The Barnum Museum: Stories (American Literature Series)

by Steven Millhauser

  It occurs to Alice that the shaft is a prison: she cannot climb out, she cannot escape. It may be that she can stop falling, by reaching out and grasping the top of a cupboard, the edge of a niche, or a protruding piece of stone; but even if the cupboard does not tear out of the wall, even if the edge of the niche does not crumble, and the stone not break, what possible use will it be to hang there like a coat on a peg, while her fingers and arms grow tireder and tireder? There are no doors or windows in the walls of her prison, no stairs or ladders: it seems more sensible to keep falling, and to hope for an end of falling, than to stop and think about regaining the upper world. Perhaps if she had stopped very early in her fall, it might not have been too late. Alice tries to imagine herself sitting on top of a cupboard as she looks up and cries for help: her legs dangle against the cupboard doors, she grasps the rim of the cupboard top, she raises her face and shouts for her sister. It occurs to Alice that she has never once cried out, in all her falling; until this moment, when it is too late, the idea has never come to her.

  Down, down, down. Something must be wrong, Alice thinks to herself, for the fall should surely be over by now. And a doubt steals over her, like a cloud shadow over a pool on a summer’s day. Did she do the right thing, when she jumped into the rabbit hole? Wasn’t she guilty of a certain rashness? Shouldn’t she have considered more carefully, before taking such a step? But the leap into the rabbit hole was the same as the leap to her feet beside her sister: it was the final motion of a single impulse, as if she had leaped from the bank directly into the rabbit hole. The mistake was to have jumped up in the first place. Alice tries to recall her feeling of restlessness on the bank, under the tree, beside her sister, but she recalls only the warm, drowsy shade, the sunny field of daisies, the blue, blue sky. Of course, it was the White Rabbit that made her jump up in excitement. But is a rabbit with a waistcoat and watch really so remarkable, when you stop to think about it? Was it really necessary for her to jump up without a moment’s hesitation and run off so rashly, without considering anyone’s feelings but her own? Her sister will be worried; when she looks up from her book, Alice will be gone; her day will be ruined. And is it possible, Alice thinks to herself, that the rabbit was only the usual sort of rabbit, after all? Is it possible that she had been daydreaming again, there on the bank beside her sister? Alice, doubting, feels a little burst of bitterness in her heart.

  In the darkness, lit here and there by the dim glow of oil lamps, Alice feels a sudden revulsion: the tunnel walls oppress her, the cupboards bore her to death, she can’t stand it for another second—and still she continues falling, past the always rising maps, the pictures, the cupboards, the bookshelves. She can hardly breathe in the dank, close air. It is like a long railway journey, without conversation and without any hope of taking tea. Above, the darkness pushes down on her like a column of stone; below, the darkness sweeps slowly upward, sticking to the dark above, increasing its height and weight. There is absolutely nothing to do. Do cats eat bats? Do bats eat cats? Do rats eat mats? Do blats eat clats? This can’t go on much longer, Alice thinks to herself, and opens her mouth to scream, but does not scream.

  There is no illustration of Alice falling, and so we must imagine the Tenniel drawing: Alice in black and white, falling against a dark background of minute cross-hatchings, upon which we can make out the bottom corner of a cupboard. Alice is wearing black shoes, white stockings with black shading, a white dress and white pinafore. Her long hair is lifted away from her face on both sides; her wide dress billows. Her elbows are held away from her sides and her forearms are held stiffly before her, at different heights; the fingers of the lower hand are spread tensely, the fingers of the upper hand are curved as if she is playing an invisible piano. Under her black eyebrows her black eyes are wide and brooding. The creases of her pinafore are indicated by several series of short parallel lines; the shadow of an arm across her pinafore shows as cross-hatching. In the lower right-hand corner is Tenniel’s monogram: a large T crossed with a small J. The illustration is without a frame, and is fitted into the text in such a way that the words continue down the right-hand side of the drawing for most of the page before stretching across the entire width of the page for the last six lines. Alice is therefore falling alongside the text that describes her fall, and at the same time is enclosed by the text; if she falls any farther, she will bump into words. Pictured in the act of falling, Alice remains motionless: she is fixed forever in her fall.

