Jenny and Barnum (24 page)

Then he was being carried to his stateroom, his voice loud but seemingly not connected to him, his raving, or whatever it was, filling the passageway. Somebody smiled at him as she passed; he thought it was Jenny Lind but it wasn't; he didn't know where she was; but then he was in his bed, thankful, out of harm's way, and finally unconscious.

Near dawn there was a knock on Jenny Lind's door. At first she thought it was Tom Thumb; she had not been sleeping, visions of his sudden collapse in the Grand Saloon plaguing her thoughts. No such problems bothered Hannelore, whose snoring in the adjoining stateroom sounded like two lumberjacks sawing the ship in half.

“Who's there?” Jenny asked through the door to the passageway.

“It is I, Giorgio. I am healthy again. I could not sleep, little bird, and I thought you, too, might be awake—”

“Go away,” she whispered. “This is no hour for your foolishness!”

“Please, I love you! I yearn for you. Otto has had you all to himself throughout the voyage. I want to hold you and kiss you—”

The thought made her stomach turn. “I warn you, get away from the door or you will never set foot in the United States! Go away, or you will be headed back to Liverpool on the return voyage—”

The last word was hardly out of her mouth when she heard him scampering away, like a mouse running up the inside of a wall.

It was as if even in his sleep Tom Thumb knew what he had done to himself, that he had disgraced himself, for he was in an agony he could not have imagined. When he awoke—every half-hour, it seemed, so sick he felt as if he had swallowed a drowned rat—the weight of his shame fell upon him. He could see all the possible ramifications of what he had done, but he was too sick to do anything about it, too sick to do anything but suffer. All that was going to happen, Jenny Lind's reaction and its consequences for Barnum, would have to wait; but wait it would—the nightmare was that it was waiting already. The only sure way to take control of the future was to do something so incredibly stupid that it irrevocably disturbed the natural flow of things.

Saturday was another calm, clear day, and now that the
Great Western
was so close to North America the temperature moderated, and the huge sliding glass roof of the Grand Saloon was opened so that Anna Swan could have another glimpse of blue sky. She was still on the center banquette, surrounded by children, when Jenny Lind and Otto Goldschmidt entered. Jenny wanted to understand the acoustics of the room before the concert this evening.

“Could we have the roof closed for just a few moments?”

“Yes, yes,” Anna Swan replied. “Do what you like, please.”

While Otto played the same musical figure over and over on the piano, Jenny moved around the room, noting how certain tones were muffled or enhanced by distance and the nature of the materials covering the walls.

“I'm so looking forward to your singing, Miss Lind!” Anna Swan cried. “I have to sit in the back. Will I hear you clearly?”

“You will hear me perfectly, Miss Swan!”

“Rest your throat, Jenny!” Otto called from the piano.

She stepped up to the banquette, against which the elephantine woman leaned, her black dress cascading to the floor like bunting over the bow of an unlaunched ship. From under the hem jutted Anna Swan's black leather shoes, as big as triangular valises.

“It's so wonderful of you to sing for us, Miss Lind.” Her vast breast heaved a sigh, and she dabbed at her enormous eyes with a lace handkerchief the size of a bath towel. “I would happily exchange the rest of my life for just one day of yours.”

“You mustn't talk such foolishness,” Jenny said, embarrassed.

“It's true. You should see how the men look at you. Even Tom Thumb.”

“Now that
is
foolishness,” Jenny laughed.

“Have you seen the General?”

“Not since we passed the icebergs,” Jenny said warily.

“Chang told me that he got very drunk again and had to be carried to his room. He's having a terrible time.”

“Someone is giving him a terrible time,” Jenny said.

“What do you mean? I was talking about his drinking. Didn't you see him at your house?”

“No, but I saw the other two, Little Miss Lascivious and her friend. I've said too much. I do not like that little woman and I disapprove of her conduct—no, I am horrified by it.”

Anna Swan's eyes narrowed. “I am a God-fearing woman, Miss Lind.”

“And so am I. I must rest. I look forward to singing for you tonight, Miss Swan.”

