The Museum of Extraordinary Things(36)
“So many,” she said, marveling at the birds, forgetting she was not allowed to address the hired man. “I wonder if they speak to each other, like men and women, or if their calling goes unanswered.”
The hired man buttoned his jacket, as if this might make their conversation more acceptable. “Men and women rarely speak to each other, though they often talk.”
They were out of the Professor’s hearing and sight, so Coralie continued. “People might speak freely if they didn’t fear one another’s judgments.”
“Then let me speak freely,” the liveryman said. There were scars on his face and neck, hastily sewn by a surgeon who certainly couldn’t be called a credit to his profession. “I don’t think you should swim tonight.”
Coralie found she wasn’t the least bit uncomfortable conversing with this man, even though Maureen had confided he’d once been the boss of one of the toughest gangs in lower Manhattan, willing to go up against some of the established Italian gangsters of the Cosa Nostra and the Black Hand, who were so numerous Prince Street was called Black Hand Street. The liveryman had been to prison before coming to work as the Professor’s driver, a humbled man who’d done far too much damage when he was young, to others and to himself.
“Blackbirds can sense danger,” the hired man went on. “You’ll never see one in a storm. They take flight long before the first raindrops fall.” He whistled a trilling call. Soon enough one of the blackbirds came to perch on the branch of a nearby sycamore tree.
“You can speak to him!” Coralie was charmed.
The hired man admitted that he’d kept pet birds for a good part of his life, mostly bright parakeets and parrots from South America, along with his beloved pigeons. “A bird will never lie, just as a man will rarely tell the truth. That’s been my experience and no one will convince me otherwise. So I’ll speak as the birds do, with honest intent. The river looks rough, miss. It’s running wildly and it’s dangerous. An experienced sailor could drown in such conditions. I wouldn’t send my daughter into it, if I were lucky enough to have one.”
The Professor was approaching, and the two who had been speaking in confidence stepped away from one another. Not quickly enough, however. Sardie had taken note of their conversation, and he threw his employee a dark look. He then drew Coralie aside. “Did I tell you not to speak to him? He’s a criminal, Cora. I’m giving him a second chance, but be warned. He has killed more men than you will ever meet in your lifetime.”
Coralie gazed at the hired man, who held his horse’s reins as he whispered in the beast’s ear. She had a surge of trust in his judgment.
“The water’s so wild, Father. I wonder if we should put off this swim.”
“Is that what that fool told you? He has absolutely no idea of who you are and what your training has been. I’m not the least bit worried. This is your farewell to the Hudson River. Once it’s over and done, I swear I’ll find a creature worthy of the news you create.” He kissed her on both cheeks. “You’re not a coward, are you? Tell me I didn’t waste all this time on you?”
Convinced she had no choice, Coralie went to the water line and waded out. When she was to her waist, she dove in, grateful for the silence of the river, which was broken only by the slap of the waves as she cut through the water. She felt herself taken up by the north-flowing current, which was indeed moving quickly, but she enjoyed the effortlessness of her swim and went where the river led her. The moon had slipped behind clouds, and Coralie came up beside a rowboat, unnoticed in the dark. As she paddled beside the skiff, she heard two men speak of their wives and of the fish they meant to bring home to them for supper. She wondered what it might be like to have a husband who spoke of you so tenderly.
She’d been instructed to draw blood as any true beast would, but Coralie had forgotten her orders. It seemed as if she had entered into a dream, spellbound by her own thoughts. Mist rose from the water in bursts of cloudy air. There was a run of sturgeon, large fish known to bite, but they ignored Coralie and swam along beside her. It was possible that they thought she was one of their own kind, as much a fish as she was a woman. As she was carried upstream, she imagined the young man, though Maureen had warned against this. She might have gone on floating for hours more, but all at once she hit something straight on. She was suddenly and achingly present. She wondered if she had collided with a sturgeon, for the thing she’d been driven into was large, yet more pliable than a log. When she gathered her wits, she spied what she believed to be a fish nearly her own size floating before her, pale blue in the muddy water. Both Coralie and this creature had become enmeshed in a soup of floating debris.
She had already passed the cliffs of the Palisades, which she recognized from her previous swim. She’d entered into the dangerous flux where the Harlem River was aswirl with eddies as the north and south currents met, and had been caught up in waterweeds, long wavering plants whose roots reached hundreds of feet below the surface. The tendrils held fast, pulling her down so that she took in mouthfuls of water. The fish trapped with her was immobilized, not able to struggle for its life as Coralie did. Without thinking, she grabbed on to the fish and tried to pull herself up so that she wouldn’t be dragged into the center of the whirlpool. She had expected cool, slippery scales; instead there was the woolly nub of sopping fabric. All at once she realized she was holding on to a drenched coat. In her arms was the body of a young woman, facedown, long pale hair flowing, arms and legs entangled in the ropes of waterweeds.