Jenny and Barnum (2 page)

Jenny gave Tom Thumb what was meant to be a mildly encouraging little smile. “I will have to give Mr. Barnum's offer very serious consideration. I will have questions, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Why don't you call him
Mister
Barnum, if I may ask?”

“Nobody in America calls him that,” Tom Thumb replied. “Children call him Barnum. Once when we were in Cincinnati, a little boy asked his father, ‘Daddy, which cage is Barnum in?' Even babies call him Barnum. He loves it.”

“You said ‘cage'—is that how Barnum exhibits you?”

The little man hesitated. “No, that's something else, his curiosities, the Feegee Mermaid and all that stuff. We're the show, and I'm the star. I really am surprised you never heard of me.”

He seemed terribly pained. Jenny put her hands in her lap. “Will you please show me what you do?”

“Really?”

“But of course!”

He puffed on the cigar, then snuffed it out in the glass dish Hannelore had provided. “Well, I'll do a little.” He eyed her. “You have to understand, I usually have music.”

Jenny concealed her smile. He sounded like any other performer. It was so
odd
—the size of him! “I understand,” she said, keeping herself composed. She carried the malodorous dish and cigar to a far table. When she returned, the General was laboriously shifting items on the desk to clear a larger space for himself. He really was scarcely more than two feet tall. He could not have weighed more than a medium-sized dog.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven,” he answered. “Barnum found me when I was five. He gave me my name, everything. He invented me, and I know it.”

“What about your parents?”

“Until I grew up, they got a percentage of the gross. I tell you, Barnum plays straight. A lot of people will try to say otherwise about him, that he's a bamboozler, but that's all part of the show. He's honest when it comes to real business—and I mean our business.”

The word “bamboozler” was strange to Jenny, but she thought she understood it.

“Why did you ask how many languages I spoke?”

“I've been coming to Europe for years, and I didn't think you were talking Swedish. I wanted to know why a Swedish woman would have a German maid—”

“Efficiency.”

“Yes, well, I suppose if you know all the languages, you can choose like that. You're all so different over here. My butler's an Englishman, and it took me two years to get him to stop calling me ‘Master' and start calling me ‘General.' But he's completely loyal and trustworthy. He's home taking care of my house right now. Barnum made me get him, figuring he'd be good for the show even if he never got on the stage. Barnum's always right about these things.”

She found it all charming, if farfetched. “Why isn't your butler on the stage with you?”

“I don't want the big jerk taking people's eyes off of me. When I'm working, I don't want anybody on the stage but me.” He turned his back to her, and could not see her laughing at his performer's vanity. “This is Barnum talking now, when he's around to introduce me. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the tiniest, bravest human being in the history of the world, the wonder of the age, the incomparable General Tom Thumb!'” He peered over his shoulder. “It goes on like that, but I'm keeping it short. Are you sure you never heard of me?”

“I work very hard, General.”

“So do I. There's a lot I don't know, too. I usually get a hand here—you know, applause.”

Giggling, she clapped her hands lightly to keep the sound from carrying into the parlor lest Hannelore think they were going insane in here. He turned and bowed low, gracefully, his eyes on her. “At the start of the show I'm in a cavalier getup, with a sword”—gesturing, he showed her where he wore the sword. “I sing a little song about sleeping in a matchbox, wearing a nightgown made out of my father's handkerchief. I slide the top of the box over me when I go to sleep.” As he spoke, he mimed the verses of his unsung song. “I get trapped in the cookie jar, fight a duel with a spider”—he was swinging the imaginary sword, his eyes glaring with the fury of battle—“and it finishes with me singing I'm glad to be me, glad to be alive, glad to be with all you wonderful folks—”

“Do that part,” she said.

