“You know,” Guillaudeu continued. “I’m a bit of a traveler myself. I know, it may be difficult to imagine, but it’s true. I walked almost the entire length of New York Island.” The tribesman was the first person he had told.
Once inside the aviary the tribesman seemed to understand the purpose of the room, and after a few seconds watching the birds he disregarded them completely. They set up the ladders and began to nail up the netting.
“Well this seems to be working much better,” Guillaudeu remarked. “And strange as it may be, I am enjoying your company very much. Is it unusual to prefer the company of one with whom I do not share the benefit of language?” He glanced at the tribesman, who worked without pause. “I believe that says something about my interest in my fellow man, doesn’t it? The truth is, I am relieved to find a person to whom I must give no explanations of any kind.”
The men ascended and descended parallel ladders, raising netting and retrieving dropped nails.
“If you are not obliged to perform,” Guillaudeu said, starting up the conversation again after twenty minutes, “I wonder what you are doing here.”
The tribesman paused for a look in Guillaudeu’s direction.
“In other words, what is keeping you here? You could walk outside and never return, if you pleased. Not that I want you to do that, of course. I should like to know your name, but that seems entirely impossible.”
Presently, the tribesman began to sing. It was an unusual piece of music, with barely enunciated vowel sounds rising and falling between intervals of throaty tones. The song continued for a period of minutes and Guillaudeu recognized a kind of refrain, but the verses between seemed to grow consecutively longer and bore no discernible resemblance to one another. After ten minutes, Guillaudeu gave up trying to characterize the song, and after twenty minutes the song seemed to have always been there. As with the tribesman’s general presence, the song put Guillaudeu at ease. He hung the netting and drifted into an enjoyment of the work and the warm sunlight on his face.
When the tribesman stopped singing, it wasn’t at the end of the song. By that time Guillaudeu had correctly supposed that the song couldn’t possibly have an ending. For a minute or two Guillaudeu didn’t notice that the other man had stopped, but when he did, the silence hit him abruptly, and he felt an unexpected sadness. When he looked down from the perch of his ladder, the tribesman was at the base of it.
“What is it, sir? I do wish you’d keep up the song.” Guillaudeu hummed a few notes as he came back to the ground.
For the first time in their brief acquaintance, the stranger responded to Guillaudeu’s voice. He put his hand on the taxidermist’s arm and gestured for him to follow.
The gallery adjoining the aviary on the fourth floor held the glassblowers and their furnace. The glassblowers drew large crowds, and the heat of their fire added to the day’s spring warmth, making the gallery uncomfortably hot and a vivid contrast to the cool aviary. In the far corner, Cornelia the sewing dog panted and pumped the pedals of her machine.
The tribesman led him straight to a small cabinet in the corner of the next gallery, which had drawn no crowd. The Ornithorhynchus anatinus sat on its pedestal, its brassy fur gathering dust and its broad, fleshy bill absurd as ever.
Amid the clamor of the forge and the intermittent call of the cold-drink vendor, the tribesman spoke in a low voice, drawing invisible figures on the palm of his hand using his right index finger as a pencil. The Ornithorhynchus had some special meaning to the man. Guillaudeu listened to the tribesman, whose voice was just barely audible.
“I suppose there is no translator, maybe in all of New York, who could enlighten me as to what you say,” Guillaudeu said softly. “And you are probably giving me the information about this creature I looked for in all the books.”
The tribesman continued marking lines on the palm of his hand.
“I have a pencil in the aviary. Let’s see if that helps,” Guillaudeu said. They returned, and he found a sheet of thick brown wrapping paper and handed it and the pencil to his companion. “Show me,” he encouraged.
With his eyes, the tribesman asked Guillaudeu what paper and pencil had to do with anything. Guillaudeu again made writing gestures, and finally resorted to humming a few notes of the tribesman’s original song. After a few seconds of rumination, the tribesman began to draw.
The tribesman worked slowly, beginning on one edge of the wrapping paper, making seven small circles arranged in a rough crescent. He then marked out a path through them. His lines branched out from the seven circles, and he followed one branch, creating what seemed to be geography around it as he went. The tribesman worked so slowly that Guillaudeu went back to work, periodically checking on his progress as he moved his ladder and continued with the netting.
When the tribesman finally brought it to Guillaudeu, the map covered nearly the whole surface of the paper. Extending out from the seven circles, which Guillaudeu sensed were hills or mountains of some kind, were what appeared to be streams, ravines, and broad expanses of flat terrain. Approaching the right-hand side of the map, the desert transitioned to rolling hills, which the tribesman had crosshatched with the pencil.
“Forests?” Guillaudeu pointed to the crosshatched marks. “Trees?” He raised his arms above his head in a gross approximation. The tribesman did not respond to Guillaudeu’s effort, but he traced a route across the map, from left to right, ending at what appeared to be a coastline. He then backtracked a finger to a stream, or river, running through the crosshatched section. He tapped this region several times and pointed through the aviary wall toward the Ornithorhynchus.
“A-ha! Is this where the creature lives?” Guillaudeu tapped the paper. The tribesman tipped his head in a gesture Guillaudeu interpreted as affirmative.
