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PROFESSOR FLUVIUS’S PALACE OF MANY WATERS

I awoke in a soft, damp bed, atop the covers, not knowing my name.

A standing man hovered solicitously over me. His genial face, with wine-dark eyes, reminded me of someone I thought I should know. Thick white wavy locks cascaded to his shoulders. A Van Dyke beard of equal snowiness did little to conceal his jovial, ebullient expression. Yet despite this arctic peltage, his unlined face and clean limbs radiated a youthful vitality.

“Ah, Charlene, you’re with us now! Splendid! We have much to do.”

My name was Charlene then. That seemed right.

The man announced, “I am Professor Fluvius. Can you stand?”

“I think so….” Professor Fluvius placed a hand on my shoulder, and a sudden access of galvanic spirits coursed through me. “Why, certainly, I can stand!”

In one fluid movement I came to my bare feet on the warm wooden floorboards. I was wearing an unadorned white samite smock, the hem of which hung to just below my knees. A balmy wind blowing in through an open window, past lazily twitching gauzy curtains, stirred my robe and conveyed to me certain bodily sensations indicating that undergarments of any sort appeared to be lacking in my wardrobe. But the clement summer atmosphere certainly did not require such.

Professor Fluvius, I noted now, was dressed entirely in aquamarine blue, from long-tailed coat to spats. He took my hand as a favourite uncle might, and again I felt a surge of vigour through my cells.

“Let me introduce you to the other ladies first.”

We stepped forward toward the door leading from the single room, which appeared to be a guest bedchamber of a quality sort.

Looking back at the bed where I had awakened to myself for the first time, I saw a long slim twisting tendril of bright green water weed adorning the damp duvet.

The carpeted corridor beyond that room hosted a dozen other doors, each bearing a brass number. Professor Fluvius and I crossed diagonally to Number 205.

“You rejoined us in my own modest quarters, Charlene. All quite proper, I assure you. But just across the corridor here, I have chartered an entire suite for you and your peers.”

Professor Fluvius knocked, then cracked the door of 205 wide without awaiting a response.

Inside, draped languorously across an assortment of well-upholstered chairs and divans, six smiling women calmly awaited our arrival; plainly, they had been expecting us. Exhibiting a variety of beautiful physiognamies of mixed ethnicities, they all wore simple shifts identical to mine, and remained similarly unshod.

I caught my own reflection then in a canted cheval glass, and was perhaps immoderately pleased to find myself wholly a match to my sisters in terms of mortal beauty.

“Charlene, allow me to introduce your comrades to you. Callie, Lara, Minnie, Lila, Praxie and Sally. Ladies, this is Charlene.”

The six women trilled a tuneful assortment of greetings, several of them playfully abbreviating my name to “Charl” or “Charlie,” and I responded in kind. Once they sensed somehow my ability to blend into their pre-established harmony, they were up off their perches and clustering around me, indicating by various endearments and mild sororal caresses how happy they were to have me among their number.

Professor Fluvius watched us beneficently for a short while, but then cut short our mutual admiration society.

“Ladies, have you forgotten? We have an important appointment to keep. Let us be on our way now!”

So saying, and recovering his ocean-blue topper from a hat-tree, the professor led the way out of the suite, and we all obediently followed.

A staircase at the end of the corridor debouched after a long single arcing flight into a splendid lobby, and I received confirmation, if needed, that this establishment was a commercial hotel. The large pillared space was thronged with people—all of them, male and female alike, dressed with considerably more formality than I and my sisters. Nor did I see any man sporting anything like the beryl suit worn by the professor. It was unsurprising, then, that our passage across the lobby toward the street entrance should attract stares and semi-decorous exclamations. And this attention was not minimized by the professor’s unprompted yet effervescent lecture to us, his charges.

“Witness the glories of the Tremont House, ladies. The first hotel ever to incorporate running water, and thus a fit establishment to temporarily host Professor Fluvius and his Naiads during the early portion of our Boston stay!”

The professor seemed intent on advertising himself and us, and it was at this juncture that I began to apprehend that I had become, willy-nilly, part of a commercial venture of some sort.

We exited the hotel through its grand colonnaded entrance on Tremont Street and crossed a miry sidewalk and concourse, nimbly dodging carriages and carts.

Amazingly, I found myself stepping unerringly on an irregular trail of clean patches amidst the offal and manure, thus succeeding in keeping my bare feet unsullied. I noticed that my sisters trod a similar random series of sterile stepping stones.

Or was it that the uniformly dirty pavement spontaneously developed virginal patches beneath our feet?

As we seven attractive women and pavonine man hiked determinedly through the streets of Boston, we began to attract a crowd of followers, picaroons and mudlarks mostly, whose unsolicited comments veered more toward gibes and lewd offerings of unwanted intimate services than had those of the Tremont House crowd. But I and my dignified sisters ignored the verbal affronts from the swelling ranks of our entourage, and Professor Fluvius seemed actually to relish their attentions.

“That’s it, lads, that’s it! Roll up, roll up! Follow us for the most exciting news of the decade!”

Almost immediately after leaving the hotel, we found ourselves in a park full of greenery, and were able to indulge our bare feet on grass. But this respite was short-lived, as we soon exited the Public Gardens and proceeded uptown on a street labelled Boylston.

