The Museum of Extraordinary Things (37 page)

She read for some time, coming to a section in which he listed all of his purchases, where he had discovered them, what their cost had been. The Professor mixed English and French in his writings and created a sort of code, reversing letters of the alphabet and often utilizing numbers in their place to ensure that his secrets would not be divined. Magicians did not share, and Sardie was particularly mistrustful, perhaps because he judged all other men by the measure of his own character.

He kept a list of obituary notices. If the deceased individual was a scientist or an explorer, he went to that person’s home address at the time of the funeral, letting himself in by breaking open any locked doors, sifting through belongings, taking any interesting finds. In surgeries at hospitals throughout the city he was well known as a collector, and, in his younger days, he had traveled to Mexico and Brazil. It was there he had found Malia’s mother begging on the street in a town where her daughter was thought to be cursed. The Durante brothers had been discovered in an orphanage in New Jersey, where they entertained the matrons with their acrobatics in the hope of a decent dinner. He’d paid twenty dollars for the two of them, and they’d begun their performances at the age of twelve, for there were no laws to protect children from theatrical exhibitions in the city of New York, and anyone could place them on display.

The tortoise was brought to him in the year Coralie was born. A very old sailor from the Canary Islands had owned the creature for eighty years, which meant the tortoise was now nearly a hundred. Its enclosure was above the workshop, and, as she read, Coralie could hear it moving slowly from one section of its confinement to the other. Grains of sand fell down between the floorboards. That was when Coralie wept, when she thought of a century of capture. She read on.

Sword, Hat, Mouse, Snake, Two of a Kind, Three Faces, Half a Woman, Fire in the Palm of My Hand, Cards, Aces, Deuces, Scarves, Doves.

The elements of each illusion were written in code, which Coralie had not yet completely deciphered. But there were other secrets as well. She came to one notation that was puzzling.
Baby in a Cradle
. The notation was set off by itself, and there was a blue image of a fish sketched below the letters. Coralie hurriedly turned the pages until she found another small fish inked in the margin. Before she could begin to read, however, she heard a disturbance above her, a pounding at the door and a man calling out. Coralie recognized the voice as Eddie’s. She could hear her father’s response soon enough, and the tone of the men rising into shouts. There was a clattering, as if pots and pans were falling. She could hear her father yelling that Eddie would never find Coralie. She had run off, the Professor said, leaving behind a note for the photographer, so he might know the truth. She wanted nothing to do with him.

Coralie pushed hard against the locked door. She called out until she was hoarse, but it did no good. Eddie had already slammed out of the house, and she could feel her future with him disappearing. By now Eddie would have crossed the yard and slipped into the crowded street, too hurt and disappointed to stay a moment longer. He could not know that, although Coralie was an avid reader, she had never learned to write. Her father had said her hands were too clumsy. She was better at household chores.

When it was too dark to see, Coralie lit the lantern, though there was precious little oil to waste. She found a blanket to wrap around her shoulders. The night was chill, and her spirits were cold as well. The paper of her father’s journal was of a fine grade but delicate, tearing along the edges. Coralie came to the sign of the fish, and there she began to read again. The entry was made in the month of March, eighteen years earlier. A clear blue ending to the winter, Sardie wrote. Brooklyn was still dusted with snow even though the leaves of the lilacs had begun to unfold. He had been in New York for two years and practiced his English late into the night. He wished to be considered a New Yorker, and his accent was all that stood in his way. He heated the house with a single coal stove and ate simple meals of bread and fish and wine. He had bought the house in Brooklyn with money he’d earned from a concoction he made, an opium-like substance consisting more of acidic chemicals than of pricey raw poppy, using a stolen recipe from another magician in France, a man so addicted to his own mixture he hadn’t noticed Sardie riffling through his papers.

The Professor used the winter months to travel and search for specimens. Animal, mineral, human. He wrote that he was a savior to many; he lifted them from lives of poverty and horror, though they didn’t always appreciate his efforts on their behalf. His first stars, the conjoined twins Helen and Helena, pretty young women, were with the museum for the first season. They lived as servants to earn their keep, and were forced to sleep in his bed each night, but soon enough they ran away, leaving the Professor with no household help and no major attraction. Still, he intended to stay and would find other entertainments. He was in his early forties by then. He had seen a great deal of the world and was ready to settle down in Brooklyn. He’d had enough of magic in France. In New York he turned to science with a cold eye. But even a man of science could not control circumstance, and, as Coralie read on, she learned the unexpected had occurred in that same month of March.

On a Tuesday, after I made my way home from New Jersey, where I bought the jaw of a mastodon discovered in a swamp, I took note of something moving beneath the porch stairs. I thought it was a skunk, for there are many in Brooklyn. I myself had seen an albino specimen some weeks earlier, which I wished to capture, for I had taught myself the skills of taxidermy and was eager to put them to use. I left the bones I’d carried from New Jersey on the grass and went to see what fate had brought me. Surely it was fate that had driven me from France, and brought me to New York, and now made me cross the lawn on this day.

