The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre Read Free Page B

“Did you smell our mademoiselle?”
    “I certainly did not.”
    “A woodland herbage, I assure you.”
    “God help our country,” said Louis. He dusted his sleeves. “Come, we’re going to execute the science of this. We’ll walk the grid, down to Palais Bourbon and east to the Pont Neuf.”
    “Yes,” said Baudelaire, raising his malacca cane like a sword, “we will map the city in the name of nudity.”
    Louis stood and clicked his heels together in a sudden display of officiousness. There was something regimental about him—the groomed mustache, the pomade-heavy wedge of gray hair, the Napoleonic jacket with epaulets. At fifty-nine he looked and dressed like a retired admiral. But he had a painter’s eyes: Antwerp blue and prone to fits of moisture and reflection.
    They walked up a small hill, Baudelaire now in front, his amber-tipped pipe clenched between his teeth. He waved at a passerby and called, “We are on a mission of the apocalypse.”
    Louis caught his reflection in a bakery shopwindow and noticed that his mouth was ajar, as if in profound thirst. He pursed his lips, then settled his mouth as his figure floated across the aqueous frontage of glass. But the seizure was already coming. The sun flared and whitened. Rivulets of sweat formed along his spine. His cravat and neck cloth restricted his breathing, and the mercury cough ascended from his groin, producing silver flashes in his peripheral vision. The taste of green copper in his mouth. He leaned against the brickwork of a building and was aware of Baudelaire standing beside him. Then the noise of the street bounded towards him, the clop and clatter of the wagons, the shriek of the vendors’ cart horses. He doubled over, hands in spasm, and fell to the street. He felt the dankness of the macadam against his cheek. A small crowd ringed him in and he could see their glaucous faces, their eyes narrowed. In the midst of the seizure, a woman stood preening her gloves. He was aware of everything—his own pulse, his blood breaking its banks, the kettledrum of the street, this lady’s chamois gloves. He could feel his head banging against the pavement, then Baudelaire’s hand and then the slowing, the release of pressure in his jaw and rib cage, his teeth coming apart, air being drawn back into his lungs. He lay there for some time, panting. The crowd dispersed.
    “Are you all right?” asked Baudelaire.
    “Yes,” said Louis, sitting up.
    A deep calm always followed the seizures. He felt hollowed out, capable of great insight. He took in the street again, became aware of the light. It was now dusk and the objects of the afternoon were slipping away; one would position the camera obscura from a loft window to catch the diffusion of day. Nearby, a woman’s face floated inside a window. Her skin a smoky pearl, jade-green eyes, lips that curved with the grace of violin hips. Louis stood in front of the deserted wineshop and looked within—a cavernous interior of empty shelves. A dusty crate stood in the middle of a floor covered with editions of La Gazette de France.
    “I saw her,” Louis said.
    “Where? In here?”
    Louis nodded. He placed a hand against the windowpane and became aware of his own reflection looking back at him. The entire shopfront was a photographic plate, and here was his own specter trapped inside the waterfilm of glass.
    “I don’t feel very well,” Louis said.
    “Let’s get a cab. I’ll take you home.”
    “She’s out there somewhere,” Louis said. “The woman I once loved.”
    “Every woman we once loved is out there alongside the women we are yet to love. They exchange tips about how to ruin us.” Baudelaire stepped into the street and flagged down a cab. As he did so, he composed the first line of a new poem: “Twilight agitates madmen.”
     
    As they rode through the Paris dusk, Louis leaned his head against the leather seat back. Baudelaire was talking to the driver about socialist causes and the rumblings