by Mark Slouka
It is only fitting that others found it inconceivable. We did. She was, well, everything she was. We, on the other hand, were the curiosity du jour, no different really from the “man-monkeys” and the “missing links” who in those days so regularly caught the attention of the entertaining class. She was known throughout the capitals of Europe. We were a small joke masking an involuntary shiver. She was beautiful. The sight of us, Dumat had been told by the French authorities who had initially denied our visa, could affect the shape of the unborn, breed monsters in the womb.
And yet, incredible as it seemed to me then, as it still seems (even had I been one man I would not have been in danger of being called handsome), there was an immediate understanding between us, a comfort, that neither of us could deny. An hour passed, then two. We seemed to naturally take each other’s side, and at some point I heard her say, in response to some question or other I have long forgotten, “We would rather not, thank you,” then pause, as though her words had said too much, glance quickly over at me, then just as quickly away. Are there words to describe the intoxication of that glance? Or my emotions when, on the pretext of making room for someone passing, she moved next to me and remained standing by my side—say it!—as naturally as a wife stands beside her husband; no, more than that: as a woman stands by the man she loves? Through the fever I could see Dumat looking at us, now from between two heads, now over a bare shoulder. He seemed very far away.
Later, I would torture myself by wondering what she could have thought, that first evening. Did she stop and wonder, perhaps, at the grotesque comedy unfolding before her, the enormous joke that the gods, chuckling in their beards, seemed to have determined to make of her life? Did she appreciate the sheer impossibility of it, or ask herself, in a lighter moment, what could have been slipped in her wine that she should fall in love with a bristly-haired Bottom on this midwinter night’s eve? Did she suddenly realize—from my stunned expression, my horrible dignity—that I had utterly misread her intentions and, feeling sorry for me, or not knowing how to correct matters, decide to humor my absurd presumption? Did she despise me (and herself) as I not only feared she might but believed, in the ignorant outlands of my heart, she should?
Even now I have no way of knowing what she may have thought to herself those first few hours in the drawing room. Against the flood of doubt and self-recrimination that rose the instant she was gone, I had only the words she had said when Dumat, apologizing profusely, had come for us at last: “You may call on me tomorrow at ten if you wish,” she had said, holding out her hand. “I will take you for a ride in the country.” And then, to Eng, “You will see. By spring we will be at least three large English persons.” Light, unrevealing words, tailored to the presence of others. But later that evening, pressing my forehead to the carriage glass, and all through the night that followed, listening to the whisper of flakes on the sill, I held to them the way a drowning man clings to a splintered bit of wood, half wishing to be saved, half hoping the waters would close above his head at last and take him swiftly down.
III.
No one could have expected it to live. It was too unlikely, too delicate. The very air seemed to conspire against it.
Consider what fertile soil we were for scandal: a society beauty—elegant, cosmopolitan—inexplicably infatuated with a pair of monsters. Had she no shame, no decency, no regard for even the most minimal standards of feminine deportment? Was she determined to scandalize all of Paris, then? Or was she … but no (this whispered in the shocked, intimate tones reserved for only the most succulent speculations), was she, perhaps, driven by some genuine perversity of body or soul, governed by unnatural appetites?
Feeling, no doubt, that a bit of scandal could only encourage the public’s interest (that all that was needed to ensure success was notoriety, as Phineas Barnum would put it some years later), Hunter and Coffin agreed to lend us the use of their carriage. And so we would arrive—the wheels slipping a bit in the wet snow that first time—at 40, rue des Nonaindières, blissfully unaware of the storm that now raged about her life. She had called it up herself, they would say, summoned it by her shamelessness. If so, it didn’t take long to arrive. By the time our carriage brought us like doubled suitors to her door the next morning, though the sky had torn through over Paris and the sun now flashed like a blade on snow still clean of filth, the winds were gathering force.
