lune, les Bois de Justice—
The contract allowed me to rent furnished apartments and a workshop in the Cour du Commerce, rue Saint-André des Arts, Paris.