“As an antidote to these accusations, I have hired these men” — Barnum stepped to the side, making way for three figures who now appeared at the back of the stage and walked toward the audience — “to add Scientific Authority to selected exhibits and performances. Please welcome the Professors Wilson, Chatterton, and Stokes.”
Guillaudeu leaned forward in his seat. Professors?
“Beginning Monday, these learned men will present Scientific explanations of exhibits such as the Human Calculator and the Aztec Royals.” The professors waved and Barnum gave a small bow. “Please welcome them to the fold.” And as the curtain fell around him he gave a final shout: “Onward!”
Guillaudeu struggled to retain his composure as he was jostled in the riptide of people leaving the theater. He felt that his growing excitement could carry him above the heads of everyone, that his relief in seeing these new professors would float him gently up to the gorgeous ceiling. He waited for the crowd to thin.
Finally, he would have someone to talk with about the problems facing the museum! He could show them the Ornithorhyncus anatinus, the sloth, all the anomalous creatures, and they could come up with a taxonomy. They would eat together, they would cultivate a certain strain of their own humor about the museum, in which Guillaudeu’s worries would become manageable, communal. Barnum had finally, of his own accord, realized that a museum without scientific organization was useless to the public and an abomination to history.
When the theater was empty, Guillaudeu climbed onstage. The museum set, which had looked so real from his seat, was made from painted cloth, paper, and spindly planks. His footsteps echoed as he walked into the wings.
“Hello? Are you still here?” Guillaudeu continued past costumed mannequins and various musical instruments arranged on chairs. He heard men’s laughter coming from one of the dressing rooms. “Professors?”
A door opened and one of the men, Guillaudeu thought it was Chatterton, poked his head out. “Who is it?”
Guillaudeu stepped into the brightly lit room, where the other two men sat on overstuffed chairs. They each held a tulip-shaped glass filled with crimson liquid. “I’m so pleased to meet all of you. I’m Emile Guillaudeu. Perhaps Barnum mentioned me?”
“Perhaps.” Professor Chatterton looked to his companions. “Do you boys recall?” One of the others shook his head. Was it Wilson? The third man simply stared at Guillaudeu with a vague smile.
“I’m the taxidermist. I worked for John Scudder here in the museum before Barnum came. Lately I seem to have taken up the duties of Menagerie Attendant. I’m so glad you’re finally here. I need guidance with various issues, not the least of which is developing an underlying philosophic principle for this collection. It is growing, as I’m sure Barnum explained, at an unsettling rate.”
The three professors looked at one another. Guillaudeu could see something like alarm in their eyes. “Oh, don’t worry,” he continued. “With the three of you, and my particular experience here, we should be able to make short work of it. I’m just glad you’re here.”
“Well, we’re glad to be here, too.” Chatterton seemed to be the spokesman. The other two remained quiet, and Stokes appeared to be laughing into his hand. “But there’s something you should probably know.”
Suddenly Guillaudeu thought he would lose his job. These professors were surely more qualified than he for the monumental task that lay ahead.
“We’ve been hired by Mr. Barnum to infuse the museum with Scientific Authority, as he says. In fact, though, we are actors by trade. I thought he would have told at least some of his staff. We are here to give the illusion, so to speak, of science.”
Sixteen
Guillaudeu banged on Barnum’s door. No one answered. Recklessly, he turned the latch and the door slid open, revealing Phineas T. Barnum sitting at his desk reading the New Testament.
“Monsieur Guillaudeu, is the museum on fire?”
The stage had dwarfed Barnum, but now he reminded Guillaudeu of the men he’d seen lifting crates of cargo off ships at the South Street port. He had a strangely graceful bearing, like a hound on point. Jerky, perfectly attuned. Not quite leonine, was he, but what? What does a griffin look like?
Barnum leaned forward and Guillaudeu fought the urge to recoil. “No fire.”
“Then sit down, please.”
He obeyed. Barnum looked at him curiously.
“You know” — Barnum swiveled in his chair toward the window — “when I moved to New York, I had no money. I was living in a pitiful room in a neighborhood I don’t even like to name. By luck I found an excellent job almost immediately.” He shook his head. “I became a salesman. I sold the one thing you can always count on people buying.”
“Food?”
“Bibles.” Barnum tapped the book in front of him. “Bibles, my friend.”
Barnum rose from his desk and pivoted around his chair, still staring out the window. “Do you remember the story of Peter Cooper?”
“No.”
“When the B and O Railroad opened up, Peter Cooper moved to Baltimore and bought up a whole lot of land near where the rails were going in. He speculated that the rail works would boost the value. He started digging, draining swamps, thinking of building a hotel. And he hit iron. Iron ore. Exactly what the railroad needed! So he set up a forge and started selling rails to the B and O. But lo and behold, the railroad ran into financial trouble. They didn’t have a good enough engine to run these new distances. The value of the company started to drop. So Peter Cooper said he’d build them an engine himself.”
Shaking his head, Barnum turned to Guillaudeu.
The taxidermist found he could not respond.
