“Well,” she began, “I have been investigating something over the years. It started with frogs at the pond in Bradworthy. The development from polliwog to frog is remarkable; I have countless sketches and observations of it. But several years ago my mother and I were walking in Kew Garden. We looked at the leaves of a flowering cherry tree, and I found a chrysalis. Have you ever seen a chrysalis, Mr. Guillaudeu?” Lilian Kipp appeared a bit breathless.
“I have not.”
“Not many people have, which is surprising, considering there are over fifty thousand species of caterpillar in the world, and those are just the ones we’ve classified! There are untold thousands more, I have no doubt. A chrysalis is a thing of real beauty. Extraordinary beauty. Rare beauty. For example, if you look at one through a magnifying glass, you will see imprinted textures and patterns on its surface. These patterns, I’ve discovered, reflect the markings of both the caterpillar and the inchoate butterfly. But inside the shell, the actual creature has dissolved into a pulpy liquid. Liquid!” Lilian Kipp paused for a drink of water. She shook her head. “In fact, I met a man in London who kept a colony of Smerinthus geminatus. He was the only other person I found who was conducting his own inquiry into the process of metamorphosis. I realized his aim was much different from mine when I entered his laboratory and found that he was draining the liquid contents of the cocoons into cocoon-shaped glass vials and selling the substance to ladies of rank as an elixir. Skin like the wing of a butterfly.
“A frog’s metamorphosis is not quite so otherworldly as that of the moth or the butterfly. The frog sprouts its limbs in plain sight. True, it changes from breathing water to air. That is no small feat.” She laughed. “But consider the caterpillar! It emerges into the world and the first thing it does is consume its own leathery egg. From that moment on, all it does is eat. Its body is a simple vessel blessed with the flame of life! It doubles and triples its size within three hours of its birth. It splits out of its first skin into a bigger one, with different coloring and contours. It repeats this process two more times, evolving into several different caterpillars on its way. Then, according to some indicator still unknown to man, it hangs itself under a leaf. It is perfectly still for almost exactly twenty-four hours. Then, its skin splits apart one more time to reveal the chrysalis. From the wormy, earthbound crawler emerges this liminal phase, a hanging cocoon, more of a place than a being. Inside, slime somehow organizes itself into a powder-winged creature, an iridescent aeronaut, one of our universal symbols of beauty. Does the butterfly remember eating the leaves upon which it now alights? All of its mechanisms for survival are different. Its whole architecture has transformed. Are they two creatures, five, or one? Only when I examine the chrysalis itself, as I told you, with the magnifying glass, do I see how the caterpillar is linked to the butterfly.”
Guillaudeu sat back in his chair. He observed Lilian Kipp beginning to blush. He could not speak. He felt as if she had split open her own skin and shown him a damp and unfurling wing. He looked down at his clasped hands.
“I know,” she mumbled, rearranging her silverware on the napkin. “It is a relatively small concern. In the face of the great studies, of Buffon and the rest, my scrawlings and rambling thoughts are hardly … Isn’t it a bit of a folly that I spend most afternoons studying worms, when surely there are better ways to address the troubles of the world, or at least to make one’s mark upon it?”
“My dear, you have forgotten to whom you are speaking. Consider my own line of work,” Guillaudeu said and smiled. “Somehow, through the convolutions of my mind, I am convinced that it does matter, though, that mine is in some way an admirable pursuit. We are both concerned with transformation. Who isn’t?”
“Metempsychosis,” blurted Lilian Kipp, “manifests not only in art and poetry, but in science, I am convinced. The passing of the soul at death into another body. Because the caterpillar dies. That much is certain. And yet it is reborn, with wings! It is a miniature phoenix. And we are too busy to ever see this phoenix rise. It baffles me. Wouldn’t it make sense for us to keep caterpillars in cut-glass terrariums, to preserve them in reliquaries, worship them, even? How can we pass through the world without even considering them?”
“You clearly have not made that mistake, and you have my utmost respect in that regard.”
Lilian Kipp laughed. “Why thank you.”
