Among the Wonderful (29 page)

“You lodged me firmly in a world of vice, Mr. Beebe. How was I supposed to interpret it?” I found my rebuke less sharp, less firmly believed, than expected. I suddenly saw quite clearly a fact that dried up my ill feeling: He cared for me. This knowledge hung in the air between us so palpably that I was left quite speechless.

“You misunderstood me,” he insisted.

“Perhaps,” I conceded. “We must all release our iron grip on our beliefs once in a while, mustn’t we?”

“Perhaps?” His face broadened. “Perhaps? Then you do not hate me?”

“How did you know elephants are my favorite animal?”

“I didn’t! I didn’t, Miss Swift.” He opened his palms as if this coincidence were God’s will. Certainly he believed it was.

“Well.” I could not help but return his smile. “Let’s not speak of it again, shall we?”

“Speak of what?” he cried. He lunged forward and took my hand with both of his. “I’m so glad you came to find me!”

“Actually, I didn’t.”

“Oh?”

“But I’m glad I did.”

“Yes.”

I told him about Miss Crawford’s party, and that I was curious about the number of children employed by the museum.

“Well, there are the albino twins, the General Tom Thumb, the four Martinettis. And these.” He pointed to the sign behind him.
THE AZTEC CHILDREN
. “So, eight.”

“Are the Aztec Children new? I haven’t heard of them before.”

“Yes, they’ve been here only a couple of weeks. They’re onstage right now.
Straight from the heart of the South American jungle, ladies and gentlemen.”
Beebe aped the master of ceremonies.
“After all trace of the great Aztec civilization vanished into perpetuity, only these royal children remain, captured by a group of
Brazilian Pigmies and subsequently rescued by our own Professor Chatterton!
I’ve heard it so many times, I could scream.”

“And do they live on the fifth floor?”

“I don’t know. If they did, I’m sure you would have seen them.”

I remembered pushing open the tribesman’s door; that musty room, his starving gray face. “Not necessarily. You wouldn’t mind if I peeked in the theater, would you?”

“I’m not supposed to open the doors if the show has been in progress for ten minutes. And they’ve been going for twenty.” Beebe stiffened a bit reciting his duty.

“Mr. Beebe, really. I just want to get a look at them.”

“I’m really not supposed to.”

“Well, then, I’ll just have to go around to the —”

“Oh, all right, Miss Swift. You see how my resolve crumbles! Let me get the door for you.” He pulled it open soundlessly, motioned me in, and then slipped in himself before easing the door closed.

The Aztec Children stood in the center of the brightly lit stage surrounded by painted set pieces depicting pyramids and various jungle animals. A professor stood to one side, addressing the audience: “They were malnourished and frightened, but over time I was able to gain their trust. Through a system of sign language, I began to learn the story of their Royal Heritage in the grand city of Iximaya.”

The Children themselves regarded the audience with dazed expressions. They were brown-skinned, quite young, and dressed in furs of some kind. Gold jewelry adorned their necks and wrists. One, a girl, I thought, was much smaller than the other, and she wore a circlet set with stones around her forehead. Their heads had been partially shaved, exposing high, strangely sloped foreheads, with matted black hair cascading down their backs.

“Eventually, they led me back into the jungle to the site of their former glory. In those caves, I found urns full of gold! So much of it that Cortés himself would have been jealous. Unfortunately, the area was patrolled by bloodthirsty
Brazilian tribesmen who would have killed us instantly if we had tried to reclaim the treasure.”

Could these be the siblings Miss Crawford and her friends had mentioned? I told Beebe I had seen enough.

“Why are you interested in them?” he asked once we’d returned to the empty foyer.

“It’s nothing, really. I was just wondering how they are taken care of. Who arranges their meals, things like that.”

“I believe there’s a nurse with them, although I’m not certain.”

Applause erupted from inside the theater and Beebe jumped to attention. “I must go, Miss Swift.” He straightened his usher’s cap and took a step toward me. “I have just a few seconds until the masses descend upon us.” He reached for my hand.

