By now the air was billowing with smoke. Mr. Morris had searched the avenue for Maureen and had returned, having failed to discover her. He was beside himself with worry. “She should have been here hours ago. She’s never late or thoughtless, especially when it comes to Cora.”
It was then they spied her on the roof. The vision seemed like a dream, as all the night had been. In fact, Maureen had arrived too early, for she abhorred lateness, and the Professor had discovered her in the garden before Mr. Morris’s rented carriage arrived. He’d grabbed her so that he might berate her, pulling her into the house to question her, demanding to know if she’d stolen the keys to his workshop and assisted the liveryman in his thievery. When flames broke out, he insisted she help him douse the roof with water. He did this every summer when lightning crossed the sky. Then and now his main concern was to ensure that all of his treasures would escape the fire. He was on the roof, at work with a hose that had been connected to the old well, shouting at Maureen, who’d been forced to fill buckets and pour them out inches away from the flames.
“He’s going to finish the job,” Mr. Morris said. “He’ll have her burn to death.”
Morris dashed inside, maddened, making his way upstairs so that he might gain access to the roof. He stepped out the window, as he had on the day he left his home, only on that occasion there was pouring rain and now the sky was pouring fire. Maureen went to him as soon as she saw him, forgetting that she was afraid of heights, and of fire, and of the Professor. She followed him through the window and then, at the last moment, thought to close and latch it.
In the kitchen, Maureen and Coralie embraced.
“I do not wish to leave you,” Maureen told her charge, though Mr. Morris insisted they must do so immediately. She was streaked with soot, and her clothes were drenched. She clung to Coralie before stepping away. “But what we wish we cannot always have.”
Coralie watched her dear friends go. They disappeared into the garden, then onto the avenue, where they would most likely seem like ordinary people, compared to what now roamed the streets. It was three in the morning, and there was a sudden shooting blaze above Dreamland. The tower that had burned for half an hour was now completely in flames. It crashed and hung on cables just above the animal arena. The keepers had no choice but to shoot as the animals attacked each other or leapt over the fences. In the yard Coralie and Eddie could hear screaming on the wind, and the horrible death song of Little Hip, whose keeper had returned to see his elephant burning alive. Dreamland was no longer an entertainment, and Brooklyn was no longer Kings County, but a wild country where the beasts ran down Surf Avenue.
The wind had shifted and the fire moved inland. In a matter of minutes sheets of it raced along the streets. The crowds on Surf Avenue panicked and ran, trampling one another, when a creature all in flames leapt through the Dreamland entrance. It was Black Prince they saw, the beloved lion, who raced through the crowd and across the street into the entrance of an entertainment called Rocky Road to Dublin, a scenic railroad ride to an outdoor pinnacle. The crowd backed away in terror, more so when the police began to fire at the lion despite the mass of human life. The creature climbed the ride until he reached the top and stood there in flames. It was his trainer, Bonavita, who had raised him as a cub and was more devoted to Black Prince than to his wife, who gave the order to shoot him. It took twenty-four bullets before he fell, and it was said the police were so terrified of him they split his head open with an ax to make sure he didn’t somehow spring back to life. The crowd attacked the poor dead beast, vying for his tail and mane and teeth as souvenirs of this terrible night.
Sparks had been flung upon the roof of the Museum of Extraordinary Things, and the flames that raced along the eaves were impossible to douse. It was the only building on the north side of Surf Avenue to catch fire. Sardie had no choice but to give up his mission. He dropped the hose, which slithered across the roof and fell into the yard, water bursting upward in a rush, dousing the old pear tree. He went to the window, but the latch was down, and as he rattled it, trying to open it, he spied the wolf on the roof. The Professor had had contact with such creatures before, but only after they had been in the hands of a taxidermist. He had a dozen wolf’s teeth in his collection, bought in Canada for a small sum, which he had attached to the mouths of certain specimens to make them appear more vicious. He’d been the master of creature after creature, but not when they were alive and on an equal footing. He ran from the beast, but there was no escape in the air, and he tumbled from the peak of the roof with no net to catch him, and no one who could reach out and break his fall.
By then, the police began to shoot every animal they saw. Bears and their cubs, horses gone mad, trained birds that could speak in a dozen languages, several tigers, along with a yellow-eyed wolf perched atop the roof of a small museum entirely set aflame, a loyal creature who plunged into the dark garden, lifeless before he landed beside the house.
The tar on the streets was melting and a streetcar burned, letting off oily black clouds. Police went door to door, alerting those who lived nearby to flee. People ran north and east; they climbed into storm cellars and jumped into boats so they might head out to sea. By now the Dreamland Pier was smoldering. The Atlantic had turned dark with cinders and the seaweed washing onto the shore was sparked with embers, giving off the scent of hellfire and salt. Eddie stood in the grass that had already begun to burn. He thought of his mother, and how she had remained a part of him, how he’d carried her with him, just as his father had. He kissed Coralie, believing this to be their good-bye, but she pulled away and said “You know the world is ours,” even though the roof had caught, a line of flames flaring along the gables and the eaves where the Professor had fallen. Eddie wondered if Coralie would suggest they try to make it to the shore, though clearly that was impossible. Every inch between the museum and the beach was burning. By morning little would be standing, with more than four million dollars in property burned, and Dreamland completely destroyed. Johnson’s carousel, the Whirlwind Ride, Taunton’s Bathing Pavilion, Balmer’s Baths, nearly everything along the New Iron Pier would be ashes.
