But Norma got away, up the ladder, and now two by two the women jumped in and flirted with Oscar and touched him and swam away before he could get his tentacles on them, although sometimes he did. And soon they were all in the tank with him, and their white legs flashed by, or their arched backs, or they came up from the bottom along the glass front with their hands over their heads, their palms pressed together and their bathing suits stretched taut over their bodies. I couldn’t tell anymore which was Norma.
All this time underwater lights were playing through the water, turning it different colors, light blue and green and dark green and red that at first looked black. Now the music had changed, and it was hard to see what was going on, it was dark and foreboding music, like the music of Inner Sanctum, a horror-story radio program, very dark music. A white body pressed up to the glass and was tugged back into the murk. And then I felt Meg’s hand in mine. She pulled me through the crowd to the door. I understood why. We let the crowd flow around us. It was mostly men, a few women, we were the only children that I could see.
Norma had told us we could wander as we wished around the Amusement Zone, she had even given us money so that we could do what we liked. The only condition was that we had to check back with her every half hour or so during the time when she was offstage. Meg had pulled me back from the tank because we were losing valuable time watching her mother when we could be seeing the Fair.
Yet as we ran along not knowing what to do first, it became clear that we would have to be organized. There were lines everywhere at the big important rides. If we had to show up back at Norma’s tent every half hour or forty minutes, it was clear we would have only one thing each time around; we should plan what that was beforehand.
“What is your absolutely essential ride?” I said.
“Parachute,” Meg said after a few moments of thought.
I dreaded going up in the parachute, but couldn’t let on. “Me too,” I said. “Now, what is the absolutely most important exhibit as far as you’re concerned?”
“The babies in the incubators,” she said. That was a keen disappointment.
“I thought you saw that already.”
“I know,” Meg said. “So what?”
“I’d rather see Frank Buck’s Jungleland,” I said. Nevertheless we were getting somewhere. Neither of us was interested in Little Old New York or the Winter Wonderland, despite its contingent of penguins brought back from Antarctica by Admiral Byrd. And we both could do without Merrie England. And we agreed that if we had time, we would like to visit the Odditorium, which was supposed to have amazing freaks of all kinds, according to my friend Arnold.
So with our agenda set, we ran into the night. In front of the Infant Incubator building was a giant thousand-pound sculptured stone baby on its back with its arms and legs waving in the air. But inside, behind glass partitions, attended by nurses in white, these real ugly little scrawny ratlike babies jerked their hands around or slept. How they could sleep in bright light I didn’t know, although I understood that babies this age are still blind. Before the invention of the incubator, babies born too early would not have lived. Meg pressed her face against the glass. A nurse saw her and wheeled over an incubator so that she could see it more clearly. The little kid inside was all hooked up to things. It had the face of a wrinkled nut or peach pit. But Meg thought it was cute.
We ran back to Norma. She stood in front of her tent behind the Octopus building. She wore a terrycloth robe and her hair was combed back, all her makeup was gone and her face looked very white, and her eyes red, from swimming in the tank. She smiled when she saw us, she had been awaiting us anxiously. We hugged her. I put my arm around her lower back. I could feel the swell of her hips under my forearm. She wore pink mules on her feet.