“I am very serious. You must publish your findings.”
Lilian Kipp again dropped her gaze to the tulip. Her hands, Guillaudeu noticed, were twined together tightly.
“What is it?”
“I have published,” she said softly.
“How wonderful! And where might I find this work of yours?”
Lilian Kipp dipped her hand into her velveteen purse and produced a slim gray volume.
“Kipp’s Epistemonicon?”
“I am the Kipp who wrote it,” she whispered, as if someone who might report the forgery might be listening. “Not my father.”
Guillaudeu blinked.
“I am a terrible fraud, I know.” Lilian Kipp looked over the railing at New York Harbor, her brow creased. Guillaudeu had the fleeting desire to place a finger on that crease, to smooth it away. “I would never be published otherwise.”
“But your father —”
“He was an explorer, a naturalist, all the things I said. But his works were simple treatises. Scientific only. The philosophical musings are all mine.”
“The sloth?”
She turned back to him, the line of her jaw set. “Yes. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Do you not hate me?”
Guillaudeu laughed. “Hardly. After your lecture at the Lyceum I was most disappointed that I could not speak with the author of those wonderful words.” Guillaudeu smiled. “I do think you could have published it under your real name.”
“Not in London. Maybe here. But it’s quite too late for that.”
“And it will be too late for us” — Guillaudeu sensed he should not pursue the matter further — “if we do not descend to the theater for the performance.”
Forty-four
Because the Human Calculator retained top billing in the theater, the Indians performed their evening show in the portrait gallery. By the time Guillaudeu and Lilian Kipp arrived, most of the wooden folding chairs were filled and the gas lamps were blazing. The audience emitted a disorienting buzz, and as they navigated the crowd Guillaudeu offered Lilian Kipp his arm as much for his own comfort as hers. He would have preferred to retire to his office and continue their conversation, but Lilian Kipp was obviously interested in the show. She led him very close to the stage, to the middle of the second row. The first row was entirely empty.
“Isn’t this a bit close?” Guillaudeu ventured.
“I want to be able to see their clothing and any art objects they might have,” said Lilian Kipp. “Isn’t this exciting?”
A figure in a dark suit appeared at the end of the row and bent to speak to someone. Guillaudeu had not seen Mr. Archer for some time and his visage gave him something of a shock. Archer whispered into the ear of a seated man whose face Guillaudeu could not see. Archer rose quickly, and as he turned, he saw Guillaudeu. The ad man’s eyebrows shot up and the two of them exchanged mutually surprised expressions before Archer walked briskly away.
“It’s beginning,” whispered Lilian Kipp.
Because there was no backstage, the Indians filed down the aisle from in back of their audience.
“Oh, look. How beautiful,” breathed Lilian Kipp. The man at the head of the procession carried a cut sapling in front of him as if it were a flag on a pole. The sapling was festooned with strips of red and blue cloth, and lone feathers fluttered from strings. Other shapes dangled from the sapling’s dead branches, small bundles of fur that Guillaudeu finally recognized as animals: a small dead ground squirrel of some kind, or at least a part of one; a whole bird, a finch perhaps, wrapped in string; ot
her creatures too small to identify.
Once onstage, the elderly man set the sapling down. Boards had been nailed to its base for stability. The man sat down underneath the tree. The rest of the Indians had gathered on one side of the stage. They wore thin white cotton robes painted with red and blue shapes. Some of their faces were painted bright red, with black half-moons or chevrons on their foreheads. A young man holding a drum joined the man under the tree.
Without acknowledging the presence of the audience, the old man began to chant.
Beside Guillaudeu, Lilian Kipp leaned forward. The younger man beat the drum. The remaining Indians formed a tight circle and swayed toward the center of the stage, picking up their pace as the drumbeat quickened. Guillaudeu felt his mouth pinch into a frown: Shouldn’t someone explain what the Indians were doing? What kind of dance was this? He fingered his collar. The crowded hall was becoming uncomfortably hot.
