The owners of Luna Park wanted to hang Topsy, but there were protests that hanging is barbaric, a relic of a bygone age, so Mr. Edison has stepped in to volunteer his expertise.
The eyes are so tiny for the bulk of it, as if a smaller and very intelligent creature is trapped within the monstrous body. The eyes of the people in the crowd, wide with anticipation, seem enormous by comparison. If there was a second camera Harry would love to do a panoramic of them — begin on Topsy’s tiny, disinterested eye, then use the pan-head to circle slowly, registering the face of every human witness in the front ranks of the throng, holding on this woman in the purple velvet hat, or perhaps that worried little boy clutching his father’s massive hand, holding on a human face as it contemplates the world’s largest land mammal felled by George Westinghouse’s alternating current.
Or pan a little farther to show Jubal at the wagon, back turned to the event, holding his horse by the bridle and covering its eyes with his hat.
“Get ready,” says Porter. The technician by the cable-join relays a signal from the dynamo, windmilling his arm. Harry begins to turn the crank, steady, the rhythm of it like breathing now, trying not to let his nerves push him faster. The camera operator is the God of Time, Porter always says, the power to speed or slow events resting in the palm of his hand. Topsy begins to tap the ground with her trunk, as if searching for something, and Harry remembers the song—
You absent-minded beggar—
The young men on the ferry were singing it and he was worried it would offend his Brigid, but she sang along. They have been back here just once, Brigid attracted to novelty but even more delighted to witness the joy of others. On their trip to the Falls she was constantly looking out for other honeymooning couples.
“Do ye think,” she’d shout to him, over the roar of the great waters, each time she spotted a likely pair, “they could possibly be as happy as we are?”
He doesn’t see the second signal.
He is cranking steadily and there is a noise from the crowd around him, a thousand gasping at once as smoke billows up from all four shoes, white smoke and burned-flesh odor and then Topsy buckling without a cry, collapsing in a pile like a condemned tenement building.
Shouts and some cheers and somebody crying, but Harry cranks through it, strangely shaken by the end of this breathtaking, murderous creature, the song in his head running to the rhythm of his cranking, as if it is a hurdy-gurdy and not a motion-picture camera—
You absent-minded beggar
Be you city-sport or jay—
The roll runs out and Harry calls to Jubal for another. The veterinarian is there to proclaim that the beast has been executed and a trio of groundskeepers, colored men, wait to dispose of the gargantuan carcass. It is a heroic task, much more difficult than throwing a switch, and he wants to record the process on film. But Porter is already taking the instrument off the tripod.
“People have seen what they came for, Harry,” he says. “Show’s over.”
But it won’t leave his head, the song the young men were singing incessantly on that first boat trip to Coney Island with Brigid McCool—
You absent-minded beggar
Be you city-sport or jay
If you want to see the Elephant
You must pay, pay, pay!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Sayles’s previous novels include Pride of the Bimbos, Los Gusanos, and the National Book Award — nominated Union Dues. He has directed seventeen feature films, including Matewan, Eight Men Out, and Lone Star, and received a John Cassavetes Award, a John Steinbeck Award, and two Academy Award nominations. His latest film, Amigo, was completed in 2010.