The creature made a wailing sound, and carried the odor of sour milk. Rather than discovering a skunk, I came upon a baby, a tiny pitiful creature. I left it where it was, tucked beneath the stair, thinking someone would soon come to retrieve it, for a kindly person had wrapped it in a clean woolen blanket and left it with some care. I saw to the mastodon jaw, and washed it off at the well. The baby wailed until it grew exhausted, then, at last, fell quiet. I had assumed the wretched mother would return for it, but when the dark fell,
it was still there. I brought the baby inside and examined it on the kitchen table. It was an uninteresting female, and I thought it good for nothing until I unwrapped its bunting. To my joy I discovered it had a deformity, as if it had been created by the mating of a fish and a human being, its hands like flippers, its little body perfect in all other aspects. In order to test its aptitude, I filled a bucket and held it under the water to see if it could exist in this element. The child flailed and fought and came up sputtering, wailing even more pitifully. If worse came to worse, I saw that I could drown it and be rid of it.

While I considered what I might do with the creature, I had one of my wonders take it home, a fat woman known as Darling, who lived with a normal fellow in Brighton Beach. She brought it back in two days complaining it had howled so piteously her husband had told her to take it and not return till she was rid of it. That was when I came to understand that freaks of nature and ordinary people had no business being together. Normal individuals would never be true to someone they considered beneath them. I fired Darling before the next season started. Soon after I came up with a list of instructions for those I employed. No marriages, that was the first rule. No children was the next. Brief alliances and love affairs would have to do, for commitments made for bad employees.

I sat on the porch and set the baby in a cradle that had been used by a wonder who had a monkey “child” that had escaped and disappeared into the woods of Queens, ruining his master’s livelihood. I tried to decide if I should sell the thing or, if there were no buyers, bring it to an orphanage, though I doubted any would take on an abnormal child. There was a hospital where I sometimes looked for specimens that kept such oddities under lock and key. I could most assuredly deposit the child there. Because the March air was chill, the baby had begun to cough. There was an old pear tree in the yard under which I buried animals and specimens. I thought that might be the final resting place for this thin, wailing creature. Certainly the fruit from this tree was sweet and the ground beneath it easy enough to excavate.

I gazed up to spy a pretty red-haired woman watching from beyond the yard. My blood raced at the sight of her.

“Your baby’s crying,” she said, the poor dumb thing.

Indeed it was. “Perhaps you can comfort it,” I suggested. “Lord knows I have no business with children.”

The lovely girl came forward and, after looking around a bit, lifted up the baby and hushed her.

“Be careful,” I said. “It’s a monster.”

The woman laughed. “This beautiful girl? Don’t be silly.”

I pointed out the child’s hands. “Look at the webbing. It may be a seal for all I know.”

The red-haired girl shook her head. She seemed quite sure of herself. “That’s God’s mark of how special she is.”

If I believed in God I would have thought this woman had been sent to me, for the baby seemed to wish to suckle at her breast and I got an eyeful that pleased me.

“I had a child but lost her,” the woman said simply as a way of explanation.

“Perhaps you’d like to take care of this one, and take care of me as well.”

She looked at me with a steady, even gaze, and I saw she wasn’t so dim. She knew I was referring to my bed.

I told her I would take no nonsense from any employee.

I won’t disappoint you, the girl told me.

Don’t, I told her, or you’ll live to regret it.

The mother from France who dressed in black, who always wore gloves and was so beautiful and gracious and had left Coralie her pearls, had never existed. She was nothing more than an orphan abandoned on the porch. Had Maureen not come along, she would have been given over to a hospital ward, or perhaps been drowned in a bucket, then buried beneath the pear tree. People say some facts are best left unknown, but those people have never had their own histories kept from them. As Coralie read on, it was as if she was moving backward through time. Everything that had ever happened shifted from the realm of black and white and was infused with color, the gray turning to red and indigo and a wavering spring green seen only in the month of March. All that she’d known and all she had ever been had turned to ashes. From those ashes, emerging through the earthen floor that the roots of the pear tree twisted through, she saw the truth. It was 1893, the year in which a serious man took in a baby and a red-haired woman and claimed them as his own.