  There are four dreams of falling. The first is dreamed by Alice, asleep on the bank with her head in her sister’s lap: she dreams of falling down a long vertical tunnel or well. The second is the dream that Alice tells her sister, when falling leaves wake her on the bank: her tale includes the story of the long fall through the dark well. The third is the dream of Alice’s sister, alone on the bank, in the setting sun: she dreams of Alice telling her dream, which includes the story of the fall through the dark tunnel. The fourth is Alice’s sister’s dream of Alice as a grown woman: she dreams of grown-up Alice telling the dream of Wonderland to little children gathered about her. Alice is therefore caught in a circle of dream-falls: no sooner does she wake than she begins to fall again down the dark tunnel, as she recounts her dream to her sister, and no sooner does she run off to tea than she begins to fall again, in her sister’s dream; and even as a grown woman she is still falling through the dark, as the bright-eyed children look up at her with eager faces. It appears, then, that Alice can never escape from her dream: once she plunges into the rabbit hole, once she leaves the safe, predictable world of her sister, she can never return; once she starts to fall, she can never stop falling.

  Down, down, down. Alice tries not to be unhappy, for what would be the use of that, but as she falls she bursts into sudden tears. “Come,” Alice says to herself rather sharply, “there’s no use in crying like that!” And no sooner has she spoken than she stops crying, for Alice always tries to listen to her own advice. She wipes her cheeks with the backs of her hands; a few tears drip from her chin, and Alice ignores them as she falls past a closed cupboard with six tiles over the doors. The tiles show rustic figures in sepia, blue, and black: a shepherd resting under a tree, a boy in a stream, a girl feeding tame rabbits, a woman and child resting from collecting sticks, a seated girl with goat and kid, and a young woman carrying a pail across a stream. The cupboard vanishes into the upper dark, and Alice, glancing down, sees a curious sight: in the air directly under her chin there are three tears, falling as she falls. For a while she watches the tears, pressing her chin against her neck and frowning down to see them; then she lifts out the handkerchief in her pinafore pocket and carefully wipes away the tears, as if she is erasing them.

  If only, Alice thinks to herself, I weren’t so tired! If only I could rest! For it’s tiring to be always falling, falling down the rabbit hole. Alice wonders if it is possible to rest awhile. She doesn’t want to catch hold of a cupboard or bookshelf, for fear of bringing it down; and in any case, to hang against a wall with your legs resting on air is hardly Alice’s idea of a proper way to rest. Indeed, the act of falling requires no effort; Alice is puzzled why she should be tired of doing something that requires no effort. Is it possible that the fall itself is a rest? Alice tries to imagine what it would be like to sit on a chair as she falls. It would be very pleasant, she thinks, to curl up in a corner of a great armchair and close her eyes. But would there be room for an armchair in the narrow tunnel? Wouldn’t it knock against the cupboard doors? And if she should fall asleep, and tumble out of the armchair, what then? But if she tumbled out of the armchair, wouldn’t she simply fall through the air, as she is doing now? Again Alice feels that she is growing confused, and she decides to rest by raising her hands, interlocking her fingers, and leaning her cheek on her clasped hands. For a while she falls this way, with her eyes closed and her head resting lightly on her hands.

  As in a dream, Alice remembers: she was sitting on the bank beside her sister. It was hot,
even in the shade. Her legs hurt from sitting on the ground, her stockings itched, a gnat kept bumping against her hair. Her sister sat motionless over her book and refused to look up—even her fingers gripping the edges of the book were motionless, like table legs with claws gripping a ball, and her neck was bent in a tense, unnatural way, which meant that she didn’t want to be disturbed in her reading. The grass was tickly and sharp. Alice’s skin itched, but she also felt an inner itching, as if all her bones needed to be scratched. Of course she loved her sister dearly, but just at that moment she would have liked to pick up a stone and crush her sister in the eyes. She was a wicked girl, to have thoughts like that. Her brain felt hot. Her ankles itched. Her blood itched. She felt that at any moment she was going to split open, like a seed pod. That was when, she remembers, she heard the noise in the grass.

