by Nick Jackson
He heard a noise in the room behind him. Regula had entered, silently. She shuffled, appearing oblivious to her husband, yet her eyes moved listlessly over the silver, the mother-of-pearl, the pierced tortoiseshell of an ornamental fruit dish, empty save for a patina of dust. Her velvet dress hung slack—a sumptuous memory, stained with the meals she’d consumed. She’d grown thin. The flesh hung loose on her cheeks. He saw how her bodice was rucked up these days.
“We must eat something,” she sighed faintly. “You have connections haven’t you? You are respected. If you can’t get food then who can?”
But Regula did not understand that money was useless. The Apostles of the New Kingdom had withdrawn the coinage. There was only barter and begging.
He thought of Gesina, who would be on her way to Amsterdam and freedom. He’d last seen her bundled up in a shapeless travelling cloak, looking very small beside the tall figure of Herr Bamberg.
“You have the papers safe?” Jan had made her open the box so that he could see the bundles of manuscripts as he’d packed them. He would have taken them out to make sure that they were in order, just for the feel of the smooth vellum and the scent of the ink, but the man, Bamberg, was impatient to be off.
“Why should I go and not you or the mistress?” she’d asked.
“Because that’s how it must be.”
“They say that all who stay will end up on the blade of a soldier.”
“You shouldn’t listen to kitchen gossip.”
When he went to the room she’d lived in—the tiny garret under the roof—he found that she had stripped the bed and left everything tidy: the one blanket folded in four. She’d left all her possessions as if she knew that she was going to a new life—a knitted shawl, the cap and apron; all neatly arranged, finished with. In the mattress was the faint hollow where she’d lain at night. He almost imagined he saw her ghostly form lying there.
*
28th December 1535
My dear Balthasar
I am to give a final anatomical demonstration in Münster. I am to perform a full dissection of the human cadaver. I have been promised a fine specimen of humanity.
Regula took to her bed a week ago and refuses to get up again. I’m afraid she may not live to see the New Year.
Your brother, Jan
PS I’ve enclosed some observations on the life of a small organism—a primitive life form, which may interest you. I sketched these creatures and was amazed to see that, when reproduced at a size large enough for me to view comfortably, their world became more and more like a map, or a key to a universe which I had not guessed at—a universe within a universe with its own incessant wars and obliterations.
*
As he prepared for his last anatomy class at the makeshift theatre in the market hall in Münster’s main square, Jan Knyp thought of the two-headed calf. The heads were beautiful: they floated in their amber liquid, the tiny hooves pawing at the curving walls of glass. The eyes were a misty blue. If this was the work of the Devil, why were they so alluring?
“God or the Devil? Will you go to one or the other? It’s a choice you’ll be required to make,” Winkeldorp had said. “The Devil wants you to be weak and to indulge those sensations which are pleasurable: gluttony, lust, vanity and slothfulness. Forget about those dark places, says God, look up to the light, rise above the earthly passions, strive for the perfection of the soul. Think of angelic things—of eternal joy!” What did he want, to tear Jan Knyp in two? Father who art in heaven! Because Jan knew he was two beings, inextricably linked. Like the calf with two heads.
As he stood above the cadaver he began to feel an ache in the arm clutching the knife. The knife had a handle like those at the dining table and for a moment he was a child again, skewering gherkins. And his mother’s mouth was thin with disapproval: “Don’t play with your vegetables, Jan.”
He raised the honed knife, slipped it between the ribs of the body, like a blade into a pat of butter, and cut upwards. The knife laid bare the layers of fat and muscle and the fibrous tendons twitched against the blade, and then were sundered.
His audience took a collective inhalation; craning necks creaked in stiff collars as he exposed the viscera. He was close enough to see the arrangement of the arteries around the heart, but what could they see, from where they sat, yards away? A mess of gore? How could that interest them? He knew what it was that drew them: the sight of a medical man done up in his black gown, the alchemist presiding over a strange transformation—the silence and secrecy of death turned into theatre. They gawped, goggle-eyed, like rows of codfish in the guttering candlelight.