My eye was drawn to a posted bill advertising a new play—The Children of Oceanus, by Eleuthera Stayrook—at the Everett Hall Theatre, and bearing the commencement date of July 12th, 1877.

And so it was that I had my first inkling of what year it was in which I had awakened—assuming the poster to be of recent vintage, an assumption which its unweathered appearance supported.

Reaching a cross-street named Clarendon, we turned and encountered a construction site. Here, a vast project sprawling across several blocks was in its obvious end stages.

The building at the centre of the site was a church of soaring magnificence. Not as large as a cathedral, the brown-hued sanctuary nonetheless radiated a deep gravitas counterbalanced by an exuberant sense of joy.

Workmen swarmed around the nearly complete structure, taking down scaffolding, entering the interior with loads of fine materials, sweeping up debris. One man seemed in charge of the general organized hubbub, and it was toward him that Professor Fluvius made a beeline.

At my side, the woman introduced to me as Plaxie now spoke in a stage-whisper, leaning her pert-nosed, black-ringleted head close to my own auburn locks. Her breath smelled mildly of fish.

“If you think you’ve seen the Prof put on a show so far, just wait till he gets to work on this mark!”

We now—my comrades, and the raggle-taggle flock that had attached itself to us—came to a stop around the overseer. He was a plump gent with a thick chestnut beard, hair parted down the middle, and an intelligently playful twinkle to his eyes that offset his otherwise stern demeanour. He wore an expensive brown suit.

Professor Fluvius hailed him in a loud voice more suited to the baseball outfield than face-to-face conversation, and I could tell he was playing to the crowd.

“You, good sir, are Henry Hobson Richardson, the veritable visionary architect of this grand dream in rough stone we see before us!”

Richardson seemed more amused than perturbed. “Yes, sir, I am. And may I enquire your name and purpose?”

“I am Professor Nodens Fluvius, and I am here to give you your next commission!”

“Indeed? And what might that be?”

“A public bath house!”

Loud guffaws and taunts arose from the spectators, but Fluvius remained unperturbed, and Richardson continued to express some unfeigned interest at this odd commission.

“A public bath house, Professor Fluvius? I assume you are thinking along the lines of the municipal facilities found on the Continent. But are you unaware of the spectacular failure of the Mott Street Bath House in New York City, some twenty years ago? Since then, no private investor nor any municipality in our great nation has deemed such an enterprise feasible. Nor has the public clamoured for such facilities.”

“Ah, but that is because all businessmen and politicos have lacked my farsighted conception of what such an establishment could offer. And as for the public—they know not what they want till it is presented to them.”

At this point, the professor encompassed us seven maidens with a sweep of his arm, as if to indicate that we would appear uppermost on his bill of fare. Some of my sisters lowered their glances demurely, but I maintained a bold gaze directed at the hoi polloi, even when raucous huzzahs went up from the crowd. For a moment, I wondered with alarm if we were meant to be courtesans in this hypothetical establishment. But then I recalled the clean organic thrill of the liquid energies that had flowed from the professor’s touch, and felt reassured of his honest intentions toward us.

“Moreover,” continued the professor, “no prior entrepreneur has held a doctorate in hydrostatics from La Sapienza University in Rome, as do I. Surely you know of the marvellous accomplishments of the ancient Romans in this sphere… ? Well, the ultra-modern technics of boilers, valves, conduits, gravity-fed reservoirs and suchlike that I intend to install will make the Baths of Caracalla look like a roadside ditch!”

At the mention of a technological challenge, the architect Richardson developed an even keener expression. “Speak on, Professor.”

“I have conceived of a palatial public bathhouse that will employ the latest in hydropathic techniques to promote robust health and invigoration in all its patrons. Combining methodologies I learned at first hand from Vincenz Priessnitz himself at Grafenburg with subtle refinements of my own devising, I can guarantee to reform drunkards, cure the halt and lame, invigorate the intellect of scholars and schoolboys alike, and induce passion in sterile marriages—all for mere pennies a visit!”

This last boast raised further hoots and japes from the crowd, who nonetheless, I sensed, evinced real interest on some deep level at the professor’s pitch. Richardson, meanwhile, seemed to be cogitating seriously on the proposal as well, unconsciously rubbing his sizeable vest-swathed tummy as an aid to cogitation.

Grinning, Professor Fluvius awaited the architect’s response—which finally came in the form of a question.

“How is this ambitious project to be funded, Professor? I do not work in anticipation of a portion of future profits.”

“All is assured, Mister Richardson. I assume pure alluvial gold would be deemed legal tender… ?”

The professor removed a cowhide poke from a suit pocket. Uncinching the poke’s neck, he grabbed Richardson’s hand and poured a mound of glittering golden grit into his cupped palm. Richardson’s eyes expanded to their full diameter. Professor Fluvius dropped the poke atop the mound and said, “Consider this your retainer, I pray, good sir.”

Very carefully, Richardson poured the gold back into the poke and deposited the pouch in his own suit. “Professor Fluvius, you have your architect.”

A roar of acclaim went up from the crowd. I realized that their massed attention had been part of the professor’s sly plan to add public pressure to compel Richardson’s assent. Surely by tomorrow this commission would be spread across all the newspapers of Boston.

