The Museum of Extraordinary Things (5 page)

“Quiet, Mitts,” she heard the man say.

The pit bull terrier looked at his master and considered, but was clearly too high-spirited to obey. The creature bounded into the woods, in her direction. The man let out a shout, but the dog continued on.

Coralie took off running, her breath coming in bursts. She felt a sharp pain below her breastbone as her heart thudded against her ribs. Her father had kept her separate from the public, except for those hours when she was on exhibit. He believed that living wonders could be made common by their association with outsiders, who could not possibly understand them and would most likely take advantage of them and ruin them. “Once you are ruined,” her father had warned, “there’s no way back.”

The dog crashed through the underbrush. Coralie could hear him racing behind her. She did her best to outpace him as she tore through the brambles, but in no time the creature was at her heels. She turned, afraid she might be attacked from behind. Her blood felt hot within her chilled flesh as she steeled herself, ready to be bitten. She knew how red her blood was, how on fire despite how waterlogged she was. The pit bull’s ears and tail were cut to nubs, and he had a compact, muscular body. Coralie expected him to leap at her, foaming at the mouth; instead he wagged his rear end and gazed up at her, utterly foolish and friendly. This was no vicious beast, only man’s best friend.

“Go away,” Coralie whispered.

“Mitts!” the man shouted through the woods. “Damn it! Get back here!”

The dog panted and wagged, sniffing around his quarry, ignoring Coralie’s attempts to urge him away. She waved at him and hissed beneath her breath.

“Mitts, you idiot!” the young man called.

The dog was torn between his great find and his loyalty to his master. In the end he turned and crashed back into the underbrush. Through the fluttering leaves, Coralie could now fully see the man. His face was all angles, with a worried expression and broad, sensitive features. His wide mouth broke into a grin as soon as he spied his dog. “There you are.” He sank down to pet the dog with tenderness, and the beast responded by leaping and licking his master’s face. “Are you aiming to get yourself lost?”

Coralie felt something pierce through her, as if she were a fish on a hook, unable to break free. She felt a tie to the stranger, drawn to his every movement. Without thinking of the consequences, she shadowed him when he returned to his camp. Despite the dog, she crept closer. The young man had been cooking two striped bass over the smoky fire, one for himself and another for his dog, whom he fed before taking his own dinner. He called the dog an imbecile, but he set out a bowl of fresh water and petted the pit bull’s wide head again. “Dummy.” He laughed. “Are you looking to be a bear’s dinner?”

A large camera had been placed atop a folded overcoat so that it might be sheltered from the wet ferns and damp soil. He was a photographer as well as a fisherman. Then what would he see if he looked at her through the lens? Gray eyes, long glossy hair falling down her back, the scales of a sea monster painted upon her skin. A liar, a cheat, and a fraud. He would see that and only that, for, as the Professor had warned her, what men imagined, they most assuredly found. Coralie wished she were nothing more than a lost woman, someone he could share his supper with, but she was something more. She was her father’s daughter, a living wonder, an oddity no common man could ever understand.

Navigating through the brambles, shielding her face from the thorns, she found her way back to the river. She heard footsteps following her. For an instant she felt a sort of thrill, as if she wished to be discovered. But when she turned it wasn’t the man from the campfire. Her heart sank, for there in the undergrowth was the shadowy form of a large, gray beast. For an instant, Coralie thought it was a wolf. In the fairy tales she had loved as a child, the villain was always punished, granted the fate he or she deserved. She flushed to think of the evil she had done in the world, the trickery and masquerades. She had seen to her father’s bidding without question or remorse. Perhaps this was her rightful fate, to be eaten alive by a fierce beast, a proper penance for her crimes. She closed her eyes and tried to still her heart. If her life was over, so be it. She would be nothing but glimmering bones scattered beneath the brambles, and the strands of her hair would be taken up by sparrows to use in their nests.

The wolf stood in a hollow, eyeing her, but she must have appeared worthless, for it shifted back into the woods.

A mist was fluttering through the trees when she at last reached the appointed meeting place. Coralie was stone-cold, and yet she was possessed by a rising tide of emotion that coursed through her with its own brand of heat. She realized there was only one explanation for what she’d felt as she’d hidden behind the tree in her sopping clothes, watching the young man, her heart pounding. Maureen had told her that love was what a person least expected. It was not an appointment to keep or a trick or a plan. It was what she had stumbled upon on this dark night, without any warning.

When Coralie saw her father pacing beside the carriage, she felt the sting of resentment. The Professor had never raised a hand to her, but his disapproval was wounding and he would not be happy to have been kept waiting till dawn. Starlings were waking in the bushes even though the last of the stars were still strewn across the sky. Coralie often wondered if her father truly cared for her, or if perhaps another girl in her place would have suited him just as well.

“There you are!” the Professor shouted when Coralie appeared. He rushed forth with a blanket to quickly wrap around her shoulders. “I thought you had drowned.”

The Professor hurried her into the carriage. The liveryman, who was often overpaid to buy his silence, would likely demand double for this journey, for it would be bright morning by the time they reached Brooklyn. There would already be crowds on the Williamsburg Bridge, men and women walking to work on this blue March day, unaware that a monster passed by them, and that she wept as she gazed out the window of the carriage, wishing that she might be among them and that her fate might at last be her own.