But rather than flee, Coralie pulled Eddie back into the house. Surely she knew it was a death trap, and that every extraordinary thing contained within would burn in a matter of minutes. Still, she insisted. They went through the kitchen, into the parlor, the pit bull following at his master’s heels. There was the cereus plant embellished with two enormous white blooms. This was the plant’s one extraordinary night, but already the flowers were closing, dying so rapidly it was possible for the human eye to see the life sifting out of it. The petals were folding up more and more with every instant, no longer brilliant white, but a pale dove gray.
Coralie led Eddie to the exhibition hall, emptied now of all living creatures. The only things remaining were bones and minerals and the preserved bodies of creatures that would never again be seen: the white alligator, the cat with five legs, the conjoined monkey twins that held each other’s hands. Coralie bid them all good-bye. They were already melting. The heat caused the chemicals inside the glass canisters to rise to a boil and the glass to crack. All at once, there was a wash of clear liquid upon the floor, as there had been in Coralie’s dreams when she was a little girl, when there was so little difference between night and day she expected her dreams and nightmares to greet her at the breakfast table.
They went to the tank where she had been displayed. In her confinement she had always felt a sort of safety, cut off from the outside world of men and their cruelty. Eddie hesitated, confused, possessing the panicked notion that they were entering into their coffin, a place from which there was no escape. He thought of his father at the dock, how his coat floated out around him when he hit the water. They could hear the fire consuming the house with a whoosh of living breath. It swept through the upstairs bedrooms and was racing down the stairs, devouring carpets and beds, wooden banisters and the umber-colored Oriental rug in the Professo
r’s library. The books caught all at once, the paper flaming into red ash, the leather bindings curling up and flickering into flame. The fire caught the withering cereus plant in its grasp. The twiggy stems caught first, becoming embers in an instant. The fading flowers turned rose-red and soared up to the ceiling before fluttering down to the floor. They carried a fragrant mix of perfume and salt water and cinders.
Coralie dove into the tank, keeping her head above water. “Now,” she told him, for the walls were moving, bending in toward them. Eddie thought he was imagining it, but the plaster was curling up, inching away from the fire. Mitts looked at his master beseechingly, trusting as always. Eddie lifted the dog, dumping him into the tank before splashing in after him. Coralie took his hand, pulling him down, like a mermaid who had captured a sailor, and, like a sailor who desperately wanted that capture, he sank down beside her. She had the breathing tube, which she passed to him, for she herself seemed to have no need for air at all. Perhaps she was more fish than even she had imagined. Eddie gratefully took in air, then grabbed Mitts and pulled the dog to the bottom of the tank, placing the tube in the dog’s mouth.
A sheet of fire passed over them. It was only seconds, but they could feel the burst of heat as the world turned bright and red. If the air they breathed through the tube hadn’t been cooled by murky water, surely they would have burned their lungs. As it was, they huddled together while the water turned black until the roar of the fire moved farther away. Chunks of plaster fell from the charred wooden beams, walls caved in, windows stood alone in empty space. When Eddie climbed from the tank, the half-drowned pit bull under his arm, he found himself standing in a boiling soup, a mixture of spiders and crystals and shards of glass. Luckily he and Coralie had not had time to remove their shoes.
They found the wolf, shot, sprawled out in the blackened grass. They buried him beneath the pear tree, for it was the one thing in the garden to survive the blaze. Though the earth was hot with cinders, Eddie took a shovel from beside the trash heap. He dug until his hands were burning, and each breath burned as well, until Coralie stopped him, assuring him the grave was deep enough. Eddie set the wolf into the earth, knowing he was not made for the streets men built or for the cities they constructed. The hermit had been correct in his assessment. A city as great as New York grew without regard to men and beasts, and where it resided, certain creatures were no longer welcome. As they left, Coralie spied the tortoise. It had crawled under the porch to dig into the cooler earth, where green weeds were matted down. That was where they left the ancient beast, to enjoy its freedom.
On Surf Avenue people were sitting on the stoops of burned-out buildings and weeping. There were children who had seen wild animals on the rooftops, and women who had lost their husbands, and families who had been burned out of their homes and owned nothing, not a scrap of cloth or a cooking pot. There was a scrim of black clouds above them and the sidewalks were hot beneath their shoes. Coralie and Eddie had nothing but the soaking wet clothes they wore, which dried later in the day as they navigated through the marshes, for the sun was bright by then. Eddie knew the way. He and the liveryman had followed this very route, and had stopped nearby to view the body of Hannah Weiss, a young girl who had been robbed of her life.
