Steven Millhauser - The Barnum Museum - Stories

Go back.Professor Plum has not advanced far along the carpeted passage when he comes to an open place from which three other passages stretch away. In the open place sit several old armchairs and couches. The Professor is a cautious man. He is perfectly aware that he must not lose his way, must under no circumstances permit himself to yield to the temptation of unknown passageways; but it is precisely this awareness that frees him from the constraints of caution, and permits him to continue his exploration of the unknown, for he knows that he is not the sort of man who takes foolish and unnecessary risks. Even as he admonishes himself to return to the SECRET PASSAGE before he loses his way, he is deciding among the new, alluring passages. One is hung with paintings; one is lined with writing desks, highboys, and wing chairs; one contains two rows of closed red doors. The Professor hesitates a moment before choosing the passage of red doors. After walking a short way he tries a door and is admitted to a flight of carpeted steps going down. Go back, the Professor reminds himself, as he descends the stairs.

A lack of imagination.The Colonel, paralyzed in a pose of suspended seduction, is beginning to grow a little bored. He has no intention of sparing Miss Scarlet, but her inept imitation of whorish abandon cannot sustain his indefinite interest. He would like to get on with it and repair to the BILLIARD ROOM for a whiskey and soda before dinner, but every possible advance is fated to confirm Miss Scarlet’s crude imagining of him. To act is to become her fantasy, to assent to his inexistence. The Colonel feels himself dissolving into an imaginary Colonel with a trim mustache, pulled-back shoulders, and reddish cheekbones. Utterly unimagined, devoid of detail, he is beginning to fade away.

David looks up.David wonders whether he is the only one to notice that Susan is playing badly. Her Suggestions reveal that she has no grasp of strategy; he knows that she doesn’t have the STUDY, Professor Plum, or the Revolver, yet on her last turn she named all three, as if guessing at random instead of using her own cards to make controlled guesses. The poor quality of her play disturbs him, and he tries not to look up when it is her turn, for fear that his irritation will show on his face. True, she has never played before this evening — David has never known anyone who hasn’t played Clue, and he imagines it as a misfortune, a childhood deprivation, as if he had been told that she had never eaten a piece of chocolate or visited an amusement park — but the rules are easy and the principles of inference elementary. It isn’t likely that Susan, a Radcliffe graduate who majored in mathematics, cannot follow the game, and David senses a deeper reason: something is wrong between her and Jacob, she is worried and distracted, she is filled with an unhappiness that doesn’t show on her cool, lovely face. And when he looks up suddenly from his cards, in order to see whether she is concentrating on the game, he is unsettled to see, three feet away, staring over Marian’s shoulder at the porch windows, the large, beautiful, sorrowing eyes of Susan Newton.

The doorknob.Mr. Green’s hand is resting on the knob of the BALLROOM door. He hears nothing within. It is possible that Miss Scarlet and the Colonel have left, and that Mr. Green can enter with impunity and retrieve his book; but there are other explanations of the silence. The room is large and the door is thick; it is quite possible that a conversation at the far end cannot be heard by someone standing outside the door, his head bent almost to the wood, listening intently. It is possible that Miss Scarlet and the Colonel are within, but silent. It is possible that Miss Scarlet has left the room by another door, leaving the Colonel alone, or that Miss Scarlet is alone, having been abandoned by the Colonel. It is possible that they are within but have been joined by a third person, say Professor Plum, who had not expected to find them there and whose unanticipated appearance has rendered everyone silent. It is possible that Miss Scarlet, Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, Mrs. White, and Mrs. Peacock are all inside, facing this very door, awaiting the return of Mr. Green, whose comic disappearance has been discussed at length. Indeed, as Mr. Green stands with his head bent close to the wood, he is surprised at how the possibilities proliferate: it is possible that neither Miss Scarlet nor the Colonel is inside but that someone else, whose appearance caused them to leave, has remained; it is possible that Miss Scarlet has been murdered and is lying with her throat cut on the window seat; it is possible that Mr. Green is inside and that he is imagining himself outside, with his hand on the doorknob and his head bent close to the wood of the door. Even as the possibilities multiply, Mr. Green realizes that he does not know whether he desires Miss Scarlet and the Colonel to be present or absent, since he is not certain whether he wishes to confront them and apologize, or to evade them and retrieve his book in peace; and as he watches his hand begin to turn the doorknob he does not know whether to be astonished at his audacity or ashamed of his timidity.

The bodies of women.David is disturbed by how much time he spends thinking about the bodies of women. He is released from this necessity only rarely, under the influence of a stronger passion, and Susan’s presence on his birthday is disturbing in part because she interferes with his release into family feeling. Although she is dressed modestly, in a vanilla silk blouse and tan corduroy skirt, David is aware of her breasts pushing lightly against the thin cloth, especially when she leans forward to roll the die; and when she crosses and uncrosses her legs, or shifts her position slightly on the padded wooden chair, he is disturbed by the soft sounds of cloth, the creak of the chair, and the hushed slippery sound of sliding and rubbing skin. Susan had arrived in nylon stockings, but when she came down from her room he saw that she had taken them off. Stockings themselves, their scratchiness and glisten, have always disturbed him, but the fact of their removal disturbs him even more, as if she had suddenly drawn attention to the act of lifting each leg in turn to roll down the tight, clinging stockings, as if, carelessly lifting each leg in turn, she were taunting him with the suddenly exposed flesh of her upper thighs, as if, lifting each leg in turn, higher and higher, she were attempting to slip her legs into his mind and leave them there, lifting turn by turn, forever, while she vanished into Cambridge, Massachusetts. One afternoon, in the year before Marian left for college, David had entered her room to look for a piece of paper. He was startled to see Marian standing in a half-slip, facing him. At the sight of the heavy white breasts with their red wounds he felt a rush of fear and sorrow, even as he felt something relax at the back of his mind, as if he had suddenly remembered a word that had eluded him. Marian instantly crossed her arms over her chest, gripping her shoulders with her hands. What David remembers is the white-knuckled fingers, the crushed, painful look of the breasts, the proud and sorrowful turning away of Marian’s face, and the fact that although she turned her face to one side, she did not turn her body away.

The Colonel makes up his mind.At the sound of the turning doorknob the Colonel turns his head sharply toward the distant door and is aware, even as he turns, of the silk-and-flesh slapping together of Miss Scarlet’s knees and the sudden stiffening of her limbs as she prepares to fling herself upright. The Colonel, although he once beat a man senseless with his fists, is essentially a discreet man, who prefers not to be caught in compromising situations. Nevertheless, during the moment when he hears the turning doorknob and the clapping together of Miss Scarlet’s knees, he realizes two things: he is not going to permit Miss Scarlet to escape her banal destiny, even if the door should open to admit a regiment; and the banging together of her knees, the tensing of her body, the look of sharp alarm constitute Miss Scarlet’s sole failure to assume a pose, and render her suddenly desirable. As she struggles to rise, the Colonel admires for a moment the tendons of her neck tensed like ropes, the harsh twist of her torso, the lines of strain between her elegant eyebrows, before throwing himself on her expertly.