Forty-five

They stood with their ears pressed to the door. Deputies escorted dozens of museum patrons out into the street.

“Let me phrase it differently for you, sir.” The giantess’ irate but controlled voice reached them easily. “You and your minions have just barred us from returning to our homes. Is this so difficult for you to understand? Look up there. Can you see that row of lit rooms on the top floor? That is where we live. Now if you and your mayor want to pay the costs of a hotel for twenty people, this story might have a different ending. But I doubt very much —”

“She will get her way,” Lilian Kipp whispered. “Listen to her!” And she was right. Soon they heard the giantess and several others return to the building, passing on the other side of the door, cursing under their collective breath as the exodus of museum patrons went on and on.

Lilian Kipp turned from the door. “Your office?”

“It is.” He lit the wall lamps.

Lilian Kipp ran her finger along the length of his bookshelf, which was still empty except for a worn copy of Birds of America that Dr. Putnam had thrust into Guillaudeu’s hands at the end of his visit.

Outside, someone slammed the museum’s main entrance doors, and they heard the slide of the outer gate.

Lilian Kipp raised her eyebrows. “We’re trapped!”

Guillaudeu opened the door slowly and peeked out. The entry hall was dark as they stepped into the corridor, and the ticket window was closed up tight. They heard the sound of people talking, milling in groups on Broadway. Someone kicked the door and demanded a refund.

Lilian Kipp covered her mouth with her hand to laugh. She turned and pointed. “Let’s go up,” she mouthed, moving toward the marble stairway, her form striped by shadows. The street sounds ebbed to nothing and as they climbed the broad marble steps, Lilian Kipp’s footsteps clicked satisfyingly across the faintly luminous, veined surface.

None of the usual crowd noise cluttered the air, and so the portrait gallery echoed their whispers. Guillaudeu and Lilian Kipp walked among a chaos of chairs, some toppled, some leaning against one another like drunkards, detritus from the Indian show. Onstage, the Indian’s wrapped tree still stood, and Lilian Kipp climbed onstage to examine it. Far away, on the other side of the gallery, the draperies swung gently on slow breaths of air. No windows were open that Guillaudeu could see; it must be the museum’s own breath.

They passed through the galleries on the second floor, looking mostly upward beyond the displays, both of them tending toward the vacuous reaches of the upper air.

He suddenly wanted to see his sandhill cranes, so they climbed to the third floor and stood among them. He refrained from his usual explanation of the behaviors their poses displayed. The cranes’ deep, spread-winged curtsy and mirrored arching salute had come straight from the lithographs in Geller’s anatomy book, but here, in the blue night, the postures spoke for themselves in gestures as graceful as calligraphy.

“Your work is stunning,” she whispered, and he did not brush away this compliment.

They walked arm in arm, as if they were admiring the blossoms in City Hall Park. They stayed well away from the balcony in case the mayor’s men were standing guard below, but Lilian Kipp climbed into the giantess’ booth and stood upon the stool there.

“Greetings!” she cried from her perch. “How is life in the lower atmosphere?”

In the aquarium gallery they watched sleeping fish drift from one end of their glass worlds to the other. The octopus pulled itself up the side of its tank, tracking them as they moved around the room. The seahorses swayed, only anchored by the curling tips of their tails wrapped around sea grass.

They walked among automatons, mummies, totems, and optical illusions. He showed her the Cosmoramas, the sloth, the Bengal tiger he had mounted what felt like centuries ago.

“Everything looks different in the dark,” he whispered. “I never thought I’d see the museum like this. That it would be like this … again.”

“Amazing,” she said. “How unexpectedly the familiar regains its mystery.”

Guillaudeu felt such relief, then, that his vision blurred and he clenched his fists tightly. He wanted to trap this moment in a specimen jar.

He led her to the roof, where briefly they shivered in the open air. The door to the kitchen swung open on its hinges, so they went inside and used a big kettle to make two cups of strong black tea.

On their way down they heard distant laughter coming from the fifth-floor apartments.

“Let’s go see what they’re doing!” Lilian Kipp whispered.

