The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (32 page)

The first tableau was “The
Returned Californian”. This depicted a railway station, with the porters and
newsboys bustling about. The effect of an arriving train was crudely achieved.
From the train alighted a bearded man in buckskins, fresh from the California
goldfields and clutching a valise filled with banknotes and gold nuggets. There
was some byplay among the locals, as the Californian gave some money to a
beggar-woman, attracting the attention of a ragged beggar who feigned blindness
and lameness. The faker unfolded his bent leg and removed the bandage from his
eyes to stare at the wealth in the Californian’s valise. He gave the signal to
an urchin. Several street-Arabs arranged a diversion; the Californian’s valise
was snatched, and spirited away. There was a chase, involving several
constables, wearing the strange helmets that evidently were typical for New
York policemen. At last, the Californian and his suitcase were reunited through
the vigilance of a flower-girl, whom he rewarded.

These were not tableaux,
then, as Verne knew the term from his theatrical endeavours in the Boulevard du
Temple in Paris. A proper
tableau vivant
offered men and women posing
motionless in a dramatic setting: statues of flesh, enacting an artist’s
illustration. Barnum’s performers moved and gesticulated, and did everything
but speak. Why not call this offering a straightforward drama, then, instead of
a tableau?

The curtain descended,
then rose again. The second tableau was named “Union-Square on a Winter’s Night”.
This was a street scene, and the actors were bundled in coats and comforters.
In the orchestra stalls beneath his seat in Barnum’s private box, Jules Verne
heard a deep awestruck gasp from the audience, as a steady torrent of
snowflakes cascaded on to the stage from somewhere overhead. A most impressive
counterfeit of winter!

Verne applauded the
effect, but as he did so his brother Paul murmured into his ear: “See, Jules!
The actors: their breath does not fog into condensed vapour, as it would in
wintertime.”

“And their breath would
not fog upon a Parisian stage either,” Verne whispered back to his brother. “We
are witnessing an excellent stage effect.”

Again the curtain fell.
The third tableau was titled “Tenement House, Baxter Street”. As the curtain rose,
Jules Verne expected to see the stage still covered with artificial snow from
the previous scene. There was none. The tableau now depicted a one-room hovel,
with a few ragged tenants. Verne found this image unconvincing, as the large
and magnificent stage of Barnum’s playhouse made an incongruous backdrop for
the cramped and squalid tenement scene. As the players onstage enacted their
drama, Verne found his mind pursuing other matters.

What were all these
bizarre encounters he had lately experienced? The first had occurred on the
thirtieth of March, during the sailor’s funeral aboard the
Great Eastern.
Now,
the weird apparitions were arriving every few minutes. Were these due to the
excitement of visiting a new country, a new hemisphere? Verne frowned. Encounters
with the unexplained were all very well in his fictions, but . . .

There was a stirring in
the audience, and Verne’s brother Paul nudged him. The next tableau was
starting. In the 437 seats of Barnum’s theatre, 437 spectators leant forward
expectantly. “Streets of New York” had been advertised as
five
tableaux, yet it was evident
that this fourth tableau was the centrepiece of the affair. Consulting his
playbill, Verne saw that this next sequence was advertised — with a crescendo
of punctuation — as “The Fire! The Fire!! The Fire!!!” Now the stage’s
footlights suddenly went out, and all was darkness. Verne heard the creaking
pulleys as the curtain began its ascent.

A sudden shaft of light
— dazzling, yet flickering rapidly — burst from the gap between the footlamps
and the rising curtain. As the curtain continued its climb, the florid glow
became brighter. Verne gasped once more.
The
stage was on fire!
He rose from his seat,
resisting Barnum’s attempts to clutch his sleeve and restrain him.

Now he understood. There
was a fire onstage, yes . . . but it was a
coup de
theatre,
a remarkable simulation. Now a wave of applause broke forth, and
Verne joined into it, as he beheld stage effects far more remarkable than
anything he might have contrived in his own melodramas at the theatre in the
Rue du Crime, in the east end of Paris.

