The Barnum Museum: Stories (American Literature Series)

by Steven Millhauser

  In the nights that followed I began to sense a remoteness in Olivia. She seemed a little tired, a little listless; it was as if she had fewer gestures at her command. She avoided my eyes. Was she, even then, preparing her departure? Scrupulously I planned intricate night-wanderings in little-known parts of town, but always I had the feeling that her inner attention was elsewhere; and from behind every house corner, from behind every fir tree and hydrangea bush, I waited for that fiend Orville to appear. One night Olivia held both elbows and gave a little shiver. “Summer’s almost over,” she said. Her words pierced me like a farewell; I noticed it was cool. “Curtain,” Orville said, and gave a sneering bow.

  But the nights grew hot again. As if to oblige me, Orville caught a cold and took to his bed. We resumed our carefree wandering, Olivia and I, through the summer-lovely streets, past the sprinklers on the lawns of ranch houses, under the thruway overpass, along rural lanes lined by sycamores and low stone walls; and all was happy, all was well; only sometimes I would raise my head and look about in confusion, as if I had lost track of something; and a pain, a little pain, began in the back of one eye, beating with the rhythm of my heartbeat.

  “Oh Robert,” my father said one evening as I ate alone in the kitchen. The swinging door shut behind him; the breeze of its closing touched my face. “About our little talk.” He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. “Have you made up your mind? Interesting expression: to make up your mind. As if the mind were an unmade bed.”

  “I’m not feeling well,” I said, scraping back my chair.

  Late one night when I was feeling tired, terribly tired, I waited longer than usual before setting forth on my night journey. It was after midnight. Outside I waited impatiently for Olivia. She had not been looking well lately. I searched the yard, walked around the block, set off hesitantly and returned. It was a windy night, nervous gray-blue clouds rushed across the sky, covering and uncovering the moon. I climbed the two staircases to my attic room, descended suddenly and waited outside, returned to my room. There I sat down at my desk for no particular reason and immediately stood up and joined myself on the bed. Through the slightly raised window I heard a soft riot of crickets and a faint rustle or susurration that puzzled me before I suddenly solved it: the dim rush of trucks on the distant thruway. I imagined the austere, heavy-shouldered tribe of truckdrivers crossing and crisscrossing the night, stopping at islands of yellow light in the darkness to sit on gleaming red stools and loop their fingers in the handles of heavy, thick-edged cups. The stools creaked under the truckdrivers and mingled with the chirr of crickets and the distant rustle of trucks. On the attic steps I heard a faint creaking. Slowly her footsteps ascended. I saw the series of comic mishaps—I returning to my room, she looking for me in vain before going off, I descending to look for her in vain—and as I waited for the door to open I remembered the night when I had finished my work and Olivia stood resting one hand on my desk and staring at the window. What had she been thinking? I felt a burst of tenderness and unease, my head was beating like a drum, suddenly the door opened with a cracking sound.

  Slouched and slack, with a look of exaggerated innocence, flourishing an unlit cigarette, he slinked his way forward over the black bookpiles, the strewn underwear, the stray shoes and slippers lying on their sides. “Match?” he said, throwing himself into my reading chair and hooking a leg over the arm.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “Where she’s always been.” He gave a soft snort of laughter and looked about. “Nice setup you’ve got here. Not my style exactly, but then, what is. Match?”

  “Look, I’m not feeling well. What do you want?”

  “But I’ve just told you. Oh: here’s one. A pause as the villain of the piece strikes a match. In the sudden spurt of the hellish match-flame his pale satanic features—which reminds me, Robert, that line of yours was awful. ‘Look, I’m not feeling well. What do you want?’ Very third-rate stuff. Have you noticed that whenever people feel deeply they speak in cliches? I love you. Do you love me? Don’t leave me. Don’t. The real justification for cynicism is that it improves one’s style. She asked me to bring you this.”

  He reached into his shirt pocket and removed a folded envelope. I snatched it from him and removed a folded piece of paper. I shook it open and saw at the top of the page the words Dear Robert. The page itself was blank.

  “Is this some sort of joke?” I said angrily.

  “Now now, don’t lose your temper, Robert. Artists should never lose control. I hope you’re not losing control, Robert. Not losing control, are you? You know, you don’t understand the first thing about her, you don’t even believe in her, no one is called Olivia, and besides, what’s the point of it all? It’s hopeless, pal. Might as well throw in the towel. Time to hang up your tights, buster. You’re all washed up. It’s all over, bub. This is it.”

