by Pasha Malla
Once again the crowd erupted. An ironic chant of "Paco, Paco!" rose up while the old man cursed the Turk, pointing at it with a quivering sausage of a finger. Maelzel, glancing quickly at the board, was shocked to notice that the call had been premature: with one backward drop of his remaining knight, Paco's king would have been safe, forcing the Turk to cede the game. But before anyone could notice, Paco swept the pieces from the board, then stormed cursing out of the theatre, shaking his fists. Beneath the din that followed, Maelzel heard a cough from within the cabinet, followed by a long, plaintive groan.
IN SCHLUMBERGER'S hotel room, Maelzel hovered nearby while the doctor, a wiry American hidden behind a mess of grey beard, tended to his friend. The vomiting had finally subsided, but there was little to indicate that Schlumberger was doing any better; he lay helpless, emaciated and silent, like a bundle of twigs left for kindling.
The doctor turned and regarded Maelzel severely. "It's as I suspected. The infection's spread into his liver - that's why the skin appears jaundiced."
Maelzel breathed.
"Please, Mr. Maelzel," said the doctor, "if we can go into the other room."
In the adjoining room, Maelzel's own, the Turk sat glowering in the corner; the other automata lay piled around in various states of disarray, abandoned after opening night.
The doctor stroked his beard. "I have to tell you, Mr. Maelzel, that your friend might not make it through the night."
Maelzel nodded vacantly. He needed a drink.
"The fever is so far advanced there's little more we can do than wait." The doctor paused, staring at the Turk. "But if I may, Mr. Maelzel, could I ask you something?"
Maelzel shrugged. He was thinking, as he had been for days, of what might have happened had he allowed Schlumberger a night's rest - just one night of respite in the room, Maelzel spooning soup into his mouth. His thoughts were interrupted; the doctor was speaking.
"The Turk - has Mr. Schlumberger got anything to do with its operation? People are talking. They say he's actually inside, manipulating its arm on the chessboard. Since he's been ill, you haven't performed, and that first night, when in the middle of your show you claimed a mechanical malfunction, was the night you first contacted me."
The doctor paused, gazing at Maelzel, who in turn gazed past the louvred doors into Schlumberger's room. Then his face twisted into something ferocious. He turned to the doctor, breath whistling through his nostrils, eyes narrowed.
"Get out," he hissed.
"I didn't - " began the doctor, but stopped himself. Before him stood a man who, regardless of his secrets (and they were many, the doctor could see, and various), was ruined. The doctor collected his things, bowed quickly, and was gone.
Left alone, Maelzel pulled a bottle of wine from one of his many cases, uncorked it, and sucked back nearly half before making his way into Schlumberger's room. Lying down on the bed beside his companion, he felt the heat trapped in the sheets, saw the glassy, empty look in Schlumberger's eyes, could smell the sickly scent of rot and vomit from his mouth.
"Sorry, Johann," wheezed Schlumberger. "You will find someone else. There are many great chess players in America."
Maelzel shook his head. "Never, my friend. This is the end. No more illusions, no more secrets, no more hiding men in the bellies of machines."
Schlumberger coughed and something rattled deep inside him. His body bucked slightly off the bed and fell, shuddering. He settled back and closed his eyes. "I love you, Johann," he whispered, his voice papery and crackling.
"I'm sorry," said Maelzel. "You could have been a master, one of the great chess men of history. But I had to stuff you inside a box. What kind of love is that?"
But there was no reply. The mouth had gone slack. Maelzel leaned in, felt what he knew were Schlumberger's last breaths coming in short, dry gusts on his cheek. Quietly, gently, Maelzel laid his head on Schlumberger's chest, his ear against the dull throbbing of his companion's heart, and waited for it to stop.
MAELZEL STOOD swaying before the Turk, the pitching of the Louisiana-bound Otis amplifying his already compromised sense of balance. He gazed at its wooden face, paint starting to peel, turban unravelling. The only thing that still held life was its eyes, piercingly blue, burning with what always seemed to Maelzel something malicious, something evil. Perched behind its empty chessboard, the Turk sneered at him through the drooping points of its horsehair moustache.
