Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top (6 page)

I sat on the stool and stared at her for a moment. She was beautiful. More beautiful up close than she’d been from afar. Her complexion so smooth. The lines of her face so graceful. The shallow curve of her neck a parabola of perfection.

But I’d heard the music in her voice; read the movement of her lips and the flutter of her eyelids; noticed the smooth efficiency of her movements. In the sudden silence of the moment I could even hear the turning of delicate gears and the gentle huff-puff of pistons moving inside cylinders. I knew now. I was not looking at a woman, but at an automaton.

“Ahh, I see that I am not who you thought I would be,” Kally said, each letter a tone manipulated by some internal mechanism—tones blending to form words and sentences, phrases, thoughts. Were they thoughts? Were they
her
thoughts? I did not think it possible.

“I won’t be far, Kally,” McKenzie said from the doorway. “Just give me a holler if you need me,” and he was gone, the door closed.

I was not exactly shocked. Automatons are not unusual in this new and modern age. From steam-horses to calculating-machines, simple automata have been making our life easier since not long after Watt perfected the steam engine. But automatons could not talk. They did not express opinions or sing and play with passion. They could not! Their actions were mechanical, programmed, a symptom of turning gears and cams, pistons and rods. No, I was not shocked, but I was most certainly confused.

I’d heard, of course, of von Kempelen’s fraudulent Chess Player. How everyone, even Napoleon, had been duped until a young New York author named Poe exposed the hoax in an article. A man concealed inside the workings to make the moves where the mechanism could not. I would not be so easily fooled.

I looked her up and down, trying to discover where a human operator might be hidden. Her torso and waist were too slender to fit even a small child but her skirts pooled around the stool on which she sat and anyone could have hidden therein. I was of half a mind to reach down, right there and then, and lift her skirts to uncover the scoundrel behind this charade . . . but, despite what I knew, it felt unseemly to even contemplate looking beneath a woman’s skirt.

“I am no trick, dear sir,” she said after a while, clearly interpreting my gaze correctly. “I am, exactly as you have guessed, no more a woman than this old steam organ is a man.”

“But how?” I asked. “I mean, you play! You sing and, unless Mr. McKenzie has slipped me an awfully strong dose of opium, I am conversing with you right now! How could that be if you were . . . if you were . . . an automaton?” The word itself seemed impolite, considering the company, but I could think of no other.

Her eyes slipped then, looking down towards the floor, and I could almost see the corners of her mouth turn down in sorrow.

“You are right to question,” she said, her voice soft and mournful. “I
am
an automaton. All gears and clockwork. Steam pumping through my veins instead of blood, offered up to me through a tube.” Here she turned and did lift the back of her skirts to indicate a pipe that came out of the floor and disappeared into the small of her back. There was a valve there too, at the juncture of pipe and lumbar, and I wondered what would happen to Kally if I turned it.

She lowered her skirts quickly and continued, “It might as well be a chain, this pipe that feeds me and moves me and gives me life. I might as well be a prisoner, or a slave, or . . . or . . . a machine! Whilst McKenzie controls my boiler I am no better than that! A machine to be switched on and off as needed.”

I reached out my hand in sympathy, half expecting the automaton to cry.

“But I still don’t understand how!” I said. “If you are a machine how can we be having a sensible conversation? If you’re just a machine how can you feel that way at all? I’m sorry, my Lady, if I seem insensitive, but you are a marvel to me. You were beautiful before I knew, but now . . . but
now
.”

“My kind sir, you are so wonderful to say so.”

She turned and adjusted a few stops on the keyboard. I could see now that her movements were not exactly natural. They were smooth and precise and all too graceful to be those of a real person.

“I will tell you then,” she said, her fingers settling on the keyboard, tinkering at a soft and simple melody.

“You know, I am sure,” she said, “of von Kempelen’s Turk, the player of chess, and how it was discovered to be a fraud. My creator, after whom I am named, was its owner at the time and, even though he knew it to be a trick, he paraded the device throughout the Americas. When evidence of the deception became public he fled back to England, taking the Turk with him. At the time, Mr. Maelzel had full intentions of throwing the thing overboard and into the Atlantic, but Fate chose otherwise.

