Child of a Rainless Year (26 page)
Read Child of a Rainless Year Online
Authors: Jane Lindskold
It is feared that the soul, projected out of the person in the shape of his reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by the ghost of the departed.
—Sir James G. Frazer,
The Golden Bough
After the emotional ups and downs of the weekend, the arrival of Tuesday and the return of the painting crew was a distinct relief. I went out and painted some griffins that were guarding the exterior of a dormered window outside the music room. I listened to the painters’ anecdotes about their adventures over the weekend, and was pleased to find my command of colloquial Spanish had gotten a whole lot better.
Indeed, I had to restrain myself from teasing a young fellow after he told a rather ribald story—one he certainly would not have told if he’d known I understood. I’d read the same anecdote almost word for word in a book. Happily, one of his fellows called him on it, and I had the pleasure of listening to the young man’s attempts to defend himself.
Moreover, I had the pleasure of feeling like one of the crew. They weren’t gossiping about me behind my back or grumbling about my odd demands for precise colors and detail. They were simply enjoying doing a challenging job right.
It was a good time, but when the mail arrived late morning, bringing with it the box from Betty Boswell, I was glad to clamber down from my ladder and see what she had sent along from Aunt May’s library.
Betty had chosen eight books, one volume of which was the abridged
Golden Bough
Aunt May had mentioned. Two others must be the dictionary set she had been sold by the sympathetic bookseller. The other five were familiar to me in that I remembered seeing them on Aunt May’s bookshelf, but as I’d never shared her interest in comparative religions—beyond the field trips we’d taken together—I hadn’t done more than dip into them.
Golden Bough
Aunt May had mentioned. Two others must be the dictionary set she had been sold by the sympathetic bookseller. The other five were familiar to me in that I remembered seeing them on Aunt May’s bookshelf, but as I’d never shared her interest in comparative religions—beyond the field trips we’d taken together—I hadn’t done more than dip into them.
Now I picked up the Frazer and started browsing. Once I got a feel for his writing style, it was surprisingly absorbing stuff. I carried the book with me into the kitchen and read about priest-kings, dying gods, and fertility rituals while I munched on a sandwich.
Frazer didn’t have a whole lot on mirrors, but what he did have gave me a new perspective. He discussed reflections in the same section that he did shadows. Essentially, he didn’t define a great deal of difference between the two: Both were copies of the self, both were thought by primitive peoples to be vulnerable to magical attack.
I thought how, as with the tale of Snow White’s stepmother and her magical mirror, these ideas had continued down to the present day. Peter Pan met Wendy because he lost his shadow. Hadn’t she sewn it back onto his foot? And wasn’t there a Mary Poppins story where Jane and Michael’s shadows come to life and take the children to some party? I was sure there was. The story ended with all those whose shadows had gone out without them coming sleepwalking to look for them—they felt the loss, as, well, as if their own souls had gone from them.
How did this fit in with my mother’s obsession with mirrors? Frazer claimed that mirrors and reflecting pools were to be avoided, lest one’s soul be taken away. Colette had surrounded herself with mirrors, doted upon her own reflection.
Mildly frustrated, I selected another book from the collection: Robert Graves’s
The White Goddess
. Skimming, I gathered that the author was attempting an even more ambitious effort at comparative religion than Frazer had. Graves’s goal was to find connections for the present day back to an ancient Moon Goddess, something that he saw as a lost feminine principle.
The White Goddess
. Skimming, I gathered that the author was attempting an even more ambitious effort at comparative religion than Frazer had. Graves’s goal was to find connections for the present day back to an ancient Moon Goddess, something that he saw as a lost feminine principle.
Hope fluttered in my heart as I flipped back to the index, for Colette was most certainly a very feminine female. However, Graves disappointed me. I only found one reference to mirrors. This proved to be part of a discussion of mermaids, which in turn seemed to be part of a discussion of Muses.
Graves seemed not to know what to do with the mirror in question. In one sentence he dismissed it as a possible artist error—a substitution for, of all things, a quince! In the same sentence, with only a semicolon’s pause to note his shift, he says that the mirror probably stood for “know thyself” and was a part of some ancient mysteries. By the end of the paragraph, again without any explanation other than his own fluid connectivity, Graves states that the mirror was an emblem for vanity.
Remembering Colette at her makeup table, that aptly named “vanity,” I could almost believe this last, but in the end I found Graves too facile for me, and put the volume aside.