In the front row sat the twelve Apostles of the True Kingdom, those for whom the entertainment had been devised. Behind their beards they seemed to smile and their eyes glittered.
He sensed the familiar pounding in his head, the pulse of blood through his temples, as if the veins had grown constricted, and the yen of a question forming itself. Was it the Devil egging him on, to satisfy an urge? Was it the Devil putting the blade in his hand: that tool of desecration and knowledge? He wondered where the knowledge was leading him but he couldn’t stop. Even if he willed himself to put down the knife, the audience would not let him go. They’d compel him to delve further into the cadaver, to reveal the workings beneath the greying flesh. The braziers belched their clouds of incense. The air was stifling with the heat of many candles and lamps. A young steward swooned and was carried out.
Finally he straightened up, his arms shining with sweat and the fluids of the corpse.
“Here, gentlemen,” he hefted the lump of flesh, “is the heart I promised you. Look well. See what a small thing it is that animates the body of man… or woman.” And he glanced down at the corpse.
“But tell us, Doctor, how the soul of man is breathed into the lungs and how the blood takes up the spirit of God.”
“I’ll leave it to those who know best to explain these spiritual matters.” The heat and light stung Jan’s eyes. He blinked away sweat and tears. “My duty is done, I think.”
“It is not very pretty, the heart,” murmured one of the Apostles.
“In fact,” said another, “it’s an ugly thing.”
“Nevertheless, it’s the truth.” Jan looked down at the torso, “and truth has a kind of beauty.”
There was silence as he replaced the heart in the body cavity, arranged a cloth over the body for the sake of decency and placed the knife back in its canvas bag. He heard a whisper as he passed the rows of seated figures: “It’s Jan Knyp, the grave-robber, who’d cut up his own wife for a bag of gold.”
*
As he left the Market Hall, Jan looked up at the sky. The clouds had parted revealing a black winter sky pierced by an infinity of stars. He could almost have believed, at that moment, in a superior intelligence, though he could not have said what impelled him to such a belief. Perhaps it was no more than the clear cold light of the stars and the sense of an indefinable void at his own centre.
He felt a desperate thirst as he passed a pump. The handle was not quite seized up but, when he tried to get water, all that came from the spout was a trickle of dust. He looked up at the windows of the houses but they were all blank. He would find no comfort there and if he returned to his own house the mob would find him. Regula was dead and he’d done nothing to rescue her. He would not think of her body. It was after all quite different from all that his wife had been. It was no more than an empty shell.
He heard a hoarse shout behind him and he broke into a stumbling run. His boots were mired in clay and he tripped on the wreckage of the abandoned furniture littering the streets.
“It’s the grave-robber, Jan Knyp!” a voice shouted. “We’ll string him up and cut open his belly for the crows to feed!” Boots pounded the cobblestones. Jan tripped over a bale of velvet cloth and sprawled headlong in the gutter. He heaved himself to his feet and felt his joints protesting. Then a hand gripped his shoulder and he cried out. He felt his sleeve gras
ped and a strong arm guided him into an alleyway. He struck his head on a beam jutting out from the wall and blackness sucked him to his knees.
*
He drifted in and out of consciousness. Once or twice he thought that a woman was standing over him but it must have been a dream because when he finally came to, in the morning light, he was alone. He propped himself on one elbow and looked around. Smoke hung over the city and the streets echoed with the sound of falling masonry.
Jan watched a figure moving in the distance and was just beginning to wonder whether he should try to hide or stay still and hope that he would remain unnoticed, when he realised that the figure was familiar to him: stout and solid with a calm and steady tread as she carefully picked a way through the wreckage. She held a piece of horn with some water in it and offered it to him.
