In the Museum’s repetitive world, image is a predatory thing. Coatings induce that noticeable funhouse mirror effect. They create that soda bottle look. They block light.
XIV.
As mentioned before, the Museum, before it was a museum, was a floating island of garbage, a garden grove, a cairn. It was also dictionary in a bottle, a Wunderkammer, and a pregnant man. Just before it was a Museum, it was dollhouse of sorts. Back then, it belonged to Maggie, but when Maggie was six, she lost it to Gretchen in an intense game of GO FISH. And so of course, it was Gretchen who founded the Museum of Oddities and Eccentricities and brought it to its present form.
XV.
While there are ever-shifting exhibits, the Museum houses only four displays (one is not available for public viewing). Each has an official bronze-plated placard. The first display is a giant golden retriever. He responds to commands in several languages — including both Latinate and tonally derived Oriental languages and all their offshoots, and may even engage in prolonged conversation. He has an incredible ear for intervallic quality, motivic relationships, textural patterns, and unnatural inflections. He has marked proficiency in Greek, Ancient not Modern. He has some difficulty with a few of the Slavic languages though, except for Russian. He is also fluent in Esperanto; it is, in fact, his preferred method of communication. For instance, you may hear some of these phrases from its snarling rictus: La bestoj estas hundoj (The animals are dogs); Hundo trinkas (A dog drinks (or: is drinking)); La kato ludas (The cat plays (or: is playing)); Hundoj kuras (Dogs run (or: are running)); La hundo estas ludas (The dog is playing); Kato ludas (A cat plays (or: is playing)); Katoj ne kuras (Cats do not run (or: are not running)); Estas kato sub la tablo (There is a cat under the table); La hundo estas la amiko de la kato (The dog is the friend of the cat). But by far its favorite phrase is La rozo ne estas frukto (The rose is not a fruit).
The dog’s bronze placard travels with him around his neck and includes not only his name, emergency information — in the unfortunate chance that he gets loose! — and his rabies vaccination date. But on the flip side, inscribed into the placard, is the reason why this one particular golden retriever is a part of the Museum. The problem arises, however, because the dog himself inscribed the tag, and although he is competent in the languages of persons, he vehemently argued that he wanted to write in his most natural language, the language — he said — of the greatest poets and philosophers, namely, dog.
The second display is the floor, which is a mirror of wonders. The floor reflects not the future or the present, your deepest desires or your greatest fears. Instead, the Museum’s floors display you before you were you. It shows who or what you were in your previous incarnation.
This can often be a frightening scene. Imagine walking around and suddenly, from the bottom corner of your eye, you see not yourself directly below your feet but a rock or a lizard, or if you are very very lucky, someone famous but ultimately unrecognizable. We have only recognized one reincarnate, but we could not reveal to them who they were. We cannot point out to others the Floor of Incarnations. It is a rule in the Big Book. Those who come in must know to look beneath to see who they really are.
The Floor of Incarnations’ placard reads more like a warning or a legal document than an explanation, which is what most persons are mainly interested in, but this, of course, is not something the Museum — as it resists explanatory efforts — can readily or easily reveal.
The third display is the employees themselves. Like the golden retriever, they are also wandering displays, and like all the displays in the Museum, their oddity or eccentricity is not always obvious or apparent to the average Museum-goer, but those with a subtle sense of understanding can easily see why the employees fit here.
The placards for this display show only a number. These unique numbers refer back to a book of application, which is always available for inspection. Unfortunately, the employees are real tricksters and enjoy trading placards with each other, such that there is no methodical way to insure who belongs to what number within fifteen minutes of the Museum’s opening.
The final display is private.
XVI.
In the Museum, there are no names, only numbers. Every morning, the employees enter the Museum with their placards and they check the Big Book to tell them who they are. The Big Book reminds them of their personalities and truths, which they may have forgotten after sleep, but just as soon as they fully grasp exactly who it is that they are, they swap placards, or their placards are stolen or replaced or lost, and they must pilgrimage back to the Big Book to learn about themselves all over again.
XVII.
There is exactly one placard per employee at the Museum. There are no extras. There is no room for that much horsing around. Anyone missing a placard is no longer an employee. They become mere observers. They are visitors.
And the opposite can also be true. If a visitor to the Museum steals an employee’s placard, they become part of the staff. They are a part of the Museum and, until they are fired, their allegiance must remain with the Museum. They can no longer go to school, go to their banal office jobs, etc. It is a steep penalty, but even bad little boys must learn the consequences of misbehavior.
XVIII.
The Big Book sits on a coffee table in the middle of the Museum of Oddities and Eccentricities. During most of the day, there is a spiraling line of employees around the Big Book. One curator, usually Curator 26039, stands next to the Big Book and reads what the Big Book says to the employee desiring a personality. Some days, however, Curator 26039 does not remember his responsibility, as he is still unused to being Curator 26039. Those days, the employees do not make an orderly spiraling line around the Big Book. Those days, the employees are savages. They fight and plunder to get to the Big Book, and they claw and rip — saliva dripping from the corners of their foaming mouths, eager to know who they are — and, if they are lucky, Curator 26039 will find his number in the Big Book early enough in the chaos to restore order. Sometimes, if any person thinks of it, the museum’s entropist is entreated to set things aright. However, on unlucky days, employees are fated to continue fighting this way until the end of the day. Then, they go home and hope that tomorrow, Curator 26039 will remember his rightful responsibility and the Museum of Oddities and Eccentricities will once again have its mechanical flow restored.
XIX.
When Gretchen won the dollhouse in a heated game of Go Fish, she decided that dollhouses are useless but dolls are not. Nor are the rooms. Having been fascinated with architecture for her entire life, she tore off the top of the dollhouse and offered her bare fingers. One by one. Inside, she saw a resplendent world, corners that were warped and rooms waiting for magic to be divined upon them. Being a kindly god, she gave the dollhouse a roof made of glass, so those inside could always see her. She took her little godly fingers and indented the glass at some points and pinching it up to peaks at others. From the outside, Gretchen came up with certain rules and regulations for the inhabitants of the dollhouse. Periodically, she would lift the glass ceiling and put some things in: knickknacks and little boys she firmly disliked.
From outside, she would peer in and think what an inadequate name ‘dollhouse’ was for this structure housing such potential and possibility.
Then, one day, she came up with a name — the Museum of Oddities and Eccentricities. Everyday, after a long day of school, Gretchen would run home to see what her little curators and employees and mean little boys from school who magically disappeared from the outside world — a serial kidnapper of mean little boys, the papers called it! — were doing. Some days, if there were problems, she would fix them. Other days, she would simply watch, knowing how easily order could be restored, if it only fit her fancy.