“There we go,” Mr. Archer said, swiveling in his chair. “A first draft.”
“Already?”
“Would you like to hear it?”
Guillaudeu wished to be left alone, but Mr. Archer waved the sheet with a grand gesture.
“This is what will bring them in, monsieur. They’ll come in droves. I can get it to the press tonight, and it will be in the papers tomorrow.”
“I wouldn’t say droves.”
Mr. Archer held the paper daintily. “Don’t miss your chance to see the Astounding Antipodean Anomaly! For the first time in History, behold a creature that defies Scientific Explanation! Bear witness to the Enchanting Ornithorhyno. Half reptile, half bird, you will be struck speechless by this curious creature. Observe a lost strand of Creation! Participate in Scientific History! Leave it to Phineas T. Barnum to bring you the very substance of Science, or is it God’s idea of a joke? Barnum’s American Museum, open seven days a week from eight in the morning to ten at night, on the corner of Broadway and Ann. Only twenty-five cents to see all!”
Mr. Archer stood motionless for a moment, and then moved toward his desk. But he managed only a few steps before a tiny golden monkey jumped out from somewhere and landed on his head.
Three
The night had chilled uncomfortably; Guillaudeu shivered in his thin coat, standing in the shadow of the building where he lived. Across the street, the grocer, Saul, watched him from between two pyramids of yellow apples. Guillaudeu affixed his gaze to the brass door handle three feet away, but he could not move.
Ever since his wife died there, he had been unable to enter his apartment without making at least two passes around the block. Even then he often stood just as he did now, poised on the threshold with his thoughts clouding over.
There was pity in the furtive eyes of his neighbors as he circled his home, and this night was no exception. He looked over his shoulder at Saul, who gave a barely discernible shrug before disappearing behind the apples. Finally Guillaudeu raised his arm, inserted the key, and propelled himself inside.
Death smells of pumpkins. After five months, the sweet, foul odor that had lingered in the apartment was certainly gone, but Guillaudeu was sure it had permanently destroyed his olfactory apparatus, if not his deepest core. As he climbed the narrow stairs to the second floor, he knew he would always remember that smell as he approached this place. His nose would always be testing the air: Is it gone yet? Is it truly gone? Could imagination alone conjure the stench? As time passed, he became certain that it did. The ever-rising bile was evidence. Or did he actually smell a far less dreadful scent and he was just twisting it in his mind? The grocery was right across the street, after all, and given his profession he was never far from dead things, the shreds of rot.
After she died, he sold all the furniture in the parlor. To pay for the burial, he told himself. But he surely did not have to sell the drapes for that, or every single lace tablecloth that she’d acquired over the years. The truth was that once he started, he couldn’t stop himself; it had felt profoundly right to him as he watched the heavy uncomfortable chairs, flowered rugs, and countless stools with their embroidered cushions disappear. Now that it was all gone and the parlor was empty except for his tall bookcases and their contents, the situation was better. The world, especially the museum, was crowded enough; this domestic emptiness soothed him. He had no plans to replace anything.
The disease had colonized Celia’s body and after two days of symptoms they both knew she would die. The only question left was whether it would be in a day, two, or just a few more hours. Actions were reduced to pathetic details: She could no longer bear to be moved, so Guillaudeu propped her up on every cushion he could find. By lifting his wife off the bed’s surface onto pillows, he was able to fit the chamber pot beneath her. He emptied it every half hour, turning his face away from the viscous, white-flecked fluid. Cholera was an efficient assassin. It drained its victims quickly, and without fanfare ferried them across the divide.
On the fourth afternoon of her illness Guillaudeu was stirring the bitters in the kitchen when he heard her half-choked breath. This is her last breath! Is this her last breath? She is gone! But he found her reading the newspaper. She was laughing.
“Emile,” she croaked. “This is too funny.”