Hollering came from above-decks from the ship's American crew, followed by a high-pitched Spanish reply - without doubt the handsome Cuban boy, Luis-Enrique, whom the ship had taken on before leaving Havana. Maelzel listened for more, but heard nothing further, just the gentle crash of waves against the hull, the mournful creaking of rigging and beams.
Turning away from the Turk, his vision swimming, Maelzel gazed around, trying to focus on the various other automata that packed the hold of the Otis: the Conflagration of Moscow, the Melodion, the Pyrrhic Fires, the Trumpeter, the Mechanical Theatre, the slack-rope dancer that Schlumberger had nicknamed "Guppy."
Schlumberger. Standing there in the dim light of the hold, yet another emptied bottle of wine dangling from his hand, Maelzel imagined that sheepish face, the shy grin, the slight stoop in his shoulders, likely aggravated by all that time hunched over inside the Turk - hours upon hours, curled up in there working the machine like a trained rat while Maelzel tromped about showboating to the crowds. A sour bubble of guilt and nausea rose in his throat.
As he vomited, the ship pitched and Maelzel was sent careering forward, bile and wine splashing down the front of his coat. The bottle flew from his hand and smashed on the floor, while Maelzel crashed into the cabinet, tumbled over, and landed face to face with the Turk. Maelzel could feel it mocking him. He closed his eyes; his head swirled and spun and danced. Spent, he collapsed finally onto the chessboard, arms splayed out, and lay there unmoving as the hull rocked with the undulating sea.
LUIS-ENRIQUE CASTILLO wasn't entirely sure what he'd been sent to the hold of the Otis to retrieve. The youngest son of a family of Cuban banana farmers, he'd sought work on board in order to make passage to America - although his English apparently still needed some work. It was impossible to decipher the Louisiana-born captain's orders. After a baffling sequence of instructions that rose in volume, but not clarity, and concluded with Luis-Enrique being slapped on the side of the head and pointed below-decks, he had slunk off, wondering if confusion would be all his life among Americans would entail.
Opening the door to the hold, initially Luis-Enrique thought he saw two men on either side of a chessboard, before realizing that one was a dummy; the other, slumped onto the desk, he recognized as the mysterious German who had been holed up in his cabin since departing Havana. From overheard snatches of conversation, Luis-Enrique had been able to glean that this Maelzel, some type of inventorcum-impresario, had been driven mad by his own creations. Although now, as Luis-Enrique skirted a puddle of vomit and prodded the dead man with the toe of his boot, the cause of his tribulations was irrelevant.
As the bringer of the news to the rest of the ship, LuisEnrique was assigned the disposal of the inventor's belongings. In Maelzel's sleeping quarters - littered with empty wine bottles, the stuffing of a mattress ripped to pieces, halfeaten meals, the shards of a shattered mirror- he discovered twelve gold doubloons, some paperwork documenting substantial debts and outstanding payments, a chessboard and set, complete but for one pawn, and a beaded necklace of the sort sold by male prostitutes in Regla.
Then there was the cargo that filled the hold. After mopping up the puddle of vomit, Luis-Enrique carted the strange machines out one by one, lining them up along the deck beside the dead man, now lashed to a stretcher and swaddled in a tarpaulin. The Turk, however, proved too large for him to move on his own, and none of the other crew seemed eager to lend a hand. Abandoning the frightening creature - LuisEnrique found himself avoiding the piercing, accusatory stare of its sapphire blue eyes - he returned ab
ove-decks for the final send-off.
The funeral, a classic burial at sea, was attended by just under half the crew, many of whom chewed on cigars while the ship chaplain mumbled a cursory prayer. There was a halfhearted "Amen" before Maelzel's things were pitched overboard. The captain pointed at the corpse, then at Luis-Enrique, then down at the water.
