The Connoisseur

Chapter 35 - All the World and More

The moonlit elegance of Alexander’s hall was startling after the devastation of Ypres.  To Sophia’s eyes every straight line stood out and every angle looked sharper.  Yet it did not seem solid.  Everything in the room – the stuccoed ceiling, the mahogany furniture, the marble tiles – felt soft and brittle.  She could almost sense the floor bending, crumbling beneath her feet.  The threat of destruction hung over it.

“I’ve never let you loose in this place, have I?” said Alexander.

“No,” replied Sophia.  “I’m not sure if I’d have wanted you to.  How much is there to see?”

“Too much,” he said.  “Call it vanity.”

He led her out of the hall into marble corridors.  They twisted and turned for seeming miles, each decorated with objects from a different era.  One was devoted to Japanese prints, swords and calligraphy; another to strange figurines and masks, African or Polynesian – she couldn’t tell.  Around another corner the windows changed to medieval stained glass, so vivid and colourful even in the dark, and further on she was astonished to see a stretch of corridor dedicated to science fiction.  Vast stills from famous films were framed on the walls, and model starships gleamed on stands, silver moonlight on silver hulls.  It was like a museum with no order, no judgement and no context; just objects, endlessly diverse.

They began to descend.  The geometry of the house no longer made any sense to her; whenever she thought they must have doubled back on themselves, a wholly new room would appear before her.  It began to get darker.  Windows became less and less common, and a kind of haze obscured the view far ahead.

“I don’t come down here very often,” said Alexander.  “Just enough for it not to fade away.  Not that the very heart of it ever could.  We’re almost there.”

The next corridor was lit solely by candles.  It was very long, very straight, and the bare stone walls were entirely devoid of decoration.  At the far end Sophia could see a large pair of wooden doors, like those of a church.  She knew herself to be in the absolute depths of the place.

They stood before the great doors, banded with metal strips.  Alexander reached into an inside pocket and produced a large iron key, worn and pitted.  He turned it in the lock and opened the door without ceremony, taking a candle in his hand as he did so.

“There it is,” he said dourly.  “The great, grand secret.”

The room was pitch-black – except for a small plinth, some twenty metres away.  Something on it barely glowed with a copper-blue light.  She stepped forward, hardly daring to breathe.  The chamber must have been vast – her footsteps echoed, though her eyes were fixed on the glow.  It began to resolve into a pattern, then into a shape, until she was stood beside it.

It was a small cube, rounded at the edges, and made of dark wood.

“You can pick it up,” said Alexander’s voice behind her.

She did; it was just larger than her palm, and much heavier than it looked.  She held it up to her eyes, and saw the carving in the wood of concentric circles crossed with lines, dots and curves, like the most complex of mathematical diagrams.  It was deep, with so many layers that its manufacture seemed impossible, like an optical illusion, and from each crevice and crack crept that blue light from some inner source.  She tried to look at it, but couldn’t fix her eye on it, even when she held it an inch from her face.  The light still seemed aeons away.  She discerned a faint, sonorous noise and held the box to her ear; the sound was quiet, but immense, like the noise of the sea in a shell, but so much more vast, as if that sea spanned galaxies.

It was at once the most beautiful and most fearful object she had ever known.

“What is it?” she whispered.