The Malacia Tapestry Read Online Free PDF Page B

puts the finishing touches to the painting, if you follow me.’
    â€˜I follow you. I too am proud to call myself an artist, though I work in movement rather than light.’
    â€˜Light is everything.’
    He led me through a choked passage where great sheets of tin stood on either side, to another shop. There, amid stink and smoke, men in aprons were making the magic lanterns which formed part of the Hoytola enterprise. Some lanterns were cheap and flimsy, others masterpieces of manufacture, with high fluted chimneys and mahogany panels bound in brass.
    Eventually, Bengtsohn led me back to the paint shop, where we watched a girl of no more than fifteen copy a view from an etching on to a glass.
    â€˜The view is being transferred to the slide,’ announced Bengtsohn. ‘Pretty, perhaps, but not accurate . How could we transfer the view to the glass with accuracy? Well, now, I have developed a perfectly effective way so to do.’ He dropped his voice so that the girl – who never looked up from her work – should not catch his words. ‘The new method employs the zahnoscope.’
    Bonihatch spoke for the first time. ‘It’s revolutionary,’ was all he said.
    Gripping me by the muscle of my upper arm, Bengtsohn took me through into another room, poky and enclosed, where the window was framed by heavy curtains. A support rather like a music-stand stood at one end of the room with a lamp burning above it and a water globe next to it. In the centre of the room was something which resembled a cumbrous Turkish cannon. Constructed almost entirely of mahogany and bound in richly chased brass, its barrel comprised five square sections, each smaller than the next and tapering towards the muzzle. It was mounted on a solid base which terminated in four brass wheels.
    â€˜It’s a cannon?’ I asked.
    â€˜It could cause a breach in the walls of everyone’s complacency – but no, it is my zahnoscope merely, so-called after a German monk what invented the design.’
    He tapped the muzzle. ‘There’s a lens here, to trap rays from the light. That’s the secret! A special large lens such as Malacia’s glass workers do not produce. I received it from ship only this morning – it has just been fitted. You saw me with it when All-People summoned you.’
    He tapped the breech. ‘There’s a mirror in here. That’s the secret too! Now I shall show how it works.’
    Taking a coloured topographical view from a shelf, he propped it on the music-stand, turned up the wick of the lamp, and adjusted the water globe between stand and lamp so that the beams of the lamp focused brightly on the view. Then he drew the curtains across the window. The room was lit only by the oil lamp. Bengtsohn motioned me to a chair by the breech.
    It was as if I sat at a desk. The flat top of the desk was glass. And there, perfectly reproduced on the glass, was the topographical view, bright in all its original colour!
    â€˜It’s beautiful, Master! Here you can have a perfect magic-lantern show.’
    â€˜This is a tool, not a toy. We place the glass of our slides over the viewer and can adjust the barrel – what adjusts the focal length of the lenses – until we have the exact size of picture necessary for the slide, no matter what the dimensions from the original etching. We can then simply paint over the image with accuracy.’
    I clapped my hands. ‘You are more than an artist! – You are an actor! Like me, you take the poor shadowy thing of real life and magnify it and add brighter colours to delight your audience … But what do you want me here for? I can’t handle a paint-brush.’
    He stood pulling his lower lip and squinting at me.
    â€˜People come in two kinds. Either they’re too clever or too foolish to be trusted. I can’t reason out which group you’re in.’
    â€˜I’m to be trusted. Everyone trusts