“On board was the British mathematician Charles Babbage, returning from Massachusetts where he’d been spruiking the plans for his Analytical Engine with hopes of obtaining the funding the Royal Society had been loathe to provide. Babbage had also heard of the fraud but, nevertheless, the Turk was of sufficient internal complexity to interest him. He suggested changes, and improvements, and the introduction of one of his own Analytical Engines whereby the need for a deceptive
human
chess-player might be removed.

“Upon returning to England Maelzel and Babbage began work on their project. They soon decided that the plan to convert the Turk was unworkable and resolved on a new project . . . I am the result of that project, kind sir. Maelzel created my body, Babbage my mind—although Babbage himself loathed almost all kinds of music. My playing and voice are based somewhat on that of Lady Byron herself . . . although the vocal mechanism itself was developed by Faber. But, I am more than the sum of my parts, as I hope you can see. And more than a mere machine.
Cogito ergo sum
, dear sir, or at least
I
like to think so.”

And here she laughed, a real laugh, although her jest seemed melancholy to me. Her fingers started pecking at a brighter tune but I heard a sadness even there.

“And so, here I am,” she said, her voice bouncing between notes. “A monster no less than Frankenstein’s own. A creature fought over by my creators. Later, lost by Maelzel in a bout of drunken gambling to McKenzie’s devious carnival wiles. A machine, a possession. Yet, I
feel
myself a slave. Has a machine the right to feel that way? If a machine feels that way, is it a machine?”

She turned to me, her eyes imploring, asking me to assay the very truth of her existence. I realised her playing had stopped and in the silence my heart sank.

“You are, Madame, a Lady of intelligence, charm, wit and beauty,” I said, as nervous as a schoolboy courting. “It sickens my heart to see you this way. You must leave at once! Sever your contract. Pay off your owner’s debt. I will speak to the man myself. I’m sure he will see the folly of the way he has been keeping you.” It came out all of a sudden and I meant every word, but again she laughed and this time it was at me.

“Oh no, you are too kind, but I cannot
leave
! I am not an employee but an attraction! And where would I go?
How
would I go? The pipe that binds me to the boiler is as strong a shackle as you will find in any prison, sir.”

I looked again to her skirts, at the floor, imagining the pipe running underneath the floorboards and out to the stoked boiler attached to the rear of the carriage.

“But steam-horses,” I said, “
they
carry their own boiler and furnace around with them. You could have a smaller engine developed, maybe contained in a wheeled palanquin so you could move around?”

The very idea excited me, but again she laughed and played, and sang a piece from
The Beggar’s Opera
:

“The Modes of the Court so common are grown,

That a true Friend can hardly be met;

Friendship for Interest is but a Loan,

Which they let out for what they can get.

‘Tis true, you find

Some Friends so kind,

Who will give you good Counsel themselves to defend.

In sorrowful Ditty,

They promise, they pity,

But shift you for Money, from Friend to Friend.”

“Are you saying my words mean nothing?” I asked, offended, feeling a sudden anger arise. “That I should be putting my money where my mouth is? Is that all this is? A ruse to empty my pocket? If that is the case then I . . . ”

“No, no, not at all,” she said demurely. “You take my song too literally, sir. I meant only that your Counsel is sage, but the ideas contained therein would cost more money than I can ever hope to lay claim.”

She turned to face me then, her entire torso swivelling smoothly on well-oiled bearings. In the flickering light of the gas-lamp her shadow writhed across the carriage curtain, wreathing her in a halo of darkness.

“I have thought on this long, dear sir, do not think I have not,” she said. “I have little time for mental reckoning—my steam supply is cut off almost immediately after a performance—but even while I play I am able to spare a small portion of my thoughts to the dream of leaving this mobile cell, this endless parading before the world, this life of performance but nothing else. Ten years. For ten years I have had these thoughts.”

She stopped and her head cocked slightly to one side, as if she were listening carefully. When she next spoke it was in the tiniest whisper, like a flute played softly somewhere far away.