The two men shook hands. Professor Fluvius said, “I am staying at the Tremont House, Mister Richardson. I anticipate your dining there tonight with me, so that we may refine our plans. And oh, yes, one last matter. I shall need the establishment finished and ready to open its doors in three months’ time.”

“Three months’ time! For an edifice of any sizeable scale? Impossible!”

Professor Fluvius removed two more plump pokes from his pocket and handed them over to Richardson, saying, “That, Mister Architect, is a word we shall not allow to trouble us again.”

I approached the Palace of Many Waters across the modest plaza of varicoloured granite from Barre, Vermont, that fronted its façade. A warm November day, its sunshine still only half exhausted, had left the stones comfortable to my bare feet. But I imagined that neither I nor my sisters would be discommoded even by the arrival of winter.

At my elbow strode the visitor I had met at the train station: Dr. Simon Baruch. Of medium height and trim physique, dressed in a respectable checked suit, he boasted a full head of dark hair and neatly trimmed thin moustache and chin spinach. He walked with a dignified bearing that reflected his past military service, as a surgeon during the War Between the States.

I had met the doctor at the terminus of the Boston and Providence railroad line, adjacent to the Public Gardens. From thence we walked a few blocks riverward, until we came to Beacon, that avenue which bordered the Charles River. We turned left and proceeded a few more blocks to the intersection of Beacon and Dartmouth, where the Palace reared its mighty battlements.

Perched on the banks of the River Charles (one single-storey wing housing the professor’s offices and private quarters in fact extended out on stilts above the flood), the Palace was a fantasy of minarets and oriel windows, gables and slate slopes, copper flashing and painted gingerbread. Like some Yankee version of the famous Turkish Baths of Manchester, England, the Palace seemed a hamam fit for ifrits—to adopt a Muslim perspective.

After demolition of a few inconvenient pre-existing structures, construction of the Palace had been accomplished in a mere ten weeks, without stinting materials or design, thanks to an army of labourers working round the clock; the ceaseless management and encouragement of Mr. Richardson; and a steady decanting of alluvial gold from the seemingly inexhaustible coffers of our dear professor. (And how marvellously I had matured myself in those weeks, almost as if a new personality had been established upon my own nascent foundations in synchrony with the Palace’s construction.)

Our doors had opened in mid-October, just three weeks ago, and in that time the Palace had been perpetually busy. We were open for business seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, and there were very few stretches when the influx into the Palace was not a copious stream.

Now Dr. Baruch and I stopped hard by the large, impressive main entrance so that he could marvel for a moment at the parade of patrons: mothers with children, horny-handed labourers, clerks and costermongers, urchins and pedlars, soldiers and savants from Harvard and the Society of Natural History. I noted every type of man, woman and child, from the most humble and ragged to the most refined and eminent members of the bon ton, all desirous of becoming clean in a democratic fashion. True, their entrance fees differed, and they would be diverted into different grades of facilities once inside. But all had to enter by the same gate—a gate above which was graven the Palace’s motto:

I noted Dr. Baruch’s gaze alighting upon the motto, and, after taking a moment to apprehend it, he turned to me and said, “An apt phrase from the Silurist, and not without a metaphysical complement to its ostensible carnal focus. Were you aware that the poet’s twin brother, Thomas, was an alchemist?”

“I fear I am uneducated in such literary matters, Dr. Baruch. Our Professor, however, is a man of much learning, and is highly desirous of your conversation.”

Dr. Baruch laughed. “I can tell when I am being politely hustled along. Let us go visit your employer.”

We circumvented the Bailey’s Baffle Gates through which the paying customers had to pass and found ourselves in the Palace’s lofty atrium.

Like most of the interior spaces of the Palace, the lofty, vaulted atrium was tiled with gorgeously glazed ceramic creations, representing both abstract and pictorial designs, the latter of a predominantly marine bent. The hard surfaces granted an echoic resonance to the gabble of voices and footfalls. High stained glass windows rained down tinted light upon the hustling masses as they filed in orderly lines towards the towel-dispensing stations and thence to the disrobing rooms. Naturally, the sexes were separated at this point—save for mothers shepherding children under a certain age—as they would be in the baths.

I guided Dr. Baruch behind the scenes, until we reached the door to Professor Fluvius’s private offices. I knocked and received acknowledgement to enter.

Professor Fluvius’s unique maple desk, a product of the Herter Brothers firm of New York, was shaped like a titanic conch shell. Behind this cyclopean design sat the man whose face was the first visage I had seen upon attaining consciousness. His ivory tresses, longer even than before, fell past the shoulders of his cerulean suit.

Behind him, a window looked out upon the sail-dotted Charles, toward the Cambridge shore. It was cracked a few inches to allow the heady scents of the river inside.

Professor Fluvius ceased fussing with a ledger when we entered, slapping its boards shut decisively, then rose to his feet with a broad smile and came out from behind the desk, hand outstretched.

“Dr. Baruch! A genuine pleasure, sir! Thanks you so much for responding to my humble invitation. I hope to present you with a professional challenge worthy of your talents….”

I hung back near the door, hoping to hear the professor’s proposal, as I was intrigued by Dr. Baruch’s character, insofar as it had been vouchsafed to me in our short acquaintance, and his potential role in our enterprise.