  He reached into his pants pocket and removed a small black gun. He pointed it at me and his face knotted in rage. I threw up an arm. A stream of water shot past my cheek at the window curtain. He gave a gulp of unpleasant laughter.

  I looked at him with contempt.

  “But then, Robert, how does that line go? I forget.” He laid a long finger along his cheek and frowned in thought. “Oh, I have it. We are such stuff and nonsense as dreams are made of. And what about me? Poor li’l ol’ me? Sprung up out of god knows where, ill conceived, hastily patched together, a few threadbare gestures—difficult to be civilized, all things considered, under the circumstances. You really might have given it more thought.”

  “I don’t know what you—”

  “Not that I hold it against you, Herendeen old world-shaker. It suits my, my what, well say my sense of ironic detachment, not to mention my um charming cynicism and my attraction to extremes. And so I live out my life at the edge of the plausible. An example to us all. God bless us one and all, and Tiny Tim. Here. Pick a card.”

  He produced from a pocket a fistful of cards and held them fanlike before him. On the glossy backs were pictured a young nun kneeling in prayer, her palms pressed together at her throat, her eyes raised yearningly.

  “I don’t have to listen to you.”

  “Of course not! And yet you do, don’t you. Here. This one?” He held out daintily a card chosen from one end. I snatched it from him with disdain. On the other side was a slightly blurred black-and-white photograph of the same nun standing with her back to the viewer and looking over her shoulder with a smile. Her wimple was down and her long blond hair lay fanned across her back. She was holding up her habit, revealing black high heels, black fishnet stockings, tense black garters, and the round white bottom of one firm buttock.

  I swept my hand through his outspread cards. “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” I said. Falling slowly, as if they were dry leaves, the cards floated down to the bed, to the floor, to the arms of the chair, and lay still.

  “Very nice, Robert. Very nicely done. A nice effect.” Suddenly he sat upright. “It’s unbearably hot in here. Mind if I take off my head?” Placing his hands on his jaw he began pushing, pushing, his eyes were twisted in anguish—“Stop!” I commanded. He dropped his hands and looked at me with a sly smile.

  “Why certainly, Robert. Anything you say.” His expression changed to intense concern. “May I speak frankly? You’re not a well man, Robert. Maybe you ought to—you know, go away for a while.” He sighed. “And now I’m tired. Why is that? Good God!” He glanced at his wrist, which was without a watch. “So late already? By jingo, I hope to heaven she. By Jove, I hope it isn’t too late to.”

  “I’m not listening to any more of this crazy—”

  “Have it your way, Bob. Hey, what are you—”

  I squeezed past the chair, stumbled over a bookpile, scraped against a bookshelf. At the door I looked back at him. “Nighty-night,” he said, wiggling his fingertips, but I was already halfway down the attic stairs, already the screen door was closing behind me.

  III

>   It was late, a brisk wind blew; now and then in the dark streets the obsidian windows gave off a shine of streetlights. Once I passed a faint yellow glow behind a curtain, where perhaps in a flowered armchair under a brass standing lamp an insomniac in summer pajamas sat reading a thick novel set in Berlin or Morocco. In my anxiety I followed an erratic route: scarcely had I passed the first corner-post of a black front porch when I found myself rounding the final post of a porch two blocks away, no sooner had I passed that porch than I found myself before a luminous window containing tennis rackets and exercise bikes, the edge of the window shaded into a winding lane bordered by tall thistles and tiger lilies, and turning a corner I came to the edge of a dark wood. Olivia’s house was invisible from the road. I made my way along a path of pinecones and oak leaves, stumbling in the dark. Around a bend the house loomed on a rise, all its windows ablaze, its black towers and gables sharply outlined against the stormy sky. A faint sound of music and voices drifted down to me. I passed several cars parked on the side of the unlit path and soon found myself in an overgrown garden. A weathered statue with decayed, pocked breasts and a single arm stood tilted at a dangerous angle; the arm was held out gracefully, and someone had hung a watering can from the thumbless hand. I passed a crumbling fountain, a child’s wagon containing a three-pronged gardening tool and half a tennis ball, an immense bush with heavy black blossoms. A topiary hedge had been cut to resemble a swan, but the swan was badly in need of trimming: it had a ruffled, shaggy look, and here and there long stems poked up, as if the swan were bursting at the seams. There was something hasty and slapdash about this garden, as if it had not been thought out very carefully, small paths branched off in all directions, and following one path I came to a cul de sac that turned out to be the side of the high front porch. Through the balusters that began at the height of my head I saw glowing yellow windows beyond which shadows moved. Holding to the posts I made my way through bushes and flowers to the front of the porch and climbed the stone steps to the front door, which opened suddenly to release a big tawny cat who hesitated before rushing past me into the wilderness of the garden. “Poor kitty,” murmured a woman with eyeglasses who stood holding the inner doorknob and peering into the dark. Without changing the direction of her glance she said, “Please come in, I’m so glad you could come,” and as I stepped past her into the hall she turned to me with a puzzled expression.

