Among the Wonderful

by Stacy Carlson

  Fifty-eight

  Gideon, the ticket-taker’s nephew, swept past as I ascended the stairs and I listened to his steps recede below. Each of my steps jolted my spine with an ungodly spasm and I envied and loathed the boy’s speed and lightness. Who would tend to me when I could no longer move, when my limbs petrified into brittle boneposts? Who would massage my legs and tell me of the world once I was confined to bed? Would my decline be a swift avalanche into the abyss or a bumpy, horrified ride down a long and gentle slope?

  In the beluga’s gallery the stranger had awakened. He crouched with his back to me, rolling up his blanket. Gideon’s tipped stool was still rocking nearby on the floor.

  I hurried to my room for the registry; this newcomer would be the first official member of the Congress and as manager of Barnum’s human menagerie I would duly catalog his details.

  As I made my way back to the stranger, Barnum himself appeared in the opposite corner of the gallery and strode toward me; we converged upon the man.

  As far as I knew, Barnum had never been sighted on the fifth floor, not even, Maud had told me conspiratorially, when his wife and daughters had resided here. Barnum grinned broadly as he approached. I thought he might break into a run.

  “We were beginning to think you’d been struck by the exotic sleeping sickness we’ve been reading about in the papers!”

  “Phineas.”

  In one graceful motion the stranger rose and swiveled to reveal a sharply planed face half obscured by a dense gray beard. The overhanging contour of a misshapen fur hat shadowed his brow, but not enough to hide the man’s strangely light blue eyes. “You know very well no such sickness has infected America.”

  The stranger pushed back his hat, which I now saw was made from the skin of a deer’s head. The animal’s face had been crudely molded above its wearer’s, but its visage was half melted and grotesque. The man wore buckskin trousers and shirt. His hair was long and matted, and his voice bore just a trace of a New Englander’s inflection.

  Barnum embraced the man, slapping his shoulders and laughing. “Adams! At long last we meet again!”

  “Indeed,” said the man, chuckling.

  “Miss Swift, may I present Mr. James Adams, whom I like to call James the Baptist for all his wandering. He’s come to us straight from the wilds of the Sierra Nevada.”

  “No locusts where I’ve come from, but wild honey aplenty,” murmured the stranger.

  “Miss Swift is one of our biggest attractions,” Barnum gestured to me ambiguously.

  “I should think so,” replied Adams.

  “She is also one of my personal assistants. Miss Swift, I’m sure you’ve heard of Grizzly Adams,” Barnum went on. “Tamer of a hundred bears, not to mention countless mountain lions, panthers, and eagles of the air.”

  “I have not,” I replied. “But I’m glad to make your acquaintance.”

  “Indeed.” Mr. Adams tied his bedroll with a length of frayed twine and pulled a soiled handkerchief from the pocket of his shirt.

  “What do you think of my enterprise, Adams?” Barnum addressed the museum with an upturned hand. “A verifiable Pandora’s box, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Lucrative, I’m sure.” Adams squinted, looking around the gallery. “Perfect for the city right now. John Scudder’s old place. A good location.” Adams continued bundling his belongings.

  “That’s it?” Barnum laughed loudly. “That’s all you have to say about my great ark?”

  Adams laughed along with the showman, and their laughter went on a bit long. I could not see what was funny. When Barnum finally stopped laughing he looked a bit disconcerted.

  “There’s no doubt you’ve outdone yourself, Phineas. It’s your most beautiful dream. I just wouldn’t bother bringing it west, is all I’m getting at.” Adams chuckled again to himself. “You’ll need more than a tiny whale to impress the folks out there.”

  Barnum snorted. “The good people of the Territories have as much reason to gawk at a bearded lady and Tom Trouble’s arm as the Vanderbilts!”

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, sir. But you shouldn’t worry. You’ve got a bottomless treasure chest right here in New York. No need to expand it westward.”

  “Because of the missionizing? Is everyone already converted?” Barnum’s voice had grown somewhat cool. “I cannot bear the thought.”

