Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain (18 page)

“The ball?” Edwin could not hide his amazement. Was all of New York invited to the Grand Duke's ball? Was he alone denied access to the finery?

“Yes, the ball,” Madeline said, lips forming a wry smile.

B
LOWN-GLASS LAMPS
, red, green, and blue, lit the Bowery. Edwin led Madeline by the arm, his elbow awkward where it touched her torso. The clouds threatened rain, but revelers still filled the street. Germans, dressed in lederhosen and suspenders, played discordant waltzes on trumpets, tubas, worn fiddles. Street merchants hawked hot corn. The air smelled of horse urine and fried oysters, and the streets held the slick, wet chill of the coming rains.

“Do you frequent these parts?” Madeline asked. Though she stood near, she did not look at him. He followed her
gaze to the parading couples, young, mostly, spirited, light as their laugher. She did not join their merriment, but she seemed amused by it.

“No,” Edwin said. He'd heard the other clerks speak fondly of the Bowery but had himself never ventured out to the street before. It was louder than he'd expected. Far more crowded, and not at all romantic. Right now, he stood beside a pasty drunk, who sang, sometimes to the music, sometimes to songs that played inside his head. A whore, bodice only half fastened, rushed past on her way to a darker, less-traveled alley. “I thought —”

“It's lovely,” she said. “The true New York. The New York of honest people, with honest lives and work and predicaments. Look at them all. Just look.”

Edwin considered the crowd, wary of the circle of dancers he'd noticed grabbing reluctant bystanders. “I suppose,” he said. When he imagined his life with Madeline, this street played no role. He and Madeline would live far uptown, and he would read both the morning and evening papers and hire a host of servants to help his dear wife run the house. They would take tea in the afternoon and brandy with their evening meal. He'd have no less than six horses draw their carriage, and he'd buy fine dresses from Worth, in Paris.

“These are my people.” She pulled a handful of pamphlets from beneath her jacket.

A butcher, still clad in a blood-splattered apron passed near, and Madeline stepped toward him. “Shorter work days!” she called. “Higher wages!”

Edwin watched, dumbstruck. How could she proselytize here? Now? She was his for the evening. In earlier days, in days before he'd found inner strength, he might have stood silently beside her, shrinking from the passing leers. He pulled Madeline to the side of the road, where a covered doorway provided some privacy. “You can't do that,” he said.

A pamphlet, soaked by the night humidity, hung limply in Madeline's hand. She gazed steadily at Edwin, wide-spaced eyes inquisitive. “Are you deranged?” she asked at last.

“Deranged?” For a moment, Edwin thought he might vomit. But he would not allow his nerves to defy him. His voice would not shake, his hands would not tremble.

“You promised your support this morning,” she said.

“Not this. I didn't promise this.” Beside Edwin, two drunks began to brawl. A thrown metal flask crashed against the cobblestone. Edwin's lips jerked open, his hand grasped her soft arm. “You don't belong here, doing this. You belong at home with children, a loving husband …”

A great torrent of rain tore through the sky. The music stopped, the dancing halted. Running bodies filled the broad street.

“Don't ever speak to a woman that way.” Madeline glared
at him, her features pinched with distaste. “In fact, don't speak to me at all.” She turned, stepped away, her shoulders rigid.

“Wait!” Edwin followed. “I only —”

“If you come near me, I'll call for a constable.”

“I —”

“Constable!” she cried, raising a drenched arm into the driving rain.

Edwin stopped, uncertain. Would an officer listen to him, a clerk, over a woman invited to the Grand Duke's ball? Likely not, and there was no telling what Madeline might say. She was the one deranged, not he, though his passion for her remained.

“You must not walk the streets alone!” Edwin cried after her, but his voice held no strength. Water beaded in his hair, flowed down the sides of his face. His evening had only just begun. He hadn't even taken her to dinner.

Stunned, he followed a crowd of street revelers — young men who moved like their laughter, in bursts interrupted with wild boasts and confident wagers — through a wide doorway. Absently, he handed the ticket booth a nickel and passed into a grand hall lit with brilliant torches. Flickering shadows colored the room in formless blue-gray swatches; the muffled sound of pouring rain dulled the audience's applause. Hundreds of occupied seats faced a central stage, which stretched long and flat in an oval. An organ grinder
played, but Edwin didn't hear the music, didn't even realize that he blocked a young girl's view of the stage, till her mother rapped his shoulder.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Onstage, a lace-clad woman stood on the bare back of a white stallion. Feathers and glittering jewels. A hunchback stood center stage calling out tricks: “Jump!” or “Spin!” which the woman performed. Clowns with white faces and lurid red smiles strolled among the seats with candied apples, which they offered to children and then pulled away.
For me! All for me!
they seemed to cry. To one side stood a midget dressed as a leprechaun, an obese woman in a tremendous silk dress, a man with an extra arm, an albino whose pale skin seemed to shimmer, identical twins dressed in matching striped trousers, and Mistress Gradiva, who danced just as she had in the department store, except that she now wore a short-sleeved gold dress and no stockings so as to reveal the hair on her arms and legs. She spun, kicked, raised her arms above her head. Then she reached toward a large wooden crate, which exploded as a bald man in a bright blue suit jumped out. He bowed to the audience, took the mistress's hand, and together the two waltzed.

Edwin watched, though his thoughts were far from the parading grotesques. Cold, despite the heat of the crowd and the flaming torches, he waited only for the rain to subside so that he might return alone to his squalid apartment.
The first inklings of a plan had begun to take form in his head. He would see Madeline again, tomorrow night. He'd hold her, dance with her, sweep her off her feet. And in the morning, to prepare, he would become confident beneath the healing shock of Doctor Steenwycks's magneto.

