Curiosity (16 page)

There were a few females in the congregation who clearly had their eye on my father. But, though he accepted their covered dishes and cut flowers gratefully, he gave them no encouragement at all; I believe that Lily, my mother, was the only woman he could imagine sharing his life with. The ladies generally lost interest anyway, once they met dear Reverend Goodspeed's son, the invalid, hunchbacked chess fanatic.

One of the more persistent parishoners was a widow with a daughter just my age. Instead of being repelled by my condition, the girl actually seemed fascinated by it, in the way that people were fascinated by the mammoth bones in Peale's Museum, or by Mr. Barnum's oddities. I wasn't a person to her, only a curiosity. As soon as I determined that she couldn't play chess, I ignored her.

The beautiful young lady I met in Richmond seemed to care nothing one way or the other about my deformity. Once we'd discussed the back brace briefly, that seemed to be the end of it. From then on, she treated me as though I were any ordinary boy—which is exactly how I'd always wished to be treated.

It had never occurred to me that pasting up handbills might be considered a form of amusement. But for some reason, my new acqaintance took great delight in it. “There's something a little naughty about it, I think,” she said. “Sort of like defacing property, except that it's legal.”

“Do you think you might come to the exhibition? It's even more fun than posting handbills.”

She laughed. “That's hard to imagine.” Then she lowered her gaze, and her face took on a more somber expression. “I would like to come, but I'll have to ask my mother. I'm not sure . . . Well, to be honest, I'm not sure we can afford it. Once we've paid for our room and board, there's not much left for ‘frivolities,' as Mama calls them.”

“What if . . . what if I could get you in for free?”

Her face brightened. “You'd do that for me? I mean, it's not as if we're friends or anything. You scarcely know me.”

“Well, if you tell me your name and I tell you mine, then we'll know each other.”

“Virginia.”

“That's your name?”

“Yes.”

“You're
from
Virginia, and your
name
is Virginia?”

“Well, I'm from Maryland, actually. We've only been here a few months. And your name is . . . ?”

“Kentucky.” When her eyes went wide, I laughed. “No, I'm teasing. My name's Rufus.”

She held out one small white hand and we shook in a businesslike fashion. “It's very nice to meet you, Rufus.” When she tried to withdraw her hand, we discovered that the dabs of glue on both our palms had stuck them firmly together.

“Oh, Lud!” I groaned. “I'm sorry! I told you it was messy!”

But Virginia didn't seem dismayed in the least; in fact, she was laughing as giddily as a five-year-old—and at the same time covering her mouth with her free hand, as well-bred young women are expected to do. I would come to learn that this was typical of her—this odd, appealing mixture of the childlike and the womanly. Still hiccuping with laughter, she said, “Oh, dear, what will people think? We've known each other such a short time, and already we're holding hands.”

I didn't find the situation quite so amusing; I was puzzling over how we were going to get our hands apart. The glue was made from animal hides, and once you stuck things together with it, it wasn't easy to unstick them. The usual method was to soak them in boiling water, which didn't really seem like a very good option.

We tried forcing our palms apart, but I was afraid that, if we pulled too hard, it would peel the skin right off. “There's a horse trough. Maybe if we soaked our hands in that for a few minutes.”

As we sat on the edge of the trough with our hands submerged in the tepid water, Virginia said cheerfully, “You know, if it doesn't work, we can always pose as Siamese twins, like Chang and Eng. Perhaps we could do a world tour.”

The longer we sat there, the more persuaded I was that it mightn't be so bad, being attached to this young woman for a good long while. When the glue began to dissolve, I felt a sharp twinge of regret, not so different from the twinges of pain that went through my spine every now and again.

Virginia stood and rolled down her sleeve to cover her slightly plump, pale forearm. “Well, that was entertaining. But I should be getting back to the boardinghouse, Rufus; Mama will think I've been abducted and transported to Trinidad or somewhere.”

I nodded glumly. “I hope you'll be able to come to the exhibition.”

“So do I. If not, we'll surely bump into each other somewhere else. It's a small city.” She glanced at the glue on her palm and smiled impishly. “I think it's best if we don't shake hands in farewell.”

“You're probably right. And don't worry; if you can't soak that off, you can always use a chisel.”

As she strolled off, she was laughing again. I hadn't made anyone laugh, or done much of it myself, for what seemed like a very long time.

Maelzel opened the exhibition to the public on the following Tuesday. Otso still sounded a lot like an adolescent boy whose voice is changing, but otherwise he was in fine fettle. Though the hall was arranged differently, our routine remained much the same. We stored the Turk in one of the small rooms of the Mausoleum, alongside the plaster Venus; over the doorway we draped the same heavy curtain we'd used in Philadelphia. My tiny peephole was in a different spot, but if I stood on a crate I could still get a glimpse of the audience.