“Gesina,” he managed to raise himself on an elbow. “It’s really you?”
“Drink.” She held the horn as he took several sips and spluttered at the coppery taste. “Come with me,” she said as she helped him to stand.
“Why are you not far away? Why did you come back?”
“I never left. The man… that man you sent me with, took all the money you gave me and left me in the street. He said it was not worth his while to rescue servants. But I’ve got friends in the city. There are people who’ll look after me.”
“And the manuscripts?”
“The manuscripts? They’re safe.”
They walked through streets that were unknown to Jan, into a district he’d never visited and finally to a tumbling shack. Although it was wretched, it still had four walls and from within came the unfamiliar sound of a fiddle.
As they entered the room, the fiddle stammered and was silent. Jan and Gesina sat without ceremony in a corner. The room was crowded and the faces seemed to smile in the gloom at his coat, ruff of grubby lace and the angle of his high black hat. He thought perhaps they were thinking of the coins in his pockets then he realised that he had nothing, not a single piece of gold.
A young woman with a perfectly round face and blonde hair cut in rough shanks stuck out her tongue, a long pink, searching tip. Her eyes focussed on the end of it. Slowly she brought her hand up to her mouth and flapped her tongue as if was a fan. The woman next to her put out a hand to stop the action of the fan. But the girl pulled away and carried on flapping her hand. It reminded Jan of the compulsive jerking of a dog’s leg: an old experiment to demonstrate the action of tendons with which he’d once delighted crowds of students at the Anatomical Institute.
There was a sudden flurry of interest in the room as a woman entered with a steaming dish of potatoes. Several people moved together, vegetables were snatched in bony knuckles. Jan and Gesina were ignored. Only one, a woman with a red scarf, was aware of them sitting quietly in the corner and brought them two potatoes wrapped in her apron. Again there was silence, broken only by breathing and the slow chewing.
Then the fiddle player was on his feet again sawing away at a jig and people began to dance in a frenzy around a brazier that stood in the centre of the room. Even though she looked pale and drawn, Gesina’s feet were tapping and a big man with a yellow cloth wound round his head took her by the arm and led her into the dance. Jan watched as the dancers whirled by.
Suddenly the flames in the brazier flared up, a quick orange glare that made the flames leap to the ceiling. It was only then that Jan wondered what it was they were fuelling it with.
The box of manuscripts lay, half-empty, with its lid torn off.
“It’s poor fuel, this stuff. It burns too quickly and sends out too much smoke,” complained the man who was tossing the bundles onto the fire. Jan glimpsed a wing he had sketched: a butterfly’s wing, with each vein distinct like the spars of a window, and he remembered the colours. For a moment the wing lived again, touched by the gold and blue and the wisps of violet as the flames took it. He grabbed at it to retrieve it but his hand was lashed by fire.
In a panic, he ran for the jug of water standing on the windowsill. He could douse the flames still, because it was his life curling up and sighing softly in the metal cage of the brazier—the hours and days he had spent in a delirium of discovery among those beautiful creatures. He must, after all, save it.
But the jug was empty.
Jan scrambled after the unburned scraps and began stuffing them in his pockets.
“Is it yours then?”
“Aye, a lifetime’s study. All for nothing.”
The man stared, bemused, as Jan crawled after the scattered pieces of vellum. There was madness in people these days, he thought.
Still the fiddle played and the dancers reeled, drunk with the heat and light. Gesina had disappeared.
Jan sat despondently on a pile of sacks. He had no idea where he would go or what he would do. Yet, since no one seemed to mind him being there, he continued to sit.
“Hey!” Jan looked down at a snotty-nosed boy of five or six. The boy offered him a potato clutched in his blackened fist.
“Thank you,” mumbled Jan and he began to cram the steaming floury mess into his mouth. It scalded his throat but the warmth spread into his stomach. With his tongue, he reached after the lumps of potato that had lodged in his gums where teeth were missing.