Almost immediately we were off again, running down the Midway to Frank Buck’s Jungleland. At last! It was a zoo technically, he had lots of different animals, but the railings were wood and the cages were portable, so it was more makeshift than a zoo, more in the nature of a camp. There were three different kinds of elephant, including a pygmy, and there was a black rhinoceros standing very still, as still as a structure, and who obviously understood nothing about where he was or why; there were a few sleeping tigers, none of them advertised as a man-eater; and tapirs, an okapi, and two sleek black panthers. You could ride on a camel’s back, which we didn’t do. On a miniature mountain, there lived, and screamed and swung and leaped and hung hundreds of rhesus monkeys. We watched them a long time. I explained Frank Buck to Meg. He went into the wilds of Malaya, usually, but also Africa, and trapped animals and brought them back here to zoos and circuses and sold them. I told her that was more humane to do than merely hunt them. In truth, I had worshiped Frank Buck, he lived the life I dreamed for myself, adventurous yet with ethical controls, he did not kill. But I had to confess to myself, though not to Meg, that I had now read his book twice and realized things about him I hadn’t understood the first time. He complained a lot about the personalities of his animals. He got into scraps with them. Once an elephant picked him up and tossed him away. An orangutan bit him, and he nearly fell into a pit with a certified man-eating tiger. He called his animals devils, wretches, pitiful creatures, poor beasts and specimens. When one of them died on the ship to America, he felt sorry for it, but he seemed sorrier to lose the money the specimen would have brought. He called the Malays who worked for him in his camp “boys.” Yet I could see now in the Malay village in Jungleland that these were men, in their loincloths and turbans, and they handled the animals in their care quite well. Frank Buck himself couldn’t have been more impressive. They laughed among themselves and moved in and out of their bamboo shacks with no self-consciousness, barely attending to the patrons of Jungleland. I looked around for Frank Buck, knowing full well he wouldn’t be here. I understood his legendary existence depended on his not being here, but I looked anyway. The truth was, I thought now, Frank Buck was a generally grumpy fellow, always cursing out his “boys” or jealously guarding his “specimens” or boasting how many he had sold where and for how much. He acted superior to the people who worked for him. He didn’t get along with the authorities in the game preserves, nor with the ships’ captains who took him on their freighters with his crated live cargo, nor with the animals themselves. I saw all that now, but I still wanted to be like him, and walk around with a pith helmet and a khaki shirt and a whip for keeping the poor devils in line. The Jungleland souvenir was a gold badge, with red and yellow printing. I pinned Meg’s to her dress and mine to my shirt.
We wandered up and down. We bought jelly apples, the good kind with the hard clear red casing. There was a strolling jazz band and we followed it along the Midway. As the evening wore on I forgot everything but the World’s Fair. I forgot everything that wasn’t the Fair as if the Fair were all there was, as if going on rides and seeing the sights, with crowds of people around you and music in your head, were natural life. I didn’t think of my mother or my father or my brother, or of school or the Bronx or even of keeping my wits about me and watching my step. After each of our forays we returned to Norma in her robe and damp hair. We were in the rhythm of the thing. She received us sitting in one of those striped canvas beach chairs with her knees up and her arms around her knees, or with her legs crossed and a dreamy thoughtful look as she smoked one of her cigarettes.
We went to the Odditorium, where the freaks were shown, terrible-looking poor beasts, some of them looking worse for wear than the animals in Jungleland: a half-bearded man/lady wearing half of a bathing suit on one flank and half of a dress suit on the other; something that had fur all over its body; male Siamese twins joined at the hip; a man with enormous webbed feet; a man who claimed to be made of rubber and proved it by suspending heavy weights from rings in his chest—when he stood up, his skin came out toward the weights like bat wings; a woman in a basket who had no arms or legs, just little flippers at the shoulders and hips, which were covered with woolen pink gloves and
pink booties; and so on.
Meg didn’t like any of this, which I could understand. She perked up in Little Miracle Town, the community of midgets. The midgets were grown-ups, they acted with all the assurance and confidence of grown-ups—they really ran things all by themselves—except that they were tiny, with tiny voices as if they talked through telephones. They had little pug faces, like Mickey Rooney. They looked up in your face and patronized you. They had their own cars and railroad line, their own theaters and stores and toy and doll factory. They sang and showed you around, there were many of them, they showed you their city hall and let you peer in the windows, and some of them were even dressed as soldiers and they stood guard at their bivouac of tiny tents.
