“Well, try to show some breeding tonight. Ah, here’s our host—”
John Amory Lowell strode decisively across the room. His starched collar stood up almost to his ears, the knot of his black tie was as big as a grapefruit, and a gold chain thick as a string of sausages made a catenary across his vest.
“It’s about goddamn time you got here, Professor. Thought you got waylaid by a gang of Irish hooligans or some goddamn thing. Who’re all these roughnecks? Never mind, I don’t need to know. And an Indian? That’s what I like about you, Agassiz, you’ve always got a surprise up your goddamn sleeve. Well, let them mingle and enjoy themselves. Go ahead, fellows, spread out and sample the grub. You come with me, Louie. There’s some people you have to meet.”
Lowell grabbed Agassiz’s elbow and steered him off. They made a beeline for a knot of people clustered around what appeared to be a midget.
Upon closer inspection, the midget proved to be an exceedingly elderly man who seemed to have shrank with age. Across his bald pate ran a few strands of wispy white hair. He resembled a bundle of sticks wrapped in too much black cloth, like an Indian’s teepee packed for travel.
“Abbot,” called out Lowell, “here’s Agassiz. The goddamn smartest fellow you ever met, and the man you’re going to give that Harvard job to. Louie, this is Abbot Lawrence.”
Agassiz extended his hand. “I am honored to meet you, Mister Lawrence. May I just say that I think that you and Mister Lowell have done more with your mills to advance civilization than any other non-scientist. . . .”
Lawrence’s voice was reedy. “Thank’ee, sir. Don’t spare the whip, that’s my motto. Hee-hee-hee. . . .”
Lawrence seemed to lose both the thread of his thoughts and all interest in Agassiz. He turned to a glamorous woman beside him and began petting the ermine trim on her cuffs.
“Okay, Abbot, enjoy your goddamn self. Let’s go, Louie.”
Agassiz was confused. “Do you think I impressed him sufficiently?”
“Hard to tell with old Abbot. We’ll hope for the best. Maybe your lecture will bag him. Better make it a corker.”
Lowell conducted him on a whirlwind round of introductions.
“Here’s a couple of transcendental thinkers for you, Louie. I’d like you to meet Ralph Emerson.”
“I’ve enjoyed your lectures, Mister Agassiz. May I ask what price you’ve been quoting? We shouldn’t undercut each other. . . .”
“And this is his friend, Hank Thoreau.”
“Do you endorse the poll tax, sir?”
“Okay, boys, don’t pester Louie. Let him circulate.”
In quick succession, Agassiz met, among others, Frederic Tudor, the “Ice King,” who wanted to know who currently supplied his household; the publishers, George Ticknor and James Field; and the famous orator and politician, Daniel Webster.
“What do you think of the siege of Vera Cruz?” demanded Webster. “Thirteen hundred shells lobbed into the town over two days. That’s modern warfare for you, sir. Bomb the rascals back to the antediluvian! It’s our manifest destiny to own this hemisphere!”
His head spinning, Agassiz was finally deposited by his host among a group of Harvard professors.
“I’ll leave you to jaw with your future co-workers, Louie. I’ve got to get the goddamn entertainment going. Remind me to tell you later about the new system of bells I’ve worked out for my factories. I’ve got them ringing every fifteen goddamn minutes.”
Agassiz had already met most of the Harvard men and their wives before. From his own field, he saw Humphreys Storer, Amos Binney and Augustus Gould.
After making his hellos, Agassiz was commandeered by one man, Cornelius Conway Felton, the classicist.
Felton was a big suety man, jovial and loud, with unruly hair and small spectacles. He was given to wearing checkered vests, bow ties and velvet-trimmed jackets.
“Agass! Come with me. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Dreading the very sight of another new face, Agassiz reluctantly complied.
Seated on a chair in one corner was the loveliest young woman Agassiz had seen since coming to America. Her brown hair fell in ringlets around her heart-shaped face. Her eyes were like sparkling brooks.
“Agass, this is my wife’s sister, Miss Lizzie Cary. Lizzie, Professor Louis Agassiz.”
“I would recognize the esteemed Agassiz anywhere, for I’ve had the immense pleasure of sitting through every one of his Boston lectures.”
