There was a hired man who often came to care for the living beasts. I’d observed him arriving in a horse-drawn hansom carriage delivering crates of food for the mysterious inhabitants of the museum. A whirl of incredible creatures was before me as I stood there: a dragon lizard who flared his scarlet throat, an enormous tortoise who seemed like a monster of the deep, red-throated hummingbirds that were let out of their cages on leashes made of string. When I looked past this dizzying array, I spied my father’s birthday surprise decorated with blue silk ribbons and garlands of paper stars. It stood in a place of honor: a large tank of water. On the bottom there were shells gathered from all over the world, from the Indian Ocean to the China Sea. I did not need my father to tell me what would be displayed, for there was the sign he’d commissioned an expert craftsman to fashion out of chestnut wood and hand-paint in gold leaf.
THE HUMAN MERMAID
Beneath that title was carved one word alone, my name, Coralie.
I did not need further instructions. I understood that all of my life had been mere practice for this very moment. Without being asked, I slipped off my shoes.
I knew how to swim.
MARCH 1911
IF CORALIE SARDIE had lived another life, in another time and place, she might have become a champion swimmer, a lauded athlete with garlands crowning her head, surrounded by crowds who pleaded for her autograph after she crossed the Channel from England to France or circled Manhattan Island. Instead, she swam in the Hudson as dusk crossed the horizon, making certain to keep to the shadows. If she were a fish, she would have been an eel, a dark flash secreted within the even darker water, a lone creature set on a journey northward, unable to stop or rest until her destination had been reached. On this raw night, she stepped out of the river when she could swim no more, shaking from exertion. The relay swimming title had just been granted to a fellow from the New York Athletic Club who’d been dubbed the Human Fish, but Coralie could have beat his time with ease. She climbed onto a deserted bank under a sky swirling with stars and stood ankle deep in the mud. She wrung out her hair, a smile playing at her blue lips. This had been her longest swim thus far. She’d lasted ninety minutes in the frigid river, a personal record. A wind had picked up and the weather was raw; few swimmers would have been able to tolerate the cold rushing water. All the same, Coralie was no champion; she had no clock and no admirers. She wore men’s clothes, which made her movements easier, fitted trousers and a white shirt tucked into her waistband. Before dressing she coated her limbs with bear grease mixed with digitalis, a concoction meant to act as a stimulant and keep her warm. Still, despite this elixir and her training to withstand inhuman circumstances, she shuddered with the cold.
As she forged her way through a tangle of reeds, Coralie realized the rising spring tide had carried her off course. She was much farther north than she’d anticipated and had arrived in the no-man’s-land of upper Manhattan, where the Dutch had once farmed enormous tracts in the wetlands. Not far to the east, there were still small villages along the Harlem River, inhabited by communities of black Americans and Irish immigrants who had settled on that river’s sandy coves, their houses hidden from view by enormous beech and tulip trees that were more than three hundred years old.
Unlike most rivers, the current in the Hudson ran in two directions, pushed north by the Atlantic Ocean, turning into rivulets and streams and meeting with the Harlem River before the combined waterways receded south to the harbor. After a winter of heavy squalls and snowfalls, the Hudson was moving much faster than expected. Coralie’s father’s calculations had therefore proved wrong. The Professor was waiting nearly three miles to the south, alongside the liveryman and his carriage, ready to greet Coralie with a wool blanket and the flask of whiskey he vowed would keep her from catching a chill in her lungs.
After eight years of performances, Coralie’s fame had waned. The public’s hunger was for curiosities that had never been seen before, not for creatures they’d become accustomed to. Barnum and Bailey’s circus was opening in Madison Square Garden. It was the same location where Barnum had first exhibited his spectacles when the area was occupied by the Great Roman Hippodrome, an arena without a roof or heat. People were entranced by the prancing steeds, the spectacle and wonder of acrobats and trained seals, the thundering Roman chariot race that drove dust into the air. Barnum had begun his career with a museum in lower Manhattan, showing off taxidermy and fossils, along with questionable exhibits such as the Feejee Mermaid, a monkey’s torso with a fish tail attached. It was that swindler Barnum whom Professor Sardie wished to surpass, for he felt himself to be a true man of science, whereas Barnum was nothing more than a charlatan. Yet Barnum was an American hero, and the Professor’s fortunes were failing.