“Oh, I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

“Why not? We’re all stranded under extraordinary circumstances. The rules of our everyday life are void here, of all places.” In her excitement Lilian Kipp was already opening the door to the fifth-floor gallery.

Someone had opened all the gallery windows, and several torches smoked near the Indian camp and the whale. Lilian Kipp took a few steps into the gallery and looked around.

“Well? Are you coming or shall I meet you back here?”

A group of people stood along the edge of the beluga tank, their feet propped against the scaffolding for what would someday be a viewing platform. One person, an Indian boy, sat on the edge of the tank with his legs dangling. A murmur arose from the group, and they saw the boy’s legs lifted up by the curved white back of the whale as it passed. The boy laughed and hung on to the edge. The whale passed, the boy remained sitting on the edge, now just splashing the water with his feet.

“The apartments must be just there, through that door,” Lilian whispered.

“Yes.”

They crossed the threshold into the corridor and almost ran into another Indian, a woman with close-cropped hair and a scarred face who leaned against the wall. She was knitting, of all things, holding her ball of wool under one arm, and when she saw Guillaudeu and Lilian Kipp, she bolted past them back out to the beluga gallery.

“She was the one from the show today,” murmured Lilian Kipp, already looking ahead with eyes full of wonder.

“Was she?”

The apartment corridor was cozily lit and much warmer than the rest of the building. It emanated the sounds of people at home: conversation, teacups clinking into their saucers, footsteps across rugs.

The next door on their right was open but the room was empty. Barely furnished, what was visible looked slightly off: The bed was half propped on wooden crates and stretched half the length of the room, and the mirror was hung at a level high above their heads.

They passed two closed doors, and then came upon an open one leading to a lavish apartment hung with rugs and silks, with several carpets covering the floor in an ornate, mismatched collage.

As Lilian Kipp stepped up to the doorway, Guillaudeu automatically stepped back as invisible but impermeable barriers rose between him and the carpeted room. He fought sudden panic.

A card game was in progress among the hirsute woman, the giantess, two young men with slicked hair sharing a seat, and a woman of tremendous girth who sat with her back to the door talking animatedly. Amazingly, the Australian tribesman sat a little apart from the game, straight-backed in an overstuffed chair and looking neither right nor left.

“I’ll wager Barnum set it up himself,” the obese woman said. “Profits are down. They say he’s spending all his money abroad doing — what? What is it?” With great effort she wrenched herself half around. For a moment the room fell completely silent. “What in the hell is this? I thought the museum was closed!”

The card players glanced briefly at one another.

“Who are they?” one of the slick-haired men said.

“Didn’t the deputies get all of them?” said the other.

“Hello!” Lilian Kipp offered valiantly.

“It’s the taxidermist,” said the giantess, who had gone back to studying her cards.

“Makes no difference to me,” retorted the hirsute woman as she rose. She lumbered to the door with the same expression, as if the bread were burning in the oven.

“Good night,” she said curtly and shut the door in their faces.

When she turned to Guillaudeu, Lilian Kipp had lost her going-to-a-picnic demeanor.

“We are in their private living quarters,” Guillaudeu remarked.

“I suppose so.”

Down the hall another door opened and two ghost-children scampered into view, chattering in French. Their hair and skin were identical shades of pale, milky yellow. The boy ran past and pulled the edge of Lilian Kipp’s shawl. He let it snap back, then ran to the end of the hallway and out into the beluga gallery. The little girl stopped short, her crimson eyes darting between Guillaudeu and Lilian. She turned daintily on her heel and skipped back from where she came.

“Yes, we should go,” Lilian conceded.

They retraced their steps and were almost back to the beluga when a bird called sharply behind them. When Guillaudeu turned, the tribesman was standing there. He addressed them by hooking his thumbs together and flying his hands upward.

Guillaudeu laughed. “I know him!”

The tribesman, who was only as tall as Lilian Kipp’s shoulder, led them back to the apartments and to the end of the corridor. He gestured for them to enter his room and sit on his narrow bed while he settled upon a rough stool across the room by the window.