Agassiz’s accent was suddenly thick. “Ah, if I had known such a gorgeous example of God’s handiwork as yourself was in my audience, I would have been unable to speak a word.”
Lizzie tittered. “Oh, Mister Agassiz, I hope I won’t have that effect on you tonight.”
“Well, perhaps if I were fortified with some punch, I could stammer a sentence or two. . . . You, sir! Two glasses of punch, vite!”
Felton spoke. “I’ll leave you two alone now. I have to continue my discussion with Jack Whittier about Catullus.”
The next two hours passed like as many minutes for Agassiz. He found himself hanging on every word that fell like dew from Lizzie Cary’s ripe lips. What a smart, witty, endearing girl she was! She obviously admired him so. . . .
Agassiz paid scant attention to the entertainment, which consisted of a troupe of actors performing a play entitled, “The Miner’s Camp, or, What A Girl Did For Gold,” followed by a series of amateur tableaux vivants enacted by the guests: The Lovers Surprised, The Mortgage In Arrears, etc.
“So, my dear,” Agassiz was saying, “does a lass of your tender years really find an old fellow like myself attractive?” when he was brought up short by Lowell’s hand on his shoulder.
“Time to earn your goddamn keep, Louie. The stage is all set up for you. Though why you needed so many goddamn crabs, I can’t say.”
Agassiz paid little attention to Lowell’s words. “Farewell for the nonce, Miss Cary. I will see you later, I hope.”
“Rest assured, I will be eagerly waiting.”
Lowell ushered Agassiz toward the stage. Somewhat fuzzy-minded from several glasses of punch, Agassiz suddenly noticed the by-now-familiar sweetish smell of dacka floating through the room. What was Cezar up to?
Stepping onstage alone, Agassiz was greeted by a rapidly swelling wave of applause. He bowed gallantly to the crowd, then turned toward his lectern.
Agassiz was struck motionless by what he saw.
A rickety enclosure of chicken-wire had been erected. Inside, like a scene from Dante’s Inferno, milled a hundred horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) climbing over each other with slow movements, the whole mass churning like a single pullulating organism. The sight was so unsettling as to nearly cause Agassiz to gag.
Damn that Desor! Had he arranged this deliberately, to sabotage the lecture, or was it the result of simple incompetence? Whichever, he would pay for this with his skin!
There was no turning back now, of course. Best to pretend all was going as planned. . . .
Taking up position behind the lectern, Agassiz shuffled through his notes and began to speak. First, however, he made an impromptu addition to his text.
“I would like to dedicate this lecture to the lovely Miss Elizabeth Cary. Now, on to the topic at hand!
“Consider the curious creature known commonly as the horseshoe crab, one of God’s little jokes. Unchanged for uncounted millennia, the jolly arthropod bumbles happily along on our North American shores, wagging its humorous spiky tail.”
Agassiz gestured broadly toward the pen of crabs. With alarm, he noticed that the hastily formed cage was splitting its seams. It looked like the gates of Hell about to spew forth all its demons.
Continuing boldly, albeit somewhat quaveringly along with his speech, Agassiz noticed a curious change overtaking his audience. More and more of them were turning
toward the back of the room, as if attracted by some spectacle there. The scent of burning hemp increased.
Persevering, Agassiz sought to ignore the defections. “—Now used mostly as fertilizer, Xiphosura once ruled—”
The air was suddenly split by a chilling war-whoop. Agassiz could maintain his pretense no longer.
“I must now pause, while we ascertain what is causing this disturbance.”
No one paid Agassiz any attention. Everyone was rushing toward the rear of the hall. Descending the stage, Agassiz pushed toward the front of the crowd.
Chief Snapping Turtle was performing a spirited dance, accompanied by Cezar’s drumming on a borrowed kettle. Pipes of dacka passed everywhere among the audience.
As Agassiz looked on in horror, members of the Boston bon-ton, their inhibitions loosed by the potent dacka, spilled into the circle, joining the whooping and dancing.
Agassiz vainly sought to restore order. “People, please, we are all civilized ladies and gentlemen—”
Elsewhere, a shouting match had broken out. Agassiz turned to look.