“This is the end,” he murmured to himself and began to laugh gently as the smoke brought tears to his stinging eyes.
“You’ve got a big nose,” said the boy, as he watched Jan eat, “and big yellow teeth.”
“I have.”
“It’s a good fire.” The boy thrust his hands towards the flames.
“Yes.”
“But it’s getting low.”
Jan stuck his hands in his pockets, pulling out the remaining bundles of vellum. Together they flung the remains of Jan’s work onto the brazier and watched the flames leap joyously.
The Secret Life of the Panda
As Denis stood in the queue at the bank, he noticed that there was a spot of orange on his cuff which he rubbed at to no effect. Marmalade. There had been no time to clean it off before he left for work. He dampened his finger with spit and rubbed at the stain again. The stickiness transferred itself to his fingers. Stains on his clothes made him feel insecure. He imagined other people in the queue had noticed the stains and tugged his jacket sleeve down to conceal the evidence.
The stickiness of his fingers reminded him of Laura’s fingers pressed to his adam’s apple where he had placed them, the night before last.
“It could be a tumour,” he told her.
“I think it’s normal for people to have lumps there.”
“My grandfather died of a tumour.”
“You and your hypochondria.”
When they first met she had shown an interest in his ailments and encouraged him to see the doctor. Later on she started to make a joke of his swellings, calling him ‘lump man’.
*
“Where’s the colour chart?” She was flipping through the pages of the catalogue. The sunlight coming through the window reflected off the glossy paper and, as the pages turned, ribbons of silvery light flicked across her cheekbones and her smooth forehead.
“I don’t know.” He tensed up slightly, not looking up but keeping his eyes glued to the newspaper.
“I wanted to check that shade of white.”
“Uh huh?”
“I didn’t like the ‘barley white’, it was too pale. I preferred the ‘linen white’. What did you think?”
He disengaged his arm from hers. “I’ll go with your choice, whatever.”
“I don’t know where you’ve picked that up from.”
“What?”
“‘Whatever’, the way you say it: it’s as if you can’t be bothered to think. It means: ‘I’ll let you make the decision because I’ve got better things on my mind.’”
“Actually…” he shifted his position on the settee, still not looking at her directly but aware of her high forehead, the way her hair was pulled back from her face,
emphasising her child-like gaze. He had preferred the fringe she had when they met.
“Yes?” She raised her eyes and glared at him.
“They all looked the same to me.” He’d trudged round the DIY store with her last Sunday and had tried to be interested but couldn’t help thinking it would have been so much comfier to spend the afternoon with his feet up on the sofa.
“OK. I’ll decide then. You go back to sleep. That chart must be around here somewhere.” She gave him a kiss, but looked as though she might have been tempted to slap him for refusing to play her game.
It was another habit she had adopted: pursuing subjects earnestly and then dropping them as though the object was to test him out. He felt irritation surging in his chest beneath the layers of t-shirt and pullover and was suddenly short of breath.
“Damn it all.” He swept the newspaper onto the carpet.
“What now?”
“I threw it out.”
“What?”
“The colour chart, that bit of paper.”
“Why? I needed it. We’ll have to go back for another one. You know we’ve got to get that bedroom done. Why would you throw out that chart?”
“Because shades of white all look the same.”
*
The Old Corn Exchange where the bank used to be, before the new branch opened, had a vast arched roof with baroque mouldings picked out in gold. Looking up into the sky-blue dome was like gazing up into heaven. It was possible to imagine the bank managers peering down from their offices like minor saints.
The new branch had plaster-board panels and mean fluorescent tubes and carpet tiles. It was like queuing in Argos. The grimy off-white panelling (Laura’s colour chart would surely have described it as ‘cruddy cream’) made Denis think of a hospital. He thought of the grubby hands of customers, clutching their wads of money and jerked his hand off the plastic guide rail—you didn’t know who might have been smearing their germs on it.