6

“Are there forms to fill out?” I asked.

The shopkeeper looked at me for a moment before shaking his head.

“Will you want references?” I had been careful to return exactly one week from the time of my first visit.

Another look, another shake of his head.

“Is there a job description?”

“No.”

“An interview?”

“Not really.”

“Would you like to know anything about my present position?”

He shook his head, adding, “But you could tell me your name.”

I told him. He smiled and offered me his hand to shake.

“And yours?” I asked

“Pecheur.”

“First name or last?” I asked.

“Either.”

“You’re joking.”

“No, not at all,” he protested.

“But that isn’t your given name.”

“That’s true. You might say it’s my chosen name.”

“You don’t want two names?”

“I find one adequate.”

“Shall I call you Mr. Pecheur?”

“Just Pecheur is fine.”

I nodded.

“Why don’t you spend a little time with the models? Then I have something to show you.”

He flicked on the spotlights again. The model boats sailed in the pools of brightness. Again I moved among them, attracted first to one and then another. Occasionally I glanced at Pecheur, bent over the diagrams spread on his counter. I lingered awhile in front of the junk. Its shape, and especially its sails, had an ancient and exotic feeling.

“Is that your favorite?” Pecheur asked when he came to join me.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Would you like to see something a bit different?”

“Sure.”

“Come this way.”

He led me to the back of the shop and pressed a button for the elevator. The golden door slid open, and he and I stepped into a cab barely large enough to contain us. The interior was made of the same golden metal, polished to the point where I could see my reflection. The cab didn’t appear to be moving but must have been rising ever so slowly. Finally the light indicated that we had reached the second level.

The door opened onto an empty room about the size of the shop on the first floor, but no ships were on display. Rather, a low white wall extended into the room like half an ellipse. It rose up above my knees and its interior sloped to form a large basin roughly twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide. Two brown leather armchairs faced this wall. Behind them, about in the position of the counter on the first floor, were a door and a glass window that appeared to belong to some sort of control room.

“Have a seat.” Pecheur gestured toward the chairs. “I’ll be right back.”

I sat. He entered the control room, and in a few moments the lights dimmed. When the room had gone completely dark, I heard murmuring and a warm, moist breeze gently touched my face. A globe of light brightened like the sun overhead. In front of me it revealed a miniature landscape, its flatness cut diagonally by a wide river. Beside the river I saw fruit trees and a group of tiny people dressed in clothing that looked like costumes from Ancient Egypt. A small package, a log or perhaps a basket, floated on the water’s muddy surface.

Pecheur sat beside me and lightly touched my shoulder. He offered me a device that looked, with its pair of unusually long tubes, like a hybrid of binoculars and a telescope. Putting it to my eyes, I saw that the package was a basket that drifted toward the reeds at the edge of the river. I didn’t understand how this scene had been created. Only a moment before, there had been nothing in this space. It couldn’t be real earth and water, but I had never heard of a hologram that looked so realistic. Perhaps such an image could be created of a single person, but of an entire landscape, with a river that flowed and people who moved toward the water’s edge, gesturing and pointing to the basket caught in the reeds? It struck me as impossible.

I could not be seeing this scene that unfolded before me. And yet through the unwieldy binoculars I saw a young woman wade into the water and pick up the basket. She carried it to the shore, knelt, and set it down before another woman, who gestured for the top to be opened. Within I could see a red-faced baby, perhaps three months old, a beautiful child despite the contortions that crying brought to its face. The standing woman looked at the baby for a minute or more as she spoke to the kneeling woman and the others that had gathered about. Then the kneeling woman rose, picked up the basket, and joined in a slow, single-file procession as the group departed from the riverbank.

The lights lowered until the room returned to darkness. I heard a distant breaking of waves. A chilling, wintry breeze rasped my face, rich with the scent of the sea. I shivered as the unmistakable sound of waves grew louder until the plangent push and pull seemed to be at my feet. A full moon glowed high in the darkness and cast its light on gray formations of clouds. I saw ocean unrelieved by land. How Pecheur had done this I could not imagine. I leaned forward into the bitter wind blowing from the basin and reached to touch the water, but he placed a restraining hand on my arm and I rested back in my seat. A schooner with three masts bucked and dipped on the moving surface. Using the schooner for a sense of scale, I realized the waves must be forty feet or higher. The ship faced into the wind but made no progress. At times the waves broke over the deck and only the masts were visible, but then the schooner would rise again from the depths. What had happened to the crew? I shifted the spyglasses toward the steering wheel, but it had no hands to guide it and spun aimlessly from side to side. I wondered how the boat could maintain its position, much less progress, without guidance. Despite the darkness, the ship had no running lights. Looking closely at the sails, which I had imagined secured against the violent winds, I could see that only shreds remained. Without a crew, without sails, unable to progress—this boat must be doomed. Its next landfall would be fathoms down at the ocean’s bottom. What did Pecheur mean by this? I swung the scopes to the prow, but the frothing of the waves over the deck and the tossing of the ship from side to side obscured the small letters of her name.

