Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain

by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

  “The baquet?”

  The Fool abruptly stopped playing and smiled, and Quimbly stepped back to examine the man completely. He looked more distinguished than ever in a tailcoat and pressed trousers. His fingers, long and pale and relaxed despite the quick notes they created, seemed to belong to the instrument.

  He kicked a canvas bag the size of a small dog toward Quimbly. “Iron filings,” he said. “Go on. Make yourself useful.”

  Quimbly picked up the heavy canvas sack and followed the Fool to the center of the room where sat a large oak vat nearly six feet across and perhaps a quarter as tall. Where had the Fool found the device? The wood of the baquet had aged and darkened on the inside, which was filled with water. Submerged bottles, arranged in concentric circles, pointed either toward the center or the rim of the vat, where two dozen iron rods projected, each bent at the end to form a handle.

  “Fold that,” the Fool said, tossing the gold velvet cloth that had covered the vat. “No, leave it for now. We have to stir in the filings. Inside this vat, we have magnetized water. The very finest magnetized water, some from as far away as southern France.”

  At first Quimbly thought the Fool was explaining only to him, but as the Fool introduced himself and his assistant, “the boy,” Quimbly realized that the show had begun, and he hastened to mix the filings into the tub.

  “Step round. Gather round!”

  Quimbly raised one arm, just as Ada had, and grabbed hold of an iron rod. The metal was far warmer than his skin, almost so hot that he released it.

  “Sore from riding? Exhausted from last night’s capers? Pain, sickness. Enough! Behold the baquet.” The Fool’s words echoed off the walls. Quimbly was meant to hear that voice, meant to learn the healing art, which he knew would, once he’d mastered it, forever assure him respect.

  Quimbly raised his arm again and bowed slightly as the audience turned to him. He could see whose eyes had already partially closed and who still gazed at the baquet skeptically. Soon they too would understand. He smiled, certain that the chandelier light glittered in his cufflinks.

  “Come, join my assistant at its side. Feel the force of magnetic fluid. Shed your complaints, your burdensome worries. Embrace somnambulism, let me be your guide.”

  Each grasping hand added depth, a new vibration to the heat of the baquet. The woman in the china-patterned dress across from Quimbly felt as close as the bareheaded gentleman behind him. The rod burned in his fingers, but he could not release it. His hand had a will of its own, a creature apart from his body, a thing that responded only to the Fool’s dulcet voice.

  “Create a circuit! Join hands! Feel the energy flow through you.”

  Quimbly no longer felt his body. The woman in front of him began convulsing, her chest heaving violently. Laughter and sobs nearly drowned the Fool’s words: Relax, he said, give way to the forces. Small waves formed on the surface of the water. The submerged bottles began to shake, to strike each other with dull thuds. Quimbly was laughing. Joy coursed through his body, threw his small frame forward, into the full peach skirt of his neighbor. The room had grown lighter, the water steamed. “The baquet!” Quimbly cried, though he did not recognize his voice. “The baquet.”

  And then it was over. He fell to the floor alongside the fine gentlemen and ladies. He felt breathless, as if he’d run for miles. He lacked the energy to rise when the Fool offered his hand.

  “Come along now,” the Fool said, calm but firm. “This house is not so wonderful as it might seem.”

  “What happened?” Quimbly said. “I’ve forgotten —”

  “Men often forget.” The Fool handed Quimbly a mop and bucket.

  Men, Quimbly thought. He’d never been called by that word before. Through the window, he was surprised to see that night had fallen.

  QUIMBLY SCARCELY HAD time to return to the shantytown to exchange his fine clothes for a dark shirt and trousers before he raced to the dock for the predawn gold run. His legs felt numb and his thoughts unclear, but his pocket watch still held the afternoon’s magnetic charge, and he wrapped his palm around the warm metal. He remembered little; only the moment he collected change and the Fool tore the bag from his hands with a firm whisper, “Do not ask for money here!”

  The Fool had lectured him about audiences and expectations, his voice no different from Parkhurst’s when he became mad. But then he spoke of constellations and planets and the relations of all things to each other, this time to Quimbly alone, and the boy was quick to promise the Fool that he’d help set up the baquet at eight the next morning.