“And he did! He did. He built a little steam engine in his barn and hobbled it up to some old wheels and musket barrels. It ran eighteen miles an hour. When they unveiled it people bought B and O bonds so fast the railroad didn’t know what to do with all the capital. This museum is my iron ore, you see. I had nothing when I got here except a hunch. You know what Cooper called his little steam engine? The Tom Thumb.
“My point is that I can provide what the people want. But sometimes, I’m finding out, the people don’t yet know that they want it. My job is to show them. That’s what this museum is all about.”
“Show them what, exactly?”
“A few months ago one fellow, a journalist, wrote that my museum was a great hive. To him, all the people streaming in and out were like honeybees. But I’ll tell you, a hive is all symmetry, uniformity! Not so with my enterprise. The purpose of a hive, after all, is the same as a factory: to create order. This museum’s effect is the opposite: to baffle. And listen to this: Another man wrote that it was like a Chinese puzzle. That was in the Herald a few weeks ago. He was a little closer with that one because the museum has untold layers, like the puzzle, and it contains elements of suspense and surprise. But again the symbol falls short because this museum is always changing! There is no innermost layer. A Chinese puzzle may delight us by revealing smaller and smaller interlocking worlds, but the museum offers the opposite: The deeper you go, the smaller you feel because the wonders you encounter grow greater and greater.”
Barnum gestured upward as if addressing the brick and wood of his building.
“How would you define it, then?” Guillaudeu ventured.
“Omne ignotum pro mirifico,” he murmured. “Most metaphors I’ve heard are too simple for this place. Too limited in meaning.”
Barnum tapped the Bible on his desk. “That’s exactly where the whole thing becomes rather interesting. Are you a religious man? Right here, in the book of Matthew, we meet Jesus, of course. This Jesus is a teacher. He stands on the mountain. He gives us a sermon. Commandments. Instructions for living. Now let me ask you a question: Can you imagine the number of eyes in that audience that must have glazed over? Because who in the world likes to be told exactly how to live or the parameters of what is possible? To me, it is a strategy that ensures only resentment and
boredom.
“But in Mark’s story it is not Jesus’ words that instruct us. This Jesus never even confirms that he is really Jesus! He relies on something better to convey his message, something inherently compelling: mystery itself. And public performances, of course: healings and exorcisms, wine from water, all that sort of thing. This Jesus gives you an opportunity to live through the experience of puzzlement yourself. Each individual is invited to rely on his own experience of life to figure out what it all means. That is the foundation on which I built this enterprise. Walking through these halls, people encounter nothing but mystery. They interpret what they see according to the patterns of their own lives and relate it to the larger pattern of our city, of the world. So to answer the question, How do I define this place? I give you this: I never will. It is true that I will hire people to do it. That is the way of our time. But just as in this book, there are many authors; interpretation is infinite. And so mystery lives.”
Seventeen
Guillaudeu walked away from Barnum’s office holding his breath, feeling as if he were underwater, not remembering how he’d responded to Barnum’s monologue, or how he had extricated himself in the end, only that he wanted to go home. He emerged from the back hall into the crowded public entryway where the river of museum visitors flowed thickly from William’s ticket booth to the marble stairway. The crowd chattered and formed small whirlpools: families, elderly gentlemen, young girls wearing feathered and silk hats, graceful or tattered dresses. A hive, he’d said. A puzzle. A steam engine. But it’s not a puzzle, because there is no solution; the farther in you go, the greater the mystery. He pushed his way against the current of the incoming crowd and burst onto the street gasping for air.
In City Hall Park birds perched in the maples. Real birds. Robins. Turdus migratorius, going about the usual business of building a nest, following the natural law of seasons. Girls pushed carts down the street. These vendors operated under the same natural laws, gathering clams according to the tide, buying corn from people who plucked the ears under a harvest moon. He looked back but the museum was no longer visible through the trees. He continued up Broadway. Produce, picked from gardens. Fruit from orchards. These people lived their lives without a thought for Chinese puzzles and museums of deception and perverted nature. These streets operate under the universal laws of survival, honest livelihood, and praise of nature’s inviolate order. He turned onto Franklin Street. He said hello to Saul and bought an apple. He ignored three small boys squatting on the sidewalk throwing dice.
Fitting his key into the lock of the building door, his stomach queased. He could stand to be in the apartment, but only if he did not allow himself to think. He could sleep at night, if he did not allow himself to dream. He could work at the museum, if he resisted the changes Barnum engendered. He leaned against the closed door. He felt that he could not go on, but he wanted more than anything to sleep so he pushed ahead, enduring the flickering memory of his dead wife in the shadows.
In the bedroom, he lay down his coat and hat and took off his shoes. He went to the kitchen and started water boiling in the small kettle. He sliced the apple. He unwrapped some cheese from the icebox, and in a few minutes he poured the tea and sat down.
Professors! What fools Barnum had made of them all. And all the hundreds of Guillaudeu’s specimens, the result of a life’s work, now possessed by a false museum and subject to the whim of a madman. He could not bear to think of the animals for long because his mind imbued them with the energy of a trapped herd, charging and hedging in a desperate attempt to outrun a wildfire.
