Among the Wonderful (6 page)

“You want to join the Lyceum of Natural History?”

“Yes! I would like nothing better. Just think of the camaraderie, the exchange of ideas. But now” — Guillaudeu was embarrassed by his own sputtering tone — “now it’s all wrong.”

“I can’t imagine you don’t get invitations anymore, Emile. You’ve been here for so long; you know everyone in your field. I can’t believe the Lyceum hasn’t contacted you.”

“I still get some invitations, not as many as before, and not from the Lyceum. But now I’m too embarrassed to go anywhere.”

“Why?”

“Because Mr. Barnum has decided to publicly ridicule this museum! He is soliciting animal specimens from the general public. He put advertisements in the papers.”

“Why would he target the public?”

“Let me describe it this way: Yesterday an elderly servant showed up at my office with the corpse of some kind of spotted cat. It was larger than a housecat, about the size of a raccoon, and wrapped in a sack. Ultimately I determined it was
Felis yagouaroundi
, from South America. The man told me that his mistress had received the cat as a gift, from a friend who had just returned from a government expedition to the Amazon. Exotic pets are common in certain circles, you know. And those pets very often die. I soon discovered that Barnum has offered a small sum for each creature. It’s a low practice, completely illegitimate. It’s awful, really. And the cat was far too decomposed to mount.”

Edie took his arm again. “I’m sorry, Emile.”

They soon reached the electric eel, safely pickled in its jar as it had been for twenty years.

“Hello, old friend,” Edie whispered.

“Indeed.”

They regarded the eel.

“Emile. My father misses you. Why won’t you go to him?”

Guillaudeu kept his eyes on the eel. Patches of its skin had begun to dissolve into slimy filaments. He had embalmed the
creature twenty-one years ago. He still remembered slipping it into the jar of alcohol, sitting at his desk in the old almshouse building where they displayed the collection in the years before Scudder had built the museum.

“You’d best leave that subject be,” Guillaudeu said softly. He saw Scudder’s broad, bearlike face as it had appeared during their last conversation, in which the old man had justified his decision to dismember his own, not to mention Guillaudeu’s, life’s work.
The character of natural philosophy is shifting
, the old man had insisted, his jowls trembling.
The arrogance and impossibility of encyclopedic knowledge is obvious. The new age of Science is dawning, Emile. The great outstretching of our minds to invisible realms. We must accept it or else we’ll grow as dusty as this collection!

Guillaudeu had argued valiantly. The public, he insisted, will always hunger for knowledge of the natural order of creation, of nature’s unique catalog. Where else can an American citizen examine a Chinese water deer or a binturang, except at Scudder’s Museum? Scudder had blinked at him and laughed, shaking his head. It was at that point that Guillaudeu stormed from Scudder’s study. Now he did not want Edie to know that her father’s betrayal had been total; he’d vowed to never to speak to Scudder again.

“I know you miss him, Emile. Why don’t you find new work? This place is bothering you so much now. I can see how it’s wearing on you. And we’ve been so worried about you since Celia died. We don’t understand why you have not leaned on us in this —”

“I won’t discuss it. Shall we go on, or must we part here?”

Edie straightened and took a step away from Guillaudeu. “Why are you so disagreeable? If I didn’t know you so well, I’d think you actually wanted me to leave you.”

He allowed her to take his arm and lead him away from the eel.

The truth was that he would not let Edie see that he was relieved, now that Celia was no longer hovering in the corners of his life. He and Celia had not known the intimacies of marriage for a very long time. Thankfully, they hadn’t
wasted their lives fighting. They had reached an adequate stasis. It was not what either of them had hoped when they married, but it was a kind of equilibrium. Celia at least had been very comfortable, if not satisfied, in the contours of their life; he had never acknowledged her lover, and over the years she had stopped complaining about the consuming nature of his work. But he could never share this with Edie because even though all of it was true, he was afraid she would perceive each detail of the history as proof that his marriage had been simply a sustained act of cowardice.

In the next gallery they encountered a family who stood transfixed in front of a new exhibit.

“Automatons,” Guillaudeu observed drily.

“It sounds like a hundred music boxes!” said Edie, staring at the tiny metal spools. Within a large frame, delicate machinery moved on a series of metal cogs, cylinders, and sliding rods. Attached at eye level to the metal framework was a wax head, complete with glossy black ringlets. At regular intervals the talking machine’s “face” grew animated, the jaw dropped open, and mechanized “words” came out of her mouth.