“All right.” I was blushing like a girl, and so was he. “So good-bye?” A bizarre giggle erupted from my mouth. I should have been turning away but I moved toward him, extending my arm. It is a delicate matter to make love to a giantess, Beebe. I will not give you more than half a minute to act.

He used both hands to clasp one of mine. He raised my hand to his mouth in the ancient manner, but at the last moment he flipped it over and kissed the center of my palm. His lips were unexpectedly soft even as they pressed against this hardened pad. Quickly he kissed again, and again, working his way past my wrist. I cupped his face, felt the contour of his skull with my fingertips. He pressed his cheek against my hand with his eyes closed. He rested there for a moment before springing back, walking slowly backward toward the theater door, keeping hold of my hand as long as he could.

At the end of the day I set off to find the Aztec Children. It wouldn’t be difficult, since I knew who occupied all the rooms on the fifth floor except two, and I was fairly certain that one of those was empty. I approached the one at the end of the hall on the right. My knock was answered by the smaller of the children, still wearing the furs and tiara.

From where I had stood against the back wall of the theater,
I did not perceive what was now immediately clear: The children were weak in the mind, perhaps to the point of idiocy. One child stared up at me while her brother sat on the floor, rocking slightly, a thread of saliva hanging from his lip. Their foreheads, which the professor had described as
ritually shaped
, were actually the bloated cones of encephalitis. They were alone in the room, and a cursory look yielded enough disarray to indicate neglect. Dishes, some broken, were stacked in the corner near the door. Their chamber pot was pungently full and looked as if someone had knocked some of its contents onto the floor. The boy seemed to be crying, although his assonant yelp could have meant anything.

If these children were the siblings Miss Crawford and her friends were looking for, their anxiety was more than justified. I could already see the women’s horrified faces, each vermilion set of lips pursed into a perfect O as I explained the situation, and their relief and gratitude when I described the children’s’ rescue. It wouldn’t be difficult to verify that these were the right children.

Outside the museum entrance I found Beebe, transformed by our earlier encounter into a dashing stranger, non-uniformed and standing with two other men. The sun had just set, and the whole avenue was cast in lavender. Visible between two buildings, a line of flat-bottomed clouds reflected angled planes of fuchsia.

“Isn’t it extraordinary?” Beebe came to me, gesturing aloft.

“Do you know where Bethany Hospital is?”

“Don’t tell me that’s where you’re going.”

I turned away from him, looking for a carriage for hire.

“I know where it is,” he said.

“Could you point the way? I have a quick errand there.”

“Ah, I’m afraid I won’t help you. Unless you agree to have me as an escort.” Beebe appeared as startled as I was by this bold assertion.

I laughed. “Such drama, Mr. Beebe.”

“No. I’m quite serious. Saint Paul’s has several aid programs in the Points. Lives have been lost delivering food along those streets. Please. Allow me.”

He caught the attention of a hack driver and we both ignored the obvious list in the four-person carriage as I stepped aboard. We lurched northward in the twilight, veering right onto Chatham Street alongside City Hall Park. Against a backdrop of buildings tinted mauve and reflecting panes of orange sunset in their windows, I explained to Beebe what I was after with the siblings and the children’s aid society. He was unconvinced that the museum would have obtained children from the Bethany Hospital.

“That would be terrible. And I’d be surprised if Barnum’s scouts even know Bethany Hospital exists.”

It was only a minute before the marble buildings gave way to red brick, and the people moving up and down the street faded from the well-heeled Broadway shop owners and businessmen to the drab tones of foundry men, laundry girls, and finally rag pickers. We turned up Mulberry Street; the hooves of our mare clacked dully as the cobble turned to clay brick. Beebe leaned up and spoke a few words to the driver, who nodded.

We were in a realm of clapboard shadows. On first glance, the street was strangely deserted. As we drove on, I picked out various gray forms of humanity, most lingering in doorways or disappearing into subterranean stairwells. The glass of each gas street lamp had been broken. Our driver tried to light the lamp dangling from the carriage, but our jostling prevented it, and it was clear he would not stop. One door, attached to a plank building tilting even farther to one side than our carriage, burst open as we passed, expelling two old men, a wave of raucous voices, and the sight of one candle burning on a table.