  Alice, raising her head abruptly, suddenly thinks of the White Rabbit: she had seen it pop down the rabbit hole and had gone down after it. He must therefore be under her, falling as she is falling. Of course, Alice reflects, it’s possible that she alone has fallen down this endless well, while the White Rabbit has remained high above, in the tunnel-like part of the rabbit hole before the sudden drop. It’s also possible that the White Rabbit has fallen much more swiftly than she, and has long ago come to the bottom, if there is a bottom. But Alice doesn’t recall any other opening in the tunnel-like part of the rabbit hole; and the maps, the cupboards, the bookshelves all suggest a familiar, much-frequented portion of the White Rabbit’s home. And then, there is actually no reason to think that the White Rabbit should fall more quickly than she. It is therefore very likely that the White Rabbit is just below her, falling in the dark; and so certain does her reasoning strike her that, looking down into the dark, she seems to see a faint motion there, in the blackness through which she is already passing.

  Why, of course, Alice thinks to herself: the White Rabbit lives here. I am falling through the White Rabbit’s home. Why hadn’t she thought of it just that way before? But what a curious sort of home it was—more like a chimney, really. Alice has never heard of a chimney with maps and cupboards on the walls; it would never do to start a fire here. Is it perhaps an entrance hall? But what sort of entrance hall can it be, with no place to leave your visiting card and no stand to put your umbrella in? Is it a stairway, then? Alice wonders whether a stairway must have stairs in it, in order to be a stairway. And as she continues falling she looks with sudden interest, as if searching for a clue, at the crowded walls, where she sees a glass-covered engraving of two dogs fighting over the nest of a heron; a wall bracket shaped like a swan with lifted wings, supporting a marble statuette of Whittington Listening to the Bells of London: he is seated on a block carved with the word WHITTINGTON, his right hand is raised, his forefinger is pointing up, his head is cocked to one side; and a marble shelf holding a clock: the round dial is set in a dark blue porcelain vase surmounted by two white porcelain angels, and the vase rests on a pediment decorated with pink porcelain flowers. On the pediment, on each side of the vase, sits a naked child with flowers in his lap; one child holds up a butterfly, the other clutches an arrow. The hands are pointing to 2:05, and Alice wonders, as she falls past, whether the time is the same as the time on the bank, under the tree, where her sister sits reading, or whether it is some other time.

  Falling through darkness, Alice imagines herself rising: past the clock, past the bottle of ginger beer, past the shield-shaped mirror, where she sees her hair pressed to the sides of her head, past the cupboard with the jar of raspberry jam, past so many shelves and maps and pictures that they begin to slide into each other like the dissolving views in the Polytechnic, higher and higher, until she reaches the place where the horizontal tunnel begins—and pulling herself onto the path, she makes her way through the dark toward a distant lightness, which reveals itself suddenly as the opening of the rabbit hole. Alice climbs out of the hole under the hedge into the brilliant day. Sunlight burns down on the field. The sky is the troubling blue of stained-glass windows or magic lantern slides. Across a field of knee-high grass she sees her sister reading a book on a sloping bank in the shade of a beech tree. The beech, the bank, the sister are very still, as if they are made of porcelain. Alice runs across the field with her hair streaming out behind her and comes to the shady bank. All is still. Her sister does not move, does not raise her eyes from the book. Over the far fields the bright blue sky burns down. All is still.

  On her sister’s lap, Alice lies dreaming. Leafshadows move on her face and arms. She is far from the long grass bending in the wind, from the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds, from the sheep bells tinkling, the cries of the shepherd boy, the lowing of the cows in the distance. Alice’s sister doesn’t want to disturb her sleep and sits very still in the warm shade of the bank. It is a hot, drowsy day. When Alice fell asleep, Alice’s sister continued reading for a while, but now she has laid the book aside on the grass, for she is feeling a little sleepy herself, and it’s difficult to read for very long without changing the position of your arm and hands, which she doesn’t wish to do for fear of waking Alice. She watches Alice breathing gently in and out. Strands of hair lie rippling over Alice’s cheek and shoulder; a single hair, escaping from the rest, curves across her cheek and lies at the corner of her mouth. Her forehead is smooth, but a slight tension shows between the eyebrows, which are darker than her hair: Alice is closed deeply in sleep. In the warm shade her sister feels drowsy, but she knows she must not sleep: she must watch over Alice, here on the shady bank. Sleep is strange, Alice’s sister thinks to herself: you are there and not there. Alice seems far away, like a princess in a tower. Alice’s sister would like to pick up her book again, but her hand remains motionless; she would like to shift her position, for her left leg is beginning to tingle, but she does not move. It is very quiet. Are we mistaken to see in the brightness and stillness of this afternoon an echo of the afternoon on the Isis? In the brightness a darkness forms: the tunnel is a shadow cast by the sunny day. May we perhaps think of a story as an internal shadow, a leap into the dark? In a distant field, cows are lowing. Under a shady tree, Alice’s sister keeps watch. Deeply Alice lies sleeping.

