The door opened easily and he paused to listen, straining for those sounds that humans make, even when holding their breath: the uncontrollable vibrations that are emitted as they sleep. There were none. The rooms were empty, their silence clad and reinforced by the snow outside.
He shut the door and peered into the studio; his machine was still there, in exactly the same place. But his nerves were spliced and unsettling his abilities: He could not leave the other rooms unchecked. He quickly paced through them and found them to be clinically empty; every scrap of their previous tenancy had been cleaned away. Her metal bed was stripped to its frame; the sink was bare; only the crockery of their golden-memoried breakfast remained, in a stacked, unbroken pile.
He returned to the machine, removing his gloves to touch his fingertips to its smooth, cold mechanisms. The crank turned, free and easy; age had not atrophied his engineering. The lenses and shutters fluttered in obedience, albeit far too quickly. He bent closer to see that all the polished surfaces were clean and free from dust.
As he touched the gears again, he felt oil on his fingertips. He looked closer: There was wear on the head strap. Somebody had used it, not once, but a number of times. Who would have done such a thing? And what for? His mind raced. Apart from Gull and his men, the only other with keys had been the black woman. He shivered. Did she still come here, addicted to the effects of the machine? He looked edgily around the rooms again, fondling his pocket where the revolver nestled. Nothing moved.
He came back to the table and walked to its other side. Something lumped under the thin, stained carpet beneath his feet, something akin to a long, slender pipe. He knelt and pulled the shabby rug away. A tarred, black electric cable ran along the floorboards and across the room, its end snaking up the inside of the table leg and under its top. He peered under the table, crouching to see what was hidden below: Here was the greatest find. Two incandescent lamps, held beneath the table by sturdy clips. He pulled one out and examined it. It was Edison’s work: one of his handmade, electrically powered lamps—new, unique, and incredibly expensive. But where had it come from? And what would this extravagance give his machine?
He stood up and stared at the machine, the wire and bulb still in his hands. He imagined her in it, serene and seemingly unaffected, and tried to push the images of her transformation out of his mind. He looked at the wire, which split to join each of the two bulbs, a metal ring on each brass stem holding the lamp in place. He searched below the counter with his fingers and quickly found the two holes drilled into the tabletop. The surface of the table near the holes was burnt, its varnish scarred from the continual heat of the lamps. He traced the cable back to an empty cupboard. By his calculations, the batteries would have been stored here: Somebody had been using his device in the dead of night. That would be the only reason for such expense—to operate it and transform another while all else slept. He shuddered at the idea. His machine of daylight, which had proved sinister enough in the sun’s presence, had taken on an ominous, unnatural function in his absence. He wished he could have talked to the almighty surgeon about this, but the moment had passed.
On his way home through the slow snow, he reflected that perhaps the locked room was best left that way, with nobody except the dead doctor knowing of his involvement here. If the machine had been used for some untoward purpose, then it was nothing to do with him. He was innocent of any of the effects that it might have produced. Yes, better left that way.
His trusty instinct was sharp in the cold, and it told him that yet again he had only a few days left in this city of crime and intrigue. He would lay low and let the snow keep all muffled until he was on the ship again. There, between his worlds, he could decide whether to take the matter further or drop the brass key like a bullet into the starless, churning water.
The gaslights around the Great Eastern glowed and fluttered in the falling snow. He had little time to rest, bathe, and dress for his lecture that evening. He was a world-famous celebrity; now others were taking photographs of him. His vast portfolio of human movement had been a colossal success, and he knew at last that it had all been worthwhile: His place in history was assured. The century was turning, and his work was on the crest of it.
The institute was bustling, and he could hear by the muffled roar that every plush seat had been taken. His new evening suit creaked as he combed his titan beard, which dazzled white against the lustrous blackness of the fine cloth. He checked the mirror again: “justified.” The stern dignity of science rested on his strong shoulders.
He strode upon the stage to waves of applause. He had the newest batch of movement photographs ready to project, as well as some old favourites, which he had turned into glass slides and was looking forward to seeing projected large for the first time: everything from elephants to studies of dancing girls, modelled in classical poses. He had made lantern slides of all of his studies to share with a wider audience and to advertise the desirability of purchasing the published works. He felt the vast audience sway closer and closer; sensed their appreciation and wonder as tangibly as one feels heat or smells the sea.
Looking out across the hundreds of faces staring at the screen behind him, he could watch their concentration without being seen. So fixed were they on his magnetic images that he became invisible. He saw his fame in their wide-eyed wonder, heard his applause in their startled sighs. They were all his devotees, his prisoners of illumination.
And then he saw the impossible, sitting in the audience and staring directly at him, ignoring the screen and its changes of animals and humans: Gull. He was supposed to be dead. The doctor’s demise was supposed to have coincided with Muybridge’s last departure from England; wasn’t that what everyone had told him? Had everyone he trusted lied to him? Even the fellow he paid to read the British newspapers?! He did not have time to read every bit of tittle-tattle the papers printed; the man had been instructed to scour newspapers for articles about himself or for letters of his that had been printed. He had been provided with a list of men of interest to spot; he had reported Gull’s passing almost two years ago! Even the hospital had said so, yet here he was, as large as life, his dense, rectangular face flickering in the projection light.
