The Palace Of Curiosities Part 31

'But you do not know the truth about me,' I continue.

'The truth? You are my student. You study under me. The Plato to my Socrates,' he smiles. 'You will learn, and become an anatomist yourself. What other truth can there be?'

'My secret, the one I wish to share. You alone can understand; and you will explain to me. I seek an answer to the riddle of what kind of man I am.'

'Lazzaro, my good man,' he declares, his teeth chattering a little. 'Must we talk here? Can we not go somewhere a little warmer?'

I ignore him. He is my teacher. He must listen.

'See: this is what I struggle to comprehend.'

I hold a scalpel and make a swift vertical cut into the skin of my lower arm. It is easy to see what I am about, for the brightness of the late moon makes it unmistakable. He ought to see it now, but still he asks questions.

'G.o.d in Heaven, man, what are you doing?'

His voice trembles. I make an incision from the inside of my wrist to the elbow, and transverse cuts at each extremity, like the good student of anatomy I am. Then I peel back the flaps of skin and fasten them to the board with silver-headed pins. They catch the light, and the water swimming in my eyes multiplies their number to many flickering dozens. The pain balances me on its tightrope.

I progress with the grave dignity of every other dissection I have undertaken: my hand moves with the same care that no detail is pa.s.sed over in haste. Presently, the muscle of the flexor carpi radialis is revealed, fresh and glistening. My master holds his hand over his mouth, but it does not stop him from letting out small cries of surprise and fear.

'I am like no waxen anatomical model you have ever seen. I am like no other man you have seen opened. You understand, for you are my master.'

He sucks in air, sharply. We are embraced by a welcoming odour, a mixture of earth and animal musk. My flesh laid bare is as peaceful as any other piece of man I have seen on these tables, yet infinitely more beautiful.

'You are-'

The colours shake like oil on water, which does not hold one hue but changes as it moves; each quiver of exposed muscle sends a sheen of deeper colour across the surface, the scarlets and magentas anatomists only dream of, more lovely than anything a sculptor can create. He does not take his eyes from me; his whole body entirely still.

'I am impossible,' I say. 'I should not exist, but I do. Tell me how.'

I want him to grant me the balm of his answers; I want to possess them so pa.s.sionately that I ache in my head, my breast, my belly. I am consumed with hopefulness: all I need is the key and all the doors to my being will be thrown open. At last he speaks, the words tumbling out in a rush.

'Lazzaro, what are you doing? Oh G.o.d. You are-' He gulps and returns his attention to my arm. 'You are killing yourself.'

'I am not. Observe. No blood flows.'

He gasps, stares. The radial artery is whole, and I slip a pair of flat-ended tweezers beneath, lifting it for him to see for I know his question and am answering. We watch the gentle throb of liquid moving within.

'But the smaller veins,' he whispers. 'They must be severed. There is always blood, even from the smallest cut.'

'Here there is none.'

I lay down the tweezers, pick up a scalpel and draw it across the untouched skin of my upper arm: the cut wells up with dark liquid which seems about to spill to my elbow; one drop, then two, trail down the skin; then all is halted. I take in a sharp lungful of air and shiver, like a horse shaking off biting insects. My muscles gleam with moisture, and there are a few dark smears on the board beneath my arm, but nothing else. He stares at my arm as though I am some foreign thing he does not understand.

'How can there be no bleeding?'

'I do not know. You are the learned man. I want you to tell me.'

At last I lay down the blade and lean over my handiwork, and I hear my master gasping for breath. I lift my head and look at him. His eyes alight upon mine, and then dart about, unable to settle.

'Master, I do not understand how I can do this and live. I must understand. I am collapsing under the weight of my unknowing. Tell me. Please.'

'I do not-'

'You are a man of science. Surely you have the answer.'

He takes a step away, blinking as though waking from darkness into a great light.

'This is not what I was thinking. I do not ...' he breathes. He grips the table-edge, knuckles pale. 'This is self-murder.'

'No,' I whisper. 'Anything but!'

'You are not what I thought,' he gasps, looking me up and down, his gaze drifting to my lap, where the blood that will not spurt from my wounds has poured into the corpora cavernosa, rendering my lower parts disgracefully firm. 'You disgust me. I do not know why you should force me to witness this salacious display of your deviant nature. You are a monster.'

