Free The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey

that the workshop might somehow hang above a wild chasm whose stream would provide the engines’ motive force. Everything was exceptionally clean and ordered, a number of shining lathes, for instance, one quite large, the others of the size traditionally used by clockmakers. The smallest lathe had a canvas belt attached to a spinning cylinder and this, in turn, was connected by a wider belt to the spring-wheel of the sawmill.
    To my ear, we were behind a waterfall, against a rock.
    I called out to say that Vaucanson had invented a lathe almost identical to this pygmy version.
    Herr Sumper glared at me.
    I thought, my goodness, do not offend him now.
    Then, in an instant, as if his own drive belt had slipped onto a faster wheel, he was grinning and gesturing at the wall behind my back.
    “This is the only Vaucanson we need.”
    And, you have guessed already—here were the Two Friends’ plans, tacked onto the wall.
    In the roar of water I heard the voices of my father and brother, in chorus, shouting that I must not give family money to this rogue.
    But I was not their creature. And when Herr Sumper showedme exactly how much he would require for materials, I was so far removed from Low Hall that I praised the thoroughness of a shopping list I could not read. Confused and jubilant in the roar of water, I paid him every Gulden and Vereinsthaler he required.
    With each coin I placed inside his deeply lined palm I was closer to the object that the supercilious Masini had called the “clockwork Grail.” So let it be a grail. I emptied my purse. And it was triumph I felt as I strode back up the sloping chute, thence to a half-way landing where I was to make my bed. With what joy I entered my lodging, so SPARTAN, so much superior to my own home which had been redecorated by the youngest daughter of a family of brewers. God forgive me, that is an ugly unworthy way to think. It is enough to say that henceforth I would require no oils, no pastels, no Turkey rug, no artistic clutter, no dresser, no cupboard, no commode, only this extraordinary fretwork bed and a series of ten black wooden pegs—I counted—driven in a line across one wall.
    I swung open the shutters and what a violent shock it was after the gloomy green light of the kitchen—the azure sky, the dry goat paths like chalk lines through the landscape, the bluish granite which contained the stream, the harvesters still swinging sweetly on their scythes as if it required no effort in the world.
    I asked my clockmaker, “When will it be done?”
    But he had already vanished. I descended the stair with some happy trepidation, grasping the rail in order not to fall.
    More candles had been lit and the males were at table, the boy’s hair filled with golden flame.
    “Are you hungry, Herr Brandling?” Sumper asked.
    “Make no fuss on my account,” I said.
    Frau Helga, however, was stoking the firebox with crackling yellow wood. Her face was very red.
    Herr Sumper’s countenance, in contrast, was cool. He nodded that I should be seated next to him.
    “How long will it take?” I asked.
    He placed his considerable hand upon my own as if that sign could be an answer.
    I told him: “In England we would say, time is of the essence.”
    “You are, as they also say in England, ‘in good hands.’ ”
    “Indeed, but surely you have some idea how long those hands will take to do their job.”
    “I have a very definite idea,” he said, accepting a dripping green wine bottle from the child. He boxed the boy gently across the head and the latter squeaked happily and ducked away. “I have a very definite idea that you will achieve your heart’s desire.”
    “Vaucanson’s duck.”
    “Your heart’s desire,” he said.
    He was slippery, of course. I watched as he shared the wine, giving the boy a thimbleful before emptying a good half bottle into his stein.
    “And what is my heart’s desire?”
    “Why, the same as mine,” he said and poured for