Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [119]
“Ciao Maya.”
“Ciao Marcel.” She had come to know Marcel on the net—to the extent that anybody knew Marcel. The red-haired and loquacious Marcel never stopped talking, but he was not a revelatory or confiding man. He was twenty-seven years old and had already circled the world, by his own estimation, some three hundred and fourteen times. Marcel had no fixed address. He had not had a fixed address since the age of two. Marcel basically lived in trains.
Benedetta, who loved to talk scandal, claimed that Marcel had Williams syndrome. In his case, it was a deliberate derangement, an abnormal enlargement of Heschl’s gyrus in the primary auditory cortex. Marcel had hyperacusis and absolute pitch; he was a musician, and a sonic artificer for virtualities. The syndrome had also drastically boosted Marcel’s verbal skills, which made him an endless source of anecdotes, speculation, brilliant chatter, unlikely linkages, and endless magnetic trains of thought that would hit a mental switch somewhere and simply …
Benedetta claimed that the pope also had Williams syndrome. Supposedly this was the secret of the pope’s brilliant sermonizing. Benedetta believed that she had the dirt on everybody.
“How chic you look, Maya. How lovely to physically witness you.” Marcel’s coat was a patchwork of urban mapping. Marcel lived in that coat, and slept in it, and used it as a navigation aid. Now that she knew that Marcel’s jacket was so plonkingly useful, it somehow seemed rather less vivid. Paul would have described that perception as a category error.
She kissed Marcel’s bearded cheek. “You, too.”
“Congratulations on your Italian venture. They say Vietti’s dying for another session.”
“Giancarlo’s not dying, darling, you mustn’t get your hopes up.”
“I see you brought your sponsor. Your photographer. He must be your man of the hour.”
“He’s my teacher, Marcel. Don’t be gauche.”
“I have my net set to read your posts in Français,” said Marcel. “I wish you would post more often. In Français, your commentary is remarkable. Aspects of wit emerge that one simply can’t find in English anymore.”
“Well, there’s a quality in a good translation that you can never capture with the original.”
“There’s another one, that’s it exactly. How is it that you do that? Is it deliberate?”
“You’re very perceptive, darling. If you don’t get me a frappé I’m afraid I’ll kiss you.”
Marcel weighed these possibilities and got her the frappé. She sipped it and gazed about the bar, leaning on one elbow. “Why do things seem so très vivid tonight?”
“Do they? Paul has plans for a spring outing. A major immersion. I hope you’ll come.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss a major immersion for anything.” She had no idea what Marcel was talking about. “Where is Paul?”
Paul was sitting among a group of perhaps a dozen people. He had them spellbound.
Paul opened a small metal shipping canister and removed a life-size carving of a garden toad. The squat and polished toad appeared to be chiseled from a solid ruby.
“Is this one beautiful?” Paul said. “You tell me, Sergei.”
“Well,” said Sergei, “if it’s a product of the Fabergé workshop as you tell us it is, then of course it’s beautiful. Look at that exquisite workmanship.”
“It’s a toad, Sergei. Are toads beautiful?”
“Of course toads can be beautiful. Here is your proof.”
“If someone said you were as beautiful as a toad, would you be pleased?”
“You are changing the context,” Sergei said sulkily.
“But isn’t that what the piece itself is doing? The shock of disbelief is the core of its aesthetic. Imagine people in the year 1912, taking a rare jewel and spending months of dedicated hand labor turning it into a toad. Isn’t that perverse? It’s that very perversity which gives the piece its trophy meaning. This is a Fabergé original, designed for a Czarist aristocrat. Czarist society was a culture generating jeweled toads.”
Paul’s little crowd exchanged uneasy glances. They scarcely dared to interrupt him.
“Still—are we to imagine that Czarist aristocrats believed that