Among the Wonderful (7 page)

“What is that sound?” Thomas leaned toward the door. “What
is
that?”

“What sound? I don’t hear anything.”

“Listen.” Thomas held up his hand.

There was a small hammer tapping, and a louder creak, like an old door, and then a quick pull of saw teeth zipping wood grain. A very small saw, maybe.

“Somebody’s building something in there,” Thomas whispered.

“I don’t think so. Oh, yes, now I hear it.” From inside came a series of snapping clicks and a whistling sigh that slid down the musical scale.

“I want to see what’s making that sound,” Thomas said. “It
sounds … 
strange.”
He pushed open the door, and Guillaudeu followed him into a vast open space.

“Dear God,” Guillaudeu whispered. “He’s knocked out the gallery walls.”

Barnum had removed half of the interior walls that had originally divided the fifth floor into six galleries. Guillaudeu now stood in an open space the size of three galleries. He turned in a circle, absorbing the new dimensions of a space he had known so well over the years. There were the two groups of three high windows, and new yellow stripes along the floor where the walls used to be. Scudder had displayed geological models on this floor: the eruption of Vesuvius, a diorama of the Noachian flood. The largest specimens had been up here, too: the polar bear, the cameleopard. Now there was a new wall that bisected the floor, a pile of tools in one corner, a ladder leaning against the wall, and a single tipped-over chair.

“He just went ahead and did it. He destroyed it.” Guillaudeu’s eyes glazed for a moment. His rage did not overwhelm him, but he was conscious of its searing flame licking up out of the crevices of his mind. He remained as composed as possible.

As he took a few more steps into the room, Guillaudeu finally comprehended the single structure in the middle of it: a cylinder, at least forty feet in diameter and seven feet high, with a Portland cement base and wide wooden staves bound by metal rims. It appeared to be a gigantic barrel.

Thomas was now standing with his ear to this structure. “Are they building something inside of there? Hello?” They heard the sawing sound again. A series of mechanical clicks and a high-pitched creak came from the barrel, then the tapping hammer. Thomas closed his eyes as Guillaudeu approached the tank. Listening. Clicks; a yawning yap, another disappointed whistle descending the scale. A whoosh of breath.

“It’s full of water,” Thomas whispered. “It sounds like horn players clearing their instruments.” The pianist opened his
eyes. “Let’s see what it is.” They heard a whirring trill, a bleat. Thomas ran to the far side of the gallery and returned with the ladder.

The tempo of the clicking increased. Thomas scurried up the ladder, and although it was a rickety perch, Guillaudeu managed to follow him, peeking over the top of the tank from a few rungs below, clinging to the edge of the tank for support.

Cutting through the water was the chalk-white ridged back of a creature swimming in tight circles. So smooth was its motion that it barely broke the water into waves, even though its body was ten feet long and moving fast. The animal stopped in front of the two openmouthed men, raised its bulbous head, and chirped.

“What in the world is that?” Thomas whispered.

Guillaudeu stared at the circling animal.
“Delphinapterus leucas.”

“I’ve never seen anything so … white. And it’s tiny, for a whale.”

“I’ve never seen anything so preposterous!” Guillaudeu’s voice rose. “What does Barnum think he’s doing?”

“How did it get here?” Thomas was still whispering.

“Barnum has people coming and going at all hours of the day and night. He doesn’t tell anybody what he’s doing.” Guillaudeu was barking his words and glaring at the whale. “We don’t even know where he is, for God’s sake. Who will take care of this … monstrosity! Where is the placard to tell visitors how this whale fits into an exhibit, and into the natural order?”

“Do you hear that? It’s making the most extraordinary sounds,” Thomas murmured.

“He hasn’t informed me of what he’s done!” Guillaudeu’s voice broke.

“Look! Look how it swims! It’s frightening to be so close to it, don’t you think? Perhaps it’s harmless.”

“I don’t care!” Guillaudeu shouted. “I am appalled! How did he get it up here? That’s one thing I’d like to know, Mr.
Willoughby. But more than that, what I’d really like to know is
why
is it here? Why?”

As he watched the whale swim in circles, Guillaudeu became aware of a different emotion forming on the heels of his dread. If Barnum could produce a whale that twittered like a canary on the top floor of the museum, why in the world should Guillaudeu feel so compelled to explain it? Barnum had accomplished an almost magical feat; the evidence swam in circles just below him. But instead of melting into admiration, or even respect, or at least acceptance, Guillaudeu’s rage flared to such a degree that in order not to be swept entirely away he clung to it harder than ever: The whale was an abomination, an embarrassment to all known rules of scientific exhibition and curatorship.

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” The tone of this new, feminine voice gave Guillaudeu the impression that its owner had been standing there for more than a few seconds.

“I am aware that the museum is considered primarily a place of entertainment. And that, indeed, it contains objects, such as this beluga whale, that are here specifically to entertain you.”

Guillaudeu stumbled to extricate himself from what he now saw was a schoolboyish position on the ladder. The woman below him appeared to be particularly large-boned, with a plain, doughy face, a pronounced double chin, and small dark eyes under a broad forehead. She had emerged from a door built into the new wall on the far side of the gallery.

“But as you may or may not know” — the woman continued — “the museum has recently acquired a different function.”

As he returned to the ground, Guillaudeu discovered there was another reason for the woman’s formidable tone. She was close to eight feet tall. Thomas Willoughby remained frozen at the top of the ladder.

“This floor has become something of a hotel.” The giantess waved her hand toward the newly built wall and the open
door from which she had come. “There are museum employees living in apartments up here, myself included. I’m here to request that you kindly refrain from conducting shouting matches while you’re visiting the fifth floor. The whale makes quite enough noise as it is.”

