Among the Wonderful (32 page)

Guillaudeu folded the newspaper. “Interesting to think of Barnum as a religious man.”

“Oh, he’s religious all right,” Archer said and snorted. “He’s just about as religious as a man can get under the broad, vague wing of Universalism. No” — Archer began to pace — “Connecticut itinerant peddler, indeed! I’m
sure
no one would
ever
accuse Barnum of selling trinkets at the temple. I cannot believe that he would set up this column without even telling me. I am, after all, his advertising
agent
. Did you know that an hour ago I was having a steak pie at Sweeney’s, when Mr. Bauer, managing editor of the entertainment pages in the
Atlas
, no less, slapped me on the back and gave me his congratulations. ‘Congratulations?’ says I, looking around to see if it was some kind of practical joke. ‘Well, yes,’ says he, and shows me this published letter from London. Unfortunately I could not hide my surprise, and so Mr. Bauer immediately perceived the whole scheme was executed without my knowledge or, more important, my guidance. The whole thing was exceedingly embarrassing, and in Sweeney’s, of all places! Half the city’s newspapermen were in there with us. I fear it has shattered my credibility.”

“That sounds like an overstatement, Mr. Archer. I’m sure —”

“One can
never
be sure of anything in this business, Mr. Guillaudeu. That would undoubtedly be the end of you.”

“So you can be sure of uncertainty. That means there’s one thing —”

“I do
not
appreciate your attempt at wit,” Mr. Archer snapped.

“Well, I do not appreciate you invading my office.”

“Good Lord, not that again, please!” Archer looked at the ceiling. “Your precious office. Just because you have no life to speak of, outside of this building.”

“Get out.”

“You get out.”

“Get out!” Guillaudeu found that he was shrieking. “You superficial, conceited, slave … to the coin!”

“I am leaving of my own accord,” Mr. Archer announced with a queer, fixed smile on his face. He paraded to the hat stand for his coat and his cane.

“No, you aren’t! I am throwing you out.”

“You’re wrong.” Archer turned. “I simply humor you, old man.” And he vanished.

Guillaudeu sat unmoving in his seat for a full minute, waiting for his heart to quiet and his breath to return to normal. He could not remember the last time he’d been in a yelling match and it disturbed him. Then it delighted him. He huffed out a chirpy hiccup that could have been a laugh, and shook his head, rising from his chair. He straightened his waistcoat. It was two o’clock: time to feed the whale.

Two buckets of herring were waiting for him as usual outside the museum’s side door on Ann Street. He hauled them back into the hallway and past Barnum’s office toward the waxworks, but he could not carry them both and had to make two trips up the back stairwell.

When he arrived with the second bucket he was panting and wishing he were a younger man. Across the fifth-floor gallery the tribesman stood at the top of the ladder at the beluga tank, with the first bucket of fish in one hand.

Despite all the changes while he’d been walking through field and valley, Guillaudeu had seen no evidence that this tribesman had been on display. No pamphlets, no transparencies, none of Mr. Archer’s hyperbolic effusions in the newspaper. The tribesman had barely crossed his mind since the day he’d banished Cuvier to the cellar. But here he was,
wearing decent trousers, leaning over the edge of the tank. He must be sixty years old, Guillaudeu observed. The man dipped his hand into the bucket and held out a fish. In a moment the delicate white maw of the whale appeared under his hands and delicately plucked the herring from his hand. The tribesman held out another fish with the same result.

Guillaudeu watched the tribesman daintily feed the whale, the expression on the older man’s face not changing in the slightest, even when the beluga cooed appreciatively and clucked in apparent satisfaction. When the first bucket was empty, the tribesman handed it down to Guillaudeu and beckoned for the other.

Guillaudeu handed it up. “Thank you,” he said uncertainly.

When the second had been doled out, the tribesman climbed down from the ladder and looked at Guillaudeu.

“I could use your help with these buckets in the morning,” Guillaudeu ventured. It seemed odd to ask an older man for help. The two men blinked at each other.

“Museum,” replied the tribesman and walked away.

