I laugh. ‘You cannot hurt me, George.’
He grabs my wrist. ‘Not so fast,’ he growls. ‘You done cleaning the house, meat-head?’
I shrug. ‘I swept the rooms, both upstairs and downstairs.’
‘George,’ says Eve, a warning vibration in her voice.
‘What? You starting on me, too?’
‘No. But you speak as though he were your servant.’
‘Well? What else is he good for? You won’t catch me pushing a broom around when we’ve got a half-wit like him to do it.’
‘He is one of us.’
George snorts. ‘We’ll see.’
Eve glares at the flames of the kitchen fire. The room is quiet again.
‘I’m having a bloody drink,’ grunts George. ‘While the cat’s away. Come on, Abel. You’re having one with me.’
‘I will not,’ I say.
‘What do you mean? Get a drink inside you.’
‘George, let him be. He has said no.’
‘Since when did you become his knight in shining armour? Let the man speak for himself. Unless you’ve become his bloody keeper.’
‘We spend too much time moping over our glasses as it is,’ I say. ‘We must work harder and drink less, especially now there are rivals.’
‘Oh, lah-di-dah. Listen to Mr Temperance.’
I sigh. ‘But I shall have one drink, for comradely feeling, if it makes you happy.’
‘Oh, don’t do it to please a lowly creature such as myself, reaching down from on high to bestow your beneficence,’ he sneers.
I shrug again. He looks at me oddly, but only for a moment. Then he glares at Eve.
‘Haven’t you got something better to do than sit here eavesdropping on men’s talk?’
She throws him a look, gets to her feet and stalks out. He shoves a glass in front of me.
‘That’s better. Just the two of us. No women to get in the way, eh? Get this down you.’
I take the proffered glass, and it seems to put him in a more jovial frame of mind.
‘Mr Arroner was wrong. We have a very good show. We will prevail,’ I say, taking a mouthful. ‘You are a good performer.’
George places his glass upon the table very slowly.
‘Am I, Abel? Am I indeed?’ His voice betrays none of the merriment that was present a moment ago. ‘I thank you, dear Abel, that you take it upon yourself to notice my stumbling efforts.’
‘George, you are very skilled.’ I smile encouragingly. ‘You have a great talent.’
‘But?’
I stare at him. First his throat and then his cheeks flush, pink as fresh-cut pork.
‘“But?” I do not understand.’
‘I have great skill, but. That is what you want to say.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Great skill, but I am a drunkard. Great skill, but I am lazy. Great talent, but not as great as your fine self.’
‘No, George.’
‘Great skill, but I am lecherous.’
‘I do not mean any of that.’
‘Do you imagine for one bleeding minute that I can’t see right through you?’
‘See through what?’
‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a bloody fool, Abel. I know what your game is.’
‘George, I do not have a game.’
‘Playing the innocent. Might fool those bastards upstairs, but it doesn’t fool me.’
‘Innocent about what?’
‘All this rubbish about being a half-wit. I’m not taken in by the act, even if everyone else is.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t interrupt,’ he growls. ‘Everyone fucking interrupts. Spying on me, that’s your plan, isn’t it?’
‘No.’
‘Going to run and tell your precious little Eve what I’ve been up to?’
‘Have you been up to something?’
‘Not me. It’s you that’s making cow’s eyes at the lady of the house.’
I feel blood rise into my cheeks, although I am not sure why. George laughs.
‘At least you can blush. Didn’t think you could raise that much blood.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘Be quiet!’ he bellows.
‘You are angry. It is best if I go.’
I half turn, but his hand grabs my shoulder and swings me round. Bile rises in my throat. He presses his face close to mine.
‘You useless piece of workhouse shit. You mince in here from your stinking cellar, with your stinking spike manners, and dare to look down on me: me, a man born a piss-shot from this window. I am a man of this city; my father and bastard grandfather also. You should be grateful we don’t chain you up in the privy yard like the dog you are.’
‘George, I swear I do not understand.’
‘I found you, you piece of mudlark scum. I found you. On the banks of the fucking Thames. Washed up with all the other turds. And you speak to me like I’m dirt on your boot. Too bleeding good for the likes of me. You’ve no idea what it’s been like. Day after day, forcing myself to smile when all I want to do is spit in your face and watch it run down your cheek.’
‘You hate me because you found me in the river?’
I stare at him although I do not want to. I want him to stop so that I can follow Eve and get some peace away from this belabouring.
