Bright and Distant Shores

by Dominic Smith

  They were gathering in the lobby and he was called to join them.

  Next stop was the Art Institute at the foot of Adams, a whirlwind of Egyptian and Assyrian sculpture, objects of the Italian Renaissance. They stood the natives in front of the old Dutch masters and waited for something to happen. The Tribune reporter sidled up, pencil in hand. Malini walked the perimeter of the room, feeling the oily gloom of the paintings weighing down on her. These were the clayskins’ dead ancestors, she could tell, assembled in a longhouse for remembering but with no bones in sight. Argus came close to a Rembrandt and noticed the perspective was off, but to great effect, the girl looming in the foreground with her rouge cheeks and snub nose, her porcelain, globoid face and averted eyes. She was standing in contemplation, in a cataract of half-light, a tunnel of miry shadow behind her. It was too uneven to be sunlight; it fell marbled and daubed, white firelight cast through shifting muslin. Chiaroscuro the plaque pronounced and Argus repeated it aloud after Adelaide pronounced it for him. Probably thinks it’s on the menu for tonight, said one of the Kansan tourists, playing to the others. Adelaide didn’t bother with a reply and they moved back out into the streets, ditching the hangers-on for the use of Hale’s carriage.

  They rode north along the shoreline, eating ham sandwiches as they crossed the Chicago River and made for Lincoln Park. They rounded the zoo, promised for another day since the animals were still in their winter quarters. Neither Argus nor Malini could comprehend an afternoon spent watching wild animals. They passed the archbishop’s residence and Argus studied the windows and redbrick façades for signs of holy habitation but all he saw was a layman grooming a horse out in the carriage house. They turned south and on North State Street stopped outside the Holy Name Cathedral, the archbishop’s parish church. Argus went in alone, through the massive bronze doors, and knelt in prayer before the granite altar. He asked for forgiveness of his sins and for a new life to begin. It was his first time in a Catholic church and he was impressed by its seriousness—so much stone and stained glass, the Stations of the Cross raised up above the bare wooden pews. The Ambo of the Evangelists served as lectern, cast in bronze, the saints depicted in symbolic form, Matthew the angel, Mark the lion, Luke the ox, John the eagle. In the vestibule there was a framed photograph of Archbishop Feehan, a profile of such benevolence that he found himself sunk again in prayer.

  They crossed back over the grimy river, its jaws opening out into the lake, congested with scows and Mackinac lumber barges making test runs and repairs in the clear weather. There was a plan to convert the boats of Chicago into a navy fleet, in the event of foreign foe coming from over the waters. The reporter was telling them all about it. Malini fell asleep as they came back into the tumult of South State Street, the carriage haltered by the stop-and-go, the window-shoppers spilling off the sidewalk, the delivery wagons flouting the rules. Argus waved to a band of Salvationists ringing bells and blowing horns for redemption on the street corner.

  Argus did not wake his sister until they pulled up in front of the museum. Like the rest of the public buildings he’d seen that day, the outside was solid and imposing, chiseled from gravestone. They were welcomed by Mr. Gray, their employer, and Mr. Field, the man who owned the department store where they had obtained their clothes that morning. Miss Cummings looked a little wary when she greeted Mr. Field. Malini stepped from the carriage slowly, still a little groggy from her nap. Argus felt embarrassed that she had slept for part of the tour but Miss Cummings didn’t seem to mind. She put an arm around his sister and led the way up the broad stairs. He hung back, taking the stairs slowly so he could eavesdrop on the conversation between the two important men behind him. The reporter scribbled madly in his notebook alongside.

  “. . . as I say, Marshall, the tour was Miss Cummings’s idea. Public institutions, after all, are available to everyone, and we felt it was our duty to show the natives some of the city’s finest. Their clothes came from your store just this morning. Can’t have them sporting loincloths until warm weather is here for certain.”

  Mr. Field spoke evenly and without emotion. “I understood that you wanted to take a tour yourself. I’ve asked one of the curators to guide us.”

  “Indeed I do wish to take a tour. Along with my charges. What should we see first?”

  “I’m not much involved with the day-to-day.”

  “Surely,” Hale said, letting the reporter catch up, “you know your way around. You’ll have to come up to my own museum when it’s finished. The entire lobby will be used for the summer just for that purpose.”

  Mr. Field put his hands behind his back and looked at Mr. Gray. “Do you suppose that will sell you more insurance?”

  “I certainly hope so. Oh, look, the tour is leaving without us. Let’s move along.”

