The Anatomy School

by Bernard Maclaverty

  The lights came up. The place became quiet enough to hear the biker unzipping his leathers. There was no sign of the Australian girl. The pianist leaned down to his mike and said, ‘Thank you —you’re all very kind.’ His voice sounded as if it was in a microphone cave. You could hear his breathing. ‘All of you. All seven of you who braved riot and mayhem to get here.’ He lit a cigarette and the smoke drifted up among the lights. He had an accent which was a mixture of Derry and New York. ‘Until the crowd arrives — listen to this.’ He began playing ‘Blue Monk’, with his head down, splashing the opening chords. People in the audience recognised it and clapped a bit, cheered a bit. Martin edged his hip on to a bench and listened. The music involved him. With jazz, he found he always had to let himself go with it — if he resisted, it didn’t sound good. In some ways it was show-off listening — foot tapping or knee jigging, nod the old head, sway the body a bit and then he found he was really enjoying it. It was like religion: any scepticism or holding it at arm’s length and it lost its power.

  This was the lecture theatre where Pippa organised her bread and cheese lunches. People paid their money and could eat as much as they wanted. At lunch time the blinds were thrown up and midday light streamed in from the high windows. On the benches were industrial-sized tubs of margarine and piled columns of white pan bread, beside matching square slices of cheese — two types, orange and yellow. There was a basket of crispy French batons and smaller more select cheeses for the gourmets who strayed in. Soft drinks were sold by Pippa and her fellow workers, the profits all going to Christian Aid. Martin had suggested a bread and cheese and wine party would go with more of a swing but he was ignored. When he could, Kavanagh attended and sat talking to Martin, always staring over his shoulder at Pippa going about her chores — sympathising, exuding niceness, convinced she was saving lives.

  Martin was surprised at how good the band was. There was something about live performance: the guys were making the music right here in front of him. They were plucking it out of thin air and shaping it and letting themselves go with it. It wasn’t like listening to records. Martin saw the doorman come in and stand looking around. Even though it was pitch dark Martin bent and tied his shoelace. He didn’t pretend to do it — he actually did it. Untied it, then tied it with a double bow. When he next looked up the doorman was away.

  More people were coming in through the slice of light at the doorway. The place was filling up. ‘Blue Monk’ came to a long-drawn-out end. The close of the piece was signalled. Everybody knew it was finishing and they began clapping and whooping and drumming on the benches, mixing their applause with the music.

  ‘Hi,’ a voice said behind him. He turned. It was the Australian girl.

  ‘It’s yourself.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s yourself.’

  ‘Who else would I be?’

  ‘No — it’s just a saying — a greeting we have here.’

  ‘Gidday then.’

  She slipped out of her shoulder strap and set her rucksack on the floor.

  ‘Did you meet up with your boyfriend?’

  ‘Not yet. It’ll be bloody hard to find him in here.’ She shaded her eyes from the glare of the spotlights and moved nearer the front to look at the faces in the audience. When she didn’t see anyone she recognised she came back to Martin.

  ‘No luck?’

  ‘No.’

  He liked that — the way she came back to him. She could have sat down on her own near the front, but she didn’t. She slid on to a bench beside him.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘They use it for lots of stuff,’ said Martin. ‘Lectures, jazz — they have bread and cheese lunches in here for the starving of Africa.’

  ‘It’s a long way for them to come,’ she said. He laughed for her. ‘Did you get that thing killed?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘Stone dead.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like that.’

  The piano player leaned over to one of the microphones.

  ‘You’re all welcome,’ he said. ‘My name is Peetie Red Wallace. And this is the band.’ He introduced them one by one as they played into the next number, ‘Baby please don’t go.’ The audience applauded each one in turn. The area below the spotlights now looked like cones of blue smoke.

  ‘You work in here?’ said the Australian girl.

  ‘Not exactly in here but — yeah.’

  ‘The Anatomy Department?’

  ‘Yeah, upstairs.’

  ‘Strewth.’

  Between numbers the house lights came up so that people could find their way to a seat. More people were coming in the door. Everybody was talking. The girl looked up, turning around. ‘What’s in all these cupboards?’

  ‘Things,’ he shrugged. ‘Stuff.’

  ‘Thanks for being so open and honest with me.’

  ‘They’ve been painted with black paint on the insides of the glass, to stop people seeing in. They’re pretty gruesome — some of them. You don’t want to see the half of them.’

  ‘What kind of things — what kind of stuff?’

  Martin paused and looked at her.

  ‘Things that go wrong — in bottles. Monster babies — hydrocephalics — Siamese twins joined at the chest.’

  ‘And they’re all in there listening to the music?’

  ‘I think the worst thing is the skin of a baby’s head, taken off the skull and flattened out — like Cinemascope. It’s bloody awful looking.’ The girl pulled a face. She leaned forward towards the cupboard door. Towards him. She smelled of talc. Or something like it.

  ‘Some of the paint is peeling. Can you see in?’

  ‘Only if you look hard enough. You’ll see nothing with the lights out.’ She cupped her hand round her eyes and put her face close to the glass. A number started and the house lights went down. They both sat there together. The drummer was playing wire brushes. Martin leaned over.