TWO

THE MAN WHO COULDN'T SLEEP

**********

I
REMEMBER
my other life, the one in which I loved my father and knew what was expected of me. I had been named Ezekiel, after the great prophet of our people, a name that means God strengthens. Quite possibly it was a fitting name for me at some point, but, just as strength can be given, it can also be taken away. Mine was a path of duty and faith set out before me in a straight line, and yet, without asking anyone or even discussing my plan, if that is what it was, I changed my life and walked away from the person I might have been and, most certainly in my father’s opinion, the man I should have been. There have been times when the decision I made resembles a dream, as if I went to sleep one person and awoke as someone else, a cynical individual I myself did not know or understand, changed by magic, overnight. There are those who believe that evil spirits can imbue mud and straw with life, breathing wretched souls into inanimate objects to create living beings, and that these dybbuks walk among us, leading us to temptation and ruin. But what is made of water and fire—for isn’t that what a man whose nature opposes his responsibilities can be said to be? Does one quench the other, or do they combine to ignite the depths of the soul? I have wondered all my life what I am made of, if there is straw inside of me, or a beating heart, or if I simply burned for all I did not have.

My father brought me to this country from the Ukraine, where our people were murdered merely because of our faith, our blood marking the snow. All across the countryside there were pogroms, which in our language means devastation, a storm that devours everything in its path. When the horsemen came, they left nothing behind, not breath or life or hope. My mother died in that far-off place. She was alone in our small wooden house when the wild men on horseback came to burn our village to ashes. There was no one to bury and no body to mourn. My father and I did not acknowledge what we had lost or speak my mother’s name. When we traveled we kept to ourselves, trusting no one. I do not remember the ship or the sea, only the taste of the bitter, rusty water we had to drink, and the bread we brought with us from the Ukraine, the last taste of our past life falling to pieces in our hands. But I do remember the forest in Russia. For the rest of my life I carried that with me.

Our first residence was shared with twenty men and boys in a tenement building on Ludlow Street. The toilet was in an alleyway. There was no heat, only a stove that burned whatever coal and wood we could gather from the streets. There was very little light and the rain came pouring in through the roof. Out in the alleys people kept pens of geese, as they did back in their homelands; often the geese would break free and could be found wandering along the streets. Lice were everywhere, and it was impossible to get a good night’s sleep, for the bedbugs drove people crazy with itching as they spread from mattress to mattress, a plague we couldn’t purge.

Other men from our village who had also escaped the pogroms of the wild Russian horsemen soon befriended my father. In our homeland we called a village a shtetl, and each one was a world unto its own. The men, brothers. The women, sisters. Our brothers took pity on us and helped us find better living quarters, where we might, once again, be on our own. Farther down Ludlow Street we found a kind of salvation. A single room, but ours. My father had a bed, and I slept on the floor atop the feather quilt we had brought with us, sewn by hand by my mother. It was the only thing of any worth that we owned.

Every morning we recited the same prayers, swaying back and forth in meditation. We dressed in black coats and black hats. We were Orthodox in our practices and beliefs, as our grandfathers and great-grandfathers had been. In the Ukraine I would have been a scholar, but in New York I followed my father to work, as I followed him in all things. His name was Joseph Cohen, known in our village as Yoysef, and he took pride even in the lowliest tasks, as if he were still a scholar reading God’s commands. If he’d had a wife and daughters, they would have been employed, and, like many other Orthodox men, he would have spent twelve hours a day in study and prayer, but that was not meant to be. In the factory I sat on the floor watching his nimble fingers turn rolls of fabric into dresses and coats. In this way I learned the tailor’s trade. I was proud to bring my father needles and spools of thread. Other men murmured they wished they had a son as smart as I was, as promising and as studious. I was a worker from the time I was eight years old, and I had a gift for creating well-made clothes out of plain cloth. That was the way my fate unfolded. And yet, despite the harshness of our lives, I did not question my faith. I still carried a prayer book in my coat pocket.

We knew we were lucky to have employment. Bands of day laborers waited for work in Seward Park on the corner of Hester and Essex; when we passed by we shook our heads and said they were like pigs at the market. I was alongside my father and his friends when the bosses came unexpectedly to the factory one day and fired everyone without warning. This was the day my life changed, when I lost my soul, or found it, depending on what you believe. As garment workers, we had no rights, but at least we earned enough to survive, until the bosses decided otherwise. They’d brought in new workers, cheaper labor, men just arrived from Russia and Italy who would toil eighteen hours a day for pennies and never complain when they were locked into workrooms to ensure they didn’t take time to eat or drink or even to rest for a few moments. These newly arrived men asked for even less then we did, and the Jews, desperate for the pennies we would earn, agreed to be at their sewing machines on Saturdays, the holy day for our people, when as Orthodox Jews we could not work. It seemed we were no longer needed, and no objections would be tolerated. Men who looked like gangsters stood at the door; should anyone dare to complain, they wouldn’t hesitate to beat down the agitators. On that afternoon some of those who had been dismissed went home and cried, some looked for work, but my father went to the river.

