Opened my eyes and saw Kistenmacher standing at the table. Staring ferociously at unwinding roll of paper. Hum and click of chain-drive motor, faint rustle of metallic brushes. Closed my eyes …
… and passed at once into wilder regions. Here, the skin becomes so thin and clean that you can feel the touch of air—of light—of dream. Here, the skin shrinks till it’s no bigger than the head of a pin, expands till it stretches taut over the frame of the universe. All that is, flowing against you. Drumming against your skin. I shuddered, I rang out like a bell. I was all new, a new creature, glistening, emerging from scaly old. My dull, clumsy skin seemed to break apart into separate points of quivering aliveness, and in this sweet cracking open, this radiant dissolution, I felt my body melting, my nerves bursting, tears streamed along my cheeks, and I cried out in terror and ecstasy.
A knock at the door—two sharp raps. The machine stopped. Kistenmacher over to door.
“I heard a shout,” Earnshaw said. “I thought—”
“Fine,” Kistenmacher said. “Everything is fine.”
DECEMBER 13. A quiet day, cold. Talk of snow. The sky pale, less a color than an absence of color: unblue, ungray: tap water. Through the high arched windows, light traffic on Main. Creak of wagons, knock of hooves. In library fireplace, hiss and crackle of hickory logs. Someone walking in an upper gallery, stopping, removing a book from a shelf. A dray horse snorts in the street.
DECEMBER 14. A sense within me of high anticipation, mixed with anxiousness. Understand the anticipation, but why the other? My skin alert, watchful, as before a storm.
DECEMBER 15. A new life beckons. A shadow-feeling, an on-the-vergeness. Our sensations fixed, rigid, predictable. Must smash through. Into what? The new place. The there. We live off to one side, like paupers beside a railroad track. The center cannot be here, among these constricting sensations. Haptograph as a way out. Over there. Where?
Paradise.
DECEMBER 17. Disaster.
On evening of sixteenth, Kistenmacher came to fetch me at eight o’clock. Said he hadn’t been in Box for two days—a last-minute snag in automatic adjustment of phonograph required full attention—and was eager to resume our experiments. Followed him down steps to basement. At locked door of Box he removed his ring of keys. Inserted wrong one. Examined it with expression of irritable puzzlement. Inserted correct one. Opened door, fumbled about. Switched on lights. At this point Kistenmacher emitted an odd sound—a kind of terrible sigh.
Haptograph lay on floor. Wires ripped loose from fastenings. Stuck out like wild hair. Back panels torn off, pins scattered about. On the floor: smashed reels, a chain from the motor, a broken frame. Wires like entrails. Gashed paper, crumpled lumps. In one corner I saw the dark head.
Kistenmacher, who had not moved, strode suddenly forward. Stopped. Looked around fiercely. Lifted his right hand shoulder-high in a fist. Suddenly crouched down over haptograph body and began touching wires with great gentleness.
Awful night. Arrived at library early morning. Earnshaw already dismissed. Story: On night of December 16, about seven o’clock, a machinist from precision room, coming to stockroom to pick up some brass tubing, saw Earnshaw emerging from basement. Seemed distracted, fidgety, quite unlike himself. After discovery of break-in, machinist reports to Wizard. Wizard confronts Earnshaw. E. draws himself up, stiff, defiant, and in sudden passionate outburst resigns, saying he doesn’t like goings-on “down there.” Wizard shouts, “Get out of here!” Storms away. End of story.
Kistenmacher says it will take three to five weeks to repair haptograph, perforate a new roll. But the Wizard has ordered him to devote himself exclusively to speaking doll. The Wizard sharp-tempered, edgy, not to be questioned. Dolls sell well but are returned in droves. Always same complaint: the doll has stopped speaking, the toy phonograph concealed in its chest has ceased to operate.
DECEMBER 18. No word from Kistenmacher, who shuts himself up in Room 8 with speaking doll.
DECEMBER 19. The Wizard swirling from room to room, his boyish smile, a joke, laughter. Go at it, boys! Glimpse of Kistenmacher: drooping head, a big, punished schoolboy. Can Wizard banish disappointment so easily?
DECEMBER 20. Earnshaw’s destructive rage. How to understand it? Haptograph as devil’s work. The secret room, naked skin: sin of touch. Those upright ancestors. Burn, witch!
DECEMBER 20, LATER. Saw Kistenmacher walking in courtyard. Forlorn. Didn’t see me.
DECEMBER 20, LATER. Or did he?
DECEMBER 20, STILL LATER. Worried about fate of haptograph. Felt we were on the verge. Of what? A tremendous change. A revolution in sensation, ushering in—what, exactly? What? Say it. All right. A new universe. Yes! The hidden world revealed. The haptograph as adventure, as voyage of discovery. In comparison, the phonograph nothing but a clever toy: tunes, voices.