Lusus naturae. The words came suddenly to him as he lay on his back in his cold bed. Nature’s sense of humor. Guillaudeu stared through the blue night at the ceiling. But wasn’t humankind itself nature’s greatest joke? Created, apparently, in the image of the Divine, man could perceive, even conjure, the weightiest questions: What is the meaning of a life’s work? What is the correct path through this crooked world? But unlike the Creator, whose Divine omniscience leads to decisive, righteous action, man can never answer his own questions with certainty. Guillaudeu lay pondering this for some time in the dark before he realized that no good would come of such an inquiry. He shut his eyes tightly, but his mind had awakened fully. Sleep was no longer possible.
In his socks he stood before the wooden case of books in what used to be his parlor. He regarded them as beloved companions and ran his index finger along the spines, which raised a tiny plume of dust. He sneezed. His finger stopped on a slim volume, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Natural History, Husbandry, and Physick. Edie Scudder had given him the book for his birthday countless years ago. It contained, among other essays, Linnaeus’ famous inaugural speech, given to the students at Uppsala. Guillaudeu had read only the opening paragraphs before discarding the book; he’d not been interested in an oration “On the Necessity of Traveling in One’s Own Country.” But now, partly out of regret for his quarrel with Edie, and partly out of genuine desire for distraction, he pulled the book smoothly from the shelf. He walked into the kitchen, sat at the window, and lit a candle to read by.
All human knowledge is built on two foundations: reason and experience. We must confess, indeed, that the business of reasoning may be carried on with equal success at our desks, supposing we have an opportunity of conversing with men truly learned. But it is experience, that sovereign mistress, without which a physician ought to be ashamed to open his lips. Experience ought to go first; reasoning should follow. Experience ought to be animated with reason in all physical affairs; without this she is void of order, void of energy, void of life. On the other hand, reason without experience can do nothing, being nothing but the mere dreams, phantasms, and meteors of ingenious men who abuse their time.
Linnaeus’ words stung. Guillaudeu considered himself anything but an explorer. Any of his own accumulations of knowledge, scientific or otherwise, had been gleaned only in his workrooms, from the bodies of his specimens and his books. Surely this was not the ethereal, impotent specter of Reason that Linnaeus described, or was it? The imagined disapproval of the great taxonomist’s ghost burned Guillaudeu’s pride, but as he read on, the figure of Carl Linnaeus emerged as more and more amiable. Yes, he tramped the mountains of the northernmost reaches of the European continent, but his aim (and it was obsessive) was to name. To create order from chaos. To incorporate species into his newly created but robust taxonomy. Venturing into the unknown, he procured the evidence for the greatest system science would ever see. As he read, Guillaudeu gradually stopped comparing elements of his own life unfavorably with those of Linnaeus. Tales of rugged Lapland, the forests of Dalecarlia, and the groves of Gothland engulfed him. They were journeys into places so strange and magical to the ear that he could hardly believe that to Linnaeus, they were simply travels in his own country. Even as his eyes blurred and his head nodded closer to the page, he followed Linnaeus through field and valley.
Eighteen
He awoke to the shouts of men as they unloaded crates in front of Saul’s grocery. He’d fallen asleep at the table with his arms folded across the pages of Linnaeus. Groggy, he closed the book and stared for a while out the window at the men, all three of them barrel-chested and laughing. Saul appeared, wearing the apron Guillaudeu had never seen him without. The grocer looked up at the sky, marking the advent of another day on Franklin Street.
Guillaudeu rose stiffly, working the knot out of his neck, and went to the bedroom. In the back of his wardrobe he found his old canvas satchel, its buckles tarnished with disuse. He traded his twill trousers for thicker ones. From a drawer he pulled a woolen undershirt and a scarf, which he folded into the satchel. Back in the kitchen, from the icebox, he put a wedge of cheese wrapped in newspaper, two apples, half a pound of smoked sausage wrapped in paper, and a loaf of bread into the satchel. He turned in a circle, thinking of what else he might need. He had no idea. Panic rose in him, spraying the inside of his head with sparks. He ignored it. He put Linnaeus in
the satchel. He looked down. The shoes he wore, the same old brown leather Spencers he wore to work, were his most comfortable. He had no others more suited. From his bureau drawer he removed what money he had, folding the bills and funneling the coins into a leather purse that had been Scudder’s, and putting that in the inside pocket of his overcoat. How did he come to have that purse? He could not remember his own history. He buckled the satchel and put on his tweed cap. Later, he would think of a hundred other things he should have brought, but as he left his home it felt deliciously simple. Hoist the satchel onto his shoulder, turn the key, turn away.
Standing on the corner of Franklin and Broadway that early in the morning, all the carriages and people moved southward as he had done every day for many years. He watched twenty horse-drawn coaches pass by, two omnibuses, and several carriageless riders. Hundreds of bobbing hats and ladies’ shawled or bonneted heads walked downtown, toward the museum, where an office full of his own work waited for him to take it up again. Indeed, he leaned southward, his body starting on its customary track, his mind pushing at the threshold of his daily duties: Which specimens needed care? Did the old cameleopard need extensive hide repair, or was it just getting too old to display? Guillaudeu had noticed it was losing pieces of its coat. He’d need to fumigate it somehow, but how would he —
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