In more private circumstances, Muybridge would have had a few things to say to the good doctor: Questions about the use of his machine instantly sprang to mind. But the animal slides had finished; he was on. He had a short time to fill with explanation as the next set of pictures was loaded. The spotlight moved to him and he could no longer see the audience or the doctor. For a moment he was lost and forgot what he had to say. There was an uncomfortable shuffling; murmurs could be heard. He coughed and hummed, spluttering the flywheel into action. It turned over and his speech began, capturing the attention of his audience again.
Five minutes later he got the nod from the projectionist and brought his dialogue to an end; the spotlight went out. The slides flickered into life; Athletes from the Palo Alto series; Men and Women in Motion. He looked back at Gull. He was gone, but two blurs remained in the darkness where he had been sitting. Muybridge strained his sight into the auditorium. The blots looked like eyes, made from smears of light. It rattled him and confused his next speech. He waved the projectionist on, not trusting himself to speak, wanting only to peer into the audience and make some sense of his sight. Women and Children; Running and Jumping with a Skipping Rope; Miss Larrigan Fancy Dancing. He stepped forward to observe the empty seat with greater certainty. They were still there, glaring back at him; amorphous balls of glowing intensity. Why did nobody seated see them there, floating so close? Was Gull playing tricks on him with his mind mechanics, or was he imagining it? Had he become sick again? He searched every face nearby, but they were locked onto the figures on the screen that rattled past their measuring lines, their muscles and curves bracing against the stillness, the same old charge of strangeness echoing between the bodies and the time they were clad in.
He felt the eyes even after they h
ad gone, as afterimages, scorched into his retinas. He rubbed at his lids, turning the blurs into dark stain, so that when he opened them and looked at the illuminated screen, he saw two dark, unfocused holes; pits, like Marey’s dugout cameras of slowness. He rubbed them again, growing angrier at the irrelevance.
He thought he saw something move at the back of the hall, a shadow that ducked to avoid detection. Could it be? Was it Gull? There must be an intelligent solution; he would hold no truck with ghosts. The latecomer scratched a painful scramble to his feet, his bruised knee exacerbating the embarrassment of his mid-aisle tumble, none of which Muybridge’s blinded logic registered.
Miss Larrigan danced on the screen, her costume made to resemble the garments of ancient Greek friezes and lofty temples. Its diaphanous nature displayed the elegance of her rhythmic dance and the sensual contours of her body. Projected to this size, it also clearly displayed her erect nipples and the shadow of her pubic mound; her nudity danced gigantically, out of the accepted space of the naked and into the highly charged arena of the erotic. Muybridge had not anticipated such an effect; his audience was noticeably taken aback.
The fallen man at the back of the auditorium stood with his back to the screen, wholly unaware of the delightful vision playing out to his companions. His friend reached out to help him, and the fallen one let out a short chuckle, to show that he was perfectly all right; by some acoustic whim, the laugh carried and was heard everywhere. Muybridge spun towards the noise, peering down like a wrathful Jehovah.
“Who dares to snigger? These are images of art and science, not brought here to titillate prurient minds! I have not slaved over their perfection so that they might be debased; I have crossed the Atlantic to demonstrate my technique to an educated audience, not to entertain an insolent rabble with the morals of a Turk!”
There was a stunned silence. He looked at the empty seat again.
“Next slide!” he bellowed at the cowering projectionist.
At the end of his lecture he stalked off the stage, the audience overclapping as a means of apology. Muybridge left the theatre to the sound of their applause. When he never reappeared, the claps gradually petered out and the crowd left in silence like hunched, mute sheep.
That night, he dug out every obituary to be sure that Gull was indeed dead. What he had seen was obviously somebody playing an elaborate hoax in an attempt to undermine him and turn him into a laughingstock.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Essenwald had changed: Ishmael sensed it the moment he entered its outskirts. It had grown impatience out of its security, become frantic and hectic inside the dynamo of its industry. All this was worn in the air: the scent of qualm.
Walking through the streets, he shaded his face from the crowd: he was not yet used to showing himself openly. His was still a face that caught glances, made strangers gawp, but no longer in abject horror. Their reaction now was rooted in something else, a compulsion he did not fully understand, though he recognised at least three of its components as surprise, curiosity, and pity. Of the few who had seen him so far, none had run or cried out in shock; either they had searched for a deeper understanding or simply turned away. It was a transformation of wonderful importance, and it fuelled an excitement that bubbled and pumped inside him.
In the five days it had taken him to reach the outskirts, he had used almost all of the money and food provided by Nebsuel on his departure. He thought about his ability to survive in a world that was so expensive.
Previously, he had been sheltered from such realities; now, the mechanics of existence were dawning, and he found them baffling and rather crude. His instinct was to head for 4 Kühler Brunnen; at least there he would find a friendly face. He would be invited in and fed, even if it was by the sour old man, Mutter. A plan finally in mind, he began to stride through the tangle of streets with purpose and exhilaration.