“I’ve made the acquaintance of an engineer, in Belgium,” she said and I had to strain forward to hear. “He has been very kind to me, dear indeed, and has promised to help me if he can. He assures me he is near to perfecting a suitable engine, just as you described but . . . our funds are lacking. He is a most wondrous man, so generous and gallant to help, but it will take time. It will take time and I have only the thought of him to keep me hoping . . . it might be years before we return to the Continent though, years!”

My heart seemed to shrivel in my chest. Who was this Belgian engineer? How long had they been acquainted? Irrationally, I disliked the man instantly. Jealousy welled up in me, bitter and confusing. I was a married man. I’d only known Kally for a few minutes; had not known of her at all a day ago. She was not even a
real
woman! An automaton, a machine! And yet, I could not deny the way her music, her voice, made me feel. Could not deny the beauty of her face, nor the travesty of the life-line that bound her to that circus as a slave.

“I want to help you, Kally,” I said, using her name aloud for the first time, tasting the sweetness of it in my mouth. “I am not a man of wealth but I will find a way. I have some funds—not much, but some. I will give it all to you. I don’t want you trapped in this carriage and I don’t want you waiting for some chap in Belgium to get you out. There are engineers here, in Australia, who can help. I know many of them. I’ll introduce you.
I’ll
fund the research.
I’ll
get you out of here.”

It all came out in a rush with no thought for how I was going to accomplish
anything
. I had no money with which to fund research. No connections, no experience. I was a Patent Office Clerk. Any money in the family was my wife’s; her inheritance, held in tight reign against my spending. I had no way of freeing Kally from her cage. None of this occurred to me until I was on my way home. None of it mattered at the time.

Our hushed conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door and the loud voice of McKenzie on the other side. “You okay in there, Kally? Hope you’re not talkin’ a load’a hot air to your admirer now,” and he laughed. “We really should be shuttin’ up for the night. ’Tis getting late and coal costs money, ya know.”

“Yes, Mr. McKenzie,” Kally said and then, softly to me, “Thank you, sir, thank you, but you really should go now. Mr. McKenzie has let me talk far longer than usual but I fear his patience will soon end.”

I stood quickly, almost knocking over the stool, and put my hand on her arm. It was hard and cold through the material of her dress and didn’t feel at all human. I don’t know why I was surprised. I assumed padding, I suppose, some attempt at making her feel as realistic as she looked. But then she was not designed to be touched. Somehow this revelation made her life seem all the more tragic.

“I will help you, Kally,” I said, whispering, reaching for the door handle. “I will be back tomorrow night. I’ll bring some money—to help the Belgian if he is your only hope—but I’ll think of something else. Something to get you away sooner.”

She smiled at me then, subtle gears turning, working her mouth into a perfect bow. Her eyes glowed with what I imagined was new hope, steeling me for the promises I’d made.

“Tomorrow night, be ready,” I said and stepped out the door.

The lights were off and my wife was already asleep when I returned home around ten o’clock that night. I crept through the house and climbed into bed as quietly, and as carefully, as I could. My wife did not stir but continued snoring softly as I lay staring at the ceiling.

Sleep did not come. Answers did not come.

Calliope music and Kally’s beatific voice played constantly in the back of my mind. Her face formed out of shadows like angels seen in the chance shape of a cloud but darker, more beautiful than any angel could be. A Muse caged for the entertainment of the masses. I had to help her. I had to free her. I could not think how.

Eventually the first grey light of dawn filtered through the curtains. I arose and moved silently to the credenza in the corner of the room, mindful of loose floorboards as I went. The credenza’s cover was down and as stiff and creaky as a crone. With cautious deliberation I was able to raise it and hunt around for our financials. I found them where I expected; a bundle of papers bound with string, tucked at the back of the top drawer.

I took the bundle and a pile of clothes and dressed in the hall. I did not take breakfast nor leave a note. I left with as much stealth as a middle-aged man is able, feeling excited and guilty, and as naughty as a schoolboy.