Typically of the Fair, almost next door to the midgets was a genuine human giant who sold rings from his finger for fifty cents. He had an English name, Albert something. He was real, all right, every few minutes he stood up to prove it, though most of the time he was seated because in actuality to be that large puts a great strain on the heart. He didn’t speak. A card said he was eight feet tall and came from the English Midlands. He had heavy eyebrows, large facial features, his teeth were not good, but he seemed a kind man, if bored by what he was doing. Of course if he got too bored he might become angry. His hair was black and nicely combed. His hands were enormous. He wore a baggy suit. The ring was cheap stuff, I could tell. Each time he sold a ring he got another one from a cardboard box and put it on his finger for the next customer. The price was steep. Nevertheless, I decided Meg should have a ring.
She didn’t want one. She was shy. I pulled her by the hand till we were right in front of him. I held out one of my dollars. The large hand gently took it from me. I was surprised at the humanity of this commerce. The giant hand deposited a half dollar in my palm. Some sort of sound, like distant thunder, issued from him, and then found tone. He was chuckling. Meg’s eyes went wide and she held her breath. The giant removed a ring from his enormous finger and lifted her arm and slipped the ring over her hand and onto her wrist. We ran off.
All night Meg had been waiting for the Parachute Jump. I’d held off as long as I could. I saw no way out of it. We took our place on line. The Jump was sponsored by the Life Savers candy company. I looked up. Big Life Savers of every color were affixed to the metal lacework of the parachute tower. That was consoling. The line moved quickly. People were pulled up into the black night under the large circular frame that was like a mushroom cap at the top of the tower. Then they floated down, their parachutes billowing. As we were buckled in I noticed that rigid guy wires kept us from swaying and would keep the parachute from actually falling. This was not a true parachute jump, but more like the feeling a fireman would have sliding down a brass pole. That was fine with me. There was a lurch, and we began our rise. My heart beat furiously. I went rigid and held my breath. Up we rose, higher and higher, I could see the whole Fair dropping away under us, the shining white Trylon and Perisphere were bathed now in pale blue light. I saw the Lagoon of Nations, its fountains lit in many colors. I saw the Aquacade. I heard music from a dozen directions, and then, as we rose the breeze added itself to the music like a string section, but in a mocking way of fluctuating sound, as if we would never stop rising from the earth and were bound now for another realm of fierce winds and darkness, a sky life, and we would be blown about in it forever.
Meg was holding my arm so tightly it hurt. “Edgar,” she shouted. She held on to my arm with both hands. Her eyes were wide with panic. “I’m scared! Let me down, tell them to let me down!”
“Close your eyes!” I shouted. “Close them!” I was terrified she would squirm so, she would slip right through the harness and fall to her death. “Don’t move! Hold on to me! We’ll be back down in a few seconds!”
“I’m scared!” she wailed and buried her face in my neck.
“This was your idea!” I shouted as the wind blew about our heads. It was not a gracious thing to say but I couldn’t help myself. I saw out over the world now, over the Fair. I saw Manhattan, I saw clouds over the city lit from below by electric light. I grew dizzy. I closed my own eyes and held on to Meg as tightly as she held me. I swore that if I came out of this alive, never again would I go up in such a contraption.
Then we jerked to a stop. And for one moment hung there like pendants from the neck of the night. That is what I thought, that is what went through my head. That we were jewels on the breast of an enormous giantess. My eyes were closed but the bright bulbs of the parachute tower lit my lids, and gave me the illusion of a shelf of white flesh behind me. Then we were falling, gliding, and shouting in our terror; but it was thrilling too. I looked up and opened my eyes, and over our heads a beautiful red parachute streamed up like an immense flower and gathered the wind into itself and flooped out to its fullness. I laughed. We were floating to the earth, I heard the calliope again, I heard the insouciant horns of “The Sidewalks of New York.” I was shouting and laughing. Meg had pressed her face against me and I was telling her to look up, but she wouldn’t. I had one more scare as I saw the ground rising toward us at an alarming speed, but then we were braked, gently, and dropped the last few feet in a mechanical way, as an elevator comes to a stop; and a few moments later we were on the ground again.
Now Meg permitted herself to look up at where she had been. She was very pale. Her hand in mine was moist. “It was fun, wasn’t it,” she said as we walked quickly back down the Midway to Norma. “I liked it.” And I nodded and didn’t say anything. I was too pleased with my own courage, and quietly surprised by it, to tease her or make her feel bad.
