This was an account that would never sell, but it was one that I had imagined many, many times. It deserved to be recorded in this True Life History.
Finally my body stabilized enough for me to stand. The first thing I saw from my new perspective was a crowd of people from town gathered outside my house. They wanted me to touch the hands of their sick relatives, to heal them. It was then that I realized how eagerly people believed in nonsense. We built a booth in our yard and charged people ten cents to see me. We made enough money in three years to buy a new boat. One day a man with strange eyes wearing a violet waistcoat appeared. I did not refuse his offer, and under his guardianship I traveled to Halifax and began my career as the only professional Giantess in the world.
Lusus Naturae
Thirteen
Guillaudeu pretended to study Cuvier’s treatise on Pongo pygmaeus. Supposedly, he was searching for clues to explain why the museum’s wispy-haired red ape refused to eat. The creature’s voluntary starvation was a problem: Its ribs poked out in a most unbecoming manner and the visitors were noticing. But Guillaudeu’s show of flipping through Cuvier’s thick pages was just that. He absolutely could not concentrate on anything other than the unfortunate situation in which he now found himself: Mr. Archer would not move out. The ad man was pacing around the office with the end of his pencil stuck in his mouth.
“But surely” — Guillaudeu began in a renewed, but still evasive, effort — “surely a writer, an artist such as yourself, needs quiet, needs … solitude to work.”
“Artist! You can’t be serious.” Mr. Archer laughed as he always did, from the belly, with his shoulders shrugging upward and his head bobbing as if he had no control over his body. “I am anything but an artist, Monsieur Guillaudeu.” He continued to pace.
“But why would you want to stay here, with the specimens … and me?”
“It’s true that the stench of your glues and preservatives are disagreeable,” Mr. Archer considered, giving Guillaudeu a flash of hope. “But this location is perfect. I can peek out at everyone who comes and goes. I may even have a window built, just here, looking out to the entry hall” — Mr. Archer pointed to the board-and-batten wall — “it will allow me to see every face that passes into the museum. Last Saturday, Commodore Vanderbilt reserved the entire rooftop restaurant for a late-evening soiree and if I hadn’t been right here, in this very spot, I wouldn’t have even heard about it. I would be a fool to lock myself up in some attic somewhere and miss all the excitement.”
“The office we found for you is on the second floor, Mr. Archer, with a clear view over the balcony to Broadway. You would have an even better view from up there.”
“Nonsense! I’ll have nothing to do with it. If anything, monsieur, you should move. After all, nothing about your work necessitates your proximity to actual people.”
“I have been in this office for sixteen years, sir, ever since they hung the door on its hinges. I designed this room for my work and I will not be crowded out. Now, if you will excuse me.” Guillaudeu walked stiffly to his bookshelf and pulled out the sixth volume of Cuvier. “Unlike some I could name, I have work to do.”
“And so do I!” snapped Mr. Archer. “Work that concerns the very breath of history!”
“Are you referring to the penny papers to which you swear your devotion?” Guillaudeu huffed. Mr. Archer did not reply, which infuriated Guillaudeu all the more. Barnum’s takeover of the museum was one thing, but to allow this Archer, this … spinner of lies, to infiltrate his domain was one injustice too many!
The ad man halted his perambulation. “You never mention your wife. I find that odd.”
Guillaudeu’s hand froze over page eighty-three, wherein Cuvier described the orang-outang’s frugivorous habits.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“What a lovely gown she’s wearing in this portrait. She seems to be a lady of taste.”
“And that surprises you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“She’s dead.” The words fell like stones from his mouth. “Cholera.”
Guillaudeu did not turn to face the ad man and barely heard his ornate, though stilted, apology. Instead his ears rang with the word that had plagued him since he was a child, a word he chased from his mind by whatever means necessary, but that kept coming back, time and again. In its two syllables lay the explanation of his life: orphan. That he was well into middle age, and it was his wife who had most recently died, made no difference.