The drummer accelerated his rhythm into a pounding crescendo and the old man suddenly leapt to his feet, stomping and emitting a high-pitched yodel. Just as abruptly, the drum ceased. The circle of Indians silently parted, revealing one shrouded figure in the center. The old man assumed a predatory stance and crept to the cloaked figure in an exaggerated tiptoe. The figure took one step backward and the chorus of people around it let out a synchronized yell. The drum started up again. As the chorus shuffled backward, the old man lunged forward. He swept away the shroud to reveal a woman, clad only in a thin cotton tunic that barely covered her knees. She stared at the ground. Her hair was shorn to her skull and she wore no paint except a black line running across her cheekbones and over the bridge of her nose. As she began to move, the chorus followed. She stumbled toward the tree, but the old man leapt toward her again in his stylized attack. The woman seemed disoriented; members of the chorus surged up when she appeared to lose her balance. Like the others, she did not regard the audience but lunged and teetered and seemed to be held up by the rhythm of the drum.
“What are they doing to her?” Lilian Kipp whispered. Guillaudeu felt the warmth as she leaned into his shoulder. “Has she been drugged?”
“Certainly not! I certainly hope not.”
Onstage, the chorus accelerated its song. These six people moved in unnerving synchronicity while the woman continued her delirious movements. The old man settled beneath the tree as the chorus fanned out to fill the periphery of the stage. They stomped and shuffled sideways, bent halfway over in one moment, and the next reaching toward the ceiling.
The temperature in the gallery was decidedly uncomfortable; women in the audience fanned themselves using pamphlets and Guillaudeu was tempted to take off his jacket. Beside him, Lilian Kipp sat very still. The woman onstage wriggled and spun with the chorus’ chant. Guillaudeu could see that underneath the cotton tunic her skin was bare; in certain moments when the woman bent forward or changed the direction of her dance, he could discern the curve of her hip and the shadows of her breasts. His hands were sweating and he dared not look at Lilian. He noticed that every man on the stage had closed his eyes. The woman’s eyes were open but she seemed not to perceive her surroundings. She stumbled again; women from the audience gasped.
Guillaudeu looked furtively at Lilian Kipp, who remained transfixed by the performance. Beyond her profile, the man at the end of the row stood up. He looked toward Guillaudeu, who averted his gaze. At the other end of the same row another man rose. It was clear these two knew each other; they were coordinating their movements. Guillaudeu watched as the men walked toward the stage. He was able to cover his ears before the first man blew a piercing note from a metal whistle.
“In the name of Mayor James Harper, we command an end to this abomination!” cried the second man.
They approached the stage. The Indians took no notice of the intrusion. The drummer continued, as did the woman’s unnerving dance. The audience, however, emitted a powerful chorus of exclamations.
In a sudden move Lilian Kipp gripped Guillaudeu’s forearm. “Is this part of the show?” she whispered.
“Stop!” yelped the man with the whistle. He blew the instrument a second time. The mayor’s deputies regarded each other for a moment and then ascended the stage.
Beneath the sapling, the old man opened his eyes. Guillaudeu noticed his expression was not one of surprise; if anything, he revealed a bemused half smile. Guillaudeu felt a knot tighten in his gut.
The deputies approached the performers with outstretched arms, as if they were pursuing errant hens. Continuing their dance, the chorus watched the deputies. The young drummer was the only one who broke from the performance. He did not stop his music but rose and took a few steps toward the woman. The old man grasped him by the ankle and shook his head. The drummer jerked his foot away but made no further movement. The deputy with the whistle removed his jacket in a swinging motion. Quickly he wrapped the coat around the twirling woman’s shoulders. The moment he touched her, the drums and the dancers stopped.
The man blew the whistle again, unnecessarily. “On behalf of Mayor James Harper and the upstanding citizens of this great city, I now make the following official announcement: As of this moment, Phineas T. Barnum’s American Museum is closed! The closure, which should come as a surprise to no one, is due to repeated offenses to the morals and sensibilities of our citizens. These offenses, typified by the obscenities perpetrated in this Indian show, target the more delicate audience members: women and children.”
