The Anatomy School

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘I thought everybody had gone,’ said Martin.

  ‘I’m just off.’ The doctor folded his glasses and slipped them into their case. ‘Why are you around so late?’

  ‘I’m here for the night.’

  ‘For the jazz in the basement?’

  ‘Naw. I didn’t know about that.’

  ‘First Wednesday of the month. So?’

  ‘I’m doing something for Kavanagh’s BSc thesis,’ said Martin. ‘What kind of jazz?’

  ‘The usual. Whatever they play down there — who knows? Are you a fan?’

  ‘I like blues — New Orleans. Some modern stuff is all right.’

  ‘What is it you’re doing for Kavanagh?’

  ‘A timed thing. It’s going to take all night.’

  ‘And why can’t Kavanagh do it? Where is he?’

  ‘Playing basketball. In Dublin.’

  ‘And who’s paying overtime for a technician for a whole night?’

  ‘It’s a favour. He’s a mate of mine. We were at school together.’

  Dr Cowie snorted a bit. His white coat looked as if it had come straight from the laundry. You could’ve cut yourself on it.

  ‘And what kind of a day’s work can we hope to get out of you tomorrow?’ Martin didn’t answer. ‘Who does he play basketball for?’

  ‘He’s on the university team.’

  ‘He’s tall enough for it. Is he any good?’

  Martin held the door open. Dr Cowie was edging out when Martin nodded to the nearby tables.

  ‘Why are they like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘With their legs in the air?’

  ‘Oh, those students are dissecting the perineum.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Martin climbed the narrow winding stair to the room where the BSc students worked. Both Kavanagh and his girlfriend Pippa had decided to do the extra year before going on to hospital. Of course it was her decision and where she led Kavanagh always followed. People said it was unusual for a girl to mark time in this way. The attic room was empty. He walked to Pippa’s place by the window and looked around. She was very neat. Very Christian. Then he saw a small dictionary among her books. He looked up the word perineum (say perri-nee-um) noun. Anatomy: the region of the body between the anus and the urogenital organs. He smiled and put the dictionary back where he found it. It was good to know that such a dirty little definition was embedded in a dictionary belonging to Pippa. And that she had one. Pippa’s perineum. He went to Kavanagh’s place. The papers he wanted had been left for him.

  On his way back to the lab he heard the basement door slam. The sound boomed up the lift shaft and stairwell. Dr Cowie’s car started, then drove away. Silence — except for the sparrows cheeping outside. And from an open door the dribbling of a cistern in the Ladies. He had never been in the Ladies before. He pushed on the open door and walked past the cubicles. The doors were open and the seats were all down. In a room there was a Tampax dispenser on the wall and a table surrounded by rows of upright lockers. He touched things with his free hand. Books were scattered about, mostly copies of Gray’s Anatomy. He touched them. There were some limp white coats hanging on hooks looking like they belonged to no one. He trailed the back of his hand across them. An umbrella and an old-fashioned scarf. A small square mirror on a windowsill. A single emerald green glove. He set his papers on the table and pulled on the glove. It was made of a soft leatherette material. It was very small and cramped his hand, crushed it almost. He stripped it off and put it back exactly where he had found it. His hand expanded. He sniffed the faint perfume which remained from the glove.

  One locker had its door wide open, a pair of brown leather shoes, feet together pointing outwards. Comfortable, with shapes of bunions, for the hours of standing on the Dissecting Room floor. There was a bottle of Atrixo hand cream on the shelf. He reached up and unscrewed the top and blobbed a little on to his palm. He rubbed his hands together and inhaled deeply. The broken cistern continued to sing and dribble.

  He went down the creaking wooden stairs back to his lab and read Kavanagh’s instructions. They were straightforward enough. The first rat had to go at seven o’clock. At the bottom of the page in Kavanagh’s big block capitals was –

  FAILURE TO CARRY OUT THESE

  INSTRUCTIONS AT THE SPECIFIED TIMES

  WILL RESULT IN CERTAIN DEATH.