She Stands Up Again

I had to laugh at the room, with its too-small chair and an oval mirror hung the height of my chest. It was a new room nested inside an old building, with a drift of sawdust in one corner and sap pearling from the walls. A window, thankfully, but not facing Broadway. And the ridiculous bed, like a toy to me.

It’s a bed like any other. I knew it would break from the moment I saw it, so why did I even lie down? I can hear your voice even now. I can see the three of us in the kitchen by the stove, all of us laughing, you into your hands, me with no sound, and he with his mouth hanging open. We were still unsure: How had it happened? Where did I get it? What would happen next? I could touch my hand to the ceiling. Mornings, I woke with my legs hanging farther off the edge of the bed, my bones already a network of pain. You said if the bed’s too short, just take off the footboard! We used it for kindling. I will do the same thing here.

You would grab me by the waist with no warning, as if there was some urgency to your message, as if I didn’t have my whole life to understand what you said, to learn and hate your lesson again and again.
You’re a mirror, Ana, for people to see themselves
. And he would come up saying,
Be prepared. Think ahead. Have what you will need
. As if we control the world with foresight. As if you would have me believe the whole thing was planned.
Do not look for yourself in others, Ana. But they will see themselves in you
. I wanted to lunge out and
take both of you in my arms. Already I was big enough to do that, big enough to know you were afraid for me. Here is the hammer and there is the bed. I am prepared. I have what I will need.

You would stand here, your eyes alight, peering up at me, proud that I don’t depend on the world for sustenance or for answers. But look at me. Just look. I am alone in this ridiculous room with a hammer in my hand, talking to my dead mother about broken things.

I could do nothing about the bed. I used crates to hold up the foot, but I knew it would crash down again. I had spent the day in alternating bouts of energy, unpacking, pacing, and fuming. Both my jars of sea salts had broken among my clothes so I could not even soak my feet. The train journey from Rochester had rattled my spine to such an extent that I felt each vertebra was about to pull free of the others. Sitting was no relief, nor was lying down, even if the bed had not broken. Dull reverberations echoed through the halls of my body. Doors slammed into my nerves, windows crashed together in gritty bone-gratings. Thank God my crates of Cocadiel’s Remedy hadn’t broken during the journey. I broke the seal on one of the cobalt bottles and held it between my thumb and forefinger to drink the bitter tonic.

At times throughout the day I doubted my decision to work without a manager. But each time this thought fluttered up, I experienced the subsequent, undeniable certainty that the way I had chosen was the only way I could proceed. At least with my career and my sanity, my life, intact. There was another way forward, the one that the sluggish waters of Lake Ontario had offered. But for now I continued to work. I busied myself with some triviality before the memory of my recent debacle, the events that had led me to Barnum’s museum, could wedge itself into view. I could do things differently now, I reassured myself. But what, exactly? I was in business for myself only, with no one taking away what I earned. But what changes would I make?

I was saved from this paradox by a crisp knock at my door. When I opened it, I beheld a familiar sight: a woman, her
prodigious eyebrows furrowed, standing with her hands on her hips. There is always a hirsute woman, whether you join a one-wagon show or the most grandiose collection of exotica. This one had her beard coiled neatly in a net that hung by loops from her ears.

“Please tell me you play whist,” she said.

“I do, as a matter of fact.”

“Then life is bearable.”

She extended a hand covered in long black hairs. “I’m Maud Kraike.”

Maud was forty years old and wound tight as a fiddle string. In the two minutes I spent talking with her she insisted we’d been in a show together seven years earlier in Halifax, and that I’d worn a medieval princess costume with a conical, veil-draped hat. I had no recollection of this, but it could have been true. She had arrived from Niblo’s Garden two weeks earlier, and despite the energetic recitation of her past, it held nothing new for either one of us. We did not need proof that our lives ran closely parallel.

“We still need a fourth. I got Mr. Olrick. But the Chinaman will never do. Never play whist with a Chinaman.”

“I see,” I said, not seeing at all. I was suddenly weary. Or, more likely, I had returned, after a short lapse, to the fact that I’d been weary for quite a long while.

When Maud had gone I lay down on the collapsed bed, propping my feet on a crate. My spine relaxed slightly, and I closed my eyes, hoping to fall asleep before it found its next complaint.

You came to me every night, before I left you. Before you left me. You leaned over me before I slept. You stroked my face with the back of your hand.
Ana
, you said.
Ana. We named you for Anastasia, your grandmother. And do you know why, what your name means?
Why? What? Tell me.
It means She Stands Up Again
.

In Jones’ Medicine Show they put me in a bizarre patchwork of furs over a chiton and girdle. They gave me a wooden shield and a helmet and called me Athena. More recently, during my time with Mr. Ramsay, he nearly always embellished me in some manner, usually with a high ladies’ top hat with a wedge of lace draped across the brim. Near the end of my tenure with him he instructed me to wear a horrible costume that he had made at his own expense: a girl’s picnic dress, all yellow daisies, ribbons, and a white lace pinafore.
A walking juxtaposition
, he said. As if I wasn’t one already.

There would be no costume here. The taxidermist had delivered a letter from Barnum addressed to me. No costume, he said. Unless I wanted one.
Wanted
one. But speaking with the audience was part of my contract. The letter included no details about advertisement, when to expect my pay, and nothing about merchandise. Near the bottom of the page, though, one stipulation:
For between three and five hours each day, Miss Swift will stroll among the visitors. For the remainder, there will be a booth in Gallery Three on the second floor
. His intention was to surprise the crowd with an exhibit outside its case.
I will disconcert them first, and subsequently please them
.