  As with the other venues, the siblings were led around. Miss Cummings’s colleagues did not seem happy to see her as the party moved through the halls and wings, the deer and bird dioramas, the skeletons of untold heathens, the urns and jewels and chain mail of vanished peoples. The curator waffled on. Malini trudged along, hungry and bored. Argus tried to stay interested but it wasn’t until they reached the weaponry of the Pacific Islands that he was drawn in. There behind the glass, labeled with small pieces of typed-up cardboard, were more weapons from Poumeta, just like the ones in Hale Gray’s office. The clubs, spears, arrows, and slingstones had belonged to his ancestors, to his great-grandfathers, from a time when village boys didn’t go off to the sugar fields or mission houses. The artistry could be read in the woven beckets for throwing spears, the inlays of whale ivory, the child’s club, feathered with egret, that his great-grandfather, still a boy, might have used to strike dead bodies to incite bravery, as was the custom back then. Argus could not place the emotion that coursed through him. It resisted naming but, like chiaroscuro, combined light and dark, regret and revelation all at once. His dead grandfathers lay in cabinets—both in the museum and in the skyscraper. They were molded into handles, captured in the obsidian flakes that came to a finial point. These items did not belong to the white men but had they saved them from oblivion? He couldn’t know what was true. What he did know was that the stories he’d heard as a child of a less complicated time, of generations spent in long hours of storytelling, fashioning the same handicrafts for days, weeks, those were all true, just as his father had told him while reprimanding his boyhood carelessness. A dropped clay jar offended the ancestors because of their artistry and care, a tradition faltering then and now lost forever. Poumeta no longer held villages of his own people. It struck him for the first time since the day he’d left its beach with his sister in the rowboat. He’d come to the other side of the world, into another hemisphere, to see firsthand what his father had told him when he was six years old—that their traditions were waning and would eventually be lost for all time.

  Hale Gray stood in front of the glass display case. “I have something similar to these weapons,” he said, throwing his voice back toward Marshall Field.

  Argus said nothing. The reporter and Malini stood looking out the window at a lone sailboat on the gold-threaded lake.

  Finally, Hale Gray said, “Well, we’re grateful for the tour, Marshall. We’d best be off.”

  They moved toward the main rotunda.

  “There’s one more thing I’d like you to see,” said Marshall Field.

  “What’s that?”

  “Something we have on loan from London for a few months.”

  “Ah,” said Hale, pivoting, his mouth held open.

  Marshall Field said, “Miss Cummings, would you ask Dr. Dorsey if we might borrow the Bennelong document for a moment?”

  Adelaide went to find her boss, certain she would be fired by Monday afternoon. She returned wearing a pair of white gloves and holding a manila envelope.

  Hale could see that it was a letter of some kind, a transcript in old cursive.

  Marshall said, “To commemorate the visit of the natives to Chicago. Se
ems they are part of a long line of imports. Reminds us that there are people attached to these objects, no? Bennelong was an Aboriginal fellow from Australia. Went to England with the governor of New South Wales at the end of the last century. Anyway, the original seems to have disappeared but this is a certified copy on loan. Our historian is quite fascinated. Miss Cummings, would you mind reading it aloud?”

  This was her punishment. She blushed before she’d even read the date of Aug’st 29, 1796.

  Marshall said, “It was written, no doubt, from dictation, when the Aborigine returned to his native country. Proceed, Miss Cummings, if you will.”

  Adelaide read the words aloud, trying not to look at Argus Niu, who was standing very still.

  Sir,

  I am very well. I hope you are very well. I live at the governor’s. I have every day dinner there. I have not my wife; another black man took her away. We have had murry doings; he speared me in the back, but I better now; his name is Carroway. All my friends alive and well. Not me go to England no more. I am at home now.

  I hope Mrs Phillips is very well. You nurse me madam when I sick. You very good madam; thank you madam, and hope you remember me madam, not forget. I know you very well madam. Madam I want stockings, thank you madam. Sir, you give my duty to Ld Sydney. Thank you very good my Lord; hope you well all family very well. Sir.

  Bannelong.

  32.

  Dear Archbishop Feehan,

  I am writing to you from the top of the world. I have come from the islands of Melanesia to Chicago where I hope to someday become a seminarian. Today I was given a tour of the city and saw your magnificent residence. There was a man brushing a horse in the stable but I did not see Your Excellency. No matter. I have seen Your Eminence in my mind many times. Today I write to you to inquire if you have positions of employment at your bishopric. I have many experiences as a mission attendant. I was the houseboy for the Reverend Mister Underwood of the Presbyterian Church of Melanesia for six years. My employer passed away recently which was sad but I would not be here if it wasn’t for his transit. In the mannerisms of cooking, cleaning, ironing clothes, and gardening celery and artichokes I am accomplished beyond my own compare. My soda-scones and chicken egg omelets are famous in all of the Bismarck Archipelago. I am also good at puzzles, analogies, riddles, and reading the scriptures aloud by candlelight. I have a fondness for reading but never shirk my responsibilities for the written word. It would be my honor to serve you in some capability. I know about roses and tulips and penance. Although I have worked for the Presbyterians I have always admired the Catholics. In matters of austerity and temperance your flock is unparalleled. There is no job beneath me if I could impinge upon your prudence and kindness. Please write back care of the First Equitable Insurance Company, where I am employed presently and until the end of the American summer. My name is Argus Trotwood.

  VII

  THE ROOFTOP

  33.