  ‘It sounds like spilling sugar,’ he said into her ear. A wisp of her springy hair touched his mouth. She nodded. The tenor sax man unhooked his instrument from around his neck and set it on a stand. He produced two pieces of a silver flute and slotted them together. As he played the light moved to and fro on it, up and down, again and again as its angle changed. The girl beside Martin began to fidget. After the number she said, ‘What am I gonna to do? This guy hasn’t showed and it’s getting late.’

  ‘Your boyfriend?’

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend. He was a drongo from Melbourne who was going to get me a place to kip free of charge. If he doesn’t show I’ll have to find a youth hostel or a B&B. And they’re so bloody expensive.’ She looked at her watch by holding her wrist up so that she could see by the light from the stage. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is there a telephone? I told the doorman I’d no money and I was just meeting somebody. He said join the club, and like an asshole I said how much is it. He said almost everybody in there says he’s looking for somebody. I told him I hated this kind of crappy music and he let me in.’

  ‘I thought you liked jazz?’

  ‘Naow — I never said any such thing.’

  ‘Do you want to phone from upstairs?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Martin led the way out. She picked up her rucksack and followed.

  As they climbed the stairs he looked at her moving in front of him, her head keeping her balance. In the main corridor he heard their own footsteps against a faint background of jazz. It was gloomy except for the light coming from the doorway of his lab into the corridor.

  ‘This is such a spooky place,’ she said. ‘Is this where you do the killing?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh my Gawd — and this is an … an … anam an Anatomy Department?’ She had stopped walking and was looking all around her.

  ‘Yeah.’

  She put out her hand and touched his elbow, stopping him in the middle of the corridor. Her voice reduced to a whisper.

&nb
sp; ‘Where’s the zombies?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The dead bodies?’

  ‘In there.’ He nodded just to her left at the Dissecting Room.

  ‘Jesus, how many?’

  ‘Fifteen, maybe.’

  She gave a low whistle.

  ‘Is it locked?’

  ‘Yeah — but I can get a key.’

  ‘Ohhh,’ she shuddered. ‘Can I see in?’

  ‘Naw — it’s not just for nosying.’

  ‘It’s not that I’m nosy — but I’d really like to see. I’ve never seen a dead person.’

  ‘Never?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No dead relatives?’

  ‘Not that I ever saw. I was a baby when all my grandparents passed away. I just love the way you talk.’

  ‘Same back.’

  ‘I could listen to your accent all night. You could make the telephone directory sound good.’ Her smile disappeared and she wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh my Gawd it stinks here … What’s that smell?’

  ‘Formaldehyde.’

  ‘It’s honkin. You’d think somebody was cutting bloody onions.’

  ‘Aye, it goes for your eyes a bit. It’s coming from in there.’ He nodded to the Dissecting Room, then urged her on towards the light from the lab. Once inside, he pointed to the phone. She slid out of her rucksack and stood by his office chair.

  ‘Feel free,’ he said, then backed towards the door. ‘Nine for an outside line.’

  ‘Hey — where you going? I don’t want to be here on my own-ey-o.’

  ‘I just thought you wanted to … be on the phone. A bit of privacy.’

  ‘Don’t you dare leave me on my own.’ She took out a notebook from a side pocket of the rucksack and opened it on the desk. ‘In a place full of zombies.’

  On the other side of the lab Martin looked at his watch, lifted another rat by the tail and popped it into the ether chamber. She was saying the number out loud to herself. The rat was dead even before she had finished dialling. He looked over his shoulder at her. She wrinkled her face in distaste.

  ‘What’s that hospital smell?’ she said.

  ‘Ether.’

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  Martin shrugged. For a moment he couldn’t think.

  ‘The knife sharpener.’

  ‘It makes my skin crawl.’ He leaned over and switched it off. He’d caught it in mid-turnover and the blade was held aloft with a little black powder and oil dripping from it.

  She stood with the phone to her ear looking around at all the equipment, at the bottles and jars labelled with Dymotape. The dialling tone purred for ages. He stood with his back to her, shielding from her what he was doing. He removed the rat’s leg and put it in the jar of fixative. He labelled it with the time. She combed her hair through her fingers, the wrong way over the crown of her head. She looked at him and smiled. He smiled back at her. Finally someone answered the phone. She asked for the guy she’d met earlier. It was a wrong number. Martin rolled the bloodied rat carcass in several sheets of newspaper and put it in the waste bin. A picture of Nixon stared up at him. She checked that the number was the number she had dialled. It was. She replaced the phone.

  ‘Bastard,’ she said. ‘I knew he was taking the piss with that number.’

  ‘Approximate phone numbers are no good,’ he said. She bit on her lower lip. ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’ She thrust her notebook into the rucksack and sat down. She revolved in the chair, staring ahead. ‘What’s the name for this?’ she pointed.

  ‘A binocular microscope.’

  ‘I think that’s really crap — giving me a wrong number.’

  ‘Are you sure you wrote it down properly?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure.’ She continued to swing in the chair. ‘Do you look into it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Yeah sure.’ He leaned over and switched the microscope on. He got a glass slide.