That evening, when Guillaudeu returned to his office, he brought out a map published by the United States Exploring Expedition of sections of Australia, primarily the eastern coastal areas of that vast continent. He spread it out on his desk with the tribesman’s drawing alongside it. After several minutes of looking between them, he recognized the same river outlined on both. Setting the tribesman’s map against the other, he saw that the tribesman’s map extended deep into the unmapped interior of the land, hundreds of miles beyond the last lines of the American cartographers. The scales of the maps were different, of course, and one was based on geometry and precisely measured distances. It wasn’t until he sat staring at the strange continuum between the high-quality paper and inks of the one and the penciled lines of the other that he wondered how the tribesman could have drawn the terrain in the first place, as if he’d flown over the land on the back of a giant bird.
The tribesman could navigate by landforms, winds, and by the night sky. That’s why he left the home place with the keeper. He always went with the keeper to visit the oldest places, walking a full twenty paces behind him so he would not hear the song, but he had heard it despite this precaution, and he had learned it by the time he was thirty, though he dared not sing it aloud. He went with the keeper many times a year, to Nanguluwur, Ubirr, and Burrunggui. Sometimes they did not go to the old places; they went walking across the savanna, or by raft during the wet seasons, so the keeper could listen for information that came from the water, from the dry ground, and from the cliffs. They returned to the people after days, sometimes weeks, with guidance and news. Incorporating the new knowledge, the people would move to the next camp, or they would stay until the eucalypts flowered or the magpie geese took flight.
But the last time had been different; the tribesman knew it right away, even if the rest of the people did not. The keeper beckoned to him in his usual way, and pointed east. The tribesman prepared for a journey but he could not feel the reason for it. The old women talked among themselves: He was going now? With the thunderheads building? They did not understand it but they trusted the keeper, as they should.
The keeper led him to the east. The tribesman thought they would go
to Nourlangie, but after a day’s walk away from the camp the keeper turned north. The tribesman’s unease grew. This was not the way toward any ancestor, unless the song had given the keeper knowledge much deeper than anyone knew.
On the evening of the second day of walking the keeper had come to him. Brother. The keeper’s white hair glowed in the nighttime. Brother, we are going to the sea. The tribesman knew he was smiling. It is the sea we need to ask. The keeper’s voice was strange, different. He squatted next to the tribesman, rocking gently back and forth on his heels, twisting a length of his hair between his fingers. The tribesman noticed his eyes were red-rimmed and watery. The keeper was very old. He held centuries of knowledge, but could he walk that far? The people knew the sea only by what they heard in stories. Those stories had nothing to do with life at the home place. Why? whispered the tribesman. We have never gone there. What is the need? We have never gone there for anything. Something is changing, the keeper told him. That is what I know. We must find out what it is and bring the news back. Now is the time to go and get this information.
For four days they walked across dry floodplain, through forests where the rustling of leaves blocked every other sound. They watched thunderheads pass above their heads and drop their rain far to the west. The keeper walked steadily in his uneven gait, limping from his old wound. As they went farther and farther the tribesman’s fear grew, and he mourned. He hated to leave the home country more than anything else in his life. The aunts and grandmothers had always teased him, ever since he was a boy, saying the only reason he learned how to read landscapes, how to mark paths and navigate by the night sky, was so that wherever he was, he could return very quickly to his bed.
As they walked, he tried to keep the home place with him. He saw the men poised ankle-deep in the shallow wetlands, spears raised. Faster than you could see, they speared turtles through the neck. The hunters walked back to the stone cliffs before dusk, watching the wood swallows roosting in the high crevices. The women plucked the last geese of the season, storing the down and stringing flight feathers and hanging them among the rocks. The tribesman wanted more than anything to return, to feel the first drops of the rain on his back. He wanted to walk into the shelter and breathe the scent of roasting bird, of coming storm. But without the tribesman the keeper would be lost. And the people needed a keeper, so the tribesman could not turn back.
The song on his lips tastes metallic, brings a vision of rain and the smell of wet eucalypts. He moans when he feels the wooden floor of the museum under his feet and hears the sound of horse’s hooves and clanging metal harnesses on Broadway. He covers his ears, but nothing helps. He is nowhere, dying, waiting.
Forty-three
“But where did they come from?”
“Chicago, probably. Most of the Indian shows originate there.”
“I mean before that. Where are they from?”
Guillaudeu was incredulous. Lilian Kipp’s interest had swerved almost immediately from the enigmatic white whale, the secret he’d used to bring her to the museum, to the Indians who lived beside it. The presence of the beluga had startled her, of course. She had scaled the ladder, even extended a hand to the creature, which had given it a hesitant nibble. But she was entirely more intrigued by the Indian camp, even though no one was there.
“These baskets,” she had exclaimed. “I saw some like them at the British Museum before I left home. The motifs remind me of Greek mosaic, do you see the similarity? I haven’t had a chance to see any of your Indians yet. I would love to travel west, but I don’t have the time right now. I’d better go soon, though. Tribes like this won’t last long.”
“They’ve been living here for several months.” Guillaudeu struggled to recall another detail about the Indians. “They perform two shows a day. Dancing, I believe.”