  The animal house was in the basement, five poorly ventilated rooms. The ceiling was low. Martin could touch it with the heel of his hand. There was a fire in the central room, still giving off some heat. Dr Cowie called it ‘the incinerator’. For fuck sake. A posh scientific word for ‘the fire downstairs’.

  ‘Just take it down to the incinerator.’

  The grate was very deep and could create a fierce roar up the chimney. It became a frightening sound when the metal shield was held across the opening. The fire would go almost white when you did that — and the chimney breast seemed to throb and vibrate with the power of the up-draught.

  Martin had only been in the job a week or two when he’d been asked to take something down to the basement. Maybe Dr Cowie was testing him out — seeing how he’d react. He was really an embryologist and this particular day he’d come into the lab, full of himself.

  ‘Martin, come and see this.’ He’d a pad of white gauze in one hand and a scalpel in the other. He wore white surgical gloves. ‘It just came in. A lovely specimen.’

  He carried his secret to the sink and began to unfold it. The last layer of gauze clung slightly to what was inside and the first thing Martin saw was blood. He tried not to flinch. There was something pale and jellied, the size of a small fist, curled in the middle of the blood. Dr Cowie smiled, waiting for Martin to guess what he was looking at. In places the blood was black.

  ‘Well? What do you think?’

  ‘It’s a foetus.’

  ‘Spot on.’ Dr Cowie used the scalpel as a probe and lifted a tiny translucent arm on its blade. ‘About fourteen weeks. See the fingers. All the details are there at this stage.’ He let the arm fall and bent forward. ‘See that? Do you know what that’s called? Lanugo — foetal hair — it’s all over.’

  All Martin could see was how defensive it looked. Its stick arms and legs were bent and its fists clenched. It had gathered itself into a ball — the way someone would if he was getting a kicking. The head was huge compared to the body, like some imagined thing from Outer Space.

  Dr Cowie produced forceps and picked the foetus up by its cord. Martin said, ‘What was wrong with it?’

  ‘Nothing. The mother had to have an emergency operation for something else. Let’s have a look inside.’ Dr Cowie took the foetus into his left hand, his thumb under its chin. He drew his scalpel down the chest. It fell open easily. ‘This is the liver. At nine weeks it’s enormous, fills the whole cavity.’ Dr Cowie went on talking to Martin as if he was a class. ‘Any questions?’ Martin had shaken his head. But he’d wanted to seem keen.

  ‘What do you want it fixed in?’

  ‘I’ve too many at fourteen weeks. Just take it down to the incinerator. You know where the basement is?’

  In the corridor with the gauze in his hand he felt a stupid urge to walk slowly. Funeral phrases came into his head. He was a great lad. Or All his life he’d wanted to … None of them applied. He carried the foetus to the basement in its gauze and stood facing the fire which had become grey with ash. But here and there deep down it glowed red.

  He remembered the first time he’d noticed a pregnant woman. He’d been with his mother walking in the street, probably holding her hand. This other woman came along with her coat tightly buttoned over a huge bump. When she passed he whispered to his mother ‘Did you see her? She had a basin or something up her coat.’

  He kept looking back over his shoulder. His mother walked on.

  ‘Shhh. Keep your voice down,’ she said. The way his mother’s eyes darted about, he knew something wasn’t right.


  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘She’s going to have a baby.’

  ‘Has she bought a basin for it?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘What’s silly?’

  ‘The baby is inside her.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He thought that very strange at the time. How could a baby be inside her? Was it inside her coat? How could it breathe? Did she take it out for a breath of air at night? Why would she try and smuggle a basin down the street?

  Along the walls of each room were tiers of cages — rats and mice, mostly. Some guinea pigs. There was a constant noise coming from the cages — twittering, squeaking, scrabbling. He looked at the reference Kavanagh had written and found the cage, then carried it up to the lab.