But Professor Fluvius would have none of my impertinent curiosity. Pulling a turnip watch from his pocket, he examined it and then addressed me.

“Charlene, don’t you have an appointment soon with one of your special clients?”

I knew full well who awaited me upon the hour, but dissembled. “Oh, Professor, I had forgotten. Pardon me.”

“No offence needing pardon, my dear. But you’d best be streaming onward now.”

I had perforce to leave their presence then.

But I was not to be stymied from my eavesdropping.

What a change in my nature from the humble, timid deference shown to the professor upon my first foray into consciousness! It was not that I honoured him any the less, nor did my desires deviate significantly from his—insofar as I plumbed either his motives or my own. But I had developed a stubborn sense of my own desires, and a reluctance to be thwarted.

Outside in the hall, I did not head immediately back toward the main bulk of the thronging Palace, but instead approached a nearby window, lowered of course against the November chill. I opened it and peered out.

Some twelve feet below me, the happy waters of the Charles burbled past on their way to the sea, chuckling among the freshly tarred pilings supporting this wing. It would have been a straight, uninterrupted drop to that wet embrace, had it not been for one feature: a kind of catwalk or boat-bumper about halfway down, installed against accidental collisions.

I slipped over the window sill and lowered myself down till my toes met the rough planks. Then I made my way stealthily to a position just below the window of the professor’s study.

“—but inside,” boomed Fluvius’s voice, “inside, Dr. Baruch, I think you will agree with me that they are as dirty as ever. The waters beneath the skin. You can clean the outer man—and that’s a fine start—but the inner man is another matter entirely. A much-neglected matter.”

“I confess,” responded Baruch, “that I have often considered the possibility of tinkering with the interior flora of the human body, with an eye toward remedying several inherent bodily ills. Many are the moments, mired in the bloody tent of a field hospital or the sputum-flecked ward of a slum asylum, when I fantasized about bolstering the body’s natural defences with a dose of some beneficial live culture.”

“Yes, yes, I knew of your researches, Dr. Baruch! Just why I summoned you out of all your peers. And my dreams tally precisely with yours! I believe I have formulated a potent nostrum that will benefit mankind in just such a fashion as you envision. My potion will not only re-order the patient’s defensive constitution, but also contribute to a more orderly patterning of nerve impulses in the brain, promoting more cogent and disciplined thought forms.”

Baruch was silent for a moment, before responding: “If that’s the case, Professor Fluvius, then what need do you have of me and my skills?”

Fluvius sounded slightly embarrassed, for the first time in my memory. “My trials of this patent medicine of mine have been not wholly successful. Certain of my subjects did not sustain a full recovery. Admittedly, I was working with gravely ill specimens to begin with, but still— I had hoped for better results. But I realized after such setbacks that I lacked the precise anatomical knowledge of a trained physician such as yourself. It is this expertise that I desire you to contribute to the cause. As for salary, I know you are above such plebeian considerations. But let me assure you, your monetary compensation will be far above any salary you could earn elsewhere. Will you join me in this quest to improve the lot of our fellow man, Dr.?”

Crouching below the window as the sun continued to sink and a brisk breeze blew up my gown, I eagerly awaited Dr. Baruch’s response. But my concentration was shattered upon the instant by the sensation of a cold and clammy hand encircling my ankle!

Only with supreme willpower did I stifle all but the most muted involuntary shriek that would have betrayed me to those inside. Luckily, a gull screamed at that very moment to further cover my inadvertent alarm.

Heart pounding, I whipped my head down and around to see who could possibly have grabbed me under such unlikely circumstances.

The shaggy head and leering ugly countenance of Usk greeted my gaze. He stood apelike on the crossbeams of the pilings, evidently pleased as Punch to have caught me in this compromising situation.

Just prior the Palace’s opening three weeks ago, a contingent of the Swamp Angels had visited Professor Fluvius as he was giving us Naiads a lecture on our duties. We watched with some trepidation and unease as these hoodlums swaggered into our sanctuary. They boldly demanded a weekly stipend as “protection money,” in order to ensure that the Palace remained unmolested in its operations. Professor Fluvius seemed to agree, and they went their way.

But then he summoned Usk.

As if out of the woodwork, the gnomish gnarled fellow, dressed in rough working-man’s garb, appeared. None of us had ever seen him before. But he seemed on intimate terms with the professor.

“Usk, would you see to it that those churlish fellows do not disturb us ever again?”

Usk laughed, and shivers went down my spine, and likewise along my sisters’, I sensed sympathetically.

“Righto, Prof! I’ll learn them a lesson they won’t soon forget.”

As mysteriously as he had appeared, Usk vanished.

The Swamp Angels had not troubled the Palace since. And I had heard that, after some enigmatic cataclysm among their ranks, the wounded remnants of their forces had been absorbed by the Gophers and the Ducky Boys.

Since that incident, Usk had surfaced occasionally to carry out the professor’s bidding. But none of us knew where he lived, or how he passed his idle hours.

Now I was face to face with him—in a manner of speaking, since actually he had a more prominent view of my bare nether parts than of my countenance. I resolved not to let him know how much he had affrighted me.

In a whisper, I demanded, “What do you want of me?”

Usk husked out his own words. “Prof’d be a tad peeved, if’n he found out you was keyholing him.”

