Among the Wonderful

by Stacy Carlson

  “I didn’t think you were unfriendly.”

  I laughed. “No? I can’t imagine how else you could have interpreted my coolness. Good Lord! Your room is half the size of mine! Less!”

  He smiled and pushed the door open wider.

  “Is this a joke? Do you really live in here?” The room was ten feet square with a minuscule window facing Broadway.

  “Of course.”

  “But there’s no furniture! I’m sure Barnum would switch you into a larger room.”

  “Yes, there is furniture. Don’t you see it? I have a table there, and a rug made for me by my uncle.” He pointed, and then I saw it: a very low narrow table along one side of the room, too low even for an average-sized person. The rug was woven from coarse fiber. He gestured me in. The room smelled pleasantly of beeswax.

  “Where on earth do you sleep?”

  “There.” He pointed to a cylindrical bundle of rolled blankets. “I put it away during the day.”

  “But where do you sit?”

  “Here.” He pointed to the floor. I looked dumbly down. He sat, as if to demonstrate it could be done. From his position, the table was a good height for eating or work.

  The table was covered with small tools, pieces of bone, and stones of various colors. On one side of the tabletop stood several rows of tiny carved animals: two rabbits, several monkeys, a bone owl, and a horse with a gracefully fluted tail. They were the same figurines I had seen for sale at a concessionaire’s booth on the third floor, the same as the yellow-green soapstone elephant Beebe had given me.

  “You make these?”

  Tai Shan surveyed his work carefully. “Yes.”

  “You could double your profits if you advertised that these miniatures were made by a giant.”

  “I know. But this is my hobby. It is my own private joke. Besides, my cousin sells the animals; he operates the booth downstairs and makes a good income from the statues.”

  Tai Shan fiddled with a small pair of pliers. I hated towering over him so I sank to the floor, my skirt billowing and my corset pinching. I felt decidedly silly with my legs sticking out in front of me. Tai Shan appeared not to notice.

  “Were you born in China, or here?”

  “China.” He pointed to a scroll on the wall. It was covered in spidery crosshatched characters. “I lived in the Imperial Palace.”

  “So it’s true. Your story, the one out there” — I gestured in reference to our booths — “it’s true?”

  “Of course. I arrived in this country only last October. I was briefly employed in Paris, but I wanted to live in New York because my remaining family lives here. My uncle and aunt, their son and his wife.”

  “Is that where you go when you’re not working? I’ve noticed you’re rarely here in the evenings.”

  Tai Shan smiled. “I go to them quite often. I stay with them for the night and return here in the morning. My cousin’s wife is expecting a baby. I’ve been helping with the preparations.”

  The more I watched Tai Shan, the more baffling his delicate angularity became. He exuded lightness despite his physical bulk. He sat comfortably cross-legged, creating a nest of his lap big enough to hold several children. Above his peaked cheekbones his eyes remained fixed on me as he spoke softly about his family. I took in the details of his room: more animal figurines on his tiny sill, a painting of a gibbous moon over pyramidal mountains. He had very few possessions, even for a performer. In comparison with his sleek and simple dwelling, my room was a chaos of ill-fitting furniture, my booth a self-administered prison cell, and my life, in its floundering and self-importance, a terrible mistake.

  Astonished, I began to shed tears. My eyes stung fiercely and my breath grew ragged.

  “Here.” Tai Shan’s voice was soft and neutral. He held out a blue silk handkerchief.

  “No, it’s all right.”

  “Take it.”

  “But it’s too fine. I would —”

  “Please.” Tai Shan laid the handkerchief on my knee. I started to rebuke him but he held up his hand and shook his head. I patted my eyes with the cool fabric as deeper shudders racked my rib cage. Tai Shan gazed at his folded hands as I continued crying.

  “I lived in the emperor’s palace for ten years,” he began. “In my quarters hung portraits of the giants who had come before me. Seven generations. When a court giant died, families with children like us appeared from across the country to seek an audience with the emperor, to apply for the post. Usually there were a dozen giants to choose from. My father prepared me for this interview from a very young age. He taught me languages, swordsmanship. There would be no greater honor for him than to be associated with the court.