“He’s a fine fellow. No English, as you might imagine. This is Lilian Kipp,” he told the tribesman by way of introduction. “He sings a most intriguing bit of music.”

The tribesman folded his hands on his lap and looked from one of them to the other.

“He is breaking my heart somehow,” Lilian murmured.

“To my knowledge he has never performed. I have a theory that Barnum has forgotten all about this one.”

“Why doesn’t he leave?”

The tribesman continued to regard them with the bemused patience of a grandmother, occasionally contemplating the rising darkness outside the window or gazing across the room to a small bundle of burlap in the corner.

“He was carrying that when he arrived here.” Guillaudeu pointed to the bundle. “Your belongings? From home?”

They all observed the bundle.

“Isn’t it strange,” Lilian Kipp mused. “We are so accustomed to our social graces. We are so dutiful. We carry out our meaningless, expected parlor conversations, never saying what we truly mean, or what is important to us. How easy it is to exist in the company of others and yet remain completely alone. Without all the talk, as it is with this man, I see how conversation is all too often just a clutter. It makes me sad, all the time we waste. He is looking at you so strangely.”

It appeared that the tribesman had made a decision. He went to the corner and brought the burlap sack. He pulled his stool so close that their three pairs of knees almost touched.

From the wrapping he pulled a hardwood root, thick and serpentine. Along it were etched designs burned into the wood: circles within circles, chevrons, and parallel lines. He cradled the root in his arms with an expression that wavered between mild alarm and resignation.

A lone ant, larger than any Guillaudeu had ever seen, emerged from one end of the root. As soon as he saw it the tribesman began to hum. The ant moved directly to the highest point on the root without any of the mindless zigzagging typical of its kind. The tribesman pulled a tiny piece of food from his pocket and set it on the root next to the ant. The creature lifted it high, retraced its steps, and disappeared.

A whole procession of ants now emerged, some like the first one, others with taut, distended midsections bloated to the size of amber marbles.

“Yerrampe,” said the tribesman. The ants marched to the highest point and the tribesman put crumbs out for each one. He began to speak, slowly at first, navigating the buoyant, rolling words and rapid repetitions of his native tongue. He spoke softly, but soon his recitation took on some urgency. Occasionally he looked over his shoulder, gesturing toward the window.

When the last ant disappeared into the branch, he rewrapped the bundle very carefully and placed it back in the corner, still talking. He returned to the stool and continued his story.

There was no one in New York who could translate these words. It was a chasm of centuries, of millennia, that separated their worlds. It was the least he could do to listen carefully despite this obstacle.

After a while the speech turned to the humming song with its unfolding layers. The shadows shifted on the walls, the night poured in. The man hummed and sang. Lilian Kipp nodded to sleep with her cheek on Guillaudeu’s shoulder, and Guillaudeu kept very still so as to enjoy every moment and every square inch of her side snugged warmly against his.

In the song he heard subtle harmonies and strange tilting narratives. No system of categories contains this, he observed. He felt Lilian’s breathing deepen and he wondered if she dreamed of cocoons swaying under canopies of sunlit leaves. What purpose is there in looking for order when new species are discovered all the time and when all premises shift and bend and crumble with time? Why look for order when the deeper you go and the more closely you look, the greater the mystery?

The song continued for a length of time that Guillaudeu could not measure.

And then at a certain point it was time to leave.

“What is your name?” Guillaudeu asked the tribesman before he roused Lilian Kipp.

The tribesman frowned and nodded and did not say.

All the apartment doors were shut and the corridor was silent. The only sounds on their way out were the snores coming from the Indian camp and the swish and ripple of the whale swimming in slow circles. Sadly, Guillaudeu realized this night would end. The steady march of daybreak had started somewhere beyond the distant horizon; the clockwork of the universe proceeded.

“Come with me,” Guillaudeu whispered. “I want to show you one more place.”

“Yes.” Lilian Kipp was still waking up. “What do you think he was telling us?”

“He was telling us about a place we’ll never see. A place where we would know nothing and recognize nothing.”