Before Celia became too weak to walk, Guillaudeu had returned from the pharmacist one afternoon to find her standing in the parlor wearing her bridal ensemble. The disease had eaten away so much of her body that she could fit into the gown again. The look on her face was ghoulish glee, and her jeweled bracelets tinkled against one another as she adjusted the cascading lace veil around her jutting shoulders.
When she saw him, she attempted to curtsy. “It’s my last chance to wear them, dear.”
“I cannot bear it,” he’d whispered as she petted the mesh that framed her face.
She turned on him. “You cannot bear it?” Her laugh turned into a violent cough and she sat heavily back on the daybed. That may have been the last time in her life that she stood.
Guillaudeu’s hand shook as he traced his finger down the columns of Cuvier’s text. He stood up, unable to remain in the same room with Mr. Archer, or Celia’s portrait. Edie Scudder was expecting him for lunch in an hour. He would go early. He retrieved his hat and coat from the rack and walked out without so much as a nod.
He slipped into the shifting horde on Broadway, his eyes on the sidewalk in front of him. A warm wind tunneled around him, and Guillaudeu proceeded with one hand anchoring his hat and the other gesturing wildly for a cabriolet. He crowded out the image of his dead wife with the image of the museum’s new proprietor. I must speak with him, Guillaudeu decided. It had been four days since Barnum’s daughter died and all the museum employees were looking over their shoulders, expecting Barnum to appear at any moment.
Seated in the small carriage, safely away from the pushing crowd, Guillaudeu’s head filled with the points he would make during his conversation with Barnum: People want to understand how nature works, he imagined himself saying. The museum’s visitors are interested in the organization of nature, the model that becomes visible through correct classification. There is a place for spectacle, Guillaudeu would concede, but it must be within the larger paradigm of nature’s elegant order. That’s why it was an abomination to put the tropical snake specimens in the same gallery as the common ducks, while the Floridian alligator crouched alone near the theater door. People love the patterns in nature, he would say. There lies harmony, and they want to be a part of it … as they were meant to be, not merely walking through a jumble of chaos. He pictured Barnum tilting his head, half closing his eyes as he realized the truth. If Barnum understood, and made certain concessions, including the restoration of his office to its former solitude, then Guillaudeu would stay. If he did not, Guillaudeu was no longer interested in the museum or its contents. It would probably be in the papers: Museum’s Original Taxidermist Scorns Barnum, Leaves Post After Thirty-five Years!
The sharp, smoky odor of pine tar grew more pungent as the carriage approached the warehouses on Front Street. He climbed down and paid the driver. Edie would give him ideas about how to show Barnum the problems he faced if he continued to run his museum like the back room of a saloon. He dodged two men struggling with a giant cedar crate. He continued south for half a block before ducking into the cool doorway of Scudder & Williams. He ran up the plank stairs two at a time. Barnum could be back at the museum tomorrow, he thought. He envisioned Barnum confiding in him: I’ve been concerned over the direction the museum seems to be going, my friend. Thank goodness you’re here. Barnum would clap him on the back and invite him to dine at his private table in the Aerial Garden. Museum Taxidermist Rises to Assistant Manager!
There was someo
ne with Edie in her office. Guillaudeu took a seat on the bench in the empty foyer. The building had been constructed out of the same cedar planks as ships, and the wide beams emitted a faintly spicy breath into the quiet room. Guillaudeu leaned forward with his hat on his knee. The museum was headed toward disaster unless it changed course. He knew that much. Either bankruptcy, because people would lose patience and stop coming, or some other disaster, which Barnum would recklessly sail toward at full speed unless someone warned him.
“Of course,” Edie’s impatient voice reached Guillaudeu. “I know Captain Morehouse. I will speak to him —”
“Yes,” a man’s voice interrupted. “Find out if there’s anything special we should know.”
“I think that’s all, Mr. Sim. Good afternoon.” Mr. Sim, a thin man in a dark blue cutaway coat, walked swiftly past Guillaudeu down to the street.
