The Transformation Paperback - 2006

First line

I begin by weaving a net.

Excerpt

I begin by weaving a net. It must be light yet strong, and the tension exactly judged: too tight is as dangerous as too loose. This is a trick which takes many years to master — it consumed my childhood, as well as those years when a man should be selecting a bride — but once it is learned, all society is at one’s command, and any price may be asked. My tiny nets, my little foundations of holes, are as fine as gossamer; neither pins nor messy adhesives are required to keep them in place. A simple adjustment of springs is all that is necessary to maintain the tension, but this is a painless procedure, and the devices are quite invisible.

In my trade, the net is known as a caul. Perhaps you associate this word with the piece of skin which is sometimes found clinging to the skulls of newborn children, and which is kept as a charm against drowning? I like to think my hand-woven cauls similarly lucky; I like to consider myself a maker of charms. You will see no sign above my door save my name, for many of my customers value their privacy, but my trade card is more illuminating:

Monsieur Lucien Goulet III
Manufacturer of Ladies’ Imperceptible Hair-Pieces
& Gentlemen’s Invisible Coverings

Some in my profession sneer at these terms, dismissing them as old-fashioned. People need to know what one is selling, they say. Call the thing by its true name. Wig. Toupee. It’s a matter of honesty. I, however, am an old-fashioned man, and prefer to maintain a certain mystique. Besides, my customers are more comfortable in my coy hands than in those of a common tradesman. Imperceptibility, invisibility: these are my areas of expertise. If you can afford the price, I can work miracles. I can take years off your life.


Part I

This Side of Heaven

February 1898
With its tangle of Moorish minarets, cupolas, and arches, its Byzantine domes and its thirteen crescent moons, the Tampa Bay Hotel was a fairy-tale castle anchored at the water’s edge. It was open only a few months a year, and during the immense summers it stood empty, its glittering roofs blinding even the crows. From December through April, however, it was full of the best sorts of people: bankers and industrialists, stockbrokers and shipping merchants, attorneys and architects, and a number of celebrities. They came from the big northern cities and from Europe, these guests, each man accompanied by a sleek wife. Any children they brought with them were, like the Hotel maids, silent until asked to speak. Wealthy invalids came, too: women of delicate constitution and sensitive nerves, feeble second sons, consumptives, rheumatics, all ordered south by physicians weary of the illnesses of the rich, whether phantom or genuine. Florida was a place where wonders could happen, where there was no winter worth mentioning, and where the soil was so fertile that dry sticks took root and flowered like Aaron’s staff. Heart cases did well there.

Once inside the gates of the Tampa Bay Hotel there was no need to leave, no reason to venture into the dirty, dangerous parts of town, where the Negroes and Latins lived. It was a city unto itself, with a drugstore, a schoolhouse, a barbershop, a newsstand, a beauty salon, and a telegraph office. There were spa facilities, an exposition hall, a casino, a bowling alley, tennis and croquet courts, kennels and stables. Every room had a telephone, hot and cold running water, and electric lighting designed by Edison himself. The grounds contained one hundred and fifty varieties of tropical plants and were so vast that porters were available to squeeze the lazier guests into rickshaws, transporting them like luggage along the ornamental walkways so that they could admire the peacocks and the mirror pool. To the north and the west lay the wilderness, which an army of gardeners kept at bay, and which shook with easy quarry: trout, alligators, tarpon, egrets, plover, deer, and snakes. Upon one’s return to the Hotel these could be cooked by the chef, fashioned into a handbag, secured to a hat, or stuffed by the resident taxidermist.



Marion Unger stood at her window on Fortune Street brushing her hair. Across the river she could see the Tampa Bay Hotel gleaming like quicksilver under the February sun, and if she lowered her gaze to the water’s surface she could watch the entire structure rippling and dissolving, then reassembling itself. She had come to Tampa because of the Hotel, not as a guest but as a bricklayer’s bride, and she had watched the resort grow to one-quarter of a mile from its foundation stone. She had married Jack at the age of nineteen, almost ten years before, and at their wedding in Detroit she had worn a crown of orange blossoms, as if Florida had claimed her already. She had wanted to put the flowers in water before she went to bed, but she could not untangle them from her hair without tearing the petals, catching them in the white-blond strands.

“Don’t worry,” said Jack. “You can have as many orange blossoms as you like once we’re in Tampa. Come here.” And he opened the starchy sheets to her, and she climbed into the cool, high bed.

The next weeks were spent preparing for their departure. As Marion filled her trunk with her new clothes, the clothes of a wife, she tried to imagine what her life would be like so far south, on the edge of that low-lying peninsula. At breakfast each morning, she thought, when she would wear her new silk kimono, she and Jack would drink juice the color of the sun, and she would make him orange marmalade and her mother’s orange cake — the secret was the zest, rubbed as fine as sand — and if it were ever cold enough to light a fire she would sprinkle the kindling with curls of peel and their house would be warm and spicy. She folded the burial robe she had sewn as part of her trousseau, admiring the tiny tucks in the bodice, the hand-made lace at the wrists and throat. It seemed a shame she could not wear it as a nightgown; the satin felt so luxurious to the touch. On top of the neat pile of clothes she placed the woollen stockings her mother had knitted, although Jack said she would never need them, and that she was foolish to take such things along.

They arrived in the summer of 1888, when there was no grand resort and no bridge, just acres of swamp and underbrush to be cleared, and alligators prowling the sandy streets, and serpents stirring in the palmetto scrub. Marion had never known such heat. The wild orange trees were bright with ripening fruit, and the air clung to her skin.

“We’ll get used to it — everyone does,” said Jack, his brow glossy, his cheeks too flushed. “And come hurricane season, you’ll long for this calm.”

He meant it as a joke, but Marion was too hot to laugh. As he led her into their house she thought of her hometown, where the hottest weather was smoothed by its passage across the Great Lakes.


From the Hardcover edition.

Media reviews

"Chidgey has that gift of the imagination that finds metaphor, contiguity and paradox wherever she looks, and a seemingly innate feel for structuring events, times and historical detail to make one whole, satisfying narrative out of a myriad unexpected parts."
—The New Zealand Herald

"[Chidgey] takes us on an enormously imaginative journey, where you can almost taste the dry heat and smell the aroma of freshly rolled Cuban cigars. This novel is as beautifully made and intricately detailed as the wigs Monsieur Goulet weaves."
—Christchurch Press (New Zealand)

“A story out of Edgar Allen Poe, with the requisite revelations about human nature, obsession and sexuality. As with any good horror story, The Transformation relies on the element of surprise.”
—Miami Herald

“A skilfully written, period-perfect, atmospheric thriller…. [Chidgey] writes as convincingly of the way to roll a fine cigar as she does about how to weave a chignon, or set out an orange grove.”
—The Gazette (Montreal)

“Like Neruda, Chidgey has a sensual imagination. The New Zealand writer … is moved by the look and heft and feel of things.”
—The Globe and Mail