TEN

THE RULES OF LOVE

**********

I
CAME
upon the Wizard of the Lower East Side exactly as I had the morning I first met him. As I turned the corner onto Ludlow Street suddenly there he was, in the very same spot where I’d first spied him all those years ago, when I was just a boy. Perhaps he could tell the future, as people said, and therefore knew where he might find me, or perhaps it was the way New York City worked—it was a huge teeming place of strangers, until you stumbled into what seemed to be a village made up of people you’d known in your youth whom you couldn’t seem to avoid. Hochman wore fashionable clothing, perfect for the season, a white linen waistcoat, a straw hat, white trousers, and cream-colored leather boots. He was on his way to a luncheon, he told me, given in his honor by the Workmen’s Circle. He had recently helped them find a boy of twelve who had come to New York from the Ukraine on his own, only to be trapped into near slavery by a sly, unscrupulous businessman who made a practice of selling the services of young immigrants to farms in New Jersey, where they labored in the fields with nothing more than a roof over their heads in return.

“You’re a union man?” I said, surprised.

“I’m a man of my people,” he said. “Wherever that brings me. If the Workmen’s Circle wants to recognize my good deeds and call me a hero, who am I to disagree? They may honor you one day as well. You’re quite famous at the moment. I heard about the girl you found.”

“As of today, I’m not in that business anymore.”

Hochman studied me. “No,” he agreed. “It was never for you. There was only one thing you were searching for.”

I admit I was curious as to his psychic powers, in which I’d never had any real faith. Now I tested him. “And what was that?”

I imagined he would say love, as I’d recently found the woman of my dreams and could think of little other than Coralie. Unfortunately, the feeling was not mutual, as she had fled and disappeared. Could I have found her? Probably. But if she had no wish to be found, I saw little point in doing so.

Hochman motioned me to follow him, and I surprised myself by accompanying him. I wished to hear what he had to say. We went in the direction of Essex Street, not far from the funeral home, to a saloon frequented by men of our faith. We went inside and sat at a rear table where we might be afforded some privacy. After ordering our drinks, Hochman continued.

“You were looking for the truth about your father, something I happen to have. But maybe so much time has passed, you don’t want to know. The truth frightens people because it isn’t stable. It shifts every day. If you’d prefer to remain in the dark, I would understand.”

Our drinks were delivered, and I gulped mine down. Perhaps that gave me the courage to say, “Go ahead. Tell me your great secret. Let’s have it.”

“You’ve resented your father all this time for running away and attempting to drown himself. You judged him as a coward. Am I correct?”

I shrugged, but my answer was clear.

“That day on the dock, there were other men who’d been let go from the factory. They had arranged to meet to plan what action they should take. A member of the Workmen’s Circle had been sent to meet with them.”

I laughed and thought the Wizard’s report preposterous. How could Hochman know this information when he wasn’t there? “And you divined these facts out of thin air?”

“The man presenting me with my honor today at the luncheon was the representative from the Workmen’s Circle. When your name came up in regard to Hannah Weiss, he told me your father’s story. The bosses sent some thugs after your father and his friends. If you hadn’t been there with him, your father would have stayed and fought; instead he saw that you had disobeyed when he told you to run. He went after you to ensure your safety and bring you home, but one of the henchmen sent to disrupt the union meeting came after him. Your back was to him when he was pushed into the river.”

I had always been convinced of my father’s weakness because he was in mourning
for my mother, because he had cried in the forest in Russia. I couldn’t stand to hear him weep. I’d covered my ears every evening. I had assumed he had leapt, a lost and helpless man. Never had I thought he’d meant to rescue me.

“You can say I don’t have the power to see the future,” Hochman went on, “but when you stopped me all those years ago on the same corner where we ran into each other today, I saw that we would meet again, and that the river would run through your life. I knew I’d be the one to tell you the truth about your father, although I didn’t know what that was until just a few days ago, when your name came up in conversation.”

I called for another drink. Without my resentment toward my father, the hatred I’d been carrying around was now directed at myself. The terrified boy in the forest who thought the owls could carry him away. The boy who believed there were ghosts in the grass. I was the coward who had cried in the forest. I was the one who could not stop mourning my mother.

Because I could not endure who I was, I had changed my name so that I might be someone brand new. I had placed upon my father’s shoulders my many flaws and faults.

“Maybe you’ll understand why he would risk everything for you now that you’ve known love,” Hochman said. He laughed when I gazed at him with surprise. “There’s no need of psychic powers to see that. I can spot desire after all these years.”

“Unfortunately she doesn’t feel as I do.” I had the letter I’d been given in my jacket, which I’d read over and over again, a wound I couldn’t help but revisit. “She’s sent me away.”

“Don’t walk away too fast,” the Wizard said. “She may change her mind.” Hochman toasted my health and wished me good fortune. “Love is the one thing that’s not easy to find. It’s an achievement, Eddie, to feel such a glorious emotion, whether it’s returned or not. Some men never do. Though I’m not surprised to hear you have a passion. I saw it inside you, even when you didn’t know it was there. Why do you think I hired you? I saw exactly who you were.”