I adopted my most winsome ways. “Must you tell him?”

“Not if’n I don’t choose to.”

“And what could possibly induce you to choose such a merciful course?”

“Let’s say if’n I were to receive certain favours from a certain lady—favours which I’d be more than happy to make explicit to you. Tonight, for instance, after your work’s all done.”

Usk’s grip tightened on my ankle—the rough skin of his palm feeling like scales—and I quailed interiorly. But he had me in a bind. I certainly did not wish to appear a sneak and gossip in the eyes of Professor Fluvius. No, I had to submit.

“Where should we meet?”

“I dwell in the lowest cellar, by the boilers. Southwest corner. That’s where you’ll find my doss.”

“I—I’ll be there.”

Leering once more, Usk released my ankle, prior to slipping away under the floorboards and among the pilings, sinuous as a fish.

Refocusing my attentions on the study window, I heard only the clink of glasses and an exchange of pleasantries. I had to assume the deal had been sealed, and that Dr. Baruch would be staying with us.

And now I needed to keep my appointment.

I pattered barefoot swiftly past the gaudy marble entrances to the enormous, rococo common rooms, big as ropewalks, where the masses of men and women bathed in segregated manner. The sounds of gay and enthusiastic splashy ablutions echoed outward from these natatoria. I could picture the water jetting from the bronze heads of dolphins, the flickering gas lights reflected off the pools, the cakes of fragrant soaps embossed with the Palace’s trademark conch shell, the long-handled brushes and plump sponges, the naked human bodies in all their equally agreeable shades of flesh and states of leanness and corpulence. The imagined scene delighted me. The conception of so many happy people sporting like otters or seals in a pristine liquid environment seemed utterly Edenic to me. I was more convinced than ever that Professor Fluvius’s Palace of Many Waters was a force for beauty and goodness in this often shabby and cruel world.

Once beyond this area open to the general public—the hubbub abating and I having circumvented with a smile and a nod one of the Palace’s liveried guardians stationed so as to limit deeper ingress solely to the elite—I had access to an Otis Safety Elevator. I stepped aboard along with a man I recognized as the Mayor of Boston, a Mr. Prince: grey hair low across his brow, walrus moustache. He nodded politely to me, and sized me up with the same look a chef might bestow on a prize tomato.

“You’re the one they call Charlie, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I’m slated to see your sister Praxie today. But perhaps next time you’ll attend me.”

“I’d be delighted, sir.”

The rattling mechanism brought us to the second floor of our establishment. I parted from Mayor Prince, and watched him enter the room labelled “Praxithea.”

On this level of the Palace were the private rooms for our more privileged clientele, where bathing occurred in elegant tubs accommodating from two to several bathers. Included on this level were the seven special suites assigned to us Naiads. In these chambers, the waters themselves were perfumed and salted, and certain luxurious individual attentions could be paid to the selected patrons.

I did not enter directly the suite whose brass plate proclaimed it “Charlene,” but instead stepped through an innocuous unmarked door and into a connecting changing room. There I doffed my gown and donned a bandeau top across my full bosom and a loin cloth around my broad hips, leaving most of my honey-coloured skin bare. I let down my long chestnut hair, and stepped through to where my client awaited.

Frederick Law Olmstead had accumulated fifty-five years of life at this date. The famed architect, known to the nation primarily for his magnificent design of New York’s Central Park, boasted a large head bald across the crown, a wild crop of facial hair, and a penetrating expression betokening a certain wisdom and insight into the ways of the world, as well as hinting at burning creative instincts. His supervisory work in the field had kept him moderately fit, although he had not entirely escaped a certain paunchiness of middle-age.

Now he sat, naked and waist-deep in a capacious ceramic footed trough steaming with soapy, jasmine-scented water, puffing on a cigar and looking already well advanced on the road to relaxation and forgetful of his vocational cares, even before my ministrations.

Olmstead had been my client since the Palace opened, and we were on familiar terms. He evidently found me a congenial bath partner, and I had to confess that I had become more than professionally enamoured of him. He had always treated me with kindness and respect and a liberal generosity.

“Ah, Charlie, you’re a sight for weary eyes! Join me, dear. I need to disburden myself of the day’s headaches.”

I slipped gracefully into the tub, sliding up all slippery into his embrace, and Olmstead began to soliloquize me. I kept mum yet receptive.

“This newest project of mine is a bugger, Charlie. Turning a swamp into a park! Sheer insanity. The Fens were never meant to be other than a flood plain or tidal estuary. And yet somehow the city wants me to convert them to made lands, a pleasure pavilion for the masses, part of what they’re already calling my ‘Emerald Necklace.’ Can you fathom what’s involved in such a project? Not only do I have to contend with the waters of the Charles, but also those of Muddy River and Stony Brook, which likewise feed into that acreage. I’m going to have to erect dams and pumps, then drain and grade, before layering in an entire maze of culverts and sewers. Truck in gravel and soil, landscape the whole shebang— So much of this city is made land already, hundreds of acres reclaimed from a primeval bog. The civic fathers imagine they can wrest any parcel they desire from the aboriginal waters. Mayor Prince and his whole Vault cabal are dead set on this project. But this time their reach exceeds their grasp. It’s a mad folly, I tell you!”

