Opened the main door again,
and she was gone.
A gesture, and the red box vanished too.
It’s up his sleeve, my grandfather explained, but
seemed unsure.
The conjuror made two doves fly from a burning plate.
A puff of smoke, and he was gone as well.
She’ll be under the stage now, or back-stage,
said my grandfather,
having a cup of tea. She’ll come back to us with flowers,
or with chocolates. I hoped for chocolates.
The dancing girls again.
The comedian, for the last time.
And all of them came on together at the end.
The grand finale, said my grandfather. Look sharp,
perhaps she’ll be back on now.
But no. They sang
when you’re riding along
on the crest of the wave
and the sun is in the sky.
The curtain went down, and we shuffled out into the lobby.
We loitered for a while.
Then we went down to the stage door,
and waited for my grandmother to come out.
The conjuror came out in street clothes;
the glitter woman looked so different in a mac.
My grandfather went to speak to him. He shrugged,
told us he spoke no English and produced
a half-a-crown from behind my ear,
and vanished off into the dark and rain.
I never saw my grandmother again.
We went back to their house, and carried on.
My grandfather now had to cook for us.
And so for breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea
we had golden toast, and silver marmalade
and cups of tea.
Till I went home.
He got so old after that night
as if the years took him all in a rush.
Daisy Daisy, he’d sing, give me your answer do.
If you were the only girl in the world and I were
the only boy.
My old man said follow the van.
My grandfather had the voice in the family,
they said he could have been a cantor,
but there were snapshots to develop,
radios and razors to repair . . .
his brothers were a singing duo: the Nightingales,
had been on television in the early days.
He bore it well. Although, quite late one night,
I woke, remembering the liquorice sticks in the pantry,
I walked downstairs:
my grandfather stood there in his bare feet.
And, in the kitchen, all alone,
I saw him stab a knife into a box.
You made me love you.
I didn’t want to do it.
PAUL J. McAULEY
The True History
of Doctor Pretorius
PAUL J. MCAULEY’S LATEST novel, Fairyland, won the 1996 Arthur C. Clarke Award for the best science fiction novel published in Britain the previous year, and the author recently quit his job as a professor at St Andrew’s University in Scotland to write full time. His first major success was back in 1988 when he won the Philip K. Dick Award for his debut novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars. Later books include Secret Harmonies, Eternal Light (shortlisted for the Clarke Award) and Red Dust, the short story collections The King of the Hill and The Invisible Country, and the anthology In Dreams (co-edited with Kim Newman).
Dr Pretorius has previously appeared in McAuley’s alternate history novel Pasquale’s Angel and in the related short story “The Temptation of Dr Stein” (reprinted in the previous volume of The Best New Horror), which won the 1995 British Fantasy Award.
About “The True History of Doctor Pretorius”, the author explains: “This story is more horror than alternate history, but for all that is no truer than any of the other stories (written and unwritten) about the Good Doctor. It was partly inspired by a visit to William Randolph Hearst’s magnificent unfinished folly at San Simeon, and of course by Ernest Thesiger’s performance in Bride of Frankenstein.”
TO BEGIN WITH, Larry Cochrane thought that it was just another slice of bread-and-butter sleaze. A contact in the Food and Drug Administration tipped him to an upcoming investigation into a Tijuana clinic. The usual shit, peddling quack cures that supposedly delayed the onset of full-blown AIDS, cut-rate plastic surgery, no-questions-asked abortions and sex-change operations. Added spice: the clinic’s owner, a certain Dr Septimus Pretorius, had old Hollywood connections. The kicker: several well-known AIDS victims had gone there for Laetrile treatment of intractable karposis, and former TV child star Bobby Dupre, Little Jim-Bob in the long-running 1960s family TV saga Sunrise Acres, had died of acute septicemia after he was given a complete blood change to try and cure his crack habit.
So far, so good. With no complications, Cochrane figured that he would be in and out in a month, sell it for 50K to one of the glossies, maybe earn twice as much from foreign rights, not to mention spin-off items that he could get his researcher to write for the movie mags.
But within days of starting the investigation, Cochrane knew that the story would change his life. Definitely permanently, and maybe for ever.
