Among the Wonderful (54 page)

At Whitehall Slip, the Royal Mail Ship
Acadia
lay at anchor with colored flags waving from all three masts and her crew swarming the decks. Without pausing, Guillaudeu presented the attendant with his ticket, climbed the gangway, and proceeded to his modest cabin. He spent the three hours until the ship’s departure writing letters, to Edie and then to John Scudder, to the Lyceum, and even one to Barnum. He paid another attendant to mail them right away. He stood at the small cabin window staring out at the city, the only home he’d ever known, and he did not feel much at all. He wondered if the fire had made a shell of him, if he would soon fall to charred pieces. Only after he felt the ship lurch into motion, and he had sprung up on deck and stood at the railing until the great mouth of New York Harbor slid backward over the horizon, did he thrill eastward, toward London.

He waited until the
Acadia
was far out to sea and then he read what she’d given him. After he’d followed her, page after page, through black and then indigo ink, through hurried scrawl and careful, beautiful script, through the last twenty pages of pencil that had been applied with force that at times buckled or ripped the page, he was breathless. So thoroughly astonished was he by these intimacies, her histories and fantasies, recollections, speculations, and especially her delicate hopes, that afterward, when he went up on deck to take in the sea air, he beheld all the other passengers as vessels for their own such wonders, and he was humbled to the core. He then understood the gift she had bestowed.

Before saying a word, before the astonishment had left her eyes or he could truly believe he was there, he put the bundled pages into Lilian Kipp’s hands. “She saved my life.”

Her eyes searched his, and she almost asked questions, but she saw a sad and wondrous expression in him that settled her after some moments. She beckoned him inside and closed the door behind them.

All afternoon in her sitting room, Guillaudeu rested while Lilian read Ana Swift’s life history. At first she sat at a small lacquer desk and Guillaudeu watched her from an upholstered chair. After a while he dozed off and when he woke she had moved across to the window seat, where she was curled like a girl with the charred and flaking pages in her lap, gazing out the window. It was an image he carried with him from then on.

“Hello,” he said.

She regarded him. “Hello.”

Ana Swift was a sensation in the few days between the fire and his departure. There had been dozens of articles in the papers about Barnum’s Giantess, Her Heroism in the Flames, Her Giant Sacrifice, and so on. The press put the number of lives she’d saved at thirty-one, and there was talk of erecting a bronze statue in her likeness at the site of the museum. Guillaudeu was sure Barnum’s men would be looking for her bones among the ruins, but the heat had been so fierce, the fire so annihilating, he knew that nothing, not her bones nor the bones of his life’s work, remained.

Guillaudeu watched Lilian in the fading afternoon light. Framed by the window behind her, she traced patterns on the final page of Ana Swift’s life story. She read it aloud.

Lilian carefully lay the pages down. She got up, brushed the burned flakes of paper from her skirt, and came to stand in front of Guillaudeu.

“It looks like we have our work cut out for us.” She put both her hands on his shoulders and kissed his cheek. “I know people who can help us get started. You stay right there. I’ll make some tea and then you’ll tell me everything.”

That had been six months ago. Now, still nervous, Guillaudeu listened to Lilian’s voice on stage. It was almost time.

“We all have read narratives of foreign lands, diaries of voyages and accounts of new geographies and species,” she said to the audience. “In our time, hundreds of lives have been honorably lost in the name of exploration. But the prism of life you are about to look through will flash with an entirely different light, one new to the world. It is the life of one who walked among us, but she walked apart, and that distance, though measurable in feet, was often as great as any ocean. Her vantage point at times may seem foreign, but far more often you will recognize her in yourself. And now, to present you with more on the life and death of this remarkable woman, and to introduce you to her True Life History, which you are encouraged to purchase after the lecture, is Mr. Emile Guillaudeu, formerly a curator and taxidermist in Barnum’s doomed museum, who was there on the night of the fire.”

The book already had sold so many copies that there had been a second printing. After news of it had reached New York they’d received several letters from Barnum’s lawyers, who claimed that Barnum owned the rights. Lilian shrugged this off and continued to plan the lecture tour of America that would come early the following year.

Holding tightly to the leather-bound volume, Guillaudeu emerged from the wings into the bright light of the stage.

I wish to thank Valerie Martin for her invaluable guidance during the initial drafts of this book and beyond. Many thanks also to Joshua Henkin, Peter Cameron, Stephen Dobyns, Karen Rader, Elise Proulx, and Rebecca Brown for their insight and tutelage.

The Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the Gerlach Artists Residency each gave me the gift of time to write, for which I am very grateful. The wonderful staff of the Somers Museum of the Early American Circus, as well as the librarians and archivists at the American Museum of Natural History, the New-York Historical Society, and the main branch of the New York Public Library graciously lent their expertise to my endeavors. Among the many books that informed this novel, I am especially grateful for Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace’s
Gotham
, Bluford Adams’
E Pluribus Barnum
, and James W. Cook’s
The Arts of Deception
.

Heartfelt thanks to Chip Fleischer, Roland Pease, Helga Schmidt, John Gall, and everyone at Steerforth Press. Kate Garrick, your passion and advocacy is a special gift. Thank you.

To my parents, Stan and Sue Carlson, your encouragement and support over the years has been an invaluable anchor. And finally, Jason, your unwavering love and steady presence during the book’s (and my) journey has made all the difference.