Curiosity (10 page)

T
HE FIRST SEVERAL DAYS OF MY ENFORCED
fast were the hardest and the longest. I got through them by thinking of my father in his prison cell; unless Mulhouse had given the keeper more money, Father was probably back to subsisting on bread and water. It gave me a sort of sense of shared misery, which is always better than misery endured alone.

I couldn't really believe that Maelzel would keep the punishment up for long; after all, each day that the Turk sat idle was a day of lost profits. But, as interested as he was in money, he was apparently more interested in teaching me a lesson.

He'd gone back to his old trick of refusing to speak to me directly, as though it were beneath his dignity. Each day he asked Jacques whether I was ready to go back to work, and each day Jacques gave him my reply, which was always the same. I was determined to beat him at this game, just as I did at chess. After examining my skull so closely, he may have thought he knew me. But I had one trait in abundance that didn't appear on the phrenology chart—stubbornness.

After a few days the hunger pangs blessedly faded; the problem now was that I could feel myself growing weaker, and I'd never been very strong to begin with. I had trouble focusing on even the least demanding task. At first, when I stopped sweeping or sanding and sat staring vacantly, Jacques cursed at me and gave me a swat. After a while, he saw that this tactic wasn't working; I was just too listless to care.

Jacques actually seemed a little concerned. “You should let him have his way,
Bébé
. He will see you starve before he will give in.”

“And you?” I said.

Jacques scowled and spat tobacco juice into the box of sawdust at his feet. “I must do what he tells me.”

“Why?” My cautiousness must have been fading, too; instead of letting the matter drop, I pressed him for an answer. “
Why
must you?”

He turned on me, thrusting out his carving knife in such a threatening fashion that I shrank back. “The devil take you and your infernal questions!”

Once again it was obvious that, if I was going to survive, I'd have to take matters into my own hands. I had no idea how I might manage to feed myself, unless I ate sawdust. But that night, when I heard the familiar
chunk, chunk
of the night soil men clearing out the contents of the earth closet, a plan began to form. I crept into the little privy room and quietly lifted the lid of the toilet. The small door that gave access to the earth closet from the outside stood open; the men's shovel blades appeared, scooped, withdrew, appeared, scooped, withdrew.

Groping about in the dark of the workshop, I located a stick of wood several feet in length. When the men finished their task and were closing the access door, I thrust the tip of the stick into the opening, just enough to keep them from latching the door. They gave it few halfhearted tries and then I heard a voice say, “Let 'em fix it theirselves. 'Tis not our job.”

I waited ten minutes or so, to make sure that they were gone and that Jacques was sleeping soundly. Then I dredged several double handfuls of shavings and sawdust from the bin, dumped them into the toilet, and spread them out to make a clean, dry layer. I might be desperate, but I wasn't quite desperate enough to crawl through night soil.

My small size, which was such an advantage in operating the Turk, also served me well in my escape. It was a fairly easy matter to slip down the toilet hole and crawl out through the access door. For a moment I just stood there, relishing the fresh air and open space after so many weeks of being shut up in that gloomy, dusty workshop. Then I drew a deep breath and began walking.

There was no point in going to a tavern; I didn't have enough money to buy a crust of bread. No, I had another strategy in mind. I'm sorry to say that it wasn't entirely honest, and I hope you won't be inspired to follow my example—unless, of course, you happen to be starving to death.

The Parsonage was probably no more than a mile from Masonic Hall, but in my weak condition it seemed like the distance between Marathon and Athens; I feared that, like the Greek messenger in the legend, I might collapse and die when I reached my goal.

Obviously I didn't, or I wouldn't be telling you all this, would I? It was a struggle, though, and when I entered the yard of my old home, I had to sit and rest for a long while before I could continue with my plan.

As I sat there in the shadow of the house, which was dark and silent, I saw a female figure approaching on the far side of the street. When she passed beneath a streetlamp, I got a better look at her—a thin woman dressed in the sort of plain cotton dress and coal-scuttle bonnet so common among servants and working girls. But, as you know, those girls tend to favor bright calico or gingham. As nearly as I could tell in the uncertain light, this woman's garb was black as a widow's weeds.

Anxious to avoid being seen, I shrank back against the wood-shingled wall of the Parsonage. The woman in black walked past the house, then turned back and stood gazing at it for the longest time, the way a visitor to Venice will stare at the Doge's Palace, as if imagining what it would be like to live there. Or perhaps, I thought, she was
remembering
what it was like, for the figure put me in mind of my old nursemaid, Fiona. I was tempted to call out to her, but I didn't want to give myself away. In any case, just then she came out of her reverie and began walking back the way she had come.

When she was out of sight, I crept up to the back steps of the Parsonage, located a familiar stone about the size and shape of a cow pile, and lifted one edge of it. The key still lay beneath it, just as it had all the years I lived there. I retrieved it and quietly let myself in through the rear door.