  Adams laughed and shook his head. “There is quite a currency of souls, but I’m referring to something else altogether. These are people who walk out of their cabins at night and see great curtains of green light moving across the sky. They see hundreds of whales sporting off the shores of their coast, singing in otherworldly tones. They see Indian canoes lashed high in the treetops and child-priests who lead whole clans of men, speaking the language of dreams and prophesying on the tidelands. No museum contains these things, Phineas. These wonders are out walking the earth, to be encountered unexpectedly. If they were in museums, no one would ever see them because no one has the time and no one has the money to spend on such a place. Your business feeds on leisure. Believe me, Phineas, I mean no offense by telling you. I am a peddler of entertainments myself, as you well know. And what I’ve learned is that the Territories are not the America you and I know. And if you don’t believe me, just take a peek under that tarpaulin. For you, it’s only a dime. Not you, Miss. You’ll have to wait like the rest of them.”

  Barnum smiled awkwardly as he placed a coin in Adams’ palm. “Still up to your old tricks.” He took a few steps toward the tarpaulin. “I thought you left your beasts at the stables in Brooklyn. Didn’t they have room for this one?”

  “Most all of them are there, but this one stays with me.”

  Barnum daintily lifted the cloth and leaned under it for a look. Then he jumped back with force, tripping over himself and then Gideon’s abandoned stool. Adams did not move to save him from falling.

  “See? You’re going to have to come up with something else, Phineas, if you want to exploit the Territories.”

  Barnum sprang to his feet. He stared at the tarpaulin with a dazed look. From within I heard claws scrabbling.

  Grizzly Adams lifted the corner of his hat. He scratched above his ear and peeled the deerskin upward. It caught, as if it were stuck to the man’s own skin, as if it were his own. He cringed as he tugged harder. Barnum and I watched him. Adams looked steadily at Barnum as he lifted his hat, which finally pulled loose to reveal a glistening wound on the side of his head. His skull was more than cracked; a small piece was missing, and the coagulated rim of the crater outlined a portal onto the great organ itself. He gave us just a glimpse of waxy gray slickness before he readjusted the hat, closing the curtain.

  “Old Fremont’s still giving me trouble,” he said wistfully. “He gave me a good one up top, didn’t he? I miss him, though. Left him in Saint Louis this time. That’s about as far east as he’ll tolerate.”

  “I’ll send for a doctor, James,” Barnum said grimly.

  “No need, Phineas. I won’t let him touch me.”

  “We’ll get you set up with a more comfortable bed.”

  “I’m most comfortable sleeping on the ground.”

  Barnum shook his head. “You never change, do you? I’m sending for the doctor, James. I’ll call for you later. I’d like to take you out for supper after the museum closes.”

  Barnum walked briskly away. Adams brought Gideon’s stool over to the tarpaulin. He set himself on it and picked up the rifle that had been leaning against the cage. He cradled the weapon in his lap and nodded to me.

  “In case it gets out,” he explained. “It was a pleasure to meet you, miss,” he said.

  I held out the registry. “We’re recording the members of Barnum’s Congress.”

  “What Congress?”

  “The Grand Ethnological Congress of Nations? Didn’t you see the transparencies outside? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “Oh, I suppose it is,” he said and chuckled. “Phineas didn’t describe
it to me that way, but if he had I wouldn’t have come.” He took the registry from me and set it on his knee. “Now that I’m here I might as well make a show of what I’ve got. Though it will cost Barnum a pretty penny.” His looping signature was as graceful and precise as that of a governess.

