Vienna, Austria 1902
A traveling museum moves down the dim thoroughfares of Salzburg and Innsbruck, Eisenstadt and Enns. Tents unfold from black carriages after sunset. Canvas glows with lamplight. A carnival barker leans against a tall podium, the front of which is painted with a single, staring eye. The barker doesn’t speak. He looks as though he’s half inside a dream. A phonograph in the museum’s entryway emits a crackling voice. It’s a doctor making notes on a patient with a mysterious disease: “The subject reports a belief that she is, in fact, a machine. Life for her is a function of someone else’s devising. Speech is scripted. Action, no longer spontaneous. [The record skips.] Each day, the subject claims it is as though she’s been asked to play out a scene. When I inquire who has asked her to do such a thing, she will not reply.”
After purchasing a ticket from the dreaming barker, patrons are confronted with the museum’s curious exhibition. In an antechamber, there are six faceless statues, diminutive men like brown homunculi. A placard explains the statues were retrieved from tombs in ancient Egypt. Pharaonic priests once used them during a ceremony called “the opening of the mouth.” The ritual was thought to bring clay bodies to life, and the statues acted as guardians of the temple’s treasure.
A young female patron with a gathering of edelweiss in her hair leans close to her husband’s ear and asks if he thinks the statues might still be alive. Perhaps they guard the museum’s corridors at night. The husband takes his wife’s hand and smiles into his black mustache. “This isn’t a house of horrors, Annalise. It is merely a showing of history. A remembrance. Come along now. I’ll protect you.”
Deeper still, patrons encounter the automatic chess player of Johann Maelzel that famously toured the Americas in the middle years of the previous century. The author E. A. Poe wrote of it. The automaton is said to have played astonishing games of chess, besting even the most skilled of competitors. It is broken now, a wreck of rust and peeling paint. One of the chess player’s eyes has fallen from its head; the other is nothing more than a staring silver orb.
Arnaud Eisler, a baker’s son from Vienna, wanders the makeshift halls of the traveling museum, peering carefully into its cluttered and dimly lit chambers. He is admittedly not interested in the curious displays—the robot made of wood and leather that once belonged to a king of the Zhou Dynasty, the Book of Stones written by a Muslim priest that details how to fashion live snakes and scorpions from wax, or even the mechanical angel built during the Late Middle Ages that is said to turn its face always toward the sun. These are dust-ridden relics from another age. And Arnaud has only recently arrived in the fullness of his youth. He’s far more interested in his search for beauty. And it’s just that search that brought him inside the museum tonight. For, not more than ten minutes ago, Arnaud saw the handsomest of boys—a docent, according to the badge he wore—lingering at the museum’s tented entryway. The docent was possessed of such striking beauty: thick dark hair, firmly parted, and queer, inquisitive eyes. He was dressed in a well-fitted suit and leather jackboots. He looked nothing like the rough boys of Vienna. The moment Arnaud saw the docent, he desired him. He thought that if he could encounter this vision inside the museum, perhaps they might strike up some conversation. One thing would lead to another. And if the docent was so inclined, they might share a kiss, as Arnaud had so recently done with the son of a traveling merchant. That young man had tasted like stale cigarettes and liquor. This docent, however, would certainly taste far sweeter.
Yet now that Arnaud has purchased a ticket from the gaunt, silent barker behind the podium and made his way inside the tent, he finds the docent has disappeared into the shadows. Arnaud quickly begins to feel as though he’s lost in a system of nested dreams. In one alcove, he sees what appears to be a mechanical black monk that rolls its white eyes and strikes its chest with a wooden cross at timed intervals. There too is a Roman suit of armor that’s said to be a metal soldier called Talus alongside a self-reading book belonging to Count Artois of Burgundy. The book drones endlessly in Latin, using a high tinny voice. Finally, there’s a mechanical bird with silver plumage and opal eyes displayed beneath a dome of glass. A placard explains that the Greek inventor Asclepius fashioned the bird. When wound, it is said to possess the ability to lead its owner to the very gates of Heaven.