On the stage before him
was a New York brownstone dwelling. The upper storey was engorged in thick dark
smoke: Verne was aware of smudge-pots, yet he admired the ability of the stage
manager who had kindled these. The smoke billowed most convincingly from the
building’s windows. Visible through the walls were huge sheets of crackling
flame, orange and bronze-coloured. The illusion was so perfect that Verne felt
the temperature rise. Now he shuddered. Was this all a stage effect, or was he
experiencing one more of those peculiar visitations?

A woman appeared on the.
house’s balustrade, clutching a squalling infant and shouting piteously for
help. The fire was spreading rapidly, engulfing the brownstone. Verne bit his
lips nervously, trying to decipher how these effects were achieved. The
movement of the flames was very lifelike. Perhaps a sheet of butter-muslin —
illuminated from the rear by means of lanterns tinted with orange-hued glass,
and set to dancing by a steady current of pumped air — might counterfeit this
effect without the dangers of actual fire. Verne nodded, silently vowing to
duplicate this effect when he returned to his Parisian theatre.

From the wings of the
stage now, a clanging of brass. Verne was seated in a side box at stage left,
and in consequence he could not see anything entering from that side of the
wings. The audience on the other side loosed a fresh torrent of applause, and
Verne craned forward to see . . . then he gaped in astonishment.

A steam-powered
fire-engine rolled on to the stage. Astride its brass fittings were ten firemen
in glittering helmets. The chieftain leapt from his seat at the helm,
brandishing his brass fire-trumpet as he bellowed orders to his men. The men
dismounted, unfastening the cagings and ladders. On the building’s upper
storey, the spreading flames had nearly reached the woman and her child. Now,
in a dazzling display of hydrotechnics, a burst of water gushed forth from the
hoses and struck the flames, repelling them. The hiss of steam from the
fire-engine’s boiler was genuine; Verne could not tell if the hiss of steam
from the burning building was equally real. The counterfeit flames seemed
exceedingly real, yet Verne was certain he knew how this effect had been
achieved. The gush of water from the firemen’s hoses, the billows of steam as
this water met the flames and smoke . . . Verne felt certain that these too
must be false, yet he was utterly unable to determine how such effects were
achieved. The chequerwork parquet of the stage of Barnum’s theatre showed no
sign of water. Then how did . . .

Something clicked in his
brain, and suddenly Jules Verne staggered back from the heat.
The entire
theatre was burning, and this was no illusion!
He found himself standing in
the street, watching in horror as the giantess Anna Swan was lowered by means
of a block-and-tackle from the third floor of the five-storey museum while the
flames . . .

“A glimpse of the past,
Monsieur Verne. That is Barnum’s American Museum you behold, at Broadway and
Ann Street: considerably south of your present location, and hindwards in time.”
The flames grew oppressively hot as the voice whispered to Verne.
“The
American Museum was entirely consumed by fire on 13 July 1865, with great loss
of life . . . although, as you see, the giantess was rescued. The building
which you presently inhabit — Barnum’s latest showplace — will be consumed by
fire less than one year from today, on March third of . .”

Another click. Verne
found himself standing upright in his seat in Barnum’s private box, gripping
the gilded wooden rail overhanging the stage. In the makeshift tenement
onstage, the woman and her infant were now being snatched from the flames,
carried down the ladders by the valiant firemen and ushered to safety. Now,
with a roar and an inrush of air, the burning structure collapsed, so
realistically that people in the front rows of the theatre screamed and
recoiled.

Verne was suddenly
dizzy. These stage effects were
too
realistic. Desperate for air, he
staggered towards . . . what word? . . . the
egress.
There was applause;
he bowed instinctively.

“Stay, brother Jules.”
Beside him, Paul clutched a playbill. “See? The fifth tableaux still remains.
It will be instructive to observe how quickly Barnum’s stagehands can clear
this wreckage from the stage, to begin the final act.”