  “When we arrived for our interview, we found that it was not the emperor himself who chose the giant, as in earlier times, but a deputy. A man no one recognized. Instead of the elaborate performance that my father had taught me, I simply stood in a line with four other men. The emperor’s deputy chose me, I believe, because I was the tallest.

  “Soon after I moved into the palace, I realized that giants had fallen out of fashion. Most days I had no appointments. During festivals I dressed in red and joined in the parades with the rest of the court. When dignitaries from abroad visited the emperor, which wasn’t often, I would sometimes be called upon to serve tea or perform some small entertainment. I was treated with respect, but my duties gradually shifted, until my main occupation was tutoring the children. One day the emperor called me into his chamber. He said I was to be the last court giant. There would be no successor. It was then that I decided to leave.”

  “It was that simple?”

  “Yes. My father was dead. My mother was dead. The court was indifferent, occupied with bigger troubles. My only remaining family, as I’ve told you, was here. There was nothing for me in China except a dead tradition.”

  “And you don’t mind working in a place like this?”

  “There is no other place like this museum! Not in Philadelphia, London, or anywhere. That’s what makes it interesting. This kind of work is easy; in America I meet people from all over the world. Yesterday, I spoke with a Portuguese duke and duchess visiting the museum! Very nice people.”

  Very nice people. When had I ever thought so well of museum visitors, or anyone? I sniffled.

  “In China everyone has seen a giant. It’s unusual, of course, but nothing extraordinary. Not like here. And you! You are the most extraordinary of all Barnum’s wonders.”

  I coughed. “How on earth do you mean?”

  “The world’s only giantess. Who else can claim to be the world’s only anything?”

  “A lot of people, in this business. Whether the claims are valid seems to be beside the point. But in all my years traveling and working, I haven’t seen another giantess, it’s true.”

  “Amazing.” Tai Shan shook his head.

  “They must be out there somewhere.”

  The gale blowing through my rib cage subsided. Tai Shan sat with his legs neatly folded. Behind him the small rectangle of sky deepened to indigo. A flock of pigeons spilled across it, the undersides of their wings flashing in unexpected unison.

  “Doesn’t it bother you that we die so young?” My voice was childlike, full of breath.

  “Fear of death is common to all of us.”

  “That’s a diplomatic approach.”

  “If I lived as if I’d been cheated, that wouldn’t be living at all. It does no good to covet a type of life that is not in our nature.”

  “Yes, but … it’s horrible. It’s not fair!”

  Tai Shan laughed, his angularity breaking into pleasant ripples. “It sounds like your particular justice has a narrow parameter —”

  “What were the odds that I would be born this way?” I sputtered, leaning toward him. “A million to one.”

  “Some would call that a miracle.”

  “I call it Nature’s terrible sense of humor.”

  “No one sees the world like you. People could ben
efit from the way you see it.”

  “I see death in every shadow and behind every door.”

  “So did the sages, Miss Swift,” said Tai Shan, still chuckling. “That’s what gave them a sense of humor.”

  Forty-eight

  The audience assembled as planned on the front lawn of City Hall Park just off Broadway and Park Row and by ten past one o’clock, it collectively began to wonder when Mr. Barnum would appear. Men flapped their hats in front of their faces even though it was the brightness of the May sun, not its heat, that was distracting. Shouting children ran among the crowd; several boys had climbed the scaffolding that hid the new Croton Fountain from view. Since its grand unveiling the previous October, the fountain had been overflowing its basin and inexplicably drying up. I hoped it wasn’t an omen for the whole Croton waterworks. Leaves and bits of trash had collected in the basin; soon children chased one another around and around it. Weaving through the crowd were several concessionaires I recognized from the museum, selling cold drinks and trinkets. At Barnum’s instruction, Representatives of the Wonderful were spaced evenly throughout the crowd. I saw Tai Shan on the other side of the park and his visage, suddenly familiar after our visit in his room, calmed me in an unusual way. He waved from above the sea of heads. We were two ships above the storm.

