We were in a realm of clapboard shadows. On first glance, the street was strangely deserted. As we drove on, I picked out various gray forms of humanity, most lingering in doorways or disappearing into subterranean stairwells. The glass of each gas street lamp had been broken. Our driver tried to light the lamp dangling from the carriage, but our jostling prevented it, and it was clear he would not stop. One door, attached to a plank building tilting even farther to one side than our carriage, burst open as we passed, expelling two old men, a wave of raucous voices, and the sight of one candle burning on a table.
The orphanage, a two-story brown brick building, was just above Cross Street.
“I’ll wait ten minutes,” said the driver. “No more.”
“How much time do you need?” Beebe asked, fumbling for a coin while flailing to help me down from the carriage.
“That will be enough.”
“I’ll ring the bell before I leave and give you one minute, no more, to get back,” reiterated the driver.
I felt as if we were jumping from a ship. “Fine.”
After emitting a painfully shrill shriek when she saw me, the young girl who opened the door for us was struck speechless. I won’t deny that I would have been, too, if I was a thirteen-year-old orphan opening the door at dusk to the silhouette of a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall person. But her shock did not help us get the information we needed. I questioned her briefly, but she just shook her head, nearly toppling the candle she held out in front of her like a ward against evil.
“I … I don’t know, miss. I don’t know.”
“It’s a matter of some urgency.” Beebe spoke gently. The girl let us into a dark foyer.
Another woman appeared, this one much older and in the black cloak of the church. “What is it, Gretchen?” She crossed herself when she saw me.
“I need information about two children taken from here,” I said.
“Who are you?”
“Miss Swift. This is Mr. Beebe.”
“We’re not open for visitors.” The nun’s round, eyebrow-less face lacked all definition, but her words were sharp.
“I just need to know —”
“Show them out, Gretchen.” The nun turned away.
“Wait!” Beebe dug into his pocket. “We just need to know one thing.” He handed the woman two coins. She dropped it into the small pouch hanging from her belt. “But we don’t have much time.”
“Come with me.” The nun led us through one door into a narrow hallway. She extracted a key from her apron pocket and unlocked the next door. We followed her into a hall filled with children. The palpable odors of hair, dirt, excrement, and old sweat made the air a poignant swamp. Some children slept on straw pallets but most sat huddled together, wearing long dirty shirts. A girl held a big-headed baby with mucus dried on its chin who screamed upon seeing me. One boy lay on a pallet with his wrists tied down and his eyes following us closely. Beebe looked neither left nor right, his fists clenched. I was fleetingly glad the room was not well lit.
The nun led us to an office on the far end of the hall. She sat on one side of a small desk.
“What is it you want to know?”
“Did the American Museum take two children from here?”
“Which organization are you with?”
“None.”
“None? Why are you here?”
“We simply want to confirm that it was two children —” Beebe began. The woman shamelessly held out her hand, and Beebe laid another coin in it.
“Yes, they took the two. Brother and sister, if I recall. Some weeks ago. Encephalitics.”
“Where did the children come from?”
The nun laughed. “Come from? Those two arrived on our front step nine years ago, drooling babies, both of them. Probably half nigger, half Indian. That always comes out idiots.” She laughed again.
“That’s all. That’s all, Miss Swift, isn’t it?” Beebe was already pulling my arm.
“Who bought them?”
Still smiling, the nun placed both hands on the desk. “Oh, we don’t sell children, ma’am.” She rose to go.
“I find that difficult to —”
“Let’s go now, Miss Swift.” Beebe looked over his shoulder toward the distant street.
“Funny, though,” the nun continued, leading the way back out, “I’ve never seen a rich person come for children like that. Real rich lady, and young, too. Came late at night.”
I could not look at the children again, so I looked at the stained and crooked floor passing beneath my feet as we made our way out. The carriage had waited for us. I could see it surprised Beebe that it was still there.