“The time it must have taken to make this,” Edie added. “It’s hard to imagine.”

“I find I can’t even look at its face,” replied Guillaudeu. “It gives me horrible chills.”

“I’ve heard a certain instrument, from Africa, I think, with a similar plunking sound,” said Edie.

“There’s something profoundly diabolical,” Guillaudeu continued, “about a machine with a human face. It’s not meant to exist.”

“I want to see the roof, Emile. Will you take me?”

Scudder had never opened the roof to the public.
It’s a liability
, he’d said. Naturally, it was the first place Barnum wanted to go after he bought the museum. Barnum, twenty-five years younger than Guillaudeu and fueled by disconcerting confidence, had walked onto the roof, raised his arms as if about to conjure a storm, and slowly rotated, taking in
the view of the buildings and the harbor.
My Ark of the city
, he proclaimed.

The vast rooftop held a miniature English garden with potted laurels and even a patch of grass, planted on a raised pedestal, that framed the view of the harbor. Along the southern edge was a promenade, complete with inlaid brick, balloon vendors, and scattered stone and wooden benches. Even now, in the cold beginning of spring, groups of visitors walked the periphery, weaving among bedecked flagpoles and leaving puffs of white breath in their wakes. The restaurant spread northward from the midpoint of the roof. Most of the patrons had moved their chairs close to the freestanding stoves placed throughout the restaurant on cooler days, and waiters moved between them and the large kitchen on the northern edge. But as Guillaudeu and Edie emerged from the stairwell, what caught their eyes was a crowd gathered near the center of the garden, pressing its collective nose against a huge new wrought-iron cage.

When they approached, Edie read the placard aloud:
“THE HAPPY FAMILY?”

A coyote paced the length of the cage, picking its way around three ground squirrels sitting on their hind legs. A peregrine falcon with tattered tail feathers hunched on the ground, and mice scurried near its feet. A housecat sat in the corner like a loaf of bread, the coyote not even looking at it as it paced. A dead forked tree leaned against one side of the cage where a corn snake lay asleep like a pile of yellow rope. Above the snake was a mottled gray owl.

“Look!” In front of them, a little girl called to her mother. “The dog doesn’t eat the cat!” She laughed and pointed.

Guillaudeu could not interpret Edie’s fixed smile. “Nature did not intend this,” he said ominously.

“Where’d he buy it?”

“From someone who apparently found perverting nature a fine entertainment. They’ve been trained out of their own natures.” Guillaudeu watched the coyote gliding the length of the cage. It turned like a swimmer, barely brushing the
corner with his tail. The dog watched the people looking in. The children squealed at the falcon and the mouse.

Edie read the inscription on a brass plaque. “
THE DIVINE PLEASURE SAW TO IT THAT THERE WAS A GREAT PEACE AMONG THE ANIMALS; THE LION DID NOT HURT THE UNICORN, NOR THE FALCON THE DOVE
. Touché, Barnum.”

Guillaudeu looked away.

“Maybe you’re the one being presumptuous, monsieur,” Edie said, stepping back from the cage. “We all play God now and then, even you. Especially you, my dear.”

“Edith, really. That’s not true.”

“Just think about what this place is, Emile. It’s not a natural history museum anymore.”

“But what is it?”

“That” — she was laughing again — “I couldn’t tell you. But the children are smiling, and so am I.”

As they approached the group of employees sitting at a large table near the edge of the restaurant, Edie ran ahead to embrace William the ticket-man and his nephew, Gideon. Guillaudeu introduced her to the new theater manager, Mr. Forsythe, who sat among four uniformed ushers. Mr. Archer was nowhere in sight. At the far end of the table was a newcomer, an odd-looking man of slight build in a dusty suit coat and three days’ growth on his chin. This man avoided looking anyone in the eye and introduced himself as Thomas Willoughby.

“Thomas Willoughby?” Edie gasped. “The pianist?”

Mr. Willoughby visibly shrank. His brown-black hair floated at least three inches above his forehead.

“The one who used to play at Mason Hall?” Edie continued, incredulous.

“Unfortunately, the same,” Mr. Willoughby murmured.

“Mr. Barnum’s set to have him lead a band on the balcony,” William added.

