Among the Wonderful

by Stacy Carlson

  “But before we continue these discussions, we have an item of new business. We are a small group here,” he continued. “When newcomers arrive, we like to give them a chance to tell us something about themselves. Please, ladies. Indulge us.”

  Everyone in the green room turned to scrutinize us; in a maddening gesture, Maud looked at me as if she’d never seen me before, her lips pursed. It was a clear sign that I was to be our spokesperson. I did not stand.

  “We’re from Barnum’s American Museum. There are certain issues among the employees there, including unfair pay, inadequate care for children, and a prevalent general disorganization that precludes the resolution of these issues. You may have heard of the recent arrest of the Martinetti family of acrobats. They are entirely without representation, legal or otherwise. I saw your advertisement in the Evening Post this morning. We are not actors in the conventional sense of the word, but I believe we fit into the same arena. I’m hoping to listen to your discussion and ask for your advice and guidance to help remedy the situation at the American Museum.”

  None of the actors regarded me, or the details of my little speech, with particularly friendly expressions, but I was still unprepared for what followed. From one corner of the room, a voice that was registered somewhere in the lowest regions of the bass clef and shockingly loud emitted a mind-splitting barrage of language. Everyone jumped, including the mild costume-maker who stood in front of us. The instrument of this noise was a robust male, of above-average height and stormy complexion, who had risen from his seat and now glowered at Maud and me while spewing chains of words in German.

  It also soon became clear that everyone else in the room knew the German language. I was incredulous. On the fifth floor of Barnum’s museum, one could not find a group of more than five or six who spoke the same language, English included.

  “They’re all German?” As I whispered to Maud, the terrible shouter began waving his fist at us, and at the costume-maker, who visibly recoiled.

  “Most are. That’s one of the reasons I left; they revert to German to discuss real business.”

  “I thought you were fired.”

  “It was practically mutual.”

  “Sir?” I raised my hand and addressed the costume-maker. “Would you mind enlightening my friend and me as to what is going on?” At the sound of my voice the shouter paused.

  “There is some discussion —” he began.

  “That is clear,” Maud snapped.

  “Why should we help you?” The shouter switched languages seemingly mid-sentence, his voice retaining the volume and force of a pipe organ. “Since your museum closed, attendance here at Niblo’s has doubled. Why should we help you?”

  “Not everyone is agreeing with Mr. Messner, madame,” the costume-maker offered. Mr. Messner had reverted to his native tongue and now addressed the seated actors. The costume-maker cleared his throat and switched to German, calling out to the group. Mr. Messner did not immediately back off, and several of the assembled people shouted their opinions in German over his voice.

  “Your meetings are advertised as open to the public,” Maud shouted over the din. “I’m surprised that you would put in the effort and money to place these ads if you did not really mean what they say.”

  “Mr. Niblo places the ads” — Mr. Messner growled from his seat — “so people will think his establishment progressive, as they say. Nothing more.”

  I could see this detail ruffled Maud, but it was clear by the set of her jaw and the tilt of her shoulders that we would stay to the end.

  “Entschuldigen Sie bitte.” The racket ebbed suddenly with this new voice. Tai Shan had stepped away from the wall and now addressed the group. “I hope you will allow me to translate my colleagues’ concerns. They are asking for your help. Surely you will give it to them?”

  He was graceful. He gestured for me to continue. I hardly knew what to say.

  “In Barnum’s museum there is no recognized method for us to enact change. All of our contracts are privately signed.”

  Tai Shan’s voice was gentle and steady even as it navigated the rugged topography of the German tongue. People’s heads turned from one to the other of us as we alternated.

  “Barnum is constantly expanding the museum according to his whim. I’d like to negotiate with him and try to centralize the contracts, and to include certain benefits for us, like what you’re doing with your schedule of Saturdays off work.”

  After Tai Shan concluded his translation, an actor was the first to speak. He addressed me directly. “You must show him that you and your group have power in the museum. Without you, he would have nothing to exhibit!”