The evidence came tumbling out of the archives. Through all his long, colourful career, Dr Pretorius had never bothered to cover his tracks. He’d left clues scattered through newspaper, film and historical archives with a recklessness that was either crazy, foolish, or incredibly bold. Perhaps he thought that no one would believe his story; Larry Cochrane was having trouble believing even half of what his long-suffering researcher, Howard Zaslow, had uncovered.
Witness:
A b&w photograph of white-haired Dr Pretorius, scrawny and bird-like in Bermuda shorts and a long-sleeved white shirt, playing croquet with Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
A sepia photograph, quartered by white lines where it had been folded, of Dr Pretorius, looking scarcely younger, lounging in safari kit in a canvas chair, boots cocked on the sprawled corpse of a dog-sized reptile that one of Zaslow’s pals at the UCLA Biology Department was convinced was some kind of dinosaur.
A luminous, sharply focused daguerreotype of Dr Pretorius in frock coat and tall top hat standing with a shorter man who wore an even taller top hat and had his thumbs aggressively tucked into the pockets of his waistcoat, both of them looking straight at the camera with some great mechanical engine half lost in shadow behind them.
A tattered handbill advertising, in type that was of different sizes on every line, that on 22 June 1852, in the town hall of Cheltenham, Dr Pretorius, lately of Geneva, would demonstrate his electric elixir for countering the outward symptoms of old age.
A warrant dated 3 August 1809, stating that a certain Dr Pretorius, otherwise known as Horace Femm, resident at number 13 Half Moon Street, should be arrested on sight, on suspicion of being a French spy and for enquiry into the disappearance of several young women known to be common prostitutes.
A facsimile of a handwritten document, signed by Elizabeth I above the imprint of her seal in cracked wax, declaring that Dr Pretorious of Cheapside was an agent invested with such powers of enquiry as necessary to seek out agents of Catholic powers.
Another facsimile, this in Latin and dated 1423, which Howie Zaslow said was the death warrant for a Dr Praetorius, a notorious practitioner of various magics and malefic rites; it was from the Armand Hammer collection, and was one of only three known holographs of Charles VII of France.
There was more, much more, including a connection with Ilsa Magall, the Destroying Angel of the Nazi death camps, that Cochrane could use to open up Pretorius like an abalone. But even half of this treasure trove was more than enough to convince Cochrane that this was even bigger than his recent bestseller about the RoChemCo disaster in Calcutta. Dr Pretorius had a secret that could make Larry Cochrane rich, and more than rich. It could enable him live for
ever.
Of course, Howie Zaslow also knew the score, but that was a fixable detail. Cochrane had a contact in the LAPD who knew a wise guy. One phone call and ten thousand dollars up front, and it was set.
Armed with the results of Zaslow’s labours, Cochrane started to hassle the PR office of Dr Pretorius’s clinic. He got a quick but inadequate response: Dr Pretorius was willing to grant an interview, but there was a certain vagueness about the timing. “We’re undergoing a certain amount of reorganization,” Ransom, the PR man, told Cochrane over the phone, and promised to get back as soon as he could.
So Cochrane told Howie Zaslow to keep digging up more dirt, packed a couple of changes of clothes with his portable computer, modem, and the licensed 9mm automatic he’d bought after the ’93 riots, and took off in a hire car for the Baja coast in Mexico, which was where Dr Pretorius had lived ever since he had set up his clinic in the 1920s.
For two days, Cochrane sweated and chafed in a roach motel with no air conditioning and some kind of lizard in the shower stall, in a Mexican fishing village ten miles north of Dr Pretorius’s estate. The village was a lost, God-forsaken place where bearded, pot-bellied refugees from the sixties stood knee-deep in the surf, bombed on LSD or hash, or sat around the bars drinking tequila from the bottle and talking about Nam. Cochrane drove past the estate’s impressive security fences, and made sure that the guards on the gate saw him taking photographs with his Nikon. He talked to the motel’s owner, the richest man in the village, who said that Dr Pretorius was a good man who sponsored the Festival of the Day of the Dead each year. He phoned up the estate office every couple of hours to let them know he was waiting, and badgered Howie Zaslow for more dirt, for more on the rumours that Dr Pretorius was about to relocate.