Graves had mentioned several names that were not familiar to me, so next I reached for the dictionary. The entries were terse, even cryptic, but tantalizing. I hunted up the entry for mirrors, and found it satisfactorily substantial. Skimming over the brief list of words associated with mirrors, I found hints of both Graves and Frazer. Doubtless, were I better read in the area, I would have recognized the contributions of other eminent scholars. Toward the very end of the entry were subcategories related to specific mirrors. One of these entries seemed oddly familiar, but I couldn’t place why. Aunt May had said something about this section, but this was something else … .
It was a reference to seven mirrors that in the cabalistic tradition were tied to specific types of divination. Unlike the references in Frazer and Graves, these were very solid, practical mirrors. The dictionary’s brief listing included what metals each mirror was to be made of, the planets each was associated with, and noted that each was meant to be used on a specific day of the week in order to divine answers to specific types of questions.
I’d been looking at the books in the first-floor front parlor, and now I rested the thick volume in my lap, trying to figure out why this seemed not precisely familiar—I was sure I had never encountered anything like this before—but somehow connected to something I’d seen, and recently, too. Then it hit me, and I got to my feet so quickly that I nearly dropped the dictionary. Instead I tucked it under my arm and rushed up the stairs to Colette’s room.
Now that I knew how it was done, I managed to get the secret compartment holding the kaleidoscopes open quickly, without spilling the contents all over the floor. Examining the neat rows of kaleidoscopes I found what I had remembered. Seven of the kaleidoscopes were inscribed with emblems I vaguely associated with various planets. There was the round circle with the dot in the center that stood for the Sun. There was the circle with the arrow coming off it at an angle that today is more commonly used to mean “male,” but started as the sign for the planet Mars. There was its mate, the circle with the cross below that stands for both “female” and “Venus.”
I’d have to look the others up, but I was sure about these. I lifted out the kaleidoscope marked with the Sun sign, and checked its characteristics against those listed in the dictionary. The outer casing was of hand-beaten gold, the shining, ruddy warmth of the metal still showing tiny hammer marks. I put the eyepiece to my eye, and was delighted by mandalas of gold-dust intermixed with minute rubies and multifaceted golden topaz.
The next kaleidoscope in line bore the characteristic crescent shape that even small children know is the mark of the Moon. This casing was dull grey, but when I rubbed my finger against the metal, the tarnish came away, revealing the gleaming metallic white of pure silver. The silver within the object chamber at the kaleidoscope’s end had fared better than the casing, probably because the object chamber was sealed away from the outer air. Flakes of metal shown silver-white, mingling in patterns with the bluish white opacity of moonstones and the pale pastels of irregular pearls.
Mars came next, out of order in how we post-Galileans arrange the solar system, but making perfect sense in the ancient order of things. After the Moon, anyone can see that Mars and Venus are our closest neighbors.
The casing for this kaleidoscope was also dull grey, but no amount of rubbing brightened it, for the metal in question was the war god’s favorite metal: iron. In a damper climate, the metal might have shown rust, but New Mexico’s dryness had preserved the iron’s dull solidity. The images I viewed through the kaleidoscope’s eyepiece were anything but dull. Here the red planet was given his due, his warrior’s booty. Rubies glittered against bloodstones, jasper, agate, garnets, and even against chips of ruddy sandstone.
I only looked briefly through this eyepiece, because according to the dictionary, the day on which the Mars mirror was used was Tuesday, when the kaleidoscope might be consulted as to enemies and lawsuits, neither of which I thought I had—and if I did, I didn’t really want to know.
My own superstitious reluctance to look made me hesitate, considering whether I’d spent too many hours reading books whose authors seemed to at least half-believe in their subject matter. Wasn’t I a practical woman? I was a schoolteacher, for heaven’s sake! Then I looked around the room where I sat, remembered where I was, remembered, too, how this room had come to be so spotlessly clean. If I could accept the silent women, then there was a lot more I needed to accept.
Even so, I put the iron-cased kaleidoscope back in its holder and reached for the next one. Here the formula called for a mirror of crystal encasing mercury. The kaleidoscope maker had invoked this by making the case from slabs of smokey quartz crystal, the rock nearly transparent in some places, in others heavily veined with darker lines. This was the first of the lot not constructed in the “traditional” round-barrel shape usually associated with kaleidoscopes. Instead, the casing was a rough triangle, the seams joined with a metal solder.