“How do you do this?” I asked him as the moon darkened and the scene disappeared. I whispered as if there were others in the audience who might be disturbed by my voice.

“We’ll talk later,” he whispered in reply, his gaze intent on the scene before us.

Next a large lake appeared, beneath a sky of dark and threatening clouds. Villages were clustered here and there on the swath of green that extended from the circumference of the lake as far I could see, although its farthest shore remained beyond my sight. Above the villages towered high, bald hills with ragged channels slashed into their sides by rain. I saw many small boats dotting the lake’s surface, and lifted the eyepiece for a closer look. The largest boat, perhaps twenty-five feet in length and holding more than a dozen men, led a procession of smaller boats toward its depths. On my face I felt a cool mist and the force of a rising breeze. The wind must have been far more powerful on the lake, because the waves rose higher than the boats that rocked on it like bobbins. The mariners cried out and pointed at the skies, from which torrents of rain whirled and tumbled. Lightning bolts danced among the ships.

Turning to the largest ship, I saw frantic men rousing a comrade from sleep. When this man arose, a blue light began to glow all over the boat and even in the surrounding water. I had heard of Saint Elmo’s fire and imagined that this must be an oddly synchronous example of that natural phenomenon. Many men gathered about and gestured imploringly to the man. Again I wished I could hear their voices, but he spoke in a way that must have been forceful. When he had finished speaking, he raised his hand with his palm facing out and seemed to speak to the skies. Immediately the dark clouds broke apart and the sun shone down on the calming waves. The man continued to gesture forcefully to the others around him, who appeared to share my astonishment.

I had to remind myself that this scene was only an illusion. No man can stop a storm. Pecheur could create whatever stories might please him. I held to these thoughts as the boats, the lake, and the remarkable man vanished into darkness. This time the lights rose to illuminate the entire room, and the large basin opened emptily in front of me. I looked for a trace of water, rock, or earth but saw nothing except the basin’s smooth sides, which seemed to be made of plexiglass.

“It’s amazing,” I said. “The images are miniature but appear to be real. Not like a movie or hologram.”

“It’s done with a sort of software.”

“Software?”

“Yes, to create the images for the displays.”

“Like animation?”

“Yes, something like that, but more advanced than the animation used for mass entertainment.”

“The people looked so believable.”

“The scopes enhance the effect of the landscape.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“Two programs run simultaneously, one to create what you see with the naked eye and the other for what you see through the eyepieces.”

“But I moved the viewer and saw different parts of the landscape.”

“Yes, it has an orientation feature.”

“If I had been nearer, I’m sure I would have heard their voices.”

Pecheur smiled. “I’m working on that.”

“And if I touched the water, I’m sure my fingers would have been wet.”

He looked pleased.

“How can you change scenes so quickly?”

“It’s simply opening another file. I’d already programmed the sequence.”

The conversation continued in this vein. His explanations did nothing to dispel my sense of awe. I knew so little about engineering, animation, and software that his use of them struck me as magical.

“What would your assistant do?” I asked after we had chatted for a while.

“Help me with the different projects. Handle some of the details. Take care of keeping certain records. There might be some traveling.”

I had the dismal feeling that I wouldn’t be competent to help him with his projects, so I didn’t ask any more questions about the position. We rode the elevator to the ground floor in silence. I found myself relieved to see the familiar display of models.

“Are you ready to choose today?” he asked.

“Not today.” I doubted I could afford any of the boats in his shop. Of course, I had no idea what the boats cost, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself by choosing and not being able to pay.

“On your next visit, then,” he offered, returning to his position behind the counter.

“What is the name of this shop?” I asked, coming to the counter and peering at the plans spread in front of him.

“The Floating World.”

“I’ve read about the floating world, but it’s about illicit pleasure.”

“It comes by night and vanishes by day,” he said with a smile.

“Surely that isn’t what you meant.”

“Must it mean one thing or another? Of course, each boat is a floating world, complete in itself. But what of the desire that comes and goes? That’s what made me want to have a shop, to build the models. It made me an amateur … ”

“Hardly,” I demurred.

“By which,” he went on strongly with one hand raised, “I mean a person who does what he loves. Amator. Not a paid specialist, but a hobbyist following his pleasures, floating first with one desire and then another, building one model and then a roomful of models. What is like that in your life?”

“At the moment,” I replied, “nothing.”

“Yet you came here. What can a model boat be but a hobby?”

I didn’t answer him.

“There’s still more to see,” he said at the front door.

“More?”

“I hope you’ll come for another visit.” Those bright, searching blue eyes looked into me. “Say a week from today.”

“Yes,” I agreed, shaking his outstretched hand, “I’ll see you then.”