As Guillaudeu walked in, Edie was leaning over a ledger, scribbling audibly with a mother-of-pearl pen he recognized as her father’s. The heavy curtains of her large office were drawn against the glare of water-reflected light, and the dark room held a swampy stagnation. His friend, sitting at the center of a pool of yellow lamplight, did not hear him enter.
Suddenly Guillaudeu was paralyzed, unable to breach the invisible wall separating him from Edie. It was not an unfamiliar feeling. The sudden panic overcame him periodically, as if he’d slipped behind a veil into invisibility. He stared at Edie, hoping to attract her attention through a force of will. He considered tossing his hat onto her desk to get her attention. How foolish! Then all at once he perceived a human figure, almost lost in the dim corner of the room beyond Edie’s right shoulder. The figure shifted its weight from one foot to the other.
“Good heavens!” His hand clamped down, crushing his hat brim. He heard Edie’s pen tear through paper.
“Emile, God damn you! Are you trying to kill me?” She jerked up, her raised eyebrows lost under the low-hanging bird’s nest of her hair. “I’ve ruined my page.” She glanced over her shoulder and then down.
“I’m early,” Guillaudeu admitted, peering into the darkness, trying to make out more than the silhouette of a human form. “Who in God’s name is that?”
“A recent immigrant.” She gestured at the figure. “He arrived this morning on the Contessa. A British ship. I’m probably going to have to track Captain Morehouse down at one of the whorehouses on the hook if I want to speak to him.” Edie closed the ledger. “I hate doing that.” She beckoned to the silhouette, which moved slightly.
The figure, which turned into a man, was clearly wearing someone else’s clothes and appeared to have been wearing them for a very long time. The wool pants hanging off his body had weathered to an obscure shade and were ragged at the hem. He wore an unbuttoned and much-too-large shirt of the same indeterminate color. He carried a bundle on his back, secured to his shoulders by a length of rough-hewn rope. His skin was darker than most of the Africans Guillaudeu had seen, and it appeared slightly dusty. Like old shoes, Guillaudeu thought. Creased like the boots worn by a soldier for the length of a war. Homo scorteus: man made from leather. But aren’t we all, he mused.
The man’s tufted brown-black hair stuck mostly straight up, with the ends bleached to a brassy blond. He could have been forty or sixty years old. He was as tall as Guillaudeu’s chest and he kept his eyes pointed at the ground. The man bore all the traces of someone who lived outdoors: flattened, callused feet, tough skin, and an obvious disregard for clothing.
“A tribesman,” Guillaudeu concluded. “He must be cold.”
“He won’t wear anything we give him.”
“Where is he from?” He studied the geography of the man’s face.
“I told you, he came off the Contessa. From the colonies somewhere. His origin doesn’t really concern me.”
“I wanted to talk with you, Edie. About the museum.”
“Oh?” She pulled out a different ledger and scanned its thick leaves.
“I’ve had just about enough of Barnum.”
“Has he returned to New York? Oh good, here it is.” Edie’s finger stopped on the page. She copied something from the ledger onto a loose square of paper.
“No. Well, maybe,” said Guillaudeu. The tribesman stood silently across the room, barely seeming to breathe but disrupting Guillaudeu’s train of thought. “Why is this man in your office, Edie? This isn’t your usual type of cargo.”
“It’s funny you should ask, Emile, because you and the tribesman are heading in the same direction. He belongs to your museum.”
Edie handed Guillaudeu the paper she’d been writing on. “Here’s the note Barnum instructed me to send with this type of acquisition.”
“What?” He took the paper from her. “Are you working for Barnum?”
“It’s mutually beneficial. A few weeks ago he sent a couple of his own men down here to look for interesting cargo coming off the ships. But the ships’ crews wouldn’t tell them anything about what came ashore.” Edie smiled. “These captains like to trade with people they know. So he came to me.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this. After everything your father worked for at the museum. After everything I’ve worked for!”
