ReVISIONS (33 page)

Darling Daughter Most Beloved Maria Celeste,

I am heartened that the Lord spares your life, even in cruel sleep. Yet, it grieves me greatly that your mind prefers that company of the heavens above, to that of the earth below. This poor sinner prays for you daily, though I fear that I am becoming weak.

My bones are made cold and wretched by the passing winter and by the chilled drafts allowed against me by hands less skilled than yours in the mending of my vestments. More than my garments, I fear that without the wisdom of your words, I am truly imprisoned, my confinement unbearable. I have sought leave, and await permission, to travel to your convent in San Matteo if only to be by your side, to hold your delicate fingers within mine, and to beseech you in my own voice to return to me.

Until then, I offer word of all that remains me, that of my experiments.

My friends in the East have been most kind in delivering to me a wondrous and elaborate clockwork upon which to mount my mirror telescope. This gargantuan clockwork, once trained on Polaris, causes the telescope to then follow the celestial body it is fixed upon across the duration of the night sky without need for further adjustment.

Moreover, in the Easterners' luminous kindness—and I believe that in His infinite wisdom, God gifts even the heathens thus—they have provided me also with a recipe for an amazing gelatin bath exquisitely more sensitive than the eye to color. These baths may be laid out in dishes, where the light emanating from my telescopic eyepieces may fall upon their surfaces. And while the gelatins are poor representatives of contour, they react precisely according to color.

Moreover, inspired by the nature of the affliction of my eyes, I have devised a method to reproduce the rainbows I had observed around the moon and to project a representation of color, rather than shape or form, from the telescope's eyepiece. This I have achieved through the simple artifice of the placement of a metal disk possessed of a fine central slit over the eyepiece, the slit approximating the narrowed gaze of my failing vision. Light emanating from the eyepiece is thus translated from shape or form into a most divine assembly of color. And thus, when the telescope is trained to follow a celestial body across the night, the object's rainbow autograph is recorded.

Most promising, is that in this apparatus that I have dubbed a Telecolorimeter, I believe I have found the means to my salvation. You will forgive me if I explain in simple terms, as I grow weary and no doubt your condition will not suffer the details. My reasoning and methods are thus: I first intend to train the device on our sun, to capture its characteristic color autograph which will serve as my universal model for all such stars. I will then train the device on a duller distant sun such as Aldebaran. (An homage to the Mohammedans for their excellent studies of the heavens and for their superb work regarding the nature of light. A crystal wedge sent to me by one of their natural philosophers was my first attempt at devising a colorimeter.) With the ability to follow a distant sun through the night, and by affixing a gelatin plate to rotate along with the clockwork mount, I hope to capture the star's color imprint. This color signature should be identical to our sun's, since they are stars just the same, but for the color perturbations according to my earlier theory likening sound to light. Owing to Aldebaran's motion, I will expect to see a change in its colors as I would expect a change in pitch with approaching or receding sound.

I suspect also that what appears to me to be distant suns may, in fact, be assemblages of stars, not unlike that which encompasses our own planet, and I will require an even larger telescope in order to better appreciate their colors. To this end I have commissioned the manufacture, and will soon take delivery, of a mirror telescope of such generous measure that it is limited in size only by the clockwork's ability to carry its weight.

If I am mistaken and the Church is correct and we find ourselves at rest at the center of a fixed celestial sphere, no color perturbations should exist, since these objects maintain a fixed distance from us. If I find this, I will humbly publish my discoveries and recant fully to the public. Should I find, however, a tapestry of varied color perturbations, it will prove that our world is engaged in an intricate dance of advancing and withdrawing celestial motions. I expect my vindication will come with shifts toward the color red on the one hand and blue on the other, these being the colors of the rainbow's edge.

I fear my reasoning may require further reflection and I pray that you recover to aid me in the refinement of this theory, so that you might also bask in the glory and holy illumination that it will provide. With much shame, I admit likewise, that I am possessed of a more selfish desire to see you recover to mend this old man's longing heart along with his increasingly threadbare garments. I beseech you, darling Daughter, to quit your Father on high and to return to me, your humble and earthly father below. As the Phoenix of myth is reborn from ashes and flame, I beg you, Daughter, to return to me that we might both truly live.

Your most beloved and affectionate father,
G.G.

Most Venerable and Beloved Daughter Suor Maria Celeste

I have received word that you have begun to stir and that my letters have caused on at least one occasion a most gentle fluttering of your eyelids. Though I feel the Lord has forsaken me in many endeavors, I thank Him for such small gifts.

Vincenzo, your brother, happened upon me yesterday morn as I examined the color autographs from the distant suns that I had been following. Since my last letter, I have trained my clockwork mirror telescope on many stars, whether bright or faded, whether seemingly orange, or seemingly blue. The many gelatinous plates, upon which star autographs have been preserved with a fixative, now extend through my poor garden like rays from my old stone sundial like the pagan goddess Shiva's many arms. They obliterate what little grass remains not overgrown with weed. Fortunately, the hedgerow hides this from my already angered neighbors who have taken to complaining of the clockwork's unsightly appearance. It appears that I had indeed offended them with my experiment of the trumpets, as Salvatore so rightly feared.

“Father, you are distressed,” Vincenzo remarked in concern from his perch on the dial. “Not our Sister-Sister?” He has named you thus out of love and a poor sense of pun.

“I am distressed always over your sister,” I replied, “but currently I am consumed by my inexplicable failure in this experiment.”

Vincenzo approached the plate closest to him and examined it. “An excellent rainbow,” he declared, “albeit, overly crimson. Beautiful, nonetheless.”

“They are all tainted crimson,” I confessed. “My other Vincenzo has checked and rechecked the baths, and our apparatus, and after several correspondences with the East he swears no error or failure in apparatus or in method exists.”

“Would that I could assist you.”

“No. I am lost without your sister's ear and her counsel. Only two explanations remain in this matter. For if one is correct, then my very sciences have failed me; and if the other, I have failed my God.”

Vincenzo then raised himself from the dial. “Father, I have thought much lately of your former pupil, Delmedigo the Spaniard. He is an excellent physician who is said to heal within the graces of God even though he be a Hebrew. Perhaps he might be of assistance?”

An excellent suggestion, I thought, even for your brother. And so, with the disposal of my humble invitation, my onetime student, José Solomon Delmedigo, has now graced your side. I understand that, with great skill and attention, he has been hastening your healing some time now. I have received word, that with his good work nearly completed, he promises to visit with me on his return to Spain.

I continue to pray for you. Your progress has renewed in my purpose, even though my results fail me. My heart leaps to share more with you, my daughter, but the hour is late and my bones have become as fragile and as quarrelsome as my spirit.

Your most affectionate and beloved father,
G.G.