Nothing was fair in this beautiful world. There were blackbirds settled on stalks of tall plumy grass, and the sky was blue and gold. Mitts walked soberly beside his master. The dog would never be as free-spirited again, and from that time forward he shied away from water, even when they moved outside the city and could see the Hudson from their porch. Eddie, on the other hand, was drawn to water after that night. He drank eight glasses every day, which he had come to believe was a tonic, good for the long life Hochman had promised he’d have. Each time he embraced the woman he loved, he thought of water, for he knew she longed for it, and, because of this, she had saved his life.
At night, when the window was open and his arms were around Coralie, he often dreamed he was fishing. As he slept he prayed that no one would wake him, for it was in dreams that a man found his truest desires. At last he came upon the trout he had been searching for, a slice of living light, darting through the shallows. He walked into the water after it, unafraid, still wearing his shoes, his black coat flowing out around him. It was there he found his father, waiting for him on the shoreline, as if they’d never been apart.
the world begins again
Dear Maureen,
I hope that you are finding Richmond, Virginia, a pleasant place to be. I was delighted to hear that Mr. Morris inherited all that his family owned, and I was so happy to receive the photograph of you standing beside him in your wedding dress outside the house where he grew up. With all its flourishes and the many balconies surrounded by white wrought iron, the house reminded me of a wedding cake.
I myself am married now, and happily so. Our service was small and I did not understand many of the customs, but I understood my husband’s love for me, and mine for him. For us, that is enough. Sometimes I dream I am back in the museum and there are flames and I can hear the tortoise crying, but I know it’s only a dream. I know a tortoise doesn’t have the capacity to weep, or so the scientists say. But I am less of a believer in what people say these days. I want to see the proof. Now I judge the world through my own eyes.
There are still rumors about a creature in the Hudson. They say it was caught, and for a little while it was kept in a tank in Brooklyn, before that world ended in fire. While the fires burned, the creature dragged itself over the low dunes, searching for water. But others say that water was not the element it needed, and that it was searching for love, for love changes everything, and forces us into lives we never imagined we might lead.
In the village where we now reside, in a valley beside the Hudson, there are rumors as well. People whisper about a woman who swims in the deepest channels, one who can hold her breath for so long she seems to disappear. Where we are, the river runs silver and it is wider than I would have ever imagined. It seems to go on forever; the current travels only one way, to the south and the harbor of New York City. When darkness falls, and the sky sifts down into the river, the woman who swims in its depths holds on to the side of a canoe that drifts toward her. She pulls herself into the boat, where a tall man is waiting in the fading light, for he is an expert in matters of light and darkness, a master of seeing through shadows. He spies her every time, even when the sky is murky and she is invisible to all other men’s eyes. The water here in the north Hudson is so cold that it’s common knowledge no human can withstand it, only creatures of the deep, miraculous things that cannot be categorized or kept under glass.
I dream about the wondrous people that I knew, and the shelves that were laden with butterflies and bones. Most often, I dream of that extraordinary night flower I had the privilege to watch bloom. In my dreams the flower is alive, with a bloody, beating heart, all of its life lived intensely and with great beauty, over in mere moments, as I now believe ours is as well.
A lifetime is a lifetime whether it lasts one night or a hundred years.
I know we lived among extraordinary things but, perhaps more importantly, in extraordinary times. People may or may not remember the heroes and the villains of our day, but all that the brave among us did, and all that they were, remains with us still. We had a year in which everything changed, when the world shifted and became something new. We no longer expected cruelty or mistreatment. We expected more.
I give thanks that the Professor’s manuscript burned on our last day in Brooklyn. I often look up into the night sky and imagine that every spark that flew upward from the burning paper became another star, for the nights seem far brighter to me now and the sky is dashed with heavenly light. I know what he did to you. I will never mention it again, for it seems unthinkable that a human being could be so sinister in his actions and so evil in his intentions. It happened in the years of cruelty, when we didn’t know there was a better life. You were only a young woman when you met
the Professor, and he had a side that could convince someone his approval was worth any price. I, more than anyone, can understand that. Perhaps this was his greatest trick, to be two people at the same time, the cruel person who betrayed those who came close, and the man who presented another world, one filled with miracles and books. Professor Sardie surely charmed you when you first encountered him; he made you believe in him, he was a conjurer, after all. You were ambushed by how brightly his attentions burned. When a star reaches for you, it is difficult to look away.
I cannot imagine the moment when you came through the door late one evening, detained by crowds on the streets, or by a slow shopkeeper, and saw him on the threshold with the vial filled with acid. I can’t imagine the words he said to you, or how you might have pleaded with him. He wanted to teach you a lesson for crimes you didn’t commit. He was jealous and he wanted to possess you, but you had never loved him. I know that. But I also know why you stayed. You resolved to have faith in the future, and to watch over me, and to teach me what the world was like. You taught me well. I know how to make preserves from ripe pears, how to plant a garden, how to love someone.