Excerpt from The Chess Machine by Robert Lohr, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

 

 

When the sound of bells roused Tibor from his devotions, the stone beneath his knees was dark with canal water. A few morning church-goers had assembled in the pews and outside the confessional. Tibor lit a candle for the dead man, said a prayer for his soul, and set off for ­Wolf­gang von Kempelen's inn.

But the Hungarian Baron had already left. Even as Tibor was trying to quell his sense of panic, however, the porter added that Kempelen had been going to stop off to see a glassblower on the island of Murano before traveling home.

Tibor crossed to Murano and despite his disreputable appearance was taken to Signor Coppola's study at once. A servant led him through the glassworks to a door on which he knocked three times. While the two of them waited for some signal from within, the servant looked Tibor up and down, or rather one of his eyes looked Tibor up and down, for the other was still staring fixedly at the door as if it had a life of its own. And as if that wasn't enough, one of his eyes was brown and the other green. Tibor was toying with the idea of turning back when a voice inside the room told them to come in. Thereupon the squinting servant opened the door for Tibor.

Coppola's study looked like an alchemist's workshop, except that here the various jars, flasks, and vials themselves, not their contents, were the objects of interest. Wolfgang von Kempelen was sitting at the only table left clear in the middle of the room, which had no windows in its walls, and opposite him was Coppola, a portly, chinless man wearing a leather apron. A flat box lay on the table between them.

Kempelen did not seem particularly surprised to see Tibor again.

"You've come at just the right moment," he greeted him. "Sit down."

Coppola nodded toward a stool, which Tibor drew up beside Kempelen. The master glassblower said nothing; nor did he seem much discomposed by Tibor's unusual build. However, he looked once into his eyes so penetratingly that Tibor blinked and had to glance away.

With a wave of his hand, Kempelen requested the stout Venetian to carry on. Coppola turned the box toward Kempelen and Tibor with its clasp facing them and ceremoniously opened it. Inside, embedded in small eye sockets lined with red velvet, lay twelve eyes—six pairs—with all their pupils staring at Tibor. It was such a shock that Tibor visibly started and crossed himself. Kempelen broke out laughing, and Coppola hoarsely joined in.

"Excellent!" Kempelen praised the glassblower in faultless Italian. "You could hardly ask for a better testimonial to your work."

Drawing a fabric glove over his fingers, Coppola picked a deep blue eye out of its velvet socket and placed it on a piece of cloth in front of Kempelen. Kempelen picked the eye up with rather less ceremony and turned it in his hand, so that the pupil kept peering out between his fingers. Then he put the eye back on the velvet lining beside its companion, but at such an angle that the lifeless pair of eyes now squinted horribly. Coppola handed Kempelen more eyes.

Tibor realized that they were made of glass and were not preserved eyes taken from dead bodies, as he had initially supposed. That, however, didn't make the sight of those six pairs of eyes much more tolerable.

When Kempelen had seen enough, he asked Tibor, "And which pair will be your eyes?"

"My ...?"

"For the automaton. Which would you choose for it?"

Tibor pointed to the squinting blue glass marbles. Coppola grunted approvingly, but Kempelen shook his head. "A blue-eyed Turk? The Empress would feel really cheated."

 

 

Wolfgang von Kempelen was in a hurry to get back to Pressburg, and that suited Tibor very well. Sometime or other a gondola was going to bump into the merchant's body, and then people would start looking for the dwarf. Kempelen didn't ask why Tibor had changed his mind so quickly. On the mainland, in Mestre, he bought him new clothes, and they climbed into a barouche.

Excerpted from The Chess Machine by Robert Loer. Copyright © 2007 by Robert Loer. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Group. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.