Olmstead paused, puffing on his cigar, then said with altered tone, “Yet if it could be done—what a triumph!”

I felt proud of Olmstead’s ambition and fervour. Intuiting that he had expended his verbal anxiety, I said, “If anyone is capable of accomplishing such a feat, Frederick, it’s you. But you must return to the project tomorrow with a relaxed mind and body. Enough speech. Allow me to do my job now.”

Willingly, Olmstead stubbed out his cigar in a wrought-iron tub-side appliance. I secured a cake of lanolin-rich lilac soap and began thickly to lather up my own form with graceful motions, all the while allowing the ends of my wet hair to drape sensuously about Olmstead like enticing tendrils.

When I had attained a sufficient soapy slickness, I commenced to apply my rich body as an active wash-cloth across his whole frame.

I understand that in far-off Nippon there is a class of women known as geishas, whose professional practices resemble what we Naiads at the Palace deliver. But how Professor Fluvius ever came to know of them, in order to use as models for his business, I cannot say.

Because the business of the Palace continued round the clock, and some of us must perforce tend the evening shift, the third-floor communal sleeping suite for us Naiads held only four of us at midnight: myself, Lara, Minnie and Lila. It were best to picture us, lounging drowsily on our respective feather mattresses, as four Graces, hued in the sequence above-named: honey, olive, alabaster and tea.

We chattered for a while of gossipy inconsequentials, as any women will, before Lila said, “I see that our newest employee has already been assigned a laboratory.”

How quickly news travelled in this aqueous environment, like scent to a shark!

“Do you mean Dr. Baruch?” asked Lara, batting her thick eyelashes. “I wouldn’t mind being his assistant. It would make a nice change from the soap-and-slither routine with the high muck-a-mucks.”

Minnie asked, “What’s the nature of his work?”

“Rumour has it he’s crafting some kind of purgative for the rubes,” responded Lila.

Lara pulled a face. “I shouldn’t care to help in that case, lest he need a subject for his trials.”

I did not add any details from my own stock of overheard information. The thoughts of the payment I owed Usk in return for that data were too discouraging.

Pretty soon after this, my sisters fell asleep, allowing me to slip out without needing to respond to any inquiries about my late-night errands.

The same elevator that had delivered me from street-level to the second-floor now took me from third to lowest cellar. Here I entered a phantasmagorical, almost inhuman world.

The sub-basement held all the apparati that allowed the Palace to function. I felt much like an animalcule venturing into a human’s guts.

Congeries of brass pipes of all dimensions, from pencil-thin to barrel-thick, threaded the space, producing a veritable labyrinth. Some pipes leaked steam; some were frosted with condensation. Valves and dials and taps proliferated. The pipes led into and out of huge rivet-studded reservoirs, from which escaped various floral and mineral scents.

Beyond this initial impression of tubular matrices loomed the many boilers, giant radiant Molochs, each one fed and stoked by its own patented “automatic fireman” apparatus, which fed coal in from vast bins at a steady clip, obviating the need for human tenders.

Indeed, Professor Fluvius’s early boast—to render the Baths of Caracalla insignificant—appeared fulfilled.

I began to perspire. Vertigo assailed me. I felt incredibly distant from all the sources of my strength, amidst this controlled industrial chaos. Usk had said the southwest corner was his lair. But which direction was which?

I wandered for what seemed like ages, meeting no one in this sterile factory, before glimpsing, beneath a large, wall-mounted mechanical message-board affair, a tumbled heap of bedclothes. As I approached, I noted that the message-board was of the type found in Newport mansions, by means of which masters could communicate with distant servants through the medium of dropped or rotated printed discs. This must be how Profesor Fluvius summoned Usk at need.

The musty midden of bedclothes stirred and out of the stained regalia rose Usk. To my horror and disgust, he was utterly naked, his powerful, hirsute twisted limbs such a contrast to the well-formed appearance of Olmstead or my other clients.

Usk conferred a look of randy appreciation on me, a favour which I could easily have foregone.

“Ah, beauty steps down into the gutter. I am glad you made it unnecessary for me to communicate with the Professor. He’s got too many pressing matters on his mind. Big doings, big doings. If you only knew…”

Usk seemed to want to disclose some secret to me, but I did not pursue his bait, for fear of a hook within. So he continued.

“It’s a kindness to spare ol’ Fluvius any knowledge of your trifling indiscretions. Howsomever, you are not here for us to discuss our mutual master. Sit down, sit down, join me on my humble pallet!”

I sat, and of course, to no one’s surprise, Usk immediately began to paw me without any charade of seduction, his hands roaming at will under my gown.

I would like to say that his touch left me cold. But the truth was otherwise. To my chagrin, I sensed in Usk’s blunt and callous gropings a portion of the same galvanic power that had thrilled me when the professor first touched me in the Tremont Hotel, so many months ago. It was almost as if Usk, the professor, and I were all related, sharing the same sympathies and humours I felt with my fellow Naiads.

No merit resides in delving into the sordid details of the next two hours. Usk had his lusty way with me, not once or twice but thrice, and deposited his thick spunk in several unconventional places.

At last, though, he seemed sated. Sated, yet still demanding.

“You’ll be back tomorrow night, my dear. Or the professor and I will have that unwelcome conversation about your goosey-goosey-gander-where-do-you-wander ways.”

