When Phosphor returned to the Big House, the cobbled courtyard reverberated with mules, their tails braided with bells, their saddlebags bulging with bug bombs propelled by compressed air, their faces transformed by the leather visors of his own invention.
Sitting on a yellow mule furnished with a quilted saddle, Fogginius wore black spectacles and a visor equipped with a veil; the ancient wizard looked like a hag in exile from a lunar harem. He also carried a bottle of oil to grease his posterior so that it would not get sore, but as hot peppers had steeped in the oil for weeks—the work of Cosima’s imagination—Fogginius, unduly agitated, was to ride in a discomfort he could never put his finger on. They set off beneath a green sky stubbled with clouds.
The evening Fantasma and his party left, Cosima celebrated her autonomy by smashing those didactic dinner plates that had once falsely instructed Fantasma as to the nature of the human species—but first she dropped the terrestrial globe she had been carrying. Next she raided the pantry and, dizzy on sugar, took herself to the garden where she deeply breathed in the potent scent of the spices growing there. What a relief to be free of the husband she hated and of that hydraulic marvel: Fogginius’ mouth!
Mistress of everything, Cosima high-stepped through the mansion’s silent rooms imagining Fantasma slowly sinking in quicksand as he screamed. And, because she believed in magic, and because little Pulco’s terror had seeded the idea in her brain, she painted his image on glass. That night, after the cook had gone to bed, she projected this image upon the kitchen wall. Freckled with grease from the cook’s deep-frying, Fantasma agonized till midnight as Cosima finished off a six-egg flan and paired her nails.
(This image, numbered 803, I found among the ocularscopic slides. It is larger than the others and vibrantly colored. Cosima was not an especially gifted artist, but Fantasma is recognizable and his expression of grief and terror as he is about to be swallowed whole is remarkable.)
The next morning, Cosima, having slept late and leisurely bathed in a precious room shimmering with glass, took herself to the balcony to comb her wet hair in the sun. The balcony was richly curtained with vines; naked, yet concealed, Cosima gazed at the landscape, which dropped dramatically to the sea, and saw blazing upon the creamy beach a city of fortune she knew had not been there the night before. Running to the kitchen, she bade the cook descend the hill at once to discover her vision’s meaning.
“It cannot be a mirage,” Cosima said, “because I can perceive people milling about down there—although they are no bigger than ants!”
Breathless and agitated, the cook returned an hour later with the news that pirates had organized a thieves’ market of such luxury no one thought to complain, and everyone, including the authorities, were down there now, benefiting from the loot which included the latest in French fashion, priceless jewels to be had for a kiss, pocket astrolabes she thought had something to do with witchcraft, velvet shoes, copal, wine Shyly she held up a gold locket and blushed.
This city, its tents made of sail and boutiques of bamboo and colored rags, was lorded over by a pirate prince—and who knows where he had learned to swagger with such irresistible charm, to braid his mustaches into his mane, and to speak convincingly about just about anything? Where had he learned to laugh with such felicity the moon would lose its bearings each time a thing amused him? How was it that he could seize a woman with his gaze and gather her body after, like a fruit set out on a plate?
Having heard enough, Cosima dressed herself in a sumptuous scarlet gown that had long ago done nothing for Fantasma’s grandmother but in which she looked just as Helen might have looked for Faust, and taking up a banana leaf to shield her pretty eyes from the sun, hurried down to the pirate souk.