“My daughter,” she said, and she wept. “I’ve waited for you for so long.”
Part III The Tour
CHAPTER 14
When Barnum had proposed the tour to Amelia, she’d gained the impression that it would be an exhibition of the “Feejee Mermaid” alone. In her mind, she’d imagined a traveling coach for herself and Levi and the two other wagons that carried the tank and barrels and tent, as well as a few men to fetch the water and perform other labor.
She soon discovered that she was wrong, and she realized she’d been a fool to even consider such a notion. Barnum didn’t know how to do a thing by halves, and of course in his eyes the more pomp and pageantry, the better.
Thus she and Levi found themselves in a parade of vehicles that carried not only the necessary accessories for the mermaid but also an artist who blew beautiful glass ornaments; a magician who performed ventriloquism and other tricks; Signor Veronia’s mechanical figures, which were said to “represent human life”; and a wide variety of birds and beasts, including a duck-billed platypus from a place called Australia and an orange orangutan with such sad eyes that Amelia could hardly bear the sight of her in the cage.
“She ought to be set free, Levi,” she told her husband after the evening of their first performance.
Amelia was the final act of the show, and so she had gone out to watch Mr. Wyman perform his magic tricks until it was time for her to get ready. The orangutan had been made to dance by her handler, and though the audience laughed at the miserable-looking creature, Amelia had left the tent with tears in her eyes.
“We can’t do that, Amelia,” Levi said. “She belongs to Barnum.”
“She’s a wild thing, Levi,” Amelia said. “Wild things ought to be free. They can’t belong to anybody, not really.”
It was hard not to think of Jack then, of how easily he’d loosed her once he looked into her eyes. The orangutan had eyes like a human’s, she thought. She might not speak their language, but she could see into the orangutan’s heart just as Jack had seen into hers.
“I don’t disagree with you,” Levi said soothingly, rubbing her shoulders. “But Barnum thinks a little differently about such things. And besides, the poor creature isn’t from this country. She’s from someplace hot and far away, and if we let her go, then she’ll only die here, or be taken by someone else.”
“Hot and far away,” Amelia said. “Like Fiji?”
Levi frowned. “You don’t belong to Barnum. And you’re not a performing animal.”
“Am I not?” she asked, and sat on the edge of the bed. She rubbed her forehead. “Sometimes I’m not so certain.”
“You chose this,” Levi said, but in a way that told her he wasn’t accusing her, just stating the facts. “You told me that so many times, that it was your choice. And if it’s your choice to stay, then it’s your choice to leave. If you don’t want to do this anymore, then we’ll go to Barnum, you and I, and tell him the traveling mermaid show is over.”
The only other occasion when she’d wanted so strongly to leave the show was the first night at the Concert Hall. Somehow seeing that ape turning in circles (just like you in the tank, swimming in circles for the waving crowd) had set off the urge to flee, to run until she found the ocean and disappeared into the sea.
But she couldn’t do that to Levi. And she couldn’t leave him for her own sake.
“No,” she said. “I made an agreement with Barnum, and I’ll keep it. But I wish we could help that orangutan. I wonder if we can find the place where she belongs—the place where she really comes from, I mean.”
“And what will you do then?” Levi asked. “Travel across the ocean with her in a rowboat?”
“Perhaps I shall,” Amelia said. “And make you do the rowing.”
“I wonder if there’s a library or a bookshop where we could find out more about orangutans,” Levi said.
Amelia frowned at him. “What good will that do?”
Levi shrugged. “If we know about her home, or what she likes to eat, or—I don’t know, Amelia, I thought we might be able to make her happier, even if she did have to dance in circles at the end of a rope.”
“A bird in a cage still knows it’s in a cage, even if the bars are made of gold,” Amelia said softly.
But it was a kind thought that he had. Levi was always kind. It was one of the reasons she loved him.
He sat down beside her. “Is that how you felt today? Like you were in a cage?”
“It’s not like the tank,” Amelia said. “In the tank there was glass on all sides. I could see everything around me and feel that I was a part of it. And there was room to move, much more room to move. In the wagon . . .”
She trailed off. She didn’t want Levi to worry about her.
“I’ll worry if you tell me or not,” he said.
Amelia leaned close to him and peered into his eyes. His eyes were very dark brown, so dark that the color blended into the pupil.
“What are you doing?” he said, laughing.
“I am trying to see if you can read my mind like one of Barnum’s fortune-tellers,” Amelia said. “I think that you can.”
“No, but I can read your face,” he said. “I’ve been studying it.”
He ran his fingers around the bone that circled her eye, down her cheek, under her chin, back up the other side. “I used to think you unreadable. As mysterious as the sea.”
“The sea is not as mysterious as you think,” Amelia said. “You only have to swim under the surface.”
“Yes, I’ve learned that,” he said, and kissed her, but in a gentle way that didn’t ask for more. “Tell me about the wagon.”
“It’s like being in a box,” she said, and sighed. “A very small and tight box. I am taller, longer, when I’m a mermaid, and my tail fin is very wide. I don’t think Barnum took that into account. I can’t swim, only float, and it’s nearly impossible to turn. So I’m stuck there, in whatever direction I’ve fallen in. And, Levi, the audience here is . . . different.”
“Yes,” Levi said.
She could tell by his grim tone that they were thinking of the same incident. When Amelia fell into the tank (and it was falling, really, there was hardly enough room to dive) a man in the audience had started hooting and shouting about the “naked lady.” He’d continued even after Amelia changed into her sea form, making ribald remarks about her fish tail and her bare chest. Several people had hushed him, and plenty were so mesmerized by Amelia’s appearance that they hadn’t noticed him at all.
But Amelia couldn’t help noticing him, and the wagon was so small and there was much less water in it, which meant it was easier to hear what he said. His words were so crude that she wanted to hide away, but there was no room to do so.
When the man wouldn’t cease, Levi had spoken to two of the traveling show laborers and they’d happily escorted the man out of the tent. Amelia didn’t know what happened to him after that, but the man had not returned.
“That never happened in New York,” she said. “Not once. Yes, there were the people who claimed I was immoral, but that’s not the same.”
“It is, er, much more rural here,” Levi said.
“I spent many years of my life in a rural place,” Amelia said. “I’ve heard Barnum refer to it as Middle of Nowhere, Maine, when he thought I wasn’t listening. But I promise you that no matter how countrified we were, no one would ever have had the bad manners to behave in such a way.”