HAUSMAN’S ARK
by Jonathan Freedman
It’s #2 on Hausmann’s Top Ten List of Things to Do — and Not Do — in Paris
VISITING DISTANT RELATIVES can be intimidating. Especially when you don’t speak the same language, and may commit a faux pas.
We visited our relatives in their imposing abode on the Left Bank – the Museum of Natural History.
Their skulls are on display in a glass case: You see the evolution of humans and Great Apes. Compare their jaws, eye sockets, brow ridges, and the size of their craniums. There’s a cast of the skull of “Lucy,” who lived in Africa around 3 million years ago, give or take a few hundred thousand years.
Which are humans and which apes? The hand-written labels have faded. You have to guess.
“Do you know name of our common ancestor?” I ask, my son, Lincoln.
He shakes his head.
“The Missing Linc.”
“Stop teasing!”
“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones!” grumbled a voice. It was Lucy, the mother of humankind, defending her youngest descendant from Hausmann.
Back home, some literalistic folks espouse the Creationist view that God created the heavens and earth in 6 days, back in the year 3760 B.C. These folks want public schools to teach Creationism alongside the Theory of Evolution.
I’d like to send this display to the Museum of Creationism in Santee, California. Maybe it would open their eyes. Or, not. For the Biblical point of view, check out: http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/museum/
Anybody doubting the wonder of evolution should come visit my relatives in Paris. You may discover they’re your relatives too.
The Gallery of Comparative Anatomy fills an immense hall. They’re celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, the Englishman who came up with the theory of evolution. Naturalists fanned out to every continent, dissecting, and sending the bones back to Paris. Anatomists studied the bones. Painstakingly, they catalogued, compared, assembled, and labeled them by hand. The exhibit hall is a living embodiment of evolution.
Yet on this rainy day, it’s virtually deserted. Science has moved on from comparative anatomy to cracking the genome and investigating infinitesimally small molecules that can cure diseases. My wife, Isabelle, is a doctor and scientist. You might think she’d be bored by this reliquary of science from a bygone era. But she’s blotto about the dusty bone museum, and the kids are infected with her love of science.
We walk through the great hall, past the skeletons of every species, from the tiniest mouse to the great whale. Rows upon rows of beasts arranged in taxonomic ranks: phylum, class, order, family, and genus. Their bones are attached with tiny screws: backbones, ribs, limbs suspended by wires. Jaws open, bellies empty. They appear to be waiting hungrily for lunch, or maybe resurrection.
As a smart-alecky kid, I thought Noah’s Ark was a stupid joke. How could all the creatures on earth, marching two by two, ever fit on board an ark?
Now I became a believer! The bestiary of bones converted me!
You see the unity of all creation filling one giant exposition hall.
“Look, kids!” I whisper loudly, pointing at the bestiary below. “Imagine the animals coming to life aboard Noah’s Ark.”
Imagine…
As the rained drummed down on the leaky roof, puddles formed in the Jardim des Plantes, and the River Seine rose, I felt the floor sway as the great hall floated off. Past the Gare de Austerlitz. Over the bridges. Genevieve waved at the statue of St. Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, submerged in the river Past the sinking spire of Notre Dame, the gargoyles drowning in the deluge. The floodwaters covered Paris except for the tip of the Eiffel Tour. We sailed around it. Perched on top was a pigeon. It had lost the toes on its right foot. In its beak waved a tiny tricolour, the French flag!
Impatient with Daddy’s reverie, the kids clamored away. I found myself alone with the bones.
***
Warning, the following contains material labeled, “name dropping,” and may upset your stomach.
We do have one other not-so-distant relative in Paris – Charles H. Rivkin, the new U.S. Ambassador to France. He’s the cousin of our cousins, the Rivkins of New York, London, and Cairo. We’ve never actually met, but I’ve been awfully busy with hausmann duties in Basel, rearranging the children’s sock drawers and brushing up on my Swiss German.
“You’re related to whom?” cried a flabbergasted writer friend, who lives in Paris.
“We’ve never actually met…”
“Could you ask him to put me on the invitation list to cultural events at the American embassy?” she pleaded.
“Well, I…”
Not that she doesn’t merit it. After all, she’s the author of a memoir, HENRY MILLER IS UNDER MY BED, that’s prominently displayed at Shakespeare & Company, and a patroness of its annual Writer’s Fair. http://www.festivalandco.com/Writer’s Fair.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think so,” I said, diplomatically.
She laughed. “Have you heard the rumor why Obama chose Rivkin?”
“Because he was a big fundraiser and honcho in California politics?
“That too. But the French say Rivkin was the only candidate shorter than Sarkozy!”
Mr. Ambassador, if you’re reading this in your CIA news dossier, please forgive our faux pas.
There’s a tall statue of Thomas Jefferson on the Quai d’Orsay. When Genevieve heard you were American Ambassador, she said, “That’s way cool. So was Thomas Jefferson.”
Which relative are we proudest of, the Ambassador or the Apes?
We’re all one family. The family of Hausmann.