And with that, he is gone.

I sigh. 'So you cannot help me.'

I do not know how I can have been so deceived; but the sensation is familiar. I can do no more. I wet the tips of my fingers and pull out the holding pins; then I lift the corner of peeled-back skin and bring it across the muscle, folding skin over flesh as tidily as a man folds his cravat. I bring the two long edges together and watch them knit, red paling to pink as I heal. My arm is dry, like smooth-planed wood married to fine-nap velvet.

I thought that if I studied with great doctors of physic I would uncover the answers at last. If a renowned doctor of anatomy cannot explain the mystery of my healing, then there exists no man wise enough to do so. Master Calvari wanted me with the hunger of one who needs a pupil to puff up his reputation, a mirror in which to show off his sagacity. The fortune-teller wanted me with the hunger of the prurient. Alfred wanted me with a hunger he dared not satisfy. On to the blank canvas of my self they painted their need and left no s.p.a.ce for me.

I have failed. Wherever I have been, whenever I have been, whomever I have begged for help, I have found no answer to the riddle of myself. There is none. I am washed clean of hope and do not know how much longer it can be borne. I am so lost in the forest of myself, shrunk to a leaf stamped into mulch by the trampling of my memories: I am crumbling, flickering, guttering out.

I want to grow old, and sicken, and ache, and stumble, and die, like everybody else. I want to feel the tickle of worms, the soft drift of earth as it rots the wood I'm wrapped in. I want to go back to dust. I ache for rattling breath, loosening teeth, blotched skin, rheumy eyes, stooped back, yet all of it eludes me. I am suicide's slave, following it like a kicked dog. It is all I want, and it is not permitted me. I hear Death's lies, tempting me: through wine, through knives, through every tower and balcony I have ever leapt from.

Come and join me, it teases. We are old acquaintances. You have been glad enough of me, through all your times.

I am left with only the pictures, the dreams, the memories: bright, colourful, confusing, making no sense. However hard I try I can mould no meaning back into them. I am worn out by uncertainty. I have trusted and had that hope dashed. No-one has been able to satisfy my hunger for self-knowledge, and after each disappointment I have tumbled into despair, as surely as I fell from the tower in that insistent memory. What a fool that I did not grasp its significance. Indeed, I rise, I fall. Unendingly.

Now there is Eve. She is solace, peace; she calls to me and I ache to answer. I wonder what she has found on her journey, what anchors she has forged for herself. I have seen the way she touches people's hands and knows the whole of them. She could plumb every part and gift it to me, so I would have no secrets any more. She could rope me to this present in which I find myself. All I need to do is say yes. Why should I let the events of the past soil the future?

Yet if she finds out what I am, who I am, will she turn aside from me also? Perhaps I can dare to hope that she will read me and read me true. With her help I can swim up from my depths and surface into wakefulness and understanding. I shall say yes the next time she asks to read my palm. I will not let myself be cast down. I will thrust my hand into hers and beg forgiveness for my cowardice, and say, I am ready.

Eager to find her, I peel myself off my sodden sheets and stumble to the kitchen. It is empty. Seized with a powerful thirst, I coax the fire in the range to light again.

'There is not much in the way of wood left in the basket,' she says, and I turn to find Eve watching me.

'No,' I say.

'George has gone.' She smiles. 'I heard the door slam.'

'Yes.'

I wonder at how mute I have become, when so many smart words were dancing in my head only moments ago. I lift the kettle, but my hands are trembling, so I put it down before it falls.

'Abel, sit down. You're all of a lather.'

'Yes.'

'Did he speak so harshly?' she asks with a small note of fury in her voice.

'Who?'

'George.'

'Oh. I had quite forgot.'

'Well, you are the talkative one, and no mistake.'

I look at her and see the kindness I have been too frightened to trust. No longer. I open my mouth. She grasps the handle of the kettle and hefts it over the fire.

'I believe I shall be making our tea from now on, Abel,' she says. 'The kitchen-girl has gone; and with her the plates, and knives, and spoons.'

'Are we truly in trouble, Eve?'