Luis-Enrique lifted one end of the stretcher and, dragging its heavy cargo across the deck, wondered what sort of man this Maelzel had been, whom he was leaving behind. At the edge, with the body teetering over the sea, the boy paused. He felt something else needed to be said, but at that moment he felt a shove from behind. Stumbling, Luis-Enrique looked back, saw the captain grinning broadly, and only heard a splash from below as Maelzel hit the water and was carried off in the ship's wake.
PHILADELPHIA, 1854
"COME ON," said Mary, tugging at Silas's sleeve. "You promised you'd show me."
Silas faltered, looking up. The Chinese Museum loomed above them against the purple clouds of the night sky, a big, black box darkening a full block along Sansom Street between Eighth and Ninth. The lantern in his hand tempted him, but he knew it would only be safe to light inside.
"Come on," she said again, huskily, leaning close, her mouth at his ear.
Behind them the darkness was punctured by a single glowing street lamp at the far end of Sansom. Ahead another lit the corner at Ninth, but where they stood between the two lights was entirely in the shadow of the museum. It was as though this section of the street were removed from the rest of the city.
"If my father finds out about this, he'll kill me," mumbled Silas.
"You're twenty-five years old. And besides, you're not exactly the pride of the Mitchell family as is." The girl giggled and took off, dragging her sweetheart by the hand, her flowing skirts nearly tripping them both as they stole around to a door at the back of the museum. Panting, Silas produced his father's key-ring from his pocket. Mary held the lantern as he rifled through the keys jangling in his trembling hands.
"Hurry up," said Mary. "What if there are guards?"
"There's no guards - not yet, not until the exhibition opens tomorrow."
Mary pushed up against Silas, both her hands clutching his upper arm, squeezing. "I'm so excited. Do you really know how it works?"
Silas turned the key in the lock, there was an ominous click, and the door sprung open. "Okay," he said, glancing around. "Inside."
THE LANTERN THEY had brought splashed a pale yellow puddle before them, glinting off the glass cases that filled the museum, gridlike. The smell of burning kerosene hung heavy in the air, and beyond the lantern's feeble glow stretched darkness, eerie and silent, the vague shapes of statuettes and stuffed animals silhouetted against the walls. Through the windows, a half-moon like an upended china bowl appeared at intervals between the clouds.
"Where is it?" whispered Mary. The echo of her voice came hissing back at them.
"Downstairs. The door to the basement's just in the next room, to the right."
"This is so exciting!"
Silas, though, was not thinking about excitement. He was preoccupied with thoughts of his father noticing the keys missing and appearing in the laboratory to find Hammond alone and his son missing. Hammond was a good friend who would do his best to make some excuse - that the younger Mitchell had left to hunt for snakes to extract venom, something diligent-sounding and plausible - but Silas knew that his father's innate sense of reason, coupled with a constant state of suspicion, would undoubtedly prevail.
Even half a world away, when Silas had been travelling around France, letters from Philadelphia had seemed to arrive almost immediately after another of the escapades he thought typical, if not expected, of a Grand Tour. Silas always opened mail from his father reluctantly, knowing it would comprise chidings and angry demands to return home, put his medical degree to some use and join the family practice, instead of wasting his time with frivolity overseas. Whether this was genuine, or merely an attempt to get Silas back so they could continue their private performances with the Turk, he was unsure. Regardless, when one of the letters, received after an evening out with some cancan ladies in Montmartre, concluded with the lament, "You are wanting in nearly all the qualities that go to make a success in medicine," Silas decided to return to Philadelphia - if only to prove his father wrong.
But here he was, trespassing in the Chinese Museum, now at the door leading to the basement, about to betray his father's trust yet again. And here was Mary, beautiful, brilliant Mary whom he loved, with her hand on his arm. "Down here?" she asked, wide-eyed.
Silas swung the lantern, light dancing across both their faces, shadows stretching out behind them. A sign on the door read Lower Hall Exhibits. "Down here."