  “Robert Herendeen,” I said, “and you must be Olivia’s mother.” “Oh no, heavens,” she said, raising a spread hand to the top of her chest, “whatever gave you, oh no, I’m just answering the—you know, the door. May I take your coat, Roger? You don’t seem to have a coat, do you. Are you a friend of—”

  “Yes, she’s expecting me.” Through a doorway I saw a crowd of revelers in eye-masks, and brushing past a leaning coat tree and an umbrella stand containing an orange yardstick I entered the room. At a glossy black piano sat a woman in a brilliant green dress and a pink eye-mask, playing barbershop quartet tunes while she leaned forward to peer at a sheet of music held open by a bright yellow Schirmer album of Beethoven sonatas. Three masked and bearded men stood singing with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Masked men and women talked in loud groups, a glass fell on its side and a ruby liquid rushed across a tabletop, a silver-masked woman in bluejeans and a gray sweatshirt threw back her head to laugh and plunged her frizzy long blond hair into a passing tray of drinks. A hand with long mint-green nails appeared in front of me, holding a black mask by its rubber string. I slipped the mask over my eyes and pushed my way through the crowded room toward another doorway, which admitted me to a den or sitting room where revelers sat on couches and armchairs. An elderly woman in white pants handed me a narrow glass on a stem, containing a green liquid. I took a sip and felt a burn in my throat; someone applauded. A tall fellow with a red mask waggled his fingers at me. Was he here, then, too? I found another door and passed into the dim-lit kitchen. On the counter beside an empty dishrack sat a masked woman in a knee-length skirt, her hands tucked under her thighs, one leg swinging slowly back and forth as she talked to someone who sat on the floor in the dark. At the end of the kitchen I opened a door and found myself in a hall. It appeared not to be the front hall, for in one direction I saw a high, closed door and in the other I saw rows of doors leading into darkness. I walked toward the dark, past paneled doors with fluted glass knobs, until the corridor ended at a transverse hall. I turned left. As I proceeded along the almost dark corridor, past closed doors, the black gleam of a mirror, a high-backed narrow chair on which sat a black telephone, I realized that I had only a vague sense of this part of the house, which seemed to extend back and back. Here other hallways began to branch left and right, the doors were of different sizes, through an open arch I saw a room with armchairs and glass-doored bookcases; and as I continued I felt that I was penetrating deeper and deeper into a region where rooms and corridors sprouted in the lush, extravagant dark.

  One of the halls ended in a carpeted stairway and I began to climb. On the dark landing I bumped a small table; something rattled glassily and slowly became still. Four more stairs led to an upper hallway, dark except for a weak night-light in the baseboard. At the end of the hall I turned into another hall, where all was black except for a strip of yellow light running along the bottom and up the side of a barely open black door that rested against the jamb. I made my way to the door and stood listening but heard no sound. “Olivia,” I whispered, “are you there?” Slowly I pushed open the paneled door, which revealed a big empty bed with the reading light on. The covers of the bed were turned down and a panda lay under the blanket, holding out stiffly both plump paws. There was a tall mahogany bureau, a desk with a fat typewriter squatting on it, an armchair with its back to me. A standing lamp shone down over the armchair’s left shoulder. Olivia’s black hair at the top of the chair was glossy as licorice. I tiptoed up to her and bent over.

  The black wig sat on the head of a big floppy doll propped up on four books. In the doll’s lap was an open copy of Anna Karenina. “Very funny,” I said, looking about sharply. Under the bed-light the panda avoided my stare.