“That was horrible,” I whispered. “I didn’t know it would be like that. Miss Crawford said the women sponsored the place. I thought it would —”
“At the chapel we try to be involved, but we still don’t always know where the money and food go.”
“They’re better off at the museum,” I realized out loud.
Beebe said nothing, but he seemed to me more dignified in the evening light. He looked upon the city with grave concern, and solemnly placed his hand over mine.
All I could think about was getting back to my room and pouring hot water and sea salts into my basin and dipping in my feet, scrubbing my hands. But there was a commotion on Broadway. We stopped behind a cart carrying a load of barrels. Carriages and horses blocked the way forward.
“Must be a collision ahead,” said Beebe, “we’re almost there. Let’s walk back.” He paid the driver and we disembarked.
“They still don’t have rights,” said Beebe, “in the museum.”
“But anything’s better than that orphanage, you must agree!”
He buttoned his jacket, his light brow furrowed.
Something had happened at the museum. A river of people poured out of the main entrance and a crowd leaned over the balcony. As we approached, a knot of blue-coated policemen emerged dragging a man. More officers followed.
“It’s the Martinettis,” breathed Beebe. “Look. They’ve arrested them.” Mrs. Martinetti and her daughter, both walking stiffly and wrapped in someone else’s coats, were escorted into the police wagon. Beebe pulled out his watch. “They would have been in the middle of a performance!”
We pushed our way toward the entrance and found Mr. Archer near the doorway. The ad man leaned casually against the wall.
“What happened?”
“Oh, this? This is the just the beginning.” Mr. Archer shook his head, smiling. “Lewd and obscene behavior. And with children, too.”
“Was it their new costumes?” Beebe gasped. “They have these new costumes. A few of us thought they might be slightly revealing, but they assured us —”
“Costumes, suggestive performances, certain anatomical exposures during acrobatic routines, not to mention they’re immigrants.” Mr. Archer raised an eyebrow.
“You must be so pleased,” I hissed at Archer.
The ad man turned his palms upward. “Pleased? My emotions hardly seem relevant here.”
“Last I heard, you were Barnum’s employee, not his destroyer.”
“Ah, you underestimate us both, Miss Swift. Don’t you remember Zechariah?”
“Zechariah the prophet?” Beebe asked.
“He’s smarter than he looks, your usher,” Archer said coolly. “There must always be an accuser, you see. It’s an ancient, perfect game, it is. Just being played out here now, in the newspapers. Barnum knows the rules. He set it all up.”
“I can’t stand to look at you,” I huffed as I pushed past the ad man. Sensing Beebe’s hesitation about what to do next, I pulled him into the museum with me.
“They don’t deserve this,” I sighed. From the balcony, we watched the police wagon full of acrobats disappear down Broadway. Even without a spectacle to watch, the crowd on the street did not disperse right away. “Lord only knows how much money they brought Barnum.”
“I’m sure when he finds out he’ll r
escue them,” said Beebe. He wandered over to Thomas’ harpsichord and played a few inappropriately cheerful notes.
“I’m not so sure.”
“Of course he will.”
“He could have arranged this whole thing, Mr. Beebe.”
“Samuel.”
“What?”
“Please call me Samuel.”
Beebe was standing by the harpsichord looking up at me. In his own clothes, canvas pants and a woolen vest over a thick flannel shirt, he seemed less familiar and I enjoyed seeing him anew. His ledge of curls still hovered above his ears, but out from under his usher’s cap even they struck me as pleasingly tousled, or at least less comical than before.
“Well, Samuel, shall we see if Gustav will give us some supper?”
From where they hung on flagpoles and in the trees, gaslights illuminated the rooftop garden against the gathering night. In the distance a second city shimmered in a reflection on the surface of New York Harbor. Candlelight emanated from the windows of Saint Paul’s, and Beebe stared at the chapel as we strolled along the promenade.