A mild panic had begun to grip life in Essenwald. The established pulse of the city’s great heart of timber had fluttered and slowed, the supply of wood withering, while the demand blocked the arteries with its swollen need. Since the Limboia had vanished, only a dribble of trees left the forest. The scant workforce that brought the wood out was expensive, and their labour was hasty and sporadic. No one wanted to work in the Vorrh day in and day out, and no amount of wages could pay for the devastating effect that such exposure produced. At first, the new work teams consisted of volunteers, collected from the industries that fed from the forest. This system quickly broke down, only to be replaced by foreign labour, lured there by rumours of rich payment. But it took no time for the outsiders to discover the city’s secret, and they added their own layers of myth to the brooding trees.
Now the workforce consisted of a mixture of the desperate, the criminal, and the insane, most of whom had been dragged into enforced labour. Nobody knew what effect might be produced by adding such a volatile mixture into the mind of the forest. It was a desperate measure, and the elders of the Timber Guild met daily to try to devise the next alternative. The old slave house became a hostel for the unstable, itinerant crew who now cut and ferried the trees: It was undeniably a place to be avoided, and Marie Maclish had acquiesced to that understanding, taking the guild’s compensation and fleeing to raise her child in more stable lands.
Ishmael was lost. He had walked past the same garden four times in two hours, each time approaching it from a different direction. Eventually he stopped and looked for the spires of the cathedral to guide him home, but they could not be seen from the elegant streets he was walking through: He needed to get higher. He searched out a street that seemed to head vaguely uphill and followed its lead.
He had been walking for ten minutes when he sensed it, not with sight, but with familiarity: He had been here before. He looked confusedly at the dozen or so vast houses that lined the street, at their imposing walls, grandiose towers, and long, sliding roofs of immaculate tiles. Why would he have ever been here? At the very moment the question was formed, it was answered: It was the street of the Owl! He had found it—or it had found him. His visual memory of the outside of the mansion was scant, so he walked up and down the street, lingering a little longer each time at the house with the ornate metal gates in its wall. He had nothing to lose. He smoothed down his long, black hair, now grown to shoulder length, dusted down the blue riding coat that Nebsuel had given him, and approached the gates, pausing momentarily before pulling the metal ring of the bell. He adjusted his collar, turning it up about his face, and waited.
A dim, absent little man came to the gate and peered through. “Yes?”
“May I speak to the mistress of the house?”
“What is your business with Mistress Lohr, sir?”
“It is private. Quite private. But she will know me.”
The little man peered more eagerly at the suspicious figure hiding in his ill-fitting clothing and his upturned collar.
“Your name, sir?”
Ishmael looked at the man in dismay, seeing the problem a second too late: He had only one name, and the Owl did not know it. Furthermore, he knew that saying just one name would be considered strange: Most other people he met had two names, if not three.
The man behind the gate was getting agitated, believing less and less that this individual could ever have any legitimate business with his mistress.
“Please, tell her it is Ishmael, from the night of the carnival.”
Now the gatekeeper was sure that this shabby figure, with his crude, long bundle and scruffy rucksack, had no real business here. “Mistress Lohr will not be able to help you, sir. Be off with you! Be off!”
Ishmael tried again to explain, but his words served only to raise the man’s guard higher.
“Be off! No beggars here; we’ve had enough trouble with your kind!” Ishmael gave up trying, picked up his bundle, and wearily walked off.
—
“What’s wrong, Guixpax?” called Cyrena from the balcony.
“Nothing, ma’am, just a
nother beggar.”
“Ringing the bell?” she asked, surprised yet again at the rising levels of boldness that poverty seemed able to induce.
“An insolent rascal who claimed to know you, ma’am.”
“Really? Whatever next?!” She turned and started to walk away from the balcony, but something outside of sight stopped her. She closed her eyes and stepped back to the rail, almost afraid to voice the question on her lips.
“Guixpax—did the beggar give a name?”
“Why, yes, ma’am. Ishmael, I think it was.”
—
He was almost at the corner when he heard the sound of shouting and someone fast approaching behind him. He stopped, sensing that running would be seen as a sign of guilt, and hunched his shoulders, waiting for trouble to descend. He had only rung a bell and asked a question, but he realised this was probably enough to cause outrage in this neighbourhood. He heard the footsteps stop behind him and braced himself.
“Ishmael?” said the gentlest of voices. “Ishmael, is it really you?”
His heart leapt. It was the voice of the Owl, and she knew him! He turned slowly into his hope, hesitant in her sudden company, his face half-hidden by hair and uncertainty. She stared at his presence, her vivid eyes reading and absorbing every detail of his sheltering features.
“You have two eyes!” she said in amazement. “Ghertrude said you only had one.”
“You know Ghertrude?”
“She has become my dearest friend; I found her when I was searching for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes. I looked for you at once; there’s so much…” She became abruptly aware of their surroundings and shivered at their exposure to unseen ears. “There’s so much to say. Shall we return to the house? It may be better to discuss things there.”
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