Read Online The Blind Contessa's New Machine by Carey Wallace - Free Book Online
Authors: Carey Wallace
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the trees on the opposite bank and marked off what she could see when she faced them dead on from the top step of her house. In November she could take in five trees, bounded by the willow and the sapling. By the New Year, the sapling had vanished. When darkness began to swallow up the willow as well, she tried to tell her mother and father. When the willow was extinguished, she told Pietro.
By this time, Pietro had learned enough about her habits to recognize that she was not like the other young ladies of his acquaintance, and had taken to calling her “my stranger.” Her announcement seemed to him to be just another piece of happy nonsense, like her affection for her poorly conceived lake with its muddy banks, or her inexplicable patience with Turri’s experiments.
Her parents had long since forgotten her attempts to warn them. Her father was engaged in a war of attrition with the gardener, who insisted that, if he were to cut all the flowers her father demanded for Carolina’s wedding, the garden itself, where the reception was to be held, would have all the charm of a desert—to which her father replied that all men of genius are mocked by their own servants. Carolina’s mother still left her room infrequently, but a steady stream of servants and delivery boys now came and went, bearing fruit, chocolates, china, silver, silks, brocade and lace, and a parade of gifts sent ahead by the hundreds of invited guests.
Carolina always opened these gifts in her mother’s company, so as her sight was leaving her she handled some of the most beautiful things she had ever seen: an enameled box, robin’s egg blue, wavy like watered silk, lined in rose velvet; a spiral shell the size of her fist, with a silver lid, for holding salt; sheets embroidered with lemon blossoms and vines; a glass candy dish the color of blood; a serving tray of silver beaten into the shape of a giant grape leaf, with a life-size bunch of cold silver grapes clustered under the curve of the handle and a small bird perched on the opposite rim, gazing at the metal fruit with longing.
At first, Carolina tried to memorize these things. She began a careful catalog in her mind, closed her eyes, and quizzed herself. But she quickly discovered that each time she called up an object in her memory, it eroded or changed. The bird on the tray, which had seemed so hopeful at her first glance, grew melancholy in her mind and developed jeweled eyes: now onyx, now sapphire, so that each time she looked at the actual tray again she had the sense that it was not quite as beautiful as it had been. The enameled box opened in her unreliable memory to reveal white and brown speckled eggs, pale gray stones worn smooth by the river, loose diamonds. Eventually she gave up the project of memorization, but she continued to try to soak up as much of the world as she could take in: the candlelight in her mother’s room, waterbirds landing on her lake, the folds of her white dress as the seamstress fitted it, added a hundred yards of lace, and fitted it again. The world had trouble withstanding her searching gaze. The blindness at the corners of her vision and the black water of her lake melded into a thick shadow that threatened to swallow up the sky and trees she could still see. The forest seemed to lose its depth and flatten, as if it were only painted on a scrim hung by some traveling theater company. Everything gave the impression that it was in danger of giving way to reveal whatever horror or wonder the seen world now obscured.
But the blindness never relented. The week before her wedding she lost the oak, leaving only the junk tree and the wild apple, which overnight had burst into full bloom, like a breathless bride adorned in white, trembling with joy over the slightest breeze.
This was when she had told Turri.
The spring that Carolina was born, her mother had planted rows and rows of white rosebushes in anticipation of her daughter’s wedding day. Today, their
By this time, Pietro had learned enough about her habits to recognize that she was not like the other young ladies of his acquaintance, and had taken to calling her “my stranger.” Her announcement seemed to him to be just another piece of happy nonsense, like her affection for her poorly conceived lake with its muddy banks, or her inexplicable patience with Turri’s experiments.
Her parents had long since forgotten her attempts to warn them. Her father was engaged in a war of attrition with the gardener, who insisted that, if he were to cut all the flowers her father demanded for Carolina’s wedding, the garden itself, where the reception was to be held, would have all the charm of a desert—to which her father replied that all men of genius are mocked by their own servants. Carolina’s mother still left her room infrequently, but a steady stream of servants and delivery boys now came and went, bearing fruit, chocolates, china, silver, silks, brocade and lace, and a parade of gifts sent ahead by the hundreds of invited guests.
Carolina always opened these gifts in her mother’s company, so as her sight was leaving her she handled some of the most beautiful things she had ever seen: an enameled box, robin’s egg blue, wavy like watered silk, lined in rose velvet; a spiral shell the size of her fist, with a silver lid, for holding salt; sheets embroidered with lemon blossoms and vines; a glass candy dish the color of blood; a serving tray of silver beaten into the shape of a giant grape leaf, with a life-size bunch of cold silver grapes clustered under the curve of the handle and a small bird perched on the opposite rim, gazing at the metal fruit with longing.
At first, Carolina tried to memorize these things. She began a careful catalog in her mind, closed her eyes, and quizzed herself. But she quickly discovered that each time she called up an object in her memory, it eroded or changed. The bird on the tray, which had seemed so hopeful at her first glance, grew melancholy in her mind and developed jeweled eyes: now onyx, now sapphire, so that each time she looked at the actual tray again she had the sense that it was not quite as beautiful as it had been. The enameled box opened in her unreliable memory to reveal white and brown speckled eggs, pale gray stones worn smooth by the river, loose diamonds. Eventually she gave up the project of memorization, but she continued to try to soak up as much of the world as she could take in: the candlelight in her mother’s room, waterbirds landing on her lake, the folds of her white dress as the seamstress fitted it, added a hundred yards of lace, and fitted it again. The world had trouble withstanding her searching gaze. The blindness at the corners of her vision and the black water of her lake melded into a thick shadow that threatened to swallow up the sky and trees she could still see. The forest seemed to lose its depth and flatten, as if it were only painted on a scrim hung by some traveling theater company. Everything gave the impression that it was in danger of giving way to reveal whatever horror or wonder the seen world now obscured.
But the blindness never relented. The week before her wedding she lost the oak, leaving only the junk tree and the wild apple, which overnight had burst into full bloom, like a breathless bride adorned in white, trembling with joy over the slightest breeze.
This was when she had told Turri.
The spring that Carolina was born, her mother had planted rows and rows of white rosebushes in anticipation of her daughter’s wedding day. Today, their
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