When Cochrane left LA, Zaslow had been close to uncovering the crux of a set of deals that included selling off the estate and the private clinic. Now, on the phone, Zaslow said, in his slow, thoughtful way, that Cochrane should wait a couple of days for the fuller picture, the financial trail was sort of complicated.
Cochrane, sitting on the edge of the sagging motel bed, strangling the phone in one hand and squeezing a sweating can of ice-cold Coke in the other, said, “Get your hands of your chicken-neck dick, Howie, and chase this down. That PR guy, Ransom, told me they were relocating, which means soon. I need to know all about his plans. I need an in. I need you to start doing some real work. I’ve already waited long enough, and this quaint fishing town outwore its welcome as soon as I checked in.”
“Another day,” Zaslow’s voice pleaded. “Give me time to chase down the share purchases and you can hit Pretorius really hard.”
Cochrane held the can of Coke to the back of his neck and counted to ten.
Zaslow said, “Are you still there, boss?”
“Another day and Pretorius might not be. There’s a stream of trucks leaving his estate. Maybe there’s another way in if we can get hard evidence about this death camp rumour.”
“That one’s no problem,” Zaslow said, his voice sounding smug. He’d been working for Cochrane for two years, and in an odd way Cochrane would miss the man’s infuriating plodding pedantry. Zaslow was in his thirties, a pale-skinned New Yorker with a summa cum laude from Yale and the distracted air of a perpetual research student. He had an old-fashioned regard for facts. Right now, though, Cochrane was burning with impatience. He had a lot more to lose than some pissant story.
Zaslow said, “The Simon Wiesenthal Institute came through. They have details of his collaboration with Ilsa Magall. Weird transplants, stuff about vacuum exposure that has a link with the V2 rocket program. I think that’s how Pretorius got into the States, by the way. The Army rounded up anyone that had anything to do with Peenemünde before the Russians got there.”
“Sometimes you’re worth the money I pay you. I got to have that stuff.”
“It’s coming from Austria by courier.”
“I need it now, fuck-head. Look, OK. Get it to me any way you can as soon as you can. This is definitely kosher?”
“One hundred per cent.”
So Cochrane phoned Dr Pretorius’s estate for the fourth time that day, and told Ransom that he had documentation proving that his boss was a Nazi collaborator, and would he like to discuss it in person, or with the Israeli secret service? Cochrane hung up as Ransom started to bluster, and ten minutes later the phone rang. To his amazement, Cochrane was in.
Early the next morning, Larry Cochrane was waiting with his holdall and portable computer outside the village’s beat-up cantina. He was wearing his black Armani suit; his beard was trimmed; his ponytail was tied back with a silver death’s-head clasp. Cochrane’s inquisitorial style was modelled on Robert de Niro in Angel Heart, and generally its brooding menace gave him an edge in interviews.
All in all, he was feeling fairly terrific, although he was not so carried away that he had neglected to strap on his shoulder holster. This day, the first in what promised to be a very long life, was shaping up pretty well. The sun was brassy, not yet at its full heat. The ocean was blue, sparkling with whitecaps, the air so clear you could see out to the horizon. Except for a couple of fishermen manhandling their boat up the white beach, the village was barely awake. An Americano was sleeping off last night’s tequila over by the garbage cans, watched by a piebald dog that trotted over and sat by Cochrane as he drank a Coke in the shade of the cantina’s awning.
Seven on the dot, the limo swung off the road. The Americano, hand out, stumbled up as the chauffeur loaded Cochrane’s bags. Cochrane lowered the smoked-glass window and gave the bum the finger; then the chauffeur hit the gas.
Moving trucks, two travelling together every few minutes, heading north towards the border, passed the limo as it drove south. The chauffeur wouldn’t answer Cochrane’s questions with anything other than a shrug, so Cochrane watched MTV on the inset TV and drank one of Dr Pretorius’s Diet Cokes from the built-in fridge.