“We should see them! Could we? Ever since I was a girl I was always envious of you Americans with your Indians. I imagined if I’d been born here I would have run away from home and been adopted by some.”
“Oh?”
“Isn’t that silly?”
“Not at all, Miss Kipp.”
“Oh yes, it is. If we’re to be friends you must tell the truth, Mr. Guillaudeu!”
Guillaudeu blushed. Once again, Miss Kipp had slipped into a directness that he found exciting, terrifying, and somehow a relief. Linked to her, he felt himself anchored to the ground instead of stumbling over uneven, undulating terrain.
“To be quite frank, then, I am at a loss. I showed you the museum’s greatest treasure and greatest secret. It is the only beluga whale in the country, and yet you are entirely more interested in the Indians.”
“A-ha! That’s better, Mr. Guillaudeu. The answer is simple: I have seen the whale before.”
“That’s not possible! The public isn’t allowed into the fifth floor at all.”
“No. Not this whale. I’ve seen belugas in the seas of Greenland. I accompanied my father on one of his last voyages, and we watched the whales, hundreds of them, as they foraged in Baffin Bay. This is a fine whale, though. I will pay it more attention if that makes you feel any better.”
“But that would not be truthful, Miss Kipp! No need for you to cater to an old man’s delusion. I simply assumed that, like me, no one had ever glimpsed one before.”
“Most people haven’t.”
“But I managed to find the one woman who had.”
“I was glad to be found.”
Guillaudeu offered Lilian Kipp his arm. “As I understand it, there is an Indian show at eight o’clock this evening. If we want to see it, we should ascend now to the Aerial Garden and Perpetual Fair for supper.”
The evening was windy and warm. Clouds in the shape of all manner of pastries scudded low against a purplish backdrop. He seated her at a table near the railing. It was the first time Guillaudeu had eaten supper on the roof. The prospect of navigating the crowds had always been distasteful enough to send him into the streets instead, or home. Now that he was here, the people did not bother him. The view to the harbor was spectacular, and off to his right he could see the Happy Family in its cage. The coyote seemed to be watching him specifically. Hoping for food, he suspected.
Lilian Kipp regarded patrons, restaurant waiters, even the tableware aligned in front of her with the same exacting scrutiny she had given to the Indian baskets. Now she gazed over the railing at the city below. Guillaudeu felt he would lose her completely to the many-layered vista if he didn’t engage her in conversation right away.
“You inherited the naturalist’s capacity for information.”
“Something of it. Compared with the others I am a dilettante. In some it borders on mania. Useful mania. An accepted one, but mania nonetheless.”
“Was your father afflicted with it?”
“Mania? Perhaps. He was considered something of an oddity. He was always abroad, and when he was home in Bradworthy he walked through the fields and woods, taking down notes and observations of things the farmers could not even see. He wandered and wandered, in circles and loops, backtracking and cutting his way through thickets. Yes, some people considered him a bit off. And then after a few months out would come an article, published in London or Edinburgh, making some new sense of the grub or the blackbird. I adored him, of course. I would stumble along behind, making notes of my own, which he insisted I read to him. He would pretend to augment his findings with mine.”
“You moved to London when he died?”
“Yes. The contours of my life have been wholly determined by his.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” said Guillaudeu. Lilian Kipp had issued her comment casually, without blinking. If it was intended for humor he could not say, and he experienced an unpleasant memory of his wife’s cholera-stricken face.
“Oh, it certainly is! The farm was Mother’s. But we stayed there for him. He could not bear to live in the city. But as soon as he died we were off. Once again, he prompted our move. And the Royal Society offered me wor
k only because I am his daughter.”
“It seems a sad way to look at things, doesn’t it? An oversimplification.”
“But it’s true,” she said and laughed.
“But no one is forcing you to publish his writings, are they? It is obvious to anyone who hears you speak that there is passion behind your efforts.”
She examined the black tulip in the vase on the table. The wind lifted the corner of her shawl and delivered a pleasant whiff of fennel to Guillaudeu’s nostrils.
“What is your work, then?” he asked gently.
Lilian Kipp replied quickly. “I classify botanical and entomological specimens for the Royal Society. I sit at a table with Miss Bedard, who sketches each beetle while I look it up in Albin’s natural history. Miss Martin fills in the sketches with watercolor.”
“That sounds like the work of the Royal Society, not your own.”
“You’re making fun of me!”
“Not in the least,” said Guillaudeu. “I truly want to know.”
“I have no work of my own.”
“I don’t believe it,” snapped Guillaudeu.
“Whyever not?” Lilian Kipp snapped back.
“Because I am convinced that everyone spins a web of their own design inside their own head. Everyone creates some personal taxonomy with its own meandering logic, some small prism of ideas and passion, no matter how delicate or unusual or unspoken. No one can implant such a thing in another. It springs from one’s own vision.”
“What a pretty thing to say,” said Lilian Kipp.
He saw she had not expected it. Neither had he.
“What is yours, then, Mr. Guillaudeu?”
“I won’t let you turn the conversation that way, Miss Kipp,” he said. “The question was first put to you.”
Among the Wonderful Page 27