  A costume-maker nodded. She could have been my mother’s age, wearing a faded kerchief around her gray hair. Tai Shan translated her words. “There can be only one representative of your group. You and you only must negotiate with him. Everyone must agree to the terms of your guild. She says the guild will work only with this unity.”

  By the end of the discussion, people talked excitedly about the museum, the change that was possible. I nodded and tried to remember everything that was said. When the meeting ended, several actors nodded good night and wished me luck with the endeavor.

  Maud stayed at Niblo’s to talk with several of her former colleagues, so Tai Shan and I left the theater together.

  On the street, the evening air promised summer. Families walked in groups beside lone men hurrying home. We walked in silence, two pillars above the swarm. An old man and his stooped wife approached us from the opposite direction, barely holding steady in the throng. They hobbled between faster-moving pedestrians, the man navigating not just his two feet but a cane as well. The woman seemed to be the eyes for the pair; while he focused on the ground in front of him, she peered up Broadway, perhaps scouting for obstacles. When she saw us she nudged her husband and they straightened up a bit to look. They beheld us as if we were a miracle, their expressions simple wonder. Perhaps I was just exhilarated by our success at Niblo’s Garden, but their faces filled me with an abrupt joy; they had received our gift. I wanted to turn to Tai Shan. Had he seen them? But in the end I didn’t, because I didn’t want to break our silence and lose the delicious sensation of struggling to keep up with someone else.

  The two policemen stationed at the entrance opened the doors for us before we had even reached the museum side of Broadway. They were in the process of tipping their hats as we brushed past them when a voice stopped me.

  “Miss Swift! Wait!”

  I swung around in the entryway. As Tai Shan continued on, disappearing into the museum, both policemen lunged forward to apprehend a smallish figure.

  “Not you again,” one of the policemen growled. “It ain’t gonna work.”

  From between their arms I perceived the pianist Thomas Willoughby struggling to free himself. The police held him in such a way that his legs windmilled uselessly.

  “I know this man,” I told the officials.

  “He’s been trying to tell us he lives inside. But our orders are no one but performers and cooks go in. He ain’t a cook; that much is certain. And he doesn’t look like a performer to me.”

  I had never seen Thomas looking anything but rumpled, but he had exceeded all previous levels of disarray, appearing now with ripped trousers, a dark stain down the front of his frayed overcoat, and at least three leaves stuck in the chaos of his hair, one of them a particularly bright shade of green. He cast furtive looks at the policemen.

  “I’ve been trying to tell them, but they won’t believe me.”

  “Oh?”

  “That I’m a clairvoyant,” he said flatly.

  I wouldn’t have believed it, either. Oh, Thomas. Why didn’t you just say you were one of the animal keepers? I suppressed a smile.

  “We asked him to prove it by telling O’Connor’s future, but he won’t do it.”

  I took a deep breath. “He performs in the theater on Tuesdays and Fridays at two o’clock,” I offered. “H
e has a booth as well. On the third floor. But I suppose my word isn’t enough, is it?”

  “He just doesn’t seem like a clairvoyant, is all.” The one called O’Connor scrutinized Thomas. “We don’t trust him. And isn’t it only the real freaks that live in there, anyway?”

  “Barnum includes Mr. Willoughby among his Representatives of the Wonderful because of the unwavering accuracy of his predictions and the delicacy of his constitution. Just look how the harsh city has affected him! He really must return to his apartment. The crowded streets overwhelm him.”

  “I can sense people’s destinies,” Thomas offered softly.

  “Then what is mine?” O’Connor leaned ominously over the pianist. “I’m sure if you tell me a little something about my future, we can allow you in.”

  I couldn’t help. Thomas gulped some air.