  “Where’ve you been?” Parkhurst demanded. He and the others had already tied their masks and the boat was upright and drawn to the river edge.

  “Work,” Quimbly said.

  “Work? Not lollygagging with that girl?” Parkhurst laughed and hit Quimbly’s shoulder with what might have been a friendly tap except for the force behind it. “After tonight, we’ll be rich! Rich beyond belief. And you go to work. Did you hear that? Quimbly, at work.”

  “I’m here now,” Quimbly said. He felt older than the other boys, or at least more knowledgeable.

  “Are you coming?” Parkhurst unwrapped his knife with a flourish of dirty cloth. “You said you were in.”

  Quimbly slipped into his seat and took the waiting oar. He did not want to go out on the river again; Parkhurst’s scheme, the whole notion of the River Gang, no longer seemed enticing. But if he backed out now, he’d be yellow forever.

  Parkhurst held his knife between his knees, blade pointed skyward as the rowboat made its way to the looming hull of the Sea Witch. She had lost half a mast on her journey and floated like a large broken bird alongside the low pier that had nearly taken Quimbly’s head the night before. The rig was dark, lighted by neither oil nor gas lamp. A loose rope flapped against the deck, and water hit the bowed side, plangent beats that soon had all four boys breathing in rhythm.

  Cobb tied the rowboat to the rung of the rope ladder running up the ship’s stern. Parkhurst started up first, and silent and smooth as shadows, Phineas and Quimbly followed. Quimbly counted the rungs, repeating the numbers under his breath to keep focused. The ship rocked gently.

  “Easy,” Parkhurst whispered. The Sea Witch seemed abandoned, without even a guard. “Easy as picking pockets.”

  “Sh!” Phineas, alert and tense despite the vessel’s emptiness, inched toward the cabin. Only the shore light reached them, a faraway glow.

  “We’re just yards away from —”

  “Quiet!” Phineas nearly yelled this time, and the three froze, listening for John Bovee’s warning whistle. A gull took flight from the foremast. Far below, Quimbly thought he heard Cobb sniffle. Seconds passed, then Parkhurst nodded and the three moved forward.

  “Here it is,” Parkhurst said. The hold was unlocked, open even, the wood cold and salty. The boys stepped, hands forward and searching, into its musty depths.

  “I’m going to buy my own boat and sail round the world.” Parkhurst moved deeper into the darkness, his voice muffled.

  “I’m building a castle,” Phineas declared. “And only the River Gang is invited.”

  “If I had a lump of gold as large as my head,” Quimbly began, though he realized that he hadn’t once thought about what he’d do with the treasure. He imagined burying the nugget in the ground, secreted away from everyone except, perhaps, Bettine, who couldn’t tell anyone. He considered showing the Fool, asking if he could magnetize it — all thoughts he would never share with the others.

  “I found it!” Phineas interrupted. “Tons of it!”

  Long and hard and thick as his thigh, the lumps of metal felt warm to Quimbly who ran his hands over them. Parkhurst reached down to lift a small chunk, but stumbled beneath the weight.

  “Give me a hand,” he said.

  But Quimbly, who felt the pull of the metal, silenced him. “It’s pig iron,” he said. “It’s all pig iron.”

  PARKHURST WOULD NOT leave empty-handed, though the
rowboat rode so low in the water that the Hudson poured over the sides. The misshapen iron rested between the benches, rolling back and forth as the boat lurched forward. The breeze had picked up, and the sky glowed with the soft light of the sun still tucked beneath the horizon.

  “Riches,” Phineas muttered. “That’s the last time I listen to you.”

  Beside him Parkhurst pulled so fiercely and single-mindedly that it was not till many minutes had passed that he realized he’d left his knife on the ship. By then the rowboat was too full of water to turn back.

  “I can’t swim,” Cobb whimpered. “Can’t swim a stroke.”

  “Me neither,” Quimbly said, admitting the weakness absently. The boat, he realized, was nothing less than a baquet. A floating vat with water, iron, and wooden sides. He felt warm where the water engulfed his shoes and ankles and splashed his fingertips. The heat spread through his chest and throat. He couldn’t swim, his boat was sinking, and he’d returned empty-handed, but he felt grand. “Don’t worry.” The shore stretched before them, twenty long yards away. They’d reach it. Even Cobb must know. “We’re aligned, don’t you see?”