As they descended, step by step, again Silas found himself thinking of his father, could hear the tone of disapproval if he were to discover his son sharing with a colleague's daughter his most prized possession. And not just any colleague's daughter: Mary's father, Dr. Alfred Elwyn, was an eccentric who opted, instead of practising medicine, to open hospices for the feeble-minded and chair societies dedicated to the welfare of animals. Silas knew that this time his punishment would not be limited to parental admonishments; now, considering the patriarch's condition and with the family practice at stake, disappointing his father would result in something far graver.
IN THE BASEMENT were cabinets full of Turk-related lore: articles in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English detailing its conquests around Europe. Silas and Mary made their way slowly down the hall, shining their lamp over the exhibit. Here was a picture of its inventor, the Austrian Wolfgang von Kempelen, and a copy of the plans for the Turk's original design - all machinery, with no space for a man inside.
Another display was dedicated to the famed showman who brought the Turk to America, the German inventor Johann Maelzel. A brief biographical sketch was paired with a reconstruction of his Automaton Trumpeter, which played various tunes through the rhythmic pumping of a mechanical bellows. Maelzel was remembered in the exhibit as "a great entertainer who perished at sea of natural causes."
Nearby, among a collection of various relics, was a framed essay by Edgar Allan Poe exposing the secrets of the Turk. His guesses were close, noted Silas, reading in the lamplight, but certainly not the entire truth.
Then the wooden floor gave way to red carpet laid out in a long strip leading to the far end of the Lower Hall. This they followed in almost reverential silence, the lantern leading the way along, then up a short flight of stairs to a sort of proscenium before a high curtain.
And then there it was, perched squatly centre stage. It had been more than a year since Silas had seen the Turk, and in the shuddering yellow light it seemed even more menacing than he remembered: the eyes twinkled in an eerily lifelike way. He held the lantern as Mary crept forward.
"Oh, my," she said, standing before the cabinet, running her hand over the chessboard. "This really is remarkable, Silas. What was your father charging for demonstrations before he sold it to the museum?"
"Back when he had me working inside it was fifty cents or so to play, but I think after I left he offered private viewings for twice that." Silas resisted adding anything about the machine being worth more empty than it was with him inside. "He bought it for twenty-five dollars, so I'm sure he made the money back fairly quickly."
Mary circled around until she stood beside the seated figure. She reached out her hand to its face, but Silas called out, "Don't touch it!"
"Please, Silas. I'm not going to break it."
"Sorry. It's likely better not to leave evidence, is all."
"Evidence?" Mary giggled.
"Evidence. We were never here, remember?"
"Right." Mary stood staring into the light for a moment. The contrast of her beauty and the ugliness of the Turk struck Silas then. On her face was an expression of curiosity, intrigue, and a trace of fear - she seemed achingly human, vulnerable, but ready to be delighted.
The Turk, meanwhile, glowered at him with a sneer of self-satisfaction and scorn. Silas felt ridiculous hating a machine, but he could summon no other emotion.
Mary tapped the cabinet. "Now, will you please show me how this thing works?"
Silas sighed. "Are you sure you want to know? Many people prefer to believe that it works on its own. Your father, for instance, left the room when we offered to explain it."
"That's my father. A dreamer."
"All right then."
Silas moved beside Mary and, kneeling down, placed the lantern on the floor so it illuminated the back of the cabinet. She crouched beside him, her hand on his back.
"Okay," said Silas. Flipping the catches he swung the back of the cabinet open and proceeded to demonstrate where he had sat and how the magnets below worked the pieces on the board above. He showed her the candle holders, the ventilation shaft, the sliding base that allowed him to move from one side to the other when the front doors were opened to display the interior, and the button to make it speak - which he pressed.
"Check," said the Turk, and Silas flinched.
That voice! Hearing it after so long tweaked and pulled at loose strings of memory until, finally, everything came tumbling back: the stifling smoke of the candles, the claustrophobia, the muffled wonder of Philadelphia's aristocracy as the automaton bested another of their rank. And the booming laugh of his father, championing the machine, mocking his peers in their defeat.
Silas paused, reeling, rocked on his heels, and landed with a thud on his back on the carpeted stage.
Mary was at his side, her hand against the side of his face. "Are you all right?"