She had vomited in such large quantities that her lips and chin were rashed and flaking. Beneath the skin, her flesh seemed to have been scraped away from the inside; he’d never seen the contour of her cheek and jawbone in such sharp relief. He almost did not recognize her, and her laughter, framed by this ghastly appearance and her white hair tangled by too many hours on the pillow, transformed her even more.
“What is it?”
“It says here that five hundred and seventy-six people have died in the last two days.”
Guillaudeu took the newspaper gently from her hands.
“Right here in Manhattan.” She turned her head slightly toward the window. She looked between the brick buildings up to the smoke-gray sky.
“I cannot distinguish myself even in my own death,” she announced. “My existence will be swept away. It will sink unremarkably. No children. No great works. Nothing to set me apart from five hundred and seventy-five other forgettable souls! The newspaper will not even have room for my obituary.” She laughed softly. The strange mask of her face swiveled toward him. “I’ve upset you.”
“It’s all right.” He braced himself, but could not keep his hand from shaking as he offered her the tea. “You know how the papers exaggerate. And you have brightened so many lives,” he continued. His voice sounded odd. “How can you say those things?”
But he knew how she could. Guillaudeu sat on the edge of the makeshift bed. The skin had wrinkled terribly on each of her fingers, and Guillaudeu wondered if the nausea he felt while he clasped them was simply a reaction — or could it be the first sign of his own demise? But he remained well. It was a fact that added its own kind of delirium to those days: What kind of order did this world contain if he tended to a sick and contagious person, yet remained well? Randomness was not something Guillaudeu was built to appreciate.
The tap on the door surprised them both; the doctor was not scheduled to arrive for several hours yet. Guillaudeu went to answer it in his socks.
The caved-in appearance of the man at the threshold revealed that he, too, had been struck. He clutched at the door frame, peering beyond Guillaudeu with distracted, half-sunk eyes. The man’s dark beard was matted with spittle or worse. He was tall but he bent forward with one arm clutching his abdomen.
“I must see her,” the man whispered.
“You’ve come to the wrong place, sir.” Guillaudeu glanced out into the corridor behind the man. “I’m sorry. You should get to a hospital. Do you need a carriage?”
“Joseph?” Her hoarse voice reached the men with surprising force.
“Celia!” The man swung his head frantically. “Emile. Please.”
Guillaudeu took a step back, confused. The man lurched past, leaving Guillaudeu in his malodorous wake.
It was not until he followed the man into the parlor and discovered the stranger’s head resting on his wife’s bosom and her shriveled arms clasping him about the neck that he understood that this was her lover. He observed that had she not been dehydrated of all her body’s liquids, his wife would now be crying the first tears of her illness.
Guillaudeu leaned on the sideboard. Her disease had forced everything from his brain, even as it let his body live; all past and present disintegrated, disappearing like his wife’s flesh with only the thinnest membrane holding together the tatters. He had become an automaton, and now he felt only the dimmest flicker of feeling. So this was the lover.
He imagined her walking arm in arm with this man just as she now appeared: emaciated, her skin pulled too tightly around her skull, hanging loosely from her chin. Wearing the rags of the grave. Of course it would not have been that way. But he could see nothing but their s
keletal hands entwined.
He could not conjure the outrage that might have been appropriate in any other circumstance. He had known this man existed, after all, that he was somewhere in the city. It was strange to finally see his face, although certainly this ravaged caricature was a poor impression of the original. He felt a peculiar satisfaction, even now, in being able to clarify and catalog what had for so long been obscure. He did not feel anything that approached sadness. He was puzzled, horrified, relieved, and tired. His only certainty was that they would die, and that his own life was in a precarious flux.
The best he could do was to give Joseph a cup of bitters. He offered to help the man off with his jacket. He gently wrapped his wife’s lover in a quilt. The man would not meet his eyes.
When the doctor arrived, Guillaudeu simply said: Now there are two. The exhausted physician required no further explanation.
