The Chemistry of Tears Read Online Free PDF

Vaucanson’s original no longer existed. His countryman Goethe had seen it, did he know of Goethe?
    “But of course Sir, we are Germans.”
    “Yes,” I said. “Then you will understand Goethe saw the duckafter Vaucanson’s death. He said it was in the most deplorable condition. The duck was like a skeleton and had digestive problems.”
    I thought, they have never heard of Vaucanson.
    The policeman told me, “I will take you.”
    What was happening was not clear, except this clockmaker would no longer meet my eye. There were no farewells, whatever that might mean. My interpreter and I passed Herr Froehlich’s lean lop-sided printery and then entered a street of medieval gables, thence into a narrow laneway. Here, at a door I had never entered, my guide ushered me inside my own inn.
    What was one to think? What could I do but wait while the policeman took my plans and explained the workings of the Duck to one Frau Beck, the rake-thin inn-keeper. This service done, he clicked his heels and bade me farewell. Then seeing my confusion he went so far as to shake my hand which he seemed to imagine was the custom for constabulary in their dealings with gentlemen.
    Frau Beck, meanwhile, was rolling up my plans and shaking her head in a most severe manner. I thought, Lord help her children if she has any.
    “No,” she said, and waved a bony finger at me. “No, Herr Brandling. You must not. You do not show this to Herr Hartmann.”
    “Who is Herr Hartmann? The watchmaker?”
    She clicked her tongue in such a way as to suggest I could not be more wildly wrong. I should have been home in Low Hall taking German lessons.
    “Then who?”
    “Then no one! Not one! You are very fortunate that this is all.”
    “Why?”
    “You have been noticed by everyone,” she whispered. “Why did you not give up your seat to the Captain?”
    I was appalled that all of Karlsruhe seemed to know my business.
    “Herr Brandling I must ask you to behave yourself politely. Here,” and with this she delivered me my rolled-up plans and stood to oneside to make it clear I should go up to my room. I fancied I chuckled to myself as I obeyed her, but it was not at all funny, and the people of Karlsruhe were clearly not a congenial lot.
    I returned to my room. I threw down my plans on the dresser and myself on the peculiar German bed. Then of course the housemaid arrived, accompanied by a boy of perhaps ten. He was hard where Percy was soft, and very fierce and blond, but he was a boy of an age and I felt I knew him.
    I greeted him
Guten Tag
, and gave him a pfennig. How I missed my friend.
    The boy’s mother—and she could only be his mother—placed her hand upon his shoulder and whispered in his ear. She was telling him to thank me, obviously, but it was the hand on the shoulder that moved me.
    “
Danke
,” the boy said and when I saw he was partly lame I was suddenly, unexpectedly, affected. Childhood is so cruel.
    It was still only a little after nine o’clock and I could no longer avoid the first meal of the day which had evidently been conceived with the firm belief that a man should stuff himself like a pig before he left the house.
    I could find no kipper in my dictionary.

Catherine
     

     
    M Y FATHER, WHEN A boy, had read right through the terror of the Blitz. At three o’clock, as they buried my beloved man, I too was reading: Dr. Jessica Riskin, “Artificial Life and Intelligence,
circa
1730–1950.”
    Cams in the upper cylinder activated a frame of about thirty levers. These were connected with different parts of the Duck’s skeletal system to determine its repertoire of movements, which included drinking, playing in the water with his bill, and making a gurgling noise like a real living duck, as well as rising up on its feet, lying down, stretching and bending its neck, and moving its wings, tail, and even its larger feathers …
     
    I also read Abbé Desfontaines who described the duck’s wings: “Not only has every bone