“My father once traveled to India. A man there blessed him. Spoke a prayer over him before his sea journey home. He asked the man to translate the words but the man wouldn’t. He said the prayer had already entered his soul and would do its work despite my father’s ignorance. Who knows.” Lilian Kipp yawned. “Maybe the man was really cursing my father and simply made up a pretty explanation for it.”

Guillaudeu led her into a green and leafy world. Hemp netting billowed down the pea-green walls and formed a canopy above them. He lifted the netting’s hem and they ducked inside. Potted myrtles and shrubs of varying heights had become the major thoroughfares for a bustling ornithopolis. A small fleet of juncos beelined among the dark trees, their white tail feathers flashing. A bluebird glided between low-hanging branches, streaking cobalt. The purple gallinule stalked delicately behind them on the sawdust path. Higher up, shapes silhouetted by the dim upper air glided by. Higher still hung the chandelier, where two ravens presided from a half-built nest made from bird bones and strands of netting, and decorated with buttons lost from Guillaudeu’s waistcoat.

They sat, leaning against one of the great ceramic tree pots. Lilian Kipp dozed again, and Guillaudeu listened to the movement of birds. Gradually, light gathered strength, rising across the windows in slender bars. A wren flitted across the path at knee level to light on the topknot of a bush. It bowed and cocked its tail and emitted a much grander song than its appearance implied. The morning must have achieved some critical brightness, because following this diminutive herald, the birds let loose and sound drenched them from above. Lilian Kipp raised her head, smiling.

From invisible perches they sang single long notes and wavering trills. The juncos twittered past again and added chuups and chips to their recital. Thrushes dropped reedy whistled spirals, which floated down in loose coils and lay among the leaves. Birds sang as they flew, trailing banners behind them. Small choruses came from the shadows, while a puffed-up robin, which Guillaudeu did not remember seeing before, hopped just ahead of them, posing dramatically for his familiar aria. The air brightened quickly and the chorus intensified. Every molecule of air seemed to be used for song. Each exhaled breath was swept up by feathers, transformed into music. Lilian Kipp’s upturned face met the cacophony straight-on, eyes closed. In an action Guillaudeu never dreamed he was capable of, he placed his hands lightly on each of her shoulders and delivered a kiss to her cheek.

She smiled and did not open her eyes. “Your mustache!” she murmured. “Listen.”

And they did, until the day was simply day again and the birds’ work was done.

“I do wish I could stay here. From what people are saying, Barnum’s got some tricks up his sleeve,” Lilian Kipp remarked as they walked away from the aviary. “It would be such fun to find out what happens, but I’ve got to get home.”

“Home?” This word left him at a loss. “To your hotel?”

“No. Home.” Lilian Kipp smiled. “To London.”

The idea that she would leave had not occurred to him.

“I leave in three days,” she added.

“What! Why?” Guillaudeu sputtered. “So soon?”

“According to the schedule of the HMS Providence.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before? We haven’t — We were just —”

Lilian Kipp straightened her skirt and tightened her shawl around her shoulders. “Why would I want to ruin a perfectly lovely evening? If I had told you, we never would have had such a wonderful time.”

He stared into her eyes until he understood she was right. She stepped closer and faced him squarely.

“I know you are a New World species,” she said. “But perhaps migratory? Passage on the HMS Providence wouldn’t be the most difficult thing to come by.”

She regarded him unabashedly and for a moment he saw the voyage with perfect clarity, standing with her on the upper deck, watching a seabird glide against a thickly overcast sky and the open sea spread beneath them, dividing the world cleanly without the obstacle of land.

“I couldn’t possibly.” He was out of breath. His voice was tight. He gestured helplessly at the museum. “My life’s work.”

“It was a ridiculous idea,” she finished briskly. “I knew it was. I just thought I’d articulate it. I don’t know why, other than I enjoy your company. Now walk me to the hotel, Emile, please?”

He delivered her there and they promised to meet again after her day’s engagements. She disappeared into the hotel foyer and by the time Guillaudeu had reached his dark apartment building, the day was bright and he had thought of a dozen things he wanted to tell her.