Curiosity (15 page)

“You mean— You mean, I can go out there by myself?”

“No one knows you here, so it should be safe—as long as you keep your mouth shut. If someone should engage you in conversation, be very careful. People are always trying to pry the Turk's secret out of me, and when they find you work for me, they may question you, too. Do not be rude or secretive; that will just make them more suspicious. And do not try to mislead them; you are not clever enough. Just tell them you are only a chore boy and you know nothing. And listen—” He stuck a thick finger in my face. “Under no circumstances are you to discuss chess with
anyone
, or let anyone know that you play. Do you understand? Above all, make certain you steer clear of Mr. Poe; I do not want him interrogating you. I do not trust the man.”

J
acques provided me with a pot of glue, and I set about papering the town with the handbills, which read:

EXHIBITION

Virginia Museum

PERFORMANCES EACH TUESDAY THROUGH SATURDAY

Doors open at half-past 7 o'clock.
Performance to commence at 8 precisely.

• Part First •

THE AUTOMATON TRUMPETER

The mechanical musician plays his instrument with a distinctness and precision unattainable by the best living performers. The pieces were written expressly for him by the first composers.

THE MECHANICAL THEATRE,

purposely introduced for the gratification of Juvenile Visitors. Figures include the Amusing Little Bass Fiddler, the French Oyster Woman, the Chinese Dancer, and the Little Troubadour playing on several instruments.

• Part Second •

THE ORIGINAL AND CELEBRATED AUTOMATON CHESS PLAYER

Invented by
VON KEMPELEN,

Improved by
J. MAELZEL

The Chess Player has withstood the finest players of Europe and America, and excites universal admiration. He moves his head, eyes, lips, and hands with the greatest facility and distinctly pronounces the word Échec when necessary.

Actually, at the moment, Otso was pronouncing the word
Échec
more like “Aw, shucks.” His vocal mechanism had gotten jarred in transit, and Jacques was impatiently and profanely trying to put it right. I was just as glad not to be in the same room with them.

As odd as it may seem, being outdoors for any length of time was a new experience for me. I had been confined to the workshop for many months, of course, and in the House of Refuge before that. But even when I lived at the Parsonage, my world was a very limited one, made up of three tiny kingdoms—my bedroom, the parlor, and the library—in which I was absolute monarch. I went abroad only as far as the Chess Club—oh, and once each Christmas season, Fiona would bundle me up like an Esquimau and trundle me in a Bath chair down Chestnut Street to see the holiday decorations.

My father spent half his life in the outdoors, tramping through bogs and wild woodlands, collecting specimens. I begged him to take me along—just once, even—but he refused; it would be too hard on my frail constitution, he said. I know he meant well, but I think now that the fresh air would have done me far more good than harm.

Once I got used to all the noise and activity, I actually enjoyed walking around Richmond, pasting my handbills up on walls and fences and streetlamp posts. For all its industry, the city still had a sort of frontier feel to it. The thoroughfares were unpaved and, except for a short stretch along Main Street, there were not even any sidewalks. Gaslights had not yet made their way that far south; the streetlamps were still fired with whale oil.

Though the women's fashions seemed much the same as those in Philadelphia, the men had a more rough and ready, Davy-Crockettish look about them; most wore their hair long and many, as Jacques did, tied it back in a horse's tail. I'd expected everyone to speak in the same Southern drawl Mr. Poe used; instead I heard an astonishing array of accents—from a Scots burr to the untutored speech of plantation slaves—and a Babel of languages, some familiar to me, some unintelligible.

With all the clamor and conversation going on around me, I didn't notice the figure standing right at my elbow until she spoke, in a soft, sweet voice. “Are you one of Mr. Maelzel's automata, sir?”

I nearly dropped my glue pot. I did, in fact, drop the brush, which stuck to one of the straps on my back brace. She put a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. “I'm sorry. Perhaps that was rude of me. It's just that . . . well, you do look a bit mechanical, with your . . .” Blushing, she made a slight, ladylike gesture to indicate the back brace.

I felt myself reddening, too, as though I'd been out in the sun too long. And perhaps I had, but that wasn't the reason for the flush on my face. I tried to think of a sensible reply, but even if I had, I don't believe I could have gotten it out; like Otso, I seemed to have lost control of my vocal mechanism.

I've often found myself speechless in the presence of some wonder of nature or some masterful work of art, but I don't recall ever being struck dumb, before or since, by a woman's beauty. Well, I say a woman, but really she could not have been much older than I was—perhaps fourteen or fifteen. Trying to describe her would be like trying to describe a sunset, or the aurora borealis. Have you ever seen a reproduction of the Venus de' Medici? Let me just say that, if someone clothed that statue in a dress and bonnet, the two would have looked like sisters. Their hair was even done up in a similar style and they had the same pale, flawless complexion. But the flesh and blood sister had an advantage over the marble one, thanks to her large violet eyes, her raven hair, and her red lips.

“May I see one of those?” she asked. I placed a poster carefully in her gloved hand. After perusing it for a moment, she glanced at me. “Can the mechanical chess player really speak?”

I got my voice box to say something that sounded like “Yes.”

From the delighted look on her face, anyone would have thought I had said something devastatingly witty. “Oh!” she cried. “And you can speak, too!”

“Yes,” I said again. My vocabulary was not even as good as the Turk's.

“How does it work?” she asked.

“My voice?”

She tittered again, very charmingly. “No, you goose. The chess player's voice. Is Mr. Maelzel a ventriloquist?”

When Maelzel warned me that people might quiz me about the Turk, I hadn't taken him very seriously. But it seemed he was right. “I don't know, Miss,” I lied. “I'm just a chore boy.” Though Maelzel was no ventriloquist, he was putting words in my mouth.

She handed the poster back to me. “Well, I suppose I'd better let you get back to your chores. I'm sorry I startled you.” She removed one of her gloves and, with delicate fingers, pried the glue brush off me and stuck it in the pot. “There. I hope you'll be able to get the glue off your . . .” She gestured discreetly at my torture device again.

“It's a back brace,” I said.

“It looks as though it would hurt. Does it hurt?”

I was not used to being asked so many questions. Usually I was the one doing the asking. “Not much.”

“Back in Baltimore, I had a friend who wore a leg brace; she said it hurt all the time.” We stood there, awkwardly silent, for a minute or two, then she said, “May I stick up one of your handbills? It looks like fun.”

“It's messy.”

“I don't care.” She tucked her gloves—which I now noticed looked rather threadbare— into her crocheted handbag, took a poster from me, and slathered the back of it with glue.

“Not so much, or I'll run out before I'm done.”

“I'm sorry.” She held up the handbill. “Where shall I stick it?”

“I just put them wherever there are other bills. That way I reckon no one will yell at me.” Suddenly I was managing to string whole sentences together. Though the girl had the Venus de' Medici's beauty, there was nothing cold or aloof about her; like the sunbaked dirt under our feet, she exuded warmth. After only ten minutes in her presence, I was feeling surprisingly at ease. Like being outdoors, it was something of a new experience for me. Growing up sequestered and sheltered as I did, I'd had very little contact with women—except for Fiona, of course—and even less with girls my own age.