For another full night and day Guillaudeu tended to them as best he could, propping Joseph up as he had done with Celia. He wiped away sputum and vomit and emptied their pots. While the invalids slept, he crept into the room and watched them lying side by side like a monstrous pair of stillborn twins whose gray skin met with the light only to illuminate death. Each time he left the room he was drawn back almost immediately by the force of his curiosity: How many glimpses of the world were left to them, how many breaths? Halfway through the second night she died. Guillaudeu moved her carefully to her bedroom and then tended to her lover for eleven more hours. When Joseph, too, finally shuddered out of the world, Guillaudeu rushed from the apartment down two flights of stairs and burst into a cold, bright morning. He felt as if he were the ghost, emerging from one life and hovering at the threshold of the next.
Four
To Guillaudeu’s dismay Mr. Archer had made himself quite comfortable in the office, even commandeering Guillaudeu’s leather reading chair. As far as he could see, Mr. Archer spent most of the day reading newspapers. This did not particularly bother Guillaudeu, but Mr. Archer tended to exclaim over the day’s news rather loudly, and rather often. Worse, he did not care for clearing the papers away once he finished with them. Mr. Archer had been in the office just four days, but for Guillaudeu, who was accustomed to entire weeks of comfortable silence, this was far too long.
“They say Barnum’s back in New York,” Guillaudeu said. He was arranging the short-eared owl in its final position, sponging soda water carefully onto its plumage to eradicate any residual bloodstains. “He’s gathering some of the staff for lunch today in the Aerial Garden. He may be able to clear up the matter of your office.”
“That’s strange. I heard he was still abroad.”
“Abroad? I thought he had been traveling down the eastern seaboard,” said Guillaudeu. How could Archer know things that he did not?
Mr. Archer abruptly turned toward him. “Would you show me around the museum?”
“Show you around,” Guillaudeu echoed. “Why?”
“If Barnum is indeed back from his travels, and I am to speak to him with any intelligence, I should be familiar with his work.”
“It’s not really his work. He’s only just arrived here. And haven’t you walked around at all?”
“I couldn’t be bothered.” Mr. Archer dismissed the idea with his hand. “It’s too tedious. I would rather have your explanations of the exhibits as accompaniment. That would make all those trips up and down the stairs worthwhile.”
“I can give you half an hour,” said Guillaudeu. “No more than that.”
“Excellent,” Mr. Archer replied, rising from his seat.
The taxidermist looked over at Ornithorhyncus anatinus, where it sat next to the open pages of Cuvier. He had wanted to spend the rest of the morning scrutinizing the specimen and the afternoon mixing resin, linseed oil, and ink into the putty that would form the short-eared owl’s new eye sockets. But more and more often, the museum required that he serve its interest, on its own terms. Or maybe the specimens were simply becoming more challenging. And demanding. Especially the ones with canes.
“I don’t know if we want to start here, Mr. Archer,” Guillaudeu called down the hall when he saw where the ad man was going. “I would really prefer —” But Mr. Archer continued straight past the marble stairway to a set of doors at the far end of the ground-level hall.
“But the waxworks! Surely, with the crowd it draws!” Mr. Archer was already swinging open the door. “The Herald said it was the most impressive new exhibit here. Ah, yes. Here we are.” The men started along the path made by a narrow red rug stretching the length of the dark, wood-paneled gallery. On either side velvet cords ran through brass pedestal guides to keep visitors in the appropriate realm. Guillaudeu hated the wax gallery.
“I’ve always been fond of wax dioramas,” Mr. Archer continued. “Because I’m not always in the mood for statuary, you know. Sculpture has such a conceit. But here” — he waved his cane dangerously — “here the sculptures wear real shoes. You see this? I’ve got a chair just like that at home.” He stopped to read the placard. “John Milton, yes indeed. He did have good taste in chairs. Ha!”
“I just … I don’t mean to be rude but I cannot bear to be in here. I may have to continue upstairs.”
“Why, Mr. Guillaudeu? What do you mean?”