The darkness inside didn't deter me in the least. I knew every square inch of the place, as well as I knew the squares on a chessboard, and I made my moves the same way I did in chess—cautiously but with confidence. I went first to the pantry, where I found a flour sack and put into it as much bread and cheese and fruit as it would hold. Then I slipped into the parlor. The Carcel lamp still sat exactly where we had always kept it—on the marble-topped walnut table. And the center section of the sideboard still held a bottle of colza oil. I added them to my bag of booty. After a moment's thought, I snatched up a sheaf of paper from the small writing desk and crammed that in the sack, too.

I'd never stolen anything before in my life, and yet for some reason I had no qualms about it, maybe because I felt that all this—the Parsonage and its contents and the privileged life I'd led there—had been stolen from me. I was just reclaiming some small part of it.

So far I'd been both clever and lucky. No one stirred in the upstairs bedrooms; there was nothing to suggest that my presence was known. I was well aware that I ought to leave at once, while my luck held, and yet I couldn't bring myself to. Standing in that parlor, I was overcome by powerful feelings, but they weren't painful ones of nostalgia and regret, as you might expect. What I felt was more like the sense of well-being and relief you experience when you wake from a miserable dream and find yourself in safe, familiar surroundings again.

On that marble-topped table, my father and I had played hundreds of games of chess. On that fainting couch, I had lain covered in quilts and lulled by laudanum and listened to Fiona's soft Irish lilt as she read to me, in her halting, unschooled fashion, from
Tales of the Arabian Nights
. For a moment I convinced myself that all I'd suffered these past four months or so had been nothing but a fever dream; if I stretched out on the fainting couch, in a little while I would wake and everything would be the way it was when I was nine or ten.

Then the bottle of colza oil fell from my flour sack, bounced off my foot, and rolled across the floor as loudly, it seemed, as the rumble of thunder. I didn't wait to find out whether I'd disturbed anyone's sleep. I snatched up the oil and scurried out the way I'd come in, pausing just long enough to lock the door and shove the key back in its hiding place. No point in letting the new owners know that they'd been raided. If Maelzel continued to hold out, I might be back.

As I was making my getaway, I spotted the woman in black again; she hadn't left, she'd only walked up the street a little way, out of the streetlamp's circle of light, and was again gazing at the Parsonage in that same rapt fashion. I took a few steps toward her and called softly, “Fiona?”

The woman gave a start and looked my way. “Who's there?” she asked, in a voice that trembled.

“It's me—Rufus.”

Though it was too dark to see her face, I was certain she was staring at me. Perhaps she didn't recognize me or hear me identify myself, or perhaps it wasn't Fiona after all. Whatever the reason, when I started toward her again she turned and hurried away; probably she took me for some street urchin bent on robbing her.

I nearly called out to her again, but just then a lamp was lit upstairs in the Parsonage, in the very room Fiona once occupied. Fearful of being discovered, I slipped away into the dark. When I'd put some distance between myself and the Parsonage, I sat down on a horse block and had a few bites of bread and cheese, hoping to regain a little strength. I had one more task to perform before I could return to the workshop.

I pounded on the door of the debtors' wing at the Arch Street prison for a full minute before the night keeper slid open the little hatch and peered out. Since my head was well below the opening, I waved a hand to make sure he saw me. “What d'you want?” he asked groggily.

“I'm Reverend Goodspeed's son, remember? I brought him some food.”

“Couldn't you come at a more reasonable hour?”

“I'm sorry. It's the only time I could get away.”

A key snicked and the door swung open. “Let's have it, then.”

“I was hoping I could see him.” When the man hesitated, I went into the piteous act that had always worked so well on Fiona and my father. “Please, sir; I just want to let him know I'm all right.”

The keeper scratched his scraggly fringe of hair. “Well, I reckon 'twon't hurt. No doubt he's awake, anyways. He sits up till all hours sometimes, scribbling in that notebook of his.”

I expected my father to greet me joyfully, as he always had. Instead, he seemed unaccountably distressed by my presence. “Ah, Rufus; I wish you hadn't come. I told the daytime keeper not to admit you; I never imagined you'd visit so late.”

“I— I thought you'd be glad to see me, Father.”

“Oh, I am, my boy. Of course I am. It's just that there's been so much illness here of late, and I didn't want you exposed to it. It's gotten so bad that they've actually let some of the prisoners go, lest they be infected.” He laughed weakly. “Not us debtors, though; I suppose we're too desperate and dangerous a lot. They did move some of us to the Walnut Street jail, but I chose to stay. Someone has to take care of the sick.” He nodded toward two still forms lying on straw mattresses along one wall.

“Haven't they brought in a doctor?”

“Oh, yes. He examined one patient, announced that it was cholera, and departed as quickly as he could. You mustn't stay, either; if you come down with the disease, it'll certainly be the death of you.”

“What about you?”

“Don't worry about me. I'm as healthy as a horse.”

That may have been true at one time, but the weeks he'd spent cooped up within these walls had taken their toll. The sanguine flush had faded from his cheeks, and his ample belly had shrunk.

I glanced about the cell, which was lit by the stub of a candle. “Where's your bed, Father?” He didn't reply. “Did they take it away?”

He shrugged. “It doesn't matter. I can make do with a blanket.”

“But why? Didn't Mulhouse come and give the keeper more money?”

“Mulhouse?”

“The man who brought me here last time.”