Elizabeth Hand - Prince of Flowers

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Prince of Flowers

Elizabeth Hand

Helen's first assignment on the inventory project was to the Department of

Worms. For two weeks she paced the narrow alleys between immense tiers of glass

cabinets, opening endless drawers of freeze-dried invertebrates and tagging each

with an acquisition number. Occasionally she glimpsed other figures, drab as herself

in government-issue smocks, grey shadows stalking through the murky corridors.

They waved at her but seldom spoke, except to ask directions; everyone got lost in

the museum.

Helen loved the hours lost in wandering the labyrinth of storage rooms, research

labs, chilly vaults crammed with effigies of Yanomano Indians and stuffed jaguars.

Soon she could identify each department by its smell: acrid dust from the feathered

pelts in Ornithology; the cloying reek of fenugreek and syrup in Mammalogy's roach

traps; fish and formaldehyde in Icthyology. Her favourite was Palaeontology, an

annex where the air smelled damp and clean, as though beneath the marble floors

trickled hidden water, undiscovered caves, mammoth bones to match those stored

above. When her two weeks in Worms ended she was sent to Palaeo, where she

delighted in the skeletons strewn atop cabinets like forgotten toys, disembodied

skulls glaring from behind wastebaskets and bookshelves. She found a fabrosaurus

ischium wrapped in brown paper and labelled in crayon; beside it a huge hand-hewn

crate dated 1886 and marked Wyoming megosaur. It had never been opened. Some

mornings she sat with a small mound of fossils before her, fitting the pieces together

with the aid of a Victorian monograph. Hours passed in total silence, weeks when

she saw only three or four people, curators slouching in and out of their research

cubicles. On Fridays, when she dropped off her inventory sheets, they smiled.

Occasionally even remembered her name. But mostly she was left alone, sorting

cartons of bone and shale, prying apart frail skeletons of extinct fish as though they

were stacks of newsprint.

Once, almost without thinking, she slipped a fossil fish into the pocket of her

smock. The fossil was the length of her hand, as perfectly formed as a fresh beech

leaf. All day she fingered it, tracing the imprint of bone and scale. In the bathroom

later she wrapped it in paper towels and hid it in her purse to bring home. After that

she started taking things.

At a downtown hobby shop she bought little brass and lucite stands to display

them in her apartment. No one else ever saw them. She simply liked to look at them

alone.

Her next transfer was to Mineralogy, where she counted misshapen meteorites

and uncut gems. Gems bored her, although she took a chunk of petrified wood and

a handful of unpolished amethysts and put them in her bathroom. A month later she

was permanently assigned to Anthropology.

The Anthropology Department was in the most remote corner of the museum; its

proximity to the boiler room made it warmer than the Natural Sciences wing, the air

redolent of spice woods and exotic unguents used to polish arrowheads and

axe-shafts. The ceiling reared so high overhead that the rickety lamps swayed slightly

in draughts that Helen longed to feel. The constant subtle motion of the lamps sent

flickering waves of light across the floor. Raised arms of Balinese statues seemed to

undulate, and points of light winked behind the empty eyeholes of feathered masks.

Everywhere loomed shelves stacked with smooth ivory and gaudily beaded

bracelets and neck-rings. Helen crouched in corners loading her arms with bangles

until her wrists ached from their weight. She unearthed dusty, lurid figures of temple

demons and cleaned them, polished hollow cheeks and lapis eyes before stapling a

number to each figure. A corner piled with tipi poles hid an abandoned desk that she

claimed and decorated with mummy photographs and a ceramic coffee mug. In the

top drawer she stored her cassette tapes and, beneath her handbag, a number of

obsidian arrowheads. While it was never officially designated as her desk, she was

annoyed one morning to find a young man tilted backward in the chair, shuffling

through her tapes.

"Hello," he greeted her cheerfully. Helen winced and nodded coolly. "These your

tapes? I'll borrow this one some day, haven't got the album yet. Leo Bryant—"

"Helen," she replied bluntly. "I think there's an empty desk down by the

slit-gongs."

"Thanks, I just started. You a curator?"

Helen shook her head, rearranging the cassettes on the desk. "No. Inventory

project." Pointedly she moved his knapsack to the floor.

"Me, too. Maybe we can work together some time."

She glanced at his earnest face and smiled. "I like to work alone, thanks." He

looked hurt, and she added, "Nothing personal — I just like it that way. I'm sure

we'll run into each other. Nice to meet you, Leo." She grabbed a stack of inventory

sheets and walked away down the corridor.

They met for coffee one morning. After a few weeks they met almost every

morning, sometimes even for lunch outside on the Mall. During the day Leo

wandered over from his cubicle in Ethnology to pass on departmental gossip.

Sometimes they had a drink after work, but never often enough to invite gossip

themselves. Helen was happy with this arrangement, the curators delighted to have

such a worker — quiet, without ambition, punctual. Everyone except Leo left her to

herself.

Late one afternoon Helen turned at the wrong corner and found herself in a small

cul-de-sac between stacks of crates that cut off light and air. She yawned, breathing

the faint must of cinnamon bark as she traced her path on a crumpled inventory map.

This narrow alley was unmarked; the adjoining corridors contained Malaysian

artefacts, batik tools, long teak boxes of gongs. Fallen crates, clumsily hewn cartons

overflowing with straw were scattered on the floor. Splintered panels snagged her

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Elizabeth Hand - Prince of Flowers

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