  ‘Give me one of your hairs.’ She pulled a blonde wisp down over her face, going almost cross-eyed looking at it.

  ‘Wait,’ he said and very carefully he selected a single strand and plucked it out by the root.

  ‘Aiow — that hurt.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I didn’t trust him. Don’t ever trust anybody from Melbourne.’ He wet his finger and stuck the hair to the moist print he made on the glass. He adjusted the focus and invited her to look. Parting her hair with her hands on either side, she faced up to the microscope.

  ‘You don’t need to close your eye — it’s not a telescope.’ She was at the wrong height so she stood. She let her hair go and leaned her two hands on the bench on either side of the microscope and stared into it.

  ‘It’s like a bloody iron bar,’ she said. She didn’t touch any of the controls. There was a tiny light in each of her eyes coming up through the eyepieces. Then she straightened up and raised her eyebrows. ‘Some machine. Have you got a Yellow Pages?’

  ‘There’s one in the tea room.’ He made as if to go and fetch it.

  ‘Don’t you leave me here.’ She was joking but not joking. ‘Speaking of which — is there a dunny? I’m dying.’

  ‘A toilet?’ She nodded. ‘Yeah.’ He walked towards the door and she followed him. He began to point into the darkness of the small staircase ‘There’s lights.’

  ‘Oh no ya don’t. You gotta come with me and show me.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ He was laughing — in a kind of embarrassed way. He led her up the flight of steps and put his head in through the door. He felt around for the switch and flicked it on. The fluorescent tubes blinked on, and off, and on.

  ‘There you go,’ he said.

  ‘Leave that door open — and don’t you move.’ Martin sat down on the threshold and she went into one of the cubicles. Still the cisterns sang and dribbled. He looked beneath the cubicle door at her boots set square on each side of the white delf pedestal, her jeans accordioned at her ankles. He heard her piss then tug at the toilet roll. Then the flush was roaring and she was out slamming the door behind her.

  ‘Double quick time,’ she said. Martin turned off the lights and they went downstairs. In the lab she sat down on the office chair again.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ said Martin.

  ‘I dunno. It’s a real bummer. I’m going back tomorrow. What time is it?’

  ‘Almost ten.’ She sat there, screwing up her face, thinking. Martin said, ‘I mean — don’t take it the wrong way, or anything like that — but you can stay here — if you like.’

  ‘In this place?’ Her voice almost screeched in disbelief. ‘By myself? In the house of the dead?’

  ‘I’m going to be here,’ he said. ‘All night. I’ve things to do. It’s the first time in my life I’ve been on night shift. We can take turns on the camp bed.’ She pursed her mouth. ‘I’m only joking — kidding on.’

  ‘This is such a truly weird place. The Abos would be outa here like …’

  ‘Abos?’

  ‘The Aborigines. Black boys. They’re very superstitious. A lot of spooky stuff to do with the dead.’

  ‘I think you’re making too much of this. The dead people thing. You just get used to it.’

  ‘To being dead?’

  ‘No — to being around dead people.’ She put her feet up on the bench and swung the chair back and forth. She reached into her pocket and produced a tiny round jar.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Vaseline. Stops my lips being like dry paper.’ She dipped her middle finger into the jar and applied the moistness to her mouth. Her finger moving over her lips pulled them sideways. Then she wiped the shining finger on a tissue and pursed her lips in and out to distribute the softness more evenly. ‘Do you want a coffee?’ Martin asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The coffee stuff is in the tea room.’

  ‘That’s very Irish,’ she laughed loudly. ‘The coffee is in the tea room.’

  Before he left the lab he switc
hed on the knife sharpener again. To have it sharpening when they were elsewhere. On the way along the corridor he asked her, ‘If you don’t like jazz what kind of music do you like?’

  ‘All kinds — I don’t know. I suppose — everything.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘The Monkees, Sonny and Cher. Elvis, I don’t know.’

  In the tea room he filled the kettle and lit the Bunsen. She unslung her rucksack and sat down. The chair creaked as it had done under Kavanagh. She gave an involuntary shiver.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘I am not warm,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose the heating has gone off. That never occurred to me.’

  She began to rub her bare arm vigorously.

  ‘Look. Look at the goose-bumps.’ She held her arm up for him to see. Her nipples were obvious beneath her T-shirt.

  ‘Maybe it’s just me. Heat’s something we take for granted back home.’ As they waited for the kettle to come to the boil he felt the beginnings of an erection, brought on by seeing her nipples standing out like that.

  ‘We call it goose flesh here. You know what it is?’

  ‘It’s when you get cold.’

  ‘Yeah, but also when you get hot — it’s a sign of change of temperature.’

  ‘I never get it in the heat.’

  ‘When you get into a hot bath, do you not go all goosebumps?’

  ‘Yeah,’ her eyes lit up. ‘You’re right. Hey, you’re a genius. How do you know this stuff?’

  He crossed his legs, tried to smother the hard-on.

  ‘There’s a muscle in the skin beneath a hair follicle — the arrector pili muscle. It contracts with cold or fear and the hair stands up.’