The people who gathered around the glowing stoves were all employees. I saw the Human Calculator staring into space, clutching spoons in one hand and a bowl in the other. William the ticket-man and his nephew, Gideon, ate next to Clarissa, whose massive heft extended into the darkness beyond the stove’s light. Everyone was talking about the Martinettis, but Beebe and I moved past the conversations of our companions to the outer edges of lamplight. We found a stove with empty chairs around it. Beebe fed it a fragrant piece of wood and I fetched a stone bench to sit on, lifting it easily in a feat some would pay to see.
“We could be around a campfire somewhere,” I mused. “Far away from cities.”
“In Bethel Parish,” Beebe said, “some nights you can see every star in the heavens.”
“I was thinking of the land farther west. Somewhere in the prairie where there’s no one for a hundred miles in every direction.” Bright clouds gathered on that unbroken horizon, dappling the grassland in great, whalelike shadows that would quickly envelop me. “Sometimes I think about going there,” I admitted.
Beebe was looking at me, but I was staring at the coals. “To the Territories?” His voice was gentle.
“People say there are trees five hundred years old out there. Big around as a house. I’d like to see those.”
“We could start a church,” said Beebe.
I frowned in the dark. “Or a farm.”
“Or a farm,” he agreed. “I know it’s difficult for you to imagine yourself a preacher’s wife.” Disconcerted, I looked at him. His gaze did not waver. I very rarely considered myself any kind of wife at all and I found the notion quite disturbing. Beebe, however, looked calmly into my eyes as though it was the most natural idea in the world.
“I don’t know what to think about that,” I mumbled, securing my eyes on the coals. Suddenly Beebe was at my side. He’d hopped up on the bench where I sat. Standing, he was almost level with me.
“I know what I think about it,” he whispered, leaning so close to my ear that his breath warmed it. I hardly had time to remember the various difficulties posed by two such disparately proportioned people kissing before we had overcome them. His lips were soft yet bold, and they sent a ringing chord through me as they worked their way across my own.
Thirty-six
I didn’t see Miss Crawford until the following Saturday, but I had spent many hours, in my booth and also outside of my working hours, coming up with a plan. I was certain I could convince the museum’s performers to create an alliance, especially since the Martinetti debacle. We could meet formally, with the intention to draft certain regulations about pay and length of contract, as well as guidelines regarding the care and guardianship of child performers. If we did this with the support of Miss Crawford’s Women’s Empowerment League, we would have the endorsement of a well-known social group. The plan would succeed. I had even begun mentally composing the agenda for our first meeting.
I saw Miss Crawford strolling into the gallery early Saturday afternoon, thankfully without her usual train of disheveled children. She walked arm in arm with a woman in a highly adorned feathered cap. I left my post to meet her.
“Miss Swift! How is the museum life?”
“Very well.”
“This is Margaret Goodwin. Her husband is one of Mayor Harper’s deputies.”
I bowed slightly. Mrs. Goodwin visibly recoiled, her eyes ricocheting between Miss Crawford and my sternum.
“Miss Swift is the museum’s most striking employee,” Miss Crawford told her friend. “Almost eight feet tall. Just look at her hands.”
She had never mentioned my physical appearance before. Instinctively I looked at my hands.
“Miss Crawford, I wanted to tell you. I visited the Bethany Hospital.”
“Oh?” She looked quickly at Mrs. Goodwin. “You went there?” She stared at me.
“Some of the children were tied to their beds. It was abominable. I couldn’t believe the conditions.”
“Our improvement program is new. Change takes time, you see. Perhaps we should speak about this later, Miss Swift.” She took her friend’s arm. Her face had become uncharacteristically pinched.
“I just wanted to tell you, though. It was horrendous. But the children did come from there. The Aztec Children. They were brought here from there by —”
“This really is not the best time to discuss this.” She yanked Mrs. Goodwin away as I abruptly realized why Miss Crawford had abandoned her perpetual grace and courtesy.