The orphanage, a two-story brown brick building, was just above Cross Street.

“I’ll wait ten minutes,” said the driver. “No more.”

“How much time do you need?” Beebe asked, fumbling for a coin while flailing to help me down from the carriage.

“That will be enough.”

“I’ll ring the bell before I leave and give you one minute, no more, to get back,” reiterated the driver.

I felt as if we were jumping from a ship. “Fine.”

After emitting a painfully shrill shriek when she saw me, the young girl who opened the door for us was struck speechless. I won’t deny that I would have been, too, if I was a thirteen-year-old orphan opening the door at dusk to the silhouette of a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall person. But her shock did not help us get the information we needed. I questioned her briefly, but she just shook her head, nearly toppling the candle she held out in front of her like a ward against evil.

“I … I don’t know, miss. I don’t know.”

“It’s a matter of some urgency.” Beebe spoke gently. The girl let us into a dark foyer.

Another woman appeared, this one much older and in the black cloak of the church. “What is it, Gretchen?” She crossed herself when she saw me.

“I need information about two children taken from here,” I said.

“Who are you?”

“Miss Swift. This is Mr. Beebe.”

“We’re not open for visitors.” The nun’s round, eyebrow-less face lacked all definition, but her words were sharp.

“I just need to know —”

“Show them out, Gretchen.” The nun turned away.

“Wait!” Beebe dug into his pocket. “We just need to know one thing.” He handed the woman two coins. She dropped it into the small pouch hanging from her belt. “But we don’t have much time.”

“Come with me.” The nun led us through one door into a narrow hallway. She extracted a key from her apron pocket and unlocked the next door. We followed her into a hall filled with children. The palpable odors of hair, dirt, excrement, and old sweat made the air a poignant swamp. Some children slept on straw pallets but most sat huddled together, wearing long dirty shirts. A girl held a big-headed baby with mucus dried on its chin who screamed upon seeing me. One
boy lay on a pallet with his wrists tied down and his eyes following us closely. Beebe looked neither left nor right, his fists clenched. I was fleetingly glad the room was not well lit.

The nun led us to an office on the far end of the hall. She sat on one side of a small desk.

“What is it you want to know?”

“Did the American Museum take two children from here?”

“Which organization are you with?”

“None.”

“None? Why are you here?”

“We simply want to confirm that it was two children —” Beebe began. The woman shamelessly held out her hand, and Beebe laid another coin in it.

“Yes, they took the two. Brother and sister, if I recall. Some weeks ago. Encephalitics.”

“Where did the children come from?”

The nun laughed. “Come from? Those two arrived on our front step nine years ago, drooling babies, both of them. Probably half nigger, half Indian. That always comes out idiots.” She laughed again.

“That’s all. That’s all, Miss Swift, isn’t it?” Beebe was already pulling my arm.

“Who bought them?”

Still smiling, the nun placed both hands on the desk. “Oh, we don’t sell children, ma’am.” She rose to go.

“I find that difficult to —”

“Let’s go now, Miss Swift.” Beebe looked over his shoulder toward the distant street.

“Funny, though,” the nun continued, leading the way back out, “I’ve never seen a rich person come for children like that. Real rich lady, and young, too. Came late at night.”

I could not look at the children again, so I looked at the stained and crooked floor passing beneath my feet as we made our way out. The carriage had waited for us. I could see it surprised Beebe that it was still there.

“That was horrible,” I whispered. “I didn’t know it would be like that. Miss Crawford said the women sponsored the place. I thought it would —”

“At the chapel we try to be involved, but we still don’t always know where the money and food go.”

“They’re better off at the museum,” I realized out loud.

Beebe said nothing, but he seemed to me more dignified in the evening light. He looked upon the city with grave concern, and solemnly placed his hand over mine.

All I could think about was getting back to my room and pouring hot water and sea salts into my basin and dipping in my feet, scrubbing my hands. But there was a commotion on Broadway. We stopped behind a cart carrying a load of barrels. Carriages and horses blocked the way forward.

“Must be a collision ahead,” said Beebe, “we’re almost there. Let’s walk back.” He paid the driver and we disembarked.