She raises her shoulders, and then lets them drop.

'My husband is an angry man. There is this new show, and it is the talk of the city. However, I shall endeavour to put it from my mind and direct my reasoning towards a more productive conclusion. It does not do to dwell on unpleasant thoughts, does it, Abel?'

Her eyes turn a key in mine. My mouth is still open, so I shut it.

'No,' I say.

I must find the right moment to speak. She returns her attention to the range, raising the shutter, examining the flames and talking as she does so.

'New acts, new thrills. I declare I am quite fatigued with all this bl.u.s.ter and fiddle-faddle. Some peace would be pleasant. What think you, Abel?'

She glances at me hopefully.

'I Eve, there is much I would say.'

My clever speech shrivels. She nods, and returns to peering into the fire. Lit from beneath, her face shimmers like the sun, her radiating curls its beams. When she straightens up, she carries the light with her.

'It is fired up well enough. I shall make tea. We shall sit awhile and drink a cup, and talk of anything you wish. Ah, there are barely enough leaves for one person. I hope Lizzie brings some back. There is coffee.'

'Coffee? Let us drink coffee, then.'

I take it from her, grateful for the distraction. As I spoon a measure into the smallest pan left in the place, I see a new picture, plucked from my mind's throng: a flat expanse of gritty sand; three stones set in a triangle with a smouldering stick set between them which I shuffle forward as it burns down. A small copper pot is wedged between the stones, sucking up the heat from the wood. I am hunched over the little fire; content.

'What are you doing?' she asks, and I am back in the under-stairs kitchen, stirring water and coffee grounds in a little iron pan.

'Making coffee.'

'I did not know it was made like that.'

'Nor did I. But you made me think of Lizzie when you spoke her name, and when I see her stomach-dance, it brings about a desire for coffee made this way. And a memory,' I add, more quietly.

She smiles. 'That is not what men usually desire when they see that dance.'

I heap sugar into the brew.

'It will be very sweet,' she says.

'Coffee without sugar is a marriage feast without dancing,' I reply, watching the pot begin to seethe. 'And burnt coffee is a wedding night without weeping. Some things must be so.'

She bares her teeth and laughs sadly. 'Where is that from?' she asks.

'I do not know. The smell of the coffee brought the words into my head. I am sitting next to a small fire, and above me the moon is slung on to its side.'

She stops laughing. 'I felt that strange magic,' she whispers, 'when you were playing the pipe. I was fairly transported by it. I did not know you could play so well.'

'Neither did I.'

'You are too modest.'

'Am I?'

'What other skills are you hiding?'

She runs her hand up and down the table-edge, as though it is an animal and she is stroking it.

'It seems that my hands are full of knowledge, but they conceal it from me,' I say, feeling a thrill to be opening the box of my self to someone who listens with sincere attention. 'Then I undertake a new task, and I discover they know how to accomplish it. I have not yet come upon something I cannot do.'

'You can do any job you set your mind to, I think.'

'Perhaps I can.'

She takes a considered breath. 'I shall speak honestly with you, Abel. You are not the only one with mysterious skills, for I have discovered one also. I can read men through their hands.'

'Yes.'

'I believe I can use this to help them. To help you. To help many others. I have plans, Abel. I have my face' she laughs 'I have my fascinating life, and it is no mean achievement.' She tilts her chin in a mixture of pride and defiance. 'I shall write the book of my life and present it with a fine frontispiece and it will be the sensation of the age. I shall write a yard of books. I shall be my own woman. I am my own woman.'

She laughs again; her eyes are bright, and hold mine longer than is customary for women. I lift the pot and pour the syrupy grime into two cups.

'Then let us drink to success. See. I did not think I could make coffee this way, but my hands are guiding me.'

'Such a tiny amount?' she says.

'Coffee is not for quenching thirst. That is the task of water. This is a different refreshment.'

I seem to be a book of proverbs. She does not notice, so I pinch the cup between thumb and forefinger, lift it to my lips, take a noisy sip. She does the same and sucks too hard, choking herself.

'Gently,' I say. 'The first time must always be gentle.'

She drops her eyes and takes a more careful taste.

'Its perfume transports me to another place.'