Dangerous Laughter (25 page)

Perhaps this. Understands that haptograph is far from complete. Protected by caveat. Sees Kistenmacher’s growing obsession. Needs to wrest his best electrical experimenter from a profitless task and redirect his energies more usefully. So: destruction of machine an excuse to put aside experiment. Good. Fine. But surely something more? Relief? Shedding of a tremendous burden? The machine eluding him, betraying him—its drift from the practical, its invitation to heretical pleasures. Haptograph as seductress. Luring him away. A secret desire to be rid of it. No more! Consider: his sudden cheerfulness, his hum. Ergo.

And Earnshaw? His hostility to experiment serves larger design. By striking in rage at Wizard’s handiwork, unwittingly fulfills Wizard’s secret will. Smash it up, bash it up. Earnshaw as eruption of master’s darkness, emissary of his deepest desire. Burn! Die! The Wizard’s longing to be rid of haptograph flowing into Earnshaw’s hatred of haptograph as wicked machine. Two wills in apparent opposition, working as one. Die! Inescapable conclusion: arm raised in rage against Wizard’s work is the Wizard’s arm.

Could it be?

It could be.

Kistenmacher entombed with speaking doll. The Wizard flies from room to room, busies himself with a hundred projects, ignores haptograph.

No one enters the Box.

DECEMBER 30.
Nothing.

FEBRUARY 16, 1890.
Today in courtyard overheard one of the new men speak of haptograph. Seemed embarrassed when I questioned him. Had heard it was shaped like a life-size woman. Was it true she could speak?

Already passing into legend. Must harden myself. The experiment has been abandoned.

Snow in the streets. Through the high windows, the clear sharp jingle of harness bells.

Perhaps I dreamed it all?

Have become friendly with Watkins, the new stockroom clerk. A vigorous, compact man, former telegraph operator, brisk, efficient, humorous; dark blond side-whiskers. His passion for things electrical. Proposes that, for a fee, the owner of a telephone be permitted to listen to live musical performances: a simple matter of wiring. The electric boot, the electric hat. Electric letter opener. A fortune to be made. One day accompanied him down to storeroom, where he searched for supply of cobalt and magnesium requested by an assistant in electrical lab who was experimenting on new storage battery. Saw with a kind of sad excitement that we were approaching a familiar door. “What’s in there?”—couldn’t stop myself. “Oh that,” said Watkins. Takes out a ring of keys. Inside: piles of wooden crates, up to ceiling. “Horns and antlers,” he said. “Look: antelope, roebuck, gazelle. Red deer. Walrus tusks, rhino horns.” Laughter. “Not much call for these items. But heck, you never can tell.”

A dream, a dream!

No: no dream. Or say, a dream, certainly a dream, nothing but a dream, but only as all inventions are dreams: vivid and impalpable presences that haunt the mind’s chambers, escaping now and then into the place where they take on weight and cast shadows. The Wizard’s laboratory a dream-garden, presided over by a mage. Why did he abandon haptograph? Because he knew in his bones that it was commercially unfeasible? Because it fell too far short of the perfected phonograph, the elegant promise of kinetoscope? Was it because haptograph had become a terrible temptress, a forbidden delight, luring him away from more practical projects? Or was it—is it possible—did he sense that world was not yet ready for his haptograph, that dangerous machine which refused to limit itself to the familiar feel of things but promised an expansion of the human into new and terrifying realms of being?

Yesterday the Wizard spent ten hours in metallurgical lab. Adjustments in ore-separator. “It’s a daisy!” Expects it to revolutionize the industry. Bring in a handsome profit.

The haptograph awaits its time. In a year—ten years—a century—it will return. Then everyone will know what I have come to know: that the world is hidden from us—that our bodies, which seem to bring us the riches of the earth, prevent the world from reaching us. For the eyes of our skin are closed. Brightness streams in on us, and we cannot see. Things flow against us, and we cannot feel. But the light will come. The haptograph will return. Perhaps it will appear as a harmless toy in an amusement parlor, a playful rival of the gustograph and the odoroscope. For a nickel you will be able to feel a ball in the palm of your hand, a hat sitting on your head. Gradually the sensations will grow more complex—more elusive—more daring. You will feel the old body slipping off, a new one emerging. Then your being will open wide and you will receive—like a blow—like a rush of wind—the in-streaming world. The hidden universe will reveal itself like fire. You will leave yourself behind forever. You will become as a god.

