The Edgar Pangborn Megapack

by Edgar Pangborn

  The Irishman shrugged, watching the bay. “Canada, the way I hear, is a handful of frightened papists in a wilderness. As for the Sun King Louis, I saw him once. Six years past, before the war was renewed—the Treaty of Ryswick accomplished nothing, you’ll understand, a patching-up, a pause for the licking of wounds, and so you may say ’tis all one war, and I happening to be in Paris when his solar bloody Majesty made a gracious appearance unto the multitude, I beheld a trembling dried-up monkey in velvet. That minikin shivering old man, that homunculus, that thing, master of Europe and the West? Don’t they tell he’s not even master of his own bowels? Faith, when he dies his empire will be crumbling like a child’s mud castle in the rain as others have done before, and England would do better to wait for it, but not so, the armies and navies must be employed and good men die to no purpose, anyway that’s the opinion of one mad Irishman,” said Shawn, and smiled with sudden brilliance. A twist of the knife gave the mermaid a pretty navel; he held her away for admiration. “O the anatomical enigmas of the mermaid!—hey? I wonder could there be word of her in Physiologus?… Will you be in haste to return home?”

  “No great haste.” But with the words, Ben realized he ought to be. The sun was behind the rooftops, the wind sharp easterly.

  “Would you dine with me, Ben?—that is,” he asked again, “may I call you so and no offense?”

  “Of course, Mr. Shawn.”

  “That’s kind. I dread a lonely evening, now that’s no lie.”

  Ben was startled, having meant only to agree to the use of his first name, for which Mr. Shawn hardly needed permission. Well—might not Uncle John suppose he had been invited to dine at the Jenks house, and so not be troubled? It would mean walking that ugly mile of the Roxbury road after dark, but there would be a moon later, if the deepening clouds did not interfere. Mr. Shawn was already speaking of a tavern on Ship Street. “The Lion they call it, nothing so fine, but I fear, Beneen, I am not dressed for a finer place. Hi!—that wind’s pure easterly, and will that be meaning rain by morning in this part of the world?”

  “Sometimes,” Ben said, and discovered he was cold.

  “Let us go.…”

  The Lion tavern consisted of one long narrow room, filled with the reek of malt, sweat, clay pipes, rummy breath, wood smoke. A line of small tables on one side was divided by a poorly drawing fireplace; on the other side of the room a bar ran from the kitchen door to a grimy window, and the smeary glass denied all memory of daylight. Pine knots sputtered above the fireplace; a lantern on the bar added more smoke but no light worth the name. Shawn chose a table within spitting distance of the hearth, ignoring two shabby customers who were exchanging an aimless rambling conversation at the bar.

  At the table farthest to the rear, dark as the smoke and like a part of it, a thin man with a black patch on one eye sat by himself, smiling. Before him stood a dirty trencher with the remains of supper, and a pewter mug. He sprawled with elbows hooked on the back of his chair, arms dangling, so quiet he might have been asleep, but the one good eye was open wide and one does not sleep with a frozen smile. When the eye moved to examine Ben and Shawn with no sign of interest, the rest of his face took no part in the act.

  An ancient waiter who knew Shawn by name was mumbling a good evening, flicking a rag at the table, his warty face darkened like a ham hung a long time on a rafter. Shawn seemed quite at home; after some unease, Ben found his own lungs could adjust to the haze.

  Shawn approached the roast beef, which was not bad, like a man with a week’s hunger. Ben finished his first mug of ale quickly, for it helped him avoid coughing; the influence of it softened the sordidness of this place; as the mug was refilled, Ben wondered why anything here should have troubled him—honest working-man’s tavern, and Daniel Shawn the prince of good fellows. As for the one-eyed half-corpse, one needn’t look.…

  Shawn’s manners, he noticed, were not quite those of Mr. Kenny’s house. Holding down the meat with his spoon, Shawn cut it in curiously small pieces, and often used the knife to carry them to his mouth, instead of his fingers. It looked dangerous, for the knife was sharp. Afterward Shawn took pains to clean his fingers on a kerchief from his pocket. Privately consulting his wallet for reassurance, Ben ordered a third round of ale. Mr. Shawn was touched and pleased.