  A long, low hall lit by a row of oil lamps hanging from the ceiling. A row of many doors, evenly spaced, all around the hall. In the middle of the hall a small three-legged table made of glass: a tiny gold key lies on top. On the right-hand wall, a dark red curtain hanging to the floor. Behind the curtain, but not yet visible, a small door about fifteen inches high. Behind the small door, a garden of bright flowers and cool fountains. In the left-hand wall, rear, an opening: the entrance to a dark corridor or passage. The long passage leads to an unseen heap of sticks and dry leaves. Above the heap, a shaft, well, or vertical tunnel, stretching up into blackness.

  Alice, falling, imagines that the tunnel comes to an end in a heap of sticks and dry leaves. In the instant that her foot touches the first stick, she realizes two things: that the tunnel does not exist, and that she is about to wake up with her head in her sister’s lap. And indeed, already through the black wall she can see a shimmer of sun, the cupboards and maps are growing translucent, she can hear the tinkle of sheep bells in the fields. With a sharp, sudden motion of her mind she banishes the heap of sticks and dry leaves. And as when, in a darkened room, a heavy church or stone bridge becomes airy and impalpable, staining your hand with color as you pass your arm through the magic lantern’s beam of dust-swirling light, so Alice’s foot passes soundlessly through the heap of sticks and dry leaves, and she continues falling. Is it possible, Alice wonders, to resist the tug of the upper world, which even now, as she falls in darkness, entices her to wake? For should she wake, she would find herself on the bank, with itching bones, beside her sister, who will still be reading her book without pictures or conversations. Alice wonders whether it is possible to fall out of the bottom of a dream, into some deeper place. She would like to fall far, very far, so far that she will separate herself forever
from the dreamer above, by whose waking she doesn’t wish to be disturbed. Have they anything in common, really? Sooner or later the girl in her sister’s lap will wake and rub her eyes. And in that moment she will sweep away the tunnel walls, the cupboards, the maps, the dark, replacing them with the tree, the book, the sun-dappled shade. But for dream-Alice the tree, the book, the sun-dappled shade are only a trembling and shimmering, a vanishing—for here there are only the hard walls of the tunnel, the solid shelves, the glistening glass jars, the lifted hair, the wind of her slow falling. And who’s to say, Alice thinks to herself, that one’s more a dream than the other? And is it possible, Alice wonders, that she will stop falling only when she releases herself utterly from the upper world, with its flickers of sunlight, its murmur of sheep bells, its green-blue shimmer of field and sky? Then in her toes she will feel the tingle of the end of falling. And with a sense of urgency, as if only now has she begun to fall, Alice bends her mind downward toward the upstreaming dark, looking expectantly at a map showing the Division of English Land by the Peace of 886 A.D. between King Alfred and the Danes, at a shelf on which sits a glass-domed arrangement of artificial leaves and flowers composed of knitting wool stitched over wire frames, at a painting in a carved gilt frame: in a parlor window-nook a woman with her hair parted in the middle is sitting in a maroon armchair with buttoned upholstery and an exposed frame of polished mahogany; in her lap she holds knitting needles and the beginning of a gray shawl, but her hands are idle, she is looking out the window; one gray strand leads to a ball of yarn on the floor, where a black kitten with green eyes and tilted head lifts one paw as if to strike the yarn-ball; the room is dark brown, but sunlight pours through the open window; in the yard stand blossoming apple trees; through the trees we see glimpses of a sun-flooded field; a brown stream, glinting with sunlight, winds like a path into the shimmering distance, vanishes into a dark wood.