  Once they left the savanna, the keeper and the tribesman walked in a cracked-earth desert of red dust. The tribesman found water by digging up mulga roots and breaking them open with his knife and a rock. They killed strangely scaled lizards that barely moved when the men approached. They walked at night, the keeper now mumbling to himself continuously and the tribesman trying not to hear. The sea is the most beautiful thing, Brother. It is not! the tribesman finally shouted, the home place is the most beautiful! But the keeper just shook his head, his hair now matted with red dust, both of them looking like mimi spirits, but without a spirit’s grace. We must go back, the tribesman said. We must reach the sea, his brother answered. That is where the new knowledge is. Nights, the keeper stared into the fire, rubbing his legs and singing the song but not listening to it. The tribesman realized his brother’s obsession was the symptom of a sickness within him. Keepers were given training in self-diagnosis; their role in the group was so important that they must have methods and protocol for when they, themselves, became ill. But this keeper could not see it. Was it old-man sickness, the collapse of all memory? The tribesman watched the keeper closely. They were close to the sea; the tribesman smelled salt on the wind that blew directly from the north, so he kept following the keeper across the desert. He wondered if the keeper would return to his senses. Perhaps the foreign lands they now journeyed through confused his mind; perhaps these lands had their own songs that infiltrated those of the people. Perhaps when they returned to the home country the keeper would return to the man he had been. But for now, the keeper walked like a child, poring over each stone he found on their path, jumping and pointing at each buzzard that followed them. The sea, he said. Always the sea.

  The tribesman leaves his room only to feed the whale. All the rest of his waking and dreaming life he is in the song, asking it to help him, to show him what to do now. He is frightened; he has none of the training that the keeper had, none of the initiations, none of the dreams. But he sings anyway, sensing it is wrong but unable to stop returning home, where the rains have ceased and the jacana now walks across the lily pads with three speckled eggs under his wings.

  The lotus flowers have unfurled into globes of layered petals, the same color as sunrise. All the trees are fruiting and the people are happy. A wind is just starting to push the morning mists up and away, and the men gather to discuss which areas will dry out the fastest. The women hunt frill-necked lizards among the rocks and bathe in the pools beneath waterfalls. Geese, gorged on the abundance of flood time, are easy to kill. On high ground the bowerbird carefully builds its dome out of dry grasses. When it is built, the bird flies away. It returns with a coiled white snail shell and places it at the entrance of the bower. It brings back another. And another. And two white bones. Several white feathers, and small white pebbles. With the help of these trinkets, the bowerbird will have a mate by the time the wetlands recede at the end of this season, Banggereng, the time for fruit and blossoms.

  Metamorphosis

  Fifty-nine

  Guillaudeu hid in his office for as long as he could, which did not turn out to be long at all since dozens of creatures relied on him for food. At least that’s what he told himself, and it was true enough, but it was also true that the museum was shape-shifting; finally his curiosity got the better of him.

  During the museum’s closure, Barnum had appeared every few days, escorting groups of men among the galleries. Although Guillaudeu never knew exactly what they were doing, he learned from William the ticket-man that they were architects, exporters, financiers, theater managers, and showmen from across America. They carried rolled plans under their arms and, according to William, their meetings in Barnum’s office lasted late into the night. These were the men Barnum had enlisted to help him create his Congress.

  Next to arrive was a fleet of carpenters. Guillaudeu watched them file up the marble stairway carrying lumber and ladders. They swept through the museum, moving exhibits aside, clearing the space to begin their work. They hammered and shouted in the empty galleries, sometimes stopping to gawk at the mummy or to pet Cornelia, the sewing dog, who roamed the halls freely, taking handouts from the carpenters’ dinner baskets.

  When the museum reopened, Barnum allowed the construction to continue during the day. Stages appeared in every corner, some only five feet across, others framed by elaborately carved wooden scaffolds. One was positioned in the round so the audience could view performers from every angle. The museum’s patrons strolled among the half-built structures, exclaiming over them as if they were the ruins of Pompeii or the rising temples of a new age.