“I practice taxidermy, as you know. I’m concerned with rebuilding a sort of … anima. Not that a mounted creature comes close to its living essence, of course, but I’m interested in a certain grace. The way I see it, whoever created these wax figures was not interested in any sort of … vitality. See here, for example: Milton’s eyes. He’s not looking down at his writing desk, though he’s got a quill in his hand. He’s not ruminating into the distance. His gaze, in fact, is so askance that he seems to be —”
“My dear sir!” Mr. Archer interrupted. “Milton was blind! Of course he’s not looking at anything. But look at this one! THE INTEMPERATE FAMILY.” This unfortunate group was gathered around a rough-hewn table. The unkempt patriarch bent over a jug, while his youngest children cried with empty bowls in front of them. They passed Petrarch, Aristotle, and Queen Victoria.
“This one’s the worst,” Guillaudeu said as they passed the scene of Judas’ betrayal. “Let’s proceed.” He pulled his key ring from his waistcoat pocket. “The small stairwell ahead of us doesn’t open to the public until noon. We can access all floors up to the rooftop garden. Shall we move on?”
Mr. Archer paused in the doorway. “Mr. Guillaudeu, if I may interject. I wonder if we might focus our tour less on your animals and more on … how shall we say … the humanoid elements of Barnum’s collection? I’ve heard about automatons, you see. And —”
“Yes, all right,” Guillaudeu interrupted as they climbed the stairs. Too often visitors passed over the work of the taxidermist simply because they assumed that an animal specimen was less worthy of their scrutiny than some overembellished and underfunctional machine. He hadn’t expected the ad man to be any different, but still it disappointed him.
The wide halls and high-ceilinged galleries of the second floor clattered with visitors. The building’s layout allowed people to flow into each floor’s main galleries from the wide landing that surrounded the central marble stairway. Patrons could also walk from one gallery to the next through arched portals, with smaller doors scattered throughout that detoured into smaller annexes. Some of the annexes then led into additional hallways, which in turn led to even smaller salons. It had taken a long time for Guillaudeu to memorize each floor’s idiosyncratic layout. The second floor was fairly easy, with its nine main galleries and several annexes. The third floor had more numerous, but smaller, galleries and no annexes at all. The fourth floor had so many annexes, salons, and narrow connecting hallways that people always got lost; there were more directional signs on the fourth floor than anywhere else in the museum. The fifth floor had six larger galleries and that was all. As the two men reached the second floor, they observed whole families congregated around the hot- and co
ld-drink concessionaires. Children rested on benches, and couples strolled and loitered among the exhibits.
Even Guillaudeu understood that Barnum had improved the museum’s general atmosphere. Shortly after his arrival, the new owner had instructed workers to remove the faded velvet draperies that Scudder had hung across the building’s high windows. True, the curtains had protected specimens and other objects from damage by the sun, but they had also created a funereal gloom that could not have been good for business. The windows had been scrubbed; a few had even been opened. Apart from an occasional house sparrow flitting into the building and smashing itself against a glass cabinet, Guillaudeu could find no fault with the sunlit galleries.
But despite the steeply angled light that accentuated his specimens and the cheerful atmosphere, the museum’s visitors unsettled Guillaudeu severely. They always had, even before Barnum’s advent. Too often the crowd surged up with no warning, bumping into him, crowding him, and emitting a disconcerting roar. But just as he would begin to panic, to feel himself drowning, it faded away in the hiss of a retreating skirt, leaving him feeling foolish.
“Barnum calls this one an Egyptian priest,” Guillaudeu said. They were approaching a waist-high vitrine in Gallery Two. The figure inside the cabinet lay on a bed of crumbling wood. “By the name of Pa-Ib.”
“Oh, good! A mummy.” Mr. Archer leaned over the case. “Although he looks more like a heap of dried apples.”
“They claim he’s a two-thousand-year-old priest. In my opinion, without the accoutrements that would have accompanied him to the grave, it’s difficult to say what kind of man he was.”
“If only he could sit up and talk, eh?” Mr. Archer tapped his cane lightly against the glass. “Wake up, sir!”
Among the Wonderful Page 3