  He drank Ben’s health. He told two or three bawdy anecdotes, large voice intimately lowered; Ben laughed in delight and forgot them at once, which annoyed him. He discovered he was lifting his mug and drinking to the hope that Mr. Shawn would secure a berth with Artemis.

  “O the warm heart of youth!” said Shawn, and looked away. “But Beneen, you must not feel obliged to speak of that to your great-uncle.”

  “But of course I will!” Softness, Ben thought—he is without it. Even now, when Mr. Shawn was manifestly touched and pleased, the brilliance of his look, his friendship, made Ben think of the spurting of light from the diamond thumb-ring Uncle John occasionally wore, or the stark gleam of sun on snow. Wondering whether the sea took all softness from a man, wondering also as he drank whether such an event ought to be called good or bad, Ben understood that Shawn was saying something more he ought to hear and remember.

  “Isn’t it the strange thing how from all the ruck, all the thousands, millions of humankind, explorers are so few? Why, you may name all the great ones on the fingers of one hand.”

  “So few as that?”

  “Cabot, Columbus, Magellan, maybe Drake, maybe the both hands. And all the South Pacific lies there unseen, untraveled—nothing but a waste of water? I’ll not believe that, when there’s room for a continent greater than this one, or a thousand islands larger than mine own motherland.”

  It was music, and what little music he had heard had always troubled Ben, as a voice whose words could never be wholly translated. For all the pure pleasure, that had been so in those distant hours with Uncle Zebina Pownal. “I suppose, Mr. Shawn, some day every least corner of the world will be explored.”

  “Ha?… Not in my time nor yours. Now that troubles me, Beneen. It’s the clear plain thing what you say, but d’you know I never had the thought myself? No more horizons—O the sad earth!… Man dear, I’m wishing you’d not said that.”

  “I suppose they who live in that day will be otherwise concerned.”

  “Most are now, the way explorers are few.…”

  The dirty trencher had been removed from in front of the one-eyed man, and his mug refilled. He must have drunk from it, for a bit of foam clung near his bleak smile and was drying there, as if someone had spat on a statue. Ben hitched his chair sideways, the better to avoid looking at him, and glanced at the bar, knowing the ale had made him foolishly drowsy.

  Two newcomers had arrived. Ben was obliged to stare, then understood he should have recognized them in an instant without need of thought. (“‘Tis a matter of being your own man.…”) That was Jan Dyckman over there, big and blond and mild, drinking rum with the round-headed greasy bosun Tom Ball. Ben leaned across the table in a generous glow. “Do you know Mr. Dyckman?”

  Shawn shook his head, deep in revery. “By sight only.”

  “I could present you. Maybe a word from him would be of use?”

  Shawn shook his head again and murmured: “The thought is kind, but look again, the way the time’s inauspicious. Mr. Dyckman is the worse for drink, Beneen. Some other time.”

  Ben looked again, astonished, to find Jan Dyckman gazing directly at him without recognition, eyes rigid and damp. The eyes moved jerkily away and with dignity viewed a coin that Mr. Dyckman would have liked to raise from a wet spot on the bar. He must have been drinking elsewhere, to be so far gone. Abruptly Shawn was asking: “Have you ever had a woman?”

  “Why, no, I—no, Mr. Shawn.”

  “And don’t I remember that time of life, the ache of it? Ah, steady as she goes!—the fear too, boy, but
devil any need of that. I’ll take you to a house, and you agreeing.”

  “I—don’t know. I suppose I ought to start soon for home.”

  Shawn seemed not to hear. “It’s orderly is the place I’m thinking of, above a cordwainer’s on Fish Street and next door to a grog shop, the which is convenient. Four girls and the madam—O the fine flow of conversation in her cups! She’s that rambling you wouldn’t know the thing she’d say. I’d have you hear how she was betrayed by an earl in London town, the way I’m thinking she was never no closer to England than a comfortable pile of sacking, maybe forninst a warehouse on one of the wharfs out yonder, but it’s the fair fine tale.” Ben fidgeted. “As for the rest, Beneen, a stallion will need but a moment to cover a willing mare, and in such a house they are willing. I recall a half-ugly wench who would be doing anything you like at all.” Shawn laid a finger along his old-ivory pockmarked nose and smiled diamond-like. “I had her once—wasn’t it like sinking into a warm dumpling fresh from the oven? One of the others is handsome but cowlike—I’m a-mind to try her, though I fear she’ll be watching a spot on the ceiling and do no more for a man’s entertainment than if he was a wind at the door.”