Arnaud leans against the pedestal. “Damned fowl,” he whispers. He should have gone to the tavern tonight or even to the stables where other young men are known to meet. He would have been guaranteed a kiss at least, even if it weren’t from the one he so greatly desires. It’s then that a voice behind him says, “Well now . . . what are your interests here?” Arnaud turns to see the dark-haired docent who’s miraculously appeared from behind a black curtain. The boy is taller than Arnaud first believed. He has a faint yet pleasing accent. There’s a distinct smell about him too, eucalyptus mixed with the tang of sweat. Arnaud’s face feels hot. He’s afraid he’s blushing. But then again, the flickering lamplight in the chamber is so dim he doesn’t think the boy will see.
“Interests?” Arnaud says.
The docent comes closer, wearing half a smirk. He adjusts the lapels of his own trim suit. “What have you come to see?”
Arnaud looks at the metal bird—the mechanical guide to Heaven. He thinks of all the exhibits he’s encountered so far and finds he doesn’t know how to respond. “Have you ever wound the bird?” he asks.
The docent shakes his head. “The key’s lost. All the keys are lost. So say the proprietors.”
“I didn’t know the traveling museum was coming,” Arnaud says. “There were no fliers in the square.”
“No,” the docent says. “I don’t suppose there were.”
Arnaud realizes he’s already straining for a topic. Not a good sign. He came inside wanting to charm this boy, but now it’s as if his thoughts labor under the weight of some spell. He’s reminded of the heat in his own father’s bakery, the way it can make him feel light-headed in the late afternoon. “What’s the museum called then?” he asks finally.
“Doesn’t have a name,” the docent replies.
“Everything has a name,” Arnaud says.
“It just a place where people come,” the docent says, “for one reason or another. They find us.”
“And who are these proprietors?” Arnaud asks. “Who do you work for?”
The docent’s lips are thin and pale, yet somehow still seem exceedingly sensual. “Do you want to take a walk?” he asks. “I can show you some things if you like.”
Arnaud nods. Of course he wants to take a walk. And he follows the docent down a dim hall, admiring the slope of the boy’s shoulders and the narrowness of his waist. They soon pause to consider what appears to be a body beneath a sheet on a table. A placard nearby simply reads: “The Resurrection.” The body begins to move haltingly and make a coughing noise as if trying to clear liquid from its throat. The docent pulls at Arnaud’s sleeve. “Better not to look at this one for too long, I think.”
The deeper the two boys move, the more Arnaud feels that he is missing some significant component of the traveling museum—a clue that would unlock the meaning of this place. He doesn’t understand how the museum is organized, or even if it’s organized. In one room, there’s a porcelain doll that laughs, showing tiny pearllike teeth. In another, there’s a shriveled brown hand that’s said to come to life once every thousand years. There’s a mirror that reflects a human shadow, yet no one is standing in front of it. Across the hall, there’s a chamber that, through some trick of light, appears to contain an entire ocean.
“My name is Arnaud Eisler,” Arnaud says as they walk. “Would you tell me your name?”
“I don’t have one, I’m afraid,” the docent says.
Now Arnaud feels as though he’s being teased. Perhaps the docent can smell the bakery flour on Arnaud’s clothing. Perhaps the docent thinks he is some country fool. “No name?” Arnaud says. “Just like the exhibition, eh?”
“Not exactly like that,” the docent says. “I had a name once, I suppose. I just forgot it. Too much traveling, you see.” He turns and winks at Arnaud.
There is very little conversation after that. They come to another phonograph like the one in the entryway. This one plays a recording of a man who’s supposedly been dead for twelve days and has recently awakened. In a halting, weak voice that is oddly pitched, the man tells of the places he visited in death. “There was a garden,” he says, “where souls changed form. Men became animals and animals, men. Some of the souls left the garden. They moved up like stars.”
“Maybe we could go to a café,” Arnaud offers. “Have a coffee? A glass of wine?”
“Difficult to get away,” the docent says.