I will not return to these notes.

Snow on the streets. Bright blue sky, a cloud white as house paint. Rumble of dynamos from the machine shop. Crackle of hickory logs, a shout from the courtyard. An unremarkable day.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Millhauser’s first novel,
Edwin Mullhouse,
was published in 1972 and several years later received the Prix Médicis Étranger in France. Since then he has published ten works of fiction, among them several collections of stories and novellas, as well as the novel
Martin Dressler,
which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997. He is also a recipient of the Lannan Award and has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His stories have been included in
Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories,
and other anthologies. His story “Eisenheim the Illusionist,” from
The Barnum Museum,
was the basis of the 2006 film
The Illusionist.
Mr. Millhauser’s work has been translated into fourteen languages. He teaches at Skidmore College and lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.

ALSO BY STEVEN MILLHAUSER

THE KING IN THE TREE

ENCHANTED NIGHT

THE KNIFE THROWER

MARTIN DRESSLER

LITTLE KINGDOMS

THE BARNUM MUSEUM

FROM THE REALM OF MORPHEUS

IN THE PENNY ARCADE

PORTRAIT OF A ROMANTIC

EDWIN MULLHOUSE

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

COPYRIGHT © 2008 BY STEVEN MILLHAUSER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC., NEW YORK, AND IN CANADA BY RANDOM HOUSE OF CANADA LIMITED, TORONTO.

WWW.AAKNOPF.COM

KNOPF, BORZOI BOOKS, AND THE COLOPHON ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.

THE FOLLOWING STORIES HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED, SOME IN SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT FORM: “THE DOME” IN
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR,
“A CHANGE IN FASHION” AND “THE WIZARD OF WEST ORANGE” IN
HARPER’S MAGAZINE
;
“A PRECURSOR OF THE CINEMA” AND “THE TOWER” IN
M
c
SWEENEY’S
;
“
CAT ’N’ MOUSE,” “THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELAINE COLEMAN,” “HISTORY OF A DISTURBANCE,” AND “IN THE REIGN OF HARAD IV” IN
THE NEW YORKER
;
AND “DANGEROUS LAUGHTER,” “THE OTHER TOWN,” AND “THE ROOM IN THE ATTIC” IN
TIN HOUSE
.

SOME OF THESE STORIES WERE ALSO PUBLISHED IN THE FOLLOWING: “DANGEROUS LAUGHTER” IN
THE BEST OF TIN HOUSE
(TIN HOUSE BOOKS, PORTLAND, 2006); “A CHANGE IN FASHION” IN
THE O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES 2008
,
EDITED BY LAURA FURMAN (ANCHOR BOOKS, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC., NEW YORK, 2008); “THE DOME” IN
THE PUSHCART PRIZE XXXII
,
EDITED BY BILL HENDERSON (PUSHCART PRESS, WAINSCOTT, NEW YORK, 2007); AND “CAT ’N’ MOUSE” IN
THE STORY AND ITS WRITER, SEVENTH EDITION
,
EDITED BY ANN CHARTERS (BEDFORD/ST. MARTIN’S, NEW YORK, 2007).

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

MILLHAUSER, STEVEN.

DANGEROUS LAUGHTER : THIRTEEN STORIES / BY STEVEN MILLHAUSER.—1ST ED.

P. CM.

I. TITLE.

PS3563.I422D36 2008

813'.54—DC22                                     2007022929

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. NAMES, CHARACTERS, PLACES, AND INCIDENTS EITHER ARE THE PRODUCT OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FICTITIOUSLY. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, EVENTS, OR LOCALES IS ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL.

eISBN: 978-0-307-26873-0

v3.0