I think by now we were beyond exhaustion. Our eyes shone unnaturally. Norma put her hands on our cheeks and insisted that we not do anything else but sit and wait for her while she finished the last show. A man was with her. He wore a leather jacket, and trousers that were like pipes on his legs. He wore a soft cap with the peak pulled down at an angle. He jiggled the change in his pocket as he looked at us. He had broad shoulders and a friendly face but he needed a shave. Pinned to his cap just over the peak was a button with a number printed on it. He smiled as Norma introduced us, Joe was his name, but I could tell watching him watch her as she tucked her hair up under her bathing cap and then folded back the earflaps that he was her boyfriend.
Norma said to us that she had to go to work. Joe said to us, “And my job is to watch from out front.” Norma smiled, removed her robe, and put her arm in his as they went through the alley to the Midway.
I wanted very badly to see those women in the water with the octopus. It seemed to me important. Meg was slumped in a deck chair. She had wrapped Norma’s robe around her legs. She examined her collection of badges and pins from the different things we had done. I felt she knew what I wanted and by studiously ignoring me was telling me she had no objection. I ran down the alley to the side door and got into the crowd just as it was filing into the theater. Taking advantage of my size, I squeezed between people and crawled under their legs till I was in the first row, by the rail.
There was Oscar. I thought I could make a pretty good guess now which of the two tentacles had a man’s real arms inside them and which two had his legs. The legs were easier. As the women swam by or drifted past him he seemed to rear himself off the floor of the tank, and after the place in the act when the water grew dark and the music mysterious, he seemed more loomingly agile than he had before, a kind of suspended potato sack with ogling eyes that caught what small light there was and shone eerily through the ink. His tentacles waved sinuously. Now when the lights brightened again, Oscar the Amorous Octopus had caught one of the swimmers and had pulled her to him under the water, and as she struggled he pulled her bathing-suit straps off her shoulders and down her back. She got away finally, shooting upwards, but for a moment her breasts were visible, as Fay Wray’s had been when after she took the steep dive off the cliff while Kong was occupied with the pterodactyl she came up in the water right past the camera. It was this way now. The audi
ence was not laughing anymore as Oscar seemed to be able to catch the women who swam with him and turn them upside down and pull at their suits. Some of them flailed their arms and legs, some were quite still, as if playing dead, but the music got faster, and Oscar’s tentacles more efficient, and soon he was chasing all the women at the same time. They did not climb out of the tank now, but swam about, you could see their legs underwater. One after another they were caught by the monster and dragged under and exhibited. He turned them around and over and upside down, and feigning a clumsy curiosity, he pulled off their bathing suits. Light began to suffuse the water, until it was a pale green. The women were all naked now and came up to the glass of the tank and drifted upwards like dancers, lifting their arms and scissor-kicking their legs right in front of us. They all did this holding hands now, swimming down to the bottom of the tank, coming forward and floating up past us. I needed to know which was Norma, and I found her, her face was blurred by being underwater, but she was the only blond lady, and that became clearer as the light became white. She was the most beautiful. She floated up past me, breasts and thighs, and kicked her legs open and did a somersault. After that the women left the tank one by one until only Norma was left. Oscar went after her. He had been lying exhausted on the bottom of the tank, with his tongue hanging out, as if octopuses had tongues, but now he seemed revived by the sight of her. He chased her and caught her. Now he was doing something she really seemed not to want him to do, one of his tentacles went between her legs and up her back, she had to push him off and dismount the tentacle, rolling around with him in the process, all bent double and rolling around up past the glass and the eyes of all of us. I couldn’t breathe. I felt a thrumming kind of heat between my legs but I felt sick too, as if I were going to faint, my ears rang and I was hot and my mouth had gone dry; but my stomach felt cold as if it were filling with the cold water in that tank after the lights had faded and it turned to ink. There was a scattering of applause.
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