Tom Thumb's hangover lasted two full days. By Saturday evening he was truly sick again, as if he had never left St. Petersburg. His lungs were raw, his throat sore. He knew it was the night of Jenny Lind's concert, but there was nothing he could do that would make him fit to attend it. Common courtesy demanded that he send around a note explaining his absence, but he was too depressed to bring himself up to the fundamental standards of mankind. Being guilty of rudeness made him writhe. He knew he was compounding his problems, but it was as if some element of his character wanted to do exactly that.

As the time for Jenny Lind's performance approached, he thought he would send his regrets while she was singing, so the explanation for his absence from the audience would be waiting for her when she left the concert platform. But then the night-table clock clacked loudly past eight, and Tom Thumb simply watched the minute hand start down the right side of the clock's face. He could not even stir himself to put the paper in his lap. He sneezed, his nose and head burned. He was telling himself he would apologize when he saw her—telling himself, but not really believing it. It was as if he wanted his life to end, but he didn't have the strength or the moral fiber to do anything about
that
, either.

At eight-thirty someone rapped on the door. He yelled, “Come in!” and the door opened—but nobody was there. He had to sit up to see Lavinia and Joe Gallagher coming in. “Get him out of here!”

Gallagher pointed his cigar. “Don't get tough with me, midget—”

“Out! I'll get the steward!”

“Wait outside, Joe,” Lavinia told Gallagher. “I'll be all right. This will only take a minute.”

What made her think she could talk like that in his rooms? He wanted to order her out, too, but if she had something to say, he wanted to hear it. Apparently it wasn't going to take long anyway. Gallagher closed the door behind him.

“Make it quick,” Tom Thumb said. “I haven't been feeling well.”

“I hope not, for the sake of your conscience,” she said. “Maybe it proves you still have one.”

“Look who's talking—!”

“No,” she said, approaching the bed, “
you
listen to
me
for a change! One of the things I'll always remember about you, Charlie, is your big, know-it-all mouth. Maybe this time if you have your ears open you'll learn something. Like how to behave. Like not to lie about people.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What you've been talking about—to her! Jenny Lind! You've got to be about the biggest hypocrite and liar I have ever known! What were you calling her after Vienna? A frightened, hysterical old maid? And now you're cozying up to her? Well, that's your business—but don't you tell her lies about me! I did
not
leave the door unlocked for you to walk in on me!
You
violated
my
privacy! Nobody said you could come in! That afternoon I asked to see you because I wanted us to have one last chance before I did anything—I hadn't done anything up to that point, no matter what you believe—”

He felt sick in his stomach. He started to get up. “Look, tell your lies to him, not me—”

“You don't understand anything, do you? Can't I see people without your dirty mind going to work? You and your old maid Jenny Irondrawers are a wonderful pair, because her mind is as dirty as yours. And her mouth is just as big. Anna Swan looked down her nose at me at dinner tonight. I wanted to find out why—and she told me!”

“Jenny Lind's been laughing at you, especially since that afternoon in the dining room when you came up batting your eyes—”

“You still don't understand. What was I supposed to do that day anyway? There you were making a fool of yourself—you were ga-ga!” She laughed. “And after what you
said
about her!”

“All right, I got the idea,” he said sourly. “You can get out of here.”

“No, you don't! You can keep your mouth shut from now on! I waited for you right through dinner that day. You never treated me with any respect before that, but I kept faith with you right up to then, when I realized you didn't think enough of me to send a waiter around with a note. What were you doing with her anyhow? You're supposed to be so good with the girls! But then this afternoon I learned from Anna that you've been spreading lies about me. What's the matter with you, didn't you ever tell the truth? You'd think you'd have the self-respect to keep your mouth shut.”

The door opened again. “You ready, sugarplum?” Gallagher asked.

“Yes.”

He waited at the threshold. Tom Thumb realized Gallagher was glaring past Lavinia—at him. “Wait outside,” Gallagher said to her. “I've got something to say myself—in private.”