“What is he talking about?” whispered Lilian Kipp. “All women have seen the skin of women. And children? If anyone, it is men who should be banned.”
“Since its opening day, Barnum’s American Museum has been a den for illicit and morally corrupt spectacles, such as the one behind me. This, in addition to numerous illegalities of the museum’s operation, has led the mayor’s office to gather all its deputies together and close the museum. It will remain closed until further notice. As we speak, dozens of the mayor’s faithful servants are at work in this building, escorting people to the nearest exits and explaining the situation. If you will all please now rise, we have stationed deputies at each door.”
A few people in the audience applauded and Guillaudeu wondered briefly if the whole thing was one of Barnum’s schemes. But the policemen stationed in each of the museum’s doorways convinced him otherwise. He shielded Lilian Kipp as best he could from the pressing crowd and led her down the marble stairway.
“Does this happen often?”
“This is the first time.”
“It’s terribly exciting, though.”
Guillaudeu wondered if the mayor meant to evacuate the museum employees as well as its patrons. Who would care for the animals? If Barnum’s museum was being shut down for moral reasons, did that mean the mayor was shutting down half of the Bowery? What about Niblo’s Garden?
As they approached the main entrance, Guillaudeu saw a cluster of people just outside the door on Broadway arguing with one of the deputies. He had not seen the giantess for several weeks and now she bent over the man, her face red and one arm pointing toward the entrance. At her side, two men with slicked hair stood very close together, also gesticulating wildly.
“Amazing!” said Lilian Kipp. “What a sight!”
“Come with me,” he whispered.
Guillaudeu grabbed her hand and led her through the crowd. With a swift turn of the key and whirl of a skirt, he pulled her inside his office.
Forty-five
They stood with their ears pressed to the door. Deputies escorted dozens of museum patrons out into the street.
“Let me phrase it differently for you, sir.” The giantess’ irate but controlled voice reached them easily. “You and your minions have just barred us from returning to our homes. Is this so difficult for you to understand? Look up there. Can you see that row of lit rooms on the top floor? That is where we live. Now if you and your mayor want to pay the costs of a hotel for twenty people, this story might have a different ending. But I doubt very much
—”
“She will get her way,” Lilian Kipp whispered. “Listen to her!” And she was right. Soon they heard the giantess and several others return to the building, passing on the other side of the door, cursing under their collective breath as the exodus of museum patrons went on and on.
Lilian Kipp turned from the door. “Your office?”
“It is.” He lit the wall lamps.
Lilian Kipp ran her finger along the length of his bookshelf, which was still empty except for a worn copy of Birds of America that Dr. Putnam had thrust into Guillaudeu’s hands at the end of his visit.
Outside, someone slammed the museum’s main entrance doors, and they heard the slide of the outer gate.
Lilian Kipp raised her eyebrows. “We’re trapped!”
Guillaudeu opened the door slowly and peeked out. The entry hall was dark as they stepped into the corridor, and the ticket window was closed up tight. They heard the sound of people talking, milling in groups on Broadway. Someone kicked the door and demanded a refund.
Lilian Kipp covered her mouth with her hand to laugh. She turned and pointed. “Let’s go up,” she mouthed, moving toward the marble stairway, her form striped by shadows. The street sounds ebbed to nothing and as they climbed the broad marble steps, Lilian Kipp’s footsteps clicked satisfyingly across the faintly luminous, veined surface.
None of the usual crowd noise cluttered the air, and so the portrait gallery echoed their whispers. Guillaudeu and Lilian Kipp walked among a chaos of chairs, some toppled, some leaning against one another like drunkards, detritus from the Indian show. Onstage, the Indian’s wrapped tree still stood, and Lilian Kipp climbed onstage to examine it. Far away, on the other side of the gallery, the draperies swung gently on slow breaths of air. No windows were open that Guillaudeu could see; it must be the museum’s own breath.
They passed through the galleries on the second floor, looking mostly upward beyond the displays, both of them tending toward the vacuous reaches of the upper air.
Among the Wonderful Page 28