She backed away with Mrs. Goodwin hooked to her arm. The pieces now lay in front of me, obvious. She visited the worst orphanages in the city for her “charitable” work. She frequented the same circles as Barnum, who had undoubtedly offered her a respectable sum to abandon her morals. He must be paying her to bring troupes of orphans to the museum as well as to buy them, to spread the good word among those circles and cover up the ugly deeds.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” I hissed as she retreated.
“Wasn’t there an arrest made here a few days ago?” Mrs. Goodwin inquired mildly.
Miss Crawford again pursed her lips and blatantly glared at me. “Yes, there was.”
“I read about it in the Herald,” Mrs. Goodwin continued. “A group of jugglers, wasn’t it? Italians, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Miss Crawford snarled. “They were arrested for exposing themselves in a most lewd and obscene manner. The police department took very appropriate action, I must say. It’s a comfort to know how easy it is to take care of situations like that,” she said. “I read that the costumes did not even reach to the knee. We really must be on our way, Miss Swift.”
“Miss Swift would probably be interested in knowing about the program we discussed on the carriage ride over,” Mrs. Goodwin cluelessly said.
“What program is that?” I inquired, my eyes still fastened on Miss Crawford.
“We are considering training a number of Christian charity workers who would be sent to work at various business establishments, mostly in the Bowery, with the intent to improve and rectify certain issues of morality. We’ve targeted this museum as a possible recipient of this service.”
Miss Crawford was now examining her own hands. “Let’s move on, Mrs. Goodwin.”
“That’s an interesting proposition,” I said. “But I think you’d have a hard time convincing Mr. Barnum to let someone else infuse his establishment with moral pretension. Especially when the people supposedly infusing it are blatant hypocrites.”
“Phineas T. Barnum,” Mrs. Goodwin announced, “is the scourge of the city.”
Miss Crawford moved away, towing the fuming Mrs. Goodwin.
“It hardly makes sense for you to say so,” I called after them. “Since you paid your quarter just like the rest of humanity.”
I swung away from them and was immediately faced by a dozen museum visitors gaping at me like a row of carved
pumpkins.
“Yes, even giants lose their tempers,” I snapped, feeling the scope of my anger flash outward beyond the bounds of the museum and any wrongdoing among its patrons, inhabitants, or creator. The people around me scattered. “As difficult as that may be for you idiots to fathom.”
Spira Mirabilis
Thirty-seven
Guillaudeu looked up. He reached up. He tried to catch the sloth’s attention, but it would not look and did not move from where it hung on the branch by its long, curved claws. It was only when he gently shook the trunk and the sloth dropped from the limb in a swirl of hair, landing with a thump next to his foot, that he realized the animal was dead.
He carried it to his office. He laid it on the worktable and brought a pencil and his set of measuring rods and wooden rulers. Arm span: sixty-three inches. Top of the head to the tailbone: thirty-one. Lower legs: twenty-three. Dusty flakes dropped from the animal’s stiff limbs. Guillaudeu smoothed the fibers of the sloth’s gray-brown coat. He rolled plugs out of raw cotton and filled the nostrils, the mouth. The words of the banished Cuvier came to him from the cellar: Courage means the courage to look steadily.
He put on his apron and surveyed the tools hanging on hooks at eye level. He chose the curved scalpel. He made the first incision from the top of the pubis upward to the collarbone. He worked slowly, relieved to feel the tools in his hands. He allowed himself to enter the microcosm of the body and forget everything else. Without disrupting the abdominal muscles, he pulled the skin of the lower torso back as far as he could, dabbing away beads of blood and grease. Using his knife, he separated the femurs from the pelvis, and after a single cut across the intestinal canal he was able to remove the lower entrails to the sawdust-filled waste box. He removed the pelvis and set it aside. He skinned the animal, slipping the handle of his knife between the musculature of its lower back and the skin, and sliding it upward.
Among the Wonderful Page 23