I studied the case, thinking about what I knew regarding how kaleidoscopes are made. It had been that knowledge as much as the planetary emblems on each case that had made me think of these devices when I’d read the entry about the seven cabalistic divining mirrors.
You see, the working heart of every kaleidoscope is a reflective surface—essentially, a mirror. In a cheap child’s toy, this might simply be a folded piece of metal with a polished inner surface. In the more elaborate kaleidoscopes, high-grade mirrors are used, at least two for each reflecting system. Two-and three-mirror kaleidoscopes are the most common, but more mirrors can be used, as long as the reflecting chamber is properly aligned. The shape of the mandala the viewer will see is affected not only by the number, color, and quality of the mirrors used, but also by the angle at which the mirrors are placed.
The casing exists for no other reason than to hold the mirrors in place. I’d demonstrated this to my students in a summer “Art and Science” course, showing them how a simple kaleidoscope could be made with mirrors, duct tape, and a small plastic container to serve as an object chamber. These makeshifts were neither pretty, nor particularly durable, and my students always agreed it was worth the trouble to make a casing.
In my classes, we usually used premade cylinders, everything from potato chip cans to cardboard tubes to PVC piping. However, as the kaleidoscope in my hand showed, a triangle encasing the mirrors could work as well or better. At arts-andcrafts shows, I’ve seen casings with six or eight sides; I’ve seen cases created from stained glass, polished wood, and precious metals. The Victorians, who were the first to enjoy kaleidoscopes after Sir David Brewster invented them in 1813, loved elaborate exteriors for their “elegant philosophical toys.” In the intervening years during which the kaleidoscope was relegated to a role as a cheap children’s toy, these elaborate exteriors were neglected, but I doubt they ever will be again.
But no matter how elaborate, the casing isn’t the kaleidoscope. If the mirrors are the heart, and the eyepiece, well, the eyes, then the object chamber is the guts. The object chamber is the container that holds the objects that tumble and twist, ready to be transformed into an infinity of mandalas when the kaleidoscope is turned. As with other aspects of Professor Brewster’s creation, object chambers have evolved over time. Some use stained-glass wheels. Others are brackets meant to hold interchangeable spheres—often your standard cat’s-eye marble. Still others hold viscous liquids in which various objects are suspended. The patterns of these last never remain constant, but are in constant motion.
When I looked into the Mercury kaleidoscope, I saw that this object chamber held liquids. The heavy, silvery one was almost certainly real quicksilver. The others might have been colored oils. They shifted and slipped about each other, carrying with them drifts of glitter and infinitesimal emeralds. Tomorrow, if I wished, I could consult this one on matters relating to finance.
I set the Mercury kaleidoscope back in its place, then lifted the next, the one dedicated to Jupiter. The tin casing had resisted tarnish better than had the silver. Moreover, the artist had followed a Spanish tradition and pierced the surface in intricate patterns. Usually, pierced tin is used to decorate lamp shades and candelabra, to let the light can shine through. This artist had instead put a thin layer of gold foil beneath the tin. It created a fine illusion, giving back the lamplight in irregular little stars.
Examining the interior of Jupiter’s kaleidoscope, I felt fairly certain that the mirrors used for the reflective chamber were tin, just as the cabalistic spell had demanded. They gave back the light more reluctantly than did the silver or gold, but with a muted steadiness. Jupiter’s object chamber was dominated by white and azure. I saw tiny lightning bolts intermixed with the gems and bits of glass, and wondered if I augured for success with this, if they would form some sort of recognizable pattern.
There were two kaleidoscopes left. Venus’s copper sheath had greened, but as with Mars’s iron, Saturn’s dull lead stubbornly refused to be affected by the passage of time. Again, the items in each object chamber were coordinated to the colors and symbols related to the appropriate planets, the kaleidoscopic patterns brilliant and enigmatic.
Other books
Not in God's Name by Jonathan Sacks
El hijo del lobo by Jack London
Thunder in the Night (Crimson Romance) by Fellowes, Kate
The Fields of Death by Scarrow, Simon
All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell
Lulu Bell and the Pirate Fun by Belinda Murrell
Passin' Through (1985) by L'amour, Louis
Lucky at Cards by Lawrence Block
Tom Swift and His Megascope Space Prober by Victor Appleton II
Transcontinental by Brad Cook