Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  Besides, some of the concessions were distracting, and he found himself standing before them, bemused, and forgetting what he had come to see. There was the Underwater Ballet, Mr. Revery the photographer who made you look like anybody you wanted, and the Villes Imaginaires, a magic-lantern show of cities that never were and never could be. The Eye Collector had the largest collection of glass eyes in the world, three thousand four hundred and nine. It was not clear where he got them. Did he have them made expressly! Did he murder people to get them? It was more likely that he obtained them from undertakers, for a price. Fred was not very interested in this exhibit.

  There were many more things to see and Fred didn’t have time for them all. He passed by the Musical Vegetable, a man with no arms and legs who played the violin, and Madame Titicaca, the Lady Who was Tattooed on the Inside. Professor Roentgen Mirador, who claimed to hold a diploma from the Sorbonne, presided over a Hall of Mirrors that hummed like an electric streetcar. When people went into it you could see their internal organs and even clear through them. Rumor in Santa Ana had it that there were those who had gone inside and never returned; they had dissolved into the mirrors. Fred didn’t believe that, but he wondered what happened to you when you were inside and what it felt like when people were looking through you. But the Hall of Mirrors was the most expensive of all the concessions, fifty cents, and anyhow it wasn’t what he had come to see.

  It took him some time to find it, after he had wandered back and forth on the crisscrossing lanes of the Exposition for some time. It was at the end of a lane, a kind of a dead-end street, with nothing but the sand of the beach behind it. It was odd that he hadn’t noticed it before; it was certainly conspicuous enough. In shape it was like a silo of canvas on a framework of poles, twenty-five or thirty feet high and open at the top; from the outside nothing could be seen, and there was only a racket from behind the canvas, a hissing and heavy thumping as though someone were subduing a great serpent. The sign said simply

  FLYING MACHINE

  in large block letters, and below, in smaller letters, “F. Gambrinus, Prop.” The canvas was covered with pictures of legendary and fanciful flying apparatuses, and a kind of mast or derrick projected from it at the top.

  Fred walked around looking at the pictures. There were fantastic flying machines of all sorts: ornithopters, inflated footballs propelled through the air by screws, carriages with balloons supporting them, a man in a black dress suit and top hat shooting skyward on a steam rocket. Another contrivance had a boat body with wheels and hinged wings, with an arrangement of cords to make them flap. From his reading in The Scientific Gentleman Fred recognized Le Bris’s Artificial Albatross, Cayley’s flying carriage with its bird body and whirling disks, the ornithopter of De Groot, Henson’s Aerial Steam Carriage, and Von Siemen’s gunpowder-powered rocketcraft. The circular display, he now saw, was arranged according to historical principles; beginning with improbable machines belonging entirely to the world of fantasy, carriages drawn through the air by swans and so on, it progressed through Cayley, De Groot, Henson, and Von Siemen to Chanute’s glider, which actually existed and had carried a man aloft, even though at the caprice of the winds and only for a short distance. At the end was Lilienthal’s expensive tandem-winged failure, which had collapsed into the Potomac and almost drowned its operator.

  When he came around to the front of the canvas structure again the noise from inside had stopped and Gambrinus himself was now standing by the ticket booth. He bore himself with great dignity even though he was only about four feet tall. He was dressed in a frock coat, striped pants, and an old-fashioned beaver in the style of at least a half century before: a gray furry hat, somewhat cylindrical in form, but tapering outward so that it was wider at the top. On his small apple-like face was a mustache and a short Imperial. His copious eyebrows were turned up at the ends, giving him a cunning and slightly Mephistophelean look in spite of his kingly bearing. In the ticket booth behind him was his daughter Marmora.

  “How much is it?”

  Gambrinus turned, as though noticing him for the first time, and contemplated his thin and intent face, his knickers, and his bicycle cap.

  “A quarter. Twenty-five cents. A fourth part of a dollar.”

  “Can I look at it first?”

  “No.”

  “I just want to look at it.”

  “I am not a philanthropist, my friend. I am a businessman.”