As I perched on the box, scanning the crowd, hoping to see one face in particular, one of the slats cracked; my foot crashed through the top of the box. Luckily, the automaton trumpter was in the middle of a rousing cavalry march, so no one could possibly have heard my fall.

I withdrew my leg carefully and painfully—the splintered wood had badly scraped my shin—and climbed into the Turk's cabinet. According to Maelzel's orders, I was to be in place when he opened the doors to the exhibition hall, but that would have meant I'd be cramped up, half suffocating, for nearly an hour before I even got to perform. Lately, I'd been postponing the ordeal as long as possible.

It was a good thing for, after several quick endgames, someone challenged the Turk to a complete game, and it promised to be a long, dragged-out affair. Every experienced player has a distinctive style, and it didn't take me long to realize that I had faced this opponent and his maddeningly slow responses before. “Oh, Lud,” I muttered. “It's Mr. Pokey Poe.”

I was tempted to let him win, just to get the agony over with, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Though I made my own moves almost instantly, in an effort to speed things up, it didn't help much. After half an hour or so, I noticed that I was having trouble seeing the board. At first, I blamed the sweat that was running into my eyes; then I glanced at the Carcel lamp and saw that the flame was rapidly shrinking. I wound up the mechanism that ran the oil pump, but it made no difference. I'd forgotten to fill the reservoir with fuel.

I
HAD TWO CHOICES, NEITHER OF THEM
very satisfactory. I could turn the brass dial to the number 4, indicating that my light had gone out. But I'd never told Maelzel about the Carcel lamp, and this didn't seem like a good time to spring it on him. My other option was to play in the dark.

I'd played blindfolded many times, of course, but that was different; there, I had just called out my moves, and someone had made them for me and told me what my opponent's response was. Here, I'd have to do everything by touch.

The lamp guttered and then went out altogether. I now had only the faint light that seeped through the airholes in the bottom of the cabinet. I took a deep breath and, with my kerchief, wiped the sweat from my own hands and from the pointer that controlled the Turk's arm.

I could picture the board in my mind easily enough, but moving the miniature chessmen was trickier. I had to grope about gingerly with my left hand, locate the proper piece, then guide it to its new position without dislodging any other pieces. All the while, of course, I was manipulating the Turk's arm and fingers with my right hand. I could usually anticipate what piece Poe would move, and where, but the only way I could confirm it was to feel the metal rings on the bottom of the big board. Fortunately—or not—he always gave me plenty of time to do that.

At first, the process was awkward; the prospect of dropping a piece and never finding it again made me sweat even more than usual. But after half a dozen moves, I became less tentative and relied more on instinct. At times, it was almost as if Otso were controlling his own hand. If so, he was a good player. Despite all Mr. Poe's considering and analyzing, we defeated him in seventeen moves. I moved the levers that made Otso say
“Échec et mat
.” Or was it “I shook a mop”?

As Maelzel wheeled us behind the curtain, I murmured to myself, “Good work.” Then I added, “You, too, Otso.” It was the only praise either of us was likely to get.

“What happened back here?” Maelzel demanded as soon as I was out of the cabinet.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the noise, of course! What was the noise?”

I shrugged innocently. “Maybe one of the crates fell over.”

He regarded me suspiciously for a moment and then let it drop. “Can you guess who your opponent was just now?”

“Mr. Poe. He didn't yell ‘Fire' this time, did he?”

“No. But he certainly examined the Turk thoroughly—or as thoroughly as he could from ten feet away. I even noticed him jotting down notes on a pad.”

“Maybe he'll write a piece about us for his magazine.”

Maelzel snorted derisively. “The
Southern Literary Messenger
? Not likely. They print poetry and philosophical essays.”

As he started off, I called after him, “Um, you didn't happen to notice a young woman in the audience who looked like the Venus de' Medici, did you?”

He gave me a skeptical glance. “No. And I feel sure a young woman with no clothing on would have drawn my attention.”

“I didn't mean—” I protested, but he was gone.

Several of the exhibits had been damaged on the bumpy ride from Philadelphia and, since there were now only four sets of hands, we spent nearly every hour of the daytime working on them. What's more, Maelzel decided that, while the machines were disassembled, he might as well make a few improvements. He fitted Fiona, the lovely lady automaton, with a metal disk, like those found in music boxes, that enabled her to write out a short sentence in French, complete with accent marks and cedillas. Then he equipped the mechanical trumpeter with a larger bellows that increased the volume of his playing considerably.