I sighed dramatically in a put-upon fashion, yet not without some falsity of emotion. Truly, after tonight’s tumble, future encounters with Usk would not be such an unknown burden. “I suppose I have no choice…”

Suddenly, as if my words had pleased him or opened up some further bond between us, he reached beneath his pallet and pulled out—a book!

“Would you—would you read this to me? Please? I—I can’t….”

I took the volume. The title page proclaimed it to be The Water-Babies, by Charles Kingsley.

“‘Once upon a time,’” I began, “‘there was a little chimney-sweep, and his name was Tom….’”

The next several weeks sped by in a busy round of work, sleep, intercourse and two-person Chautauqua between Usk and myself, with the text of our studies moving on, after Water-Babies, to Mr. MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind. I could not honestly say I found this regimen imposed by Usk without its thrills and rewards, and on the whole, what with work and all, each of my days passed in a pleasant whirl of activity.

Several times the professor took all seven of us girls out with him on various expeditions across Massachusetts and nearby New England. Ostensibly, these were gay recreational outings to reward us for our diligent services. But in reality, I suspected that they were calculated to serve at least as much as advertisements for the Palace.

Late in December, on a mild day, we went to Rocky Point Amusement Park in Rhode Island. The place had been much in the news, since President Hayes had recently visited and become the first sitting president of this forward-looking nation to utilize a newfangled telephonic device located on the premises. (He had placed a call to Providence, purpose unreported.)

Even this late in the season, the Shore Dinner Hall was still serving its traditional quahog chowder and clamcakes fare, and we all ate to repletion, amidst much laughter and chatter.

At one point, without warning, the skies darkened and the waters of Narragansett Bay became troubled. It seemed as if our little excursion would be dampened. I looked up from my half-eaten tenth greasy clamcake and noted that, across the hall, Professor Fluvius was arguing with the manager of the establishment, about what I could not say. Several park employees intervened, and both men calmed down. At the same time, the sun returned and the sea grew still, and so all was well.

During this period, I spent whatever minutes were not otherwise occupied with Dr. Baruch in his laboratory, which was located in the same wing that housed the Professor’s quarters and office. I had taken a shine to the humble physician, and was in awe of his learning. His cosmopolitan air spoke to me of the larger world, a venue I hoped one day to experience firsthand. I was resolved not to spend all my days in the Palace of Many Waters, despite whatever debt I owed to Professor Fluvius for first awaking me. I wanted to travel, to broaden my horizons.

Dr. Baruch was careful not to divulge the nature of his researches to me—a secret he was unaware I already knew—but accepted me as a mascot of sorts to his scientific endeavours, a pleasant female ornament to his glassware-filled, aqua-regia-redolent workspace.

It was in this manner that I became privy to his ultimate success, and arranged to be at my secret listening post when he rushed into the professor’s office to deliver his good news.

“Professor Fluvius, I am happy to report that your generous faith in my talents has been rewarded. Administration of the biotic infusion of your devising is perfected at last. Delivered as a lavage to the lower intestines, the colony becomes well-established and active. Although I forecast that frequent infusions will be necessary to maintain its presence against the body’s innate capacity for driving out foreign invaders.”

“Excellent, Dr., excellent! I can now begin improving the material condition of the community. And the best way to do that is to start with the health of the men at the very top. With a public servant such as the Mayor, perhaps. If you would be so good as to prepare a dosage for Mr. Prince, and stand ready to offer your testimonial as to its efficacy….”

Perched not uncomfortably on the frigid catwalk, listening to the formation of ice crystals in the burbling water around the pilings below, I received this news as a sop to my curiosity, but did not regard it as any item of significance.

How little I witted or foresaw.

A few days later, Olmstead and I were reclining in our tub prior to my sudsing us up. He looked ill at ease for some reason I could not immediately fathom. His wetted bedraggled beard resembled a nanny goat’s. My heart went out to him, and I resolved to exert all my charms to get him to relax. But most uncommonly, I could not. Finally he disclosed what was troubling him.

“You know my project to reclaim the Fens? It’s cancelled. Funding’s been suddenly withdrawn. The Mayor and his tribe have had a change of heart. They’re full of talk about making an end to ‘trespassing on the natural order.’ Claim the city is big enough as it is. It’s as if they’ve all gone Transcendentalist on me! Progress be damned!”

I ached for his disappointment. “Why, Frederick, that’s simply awful! You had your heart set on accomplishing this!”

“I know, I know. But what can I do? My mind’s so disordered at this development. Perhaps I should take one of those new treatments the professor is offering. It seems to have perked up the Mayor and his crowd. Fostered a strange implacable resolve in them.”

I could not offer a solution to Olmstead’s worries, and so concentrated instead on delivering the most agreeable whole-body massage I could to this client whom, to my surprise, I had become so very fond of.

The hour after midnight that same evening found me once more down in the depths of the Palace with Usk. After our robust hinky-jinky and a chapter or two of Mr. Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River, I made to leave. But Usk detained me with a teasing query.

“You picked out your dress yet for the Prof’s coronation ball down in Washington?”

I halted in my tracks. “Whatever do you mean?”

“He’s got the Mayor and his cronies in his pocket now. Only a matter of time till the whole country’s his to command.”

