"Baker, Kage - Standing in His Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)

"I'm very sorry to interrupt, Mynheeren," said the woman. They looked up at her. The weaver's son stared, struck by the image she presented, the way the light from the window fell on her white coif, glittered along the line of brass beads on her sleeve, the way the layered shadows modeled her serene face.

"What do you want?" asked the draper's son. She didn't look like a whore; she looked like any one of the thousand respectable young matrons who were even now peeling apples in a thousand kitchens. What, then, was she doing in the common-room of a shabby inn on the market square?

"Well, I couldn't help but overhear that you two young gentlemen were talking about making a camera obscura. And, you know, I said to myself, isn't that the strangest coincidence! Really, when a coincidence this remarkable occurs it's got to be the work of God or the holy angels, at least that was what my mother used to say, so then I said to myself, whether it's quite polite or not, I'll just have to go over there and introduce myself! Elisabeth van Drouten, gentlemen, how do you do?"

And she drew up a three-legged stool, and sat, and thumped her covered basket down on the table. Looking from one to the other of the men, she whisked off the cover. There, nestled in a linen kerchief, were a handful of objects that shone like big water-drops, crystal-clear, domed, gleaming.

"Lenses!" cried Mevrouw van Drouten triumphantly. "What do you think of that?"

The two gentlemen blinked at them like owls, and the draper's son reached into the basket and held one up to the light.

"Nice lenses," he admitted. "Are you selling them?"

"Not exactly," said Mevrouw van Drouten. "It's a long story. There's a friend of my family's in Amsterdam, actually that's where I'm from, you could probably tell from my accent, yes? Well, anyway, he grinds lenses, this friend of mine. And because he got in trouble with his familyЧand then later on the Jews kicked him out of their synagogue for something, I'm not sure what it was all about, but anyway, bang, there went poor Spinoza's inheritance. So we were trying to help him out by selling some of his lenses, you see?

"So last time I was here in Delft visiting my auntie, which was, let's see, I guess it was five years ago now, I brought some lenses to see if I could sell them, which I did when I was at my cousin's tavern to this nice man who was maybe a little drunk at the time, and I understood him to say he was a painter and wanted them for optical effects. Fabritius, that was his name!"

The two men grunted. In a gesture that had become involuntary for citizens of their town, they both turned to the northeast and raised their beers in salute. The woman watched them, her brows knitted.

"He died in the explosion," the weaver's son explained.

"Yes, the 'Delft Thunderclap', we called it," said Mevrouw van Drouten, nodding her head. "When your city powder magazine went blooie! Awful tragedy. And that's what my cousin said, when I went back to her tavern yesterday. That poor Fabritius had been so drunk that he left the packet of lenses on the table, and he never came back to get them because the explosion happened the next day. So she kept them until she saw me again. And I said, 'What am I supposed to do with them now? He paid for them, so I don't feel right keeping them,' and she said, 'Well, Elisabeth, why don't you find some other painters to give them to?' And I said, 'Where would I find some other painters?' and she said, 'Try that inn over in the Market Square,' so I came straight over, and here you are, fellow artists I guess, eh? Maybe you knew Fabritius?"

"I did," said the weaver's son. "He was a genius."

"Well then! I'm sure he'd want you to have these, wouldn't he?"

The weaver's son reached into the basket and the lenses rattled, clicked softly as he drew one out. He peered at the tiny rainbowed point of light it threw. It magnified wildly the lines of his palm, the yellow hairs on the back of his hand. He held it up to the window and saw his thumbprint become a vast swirl etched in silver. The draper's son held his lens up beside it.

"Ooh!" Mevrouw van Drouten clasped her hands in pleasure. "I wish I could capture this moment, somehow. Can't help thinking it's portentous, in a way I can't explain. Fabritius's ghost is probably smiling down from heaven at you two fine young fellows. Now you can build your camera obscura, eh? And maybe find one or two other uses for the lenses."

"Are you sure you want to give them away?" said the draper's son, a little vaguely because he was still entranced by the play of rainbows across crystal. The buzz from the hemp hadn't quite vanished.

"Quite sure," said Mevrouw van Drouten cheerfully. She spilled the remaining lenses out on the table and stood, tucking her empty basket under her arm. "There. Much as I'd love to stay and chat, I've got a boat to catch. Mynheer van Leeuwenhoek, Mynheer Vermeer, may God keep you both."

Then she was gone, as suddenly and inexplicably as she'd arrived. The weaver's son tore his gaze away from the liquid contours of the piled lenses and looked around. The light still streamed in, clear and soft, but the room was empty save for a drunk snoring on a bench in the corner.




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In the twenty-fourth century, it was unanimously conceded by art authorities that Jan Vermeer was the greatest painter who had ever lived.

The other Dutch masters had long since been dismissed from popular taste. Rembrandt didn't suit because his work was too muddy, too dark, too full of soldiers and too big, and who wanted to look at Bible pictures anyway in an enlightened age? To say nothing of the fact that his brush strokes were sloppy. Franz Hals painted too many dirty-looking, grimacing people, and his brush strokes were even sloppier. The whole range of still life paintings of food were out: too many animal or fish corpses, too many bottles of alcohol. Then too, a preoccupation with food might lead the viewer to obesity, which was immoral, after all!