THE NEXT D
A
Y,
I went looking for my father. I knew I owed him an apology. If I were to be honest, I owed him more than that. I had brought Mitts and North with me, knowing they needed the walk, and they were quiet, tempered by my mood. Once I’d climbed the steps, however, I found I couldn’t knock on the door. I stood there in the hallway where I had been a hundred times before, and yet I was not the same person who had lived here. The corridor appeared smaller and more narrow than I had remembered. There was the scent of cooking from other flats, onions and chicken, and the dim lighting that turned shadows blue. I imagined my father on the other side of the door, his prayer book open as he said the evening prayers, the photograph of my mother on the table propped up beside an empty soup bowl. I had looked to find what I was missing in Moses Levy, in the hermit, in Hochman, in Mr. Weiss, but all along it had been here, at the end of this corridor.

Still, I could not go farther. I couldn’t imagine asking for his forgiveness. My throat had closed up. Could words burn you? Could they tear you to pieces? I stood with my back against the wall that was streaked with cheap green paint. Mitts and North were beside me, on edge. Did I bring them for protection or merely for company? Or was there another reason? I had met an old woman on the dock the day I rescued Mitts, and she’d told me that it was easy enough to judge a man by the way he treated his dogs. Perhaps I wanted my father to see that I was not a wretched, thankless person, the sort of man who would walk away without a look back, a son who would judge his father and fail to rescue him when he was drowning. I had a heart after all, not straw inside me, but blood and bone and flesh.

I did the only thing I knew how to do. I had the rest of my savings with me, all I had. I slipped the envelope of money under the door. I thought I spied a shadow. I thought I felt him near. I bowed my head and said the evening prayers. I was grateful for the teachers I’d had, though I now recognized myself to be a slow and unexceptional student. I finally understood what Mr. Weiss had given me in return for finding his daughter, for, like the angels who are said to follow men’s lives on earth, he’d sent me a message. I was my father’s son, no matter what my name was.

Soon after, I returned to the mansion on Sixty-second Street. It was the day when all New York pulsed with excitement, for President Taft had come to preside at the dedication ceremony of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. The building had cost more than nine million dollars and boasted a collection of over a million volumes. The huge lions that fronted the staircase to Fifth Avenue, sculpted by Edward Clark Potter, were nicknamed Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, for the library’s founders, John Jacob Astor and James Lenox. I avoided the crowds and slipped into a tavern, where I took my time over some warm gin till evening closed in. Then I went on to my destination. I stood in the dark, a shadow from my own past yet again. I looked up into the window I knew to be Juliet’s bedroom, but it was dark. I wished to thank her for her help. She was so bright, I thought she could help me grasp why the one woman I wanted would run from me. Juliet was an advocate for women’s rights. I, too, believed each woman had the right to follow her own destiny, but I hadn’t paid attention to the personal liberties women were lacking. Perhaps there was much more I hadn’t understood.

I saw a fellow bring a carriage round. He was a liveryman I’d heard his employers call Marcus. I walked over casually and paid attention to the horse.

“Keep away then,” the fellow said to me. “This horse is worth more than you are.”

The wondrous specimen was an Andalusian, sent from Spain, one of the finest carriage horses in New York. He was so spirited Marcus said he had to be ridden at a full gallop along the bridle path in Central Park on Sundays to ensure he burned off steam and therefore would be less likely to spook and run off with the carriage.

“Is Miss Block at home?” I asked.

At first he refused to answer, but I wouldn’t let it go, and finally, most likely to be rid of me, he said, “We’ve been told not to bring up her name.”

“Who gave you those instructions?”

Marcus shrugged. “We are to act as if she was never a member of the family.”

It was a curious pronouncement, but I could not bring him to say any more. I decided to wait until the maids went out, hoping to have better luck with them. I’d watched the town house often enough to know they went out walking each day, and I recognized them right away. Sarah and Agnes had Juliet’s poodles with them. The dogs saw me and strained to get to me, leaping up as if I were a long-lost friend.

“I never knew Jasper to be so friendly,” Agnes said of the larger poodle’s reaction to me. “He’s a snobby thing.”

“I’m a friend of Miss Block’s,” I said, which was not so far from the truth. “I’m here to visit her.” The maids exchanged a look. “I take it she’s not at home?”

“We have to walk the dogs,” Sarah said, wanting to get away. She grabbed Agnes by the sleeve, steering her toward the park.

I followed along. I was still the same stubborn fellow I’d been from the start, unwilling to give in. “Will she be home later?” I focused on Agnes, the maid who seemed more willing to engage.

She shook her head sadly. “They were going to send her to a hospital in Massachusetts. I myself told her of the plan because I’d overheard them discussing her with the doctor. She was always kind to me, and I thought it evil that they were planning behind her back. I saw the jacket they planned to tie her into if she fought their demands—it was a horrible thing made of leather and canvas. When I saw what they intended, I knew I couldn’t keep quiet.”