“How so?” I demanded.

“That bum-wash what he and the doc cooked up. Makes any man the Prof’s slave. Saps their native will and substitutes the Prof’s.”

“I don’t believe you! The Professor is a noble intellect! He’d never stoop to such a thing!”

Usk shrugged. “Believe as you will, makes no nevermind to me.”

I stormed out, all in a dithery confusion. Should I confide this news to my sisters, and ask their advice? Confront the professor directly? Or do nothing at all?

I resolved to seek Olmstead’s guidance first.

The hours till our next appointment dragged their feet, but at last we were fragrantly en-tubbed together.

Before I could venture my request for guidance, Olmstead burst forth with plentiful yet somewhat inane zest.

“Lord above, I’ve never felt better nor been more peaceful of mind! All those troubles I was blathering about to you— Vanished like the snows of yesteryear! Who cares if the Fens ever get transformed? Not me! And to think I owe it all to high-colonic hydrotherapy!”

Rain in great sheets and buckets; rain in Niagara torrents; rain in Biblical proportions.

The skies had poured down their burden unceasingly for the past twenty-four hours, ever since I had left Olmstead, as if in synchrony with my foul, black mood. Nor did they seem disposed to stop.

Just beyond the walls of the Palace, the throbbing, gushing waters of the Charles were rising, rising, rising. I could feel them, even out of sight. It even seemed possible they would soon threaten to lap at the catwalk where I had eavesdropped, high as it was.

All the talk among the patrons of the Palace centred about roads swamped, bridges washed away, dams upriver that were bulging at their seams.

Something had to be done. About my anger, about the professor, about the subversion of poor Olmstead. But what?

The professor had been like a father to me and my sisters. We owed him our work, our maintenance, our purpose in life.

But didn’t he in turn owe us something? Honesty, if nothing else?

Finally, when I had worked myself into a right tizzy, I stamped my way to Professor Fluvius’s office, and barged in without knocking.

He was there, seated behind his big seashell desk, idle, back to me, looking out the window at the incessant precipitation with what I immediately sensed was a melancholy ruminativeness. I stood, quivering and silent, till at last he wheeled to face me. His long tresses, white as sea spume, framed a sad and sober visage.

“Ah, Charlene, my most local and potent child. I should have known it would be you who might tumble to my schemes. I hope you’ll allow me to explain.”

“What is there to explain! You’re bent on accumulating a greedy power over your fellow men!”

The professor chuckled wryly. “These men are not my fellows. But yes, I need to pull their strings for a while.”

“To glorify yourself!”

Professor Fluvius arose and hastened toward me. I took a step or two backwards.

“No, Charlene! Not at all. Or rather, yes. I seek to glorify what I represent. The natural state of all creation. This city— It’s an emblem of all that’s wrong with mankind. That’s why I established my Palace here, on the front lines of the battle. Can’t you see what they’re doing? Tearing down their hills and dumping them into the waters! It’s an assault. Yes, an assault on creation. If they succeed here, they’ll go on without compunction, dumping whatever they wish into the seven seas, into rivers and canyons. Before too long, the whole of nature will be naught but a soiled toilet! I had to stop them, here and now and hence forever. You must see that!”

The words of my master tugged at my loyalty and heart. But counterposed against them was my affection for Olmstead, and my own sense of thwarted individual destiny.

“No!” I yelled. “I won’t let you! I’ll stop you! Stop you now!”

And so saying, I slammed my small fists into his blue-vested chest.

The professor’s face assumed a wrathful mien I had never before witnessed. That blow seemed to unleash greater cataracts from the sky. The noise of the rain threatened to flood my ears. But I could still hear his words.

“You belong to me! You are naught but a tributary! You flow into my vastness! You shall not rebel!”

He gripped me fiercely by my upper arms. Instantly I felt tethers of strange energies enwrap us, coursing into and out of us both. For his part, Fluvius seemed to be drawing on some vast but distant reservoir, while my own forces were smaller, but closer to hand.

Immobile as statues, we struggled mightily in this invisible fashion, while the rain cascaded down.

And then somehow I felt the presence of my sister Naiads at my back, offering support and sustenance. I seemed to hear them speak with a single voice:

“Bold and deep-souled Nodens oversteps himself. He distrusts and hates all men. But we, we who wind our courses gently among them, fertilizing their fields, ferrying their goods, supplying their recreation—we do not. We must give them a chance to be their best selves. End this now, sister.”

And I did, with their help.

Out the window that looked upriver, I could see the wall of dirty, debris-laden water barrelling down, high as the steeple of the Old North Church, aimed to sweep the shoreline clean, and take the Palace down.

Professor Nodens Fluvius saw too, and in the final moment before it hit us, I thought to detect a trace of pride and even approval in his expression.

When that liquid avalanche struck the Palace, tearing it off its foundations, drowning its boilers, I too dissolved, along with Fluvius and my sisters and even Usk. (Of the poor unfortunate mortals caught therein, I speak not.) I dissolved back to what I had been before I awoke on that damp coverlet, not knowing my name, back to an existence of endless flow, never the same from moment to moment, yet eternal, owning a mouth that pressed wetly against my old master, yet this time retaining my name.

Charlene, or Charlie, or Charles.