He opened his mouth, no doubt to remonstrate with her, but Levi held up his hand. “I don’t know about having dancing girls when we move Amelia to the museum, but they certainly won’t be appropriate when she’s at the Concert Hall. It’s supposed to be a scientific presentation, and I’m supposed to be a naturalist from London. If we make it too much of a performance, folks might not believe the evidence of their eyes when Amelia changes.”
“They’ve got to believe,” Barnum said. “When they see her there will be no doubt that she’s real.”
“But if you razzle-dazzle them,” Levi said patiently, “they might think her change is just more razzle-dazzle.”
“You may be right at that,” Barnum said, chewing on the end of an unlit cigar. “Well, we’ll leave off the dancing girls. For now.”
This last was pointedly directed at Amelia.
“No matter if or when you decide to use them, I won’t be one of them,” she said.
“You agreed to perform for me,” Barnum said.
“I agreed to be a mermaid, not to dance. My contract doesn’t say anything about dancing.”
Barnum threw Levi a dark look, as if this oversight were somehow his fault.
“I’ve got to go and check on the progress of the blasted tank,” Barnum said, glaring at Amelia now.
“You can’t have a mermaid without water,” she said.
Barnum mumbled something indistinct and left the room, trailing his foul mood behind him.
“Don’t worry about him,” Levi said.
“I’m not,” Amelia said.
“I only meant don’t let him bother you,” Levi said.
“He doesn’t,” Amelia said. “Mr. Barnum is accustomed to having his own way. That doesn’t mean I’m required to give it to him.”
She paused, thinking it was the appropriate thing to show gratitude for his intervention with Barnum.
“I do appreciate your help, Mr. Lyman. It never occurred to me to argue that dancers would make the show less credible.”
His eyes flickered at the “Mr. Lyman,” as they always did, but she just couldn’t bring herself to call him Levi. It seemed too much like an invitation for him to pour all the stars out of his eyes and into her hands.
“Barnum’s trouble is that he’s got lots of ideas but he’s never bothered to think them through to the end,” he said. “And it’s no trouble to help you, Mrs. Douglas. No trouble at all.”
He wanted to say more—it was there in the lines of his face, something yearning, something longing, something leaning toward her and hoping.
“If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Lyman,” Amelia said, and made her unhurried way to her own room.
She wasn’t cowardly, but she did not want to hear the longing thing in his heart. Only grief could come of that, for she would have to refuse whatever overtures he made and then there would be hurt feelings. There were already too many feelings cluttering up the space—Charity’s suspicion, Barnum’s dominance, and Amelia’s own conflicted emotions on what she was about to do.
She felt she could think better, more clearly, if only she were allowed to return to the sea now and again. After the demonstration in Rhode Island, Barnum had been adamant that Amelia go nowhere near the harbor.
“I won’t have some damned sailor seeing you without paying for a ticket,” he said.
The harbor was not private. Amelia understood that. It was the reason why she had not wanted to show Barnum and Levi her true form there. But she had arrived in New York via the harbor; she knew how to be careful and understood better than Barnum the sheer numbers of people and boats there.
Amelia wanted—needed—the freedom of the ocean. It would not kill her if she stayed long in her human form. She knew that. But she felt as though it might. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t swim. She couldn’t see or hear or smell the water at all, and the sheer numbers of people everywhere suffocated her.
Additionally, the polite requirement that she sit in the parlor with Charity and the children when Amelia was not engaged in “Fiji business” was oppressive. Amelia did not wish to do needlework and make polite conversation about the weather. She didn’t see how Charity could even know anything about the weather when she rarely set foot outside the museum.
Since Amelia knew nothing of the wealthy classes of New York and their doings (apparently a favorite topic in well-bred parlors across the city), there was little for them to speak about other than the wind and the rain.
In the privacy of her room, she would dream of the water, or of Jack, and wonder how much money she might have after six months. Enough, she hoped, to see all the things in all the world, just as she had promised herself. She only hoped whatever she earned was worth the cost.
* * *
• • •
The tank was one thing. Barnum’s glassmaker knew well enough how to make it, although the question of transporting it to the Concert Hall was a conundrum. It was decided that the panes of glass would be brought to the hall and assembled there.
The seawater was a different problem altogether. How to collect it, how to carry it, and how to keep it from fouling if it was in the tank for several days—all these problems needed to be solved, and they needed to be solved with as little expense as possible.
They wanted the moon, but they didn’t realize it cost the earth.
In retrospect, Barnum agreed with Levi about the dancing girls. Not only would they detract from the scientific nature of the presentation, but they’d expect to be paid. Every person he paid resulted in less money in his pocket, and sadly the mermaid had been canny enough to ask for a cut of the ticket sales.
He suspected Levi’s hand in that, but the boy admitted nothing, and the mermaid just looked at Barnum with that grave stare no matter what he said.
That look, he thought. It made him want to twist away, to hide his eyes so she couldn’t see inside him.