‘You took Arroner’s eye off me,’ he hissed. ‘Me. Since you joined us, it’s the Modern Marsyas this and the Man With No Name that. He gives you top billing, and I’m left with scraps from the table. The years I’ve laboured for one glance from that man, one nod of praise. Yet over you he spews all his approval.’
‘I did not mean to offend you.’
‘You’ve no idea. All my plans to get his trust. Get rid of him and set up my own show. Have her, as well. Now some bastard’s beaten me to it. I’m fed up with his miserly pennies. I want the pounds.’
‘Do you want money? You can have some of mine.’
He lifts his fist and it hovers in the air over my head. He quails with the effort of holding it still.
‘Make me hit you, eh? Is that your new plan? So you can go whining to Arroner and get me thrown on to the street? He’s as much as said he’s going to turf me out. I’ll see you dead before that happens. I’ll do what it takes.’
‘Why are you like this, George? What did I ever do to harm you?’
He ignores me.
‘I knew one day I’d find the key to your fall from Arroner’s bloody Heaven. Now I’ve got it. Don’t think I haven’t seen the way Eve moons over you. Arroner will kill you when he hears what I’ve got to say. He’s a fool, but all I’ve got to do is point it out.’
‘But there is nothing between Eve and myself.’
He grins unpleasantly. ‘I don’t care if it’s truth or lies. As long as it gets rid of you. Then I’ll have her.’ He grabs my collar, leans close. ‘I’ll have her Abel. Hairy or not, she’s got a cunt like every last one of them. She wants a real man. A man like me.’
He wraps his arms around himself and rolls his eyes upwards, licking his lips. ‘Oh, George,’ he coos in a girlish voice, running his hands over his body. ‘Oh, George! Take me, bend me over, fuck me, now! That’s what she wants,’ he hisses. ‘That’s what she needs. Not a piece of your jellied eel.’
His hand sweeps between my legs and grasps the softness there, twisting harshly. After a moment, he shoves away, eyes filled with a revulsion I do not understand. There is still so much I do not understand.
‘Limp as a dish-rag,’ he spits. ‘You shit-eater. Dead fish. You keep your hands off her. She’s mine.’
‘George, I want nothing of this.’
‘No? Stow it where the sun don’t shine, Abel. I’m no fool. I’m a man who makes plans, even if you’re not. I’ll take what’s owed me and then – well, we’ll see. Shan’t we?’
He strokes my cheek, so near I can see the grime of tobacco between his perfectly even teeth. He hesitates so long I am filled with the strange notion he is
about to bite my nose off, but he pats me gently, spins on his heel, and is gone. I shake away the unpleasantness, yet it sticks to me. I am exhausted by the argument. There is nowhere to go except to my bed, and I am grateful the room is empty. The room swings like a headache. As soon as I lie down, I fall into a blank slumber.
My Italian master appears at my side. It is the balm I need. He is proof that I can seek and find answers.
‘You have been gone so long,’ I say to him. ‘I thought I had lost you.’
He smiles, eyes warm. ‘A good teacher should not lose his student.’
Here is the man who understands my confusion, this stumbling towards the truth of myself. He is a learned man: there is nothing he cannot uncover. I open my mouth.
‘I have a secret,’ I say bravely. ‘I wish to share it with you, so that you can help me understand.’
‘Understanding! A noble goal.’
My heart soars with hope. I lead him to the dissecting-room. It is so deep into the night as to be early in the morning, and we proceed slowly up the steps, finding the way to the anatomy studios with the help of the smooth banister. I pause on the landing and hold my breath; I savour the sensation of the air eddying around me, the hissing of blood in my ears. Yes, this is where I shall have my answer at last.
He wraps his coat about him, for although the night is warm enough outside, here the marble of the floors and table-tops chills the air. The waning moon, approaching the last quarter, is rising high enough to clear the trees in the gardens beyond the room and casting a pale gleam though the glass lights set high up the walls.
‘Here?’ he says.
‘Here,’ I reply, directing him to one of the tables.
On the bench before me is a wax model of an arm, newly finished, the fresh varnish perfuming the room with tart sweetness. Beside it I lay my own arm as though it were a second model.
‘Look,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘Our models are close to the life, so close it is sometimes hard to tell the difference. This is no secret; I know this already. You do not need to show me.’
I frown. He does not see what I am trying to show him. I must try harder, make it clearer.
‘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.
‘God 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 passed 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 passionately 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 God. 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 pr
urient. 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 space 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.
The Palace of Curiosities Page 23