Maelzel was not the sort of creator imagined by the Deists, who fashions a sort of clockwork universe and winds it up, then sits back and watches it go and never interferes. He was more like my father's idea of the creator: constantly tinkering with his creations, looking for ways to make them run more smoothly and perform more cleverly—the kind who makes it possible for new species to develop. If only Maelzel had been as concerned about the condition of his employees as he was about his machines. He often kept us at our tasks until half an hour before the doors opened.

I have to admit that my thoughts were not always on my work; in fact, more often than not, they were on Virginia. My distractedness earned me a good many curses from Jacques, and the occasional swat.

As silly as it may sound, every chance I got I slipped into the small exhibition room where the statues were displayed and gazed longingly into the face of the Venus de' Medici. The plaster woman was no substitute for her flesh and blood sister; still, after working alongside Jacques and Mr. Moody for days on end, it was nice to see a friendly face, even if its nose was flaking a little.

Jacques had never been very good company in our off hours, either. But to my surprise, that began to change. The other boarders had been complaining about his nocturnal ravings and thrashings. Though he didn't ordinarily indulge much in strong spirits—just a pint of ale with his meals—the only way he'd found to keep his nightmares under control was to drink himself into a stupor before he retired.

I've known perfectly affable people who turned nasty under the influence of alcohol. It had the opposite effect on Jacques. For an hour or so each evening, before he passed out, he became almost pleasant, or at least not entirely unpleasant.

The bourbon, which he swigged straight from the bottle, seemed to loosen his tongue, too. Every so often, he got carried away and uttered eight or ten sentences, one right after the other. Usually he seemed to be recalling some incident from his youth, but it was hard to be sure. Not only did he ramble a lot and slur his words, he sometimes spoke in a regional dialect of French that I couldn't quite follow. I nodded a good deal as if I understood, all the while playing mental games of chess or plotting how I might make good on my promise to sneak Virginia into the exhibition hall—presuming I ever saw her again.

When we finally had all the exhibits working properly, I was allowed an afternoon off, which I planned to spend looking for a new suit of clothing. Well, I say
new
, but of course I couldn't afford to pay a tailor, and ready-made clothes weren't common at the time. Pawnbrokers were, though. I'd never visited one, but I understood that, when pawned items went unclaimed long enough, the broker put them out for sale.

During my handbill hanging, I'd noticed the three gilded globes, the universal sign of pawnbrokers, in a poor section of the city known as Screamersville. Like you, I wondered how it came by this curious name. According to some, the residents had a habit of sitting on their rickety porches and shouting the latest gossip to each other. Others swore that, in the graveyard on certain nights of the year, souls in torment could be heard screaming. Though I doubted that story, I was glad enough to be going there in the light of day.

The pawnbroker was conveniently located next to a grog shop, so that a working man without the price of a drink could get a little ready cash by hocking his vest or his tools or his wife's petticoats; with any luck, he would redeem them on the next payday.

Clearly, not everyone was so lucky. The front of the pawnshop was like a miniature version of Peale's Museum, except that the curiosities on display were more mundane—vases and ewers, fiddles and flutes, prayer books and hymnals, blankets and pillows, rings and brooches, tarnished silverware and chipped china. A table in one corner held dozens of items of clothing, neatly folded. But before I could examine them, my eye was caught by something even more interesting—a barleycorn chess set with red and white men carved from whalebone. I fingered one of the pawns covetously.

“Be careful with that, then,” said a voice, in a heavy Irish brogue. I looked around to see a scruffy, bald-headed fellow leaning across the counter that bisected the shop. He didn't seem to be scolding me; in fact, he was grinning mischievously. “You don't want to become a pawnbreaker, do you, now?” He gave a cackle of laughter. “You get it? Pawn
breaker
?”

I smiled wanly. “Very clever.”

“Ah, puns are me specialty. You might even call me a
pun
broker.”

I did my best to laugh along with him.

“Do you play chess, then, my lad?”

“Oh, yes,” I replied eagerly. Then I remembered Maelzel's warning. “That is—No. Actually, I don't know the first thing about the game.” Again, I felt like a ventriloquist's dummy mouthing Maelzel's words. “I just meant I'd
like
to play.”

“Oh, well, I can give you some instruction, if you like. I was the chess champion of Skibbereen, you know, back on the auld sod.”

“Um, no. Thank you. I need to get back to work. I just wanted to buy a suit of clothes.”

The man shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He laughed again. “
Suit
yourself?”

“I get it,” I assured him, and gave my attention to the array of jackets and trousers.

A few moments later, the bell over the door jangled softly and someone entered. “Ah, and it's you, Miss Clemm,” said the pawnbroker. “What can I do for you this fine day?”

“I wondered how much you could give me on this cameo.”

The voice sent a tingling sensation, almost like a pang of pain, up my crooked spine. I turned, hardly hoping to see the Venus of Richmond, but there she stood.