  I saw Clarissa, the museum’s Fat Lady, sweating profusely, cooling herself with an outsized peacock fan. Thomas Willoughby stood beside me, fidgeting incessantly and peering over his shoulder as if he suspected he was being followed. I looked for Beebe but could not see him.

  Besides the staff, who milled and squabbled over patches of shade, and the two dozen journalists with notebooks in their hands occupying the area directly in front of the empty podium, at least two hundred citizens populated the lawn; they appeared to be average citizens from all over town who seemed to require nothing but Barnum’s name to appear. They were probably expecting acrobats, or a crocodile. My neck emitted electric pulses of pain and my jaw ached, but it was good to be off the fifth floor, where the stagnant air was infused with the restlessness of eighteen professional performers on hiatus.

  When a sleek carriage stopped outside the stone piers at the park’s entrance we were sure Barnum would emerge with some flourish, larger than we remembered, smiling grandly. The crowd leaned and voices rose. But a dozen constables on the backs of horses came around the corner instead. They lined themselves up along the perimeter fence, their horses jostling and sidestepping daintily. The audience recoiled, our collective head pivoting. The shouts of children faded to murmur.

  The carriage door slammed open and two men stepped out onto the sidewalk. A third man emerged and remained balanced on the running board with one arm hooked around the carriage window for support. “It’s Mayor Harper,” a voice whispered somewhere below and to my left.

  I glanced behind me to where Maud stood with a black lace veil obscuring her face. She was talking with Oswald La Rue, the Living Skeleton.

  “This meeting is now canceled!” The new mayor’s youth surprised me. He was a slip of a thing with a thick mop of dark hair, and his voice rang out as if he were a schoolteacher losing control of a rowdy brood of children.

  “We now ask you to vacate the park. Barnum’s museum remains closed.” He looked around. “There’s no place for Barnum at our great City Hall. Please, make your way out immediately.

  The crowd stirred near the gates. Was it that easy to dispel them? Would they come out for Barnum and immediately turn tail for the mayor? But a familiar figure emerged from the crowd and walked between the stone piers to face the mayor.

  “Good afternoon, Mayor.” Barnum’s voice was friendly. Harper’s shape grew rigid. “I admit I do not see what the problem is. This park has been the site of countless public gatherings, including speeches by statesmen, celebrities, even visiting dignitaries from abroad. Would you deny those who live in this city access to their own parkland?

  “But now that I think of it” — Barnum paused dramatically — “that is exactly what you propose for this grand central park of yours. Access to only those who can pay!”

  “Barnum, I insist you leave the premises now.”

  “Indeed.” The crowd was now condensing in a push toward Broadway. Children were no longer laughing. Some people hurried toward the side entrance, but most remained to see the show.

  “Yes,” Barnum continued. “You indeed hold this particular power, Mr. Mayor. Dominion is the old term. But do you know Mr. Suskin?”

  From his running board Mayor Harper made no response.

  “Mr. Suskin is one of your secretaries, and it was he who issued the permit for this gathering.” Barnum removed a folded paper from his trouser pocket and walked directly to Mayor Harper to hand it over. “It is a gathering for members of the press,” Barnum went on, waving toward the journalists who were furiously scribbling. “To begin now and extend until two thirty. There are children and mothers here as well, Mayor Harper. If you’d like to keep your constabulary on guard at the fence to ensure their safety for the length of this meeting, we would be much obliged.”

  Barnum turned to the crowd, who responded with applause. He made his way toward the podium as the mayor of New York slipped back into his carriage.