  From a roll of cotton wool he tugged off a wad and stuffed it into the bottom of a stone jar about the size of a biscuit barrel, then splashed in some ether, darkening and dampening the cotton wool. He smelled the whiff, saw the gas corrugate the air above the jar. The lid was a disc of glass so that you could see what was happening in the jar. He rubbed his nose — he still could get the Atrixo hand cream faintly. The cage of rats was on the bench and it was as if they could smell the ether. They were giving off a panicky noise which increased when he raised the wire lid of their cage. He lifted a white rat by its hairless tail and dropped it into the jar and slid the glass lid back into place. It made a hasp-like sound as it slid. He checked his watch. The rat crouched rubbing its nose and eyes, twitching its white whiskers, sneezing. It panicked and stood on hind legs looking for a way out making tiny scrabbling noises with its claws as it went hand over hand all around the curve of the jar. Black ovals of shit appeared and littered the cotton wool. Yellow stains — like piss on snow. The pink eyes, the whiskers flickering. Very quickly it tumbled over backwards and lay on its side, its flanks pumping in and out. Then the movement ceased. Its eyes became clear jelly — a sure sign that it was dead. Martin lifted it out by its tail. The hairs on one flank, where it had lain on the ether, had gathered into wet, yellowed points.

  There was a pile of old newspapers on the bench for working on. He took one and dissected out the left leg from the furry skin. It looked like a tiny uncooked chicken drumstick. He dropped it into a jar of formal saline, labelling it carefully with the time. The remains he bundled in the newspaper and dropped the parcel into the bin. He would incinerate them all later. He was hungry. Often he thought he’d like to eat rat.

  One day in school the Spiritual Director had told them about the siege of Derry and how the situation had got so bad that rats were caught and sold for food — sixpence apiece. Kavanagh had put up his hand and asked, ‘What’s that in our money?’

  But these particular rats were clean, well reared. They were tender and lean. He imagined throwing a supper night like his mother’s with bits and pieces threaded on wooden cocktail sticks. A pickled onion, a pineapple chunk, roasted rat, tomato.

  ‘Ummm, this is delicious,’ says Nurse Gilliland.

  ‘What are these, Mrs Brennan?’ says Mary Lawless, ‘they’re absolutely divine.’

  ‘Oh something Martin cooked up,’ says his mother.

  ‘What are they Martin? What are we eating?’

  ‘Rat.’

  ‘Ahhhhhhh Jesus, Mary and Joseph — let me vomit copiously.’

  After he’d started this job he’d become aware of the anatomy of things. Like chicken. He’d be eating and be aware of the tendons, the muscle bundles, the blood vessels cooked to black threads. Biting through all this he would come upon the bone glistening and faintly bluish. Lamb chops became ribs. And somehow the knowledge of its anatomy faintly repulsed him. He thought of becoming vegetarian but never actually did.

  He reached into his bag, took out the alarm clock his mother had lent him and set it for an hour hence. It ticked loudly.

  When he’d been getting ready to leave for work that morning his mother had said, ‘I’ll miss you.’

  ‘It’s only for one night,’ he said. She stared at him.

  ‘Martin, I’m joking.’

  He wondered if he should fix up his bed. How utterly ridiculous. Here he was thinking about sleeping at seven in the evening just because he was out of his own bed. The last time he’d slept away from home, other than holidays, was about three or four years ago — at the silent retreat in Ardglass.

  Kavanagh had got him a Territorial Army camp bed from somewhere — sage green canvas stretched taut over metal rods. It would be OK with his sleeping bag. If he opened it out now and left it on the floor it would just be in his way. He’d fall over it and break something. Nevertheless he opened it up as best he could. It was as simple to put up as a deck chair.

  ‘For fuck sake,’ he kept saying. It took him ages. Eventually the whole thing stood a springy six inches off the floor. He unrolled his sleeping bag and lay down on top of it, trying it for comfort — on his back — with his hands joined behind his head. It wasn’t bad. He bounced up and down a little. Not bad at all. The canvas creaked, made a sound like moving cabbage leaves. But it was comfy. This was the life. He could be lying down looking up at the stars. He tried to turn on his side. More strange squeaking noises. When he bent his knees they stuck out over the edge of the frame. Since it was a Territorial Army bed he could sleep in the ‘Atten — shun!’ position. He straightened out and looked at his feet, then put his head back and looked up at the ceiling. Fluorescent tubes hung from chains. Maybe if the IRA got to hear of it, they’d shoot him for sleeping in a Territorial Army bed.

