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ONE BRIGHT morning soon afterward, Valcas found me on the brunch balcony looking out at the sea through my tiny telescope.
“You don’t need to capture a recording of the waves, you know. They will last all day long.” He bolstered his taunt with a playful grin.
“Excuse me?”
He put his arms around me to adjust the positioning of the instrument. “Of course it helps when you’re rotating the lens.”
“Stop teasing! You know what this is, don’t you?”
“It’s a zobascope.”
I turned around to look at Valcas as if that would help me to understand him better. “A zobe-a-scope?” I repeated, testing out each syllable of the word.
“I’ve only seen one before, but I’m not surprised that there are duplicates. Yes, I’m quite certain that’s what it is.”
“Do you know how to use this?”
Valcas smiled, patiently waiting for the punch line to the joke. When none came, he replied, “You don’t?”
“It was a gift given to me with no explanation. Please, teach me.”
“There’s really no trick to it. The contraption is much less complicated than a camcorder. You just look through the smaller end, like a telescope, turn the zobascope clockwise to record and then turn it counterclockwise to play back what’s already been recorded.”
“Okay.” Unsure of what was inside to be seen and afraid to accidentally record over something important, I carefully placed the zobascope back into its box. “Thank you, Valcas.” I smiled. “If it’s that easy, then it can wait until after we have brunch.”
If it’s that easy, I added in my head, then why didn’t Enta just tell me how to use it?
***
LATER THAT DAY, I SAT alone in the front room of my guest suite, facing a window that overlooked the all-night sky.
“No need for your books this afternoon. Just a pencil and your writing tablet if you wish.”
The voice I heard while turning the zobascope was younger but just as animated. I knew that the voice belonged to Enta, even though I couldn’t see her. Instead, I watched a young boy, approximately seven years old, as he carefully turned fine sheets of parchment notebook paper to an empty page. The boy had a defiant ruddiness to his cheeks. His tousled black hair still had the wet shininess of having been combed earlier that day. Otherwise, he was as neat as a pin in his navy blue uniform trousers, crisp white-collared shirt and green button-down sweater. The boy looked up expectantly, his attention focusing on me through oversized emerald eyes.
I listened along with the boy as Enta chattered on and on about how Edgar had made her the gift, how she always dreamed of being more than a governess and how fond she’d always been of the sciences. Governess? Valcas’ governess? I thought she’d said she was a nurse.
“Oh, to be an innovator like him someday! I don’t think he realizes just how far ahead he is of his own time.”
I smiled, knowing that Enta had surpassed Edgar’s work on the travel glasses.
“What do you think of my birthday present, Valcas?”
“What is it?”
“It’s a zobascope—one of your Uncle Edgar’s most recent inventions. Very advanced for his time period, you see. After this lesson you will be able to look into it and see today as if it were happening all over again. Only, at least right now, it will be from my point of view.”
“Wow!”
The child Valcas sat at a student desk in a classroom that looked to have been made for twenty students. Behind him, the walls were lined with shelves full of lesson books, picture books, scientific instruments and astrological equipment. Valcas’ eyes were on fire with curiosity. He clutched a pencil, but took no notes.
“Nurse, tell me how it works.”
“First, as I am doing right now, you place the small end of the zobascope to your eye and point the larger end to what you want to observe. When you rotate the lens clockwise—you see that I am turning the front half of the instrument to my right and your left at the moment—the zobascope takes a moving picture of the object. This type of picture is called a recording.”
I watched as the child’s shining eyes opened wider than I thought was anatomically possible.
Enta continued, “Yes, I can see that you are impressed, Master Valcas, but there’s more.”
“More?” The child’s feet twitched with excitement.
“Not only am I making a recording of you sitting at your desk as I see you through my own eyes, but I am also capturing our entire conversation. Everything we say will be right here inside the zobascope.”
Besides looking astonished, the child Valcas grew suspicious. With furrowed brow and through pouted lips he responded, “Then I must behave or you will show this recording to Mother and Father?”
At this, Enta and I both chuckled. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Master Valcas. Inattentiveness and speaking out of turn will only result in additional lessons today. Oh, how delighted I am with this very special gift!”
Seemingly unable to keep his bottom upon his seat, the child asked, “Nurse, how do you see the recording?”
“A well-thought question, young sir. You only need to rotate the lens counterclockwise—the opposite direction—which I will show you in a moment after I let you have a turn.”
Valcas grinned widely, revealing a missing front tooth. “Will I be spinning around when you watch it back? Or does the whole room spin?”
I sensed Enta’s surprised silence, and then heard her understanding murmur as she took in Valcas’ smart question.
“It is true that the zobascope turns, but the room will be still, exactly the way that I am looking at it.”
“Oh.”
“Are you ready for your turn?”
“Yes!”
After an empty pause, a torrent of giggling filled my ears. The image wasn’t as clear and stable as it had been with Enta acting as the “zobographer.” Flashes of shelves, tall windows and desks whirled by. I steadied myself for a dizzying view of the domed ceiling, followed by a more serene vision of a stick bug slowly making its way across the floor. I had to admit that Valcas had a knack for making the recording come to life; although, I wasn’t sure exactly what it was that made the room appear grander and more alive from his point of view.
“Master Valcas, you must observe more steadily. You will compromise the quality of the recording.”
“I’m making the room spin, Nurse. You’ll see!”
“You’ve made the room spin long enough now. If you remain still and sit nicely, I will let you record the rest of your afternoon lesson.”
A delighted squeal confirmed the agreement. I watched as the room rotated halfway as the child Valcas turned toward the front of the classroom and then plunged downward, followed by a milder bump as he settled onto his seat. A chalkboard came into view, covered in bold penmanship on the topic of how artists portray two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects.
“Valcas—you are not looking at me. Please face me while I am speaking.”
“Yes, Nurse.”
The room shifted to the left and then upward, centering on the governess. Enta smiled in approval. Her auburn hair, speckled with gray, was pulled up halfway into a chignon, with ringlets falling onto the starchy white collar that crowned a long black dress. I’d expected to see a younger Enta, but she looked exactly the same age as she did at the homestead—with one glaring difference. The Enta I knew never had rich brown eyes. She’d had a more understated honey-hazel color, a dim maple frost. I thought of Valcas’ bright green eyes that had turned pale blue, as well as my own dark eyes that had faded to green. The travel glasses had affected each of us.
I listened with the child Valcas while Enta lectured about the history of painting techniques and how artistic realism became less necessary with the invention of the camera. She spoke about video cameras and movies as if they were inventions of an archaic past. I wondered why Enta was so excited about the zobascope. Was it remarkable just because Edgar had been able to invent it with the limited resources that had existed in his own time period? Or was it simply because the gift had been from Edgar?
I remembered Enta’s tears and splotchy red eyes from when she mourned his death. What had Edgar meant to her? The zobascope didn’t answer these questions. Unable to fast forward, I became weary of the lesson. I returned the zobascope to its box and settled in for the night.