The Palace Of Curiosities Part 23

My fingers peel back the omentum majus, and I open a window on to her womb. The manikin is wedged within, umbilicus fouled around its neck, grimacing in the agony of its final struggle.

'How precarious our coming forth into this world!' he exclaims. 'How the umbilicus must have tightened as it fought to be free!'

He snaps his fingers.

'Plaster,' he says, and one of the students dashes away to do his bidding.

I stand close by him, breath furring the frigid air, reading the lessons of the body and keeping private my store of questions. I watch him spread the mixing-plaster over the face of the unborn child, his hands steady.

'We anatomists labour to capture the essence of our beautiful mortality,' he says in his musical voice. 'We are more beautiful than anything the Greeks carved from stone, for stone cannot breathe, however cleverly wrought and marvellously proportioned. I would have the beauty of flesh. Not marble.'

I am spellbound. He looks on me again.

'What do you think, Lazzaro?' His voice swells with encouragement.

'You understand!' I reply, a little breathlessly.

The students laugh, and I hang my head, for I fear that I have spoken insultingly. Of course he understands; he is my master.

'You are most complimentary,' he says, and I look up to see he is smiling. 'I hope your faith in me is not misplaced.'

'Yes, master,' I whisper.

He returns his attention to the corpse.

'This is death: putrefaction and stench,' he continues, pointing his plaster-knife at the body. 'We anatomists are sculptors. Artists. We seek out the wonderful workmanship of G.o.d in Man. We open His great picture book of Man. In it may we discover all that is remarkable in G.o.d's creation. Through study of the powers and functions of each of the parts, shall we know ourselves.'

I cannot cease from gazing upon him as he speaks. It is as though each word is meant for my ears alone.

'By understanding visible nature we may understand G.o.d's divine plan. Understand ourselves, and we understand the measure of all things. This is more than anatomia normale. This is the revealing of divine architecture.'

It strikes me then: here, in this reeking anatomy studio, I am close to my answer. I am filled with an unfamiliar emotion and slowly realise that it is happiness; I bloom under the tutelage of my master, studying the wondrous geometry of the human body, feeling it bringing me close to resolution, to insight.

My master knows: everything he says confirms that he could understand my secret. All I need do is ask the questions I have stored up in my soul, and he will tell me the answer, for he is the one who can teach me what I am. Hope makes me bold. At the end of the lesson I dawdle behind.

'Dottore,' I say when we are alone. 'I want to ask you something.'

'Indeed. Speak, man.'

I will ask him now. He will tell me.

'Then, master, let me ask: what ties a man to life? What loosens him into death?'

'Good questions, my dear man, most excellent!' he cries. 'What do you think?'

'Every living thing bleeds when it is cut,' I say, and drop my chin. 'That is the law of nature.'

'Good,' he says. 'You are an observant pupil. Every creature with blood, such as a dog, or a man.'

'Every man?'

'Of course.'

'And every man, when he is cut deeply, remains open?' I say nervously.

'And bleeds to death. The blood is the life, Lazzaro.'

I swallow a great lungful of air. 'What if a man was cut and did not bleed? And his flesh knitted up, and swiftly?'

I dare not look at him. He must be able to see what I am concealing: that I speak of myself.

'It would be a miracle.'

'Maybe I have seen such a thing, master.'

'Pah! A piece of trickery such as you may see in one of the fairground booths on Holy Days. Men who swallow swords, or toads. My good man, cast your mind solely upon science, not fakery and magic tricks.'

He turns to leave, but my questions are burning a hole in my tongue and it seems I must spit them out.

'Master. Does everything stay dead when it is cut?'

'You may be sure of it. A fatal wound will kill a man. When a man is dead, he stays dead.'

His eyes are friendly and it makes me bold enough to keep on pressing him.

'There are other things that trouble me.'

'Indeed? What?'

'I have thoughts I can tell no-one. Dreams. Memories. I want someone to help me.'

'Perhaps I can help,' he says, and starts to flicker, like the flame of a candle in a draught.

I clutch at his arm and cry, 'Master! Dottore!' I want to hold tight to the answers he possesses: they are here, in this place. I do not want to leave, but I am dragged away into darkness. Of all my desires, the one I most long for is to return.

A voice speaks: Don't you understand? This is not a dream. You are not sleeping.

I look around, trying to find the blackguard who is torturing me, but I am alone.

This is your answer, says the voice. You do not want to hear it.