  The knife sharpener hissed on and on, pausing to turn and slap its other side down to grate on the ground glass plate. He unpacked his first lot of sandwiches and walked along the corridor away from the noise. He would eat in the peace and quiet of the tea room.

  He lit the Bunsen burner and pushed it under the tripod which held the kettle. He weighed the kettle in his hand. There was enough water for one. He dropped a teabag into the mug he liked best — the biggest. This room was usually full of people. At eleven o’clock and four. Coffee breaks at work were good. Everybody came along: doctors, technicians, students — sometimes the Professor. You could always learn a thing or two from the crack.

  Yesterday, Walter Graves, one of the young doctors had said, ‘The cyclist’s heart — these guys on the Tour de France — their hearts are big enough to pump the blood around an elephant. They die young of cardiomyopathy.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Martin.

  ‘An overgrown heart. A heart which has been over-exercised.’

  ‘Hey, I ride a bike to work,’ said Martin. ‘Am I going to drop dead?’

  ‘Great Victoria Street is not the Alps, Martin.’

  ‘It’s the best exercise you can take sitting down.’

  ‘Naw — that heart of yours’ll last you right till the end.’

  ‘Till you’re knocked down.’

  The death was announced this morning of big-hearted Arthur. His mother used the expression whenever he did favours for people. When he said he was working late to help Kavanagh — for no money — he knew it was coming:

  ‘Huh! Big-hearted Arthur.’

  The tea room had bookshelves round the walls. There were copies of working anatomy books but there were reproductions of older volumes as well — Galen and Vesalius. The Vesalius book was great, an artist like Leonardo or somebody. The bizarre figures were in a landscape, upright or leaning on a column, or sitting with fist on chin, their muscles detached and hanging down like undone braces.

  There was also a book of photographs — Muybridge’s The Male and Female Figure in Motion. People running and crawling and jumping and carrying buckets of water and God knows what else, all shot from different angles — but the important thing was that they were doing these things stark naked. He could hardly believe it the first time he saw it. Not a dolly on them. And this experiment was carried out back in the 1890s. In America somewhere. The only thing was, that the photos were very small — twelve or fifteen
action shots across a double page — and he had to use a magnifying glass to get any sort of a look at the women. A wee glimpse of their rugs. He had little or no interest in men and their tiny white dicks.

  The photographer, Muybridge, seemed to have been a bit of a madman. He discovered that some bastard had banged his wife and he’d become the father of somebody else’s child. He was not happy at all and so he went off and banged the guy who had banged his wife. With a gun. Stone dead. He got off because the jury in those days figured he had done the right thing. Your man had it coming to him for screwing another man’s wife. It was the Wild West with horses and saloon bars and guns and high-kicking women and what have you.

  The whole action photography thing had been started to investigate whether or not a horse, when it was galloping, had all four of its hooves off the ground at the same time. This was important to somebody in those days. And it was as much about time as it was about anatomy. You could actually see the progress of milliseconds. The background to all the photographs was dark with white lines like graph paper. Somebody falling from top to bottom of the picture could be charted, could be timed. The more often he looked at the book the less sexy it was. He began to like it for different reasons. The titles of the pictures: Woman pouring a bucket of water over another woman, Jumping from stone to stone across a brook — except that there was no brook there, the model was still in the photographer’s yard in front of the graph paper fence. Turning around in surprise and running away, Kicking a hat, Blacksmiths hammering on anvil, Handspring: a flying pigeon interfering.

  It was all supposed to be scientific but he thought it was just funny. Humour had no place in science — Dr Cowie was living proof of that. Take the flying pigeon interfering: this guy wearing a baby’s nappy — he must have been shyer than the rest — just as he’s about to do his handspring, into the frame walks this bloody pigeon and it gets its picture taken. It looks round only to see this mad bastard coming towards it about to do a handspring and, quite rightly, it takes off. Freeze frame of take-off. A little moment caught. It should have been called, Pigeon takes off: mad bastard in nappy interfering.