17

The morning they left Basel, Bonny brought Hilda a flower from the gardens, a white fleshy blossom with a heavenly scent, and Hilda thought he had forgiven her for failing to deliver on her promises. She wore the flower in the buttonhole of her jacket all the way by train to Lyon, but the next day, Bonny was distant again and the flower had turned brown at the edges.

Bonny had said he would attend the session asked of him at the Lyon museum and the displays in the neighbouring gardens but only if Hilda’s father paid him three times his normal amount, and Louis had agreed.

Now it was morning again and time to leave the hotel that Hagenbeck had arranged in La Croix-Rousse, where the sound of silk workers had kept Hilda awake long into the night despite her tiredness. Bonny’s beret grazed the roof of the carriage as he stepped inside, and Hilda found herself wanting to tell him not to wear the hat, which she thought made him look foolish and which she knew people at the museum would laugh at. People laughed at the beret everywhere Bonny went, jesting that he was a man striving for heights above his station. Did he not notice their cruel mirth? Perhaps he no longer cared what people made of him, Hilda thought. She cared, however. She could not help thinking it reflected on her and would affect their chances of being together, something she had only recently allowed herself to properly consider. She reached across to remove the beret.

‘You are not my mother,’ Bonny said in Badtjala, slapping her hand.

Hilda, her eyes stinging, watched him take his seat diagonally opposite her.

‘Sorry, Bonny,’ she said and felt her father’s eyes on her. Her father should be the one apologising, she thought, overwhelmed with tiredness, her limbs suddenly drained of their power. How could he still be asking such things of Bonny? How could she? The muscles at the back of her neck were tight from propping herself up in bed during her illness in Basel and then the long train ride, and she pressed her fingers deeply into the areas that hurt.

What was Dorondera doing now, Hilda wondered, taking from her pocket a fine silk scarf she had bought as a gift for her just yesterday. Was she enjoying a fine meal? Parading around a gallery? Did Dorondera feel at all lost without her, as Hilda did without Dorondera?

The coach lurched forwards, and Hilda opened her window. A late summer breeze met them as they crossed a street bordered with tall buildings flushed alternately deep red, ochre yellow and pastel pink. There were flashes of fabric as silk weavers moved flighty fabrics through covered passageways, and Hilda considered what it might be like to wake in the same bed each night and work at the same loom each day. Would that make a person happy? And what if a woman were to earn her own money? The possibility, the freedom, of that she could only imagine.

They traversed the Croix-Rousse hill and headed east over the Rhône and along the grand Boulevard des Belge, which bordered the Parc de la Tête d’Or. It was not long before the carriage drew to a stop at the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, a three-storey building that filled the street corner and ended in a cylindrical structure where the main entrance was situated. Above the entrance, on the highest level, was a curved balcony that Hilda imagined would have an excellent view out across the parklands and the zoo.

An attendant met them at the museum’s towering wooden door and showed them up a wide staircase to the second level. There was the familiar sound of a large gathering of male voices coming from a side room. Many times in recent months, Bonny had asked Hilda why the doctors and scientists were still so interested in him. ‘They have measured me already. I have done their tests.’ He motioned tightening his grip, illustrating the test of strength he had been repeatedly asked to perform. Hilda answered again that he was unlike anyone they had ever seen. ‘Difference,’ she explained, ‘fascinates them.’

‘But these are the last examinations, Bonny,’ she promised. ‘The very last. And, Papa tells me, they will soon make a plaster cast of you, so no one will ever have to measure you again. Then we will return to London. I am also angry at my father for –’

‘A cast?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled.

Inside the room, Louis, Hilda and Bonny were introduced to Dr Ernest Chantre, who was examining five Zulus recently arrived in the city. As Bonny entered, a colour chart measuring skin darkness was again held against various parts of his body. Bonny stood patiently, holding out an arm, then a leg, lifting his shirt, exposing his buttocks. Hilda looked away. Another man entered and nodded his greetings. Hilda watched her father overcorrect his posture as he had done with Professor Virchow. The man was introduced as Léonce Manouvrier, a scientist she had heard her father say had a reputation for being difficult to impress.