  A figure, crouched by the rocks, stood to greet them, and Parkhurst spoke for the first time since leaving the Sea Witch. “Good God, Quimbly.” The harsh syllables nearly broke the musical spell. “It’s that girl.”

  Quimbly searched the shore, found the silhouetted form. Even in shadow Bettine looked pretty, and as they rowed closer he could make out her smile, her hopeful expression. She carried an oar, as if awaiting an invitation.

  “Das Boot,” she said, pointing toward the Sea Witch.

  “I’d kill her, but I don’t have my knife.” Parkhurst slapped the water with his oar and jumped out. Quimbly followed, the two tugging the boat to the rocks.

  “She’ll forget,” Quimbly said. “I know how to make her.”

  “You’re a fool,” Parkhurst said, “a damned, bloody fool.”

  Quimbly held the girl’s shoulder. She’d pulled her hair back in a white ribbon, and she wore a brandy-colored dress he’d never seen before. She’d washed her face and fashioned a necklace for herself from bits of broken dishware.

  She smiled, not at all afraid. In fact, as Quimbly looked at her, she leaned into his arm, unfolding her fingers to reveal a stolen bracelet. Curing this girl of her memory was not an abuse of power, he decided. The Fool would not mind, would never know. She couldn’t be part of the River Gang, no matter how good a thief she became. Besides, he wouldn’t be thieving much longer himself. Quimbly reached into his pocket, swung the watch before her eyes as he’d been taught.

  “Let me lead you,” he said, the words less important than their sound. Morning light colored the sky: apricot, silver, and green — the thousand shades of her eyes. “Let me tell you a story.”

  The words poured from his lips as Parkhurst and the others dragged the pig iron onto the rocks. “Come on,” they called. “Give us a hand.” But Quimbly ignored them, and he didn’t follow when they left for the docks in search of bulging purses and wallets. Animal magnetism was not something he could control, he realized. It flowed through him, his force, the girl’s. It collected like gulls around an old carcass, a flock that might lift from the ground any moment and soar. “Come with me,” he said. He’d evoked the Fool’s magic. The sun felt hot on his skin. “Come with me.”

  She clutched his fingers, and together they ran, past the turn where the Fool waited, past Parkhurst and Phineas and Cobb and the docks, and the markets and lumbering trains. And Quimbly raised his free hand to the sky, toward the celestial bodies he knew were pulling him, him and the girl, through the fluid of life.

  NEURASTHENIA: A VICTORIAN LOVE STORY

  Naked, Edwin Macready’s legs and lower abdomen quivered. His feet and ankles paled to an unsightly yellow; his chest, cruelly carved by his disease, curved as delicate as a china bowl. He folded his hands over his genitals. A sulphurous smell of sparks, long extinguished, filled the air.

  “Bit of good news today,” he said, blue eyes gazing longingly to the left of Doctor Steenwycks’s shoulder, where a woolen vest and underpants lay exposed on the examination table.

  Doctor Benjamin Steenwycks, who had just finished implanting a fist-sized copper electrode in a damp sponge, raised the instrument to the gaslight to observe his work. Behind him coils of wire and sharp-toothed gears hung from hooks on the wall. Scattered hammers, glass jars of odd nails and screws, and fragments of welded metal gave the small office the feel of a clock repair shop. “Yes?” he said.

  “I’ve been promoted to head clerk.”

  “Wonderful news! And you’re feeling —” The doctor nodded toward Edwin’s groin.

  “Better,” Edwin said, suddenly remorseful. The truth of the matter, as any clerk knew well, was that “head clerk” meant little more than undesired responsibility and additional unpaid hours. No matter how long or hard he worked at the undergarment department at Macy’s, he would never afford Doctor Steenwycks’s fees. Edwin stood in the scratched copper treatment dish only because the doctor studied neurasthenia in the lower middle class: single men, who paid eight dollars a month to live in dingy boardinghouses, who worked late into the night at factories that rose like flaming candles throughout New York.

  Neurasthenia, the doctor claimed, was prevalent among the poor and rich alike, though it was more often diagnosed among the latter. In fact, ailing nerves were the root of all human misery. What but disease could explain the conditions the destitute chose for themselves?