  “How does it work?”

  “You’ll see that after you’ve paid your quarter.”

  “Is it like any of the machines in the pictures?” Fred pointed to the painted canvas behind the dwarf.

  “No. It’s more modern. It’s in accordance with the latest scientific developments. Also,” he added, “it works, which none of these did.”

  “It works by steam,” suggested Fred, guessing from the sounds and odors that proceeded from behind the canvas.

  Gambrinus said nothing.

  “Does it maintain controllable free flight?”

  Another silence.

  Fred gave up. “All right.” He reached in his pocket for the quarter and held it out. But Gambrinus stepped aside, not deigning to soil his hands with money, and it was Marmora who took the quarter, giving him in return a piece of cardboard with a hole punched in it and the words “Flying Machine.” She was taller than her father, but still came only to Fred’s shoulder. Her face was heart-shaped, with large fawn-like eyes and a small chin. Her face was pale as marble, but with a touch of color flaring in the cheeks, as though she were slightly feverish. Everything was childish about her except for her mouth, which was round and full as a woman’s. A strand of her long silky hair had strayed down onto her shoulders. She wore black tights, a close-fitting black jersey with a low neck, and dancing shoes. Hanging from her neck was a small golden heart on a chain so fine it was almost invisible.

  She said nothing. Fred took the ticket and followed Gambrinus in through the canvas.

  As it happened two other customers were waiting. Gambrinus evidently collected three or more of them inside the canvas before he started up the machine. This was because, as Fred had surmised, it was steam-operated and took a certain time to set in motion. The contrivance in the canvas silo was made, for the most part, out of a Stanley Steamer motorcar engine and an old iron chair. A length of gas pipe was welded vertically to this assembly, and at the top of the gas pipe was a pair of large fans like those used to discourage flies on a ceiling, except that the blades were ten feet or more in diameter. Through the gas pipe ran a fine steel cable, attached at the bottom to the floor and at the top to a derrick thirty feet or more in the air. There was a crackling of wood burning, and a medicinal smell of steam and oil—the boiler was fired with eucalyptus logs, which accounted for the odor. From the boiler to the flying machine ran a rubber hose with a valve in the middle.

  The first customer, a young man in a shiny black suit and clerical collar, got into the chair and was buckled fast. Gambrinus verified the pressure gauge on the boiler and checked the safety valve. Then he picked up the hose and turned the throttle valve in the middle of it. The two fans began rotating in opposite directions. They whirred and turned into a blur. The engine emitted steam and a noise like a ripsaw. The machine bumped and bounced, then uncertainly moved upward, in fits and starts, until it reached a point some halfway up the wire. The young man in the clerical collar looked somewhat alarmed; he stared down from the chair to see how far away the ground was. But there was no turning back once you were strapped in the chair and Gambrinus had the valve in his hand. Gambrinus, dropping the valve temporarily onto the floor, threw another log in the boiler. The young man in the clerical collar was made to mount almost to the top of the wire, his face paler and paler. Then he came down in jerky fashion, plunging three feet or so down and then bouncing upward again before descending another step. The landing, however, was gentle; Gambrinus with fine touches of the valve brought the whole heavy business to the floor like a feather.r />
  Next it was the turn of a serious gentleman in a pince-nez, who had the air of someone subjecting himself to a scientific experiment rather than treating himself to an amusement, and was perhaps an engineer interested in keeping up with the latest developments in aero-levitation. In view of his maturity Gambrinus did not take him up quite so high. The machine reached a point approximately halfway up the wire, and wavered there for three minutes or so while the gentleman in the pince-nez, evidently, took mental notes. The business of bringing the thing down was not as easy as it looked at first. This time Gambrinus’ hand slipped on the valve, and the machine fell heavily to the ground from an altitude of perhaps a foot. The pince-nez fell off and the gentleman turned red. Gambrinus did not apologize, any more than a surgeon might for an unsuccessful operation. He hardly even glanced at the gentleman in the pince-nez. Instead he turned to Fred, with a small and distant bow.