“You claim I sponge off of you all the time?” yelled Thoreau.
“I do!” replied Emerson.
“By God, let’s settle this as the ancient Greeks would!”
“Agreed!”
Soon Emerson and Thoreau had stripped down to their drawers and were locked in the intricate embrace of wrestlers. Choosing sides, people began to cheer. “Go it, Ralph!” “Nice move, Hank!”
Something grazed Agassiz’s foot. He looked down.
It was a crab. He saw them now, scattered throughout the room, as if on the floor of the ocean. Suddenly, he was convinced he was underwater. He couldn’t breathe—
The next half hour seemed an eternity. Agassiz would never forget for the rest of his days the uncanny sights he was forced to witness. Just the picture of Abbot Lawrence riding his female companion like a horse would have been enough to haunt his nights. But there was more. Much more.
He searched in vain for Lizzie Cary, hoping she would serve as a bulwark of sanity. But she had disappeared, and Agassiz could not say he blamed her.
At last, the prospect of order arrived in the form of a squadron of Boston police.
Agassiz rushed up to the lead officer.
“ Thank God you’ve arrived—”
“And who might you be?” asked the man.
“Why, Professor Agassiz.”
Agassiz was suddenly grabbed by a number of steely hands.
“I’ll have to thank you for saving me some time, Professor. You see, I’ve got an order for your arrest.”
7
SEWING ON A BUTTON
JOSIAH DOGBERRY SNORED. Like a Maine sawmill, like an asthmatic platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), like a Michigan beaver (Castorfiber michiganensis) uneasily winter-dreaming of Ojibway hunters led by a wild Chief Snapping Turtle, Mister Dogberry roughly rasped and snorted throughout the night, making it nigh impossible for Agassiz to get any rest.
Not that either his mental condition or his physical surroundings were conducive toward sleep anyway.
Agassiz sat on a rude cot cushioned by a cornshuck mattress covered with a scratchy striped material. A pungent blanket—whose aroma was matched only by that of the open chamberpot in a corner—was rucked up at the end of the bed. The cot and mattress occupied one half of a gloomy windowless cell. The cell lay deep in the bowels of the Charlestown State Prison.
He had been brought to the jail in an enclosed police wagon. While being hustled into the back with no apparent consideration of his status, Agassiz had struggled and uttered vain protests against his arrest.
“My good man, there must be some mistake! I am Louis Agassiz, scientist and Swiss citizen—”
The officer who had made the pinch, whom Agassiz had heard addressed as Sergeant Rufus, said, “I already thanked you oncet for not hiding who you was and surrendering so pleasantly. What more do want? A dadblamed certificate?”
“But you obviously don’t comprehend—”
“Hold on one minute, old trump. You’re the one who don’t compree-hend the facts. I am carrying a writ signed by the Governor hisself for your arrest, and his word is law in this state. You ain’t in your precious Willy Tell land now, so get your tail in that there Black Maria.”
“But diplomatic immunity—”
Sergeant Rufus held a hand palm up toward one of his assistants. “Griswold, pass me the leg irons. . . .”
Seeking to spare himself further indignities, Agassiz clambered into the wagon, followed by Sergeant Rufus, who bore a small lantern. Then the doors were slammed shut on them and barred from the outside.
As they pulled away from the Lowell mansion, Agassiz could faintly hear the raucous sounds of the mad party, which seemed to be approaching some kind of crescendo that could be only guessed at. He grew angry that none of his compatriots had come to his aid. True, his arrest had occurred on the fringes of the fracas, and it was possible that no one had noticed, what with the other spectacles commanding more attention. Still, their disloyalty rankled.
As the wagon rolled on, Agassiz demanded of Sergeant Rufus, “Why did you not fulfill your duty as upholder of the public morals by arresting everyone at that debauched soiree? Surely they were guilty of disturbing the peace, not to mention several kinds of exceedingly vulgar turpitude.”
Sergeant Rufus scratched his head. “I got to confess, I ain’t never seen the likes of that bash, and I been called to lend a hand at quite a few wild affairs along the Tontine Crescent. What were them crabs doing crawling all over, anyway? Was you staging a race?”
