The Anatomist's Dream

by Clio Gray

  ‘Only a day’s coach-ride from Dortmund and Bremen. Perfect for the chase of Lusus Naturae. The Sports of Nature, dear boy,’ he elucidated, jamming his not inconsiderable hat onto his head. ‘Ullendorf the name, Teratology the game, to use a Kwert-like catch-phrase.’

  The more tired Philbert got with the travelling, the more Ullendorf seemed to perk up, telling them in great detail about his home and the laboratory he had built there over the years and how he would have the great privilege of taking another look inside Philbert’s head in circumstances far less trying than back at Finzeln. He seemed as excited at this prospect as any Fair-goer paying over his penny to see a new exhibit; he might not know exactly what his penny would enable him to see, but he surely wanted to see it.

  Philbert’s initial wonderment faded dramatically on the second day of travelling, every bone in his body felt bruised by the bump and jump of the carriage, nothing in the world of interest to him anymore but his own discomfort. It was at least as dark as when they’d left Finzeln when they finally arrived in Lengerrborn and came to a stop. All to be seen outside the carriage were two glimmering torches hoisted high on columns either side of a great wrought iron gate. Ullendorf flung the carriage door open, stuck out his head and breathed in deeply of the fresh night air.

  ‘Welcome to my abode, my friends, to my haven, or my House of Horrors, as it is known hereabouts.’

  Ullendorf was jovial in the extreme as he tethered the carriage’s horses to a post just inside the gates, and Philbert was too tired to protest when Ullendorf insisted he and Kwert disembark and take the last few yards up the winding track on foot. They trudged on wearily behind their host, and up a short flight of steps to the wooden door of a house that was hidden in darkness. Ullendorf put out a hand and grabbed at a dangling rope that was weighted with a brass globe the size of man’s fist, a mighty jangling ringing out fit to burst lesser heads than Philbert’s.

  ‘Like a ship coming into Anchorage, which is the name of my home,’ laughed Ullendorf.

  Then the door swung open and a huge aproned woman advanced upon her visitors in a floury cloud, the scents of sesame and honey-cake surrounding them as did her fleshy arms, flapping them all in like chicks beneath her wings.

  ‘Brother, brother,’ she chided Ullendorf. ‘Du knabe unartig! What on earth are you doing keeping these poor gentlemen ­sitting on the step while you ring your schrecklich bell? Don’t you know how cold it is? And who is looking to the horses? And oh my, look at that poor mite.’

  The woman ballooned over Philbert. ‘You will come down to the kitchen with me immediately and I’ll fix you up something grand and hot to eat. Merciful God! That brother of mine is really the end. All manner of strangers and so little warning. But you know men,’ the woman chattered on, abandoning Kwert and her brother as she led Philbert away down the lamp-lit hall.

  ‘All alike in my experience,’ she continued. ‘So long as they’ve got something they can chew over – talk, talk, talk, their mouths twitching like rabbits at a blade of grass – then they are happy. Those two can sort themselves out with the bottle of port I’ve left in the sitting room, for no doubt that will entertain those two sots while I see to you. Come along with me, my dear,’ and Philbert’s hand disappeared into hers, soft and warm as rising dough.

  ‘Oh and Heinrich,’ the woman paused briefly at the threshold of the kitchen, turning back as Ullendorf and Kwert began to come in through the open door. ‘Welcome home. There’s port already out and I’ll bring you and your guest something shortly, but first the boy . . .’

  Ullendorf laughed, well used to his sister’s thwarted leanings towards motherhood and expecting nothing less of her. He shook off his hat, sweeping it in an arc through the air as he bowed deeply to her, his curls unfurling briefly before being pinned back again by the brim of his voluminous hat.

  ‘Always a pleasure to be back, Helge, always a delight. And port you say? Port in the safe haven of home! What could be more apt?’

  And with that pronouncement he and Kwert disappeared down the corridor, Ullendorf talking non-stop, his arms gesticulating, Kwert dipping his head as he tried to follow what the man was saying.

  Once in the kitchen, Helge smiled at Philbert, her face as round as a bun.

  ‘That brother of mine, what can you do with him? Here and there he goes, here and there, and always he comes home without so much as a by your leave. If it hadn’t been for Fatzke calling earlier to say he’d seen you on the trail, I shouldn’t have known you were coming at all. Anywise, here you are, my ­duckling. You sit yourself down on that stool by the stove. You must be cold as an icicle, and I’ll bet you could use a slice of blueberry pie with a bit of warm custard, so you just wait there while I fetch you a slice from the pantry.’

  Philbert sat on the stool and leaned against the edge of the range, glad for the warmth of it seeping into his bones. The kitchen was huge, all painted white, even the flag-stones of the floor, in the middle of which stood an enormous slab of a table. From the ceiling hung racks and pulleys holding washing and hams and bundles of drying herbs, copper basins and black-bottomed pans. Helge returned with a bowl full of pie and poured on some thick, steaming custard from a jug on the range. She gave him a small silver spoon with a figure carved into the handle.