He had a strange idea that if she looked at him for too long, she would know all of his secrets, everything that had ever made him ashamed, every humbug he perpetuated, every sin he committed.
The girl had missed her calling. She should have been a preacher’s wife. That look would have compelled even the most wayward sinner into church every Sunday.
And on the long list of problems to be solved . . . she wasn’t eating enough. Levi said the girl liked sweets, and Barnum himself had seen the girl putting more lumps of sugar in her tea than strictly necessary. But she didn’t seem interested in any of the bakery treats that appeared with regularity around the breakfast table.
Charity gobbled up all the goodies in the mermaid’s stead. She was full to bursting with his child and seemed determined to make herself even bigger, if possible. He didn’t think all that was good for the baby, especially not if it was a boy. Boys needed red meat, and lots of it.
He surely did hope for a boy this time. Daughters were fine; Caroline was about the age when she was starting to become interesting, though little Helen was still a chubby squeaking ball of ruffles and curls.
But a boy! A boy could carry on the Barnum name. A son could learn everything there was to know about the American Museum and that would carry on, too. Barnum could pass the museum on to his children and they to their children and so Barnum would live on and on, his name etched forever in the annals of New York history.
However, none of that would happen if Charity had another girl. He’d have to make it clear she wasn’t to eat the fancy cakes and breads any longer. Red meat, that would make Barnum’s boy.
Still, he could give orders to Charity, but the mermaid was another matter. He told her many, many times to eat more, but it was clear that she wouldn’t force down a single bite just to please him.
Couching it in terms of the exhibition didn’t help, either.
“It’s just that folks like to see a nice healthy girl,” Barnum said ove
r the breakfast table one morning.
The girl had ignored the bacon and taken only a mouthful of eggs and dry toast.
“I am perfectly healthy,” Amelia said.
“Yes, but you need to be . . .” He gestured with his hands, making the shape of a curvy figure in the air. “Rounder.”
“Why?” she asked, giving him that disconcerting stare that made him want to squirm in his seat.
Charity and Caroline were looking on in curiosity, too, and that made him bluster.
“Well, because, as I said, folks like to see a healthy girl.”
“And as I said, I am healthy even if I am not round, so I am certain the folks will be pleased.” She gave him a half smile (a mocking half smile, he thought) and returned to her toast.
Barnum thought he caught a glimpse of satisfaction in Charity’s eyes before she, too, dropped her gaze to her plate and continued eating.
The hell of it was that damned mermaid always seemed to get the better of him. And everyone was on her side—Levi, Caroline, even his own wife. Didn’t they see he was the one being wronged by the girl at every turn? He was the one bearing the brunt of the expense. He was the one who had to solve all the problems. Who was going to figure out how to get seawater into the tank if not him?
And he was the one who had to try to make a show out of a girl who didn’t seem to want to be one. Barnum sat back in his chair, thinking. He always did his best thinking at night in the museum, when the building was silent but he could still imagine the murmur of voices or squeals of delight as the throngs moved through.
It comforted him to think of them—all the people who had paid to come into his museum, and all the people who would pay in the future.
Barnum could hardly remember a time when his primary thought wasn’t of making money. His own grandfather, a great old humbug artist if there ever was one, had promised him when he was young a tract of land near their hometown of Bethel called “Ivy Island.” This, he was assured, would be the makings of his fortune.
This prize of real estate was to come into young Taylor’s possession when he was of age. Throughout his life his entire family referred to him as the richest child in Bethel, and his parents extracted frequent promises that he would not forget them once he became wealthy.
He’d spent many a long hour dreaming of the day this wonderful present would come into his possession. He imagined there was treasure to be found, gold and silver to be mined in mountain-sized quantities.
Later he considered the matter more practically. There might be forests of trees to be sold for lumber or arable farmland to be turned into parcels for rent. Yes, young Taylor built marvelous plans for his inheritance.
Then, when he was ten years old, his grandfather took him to see Ivy Island. It was a wreck, covered in brambles and swamp, and there were snakes everywhere. The land was hardly worth the paper the deed was printed on.
It was then that Barnum realized how thoroughly he’d been humbugged. His family had laughed at him his whole life. Of course they’d known Ivy Island was completely worthless, but they’d all enjoyed watching him dream of the day it would come into his hands.
He learned two lessons that day. First, it was better to be the humbugger than the humbugged. Barnum enjoyed a good joke just as much as anyone else, but he didn’t enjoy being the butt of one.
The second was that no one was going to give his fortune to him. He’d have to earn it himself, and he had tried. He’d run a shop, sold lottery tickets, invested in bear grease, and spent two years as a traveling showman. He’d even started his own newspaper and was prosecuted three times (and once convicted of libel) for the privilege.
Early on, he’d made lots of money but had been a little too open-handed with the spending of it—once it was in his pocket, it dashed right out again. Lately he’d been the victim of both the Panic and the credit system implemented by that swindler Proler, purveyor of bootblack and bear grease who’d taken Barnum’s money and fleeced him in return.