His voice was higher than a little girl's soprano, thinner and more fragile, as delicate a voice as she had ever heard, but trained, experienced, and true. He sang with his hands on his heart, and he looked like an angel, a baby in heaven. He did not sing to her, but to the rest of the audience with which his imagination instantly filled the room. When his eyes engaged hers, he did not break the spell; rather, her desk became a miniature stage, and he brought her closer to the light and the warmth of it. The song itself was simple rhyming verse, without subtlety or the gift of language, but he was such a sophisticated, polished, joyful performer that he gave pleasure with his broad, ornate style, full of flourishes, pauses, and movements, his sense of rhythm, and the intense execution of his little dance steps, kicking, stepping, and pirouetting with vigorous authority. She had studied dance, and was capable of a professional judgment. He did not seem as agile as someone full-sized, but he did not mind exerting himself, and he accomplished everything he tried with precision and snap. “That's who I am,” he sang. “Smaller than all but oh, bigger than some, the world's happiest General—” He leaned over his invisible footlights and beckoned her closer. He whispered, still performing, “I'm Tom Thumb.”

He stepped back. “That's how I start. Then I have a costume change. I do the Battle of Waterloo, playing both Napoleon and Wellington. I used to have a dog I rode, but I got rid of him.”

“Why?”

“To me, a dog is as big as a horse. If he bit me, he'd tear off my arm. Besides, he used to stare at the audience—a real idiot. With an act like mine, you can't have distractions.” If he saw that she wanted to laugh again, he ignored her. “Sometimes I do Marc Antony's speech from
Julius Caesar
. One critic said if I was full-sized, I'd be working with the great English actors.” He stood at attention, his hands clasped over his tiny, baby-shaped stomach, and looked directly into her eyes. “I can hold an audience,” he said evenly. “I can make it do anything I want, laugh or cry, or both together.”

“I believe you,” she said, afraid to look away, lest
he
not believe
her
.

“At the end—when I'm working at home, that is—I have another costume change,” he said, “and I come out in red, white, and blue, which are the colors of the American flag, and I recite from our Declaration of Independence. Do you know what that is?”

“It was part of your war against England,” she said.

“The first one. We've had two. Who knows, maybe we'll have more. They'd love to get the colonies back. The Declaration of Independence is the greatest human utterance since the Sermon on the Mount—”

“Don't blaspheme,” she warned.

“I'm not! I know you're a religious woman, Miss Lind. Jefferson wrote that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' What could be better than that?”

“You Americans keep slaves,” she said.

“Not for long. Anybody with a brain can see emancipation coming. I myself don't know what we're going to do with the darkies. Maybe they'll want to go back to Africa.”

“How does your Mr. Barnum—excuse me, Barnum—feel about slavery?”

“He thinks it's a sin. I'd tell you more, but there's a lot of things about him that he doesn't want widely known. He makes his living putting on entertainments for the public, and the way he does it, sometimes deliberately getting people mad at him, he has to be careful about a lot of the things he says.”

“It may take me a while to consider his offer. How shall I contact you?”

“We're leaving Vienna tomorrow for Milan and Genoa, and after that, we'll be in Spain for a month. Maybe we can get together in Paris afterward—”

“I never perform in France,” she said.

“You've never been in Paris?”

“I lived in Paris for nearly a year, and it disgusted me in all its aspects.”

General Thumb sat down with a bump in the middle of the desk and folded his legs like a child anticipating a bedtime story. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“I take it you find Paris pleasant?”

“Well, a fellow in my circumstance—a little person—has an easier time in Paris than most places. People there see so many different things, they're more ready to accept someone like me. I feel better there. Sometimes I feel almost full-sized.”

He was watching her carefully, and she hesitated before responding. She felt terribly uncomfortable and unhappy, and wondered fleetingly if her little visitor was shading the truth about his real activities in Paris to redeem himself with her. For her, Paris was a city of nauseating superficiality at best, secretly smirking in its love of sin.

But at once she looked away. Her suspicions in themselves were shameful, as great a sin as anything she could imagine for this tiny, helpless creature so gifted and transparently eager to please. Her emotions welled up—she dared not speak, for fear that her anguish would pour forth. He would see the terrible things she had just been thinking about him.