  ‘Lucky for you I’ve not long taken some to Widow Wilhelm next door and the custard’s still hot as a chestnut. You eat as much as you want, my duck, and I’ll set a platter for Heinrich and his friend. I think I’ve still some of that veal and there’s plenty of those butter-crumbed eggs . . .’

  Helge bustled about her kitchen, bringing out plates of cold meat and potato salads from the pantry, placing them on trays, rattling spoons, arranging dishes, humming all the while. Philbert forgot about being tired and bruised and bad tempered and was soon kneeling on the big chair by the table, watching Helge’s hands weave in and out of her dishes, folding slices of meat into slivers of bread.

  ‘Putting the baby to bed, they call this,’ she hummed, then began to dip cold dumplings into melted butter before putting them to fry on the stove. She gave Philbert a little taste of everything and he sat watching, as warm and welcomed as he’d ever felt in his life.

  Helge left briefly to take all her dishes to her brother and Kwert, and when she returned she sang softly as she washed up her pots and pans. When she saw Philbert’s eyelids drooping, his head falling down onto his arms, she lifted him up, just as Philbert had many times lifted the piglet Kroonk, and carried him off to bed.

  And what a bed! All big and bold with white sheets and ­pillows, and an eiderdown quilted all over in patchwork flowers. Helge removed the hot bricks she’d earlier placed there from the sheets as Philbert crawled in, and she leant over him for a moment as she tucked the boy in. She put a warm hand on Philbert’s cheek, and kissed his forehead and wished him good dreams before leaving. From outside came a caterwauling of tomcats fighting for their territories in the gardens beyond, reminding Philbert of that Bowman sawing at his nail-fiddle, and the tap-tap-tapping of Lita’s feet, and hoped to God he was looking after Kroonk as he’d promised; then Philbert slept, and slept deeply. And long, long would Philbert remember the feel of those sheets and those pillows, and every flower of that ­eiderdown: his very first night in a proper bed.

  17

  Islands Beneath the Skin

  The next morning came crisp and white as the sheets Philbert had slept in, the hoar frost gathered in hard pockets beneath the green bushes of the garden just beginning to melt in the sun. Looking out of the window, Philbert saw a spread of gleaming roofs laid out below him like a dealt deck of cards. Helge burst in just as Philbert was pulling up his trousers.

  ‘Well, my little Philbert,’ she said, hands on the hillocks of her hips, ‘first thing for you is a change of clothes and then food, after which,’ she sighed a little as if the thought pained her, ‘my brother wishes to see you.’
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br />   Philbert got manhandled into a pair of patched trousers and socks with heels newly darned, a shirt with sleeves so long Helge had to fold them four times at the cuff to make them fit. She puffed and panted, cheeks going red, tendrils of butter-yellow hair escaping her bonnet and sticking damply to her neck, before leading him down to the kitchen where she fed him poached eggs on toast and a cup of hot chocolate.

  ‘There now,’ she said proudly, leaning back for a more critical look at her handiwork. ‘You look so much better. Are you still hungry?’ she asked, parading a plate of toasted and sugared muffins before him as she loaded them onto a tray alongside bread that was dark, dense and hot, jams of wild strawberries and plums spooned in delirium onto a wide pink plate. Helge was humming again.

  ‘The boys,’ she commented with disapproval, presumably meaning Kwert and Ullendorf, ‘have been in the study for hours. I’ve already taken them their eggs and coffee, though it’s not something I approve of, eating with all those . . . all those . . . specimens . . .’ She struggled for adequate words. ‘It just isn’t nice, not nice at all.’

  Helge spat on Philbert’s tuft and combed it flat, along with the rest of his hair, and Philbert realised with a jolt she hadn’t commented once on his taupe, nor even given it a second look or thought. She picked up her tray of mid-morning snacks and led Philbert down a wide hall that was undoubtedly the grandest place Philbert had ever seen. They passed the staircase that wound up to the floor above, hordes of grim painted men riding on their grim painted horses lining the passageway, enlivened here and there by painted ladies on painted swings and severe looking mountains shading the green and purple landscapes above which they towered so magnificently. At the end of the corridor, Helge knocked on a large oak door, opening it without waiting, plonking down her tray before turning and briskly propelling Philbert in as she left.

  ‘Go on in, my duck,’ she whispered, ‘and see he doesn’t frighten you with all his talk. You come back to Helge if he does.’

  The door closed behind Philbert, and he was left twiddling with his buttons, gazing around him. If the kitchen was big, this room was enormous. Cavernous even. From top to bottom the walls were pleated with shelves overflowing with books on one side of the room, bottles and glass jars on the other. A series of tables marched its length, arrayed with tubes and gadgets, pipes and cylinders, springs, microscopes, tanks, vials, ink pots, folders scattered through with pens and pencils and eye glasses of varying shapes and sizes. On the other side of the room, beyond the tables, two vast windows reached down to the floor, showing the same deck of roofs Philbert had seen from upstairs, and down at the base of those windows, thankfully on the other side of the glass, a line of scraggle-backed cats sat looking in, eyes glinting as they turned to watch Philbert wend his way across the floor.