  “The reason I am so hesitant, sir, is simple enough.” Thomas still had a wild look in his eye, and I wondered if he had been out somewhere smoking opium. “Generally, people are eager to hear their fortunes when there is love on the horizon, or exotic travels.” His voice settled into a surprising, authoritative tone. “But it’s altogether different when the news is bleak. For example, when the unforeseen event is an accident” — Thomas raised his eyebrows suggestively — “people are far less interested to know the details.”

  O’Connor took a step back.

  “Yours is a profession fraught with danger, Mr. O’Connor. Given this warning, do you truly want me to continue?”

  “I don’t believe I do. No, please don’t.” Mr. O’Connor stepped away from the door, and I pulled Thomas inside by the collar.

  “Good Lord, Thomas. That was a bit extreme.” I let him go and we ascended the marble stairway.

  “I could think of nothing else!”

  “You look as if you’ve slept on the street.”

  “I have.”

  “You have?”

  “But I am inside now, thank God. I shall eat and play the piano and look at the whale.”

  He trotted to keep up with me, his head bobbing up and down with its crown of leaves. He caught me looking at him and smiled.

  I stopped on the landing to laugh. “I’ve seen worse clairvoyants, Thomas. But, ‘I sense people’s destinies’?”

  “It’s true, in a way.”

  Thomas revealed that for a full month leading up to the museum’s closure, he had slept each night in the glassblowers’ studio on the fourth floor. Quite comfortably, he insisted. It was easy to keep a bit of a fire going in the forge, he said, and now it was warm enough that he didn’t need one.

  “Don’t you have an apartment? You must be making enough money here to sustain yourself.”

  “I have a room on Hester Street, yes. But it’s a difficult neighborhood. I had an unfortunate incident involving my neighbor and one of her … clients. She’s a pleasant woman, really. But I’m afraid I made an enemy out of her. Since then I’ve been hesitant to go home. And the truth is, there’s no piano on Hester Street. It suits me fine to stay here. I like it.”

  It was true, now that I thought about it, that Thomas was always at his post on the balcony in the mornings when I made my first rotation of the galleries, long before the fiddler and the horn player arrived. And he was always there at the day’s end, when I retired upstairs. The museum opened at sunrise, it was true. And closed at ten o’clock.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “No need to pull anyone else into it.”

  We made our way across the galleries to the corner stairwell. We took one flight up. Thomas stopped at the landing.

  “You’re coming with me,” I told him. “I’m not leaving you down here to nest like a squirrel when there is a perfectly civilized apartment building upstairs.”

  “Squirrels are resourceful creatures,” Thomas muttered. But he followed me.

  A handful of oil lamps lit the Indians’ camp but the rest of the fifth-floor gallery gaped like a great cavern, with only slivers of moonlight casting white shadows into its farthest reaches.

  “This might be my favorite room in the museum,” I told Thomas. “It seems to me that every museum should have an empty gallery. For balancing the senses. I am truly fond of the effect of walking through an emptiness like this. It makes me feel … the right size. The Giant’s Lament, Thomas. You finally heard it.”

  “But this gallery isn’t empty. It houses the museum’s greatest marvel, remember? I’m going to have a quick look.” Thomas swerved toward the beluga tank.

  Only three Indians sat together in the makeshift living room of the camp. As I approached I realized that one of them was not an Indian at all, but the Australian tribesman, sitting on a stool next to the eldest Sioux. The third figure was the young man who had translated for They Are Afraid of Her during my English class. The old man, in his black wool frock coat and satin top hat, was speaking to the tribesman so softly I could not recognize the language, or even hazard a guess as to which it could possibly be, for them both to understand. The younger man rose to apprehend me before I could interfere.

  “He can’t understand you,” I said.

  The man did not look at me, but the corner of his mouth curved into a sneer. “If you say so,” he said.

  “Who is he?”

  “Who do you think he is?” The Indian took a step toward me. Mocking me somehow, though I didn’t understand his parameters. “Who could he possibly be, in this place?”

  “Someone whose home is a long way from here. As it is with all of us.”