'Shut up!' I cry.

You run from yourself, it continues. But you are always at your own heels. There is no escape.

There is a deafening thunder, bowling closer and closer.

'Please, stop. I can no longer bear it,' I shout, and I am returned to my clean bed.

Eve, the one they call the Lion-Faced Girl, is standing in the doorway, knocking on the wooden frame.

'Abel?' she says.

'Yes.'

'I thought you were asleep.'

'I thought so, also,' I say, blushing at the untruth.

'What ails you?'

'Nothing,' I lie once more.

'You are pale, sweating as though you are in a fever. You were crying out.'

'Was I? I think I have had a nightmare.'

'Indeed?' She flicks a voluminous eyebrow; her forehead shimmers. 'You are as bad a liar as I am, Master Abel.'

She is smiling; she means kindness. I struggle to catch my breath, to clutch at what I have just seen: the anatomy studio; picture after picture, leading further into myself. Not dreams: lives, memories. Already I am losing the meaning of it. I scrabble inside my shirt and get out my paper. I press the pencil stub into it so hard it breaks off.

'Do you have pen and ink?' I say.

She laughs. 'No. What a strange request.'

'Please,' I say, my voice rising in panic.

Her smile fades away. 'I am sorry,' she mutters and disappears.

I chant, 'Anatomy, answers, memories,' over and over until she returns with pen and inkwell. I scrawl in a fury, trying desperately to remember more details before they fade.

'Abel?' she says. 'What are you writing?'

'I have dreams. But they are not dreams.' I point to what I have just written. 'I believe they are memories.'

The effort of saying this makes my teeth grind. If I tell her about my secret strangeness, she will draw aside from me. They all do.

'Abel, you look as though you are about to faint clean away. Wait,' she says, although I have no intention of going anywhere.

She returns a moment later with a gla.s.s of clear liquid, perfuming the room with the sharp oily smell of gin. She glances over her shoulder into the corridor before seating herself at the end of my bed.

'Thank you,' I say, and take the drink.

It fortifies me surprisingly well. She smiles, and the long moustaches framing her mouth quiver. There is a pause.

'You are stranger than the others, Abel.'

'Am I?'

'Yes. Can you not see it?'

'I do not know,' I say, turning away from her clever eyes.

'George has his wonders painted on to him. Bill? Well, he is a boy, and an exaggeration only. I never heard of any man who can do what you do.'

'No, I dare say you haven't.'

'I think there is more to you than that, even.'

'Yes?'

I endeavour to sound careless, although my heart is pounding with mixed fear and exhilaration that she can read me so clearly. She leans forward and takes my hand, grasping it firmly. As we touch, a profound sensation seizes me, as though my innermost being is reaching up towards her from a deep well.

'Oh,' she whispers. 'I did not expect ... I feel ...'

'What?'

She breathes heavily awhile, and then smooths out her ruffled face.

'You.' She smiles.

We stare at each other. I feel a tantalising hope that I may draw close to the sh.o.r.e of friendship and understanding. I do not know if I can trust her. I have been wrong before. I draw my hand away. She hangs on.

'No, Abel. Let me. There is such-'

'Confusion? As if I do not know that myself.'

'Far from it, Abel. I think I see ... wondrous things.'

I am torn between my aching need for communion and answers, and the quaking fear of how badly it turns out. The hungry pawing of the fortune-teller is disturbingly fresh in my memory, as is the bewildering rejection of Alfred, a man who called me friend. My fear triumphs.

'Please. No more.'

'Why are you so afraid?'

'Mrs Arroner-'

'My name is Eve.'

'Eve, I am sorry. I am a coward.'

'Are you indeed?' she says drily. Her smile is warm. 'Very well. I shall never force you to anything you do not wish.' She busies herself with rolling a lock of hair round and round her finger. 'Let us talk of other things.' She nods at the doc.u.ment I still have in my lap. 'What is that piece of paper you carry about, Abel?' she asks.

'It is the record of who I am,' I begin. 'The thread which I pray most devoutly might lead me out of this labyrinth.'

'How very politely you speak, Abel!' She laughs, but there is delight in the sound rather than cruelty. 'I almost see you in a brocade waistcoat to the knee, doffing a three-cornered hat trimmed with feathers, like a prince from a history book.'

'I would bow as deep, if it should please you, my lady,' I say in an affected twitter, caught up in the easy playfulness that sparks between us.