Arnaud clears his throat. He wants to ask questions: Do you like to touch? Are you interested in boys? Instead, he decides on a safer line. “So, where do you come from?” he asks. “Where did the exhibition begin?”
The docent looks distant, as if trying to recall. “There’s just one more thing I think you should see,” he says finally. “It’s what most people come for, even though they don’t always know it. Follow me.”
Arnaud actually considers declining the offer. This whole experience has been so improbable. So unexpected. He realizes he isn’t even likely to get that kiss. But then he looks at the docent again, appreciating the way the boy tilts his head as he waits in the doorway.
“Why not,” Arnaud says. “Lead on.”
As they walk, Arnaud sees indistinct bodies in the shadows up ahead that seem to swell and diminish. He wonders if these are other patrons or perhaps something else that wanders here in the museum. Arnaud realizes that he’s a wandering shadow now too. He and the lovely docent. He thinks of his mother and father who are, at that moment, likely waiting for him in the warm rooms above the bakery. His father will be reading from the Bible. His mother will sit in a chair and peer out through the high window. Some part of him wishes he were there. He’d tell them the story of the museum, how strange it all was.
“Just down here,” the docent says. And surprisingly, a staircase appears before them. A staircase in a tent? Arnaud thinks. That isn’t possible. And yet they are descending.
“The proprietors are of the belief,” the docent is saying, “that the whole cosmos is a clockwork. We are all pieces in its mechanism. They’ve invented a model of—well—you’ll see.”
At the bottom of the staircase, it’s so dark that Arnaud can’t see anything. He feels the docent’s fingers brush his hand and draws back. The boy is cold, impossibly so.
“Maybe we shouldn’t—” Arnaud says.
“What’s wrong?” the docent asks.
“Nothing,” Arnaud replies. “I only want a cigarette.”
The boy is so close now that Arnaud thinks he should be able to feel his breath. Yet there’s nothing. “It’s just up ahead,” the docent says. And before Arnaud can ask any more questions, they’re moving once again. Down a twisting corridor that looks as though it’s been hewn from the earth itself. We’re in a cave, Arnaud thinks. But he knows that’s ridiculous, of course. This isn’t a cave. It’s another part of the traveling museum, another illusion in this collection of illusions.
And then Arnaud sees it there in the half-light—what appears to be a full-sized clockwork man. The clockwork crawls in the dust of the cavern floor, making odd stiff movements with its hands, as if searching for something.
“Go ahead,” the docent says. “Have a look.”
As Arnaud approaches, he recognizes the figure’s clothes: brown trousers and a loose cotton shirt, common clothes, dappled with flour. The android’s hair is dun-colored. And the face—Arnaud has seen that wide, square face in his own shaving glass. For there, crawling in the dust of the cavern floor, is Arnaud himself. Only it’s not him. This is some copy, some piece of metal brought to life.
“The proprietors,” the docent says, “are building a cosmos within the cosmos. Smaller and smaller, you see. Eventually, we’ll have one of everything here.”
Arnaud doesn’t speak. How can he?
“You seem surprised,” the docent says. “I thought this is why you came—to look at this. But people come for different reasons.”
Arnaud gets down on his hands and knees to look into his copy’s greenish glass eyes. They seem empty at first—without a soul—then Arnaud sees something deep inside. It’s another copy, he thinks, a boy in the black cave of the android’s pupil, crawling there. The miniature boy is thinking of his parents who sit above the warm bakery, waiting for him to come home. He’s thinking of how he could have gone to the stables. He could have held hands with a soldier or had a night of swimming in the pond at the northern edge of the city with the miller’s son. He’s thinking what a fool he’s been. How many of these boys are there? Arnaud wonders as he stares into the cave of the creature’s glass eye. How many of me? He looks toward the docent again and realizes the boy might now, finally, be ready to give him that kiss. It will taste like dust, Arnaud thinks. It will taste like something formed a thousand years ago. As all these things here are made of dust.
“I should go,” Arnaud says.
“Yes,” the docent says with a faint smile. “I suppose you should try.”