B
ENEATH THE LOW
ceiling of the doctor's office, Edwin's muscles twitched in violent spasms. The current built inside him, hot as burning oil: pure energy, intoxicating. He raised his arms as the electrodes passed over his forehead, his chest. Doctor Steenwycks's fingers and the damp sponge encasing the metal disks had no weight on his skin. Only the current touched him. Eyes shut, Edwin could see it: a tidal wave of orange and red. “Yes!” he cried. The force had never been so strong, so constant. The howl of the magneto rose, piercing and high, louder than even a moment before. Exploding. Only after the shock ceased, did Edwin recognize the cadence of his screams. “Very good,” Doctor Steenwycks told him. “Very good.”

T
HE EVENING OF
the Grand Duke's ball found Edwin in high spirits. Without any trouble, he'd smuggled a smartly cut tailcoat, fitted trousers, and a pair of fine leather boots from Macy's. And he had only to shave and trim his hanging cuticles without drawing blood before he set off for the dance. The fact that he did not have an invitation no longer deterred him.

He left his carriage-sized room, his cast-off clerk's garb strewn over the floor, and walked barefoot up Broadway — a plan he'd devised to preserve the soles of his shoes so that he might return them to Macy's shelves unharmed. The night stretched hot and humid. Sweat collected in the fabric of his shirt and threatened to stain the fine weave of his borrowed outer garments. But Edwin felt calm. Madeline could not resist, would not resist his request for a dance, and he'd win her subtly, avoiding her mad politics till she hung limply in his arms and agreed to abandon her notions forever.

A dozen fine carriages stood before the music hall, each with a driver dressed nearly as well as Edwin. Women in tremendous skirts required two or three gentlemen escorts before they could travel the yards between their coaches and the hall's grand entryway. Edwin slipped into the shadows and tied his boots, his eyes adjusting to the landscape of wealth. He must remember to approach with confidence.

“Why, Edwin Macready! Such an unexpected pleasure.” Strolling through the shadows was none other than Doctor Steenwycks, his hair soaped back, and his suit impeccably clean. “I came out for air,” he explained. “Have you met everybody?”

“I've only just arrived,” Edwin said, deciding that anything more might sound suspicious.

“It's good to see you feeling so well!” The doctor threw a welcoming arm around his shoulder and led him up the
marble steps to where a cluster of gentlemen stood. Doctor Steenwycks made introductions, turning first to a stooped, bearded fellow in a towering hat.

“Another patient of yours!” the man said. “The last made such a fine manager.” He extended his hand, the skin as soft as worn fabric. “You're not seeking employment, are you?”

Edwin turned to the doctor, unsure of how to respond. Was the man hiring him? Here on the steps of the Grand Duke's ball?

“Edwin's a wonderful worker,” Doctor Steenwycks said. “A fine man all around now that he's cured.”

“I'd expect nothing less from one of your patients.” The man peered into Edwin's half-open mouth, perhaps counting the teeth, or confirming their quality. “Karl Harrison,” he said at last, “at your service.”

Edwin looked past him, to the far side of the street where a familiar voice cried out. “Shorter work days! Higher pay!” Madeline stood behind a small table, her short hair framing her lovely features. She wore her day clothes, a gray skirt with matching blouse and only a ribbon for jewelry. No one stopped to take her fliers; no one listened, though several young men pointed to her and laughed.

“She's been at it for hours,” Harrison said, shaking his head and turning to join the party.

“Why spoil the evening?” Doctor Steenwycks agreed. “Come along, Edwin. The show's begun.”

Edwin stood at the doorstep. Inside, well-dressed women paraded over parquet floors. The light played over bodies, grown wider and taller with the clothes Edwin sold, the female form, distorted by garments, was no longer human, though none of the gentlemen seemed to mind. At the center, upon a raised platform, Mistress Gradiva danced, hairy arms and legs bared for the spectators, fur twitching as she spun. The hunchback had come as well, Edwin realized, along with the midget who now carried a miniature parasol.

“Come along, Edwin,” the doctor repeated.

“Why can't we vote? Why can't women vote?” Madeline called. Edwin couldn't bring her inside dressed as she was. He couldn't dance with her now that she'd upset the guests with her foolishness. But he could slip out of the party and talk to her later. He could leave the ball to help her, make her come to her senses. Or he could find her tomorrow, he decided, on Fourteenth Street. He'd share news of his profession: a manager, for Karl Harrison. He'd point to himself, a healed man, a man who required a respectable wife. He'd offer an ultimatum: me or the vote. She would make the right decision. And with one step, Edwin entered the celebration.

T
HE
S
IBLINGS

When the snow had gone but winter had not yet lifted, Abraham returned to New York. He'd left the city as a slight, dark-haired youth, a boy who made promises like a man: “I'll cure you,” to his mad sister, Lillian; “I'll write every Sunday,” to his older sister, Chastity; “I'll marry you,” to Hilda, the judge's daughter; “I'll take over your practice,” to his father, who had no intention of passing on any time soon, God rest his soul. He returned from abroad, after squandering the family fortune on ill-fated bets, with a holy kind of pallor. He wore his hair long on top and slicked back in what was likely the latest Swiss fashion, and he squinted through a pair of eyeglasses engraved with his initials so that anyone meeting his eye was distracted by the curve of the letters cut into the glass.