The Museum of Extraordinary Things (16 page)

Their journey continued blindly, for it now seemed apparent that Coralie couldn’t find her way. How mortified she would be if she discovered that she’d dreamed the encounter and they found nothing more than a great blue fish in the grass. But then the liveryman called out. “I see something in the hollow.”

They followed him now, the Professor rushing through the bushes, Coralie trailing behind, for she not only dreaded what they would find, she feared the reason her father had insisted they come here. Perhaps the time had come for her to defy him. If only she could find the strength to hurl herself into her own destiny, running there head-on, resolved to find her freedom. She gazed at leaves, imagining Egypt and Paris and all the wonders of the world that awaited her.

“There she is!” the liveryman shouted.

A sheaf of blue in the dark ferns and brambles.

When they came upon the body, Coralie felt something sharp run through her. She knew Maureen was right. She would indeed carry the dead with her. Coralie had the urge to turn away, but she could not. She had already seen what was before them.

The Professor shrugged off his black overcoat and threw it over the young woman. “Take her back to the wagon,” he told the liveryman. “Our treasure.”

“This isn’t what I do,” the liveryman replied, bristling. “I’ve been to jail for too many years. Now that I’m a free man, I’m not about to go back.”

“You’ll do it, or you’ll find yourself in jail for worse offenses,” the Professor told him. When he saw the grim expression on the liveryman’s face, the Professor tried another tactic. “There’s double what I usually pay in it. That should make the deed easier for you to complete.”

Coralie now noticed that the drowned girl’s head rested on weeds that had been arranged to form a pillow; her hands were crossed one upon the other on her chest. Coralie had not left the young woman in this tender position, as if waiting for the world to come. She gazed into the woods to try to spy whoever might have tended to the drowned girl, but she saw nothing but locust trees and reeds that stood nearly ten feet tall along the bank. The liveryman lifted the body over his shoulder. As he did so, the girl’s clutched hands were jostled, and what appeared to be two black stones fell from her grasp. Coralie bent to retrieve them. Once in her hands she realized these weren’t stones at all but buttons, cold as water, made of black glass.

They went back the way they had come, only now rays of sunlight glinted through the leaves and the waking songbirds trilled. They tramped along for a time, wordless, until they came upon the carriage. The Professor embraced Coralie in a rare show of affection. “You found the Hudson Mystery,” he informed her.

“Father.” Coralie paled. “How is that possible? She’s only a woman.”

“She’s that now. But when I’m finished with her, she’ll be far more.”

Coralie thought of the baby’s skeleton she’d once found upon his desk and the surgery tools set out on the white table. She thought, too, of the specimens in the glass bottles, creatures not made by God but sewn and hammered together.

“We have no choice but to create what we need,” her father assured her when he spied her worried expression. “There was a mermaid in the Hudson River who died in the cold currents, the Mystery that has haunted New York. It is our duty to preserve her so that she might remain intact for all eternity.”

The liveryman had carried the body up to the carriage; he stored the drowned girl beneath the bench. Water pooled on the floor, and there was a wet, green odor that was impossible to ignore. When she took her seat, Coralie did not look at her father but instead gazed out the window as he came to sit beside her. The horse began its easy pace through the woods.

“We have our miracle,” the Professor said, satisfied.

An outrage arose within Coralie, a distaste for her father’s business so strong it felt like a flicker of hatred. She would never again listen to his words as if they were gospel. No matter what he intended to do in the future or what deeds he had committed in the past, Coralie was certain that in good time every secret would be shared. Every miracle would be called into question.

FOUR

THE MAN WHO FELT NO PAIN

**********

I
PLANNED
to sell the watch I’d stolen as a boy to pay for Moses Levy’s funeral, but, as if it knew of my intent, it broke that very day. I wound the crown, and still it would not tell time. And so I kept it and instead sold the camera I had learned my craft upon, an American Optical. Moses had left me several other cameras, including his own ancient large-format wooden bellows camera whose images were developed as eighteen-by-twenty-four glass dry plates, and a Leica held together with tape that had an exquisite Petzval lens. From then on, I used these as my own. Moses’s favorite camera was the old battered one, oversized and heavy to carry around town. Someone else might have thought the camera I sold was the best of the bunch, but it wasn’t. A camera has its own eye, my mentor had told me. He insisted his could see the truth even when he’d begun to grow blind. I hoped it would do the same for me, for I was blind to much in this world.