Manouvrier studied the scene in front of him, with a focus on Bonny.

‘Let me say at the outset, Herr Müller, I see no scientific value in the spectacles I hear you have been taking part in. The further you distance yourself from such endeavours, the better.’

‘The exhibitions merely serve a function –’ Hilda’s father began in French.

‘They are becoming everything science is not,’ Manouvrier interrupted. He described ‘the redskins’ he had seen at the Jardin d’Acclimatation and how they had ignored him soon after he had given them gifts. He said they did not wish to be measured and filled the tent with smoke to force him outside. He laughed. ‘In short, they have been spoiled. My prediction, Herr Müller, is that science and spectacle will soon become distant relations. It is an unhealthy partnership.’

‘Let me assure you –’

‘I am beyond needing assurance. My views on the matter are quite strong, you may have gathered. The matter is simple. The spectacs have grown in size and nature and are now something quite ugly, telling us more about ourselves than the visiting tribes. If you keep showing him, as you have,’ he said, ‘his worth as a natural example of his type will diminish. It would be a great loss.’

Hilda noticed her father’s stance becoming strained, and there was a hardness to his face and jaw.

‘Showing Bonny to scientific audiences is not without cost,’ Louis erupted. ‘How do you propose I earn enough to keep him fed, housed and dressed? And, of course, there are transport costs. You,’ he said, pointing to every man in the room, ‘are the beneficiaries of my efforts, happy to publish what you learn from him. Tell me, how else would you gain access to a living Aborigine? Have you made your own travels abroad? And should the public not have the chance to be educated also?’

‘Don’t misunderstand me, please,’ Manouvrier said, his tone amused. ‘We are fortunate to see him. Certainly grateful. I am just trying to say that we must make sure the commercial aspects of the shows don’t corrupt the authenticity we are now observing. In my experience, many of the people being shown have been contaminated by European influences.’

‘It was always our intention to do just as you say, regarding authenticity. Sometimes the venues … It is not always within my control,’ Louis said.

Hilda studied Manouvrier. He had articulated much of what she had come to see as the shameful truth of the business they were in, for surely it had become that: a business. Why could her father not take responsibility for his mistakes?

‘I agree with you,’ she told the Frenchman.

Her father turned on her. ‘Hilda, I am not sure your assistance is required today …’ he began, as a man in a black cap appeared at the door and jogged towards them. He was flummoxed and breathless from running up the stairs.

‘Prince Rolande Bonaparte has arrived unexpectedly to take photographs.’

The men regarded one another.

‘The Prince is here now?’ Chantre asked.

‘Yes,’ the man said, looking at the doorway. ‘Unannounced.’

‘He’s related to the Bonaparte?’ Hilda asked Manouvrier quietly.

‘A great-nephew, yes,’ he answered. ‘Royalty nevertheless, and a respected anthropologist in his own right. His photographs are quite extraordinary. It is just the sort of record we need, although he is overly fond of props, most of which bear no relevance to the actual subject. A juxtaposition perhaps, or a symbol of domesticity, I don’t really understand it –’

There were footsteps outside, and the man in the black cap pulled out a stool and asked Bonny to sit on it. At the same moment, Prince Bonaparte strode into the room with an assistant carrying a large camera and tripod. The scientists bowed in unison.

The Prince was dressed in a fine suit with a pink silk necktie. He looked at Bonny and then at the Zulus who were standing off to the side, conversing amongst themselves.

‘I am grateful to be invited,’ the Prince said. He took a small stuffed dog from his carry bag and placed it in front of Bonny as his assistant set up the camera. It was a French bulldog, a breed Hilda had never seen in Australia. Manouvrier discreetly winked at her.

Bonny looked at the small, squat dog and laughed, shaking his head in dismay, before staring straight ahead into the camera lens as if challenging it to shoot.