  “This is how it begins,” Barnum intoned when he reached the podium. “Exactly like this. Those in power begin to make judgments on behalf of those they govern, instead of listening to the judgments and opinions of the people. Where we can gather together peaceably. Where we can go on our well-earned day away from the workplace. We must keep an eagle’s eye on those above us. Remember the rights of the citizen as written in our great Constitution, that sacred text that they” — here Barnum gestured behind him to the granite columns of City Hall — “claim to hold above all others.

  “Friends, I was a penniless man when I arrived in this city. The list of my occupations during the first months I lived here would surprise you, and embarrass me. I struggled not only to survive and to provide for my wife and infant. I wrestled with my soul.

  “Come closer, please. There is plenty of room up here on the lawn.” Barnum gestured toward the steel fence at our backs. “Come, friends.”

  It was a good approach, I had to admit. Barnum knew exactly what he was doing, and his audience stepped closer with childlike expressions.

  “From my earliest memory I knew I was not made for the farming life, the life given to me by my family. My interest and my calling lay in a different realm. But where? It was not in the landscape of meadow and forest. As a child I worked in the Bethel Parish mercantile, and in the world of commerce I found myself a step closer, yet my destiny remained mysterious.

  “I rode into Manhattan on a donkey. It was my own Jerusalem, if you will allow me the comparison. I still did not know where my search would ultimately lead, but I had found the city of my dreams. I was soon impoverished, invisible in this great tide of humanity, adrift amid thousands upon thousands of people and opportunities, bumped and knocked down, even trampled. I admit that my good wife returned to Connecticut in shame, to await my rise from the gutter.

  “A man is given a certain allotment of fuel in this life for the engine of his career. Would I run this machine on an established path, would I enter banking, shipping, or some post in municipal government? Or would I follow the compass of my deepest yearning, even toward an unknown destination?

  “Most of you know the story of my first venture as an itinerant entrepreneur of the show business.” Again Barnum regarded the newspapermen. “With those first explorations, I had hit upon it: To make men and women think and talk and wonder was the end at which I aimed. In their wondering lay our humanity, my destiny, and my fortune. I knew it with certainty. Any doubt that had polluted my faith dissolved.” He pointed south. “My museum is a manifestation of that faith.

  “The human mind wanders far afield. It wanders as far as the ships of the United States Expedition Company, and farther even than Europe’s most powerful telescope
. There are no officers of morality patrolling those peripheries, for better or for worse. And would we want someone to decide for us whether we are allowed to learn of the distant cultures of man? Would we avert our gaze from the image of a celestial body brought close to us by the inventions of man, simply because one opinion is that the star blasphemes? Of course not! We have a right to marvel at these existences!

  “I have brought nothing into my museum with the intention of offending the citizens of this city. I have brought strange, wonderful things to the light. That is my livelihood, my passion, my constant study and occupation. Is there anyone here who would challenge the people’s right to view and form their own judgment of the contents of a museum that declares itself to be as diverse and infinitely surprising as the variety of human souls? Would anyone challenge me?”

  The newspapermen scribbled. Barnum trolled the audience, passing his gaze over the rear sections and then scanning forward.

  “I would speak.” The voice came from within a group of theater employees.

  “Samuel Beebe, it that you?”

  The scribbling stopped. Barnum’s voice had betrayed surprise. Shocked, I did not turn to look. Good Lord, Beebe! Not you.

  “Why don’t you join me up here, Samuel.” Barnum quickly recovered his composure. “I would like to hear your view.”

  “I see no need to ascend the podium, Mr. Barnum. I’m perfectly comfortable addressing you from here.” Beebe’s voice was unusually level. “I am repulsed by the arrogance of your analogy, Mr. Barnum. By the time Jesus rode into Jerusalem he had healed a hundred lepers and announced a New Kingdom for the community of man. The kingdom he professed is based on the substance of Jesus’ life and teachings: love, compassion, faith. Humility. He rode into Jerusalem for one purpose only: to suffer and die at the hands of the adversary, on behalf of all of humanity. On our behalf. Do you not recall Jesus’ first action once he had reached the holy city? Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying, and he overturned the tables of money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.”