  Doctor Steenwycks diagnosed and cured more cases of nerves than any other doctor. He was highly regarded in the medical community. Other doctors as well as patients consulted him on every medical matter: the use of carbolic acid in surgery, the relationship of clean water to public health, the best treatment for cysts, the repair of fistulas. A man of vast means, descendant from a long succession of brilliant doctors, he worked because passion drove him. And one day, after his cousin Letty died and he inherited the family estate, which would have been his had his father not been such a fool, he would move his practice from the lower floor of his Eighteenth Street brownstone to Orchard Street, his ancestral home, which had four chimneys and a rich history of success. When he spoke of it, the doctor looked very wise, his eyes magnified behind spectacles, his hair a neat coif of brown curls.

  “Cure the body, the rest will follow,” he said.

  Edwin nodded. The clerk received free treatments, generously scheduled for dawn so that he could depart in time to begin his twelve-hour day, but he was often too tired to follow conversation. Beneath his feet the metal dish felt cold. The thought of failure troubled him as it had each morning since the doctor began treatments three weeks earlier. What if he never again felt the healing shock? What if Doctor Steenwycks turned him out of the clinic before Edwin owned his own shop, like the butcher’s assistant the doctor had cured in only four sessions? Or the waiter who now owned a stagecoach and lived in a brownstone on St. Nicholas Avenue?

  “You’re responding,” the doctor said. A set of pliers bulged from the slit pocket of his tweed jacket. “The higher doses of current are helping.” He consulted a leather-bound journal, scribbled a quick calculation, and struck a rectangular gong, which rang with a resounding clatter. “Herbert!” he called. “The magneto!”

  Herbert, the doctor’s diminutive assistant, responded to the summons before the gong ceased to sound. Never once taking his rust brown eyes from Edwin’s thin, naked frame, he bowed slightly and stepped forward to grasp the crank handle of the cabinet-sized cylindrical machine. Nickel-plated bars gleamed beside coils that spiraled into the dark core of the device, the place where the current came from, at least so Edwin believed, when the smooth metal cylinder spun. With exaggerated effort, Herbert turned the machine’s L-shaped handle. The exposed iron frame trembled to the hum of spinning gears and the clunk of an improperly aligned screw. Doctor Steenwycks, wires trailing from each hand, raised his electrodes.


  “Have you spoken to that girl?” he asked.

  Edwin’s interest in a lady had been the first sign of recovery. And ever since he’d mentioned the short-haired girl, whom he’d first seen on the street outside Macy’s, the doctor had asked after her.

  “You must speak with her.” Doctor Steenwycks ran the electrode over Edwin’s left thigh, and the muscles twitched violently. “You mustn’t let your nerves interfere.”

  Herbert cranked the magneto rapidly. The odd clunk blurred into the hum of the gears. Again the current shot through Edwin, this time near his abdomen. Shock pounded his flesh. His skin flushed, his breath came in quick bursts. He set his teeth against the pain that coursed through his body. Sweat hung in the air, filling the small office with its rich scent.

  EDWIN BRUSHED BY the two uniformed policemen who guided the stream of ladies to and from the front doors of Macy’s. The clock struck eight, and he decided to forgo breakfast and begin work (his first day as head clerk of the ladies’ undergarment department) a half hour early. All of New York was his, he thought as he passed the plate glass windows surrounded by early-morning shoppers. He would rise through society’s ranks as gracefully as the moon rose through the night sky. Startled, he realized that he had begun to whistle. He paused, looked about to see if anyone had noticed. Shoppers thronged: skirts, parcels, flat-toed shoes on sooty cobblestone. The day had warmed, contrary to rumors of a strong coastal storm. And there, right before him, was the girl.

  Hatless, as usual, she walked with a purposeful stride. She wore her skirt shorter than respectable women — her ankles flashed where the hem grazed the top of her shoes. She carried a pair of long white gloves, as if she’d been too busy to pull them on, and slung over one shoulder her leather bag bulged with books and papers. Most mornings, she walked on the north side of Fourteenth Street, and Edwin would watch her through the glass of the small coffeehouse, where he sat over coffee and toast. Today she’d chosen the south side, and had Edwin not stepped aside, she would have walked right into him. She must be drawn by his energy. Healthy people, successful people, attracted admirers.