She started to say something, but Gallagher helped her through the door. He shut it behind her and strode across the room, cigar clenched in his teeth, climbed the wooden step beside the bed, and struck the amazed Tom Thumb smartly on the end of the nose.

The next day, the second Sabbath at sea, passed necessarily uneventfully. Everybody needed rest. After the on-deck services Jenny returned to her stateroom and climbed back into bed, surrendering to the exhaustion brought on by extreme nervousness. They were close to the new continent now, the continent full of men crazed by new riches, women drunk on lust, and even savages, heathens who painted their bodies and prayed to mountains, birds, and snakes. Jenny was deeply distressed, afraid of what she had started. America! She had survived the voyage across the ocean, but for what purpose? Even if she had died, according to the contract, the orphanage in Stockholm would have been able to keep its money. God was keeping her alive for something else, which she hoped was an adventure in His service. God haunted her. She couldn't draw a free breath and she knew it. She had been raised up so far, tempted by so much. There were women in Paris and even London who laughed at her—she knew all about them, and bore them no malice or ill will. At thirty—almost—she knew what happened to such women. Eventually they married for money and security, and dried up with their poodles for lives of comfort but unhappiness. Lavinia Warren, Jenny was sure, was just an American version of the same type.…

By dusk passengers could see the shore of Long Island, low and flat, a line of low trees rimmed by a strip of white beach. Beyond were flatlands divided into small farms much like Denmark, Jenny had been assured. At the western end of the island was the city of Brooklyn, and beyond that, New York, more than a million people. It was hard to believe so much of Europe had been able to make the journey, even in two hundred years. At dawn the ship would be in quarantine at Ellis Island, and not until early afternoon would the
Great Western
paddle across New York Bay. Jenny needed all the time available to see that her people, from Hannelore and Miss Holobaugh, her secretary, to Signore Giorgio Minelli, were ready for the new nation, the new continent.

But on Sunday night she could not sleep, and dressed and went up on deck alone. The lunatic troupe with which the bizarre Barnum had surrounded himself had frightened her at last. Midgets and the attached twins, and a woman who could not sit down without making a house shake—what did they mean? Who was this Barnum after all but a self-proclaimed madman? If he was as celebrated in America as people said, then America was an asylum. She could not have raised the money for the orphanage in Europe in a year. She did not know why she had agreed to this nightmare, except that she had wanted a change. Her life had become an unrecognizable ordeal that finally left untouched the person at the center of it, who still felt outside of life, outside of experience, displaced, alienated, and alone. Herr Craelius had told her years ago that the life of an artist was full of struggle and sacrifice, but he had not spoken of the terror that she had yet to see in the eyes of any other living human being. In the lies she had told herself about her reasons for coming to America, left unwhispered was the hope that her fears would be left behind and she would allow herself to live her life at last. But no. Out there in the darkness was an America that threatened to swallow her alive.

Now she saw the kerosene lanterns of a small, steam-powered boat chuffing up to the
Great Western
.

“Pilot boat!” a sailor called.

It had already begun, merged seamlessly with all the events of her past. She stepped backward almost instinctively, but aware of her every gesture. She knew she was haunted. She turned to go down below when a shout came up from the little boat coming alongside. An American voice. It made her shudder, for it was harbinger of the strangeness that had made it, the strangeness out there about to take her into itself.

III

10.

Hoopla!
He wanted hoopla and
razzmatazz!
Barnum wanted the biggest noise New York had ever made, bands playing, fire companies marching, and thousands upon thousands of citizens lining the streets to see them, ragamuffins shinnied up the gaslights, office workers hanging out the windows, the whole parade in honor of the arrival in America of—or so Barnum had told them—the finest flower of young womanhood produced in the modern age, the beautiful and chaste Swedish Nightingale, ladies and gentlemen, the one and only—Miss Jenny Lind.

At least, that was the way Barnum wanted it, Jenny Lind and him in a polished ebony carriage, Barnum introducing her to America, and introducing America to her. The florists were on the dock right now working on the two arches Barnum had sketched himself weeks ago. Nothing like it had ever been seen before.