On the roof, the Happy Family was looking decidedly bedraggled; now that the weather was warming up they needed some shade. Guillaudeu unlocked the wooden door to the cage and ducked inside. The prairie squirrels immediately ran up and all three sat up on their hind legs, tapping their short tails.

“All right!” Guillaudeu laughed, filling their bowl with chopped vegetables. The coyote retreated to the farthest corner and stood with its back to Guillaudeu. He filled each food bowl one by one. The snake lay sleeping, still half inside the remnants of its old skin, which hung in crinkled tatters.

On the way back down, Guillaudeu visited the aquaria on the fourth floor: the octopus tank, seahorses, huge vats of tropical fish. He had been astonished to discover that museum visitors were in the habit of tossing things, usually food detritus or ticket stubs, into the animal cages. He would need to conduct several daily patrols to make sure none of the animals were harmed.

He skipped down the stairs of the back stairwell two at a time, his head full of the animals. He would conduct patrols, keep a detailed journal of the animals’ behavior, perhaps even initiate a correspondence with one of the zoologists in Philadelphia. He wondered if Barnum might consider placing him in charge of obtaining new members of the menagerie, so that Guillaudeu could realign the methods of acquisition with taxonomic propriety.

Guillaudeu stopped abruptly as he approached the second-floor landing. A strange shape flitted across his mind. He closed his eyes to see it better: a soft, delicate creature housed in a curved horn was hovering in the black sea of his mind’s eye. Wavy brown lines against a milky white shell. He saw it clearly now:
Nautilus pompilius
. Guillaudeu gasped, delighted. Not a puzzle, though there were many interlocking parts. Not a hive, but a nautilus.

On the surface, of course, the museum would appear not to be a spiral. But the longer he kept the nautilus in mind, slowly spinning in the black abyss of deepest water, the more certain Guillaudeu became: The museum resembled this strange creature. The main stairway, drawing people up and around, was the siphon. The dense crowds streaming through acted as water, gaining pressure and generating propulsion. The museum itself did not move, of course, except with the current of public fancy and at the bidding of Barnum’s hidden will. But like the mollusk, the museum contained chamber after chamber, instinctively constructing its graceful architecture to facilitate its own growth, as well as to house the movements of the public’s imagination. But wasn’t there also a distinction, Guillaudeu mused, between the expansive, outward spiral and the destructive inward one? This museum, it seemed, accommodated both the galaxy and the maelstrom. Wasn’t the nautilus, after all, one of the most famous examples of the divine proportion, so fundamental to the universe? And if the museum could accurately, if poetically, be described as a nautilus, how big would the spiral grow, and where was it propelling itself? Toward some new age, whose rules and form were still malleable ideas in the
minds of the populace? Or was it spiraling toward its own violent implosion?

Exhilarated by his revelations, and buoyed by the sense that he had gotten the better of Barnum by discovering such a profound symbol for the building he loved so well, Guillaudeu hurried down the last flight of stairs toward his office to write it all down.

“Emile!” It was William, leaning out from behind the ticket counter with something in his hand. “A letter came for you.”

Guillaudeu grabbed the envelope without looking at it and continued through his office door. On the other side he found Archer, whistling ostentatiously.

“Don’t worry, my dear Guillaudeu,” said the ad man, tipping his hat. “Our problem is solved, and I hold no ill feelings. You will once again have dominion over all of your lands.” He gestured at the room. “I’ve found a new abode.”

“You’re moving out?”

“Yes. To a somewhat more … discreet location.”

“But I thought —”

“Yes, well, let’s just say sometimes it behooves a person to fade to the background for a time. You shall soon see what I mean. I’ll leave it at that. Someone will be here for my things in an hour or so. I’m taking the remainder of this day off. I have … well … I will not regret the time we’ve spent together, despite our … differences. My office will be along the inner hallway.” Archer continued, pointing away from the street. “Beyond the waxworks. Not too far from Barnum’s.”

“A good place to work. Quiet.” Guillaudeu did not know what else to say.

