Jeffrey Ford by The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque

Author:The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 2011-11-25T13:38:27+00:00

Consulting the Twins

A single green leaf fell, sawing back and forth in the air past the static depiction of its autumnal kin. "I will demonstrate for you," said Mrs. Charbuque. "Do you have your pencil?"

"Yes," I said, still trying to digest her statement that she had felt herself to be God.

"Write out a question," she said.

I leaned over in my seat and lifted the paper leaf from the floor. It took only a second to think of what to ask. You do not have to be psychic to guess what it was. "I have done so," I said.

"Place it carefully beneath the thumb," she said, and I saw that insane monkey arm inch its way slowly up from the top of the screen. The sight of it now made me smile, and I heard Mrs. Charbuque giggle quietly like a girl in church.

I stood and secured the leaf in the hairy hand. Then it lowered with the same comic slowness as it had risen.

" 'Do I see it clearly?' " Mrs. Charbuque read aloud. "A moment now, Piambo. I am consulting the Twins."

Knowing the entire thing was a farce didn't matter. I still felt a kind of mild excitement tingling in my chest as I waited for her pronouncement.

"I see fire," she said, "... and snow. There is a shiny coffin, a smile, and an angel on the beach at sunset. That is all." A few moments passed, and then she laughed. "How was that?"

"Curious imagery," I said, "but I'm afraid I'm no wiser than I was before asking."

"In all the time I actively portrayed the Sibyl, I don't think I ever actually answered anyone's question," she said.

"Your record remains unbroken," I told her. "How long did you perform as the Sibyl? You've already said that you continued with the act after your father passed away."

"I not only continued, Piambo, I became famous and, as you can see by the trappings of my life, wealthy," she said. "Yes, for someone who for all intents and purposes did not exist, I did quite well."

"Tell me about how that happened," I said as I sketched the twin arches of her eyebrows.

"My father and I were to go to the mountains twice more, and in the summers following each season of snow, we performed in the city. A goodly piece of everything we made on the act was handed over to the police to keep my father from being prosecuted for the murder of my mother. This weighed on him, not out of guilt but because he was loath to share our wealth. As much as he enjoyed playing the assistant to my Sibyl, he was still first and foremost a crystalogogist. Once we were back in the mountains, he buried himself in his work. The tale told by the snowflakes became grimmer with each reading, but barring his obvious concern for the future, he was always pleased to trudge out to the tin laboratory and climb the ladder to the optical magnifier.

"Then,

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