  Guillaudeu ignored the changes as best he could and also harbored a painful feeling that the museum, which he now imbued with a majestic, disdainful spirit, had rebuffed him once again. Hadn’t he watched this building rise from the ground, conjured by John Scudder? Guillaudeu had inhabited the new halls eagerly and filled them with the work of his hands, but he had never commanded its shape. He could only watch helplessly during the museum’s second transformation as Barnum’s vision had capsized the ark of Guillaudeu’s silent menagerie and replaced it with, among other things, the furred and feathered lives that now shaped his days. With injured pride he watched yet another transformation begin without him. He sulked in his office, and went about his rounds trying not to look or listen as the carpenters shouted to each other from ladders and scaffolds while they carved the museum’s next face.

  Returning from the beluga’s morning feeding, an empty bucket swinging in his hand, Guillaudeu encountered a young man wearing a stained smock and holding a large open book in his hands. Despite himself, Guillaudeu looked to where the man’s attention was focused. It was one of the new stages, embellished with two very tall carved wooden trees, one on either side of the stage, which had been painted shades of yellows and greens. There was an easel set up on the stage, and Guillaudeu immediately recognized the half-penciled and half-painted backdrop. He stopped.

  “Lareux’s African savanna! A wonderful depiction!” Guillaudeu gushed, his attitude of aloofness abruptly derailed. “The colors are very close to the original lithograph. That must be from his Histoire Naturelle?”

  The young man’s eyes widened. “You know it?”

  “Of course!”

  The painter shook his head. “I can’t quite seem to get it right.”

  “But what have you done here?” Guillaudeu pointed to a mounted specimen that had been placed threateningly on one side of the stage. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No,” the painter said doubtfully. “We’ve been directed to set the stages as dioramas. You’ll see there are plants, there, as well as the leopard. When the performers —”

  Guillaudeu laughed. “The leopard?” Guillaudeu ascended the stage and stroked the spotted cat’s head. “Allow me to clarify that this creature never lived on the African continent. It’s a jaguar. Panthera onca. A New World species. You’ll see the spots are in a distinctly different pattern from a leopard’s.”

  “They look the same in the drawing,” the painter muttered, climbing onstage and flipping through the pages of the book.

  “You are mistaken, I assure you. For the sake of authenticity, I suggest you go up to the third floor and retrieve the lion for your display. Unless you are not concerned with taxonomic accuracy.” Guillaudeu narrowed his eyes at the painter.

  “There’s a lion?”

  “Of course. What kind of collection doesn’t have a lion?”

  “You work here, then?”

  “I’m the taxidermist.”

  “What other African animals are here?”

  “Aardvark, baboon, gazelle, hyena, impala, lion, oryx, well, an oryx head, warthog, zebra. Those a
re the mammals. There are also many birds, of course. And a cobra in Gallery Eight, unless someone moved it.”

  “A cobra! That would be wonderful in the diorama.”

  The painter trotted toward the stairs. Guillaudeu examined the glossy-leaved plants on the stage. Convincingly exotic, he decided. And the painted backdrop really was good.

  He returned to his office, but within the hour another painter appeared at the door.

  “Silas told me you’re one of the curators?”

  “Curator?” Guillaudeu had never considered this title, but he liked the sound of it. A curator was a guardian for all museum exhibits, his taxidermied creations and the creatures of Barnum’s menagerie.

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Are there penguins at the pole?”

  “That depends upon which pole.”

  The painter looked puzzled. “They didn’t say which one.”

  Guillaudeu accompanied him back up to the galleries, to a stage set with a curtain of white velvet and painted icebergs like house-sized crystals. Above this landscape hung a banner advertising THE POLAR WORLD OF THE ESQUIMAUX.

  “No penguins,” Guillaudeu confirmed. “And you’re going to need at least three men to help you carry the polar bear down the stairs, assuming you want the polar bear.”

  By the end of the afternoon Guillaudeu had advised three more painters as well as the artist responsible for designing a new transparency that would hang on the side of the museum to advertise the Congress. Guillaudeu knew this young artist mistook him for someone legitimately in charge of the preparations, but he did not demur. Giddily, he suggested that instead of a scene from one particular region of the world, since the breadth of the Congress spanned the whole globe, why not depict a scene like Scipio’s Dream? A scene of the entire world with a spectator peering at the whole thing?