“Well,” said Edie, regaining her composure. She addressed the assembled group. “How do you all like the new museum?”

“I like it just fine,” said William, taking out his watch and
checking the time. “We had a record number of visitors yesterday, and it’s going to just keep getting better.”

“Have some wine, Emile.” Edie poured them both a glass, and raised hers. “To the Happy Family.”

A wind flicked the red and blue flags on their poles and set the rooftop trees rustling. A hat flew into the air and a group of children chased it until it sailed beyond the edge of the museum. Another surge lifted the corner of the tablecloth, upsetting two wineglasses and blowing Guillaudeu’s napkin off his lap and away. They waited for Barnum, but Barnum did not appear.

“I’m surprised Mr. Willoughby is still in New York,” Edie whispered to Guillaudeu. After the meal they had left the others, and they now strolled along the promenade. A high railing protected museum visitors from vertigo. It was pleasant, Guillaudeu admitted; though windy and unusually cold, March was proving to be particularly bright.

“I thought he’d left town after what happened. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Like what? I’ve never heard his name before.”

“Oh, you’ve never heard of anyone, Emile. Thomas Willoughby’s a brilliant musician! Celebrated in London and Vienna. Solo performances every week at Mason Hall. I was there with Rosemary Timm. You remember her, don’t you? Mr. Willoughby had been praised in all the papers as a phenomenon not to be missed. Well, we just happened to go to the performance during which he became … 
unhinged
, as they said in the papers.”

“That makes it sound as if his skull opened up like a treasure chest.”

“He was finishing Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Number Thirty-one and positively
soaring
, Emile. When all at once he leapt to his feet. His stool toppled and slid across the stage. At first we thought that in his fervor he had transported himself somewhere far away from Mason Hall and the movement of his body had separated from the music. Perhaps that was the
case. I don’t know. He continued to play for a few moments, and we could see he was staring into the piano’s innards some feet in front of him. And then he climbed right over the keyboard and up into the piano.”

“You’re joking.” Guillaudeu looked back to the table where Thomas Willoughby huddled alone with a glass of wine.

“His left knee hit the lowest notes and his right shoe hit the highest. The audience! You should have heard us gasp. Then he was plucking the strings inside the piano with his rump in the air!” Edie laughed, covering her mouth. “It was spectacular, Emile. Two men rushed in from offstage and picked him up by the waistband.”

“Did he resist?”

“Not exactly. But he was fixated on the instrument the whole time, his arms stretched out, playing the air, until he disappeared from view. Needless to say, we gave him a standing ovation. All his scheduled performances were canceled after that. He disappeared —”

“Until now.” Guillaudeu finished.

“Barnum must have hired him for the publicity his reputation would bring.”

“And here we are, playing his game.” They stopped by the railing.

Guillaudeu peered down at the people far below. He noted myriad worlds brushing past one another, and the randomness of it made him ill.

Looking away, Guillaudeu snapped open his watch.

“I think he’s crazy,” Edie murmured. “But even if he is, he’s not dangerous. I’m certain of that. Just look at him. Why don’t you invite him down with you, Emile. I want to stay up here, but I can see you’re ready to return to your office.”

Edie let go of his arm and straightened the collar of his shirt. He observed sadness in her eyes, but to acknowledge it would make it worse and Guillaudeu could not bear to do that.

“Yes, I’d best get back.”

“Invite Thomas Willoughby to go down with you. He looks so forlorn over there by himself.”

“All right. For you.” Guillaudeu gave her a little bow and said good-bye.

Thomas Willoughby appeared to appreciate the gesture and followed Guillaudeu into the stairwell with barely a word. But on the landing outside the door to the fifth-floor galleries, the pianist stopped.

“What’s in there?”

“That door is usually locked,” Guillaudeu replied. His mind was already on the final positioning of the short-eared owl. It would complete his collection of Old World owls, and he was restless to place this one among them.

When he bought the collection, Barnum had closed the fifth floor to the public, and rumors were circulating among the staff about what he was building. William the ticket-man was certain it would be a jungle. People would open the door, he said, only to be engulfed by vines. Birds would live in the branches of huge living trees, and a tiny river would coast through the galleries operated by a system of pumps and drains. Guillaudeu had tried to keep away from the rumors; refusing to participate in the speculations was his one small protest against Barnum’s new regime. But now the door’s padlock hung open on its latch.