Verne glanced at the
card his brother thrust towards him. The fifth and last tableau was titled “The
Home of the Rich”. At another time, this might have intrigued him. Now, he
waved his brother aside and staggered towards the door.

“You all right, Verne?”
muttered Barnum, gesturing towards a pageboy. Verne nodded, pantomiming that he
only wished to clear his head. He flung the door open, stepping out of the
private box and into a corridor leading back to the museum.

On the second floor of
Barnum & Van Amburgh’s Museum, the aisles between the glass display cases
held fewer visitors now, for most of the museum’s patrons had gone into Barnum’s
theatre to watch the tableaux. As Jules Verne staggered past the Feejee Mermaid
and a portrait of the Earl of Southampton, he paused to rest beside a weird
conveyance: exactly like a royal coach, but scarcely a metre high. A brass
plate on its door explained that this vehicle was Tom Thumb’s Carriage, and two
Shetland ponies in convincing effigy were hitched to its traces.

“Hel-lo, hsssir,”
spoke a voice that
seemed inhuman.

Verne looked up, and
beheld a face that was human in shape yet not
alive. “Hel-lo, hsssir,”
it
repeated in English.

The hauntings again!
Verne retreated, intending to turn and walk swiftly away when he caught another
look at this interlocutor.

A man of metal stood
before him on a pedestal. The counterfeit man was authentically human in his
size and proportions. His limbs were gracefully jointed, although a long iron
strut attached to his right leg indicated that he had difficulty standing
upright.

The automaton was
dressed as a footman of the French court, in breeches and livery and peruke.
There were lace ruffles at his throat, half-concealing some mechanism that
Verne could barely perceive. The footman’s hands and face were carved wood,
painted to simulate human flesh, but the colour had faded . . . and on some of
the fingers it had chipped off altogether. He was perhaps five foot seven — two
inches shorter than Jules Verne — yet by virtue of the pedestal he towered over
Verne easily.

The footman stood in
profile. Now, suddenly, his head turned and faced directly towards Verne. His
eyes blinked, with mechanical precision. His jaw creaked open.

“Hel-lo, hsssir,”
the automatic man repeated. His right arm lifted stiffly, its hand
gesticulating.
“Hhhow are you?”
His eyelids blinked, revealing pale blue
eyes of Essen glass.

Hearing laughter, Verne
approached. At the base of the footman’s pedestal stood a device resembling a
harpsichord, with three banks of keys and levers: the former with ivory
fittings, the latter in stained wood. A man — reassuringly human, in a hideous
yellow waistcoat — was manipulating these, while two girls and a plump older
woman laughed and fanned themselves.

On a brass plate near
the keyboard, Jules Verne noticed a familiar name engraved:
JEAN EUGENE
ROBERT
^,
HOUDIN.
The great magician! Verne had met him, and attended
his performances in Montmartre. The inscription on this plate disclosed that
the mechanical footman was Robert-Houdin’s patented Speaking Automaton. A
bellows apparatus sent compressed air through the body of the Automaton,
enabling him to speak as if equipped with human lungs. By pressing the
manifolds of the keyboard, an operator could induce the Automaton to replicate
human speech.

The waistcoated man and
his companions had departed. Now the jaw of the Automaton dangled slackly and
silent. Eager to reassure himself that the machine’s voice was a man-made
contrivance, and not some unaccountable haunting, Verne approached the
keyboard. He ran his finger across several keys, in the manner of a glissando.

“Mnerghajib!”
cried the Automaton.

Verne chose a key at
random, and depressed this.

The Automaton emitted a
loud consonant of uncertain parentage.

There was a stool before
the keyboard. Seating himself, Verne now observed that each of the console’s
keys and levers was incised with a letter or phonetic symbol. Vowels were on
the lowermost bank of keys, nearest to hand, and the letter “E” centremost.
Robert-Houdin had contrived his keyboard so that most accessible keys produced
the letters uttered most frequently in French. Splaying his fingers, Jules
Verne located the keys that would approximate the letters of his name. He
touched the keys, interposing the sequence “JULES VERNE”.