Being who she was, she must have anticipated what was coming. Must have known that those who hated her for her masculine range of interests and the protection of her wealth, who had chafed for years under her irreverent humor and her disrespect for the opinions of those—like themselves—whose importance was so patently self-evident, would now gather into a force and collectively seek to bring her down. Hers was a monstrous unwillingness to acknowledge being hated, and for this, above all, they would make her suffer.
Or try. Imagine their fury when, having successfully summoned the tempest, their victim simply sat in the deluge, her wet hair streaming back in the wind, sipping tea. Glorying in the agitation of rain in her cup, the sensation of her clinging dress, the drops streaming off the nodding flowers on her hat.
Afterwards, there were some who maintained—and it is a testimonial to her strength—that there was no pretense to this, that she genuinely neither knew nor cared what others said. That she sat in the rain, so to speak, not in order to spite the spiteful, but simply because she liked it. Perhaps. But I always believed that, though this was true, there was some small part of her that reveled in the storm simply because it made her feel alive. Though I’ve never met a gentler soul, there was something about her that needed to live in extremis, to fight. And I loved her for it.
Of course, we knew nothing of this at first. In the mornings, the carriage would simply deposit us at her door. We would enter. There, we would spend the next three or four or five hours in much the same ways we imagined people everywhere spent theirs—talking in the huge, sunlit drawing room (how I loved it when Claudine, showing us in, would throw open the doors on that sudden brightness), playing Pope or cribbage, listening to Sophia play Beethoven on the pianoforte, attempting to read aloud, despite our laughter, the sentimental English novels she had decided would aid us in our quest to become English. We took long walks in the cold, she striding, despite her skirts, like a man (her arm in mine, or at times my brother’s), blithely ignoring the turned head, the surprised second glance, the carriage slowing across a busy street. We spent an afternoon (could it have been only one?) taking turns peering through the eyepiece of a microscope into a world in which ordinary newsprint—the word “plus”—shouted like a banner (the vestigial tail at the top of the p alone filling half the view), and a single strand of her hair became a cord as thick as a ship’s hawser.
But all this was just the visible. How do I sum up the language of gestures, the eloquence of silence? Where do I find the alphabet into which I could translate the sudden surrender in a pause, the nakedness of an answer not given? Words, like signposts on the frontier of meaning, simply mark the limits of their own domain. We spent a dozen mornings together, no more, most of them within a circle so small a ten-year-old boy could have thrown a rock from one side to the other. And yet, in that brief time, she and I … no, let me say it: In that brieftime, you and I, my love, crossed half a continent together. Was it our fault that we never made it to the other side? That our journey was interrupted?
Perhaps it was, but consider the armies arrayed against us. In the mornings we sat on your divan and ate dainties off the trays that Claudine so gently set down before us. In the evenings we performed for the crowds that filled the small wooden halls that had now become our main venue, doing what was needed, playing to their expectations like the trick monkeys that we were. In the mornings we were allowed to pretend we were men like any others; by supper, we had stripped that pretense bare. You remember the bandage around my hand that morning, how awkwardly I drank my tea with my left, our unconvincing explanations of wha
t had happened? How could we own up to the fact that I had split three knuckles on the head of a man who had claimed that we were a fraud, that our bond was nothing but a section of horse flesh daily stitched to a flesh-colored bodice, that he could tear us apart like a badly sewn shirt? How could I begin to explain that I could have clubbed him to death like a rat in a barrel not because he was wrong—no, not that—but because part of me wished him right? Because I myself, in the days since I had met you, had dreamed his lie was true? I ask you—how was I to bridge these worlds? Every morning you saved me, and every evening, baptized anew in the spittle of the crowd, I was reminded of our calling.
In this essential task, of course, Hunter and Coffin played their part. An appropriately severe-looking man with a long, horse like visage made even longer by the kind of side whiskers General Burnside would make popular half a century later, Captain Coffin had changed considerably since our days on the Sachem. Then, much to the crew’s amazement, he would invite us to his stateroom, where he would try to teach us how to play chess, or show us the collection of curiosities he had collected on his travels. Now, increasingly taciturn and irritable, he hardly spoke to us at all except to demand a change in our clothing or our manner, or to mumble into his sherry about wasted days spent “dribbling over a countess.”