“Quiet. Good. Well.”

When he left, Mr. Archer closed the door silently behind him. After the noise of the crowds and the animals, Guillaudeu found the office gloomily silent. Wasn’t there something he was going to do? His momentum gone, he tapped the fingers of one hand on his desk and looked anywhere but the empty shelves. He slumped into his chair. Still staring blankly
ahead, he fingered the envelope William had delivered. Slowly, he registered the embossed lettering, the stamped insignia, as those of the Lyceum of Natural History. Gawking, he smoothed the letters lightly with his fingertips and held the envelope for some time before he opened it.

The meeting was tomorrow. Tomorrow! He knew there was an intricate and often lengthy procedure for inducting new members. How had he even come to their attention, after all this time? Could it have been Barnum himself who nominated him?

Years ago he’d petitioned the society and practically begged for admission, but after receiving no reply, and no acknowledgment from Lyceum members who had visited Scudder’s collection over the years, he’d given it up. He’d always hoped they would one day see him as one of their brethren, and they finally had. Excitedly, he looked around his empty office.

When he saw the Lyceum of Natural History building for the first time, Guillaudeu was forced to correct his expectation that the establishment would at least attempt to imitate Aristotle’s original school in Athens, in which scholars paced under ornate covered walkways, hypothesizing the parameters of Nature’s great scheme amid gardens that reflected those patterns in miniature. He thought, at the very least, that its interior would be an enlargement of an Italian virtuoso’s study, with geodes and astronomical instruments crowded among half-unfurled maps of Patagonia.

He was disappointed to see that the Lyceum was housed in a narrow brick building identical to the residences on either side. As he stepped through the nondescript foyer, his remaining illusions dissolved. He was startled to find a medium-sized room, bare except for several tables on one side and a grouping of chairs in front of a small podium on the other. The only thing filling the room at the moment was conversation, emanating from the twenty or so men standing among tables not covered with instruments or specimens but with sandwiches.

Guillaudeu recovered quickly and approached these men not with his accustomed dread, but eagerly. He recognized some of their faces, even knew one or two by name. Before he lost his nerve he introduced himself to the first man he encountered, a friendly ornithologist called Dr. Putnam.
Soon he’d met five other members of the Lyceum, all recently graduated from Columbia College’s new School of Natural Science.

“Mr. Guillaudeu is guardian to the creatures in Barnum’s American Museum,” Dr. Putnam explained to the younger men. “You’d be surprised how many zoological displays Barnum has installed.”

“I’m not sure I’m capable of being surprised inside that building,” said one of the men, a rotund young fellow by the name of Standish who appeared even younger than he was by the thick blond curls hanging about his face. “When I go to Barnum’s museum, I
want
to be surprised. And yet there is such a plethora of anomalies that it’s impossible to retain one’s sense of wonder. After an hour I expect surprise, which is most unsatisfactory. I can only imagine the effect of being there on a daily basis.”

“It is a strange place,” Guillaudeu agreed. “My attention is primarily devoted to the natural history collection and the new living menagerie,” he went on calmly. “I let most of the museum’s other contents pass by me without much consideration.”

“That’s all well and good,” replied Standish. “Until those other contents begin to affect your livelihood. I’ve been following the story of the family of acrobats in the
Atlas
. They’re still being held at the Tombs. I think it’s a shame that the museum hasn’t gotten them out by now. There are three women, one of them a grandmother!”

“Yes, that was an unpleasant business,” Guillaudeu replied. He did not say that he hadn’t kept up with the story beyond the headlines, or that ticket sales at the museum had jumped thanks to the press after the Martinettis’ arrest.

“So you are the keeper of Barnum’s menagerie!” Another man, also very young, joined in the group. He was a specialist in tropical fish, he was quick to assert.

“How in the world did he get those magnificent seahorses? I believe they are the only ones to be found on the eastern seaboard, if not the entire country.”

“Barnum has scouts all over the world,” Guillaudeu replied, feeling distinctly knowledgeable. “They bring the fish by boat to —”