“Why are you riding the high horse, Emile? Barnum is paying me a very respectable sum for this service, and I intend to provide it. He’s been nothing but fair and honest about what he’s after.”
“And what might that be?” Guillaudeu noticed his voice rising higher, tighter. “Because that’s what I’ve been wanting to know.”
“Exotic objects. Natural anomalies, anything to spook people or make them curious.”
“And this tribesman qualifies?”
“Read it for yourself,” Edie said with a shrug. “I’m not going to refuse a good contract, Emile, no matter who it’s with. And I can guarantee Barnum operates under the same philosophy.”
“That’s not philosophy,” Guillaudeu seethed. He read the note in his hand: Please welcome the newest Representative of the Wonderful.
How could Edie have come to this? His hand trembled as he put on his hat.
“I cannot bear it,” he said, his voice catching pathetically in his throat. “First your father, and now you? Abandoning all respect for nature’s innate order, ignoring the legacy of your family business, not to mention my own life’s work? I can’t —” He stared at her familiar, beloved face and felt nothing but anger. “I don’t know what to say, except good-bye.”
“Emile!”
He had already left her office and had started down the stairs.
“Emile, you must take him with you! Make sure he gets to the museum!”
Guillaudeu did not look at the tribesman as they marched up Broad Street. Groups of men crowded around them on their way to warehouses, ships, or one of the taverns scattered around the shipping district. Edie Scudder, Barnum’s employee. Guillaudeu fumed. Hadn’t she learned anything, growing up among the great collections, visiting the Peales in Baltimore, even the British Museum? One would think the organizational principles supporting the exhibits would have left at least a vestigial mark on her. He quickened his pace in a half-conscious attempt at losing the man who followed him. She is nothing but a simple opportunist, with no thought for the integrity of science.
He was reminded of the day after John Scudder signed away the museum. Guillaudeu had arrived for work, expecting Edie to appear as she always did to manage the accounts. He had waited all morning. An accountant arrived after lunch and informed him that Edie had hired him. Edie herself, Guillaudeu found out, was signing a rental agreement on her new office at the port. As if she had been waiting for an opportunity to leave him!
As they started up Broadway, he glanced behind and saw that the tribesman was keeping up effortlessly but looking neither left nor right; he ignored the first city he’d ever set foot in.
Guillaudeu walked straight past the door to his office, but not before Mr. Archer leaned into the hallway. “Did you pick up a friend, m
onsieur? Or will you cure his hide and stuff him?”
Guillaudeu marched on, through the waxworks gallery, to which the tribesman paid no attention whatsoever. They ascended the back stairwell, passing several groups of museum visitors. Unlike the people on the street, these citizens gasped when they saw the tribesman. They continued up, past the entrance to the second floor, where the twelve o’clock show in the theater had drawn a crowd that extended all the way to the landing.
The huge fifth-floor gallery was now occupied by a group of Indians who crowded around the beluga whale’s tank, standing on chairs and the ladder to peer over the side at the singing creature. Guillaudeu walked quickly across the hall to the door to the apartments. Which one did the giantess inhabit? He thought it was the second on the right. He felt sure that the giantess would know what to do with the man. Was it Miss Smith? Swanson?
But the giantess was not in her room. Of course. She’s working. The tribesman stood behind him, looking at the floor or somewhere thereabouts, with one arm kinked behind his body to support the bundle on his back.
“Well, let’s see if we can find you somewhere to stay. Do you understand me?”
The other man made no indication.
Guillaudeu found a small empty room at the end of the hallway.
“I don’t know if this one is spoken for, but why don’t you take it for now.” Guillaudeu walked to the window and surveyed the brick wall outside. “This will do, I suppose. I’ll let someone know you’re here.” Guillaudeu did not know whom he would notify. He would at least tell William, the ticket-man.
Among the Wonderful Page 10