  Ben pressed damp hands on the table to check a shaking in them, knowing with exasperation that Shawn must have seen it. Vague sounds at the bar gave him an excuse to turn away. Tom Ball and Jan Dyckman were leaving, Dyckman moving like a giant wooden doll, every step a separate achievement. When at length Ben turned back it seemed to him—but everything now was confused, the ale in him mumbling I-will-I-will-not—it seemed to him that Daniel Shawn was settling in his chair as if he too had just swung about, or risen perhaps, resuming his former position in the same moment when the one-eyed scarecrow stood up (not drunk at all) and stalked in the wake of Ball and Dyckman out of the tavern.

  As he passed Ben’s table the thin man shot one downward glance. To Ben in the cold-hot worry of I-will-I-will-not it was like being jabbed by an icicle, and he could not even summon his wits to think about it, for Shawn was saying kindly: “It’s the fresh air you need, Beneen, and I’m thinking of the old saying, a man’s not quite a man till he’s tried that bit of a doorway. So shall we go?”

  * * * *

  Reuben left the cottage with the green shutters before the sun had entered the smudge of horizon clouds. He took the path across the back fields, his muscles lazy with the spring, his mind blazing.

  Mr. Welland had not appeared surprised that Reuben should wish to study his art. He had not probed for motives; had not even inquired whether such ambition harmonized with Mr. Kenny’s plans; had offered no large generalities of grave counsel. Alertness was the word: as though the doctor had caught something more than Reuben’s words, and must listen sharply within his own universe to interpret the message.

  Reuben had lived through a heavy time while Mr. Welland gazed at the completed chess game, his monkey face a stillness. Then—“Yes,” said Mr. Welland, “you and I must be friends. Yet I have never taught.…”

  The doctor spent much time laying the chessmen away in their plain box, the stillness remaining, his lips pursed, a dim frown coming and going. He carried the box to a drawer of a battered cabinet, then stood before the single bookcase in his surgery, stoop-shouldered, elderly, pinching his small chin with thumb and forefinger. “Mm-yas—Vesalius. Not the most recent but still the best.” He spread the tall book open on his desk. With the appearance of impatience he nodded for Reuben to come to him.

  “This is a man,” said Amadeus Welland. “You’ve glimpsed him, clad in garments, and in a skin—itself an organ of first importance, but forget it for the moment and look on him here, flayed. You can imagine, I suppose, what these are—these flowing, overlapping bands?”

  “Muscles, surely?”

  “Yes. Place your left hand by your right armpit, here, now draw your right arm leftward; what bunches under your fingers is this, here in the drawing, and the name of it is Pectoralis major, and you may find some little trouble in remembering it.”

  “I will try to remember it.”

  “I am glad you said ‘try.’ I have spent fifty-three years striving to overcome that vanity wherewith all men are born. You’ll also try, and succeed, in remembering the names of all the other muscles in this drawing, and in this one where the fella turns you his flayed back, and in all these other drawings further on. You will reflect that muscles, while of major importance, are not more important than all the organs that live below them in their manifold occasions—since these also you must remember, all of them, their names, their functions so far as we know them, the many changes that will affect them in youth and age, sickness and health. Here, for example, is the diagram of the bony frame that bears us. When my own studies began I had first to learn these bones—all of them, naturally, their names, position, function whether in action or repose—mm-yas, as you will. I do recall my teacher once struck me across the face with a dry bone called the radius—this one—because I called it the ulna, for the which I later praised him—with reservations.”

  “Reservations, sir?”