  The rooftop exhibition opening was two weeks away, scheduled for International Workers’ Day, May 1. That day was also, Hale knew, a commemoration of the Haymarket affair. He wanted to divert attention away from any celebrations the bomb-throwing anarchists might have planned, to stem the swelling parades and marches with a statement of his own. It was also annual moving day, when the streets filled with tenement wagons and toppling wheelbarrows, a tawdry procession of mattresses, shovels, tin pots, old shoes. Would the war with Spain over Cuba—less than a week old—dampen any of that? Would people stay at home? Hale doubted it. The city needed distraction. And so, to widen the draw of the event, he’d decided to include a captive balloon ride, tethered to the base of the clock tower, a children’s wading pool with imitation coral reef that fronted the thatch-roofed hut, a concession stand selling ice cream and coconut milk served in the half shell. A photographer would be on hand to capture Mr. Haroldson or Tompkins lazing in a hammock, barefoot, toes dusted with sand barged all the way in from Mackinac Island. Junior wading in the lagoon, or maybe paddling a small canoe, play-fishing with a bamboo pole, waving to the big-grinned savages. Hale could see it all very clearly. The missus spotting her neighborhood from the viewing platform, ice cream cone mid-lick, there it is, George, our house, from all the way up here. But George is napping. The commission men move among the crowd, avuncular in sunhats and bow ties, handing out policy brochures, selectively, as if there were a shortfall of paper. Keep them hungry, curious, that was Elisha’s mandate. George wakes replenished, ready to sign on the dotted line, the parsed sequence of dashes and spaces that demarcates his new life. A period of inoculation begins. He sleeps better, drinks less. And over time this has a statistical effect on Chicago, all those policyholders breathing easy. Crime rates diminish. A decrease in divorce. A lengthening of handshake duration. A surge in population as George, indemnified and formidable, descends through the floors in the hydraulic elevator, the policy’s goldenrod copy in one hand and his wife’s elbow in the other.

  The lobby museum was almost complete, the opening imminent, the artifacts dusted, arranged, numbered. The chiefly canoe hung from the ceiling on long metal ties, an effect that brought in a maritime bent, reminded people that the First Equitable had sponsored an actual voyage to procure all this for their pleasure. Jethro’s cabinet of curiosities, the wunder-something-or-other— perhaps it would be a hit with the children—was shrouded by drop cloths, obscuring any hint of its progress. Hale saw his son passing through the lobby at all hours, carrying one strange object after another into the converted cigar shop. He was afraid to see what was on the other side of the shrouded front window. As curator, Jethro had been largely ignored by the workmen. They placed the items into the display cases based on a list provided by Owen Graves. There was very little harm Jethro could manage at this point. If the cigar shop turned out to be a foppish lair then Hale would simply shutter it.

  The preparations, then, were in order. The natives had been spending their time learning English and touring the city, all of it photographed for publicity. Their hut was ready and soon they would make the move from their offices to the rooftop. It was a running joke at the company that the two savages had snagged corner offices without selling a single policy.

  What kept Hale awake at night were reports of further deterioration in the plate glass, the engineers insisting that the building was inching farther afield as the clay bed thawed from a long winter. The foundation, the concrete raft, these were sliding toward the lake by the second, if you believed the structural engineers. Less than six total inches to date was the pronouncement but they recommended drilling, anchoring, boring steel rods and cables into the hardpan. Hale told them he would make a decision after the summer unless they could convince him of immediate peril. Meanwhile, First Manhattan Life & Casualty was adding stories to their building, set to eclipse the rank of highest occupied floor before the year was out. He lay in bed before dawn, listening to birds maraud the seed feeders in Marshall Field’s backyard, thinking of ways to build up. On some level he regretted the clock tower because it inhibited the building’s further ascent. If the foundation could be squared up, then they could add another five floors, surely, perhaps ten. But what small and narrow floors they would have to be, to leave the clock tower intact. Then he saw a vision of a second tower rising from the rooftop, shadowing the clock face, a stack of private rooms and suites, his own office at the apex. Hale Gray anchored above the grimy world. He was dreaming, he knew. The shrieking birds slipped beyond annoyance and he saw himself in a dirigible, a zeppelin floating above the Loop and the lake. The great hull was gilded with the leonine company seal. He woke to recall Napoleon using hot air balloons during the Battle of Waterloo, advancing above the British with fire and silk.

  34.

  The teeth of a mermaid captured in the Aegean Sea, the horn of a unicorn, the feathers of a phoenix, the claws of a salamander, two iron nails from Noah’s Ark—all had been among the King of Bohemia’s collectibles. Jethro knew Rudolf II had been taken advan
tage of, hoodwinked by charlatans and peddlers of fraudulent antiquities, knew the unicorn’s tusk was probably, in fact, the tooth of a narwhal. The monarch had been vulnerable in his quest to know the mind of God. Who could blame him? That time—the latter half of the sixteenth century—was seething with mysticism and superstition. People believed ostriches ate iron, moles were eyeless, swans sang before they died, chameleons lived on air, elephants had no knees. What a dark epoch, alchemical in its knowledge, science relegated to ingots, salves, unguents, balsams . . . Rudolf had been mesmerized and blinded by the monstrous and the rare, the aberrations of the divine, filling his cabinet of curiosities with apocrypha. Remember, Jethro cautioned himself, that out of this same period also came Gessner’s History of Animals, the classificatory basis for modern zoology. Innovation rising up the river of ignorance like a tidal bore.