Initially, it was Robert Hunter who came to our aid, who insisted, over Coffin’s complaints, that the carriage be made available to us, who seemed the more willing of the two to give us some measure of liberty. Feeling, perhaps, some remorse for the way he had behaved in the past (or believing he could afford to be magnanimous, given how things had turned out), he genuinely appeared, from the time we stepped aboard the Sachem, to have nothing but our best interests in mind. More than once, where some small matter was concerned, he intervened on our behalf. Where once he had seemed oily by nature, instinctively disingenuous, he now appeared refreshingly direct, blunt to a fault. Gone, or nearly so, were the pious exclamations that had pocked his speech at every turn; gone, too, the painful mannerisms, the little flatterings and insincerities we had come to despise so much. In their place now was a businesslike matter-of-factness we could deal with and even respect.
With the four of us sitting like equals in the captain’s comfortable stateroom, all dark wood and polished brass, he had explained—at length and without a hint of condescension—what we might expect in the year to come, how our business arrangements would be worked out, why, given his and Coffin’s expenses, income from our appearances would be divided forty-forty-twenty, and under what future circumstances that might change in our favor. Eng, who had a head for such things, and whose ability with numbers never failed to amaze me, said that it seemed, on the face of it, a fair arrangement, and given our situation, even generous.
Had they lived up to it, it might have been both; as it was, it was neither. We were shown books and figures that made no sense, quoted sums for expenses that a child would have found absurd. When we demanded our share of the receipts, we were told they were unavailable, that they, Hunter and Coffin, had taken the liberty of investing them for us, and that, in any case, we would not receive the balance of our money, as per our contract, until such day as the partnership was dissolved. When Eng complained that we had signed no such agreement, they laughed, incredulous, and airily waved a piece of paper in our faces, a copy of which, they said, was on record with their solicitors at Evans, Lamberton.
They did not know—though they could certainly guess, they said—who could have put such notions in our heads. (Insulting, they were, damned insulting, said Coffin, taking his pipe from his mouth and promptly growing purple in the face as though a valve had been shut, while Hunter, next to him, simply shook his head, averring there must be “some misunderstanding.”) Did we truly believe we were being cheated, after all they had done for us? They couldn’t understand how we could think such things. Still, as it appeared we were serious, they felt it their duty to inform us that power and precedent (as well as the natural sympathy of the courts, given our, ah, respective stations in life, shall we say) were all on their side. Should their reputation as honest businessmen be challenged, they would have no choice but to defend themselves with all the means at their disposal; they could assure us that Evans, Lamberton, who played the Court of Chancery like a flute, would … well, there was no need to bring up unpleasantness that would surely never come to pass. The contract which we so mysteriously did not remember signing—though sign it we both most certainly had, and with pleasure—was legal and binding. In the fullness of time, if we could but curb the natural impatience of youth, we would receive our money, and a pretty sum it would be. How much? That would be hard to say.
Where could we go? Sophia, fighting on a hundred fronts, would not have been able to help us, even if we had been willing to ask her. In our desperation we turned to Dumat. He listened carefully, a worried look on his face, as Eng listed the facts of the situation—the head counts, the estimated receipts, the likely expenses we had been quoted by third parties—then promised to look into it for us. “If this is true … but no, I cannot believe it. Still, what you say is most troubling, my friends. I need hardly add that as a business associate of Monsieur Coffin and Monsieur Hunter, I, too …” Sharply tugging down the corners of his waistcoat, he seemed to snap to attention. “I shall look into this matter at once,” he said, his trim little beard fairly bristling with indignation. “Rest assured, my friends, they shall not pull the cloth over the eyes of Emmanuel Dumat.”