  “It was possible for him,” said Mr. Welland lightly, and took snuff. “It would not be possible for me to strike—a student. Fi-choo-shoo! And here, sir, is a representation of the human heart.…”

  When Reuben next glanced at the clock in Mr. Welland’s surgery, another hour had passed. “There will be times,” said Mr. Welland, removing a gray cat from a cushion on a three-legged stool by the western window, where she had slept through the lesson, so that he might sit on the stool himself with the late sun behind his shoulder—“times, I guess, when your eyes grow tired in candlelight; other times when you’d much prefer to go outside and play—as you must do fairly often, but not of course at times when you’re unable to remember, for example, all the occasions when laudanum may be given and those when it may not. And so on, Reuben, and so on and so on—I’ve merely mentioned a few things that come first to mind,” said Mr. Welland, and rubbed his eyes. Reuben could not see his face very clearly against the light.…

  Crossing the back fields, Reuben passed through a clump of trees, and from the other side could look across a better-known field to the roof of Mr. Kenny’s house. He leaned against a beech, discovering that he was hungry, that it would be enjoyable to pester Kate for something unauthorized in advance of supper. The wind had shifted behind him, now easterly; the broad hard body of the beech was a friend.

  There was too much: Reuben knew he could not immediately bring order to any such welter of new impressions and discoveries. Hungry, yes, but let that wait; and the questions about himself that he had timorously half-intended to ask Mr. Welland—let them wait too. Too much for now—like a runner exhausted, he must rest, and was even reluctant to go on to the house. Better for the moment only to stand here in the failing daylight, friendly with the beech and needing (for the moment!) no other friend.

  Rising from that stool, disturbing the cat again and taking pencil and paper at his desk, Mr. Welland had made a few light loving strokes.

  “You draw with great skill, sir.”

  “Thank you—practice. And this woman’s breast I have drawn—beautiful, you would say?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Yes, I should think so, to anyone, although I fear my poor sketch claims only accuracy and not art. But ’tis beautiful, as you say, the thing itself—maketh one to think of the lover’s kiss, or of a child’s mouth here drinking life.” He began another drawing. “This is what I have seen not once but too many times, when this organ is afflicted with certain kinds of destroying tumor.” Reuben watched, shaken and sickened but refusing to turn away until the doctor sat back from his desk, murmuring: “You understand, Mr. Cory, I am merely trying to frighten and demoralize you with selected scraps of truth.”

  “I killed a wolf once,” said Reuben Cory, refusing to look away.

&n
bsp; “Tell me of that.”

  Reuben told of it, reluctant to meet the doctor’s look because of what the man had said a while ago about vanity, but finding no great difficulty in the telling. After all it was not brag. It had happened.

  “I shall speak to Mr. Kenny,” said Amadeus Welland. “Perhaps an apprenticeship? Or better a year or so of preparation, to determine for yourself if this be really what you wish, in such time as may be allowed from your other studies—which are not to be neglected, Reuben, not ever, you understand? Show me a man of medicine who hath found himself too busy for other fields of learning, and you will have shown me an educated damned fool.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Reuben, if thanks be appropriate, let them wait. I may have done thee no service. I have only pointed out one or two signposts on a most heartbreaking journey. But if that is the way you will go—I am fifty-three, Reuben, not very successful and not at all loved here in Roxbury—if that is the way you will go, I’ll go with you as far as I may.”

  * * * *

  Ben Cory ducked his head to clear the doorframe, unused even yet to being rather tall, following Daniel Shawn with the precarious poise of a man of the world. The room in many ways resembled a cavern, its air stale-scented and much used, with bat-rustlings from other chambers. The shriveled woman squeezed his damp hands, twittering, her pink cheeks like summer apples as they look after a winter in the cellar, powdery and dull within but retaining a characteristic cloying sweetness. “Any friend of yours, Mr. Shawn—ooh, look at the great gray eyes of him!” Mistress Gundy patted the pleat of her lips every moment or two, maybe enjoying a silent burp. “What do I call you, dearie?” She trotted away with small bobbing steps, to plump into an armchair and smile and sigh. “Cat’s got his tongue, la. So he loseth nothing else, no harm done, ha, Mr. Shawn? What do I call the pretty young gentleman that’s lost his pretty tongue, Mr. Shawn? Won’t have anything lost in my place, and me trying so hard to keep everything agreeable, ha, Mr. Shawn?”