The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,55

me he took special care of the elephants because their dreams were so expansive, and clear as crystal.

That got a chuckle out of me. “What do you do,” I said, “peel back their eyelids and shine a light in there?”

“Everything I tell you is true,” he said, “and everything you see is as real as you are.”

I’d read that on one of the posters they’d pasted around town. It was this fellow’s catchphrase, and I didn’t need it. Later, while we were getting fresh water from the cistern, I finally got him to say something interesting. “The people who stay put don’t trust the people who don’t,” he said. “My carnival’s been the subject of many wild accusations over the years, all of which have proved groundless. I’m getting tired of having to listen to the same old stories.”

“Stories are what I’m here for,” I told him. “Are you saying we have nothing to worry about?”

Clerk, you should have seen the sparkle in his eye. “You have plenty to worry about, Detective. Make no mistake, I am your enemy. You think you can control what is known and what is unknown? I tell you the unknown will always be boundless. This place thrives on mystery; we revel in it here. All the world’s a rube, and he who tries to prove otherwise will be the first to wake onstage, victim of our just ridicule.”

He’d worked himself up a bit and had to sit down and catch his breath. The little girl ran off and came back a minute later with a cup of cocoa. He sipped, watching the elephants. The animals were eating now, fetching clumps of hay with their trunks.

“They remember everything,” Caligari said quietly. “I don’t know what I’d do without them. And their dreams, Detective. A minute in one of their dreams is a month on the open plain, unfettered, unchartable.”

I don’t know what he meant by that, or whether he meant anything at all. But this much I know: we need to keep an eye on this character.

The carnival had closed up by then, and lights were going off all around us. The girl took my hand and led me away, back to the front gate. There she turned my hand over and looked at the palm. “You’ll live a long life,” she said, “but a long part of it won’t be your own. Good night, Travis.”

That bugged me some—not the fortune, which is malarkey. But the fact that she knew my first name. I hadn’t mentioned it, not to anyone in the place.

Five months later Caligari vanished. His employees never left the city, and in the end the carnival was shut down by force. But the workers, despite numerous arrests, refused to go. They found other ways to provide for themselves, and like-minded souls were welcomed into their gang. The gates were shut against all others, and the Traveling Carnival became the Travels-No-More.

Many wondered: What about the elephants? What happened to them?

For years some reported hearing, on especially quiet nights, a trumpeting call out there in the dark, like a reminder, or an omen.

What troubled Unwin now was that little girl, Caligari’s assistant, who had known Sivart’s name and had spoken like some kind of sibyl. Could she have been the daughter of Cleopatra Greenwood?

IN THE BED OF the Rooks’ steam truck, the ticking of the alarm clocks was the hum of a thousand insects. They jangled and buzzed when the truck went over bumps, and Unwin imagined they were about to burst free in a great tick-tocking swarm. Peering under the canvas, he saw that Moore was not in there, and neither was Pith’s body. How many truckloads of clocks had the sleepwalkers stolen?

In time they came to the farthest corner of the carnival. Here at the edge of the bay, the tents were still striped with color, and electric lights along the waterfront shone red, blue, and orange. Most of the little makeshift structures had been converted into cottages, and shacks had sprung up among them. It looked less like a carnival here and more like a shantytown into which a carnival had erupted. The truck halted beside the largest of the pavilions, and almost immediately a group of men with shovels emerged.

Unwin hopped off the bumper and went around the passenger side. The men went straight to work, shoveling the alarm clocks into the tent, where thousands more were already piled. The noise of them was a second storm. Down at the