The Malacia Tapestry. Brian Aldiss

to eat. Those of us what are going to change the world must keep ourselves fed up … We aren’t supposed to think about change in Malacia, are we? Still, we’ll see …’ He grinned at me in a sly way. He pointed up at the leather-toothed ancestral depicted on the tavern sign, its segmented wings outspread. ‘You have to have jaws like that creature to eat here. Do you mind visiting our slum, de Chirolo?’

      We pushed into the tavern.

      There, Bengtsohn was known and respected. In short order, a grimy girl placed soup, bread and meat balls with chillies and a pitcher of ale before us, and we set to, ignoring the jostling bodies at our elbows. I ate heartily.

      Sighing after a while, and resigning myself to his pouring me more ale, I said, ‘It’s good to feel the stomach full at midday for a change.’ There I checked myself. ‘Why should I say “for a change”? Everyone today seems to have been talking about change – it must be because the Council’s meeting.’

      ‘Well, talk, yes, but talk’s nothing – foam off from the sea. Malacia never changes, hasn’t done for thousands of years, never will. Even the conversations about change don’t change.’

      ‘Aren’t you introducing change with your – zahnoscope?’

      He dropped his fork, waved his hands, shssh’d me, leant forward, shook his head all at the same time, so that I found my face peppered with half-chomped meat ball. ‘Remember that whereas talking about change is proper and fit, anyone who makes bold as to implement change IN THIS DEAR OLD STABLE CITY OF OURS’ (said loud for effect as he groped with his fork) ‘is liable to finish up in the Toi with his throat cut to shreds …’

      Silence while we ate. Then he said, in a tone of voice suggesting that the statement might be of particular interest to any eavesdroppers in the vicinity, ‘I work in the field of art, that’s all what interests me. Happily, art is a central interest of this dear city, like religion. Art’s safe. Not a better place in the world for to pursue art, though heaven knows it don’t pay all that much, even here. But of course I don’t complain of that. How I’ll go through next winter with a greedy wife … Come on, mop down your platter with the crust and let’s get back at the workshop. Work’s the thing, if it earns fair pay.’

      Back through the court we went, and into the workshop, which was a dim and dirty place, cluttered with all manner of objects. Bengtsohn waved his hand in a vaguely descriptive way which took in a number of apprentices at benches, some munching hunks of bread.

      ‘You have a busy place.’

      ‘I don’t have it. It isn’t mine. I can be booted out from here tomorrow, with boss’s boots. This is an extensive works, biggest in Malacia. These workshops and glass factories back on the great exhibition gallery. You’ve been in that, I suppose – the gallery of the Hoytola family, Andrus Hoytola.’

      ‘Hoytola’s hydrogenous balloon.’

      ‘That’s another matter. I’ve been here during some years now, ever since I have come from Tolkhorm with my family. There are some worse masters than Hoytola, I’ll grant you that. Here’s Bonihatch – he’s foreign to Malacia too, and a good man.’ He made reference to one of the apprentices, who loitered up in shirt-sleeves.

      Bonihatch was my age, dark, small and wiry, with untidy blonde whiskers. He nodded, looking suspiciously at my clothes without addressing me.

      ‘A recruit?’ he asked Bengtsohn.

      ‘We’ll see,’ Bengtsohn replied.

      After this enigmatic exchange, Bengtsohn, with Bonihatch in surly attendance, showed me some of his work. A small den off the main workshop was stacked with slides for magic lanterns, all categorized on shelves. He pulled slides down at random and I looked at them against a flickering oil lamp. Many of the scenes were Bengtsohn’s work. He was an artist of a rough but effective order. Some of the hand-painted transparencies, especially those depicting scenery, were attractive, the colour and perspective harsh but nevertheless effective. There was an arctic view, with a man in furs driving a sledge over ice; the sledge was pulled by a reindeer, and the whole scene was lit by a sky full of northern lights which reflected off a glacier. As I held it before the lamp, he saw something in my face and said, ‘You like it? As a young man, I have gone beyond the Northern Mountains to the ice lands. That’s what like it was. A different world.’

      ‘It’s good.’

      ‘You know how we make these slide-paintings?’

      I indicated the stacks of glass round about, and the long desk where assistants worked with brushes and a row of paint-pots. ‘Apart from your genius, Master, there’s no puzzle about the production.’

      He shook his head. ‘You think you see the process but you do not see the system behind the process. Take our topographical line, what is popular perennially. Travellers from far parts will make sketches of the fabulous places they have visited. They return home to Byzantium or Swedish Kiev or Tolkhorm or Tuscady or some other great centre, where their sketches are etched and sold, either as books or separately. Our factory then buys the books and artists are converting the pictures to slides. Only the slides live, because light itself puts the finishing touches to the painting, if you follow me.’

      ‘I follow you. I too am proud to call myself an artist, though I work in movement rather than light.’

      ‘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.

      ‘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.

      ‘It’s a cannon?’ I asked.

      ‘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!