But the museum . . . the museum, he felt, was his chance to make his mark and his fortune for good. The mermaid was the key to that. She was his stairway to the cream and the velvet and the life he’d always wanted.
Nobody’s fortune would be made if the girl contradicted him at every turn. Still, he supposed he would have to work within the limits of her personality—and there were limits. The girl simply couldn’t be convinced to put on a show in the sense that he wanted—something with flair.
Then there was the staging of the change itself. He was convinced that she must walk onstage, not simply appear already in the tank when the curtain rose. It was necessary for everyone to see what she was before to believe what came after.
But she couldn’t simply shed her clothes onstage as she had on the beach under the moonlight. Every newspaper in the city would come down on him—or rather, Dr. Griffin—for indecency. Women in the audience would probably faint. The whole show would be tainted. No, that wouldn’t work at all.
He sat and wondered and listened to the ghostly whispers of the museum and finally came up with a plan. It was simple and elegant and wouldn’t require much of the girl. It was perfect, and he was certain she’d go along with it.
* * *
• • •
Amelia waited just offstage. The theater was empty, but the restless excitement of the crowd outside could be heard despite the closed doors.
The tank, filled with seawater, sat in the center of the stage. It had a height of twenty feet and was approximately twenty-five feet across. Every human who saw it remarked on its size, but to Amelia it looked like a very small container compared to the ocean.
Behind the tank was a ladder that led up to a small platform that jutted over the water. A white screen hung just in front of the ladder, ending at the top of the glass. When Amelia climbed the ladder steps, her silhouette would be visible through the screen. The theater would use a limelight like the one Barnum had on the roof of his museum to attract visitors.
Amelia had seen these lights outside the museum at night. They were astoundingly bright, especially in a city lit only intermittently by gas. It seemed to her that there was often more light at night out in the country. In the city, the buildings huddled close and blocked out the stars.
When the limelight shone on the white screen, everyone in the audience would be able to see that Amelia was alone on the platform. There would be no trick with a second girl in a costume diving into the water just as Amelia reached the top of the water or some such thing. She would be in the light until she reached the screen, and then the light would shine through it.
Once there, she would remove her dress and dive into the water.
“Everyone will see a naked woman, but only for a moment,” Barnum had said when they discussed the show structure.
He rubbed his nose. “There’s just no avoiding this. I think if it’s very quick, then most folks will forget about it once they see you as a mermaid.”
He looked at her expectantly. Amelia realized he meant to preserve her modesty and that he was actually concerned that she might not want to be seen.
Amelia didn’t understand the human obsession with nudity as something sinful. It was particularly puzzling in light of most of the works of art she’d seen—almost all of these featured men and women in various states of undress, though Levi had told her they were “Greek and Roman and that was all right for them,” whatever that meant.
In any case, she could appreciate that Barnum was attempting to be kind for a change.
“I don’t mind,” she assured him. “Until I became human, nobody ever told me there was something wrong with my body.”
He appeared discomfited by this frankness, and Amelia realized she’d said the wrong thing again. Perhaps she was supposed to blush modestly and say she was troubled even if she wasn’t?
Amelia had carefully obser
ved Charity Barnum over these weeks to see what was generally expected of women. All she’d found was that women spent a great deal of time saying they were pleased when they were not, smiling when they were not happy, and pretending their anger and frustration did not exist.
Jack had never expected this of her. He never wanted her to pretend to have feelings she did not have or to say something just to please him.
Having never troubled to do such things for her husband, she found the habit of being herself difficult to break.
Soon the doors to the hall would open and all the people outside would pour in. Barnum was among them, pretending to be an ordinary citizen curious about the Feejee Mermaid. His presence in the audience would ensure that no suspicion of association with the museum would come up prior to the show.
After the show ran for a week or so, Barnum would make a public offer to “Dr. Griffin” to house the mermaid at the American Museum for the benefit of the paying New York public. He was already arranging for a larger tank to be built in one of the saloons.
In this room would also be the awful mummy that Barnum’s friend Moses Kimball had brought from Boston. When Amelia saw it, she had gasped and turned her head away. It might not actually be a mermaid, but it still looked like a thing that had died in horrible pain. It did not even appear as well-preserved as the other dead things in the museum, like the elephant.
She did not think anyone could possibly believe that she and that dried “monkey-fish” were from the same family, but then humans showed an extraordinary willingness to believe absurdities that only made Amelia shake her head.
Amelia heard Levi’s steps behind her as he entered the wing of the stage. He looked, she thought, like a dandy. His waistcoat was striped, his hat was tall, his pants were checked, and he was nothing at all like the sober-faced and sober-dressed Levi Lyman she knew.
He’d grown out a very large and bushy beard over these last few weeks, not at all fashionable but deemed necessary. Levi had explained to her about Joice Heth, somewhat shamefacedly. Since he had been the public face of that hoax, it was important that no one suspect Dr. Griffin and Levi Lyman were the same person.
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