Of that I have no doubt, if only because they needed his help in pulling it over ours. A week later he was back. “You will be relieved to hear, my friends, that your fears are entirely unfounded,” he announced, perching awkwardly on the edge of a chair in our cramped rooms. While Messieurs Hunter and Coffin were, admittedly, not the most sophisticated of men, he believed them to be essentially honest in their dealings with us. He had taken them to task most directly, most directly, and had left convinced that both gentlemen, while certainly not averse to making a profit, had only our best interests in mind. Though hurt by our accusations, they bore us no ill will, and, in fact, cherished an almost fatherly affection for us both; indeed, he felt compelled to add that, just as in real families, in which the strongest feelings often bespeak the strongest bonds, here, too, the harsh words, the wounded feelings, even the anger with which they had responded to our accusations, were but proof of their regard. And so on.
Though it was particularly difficult for Eng, who took great pride in his business sense, and who for well over a year now had been pacifying himself with the thought of our growing fortune, patiently trading in each indignity for its worth in coin, we neither of us let on that we knew where matters stood. We dissembled like masters (it certainly was a relief to us both; how simple it was to misunderstand the motives of others when far from home …) and immediately began collecting evidence of our own, quietly writing down dates and figures and monies received in a small, pocket-sized notebook Sophia gave us during one of our visits, preparing for the day when we should take our stab at freedom.
IV.
It was not to be. The jailers, as it turned out, would escape before their prisoners. Once before we had rejected Hunter’s advances only to be forced by circumstances to beg his forgiveness. This time, however, we were not even given the chance to atone for his sins, to reinstate ourselves in his good graces. Perhaps it is just as well. He had forgiven us the first time because he had stood to gain by it. This time, we had nothing he wanted. He and Coffin had shelled the nut.
When I recall the arc of our fortunes in Europe that year I see a short, sharp peak—glorious and dizzying—followed by a long downward plunge. An Alp. A veritable Zugspitz of easy success and utter humiliation. For nearly eight months—a time so heady and disorienting we could hardly take any pleasure from it—we were entertained by heads of state, welcomed in the homes of the wealthy and the well connected, introduced to ministers and dignitaries, barons and baronesses whose names we
could hardly pronounce, much less remember. In London we were presented to His Majesty King George IV (I remember a coughing, yeasty-looking man), then exhibited at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly before “the most eminent professors of Surgery and Medicine in the Metropolis.” This august body, to whom we were introduced as we sat in the center of the stage on a red divan (Hunter leading them forward one by one, strewing the path with flatteries), collectively pronounced us not only genuine (“a wonderful caprice of nature”) but assured the public that the sight of us would be quite inoffensive to even the most delicate sensibilities.
The gentlemen of the fourth estate concurred: “In their figure, countenance, manners and movements, there is nothing that can offend the delicacies of the most fastidious female,” we read in John Bull. “Without being in the least disgusting or unpleasant, like most monstrosities,” wrote the reporter for the Universal Pamphleteer, “these youths are certainly among the most extraordinary freaks of nature we have ever witnessed.” The Times agreed. So did the Mercury. Indeed, to judge by the blizzard of letters, testaments, speculations, and scientific reports our appearance in London elicited, there was hardly a soul in England at that time, living or dead, who did not have an opinion regarding us. If living, they published it; if dead, they communicated their feelings by proxy.
Ours was, truly, the well-examined life. In a paper presented to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, Dr. Robert Buckley Bolton reported that “the tongue of Eng is at all times whiter than that of Chang, and his digestion more easily deranged by unsuitable diet. Moreover Chang, by his own testimony, has never passed a day without alimentary discharges, but the contrary has often occurred in Eng.” From these humble particulars Dr. Bolton then proceeded on, by a series of daring leaps that must surely have amazed his audience, to the underlying nature of form. We had never thought of ourselves as apertures onto the hidden laws of organology.