I was tall for my age, as quiet as I was studious. My life was in the shul and in the factory, but on the day we were let go I followed my father to the docks of Chelsea, and because of this I became someone else. Something inside me grew hardened, or was it that something inside me was freed, a bird that flew from its cage? I trailed after my father, though he told me to hurry back to Ludlow Street. The docks were crowded with men in black coats, some who were clearly of our faith, friends of my father’s, but opposing them were a gang of thugs cut from the rough cloth of the docks, men who carried brass knuckles and were good and ready for a fight. I could think only of keeping up with my father. When he noticed me, he shouted that I must go home. I ducked behind some barrels, hoping he’d assume I’d done as I was told. That was when it happened. My father seemed to leap all at once, like a strange unwieldy bird he rose into the air and flew away from the pier. There was the slapping sound of flesh into water that I still hear.

Dockworkers nearby were unloading a ship of its cargo, huge steel beams, each of which took a dozen men to handle. When they heard the splash they all came running. My father floated, his heavy coat spilling out around him like a black water lily. I feared this was to be our last good-bye, and I would now be on my own. I sprinted back to the dock, sweating and in a panic. My feet were on the railing and I was about to jump in to rescue him. I didn’t know how to swim, but that was not the reason I did not leap in. It had often seemed possible that he might take his life when we wandered through the forest. Once I had discovered him with his belt made of rope looped in his hands. He was staring into the branches of a tree filled with black birds. I grabbed his arm and told him there was a path only yards away, and then, as we wandered forward, I found it.

We had come this far together, and I was stunned that he was now willing to leave me behind in this world of grief. But hadn’t he been looking for a way to rejoin my mother? Wasn’t his love for her more compelling than his concern for me? Now the cage had opened; the bird had flown. In that instant, my responsibility to my father vanished. It was then I decided the person I would save was myself. I owed nothing to my father, nor to anyone else in this world.

The dockworkers pulled my father from the river and wrapped woolen blankets around him, but I walked away. That night, when my father came home, he acted as if nothing had happened, and so did I.

But it had.

After that I avoided people in our neighborhood. I no longer considered myself Orthodox, and I left my hat under the bed whenever I went out alone. I was drawn to the river, and began fishing. I went farther and farther on my expeditions, away from the harbor where blue crabs ate the bait off my line and the fish tasted of petroleum. The very act of angling calmed me and allowed me to think. I studied what other men did and thereby learned where to search for night crawlers and how to spy a run of shad in the darkening waters. I went ever farther uptown, looking for solitary places, and finding them.

In those days I was walking through a dream rather than living my life. I had become someone else, but who was that someone? The watcher at prayer meetings, the false son who sat in silence at our meager dinner table, the boy who had failed to rescue his father. He had finally found employment again, sewing women’s blouses, and I worked beside him once more. Here the conditions were even worse than in the first factory. We were not allowed to speak or open any of the windows, most of which were nailed shut. There were no fire escapes where we might sit and catch a breeze from the west. In the summer it was sweltering; in winter we wore gloves with the fingers cut off so that we might still sew. Rats ran inside the walls, and I sometimes put my ear up so I could hear them. The truth is, I envied them their freedom, and longed to be among them, darting into the alleys, living out of sight, doing as they pleased.

There were several other boys there, and I was befriended by one, Isaac Rosenfeld. We did the pressing of finished clothes with gas-fueled irons, in which a flame burned so hotly we needed to take care to ensure that we didn’t burn ourselves or drop sparks onto the piles of lace and muslin spread around. We shared whatever food we had—an apple or some raisins that we stole from the pushcarts on the streets when no one was looking. We did not speak much, but we usually worked side by side. When the supervisor walked through, Isaac always made an obscene gesture behind his back and we had a few laughs. We shared our contempt for the rich and well fed, and that bound us together.

By then I was eleven years old. I had swallowed my share of bitterness, but a portion had stuck in my throat and turned to rage. That rage was there night and day, looming at all hours. Sometimes I would see the owner’s children come to visit their father in a horse-drawn carriage, a boy my age and a younger girl. I felt a hatred inside me that seemed too large for me to carry. My father’s fingers bled every night, and he soaked them in a glass of warm water to soften the calluses. One day I was sent to the storeroom for thread. As I walked along the corridor, I heard the owner’s children laughing and playing in their father’s office.

I crept nearby to spy on them. They were seated behind a large, handsome oak desk playing cards, using real pennies to bet. The girl was wearing a rabbit coat over a ruffled dress, and the boy was saying, “That’s not fair, Juliet, you’re cheating. You have to play by the rules.” Perhaps my stomach rumbled, or I breathed out my hatred in a foul gasp. They looked up to see me in the doorway, dressed in my father’s old black trousers, a scowl on my face. From their expressions I could tell they saw me as menacing. Immediately, the boy held out his watch. I didn’t think twice. If they expected me to be a robber, then I would accommodate them. I grabbed the watch from the owner’s son and stuffed it in my pocket. Luckily, I no longer carried my prayer book.