Haptograph: instrument of revelation.
Still no word.
DECEMBER 21. The Wizard at his desk, humming. Sudden thought: is that a disappointed man? The haptograph destroyed, Kistenmacher broken-hearted, the Wizard humming. A happy man, humming a tune. How could I have thought? Of course only a physical and temporary destruction. The machine easily reconstructed. But no work ordered. Takes Kistenmacher off job. Reign of silence. Why this nothing? Why?
Perhaps this. Understands that haptograph is far from complete. Protected by caveat. Sees Kistenmacher’s growing obsession. Needs to wrest his best electrical experimenter from a profitless task and redirect his energies more usefully. So: destruction of machine an excuse to put aside experiment. Good. Fine. But surely something more? Relief? Shedding of a tremendous burden? The machine eluding him, betraying him—its drift from the practical, its invitation to heretical pleasures. Haptograph as seductress. Luring him away. A secret desire to be rid of it. No more! Consider: his sudden cheerfulness, his hum. Ergo.
And Earnshaw? His hostility to experiment serves larger design. By striking in rage at Wizard’s handiwork, unwittingly fulfills Wizard’s secret will. Smash it up, bash it up. Earnshaw as eruption of master’s darkness, emissary of his deepest desire. Burn! Die! The Wizard’s longing to be rid of haptograph flowing into Earnshaw’s hatred of haptograph as wicked machine. Two wills in apparent opposition, working as one. Die! Inescapable conclusion: arm raised in rage against Wizard’s work is the Wizard’s arm.
Could it be?
It could be.
Kistenmacher entombed with speaking doll. The Wizard flies from room to room, busies himself with a hundred projects, ignores haptograph.
No one enters the Box.
DECEMBER 30. Nothing.
FEBRUARY 16, 1890. Today in courtyard overheard one of the new men speak of haptograph. Seemed embarrassed when I questioned him. Had heard it was shaped like a life-sized woman. Was it true she could speak?
Already passing into legend. Must harden myself. The experiment has been abandoned.
Snow in the streets. Through the high windows, the clear sharp jingle of harness bells.
Perhaps I dreamed it all?
Have become friendly with Watkins, the new stockroom clerk. A vigorous, compact man, former telegraph operator, brisk, efficient, humorous; dark blond side-whiskers. His passion for things electrical. Proposes that, for a fee, the owner of a telephone be permitted to listen to live musical performances: a simple matter of wiring. The electric boot, the electric hat. Electric letter opener. A fortune to be made. One day accompanied him down to storeroom, where he searched for supply of cobalt and magnesium requested by an assistant in electrical lab who was experimenting on new storage battery. Saw with a kind of sad excitement that we were approaching a familiar door. “What’s in there?”—couldn’t stop myself. “Oh that,” said Watkins. Takes out a ring of keys. Inside: piles of wooden crates, up to ceiling. “Horns and antlers,” he said. “Look: antelope, roebuck, gazelle. Red deer. Walrus tusks, rhino horns.” Laughter. “Not much call for these items. But heck, you never can tell.”
A dream, a dream!
Yesterday the Wizard spent ten hours in metallurgical lab. Adjustments in ore-separator. “It’s a daisy!” Expects it to revolutionize the industry. Bring in a handsome profit.
The haptograph awaits its time. In a year—ten years—a century—it will return. Then everyone will know what I have come to know: that the world is hidden from us—that our bodies, which seem to bring us the riches of the earth, prevent the world from reaching us. For the eyes of our skin are closed. Brightness streams in on us, and we cannot see. Things flow against us, and we cannot feel. But the light will come. The haptograph will return. Perhaps it will appear as a harmless toy in an amusement parlor, a playful rival of the gustograph and the odoroscope. For a nickel you will be able to feel a ball in the palm of your hand, a hat sitting on your head. Gradually the sensations will grow more complex—more elusive—more daring. You will feel the old body slipping off, a new one emerging. Then your being will open wide and you will receive—like a blow—like a rush of wind—the in-streaming world. The hidden universe will reveal itself like fire. You will leave yourself behind forever. You will become as a god.
I will not return to these notes.
Snow on the streets. Bright blue sky, a cloud white as house paint. Rumble of dynamos from the machine shop. Crackle of hickory logs, a shout from the courtyard. An unremarkable day.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven Millhauser’s first novel, Edwin Mullhouse, was published in 1972 and received the Prix Médicis Étranger in France. He has published eleven works of fiction, most recently Dangerous Laughter, which The New York Times Book Review named a Best Book of the Year, as well as the novel Martin Dressler, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1997. He is a recipient of the Lannan Award and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere, and have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction, and other collections; his story “Eisenheim the Illusionist” was the basis of the 2006 film The Illusionist. Mr. Millhauser’s work has been translated into fifteen languages. He teaches at Skidmore College and lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.
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