  I returned to the hall and made my way into the dark, running my fingertips along the papered walls, the doorjambs, the paneled doors, until I came to a sudden opening in the wall. A short corridor led to a many-paned window. Through the panes I saw buttery yellow light from a lower window spilling onto ragged bushes. Beyond the bushes a dark wooden swing dangled above the ground, its fallen rope twisted in the grass. Black tree-branches crossed my window and through them I saw a dark blue sky with rushing blue-gray clouds. Short flights of stairs began at my left and right. I chose a flight and made my way along a hall that was intersected by another hall, and it seemed to me that I was going to spend the rest of my life wandering the prolific hallways of that always branching house, when I came to a door that opened onto a flight of wooden steps.

  I turned on a switch that illuminated a faint amber night-light and began to climb. The walls were studs separated by vertical, rippling strips of insulation from which pink twists of fibers escaped at the sides. On a nail hung a leather glove with burst fingertips. At the top of the stairs I came to a crude wooden door fastened by a hook. I unlatched the hook and stepped over the steep doorsill into a pile of wood shavings at the bottom of a narrow stairway. Four steps led to a landing, four more steps to another, four steps to a third landing, and in this manner the stairway turned at landing after landing until it abandoned all pretense and became a rickety circular stairway with a creaking rail. My thighs ached, my breath came sharp, far away I heard the dim sound of a piano, and all at once I came to a low door no higher than my neck. I turned the knob and the door opened easily.

  “So there you are,” I said and bowed my way beneath the low lintel into the tower room.

  Six of the eight walls were lined with bookshelves from top to bottom. The seventh wall contained a casement window, beneath which sat a reading chair; against the
eighth wall stood a dressing table with a large oval mirror. Olivia sat at the dressing table with her back to me and her mirrored face looking directly at me. A green mask covered her eyes. She wore a black dress, black stockings, a pearl necklace, and a pink-and-green party hat. She was leaning forward and appeared to be studying her face in the mirror, which reflected part of the open door, my hand on the knob, and part of my shirt and pants. Still holding the door I bent over to see myself in the mirror, startled at the black mask over my eyes, which I had forgotten.

  “You’re just in time,” Olivia said, reaching behind her neck to unclasp the pearl necklace. On the dressing table stood an open jewelbox, a row of faceted glass vials, and a bald wig stand that disturbed me for some reason.

  “Are you going to the party?”

  “I’ve already been.” She placed the necklace in the blue velvet tray of the jewelbox and leaned forward again. The black window reflected a wall of books. I closed the door behind me and stood uneasily in the large octagonal room. Olivia reached through an eye-slit of her mask, removed something small and dark, and placed it carefully on the dressing table. As she reached into the other eye-slit I took a step forward and saw her remove a pair of false eyelashes, which she placed beside the first pair. A feeling of anxiety came over me and I said, “Olivia, let’s leave this place, let’s go for a walk, it’s hard to breathe in here, Olivia.” And indeed I felt that something wrong was happening, that things were beginning to get out of hand. “Don’t be absurd,” Olivia said, slipping off her long blood-red fingernails one by one and placing all ten of them side by side on the dressing table, where they resembled the visible tips of invisible hands. Slowly she removed a glittering earring hidden by her hair. She placed the second earring beside the first in the velvety jewelbox. Then she reached behind her neck to unclasp a glossy black cluster of hanging hair. She held it up for a moment, examining it with her head tipped to one side before laying it on the table. It looked like a black squirrel. Then she swung halfway around in her chair, drew her silky black dress up to her thighs, and unclasped her garters one by one. Swiftly she rolled down each black stocking in turn, and gave them a little kick. “There,” she said, wriggling her toes, “that’s a relief!” In the lamplight her bare legs looked glossy and smooth. She reached an arm behind her neck. With a sharp ripping sound she pulled a black zipper partway down. She reached her other arm behind her back and pulled the zipper down to her waist. “Olivia,” I said. She gave a little yawn, stretched out her arms, and looked vaguely about. She slipped off her pink-and-green party hat and placed it next to the wig stand. She slipped off a chain bracelet and dropped it on the table with a sharp little rattle. She slipped off her watch, slipped off a glittering ring, and raising her hands to the sides of her head she slipped off her hair and mask, placing them carefully over the wig stand.