Certainly I’d been blind when it came to Levy’s poor health and age. He’d told me of his bouts with pneumonia, which had weakened him, but he had such passion for his work I forgot how ill he was and ignored his labored breathing. I often accompanied him to meetings at 291, the gallery where Stieglitz showed photographs alongside paintings that seemed to come from a far-off universe, each unique and haunting. I stood in the back, an awkward apprentice, listening to the real photographers argue and talk. Once Moses went to shake Stieglitz’s hand and introduce himself. Stieglitz of course knew of him, although the rumors were that Moses Levy was dead. He had disappeared from the art world and from his compatriots. Perhaps he preferred these stories to the truth, and wished to keep secret the fact he made a living photographing brides and grooms at the marriage halls of the Lower East Side. His great work had been destroyed by officials in the Ukraine, who felt that Jewish artists were dangerous, rebels by nature, untrustworthy at best, demons at worst. He could not bring himself to think, let alone speak, about his lifetime’s lost work.

“Here’s one of the originals,” Stieglitz called out to those in the gallery. “One of our forefathers!”

Few paid attention. The mantle of genius had already been handed to younger men, such as Stieglitz himself, who quickly moved on to speak to his own admirers. Now Levy’s great work had been burned and forgotten, and there was little interest in him, even though many of his techniques had been taken up by these same young men. He was a master of the ambrotype print, in which the photographer is the conduit to the photograph, so that each is as individual as a painting, and later his use of silver nitrate or potassium cyanide to illuminate his landscapes had led the way for those who wished to take photography into the world of art. He had a unique toning technique that tinged some of his prints a golden color. Many of the younger men who gathered to speak of themselves and their work had no idea Levy had invented some of the processes they now used on a daily basis, nor did they care. I saw this was the way of the future, to leave the past behind as if it were a dream.

On the wall of Levy’s studio were the two remaining prints taken in the forests of the Ukraine. Trees so tall and wide they were true giants, their limbs saddened by the sorrows of the world, filled with the sepia shades of songbirds. It was much like the place where my father and I had camped when our village was destroyed. I had led him by the hand through the tall grass and the wild asters so that he would not lose himself and give up the life he no longer valued now that my mother was gone. We did not speak to each other in the forest, for fear of what we would say. We mourned in silence so that we would not curse the world we walked through. I saw owls in the locust trees and wondered if these creatures were the spirits of the dead, for there were so many murdered in our homeland there was not room enough for all of their ghosts. I half-believed they had turned into birds instead.

Moses Levy left me his lustrous silver nitrate prints. I had them on the wall of the studio, in frames I’d built myself of plain pine, for this cheap wood was the best I could afford. But the photographs hadn’t been treated properly in Moses’s travels across the continents, and they faded more each day. To avoid the ravaging effects of direct sunlight, I took to covering them with a white sheet, as people of the faith I’d left covered mirrors after a death in the family. I once believed this practice had arisen to make certain there was no vanity in a time of sorrow, but now I think it was so a man could not see his own hopelessness reflected in the glass.

Sometimes as darkness fell, I tore off the sheets so I could study the gift Moses had left me. The trees became illuminated in the fading light, struck by shades of yellow on some days, and at other times enveloped by the red glow that pours over Manhattan after sunset. When I stood there before the greatness of my teacher’s vision, I was reminded of the day I found my second life. I thought perhaps I did indeed have a purpose, and that purpose was to see the true beauty of the world and, like my teacher, to capture a single moment of that beauty.

And yet I was blinded to so much around me, stubborn and arrogant in the way many young men are. Could a blind man know beauty? I hadn’t noticed the milky film over my teacher’s eyes, nor had I realized the difficulty he had in taking the stairs in his last months on earth. To me he was indomitable, an icon who was more than human in both talent and virtue. I toted his equipment, as any apprentice would, but soon I was developing his negatives as well. He said it was so I could learn the skill of this process, but it was most likely he had me do this work because he could not stand steadily for more than a brief time. There were a few occasions when he was too tired to leave his bed, and I was forced to take wedding photographs alone. I’m sure the bridal parties were not pleased by my sour demeanor, but I did the job and learned to keep my mouth shut. I did not tell anyone to smile or to embrace—I photographed them as they were, delighted or terrified, brides who seemed too young to be married, and those who were grandmothers, grooms who shook with fear and those who rode triumphantly into the hall on the shoulders of their brothers and friends. There were occasions when my photographs were rejected by an angry bride or mother of the groom. I didn’t blame them. I showed them what I saw, and what I saw was not always pretty.

I did not realize that Moses’s death was coming until my teacher could no longer stand or speak. On the day of his passing, I was the one who found him. I slept in a storeroom then, and he in the bed that later became mine. Everything in the loft changed when his spirit left him, as if a whirlpool had drawn the light from the room. I sat beside his body and wept, not only for the loss of this great man but also for the darkness that settled upon me once more.

I was the only one at the funeral at the Mt. Zion Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens. I hired a rabbi who went from cemetery to cemetery for a fee. He was an old man from Russia, who owned a single suit that he wore every day. There was sorrow in the seams of his clothes, but he was used to death. It seemed that life was a bolt of cloth to him, and he was there to fold it and set it in a drawer. He said the prayers over the open grave, then, after being paid, quickly went on to his next appointment. I shoveled the dirt onto the coffin, as was the custom of our people, while the gravediggers looked on, arms folded across their chests. In our faith we are instructed to bury our own, and in doing so grant them that last favor.