The limo turned off the highway, climbed past a clump of coral trees and stopped while a big brute of a guard, sweating through his tan uniform, opened the gate in the tall double fence. The guard was hunchbacked, and his face was brutish and scarred, his nose smashed flat, his tiny eyes like piss-holes in snow. His blubbery lips worked as he waved the limo through. The narrow road switch-backed through rolling pastures wet by sprinklers that set rainbows in the hot Mexican air. Once, the limo stopped to let a couple of giraffes amble past; Pretorius was supposed to have more animals on his estate than in San Diego Zoo.
The house itself came into view only as the limo climbed the shoulder of the rise: a Normandy château, with sharply ridged roofs and a spiky tower, standing amongst a formal garden of lawns and clipped hedges. The limo rumbled over a wide cattle grid that bridged a steep-sided ditch with razor wire on the outward-facing slope – to keep the animals out of the garden, Cochrane supposed – and drew up by the mansion’s great Gothic door where Dr Pretorius’s PR man, Ransom, was waiting.
Dr Pretorius was ready to talk, Ransom said, as he led Cochrane around the side of the house. As they walked across a sweep of gravel towards a huge glasshouse framed with Victorian ironwork, palms and tree ferns visible through the whitewash on its panels of glass, Ransom added, “Dr Pretorius is eager to tell the truth about his life. He won’t hold anything back, Larry. You must trust him.”
But Cochrane knew that his job really started when the subjects of his investigations finally agreed to talk, because they only wanted to tell their version of the truth, to smokescreen, to play the victim, to shift the blame. Cochrane had had the president of RoChemCo telling him that careless local workers that caused the explosive outgassing in the Calcutta plant that killed thousands in the surrounding shanty town; the chairman of ScotOil blaming environmentalists for regulations that had distracted the crews of his company’s tankers and led to illegal discharges killing millions of seabirds and seals in the new Falklands oil fields; the police chief of Tupelo blaming rioters for inciting police
to violence that left more than twenty, including a grandmother and two children, dead of shotgun wounds after cops opened up on a group protesting compulsory prayer in schools.
Larry Cochrane was a master at the adversarial techniques of the new, aggressive breed of journalist. He didn’t agree, he didn’t gently point out the contradictions his interviewees tangled around themselves: he went for the jugular. He had been carried out of the RoCoChem headquarters by four security guards. He had screamed into the face of the police chief until she burst into tears. The interview with the chairman of ScotOil had ended after the man threw a lead-crystal decanter at him. Cochrane knew what he wanted and he didn’t care how he got it.
But Dr Pretorius disarmed Cochrane by simply agreeing with everything. He said that it was all true, and he didn’t care. “I’m disappointed,” he said, with a sly, foxy smile. He leaned forward in his wheelchair, and said into the Sony proDAT tape recorder on the wicker table, “You’ve done so much work, Mr Cochrane. You’ve found out where the bodies are buried. You are quite right when you say I have exploited the desperation of dying men and women. But you haven’t stopped to consider this. No one wants to die, and that is why I am rich.”
Dr Pretorius was hunched within a crocheted shawl, with a tartan blanket wrapped around his legs, as immune to the stifling heat in the huge greenhouse as a mummy. Only his head and hands were visible. If he really was five hundred years old, he looked every day of it: a mummy indeed, the dry, deeply wrinkled leathery skin of his face sunk so close to his skull that the arches of his cheekbones and the jut of his jaw were clearly visible. Only his white hair, combed back from his high forehead and crowned by a crocheted skull cap, showed any vigour. His hands were spotted with age, and constantly fretted at the hem of his shawl; his nails were curved like talons.
Cochrane leaned forward, too. The wicker chair creaked under his 200 pounds. With his face less than a couple of handspans from Dr Pretorius’s long, sharp nose, he said, “The Mexican government has agreed to the demands of the FDA that clinics like yours should be subject to full licensing procedures. Tell me you’re not worried by that, Doctor. Terminal cancer patients have spent every last cent on your so-called cures. AIDS patients have died while crossing the border because of the false hopes you held out. Your clinic has peddled some weird treatments in its time, none of them anything to do with real medicine. The monkey gland extracts, for instance. How will you explain those in court?”
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