“Those crabs were part of my lecture.”
Sergeant Rufus appeared not to hear, so bemused was he by memories of the rampant Xiphosura. “Not that I ain’t seen animals at parties before. There was that jackass and the actress—But that’s neither here nor there. Yet crabs just don’t seem to present as much opportunity for fun—”
“Forget the crabs! Why didn’t you arrest Lowell and Lawrence?”
Sergeant Rufus looked at Agassiz as if he were mad. “Arrest two of the richest men in the state, just for blowing off a little steam in private? Do you take me for some kind of bloody loon? I might as well just lay my head down on the tracks in front of the New York express! No, I don’t mess with the Associates, and I’d advise you not to either.”
And with that bit of sage advice, Sergeant Rufus settled back in silence for the rest of the trip.
When they eventually stopped and Agassiz emerged from the wagon, he was struck with the enormity of his plight.
Ahead of him in the night bulked the granite sinews of the Charlestown State Prison.
Its octagonal central portion was flanked by several rectangular wings, their barred windows resembling the vacant eyes of the giant floating casque in Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. A six-foot-high wrought-iron fence surrounded the Bullfinch-designed complex. (How ironic, to pass so precipitously from Lowell’s Bullfinch townhouse to this creation at the other extreme of the architect’s palette.) Fields of prisoner-tended crops stretched away on three sides.
Shivering in the mild June air, Agassiz knew that if he were to enter the prison he would never emerge. He couldn’t be sure anyone even knew he was here. And whatever insane bureaucratic mixup had led to his arrest would remain in effect for decades while he withered up into a prematurely aged wretch. He was only forty years old, for God’s sake! He was too young to be immured like this, he had so much yet to do, so many honors yet to reap—
Agassiz made a dash for freedom. He was brought low by Sergeant Rufus’s flying tackle, ending up with a mouthful of dirt.
“Come on now, Professor, it ain’t no use—”
Inside, Agassiz was remanded to the custody of a turnkey who bore a striking similarity to one of the larger species of anthropoids, p
erhaps Gorilla gorilla. This truncheon-wielding Jack Ketch shepherded Agassiz through a labyrinth of cresset-lit corridors until they finally reached a Stygian cell. The guard opened the door, shoved Agassiz in, then banged it shut.
The light filtering in through the Judas-window showed Agassiz a recumbent form. The body stirred, and introduced itself.
“Josiah Dogberry, sir. And you?”
When Agassiz in his stupefaction made no reply, Dogberry said, “Takes a mite of getting used to, doesn’t it? Well, see you in the morning.” Whereupon he went straight back to sleep, with the aforementioned nasopharyngeal accompaniment.
Now, untold hours later, Agassiz remained in shock. The dank and slimy stone walls of his cell seemed to be closing in on him. He tried to rouse himself to action. What was that cheap novel he had read on the boat to America? Ah, yes, The Count of Monte Cristo. . . . How had the protagonist of that romance escaped? Dug his way out with a spoon, hadn’t he? Agassiz made an inventory of his personal effects: a pencil (from the Thoreau family factory), his hastily snatched lecture notes, some coins, a pocket watch, and a molasses-scented handkerchief.
His scheme was clear: he would scribble a farewell note, bribe the jailer to deliver it, wait till the stroke of midnight, and then garrote himself with his hanky.
The cell was suddenly silent. Dogberry had stopped snoring. Agassiz braced himself to meet and deal with the hardened felon who shared his incarceration.
Dogberry stretched and yawned. Sitting up, he raised his face into the light. It was a distinctly mild and youthful face, not at all what Agassiz had been prepared for.
“Ah, that was a fine night’s rest. Nothing like a good sleep to put you right with the world! How did you snooze, old chap?”
Somewhat reassured by Dogberry’s civilized demeanor, Agassiz replied, “Not too well, I fear. My name, by the way, is Agassiz. Louis.”
“Well, Lou, they should be by with the morning porridge soon. And with any luck, it won’t have too many weevils in it.”
Although he feared it was a breach of penal propriety, Agassiz could not refrain from asking, “So—what was your crime, Mister Dogberry?”
The Steampunk Trilogy Page 15