  “And so the Grandfather welcomes him.” With that, the man abandoned me abruptly to return to his grandfather’s side.

  Out in the middle of the gallery Thomas had climbed the scaffolding up the side of the tank, facing away from me. I could see his head moving side-to-side as he followed the animal’s movements. He did not see or hear me approach, even when I stood near him and peered over the edge of the tank.

  The beluga was not alone. It slipped through the black clear water, luminescent as usual and silent for once. A woman glided with the whale, equally luminous and equally silent, her arm flung over the animal’s barely discernible neck, her body, barely concealed beneath the soaked fabric of her blue shift, lying flush against the beast. The whale propelled them both with slow vertical sweeps of its tail. They went around and around, the woman with her eyes closed, her short hair lying flat and smooth against her skull.

  Thomas stared at the two creatures until he saw me. Then he turned crimson and tripped over himself to descend the ladder.

  “Who is she?” he whispered.

  “An Indian. They Are Afraid of Her.”

  “Why?”

  “No, that’s her name.”

  “She must be cold. I’ve never seen her before.”

  “And now you’ve seen more of her than most.”

  They Are Afraid of Her, who must have heard Thomas’ commotion, hoisted herself out of the tank. She wrapped herself in a blanket that she’d hung on the scaffolding.

  “Wait,” she said softly. She came halfway down the ladder so that she was level with my head.

  “Hello!”

  “Your English is improving,” I observed.

  “Practice. My cousin knows.”

  She regarded Thomas, who simply stared at her. She extended a hand and fluttered her fingers. “You,” she offered. She reached her other hand out and fluttered both hands until her blanket slid precariously and she clutched it around her.

  “Yes! I play the piano!” He pointed at himself. “Thomas.”

  They Are Afraid of Her nodded.

  She looked between us, and then over her shoulder toward the encampment where a couple of Sioux sat on the floor, leaning against the wall.

  She pointed to the door to the apartments. “I want to live.”

  “Me too!” Thomas responded excitedly.

  “That’s not what she means, Thomas. She wants an apartment.”

  “Don’t you want to stay with your peop
le, your relatives?” Thomas asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll see if an apartment is available,” he gushed.

  “Thomas, don’t make promises you can’t keep.” I tugged his arm. “Let’s go.”

  Thomas tipped his hat as he backed away from her. “It is an exquisite pleasure to meet you.”

  They Are Afraid of Her watched us go.

  “That was a bit rude, Ana.”

  “We can’t get ourselves involved in something we don’t understand.”

  “Speak for yourself. If I avoided things I didn’t understand, I’d never do anything! I’d have to avoid music, for goodness’ sake. Where would I be then? She is very beautiful, you have to admit.”

  I led Thomas to the Martinettis’ abandoned apartment, the largest on the fifth floor. Since the arrest of the acrobats, the other residents had been arguing over who would move in. Of course they could not decide, so the two adjoining rooms remained empty. I ushered Thomas into them and got him settled, reassuring him that no one would mind if he joined us. The pianist was delighted, and he began to fret over what he would do first: go back to the whale or downstairs to his piano.

  I continued down the hall and knocked on Tai Shan’s door. He appeared in the doorway, already changed into a soft white robe and trousers. “I don’t mean to disturb you, but I just wanted to thank you again for what you did at Niblo’s.”

  “It was your idea to get their help. Thank you.”

  How had I convinced myself he was pompous? Tai Shan was elegant, certainly more educated than anyone else on the fifth floor, but the arrogance I had seen was actually a reserve that now seemed closer to shyness. How could I have misread him? My eye for seeing through layers of pretense clearly was not trained for my own kind. Nor had I noticed that his head was not entirely shaved; a thin, tightly braided plait hung over his shoulder all the way past his waist, at least four feet in a shiny silken cord. It was quite stunning.

  “I also wanted to apologize for being unfriendly toward you,” I stammered.