  Fred sat down in the iron chair. Gambrinus buckled him in and then went back to the valve. The eucalyptus fire was crackling hotly now. Fred felt himself rising, and to his surprise was hardly conscious of the noise of the Stanley engine. There was a great rushing and thrumming from the vanes over his head, and a powerful down-draft. The engine was under the chair, the iron seat of which it warmed considerably. A jet of steam shot out from between Fred’s ankles, which he was careful to hold apart. And yet the whole contrivance gave the impression of lightness, of grace, in spite of its iron weight and the roaring of boiler and engine. To his surprise Gambrinus didn’t take him very high, hardly higher than he had the gentleman in the pince-nez. Fred felt a sense of disappointment as the machine descended in its jerky way and touched down onto the floor.

  Gambrinus left the valve partly open, however, and the fan blades went on turning overhead. Fred now saw that Marmora had left her post at the ticket booth and was standing at the entrance to the canvas. Her ankles crossed, one hand on the canvas, she licked her lip at one side with an air as though she were waiting for something—like a dancer, perhaps, waiting in the wings for her cue.

  Gambrinus did not unstrap Fred. Instead he seemed to look to Marmora for advice. A three-way glancing of eyes took place: Gambrinus looked at Marmora, Marmora looked at Fred, and Fred looked from one to the other. Fred was not sure what was happening. Finally Marmora nodded very slightly; her chin moved a fraction of an inch and then came upright again. Gambrinus picked up the valve, but instead of turning the lever he handed it to Fred.

  The hose was quite long; it snaked around the edges of the canvas structure for fifty feet or more before it reached the boiler. It was more than long enough, Fred now saw, to reach to the top of the derrick. He moved the lever. The blades over his head slowed. It was the wrong way. He turned it the other way, and the rushing of wings over his head mounted to a higher pitch. This time the machine stirred, bumped once or twice, and rose into the air. With the valve partly opened the thing rose to about the middle of the wire before it slowed and hovered. When he himself held the throttle, Fred found, the sensation was entirely different than when Gambrinus had worked the valve. Before there was only the moderately exhilarating sensation of mounting into thin air; now he had all at once the sense of controlled flight, of power and freedom, of transcending the mundane laws of physics that limited other men. A touch of his fingers and he mounted; another touch and he settled. The warm seat and the trembling iron pipe at his back gave the impression that the machine was a living creature, or more precisely that he himself was the living creature whose powers had been miraculously extended by this contrivance of iron and fire. His own body trembled with the vibration of the thing, and the jet of steam hissed from between his legs. He and the machine were one. It was an extension of his body, but instead of making the body heavier it made it light as a feather and at the same time enormously powerful. If it were not for the wire fixed to the crane at the top, Fred felt, he might soar away until he became only a speck to Gambrinus and the others watching him from the ground.

  Gambrinus showed no impatience, and made no gesture suggesting that he should bring the machine down. He only watched, tilting his beaver backward to look at the steep upward angle. Fred descended several times, practicing landings. The first two or three were rough and he was afraid he might damage the machine. But it was stoutly built; it only emitted little puffs of steam as though it were protesting at this treatment. Finally, barely touching the throttle as though it were the key of some musical instrument, he settled onto the floor so imperceptibly that he hardly realized it had happened. Gambrinus didn’t smile exactly, but his Imperial tightened and a wrinkle appeared at the sides of his mouth.

  Fred tried a few more landings, then he decided to climb to the top of the thing and see how high he could go. There seemed to be plenty of pressure; out of the corner of his eye he could see the gauge on the steam boiler. He opened the throttle carefully, lifted past his previous stopping place at the middle of the wire, and continued on upward. Gambrinus watched him imperturbably. It was possible, Fred thought, that if the machine went too high the whirling blades might become entangled in the mechanism of the crane above, but surely Gambrinus would have warned him of this. With one eye on the dwarf he went on opening the throttle. He had passed the point now where Gambrinus had stopped the young man in the clerical collar, three feet or so short of the top. The edge of the canvas structure seemed to plunge up and down before his eyes. There were kaleidoscopic glimpses of the tops of tents, the Pavilion in the distance, and McFadden Wharf sticking out into the ocean. Finally he managed to steady the machine at its maximum height, well clear of the canvas screens.