I could not completely rid myself of my first life, though I tried my best. On several occasions I went to photograph rallies and strikes, sent there by the editors I sometimes worked for. This was not by choice. I gave excuses, and I often managed to get other assignments. But occasionally I was forced to go to events I dreaded. Though I looked nothing like the boy I’d been, there were times when I was spotted by ghosts from my past. Once I’d gone to photograph a meeting of hundreds of shirtwaist strikers in Washington Square. This park had once been a public gallows, with bodies still buried beneath what were now paved paths; it seemed as good a place to be haunted as any. Just as I turned onto Great Jones Street, I found I could go no farther. I felt a chill spreading through my chest. There, among the strikers who held up signs in Yiddish and Italian, I thought I saw my father. I dodged into a doorway, as if I were a common thief, and from those shadows I peered out at the crowd. Upon closer study, the person in question was revealed to be someone else entirely, a much younger man than I’d initially imagined, perhaps the age my father had been when I first began to work for Hochman. I felt an odd mixture of relief and disappointment, for in all honesty, I wanted to see for myself that he was alive and well. In a haze of emotion, I realized that my resentment as a boy had arisen not only from the idea that he was willing to end his life and leave me when he leapt from the dock but from the fact that I felt, from that moment on, responsible for him. I was too young, or foolish, or headstrong to meet that responsibility. I did not want it, and I paid for my choice dearly simply by knowing the sort of man I’d become.

I went back into the crowd and set up my camera stand. When I scanned the mob, I noticed several young men shouting and glaring in my direction. I heard the name I never used, and then I knew their taunts were directed at me. I turned and slinked away, convinced I had been marked. Those who’d known me in my other life saw me for who I truly was, Ezekiel Cohen, traitor, the boy who had not leapt into the river to rescue his own father.

Soon after that I was sent by the Tribune to photograph a rally at Cooper Union on Third Avenue. I was young, little more than twenty-one, and I thought I could express an opinion in such matters when working
for the papers. I said I preferred crime scenes, which was true enough. I went so far as to declare I had a fever and might be ill, hardly the truth at all. But no one else was available, so I had no choice but to go, even though my guts churned. I knew it would be bad for me, and it was. I came upon several leaders of the Workmen’s Circle, an organization for the betterment of the workingman that was concerned with community and social justice, serving as a welfare agency, especially in times of tragedy. There among them, I spied my childhood companion, Isaac Rosenfeld. Unfortunately he spied me as well as I set up my camera.

“Here he is. The anti-Jew,” Rosenfeld called out, nodding to me. “I hear you’re Ed now. To some people at least.”

“I’m here to do a job,” I told him.

“To watch us? To stand outside of us? Maybe to judge us? You’re very good at that it seems. You don’t care what happens to anyone else, even your own people. What would your father think?”

“I don’t know what other men think,” I said. “That’s God’s business, not mine.”

Rosenfeld spat upon the ground. I didn’t react, though I suppose he wanted me to. He was a decent man and would not strike me first, but I didn’t give him the pleasure of hitting him. I merely took a photograph of the crowd that had gathered, Jews and Italians who worked in factories and wanted more for themselves and their families, basic rights at the very least. Rosenfeld’s father had worked with mine in the second factory where we’d found employment, and Rosenfeld and I had spent a portion of our boyhood together. We had once been friends, when such things were possible for me. I didn’t react when he shoved his hand in front of my camera’s lens. “Well at least you know what this man thinks,” he said. And yes, I knew. He despised me.

I kept the photograph of his hand and have it still. The lines of his palm are like a map to a country I cannot name. I kept the broken watch as well, stored in my pocket after Moses’s death. Soon after my run-in with Rosenfeld, I happened to pass a watchmaker’s shop on Houston Street. The sign proclaimed the shopowner could repair any timepiece. If stumped he would present a customer with a new gold watch at no cost whatsoever. The proposition sounded fishy, but I could hardly afford to have the watch fixed, so I went in to see what he could do. The watchmaker was working when I entered. He was an elderly fellow, and a sign informed me that his name was Harold Kelly. It was likely clear to him that I was a young man with a chip on my shoulder. I cared little about my appearance and wore a frayed blue jacket, baggy trousers, boots, a black cap with a brim. I kept my hair clipped to my scalp, as a convict newly released from prison might have. I suppose I looked ragged in every way, lanky and dark, headed for trouble. I had spent so much time photographing criminals, I may have taken on some of their airs. I assume Kelly thought I wasn’t a customer worth the bother. He ignored me until I placed the watch on his counter. He glanced at it, and as soon as he did, he stopped working so he could peer over his glasses at me.