He cocked his head to catch her eye. A full-grown man would have been able to reach out and raise her chin so their eyes would meet. “Miss Lind, I'm sorry if I said anything to offend you—”

“No, no. Forgive
me
, I am an emotional woman.” Jenny wanted to try a little lie. “I was thinking of what your Barnum's offer could buy for so many of the needy.”

“Barnum fully understands that you are a good, charitable, God-fearing woman, Miss Lind,” General Thumb said, very formally. “I suspect that that knowledge may have had some bearing on his decision on the magnitude of the offer he is making to you.”

She flushed. Somehow he had seen through her, she was sure. “I will have questions. I will need certain assurances and guarantees.”

“How can we be in touch with you?”

“I will be traveling through Germany, Denmark, and Sweden for the next month. I live in England, you know—”

“Yes.”

“But I am still Swedish, protected by Swedish law. Until I marry, my business affairs are managed by my guardian, Herr Henric Munthe, Judge of the Second Instance, in Stockholm.”

“Is that how I can reach him by telegraph?”

“You Americans are so proud of your telegraph!” she scolded mockingly. “Now you talk about putting wires under the ocean itself!”

“We will.”

“The ocean? No! Never! The fish will eat your wires, wait and see!”

He smiled. “Miss Lind, when you've been across the ocean as many times as I have, you'll see that the plan is not impossible.”

“I haven't been across the ocean at all.”

“I know. And all America is waiting to see you, to hear you sing. That's over thirty million people, Miss Lind. That's why Barnum has made his stupendous offer. Should you accept, you will bring to America a beauty and artistry it still waits to experience. You will make history. You will change history—for the good.”

She stared. “You understand, I'm sure, that under the circumstances, your Barnum will have to put up the money—the entire amount—in advance.”

The little man blinked.

“It is a big ocean,” she said. “I cannot go sailing back and forth pursuing fees I've already earned.”

He nodded. “Since I can't very well fight people for what's due me, I ought to be able to appreciate your concern. I'm sure Barnum will do everything in his power to accommodate you.”

“I've never had any communication with America before,” she said. “How long does an exchange of letters take?”

“A month, sometimes a little more.” He smiled. “You see, if we had the cable now, we could do it overnight.”

“Nonsense.” She reddened self-consciously. “Someday, because of you Americans, only the telegraphers will be able to read and write. Everybody else will have to queue up in their offices to send messages to their friends and families. What are you looking at, if I may ask?”

“You—forgive me. I know you were making a joke, which I enjoyed. But while you were talking, something about you changed. Forgive me, really, I don't know how to express it. While you were making the joke, I saw an indescribable happiness—”

“Everyone makes fun of the way I laugh, General. People used to tell me I never learned how.”

“No, I meant no offense. In fact, you didn't laugh—”

Hannelore knocked on the door. “Now I must rest,” Jenny said. “In a day or two I will send to Judge Munthe a list of the questions your offer raises, and when you give him your location, he will forward them to you. How can we learn more of your Barnum—?”

Hannelore had been peeking around the edge of the partly open door. “Miss Lind? The gentleman has brought a book. I have it out here.”

“Barnum's autobiography,” General Tom Thumb said. “He wanted you to have a copy.”

“Autobiography?” Jenny asked. “How old is he?”

“Well, I guess he's forty-six now, but he wrote that book five years ago—”

He stopped staring, because Jenny was laughing aloud. She could not control her laughter, which erupted in spasms out of her chest, ending in a series of high-pitched squeaks, which, if she was provoked, could last for many minutes. People had been making fun of the way she laughed ever since her apprenticeship at the Royal Theater, Stockholm, when she was nine years old. “America!” she said when she had caught her breath. “I must see this place! Men who haven't lived half their lives write their autobiographies! What an amazing, staggering idea!”