  He could see everything. Far in the distance, extending its snowy back into the sky, was the Sierra Madre. There were orange groves, hills, a cluster of trees that was Santa Ana, a smaller one that was Angel Town, and the stranded hulk of Cantamar where the ocean met the land. And then for some reason the machine did something it had never done before. Perhaps he did it in some way, by some adjustment he made, or some act of his will, but he was not aware of it. He felt himself turning, slowly and with total control. The horizon rotated like a clock. He saw in all directions. This was the world. He was above it, mastering it. It was all his.

  Of course, it was necessary to uncoil in the other direction in order to free the machine of the twisting steam hose. This too he did without much difficulty. Then, finding himself lined up as he had been before, he closed the throttle slightly to descend. He looked around for Gambrinus, but he seemed to have disappeared. Marmora was still standing by the entrance to the canvas. As he settled onto the ground their eyes met, and she made a little smile. Then she looked away.

  17.

  As she had promised, Herma came back to the Electric Theater again the next week. She had been singing at weddings again, and she had a five-dollar bill and some change in her purse. But there was no one at the ticket office; that is, no arm came out of the mirrored column in the doorway to take her nickel. She went in and found the projectionist working with a frown of concentration at his machine, adjusting and oiling it. He stopped and wiped his hands carefully on a piece of waste. Then he introduced himself as Mr. Earl Koenig. He apologized for having taken the liberty of a handshake on the occasion of their previous meeting.

  “It’s quite all right.”

  She looked around the theater, which was totally empty except for the projector at the rear staring into the darkness like some kind of mechanical Cyclops.

  “Do you have the operas?”

  “Yes. I have obtained La Bohème and The Marriage of Figaro from Los Angeles, as I indicated to you last week.” He had a rather formal way of speaking, perhaps simply out of shyness. He looked at her uncertainly, stroking his mustache at the side. “Would you like to see them?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  There was a certain amount of awkwardness between them. But Herma’s quick and cheerful acquiescence, her total lack of coyness, seemed to put him at his ease. There were no other customers. Mr. Koenig
, in fact, shut and latched the doors and abandoned the ticket office so that from the outside the theater appeared closed. They smiled at each other. Herma took a chair immediately in front of the projector, and Mr. Koenig deftly ignited the arc lamp and inserted it into the machine.

  There was a rhythmic clucking sound, and the usual fleeting white letters ran down the screen. Then the attic scene from Bohème appeared, and at the same instant Mr. Koenig lowered the needle onto the Victrola record.

  The Parisian garret was almost dark. A shaky and indistinct Rodolfo touched the hand of a Mimì barely visible in the gloom. Then the moonlight shone from the window and the two figures could be seen more distinctly. “What a frozen little hand!” sang Rodolfo with feeling out of the Victrola horn. “Won’t you let me warm it?”

  Herma’s hand strayed onto the Victrola table at her side. To her surprise—or rather, to tell the truth she wasn’t surprised at all—another hand softly touched her own. It remained there throughout Rodolfo’s rather lengthy explanation of who he was—“Qui son? Sono un poeta.” Then Rodolfo fell silent, the orchestra played a few chords, and a soprano like a tiny squeezed thread began to come out of the horn.

  “Sì. Mi chiamano Mimì,

  ma il mio nome è Lucia.

  La storia mia è breve.”

  The flat a’s, with just a hint of head voice, contrasted with the perfect silken and liquid roundness of the o’s and u’s. It was a pretty voice, even though it was so thin that it scarcely seemed able to force itself out of the Victrola. After a few bars Herma joined in and helped it. Her own youthful soprano, even though it was undeveloped and lacked body, easily overwhelmed that of the shaky Mimì on the screen.