  ‘Ah Philbert, here at last! I see Helge has given you the full benefit of her thwarted motherhood.’

  Ullendorf was perched high on a ladder that hung from a rail running the distance of the top shelf. Something red caught Philbert’s eye and he located Kwert hunched in a vast armchair, a pile of books tottering at his side, the remains of his breakfast plate on top, a piece of rind draped limply over its edge waiting, just waiting, to fall. Philbert moved towards Kwert, who looked up and smiled, a piece of tomato skin caught between his yellow teeth, a dribble of egg on his stubbled chin. Breakfast, Philbert gathered, had been a hasty affair.

  ‘Welcome to the Wunderkammer!’ Ullendorf announced as he extracted himself clumsily from the ladder, both hands clutching a large glass jar inside which something moved. Philbert thought of Kwert’s cart and the umbilicus and couldn’t help but feel a little sick, especially when Ullendorf brought the jar right up to Philbert’s face.

  ‘Want to see?’

  Philbert gagged, but kept his breakfast down as Ullendorf strode past him and took his jar to the nearest table.

  ‘As I was just saying to Kwert, Philbert, it was my very good friend Karl Von Basedow who first described the features you can see so clearly in this jar. And only a few years ago, in a quite magnificent paper. He called it Exophthalmic Toxic Goitres. And quite rightly, too. You see here? The gland is swollen somewhat, although a close examination would show the vesicles themselves have reduced in size, the epithelium being long and columnar – obviously caused by the overproduction of ­thyroxin. But nevertheless a very unusual case. Quite why the eyeballs have begun to protrude is a mystery. One assumes it is ­something to do with internal fluid pressures.’

  Philbert approached the desk. Outside, the cats were still watching, their eyes blinking in the sun. A ginger tom, with only a stub for an ear, viewed the goings on with a look of distaste, then began licking at his paw and cleaning his face, dismissing the world beyond the glass as if it were the tail end of a dissected vole. Philbert gathered his wits, determined not to let himself down in front of this critical audience. No doubt they’d seen it all before, but it was new to him and it wasn’t every day somebody waltzes by you carrying the pickled head of a woman, her hair floating loose above her head, eyes sticking out like a snail’s, wide open and staring, the whites surrounding the iris like a lily on a pond.

  ‘She was a most unusual case, as I say,’ continued Ullendorf, beckoning Philbert closer. ‘I had the honour to meet her and give her a good prodding over. The blood supply was so increased there was a positive thrill beneath my fingers when I palpated her neck, and the gland itself pulsated visibly. Her ­fingers shook, clubbed at the end like spoons and she was forever fiddling, couldn’t relax. Picked up everything, twiddled it round and round, put it down, picked it up again. Her husband swore he could feel the blood racing around her body when she was asleep at night, and do you know? You’ll never believe this! Come closer, Philbert, take a proper look.’

  Philbert edged his way up to the table and gazed at the woman agog in her jar. They stood staring at each other like reflections although Philbert, to be fair, hadn’t been severed at the neck and pickled in a jar. At least not all of him.

  ‘And the only reason,’ Ullendorf went on, ‘that she’d gone to the physician at all and thence was referred to me, was because her husband insisted she was snoring like a troll at night and he couldn’t stand the touch of her hands – all hot and sweaty. More than a loving husband can take, was what he said. Can you believe it?’

  Ullendorf turned and casually patted Philbert’s head.

  ‘Prize specimen,’ he said, presumably meaning the un­fortunate woman. ‘Don’t worry, Philbert. I didn’t chop her into bits with an axe; although come to think of it, I’ve probably got enough pieces in this room to make a whole body if I could persuade Helge into sewing them into a patchwork. No. The poor woman got knocked down by a carriage just as she was leaving me. An opportunity too good to miss. The husband, distraught as he was, wasn’t averse to being paid to let us clean up the mess. I don’t believe he ever came back for the rest of her, now that I think of it. You never can tell – there are some strange people in this world.’

  Philbert raised his eyebrows. He’d met many strange people at the Fair, but by far the strangest of them all was this man Ullendorf, who had now folded his hands behind his back and was gazing out the window, before turning back abruptly and continuing his lecture.

  ‘Now then, what else was I going to show you? What would you like to see, Philbert? Ah, I know! Come and look at these.’

  He took Philbert by the shoulders and propelled him across the room, Philbert glancing back briefly to see the lily-eyes ­following him with not a blink as the woman bobbed within her glass, her mouth a puckered sigh. Ullendorf took Philbert to his shelves of bottles and lifted him onto a stool. Straightaway Philbert was faced with a line of cats staring at him as they had been at the window, only this time they were like frames of a magic lantern, sliced up and in bits. There were heads and tails, paws, and all sorts of stuff from the inside that he didn’t want to think about. Each j
ar had its label:

  Katz: hepatocellular carcinoma with cirrhosis scarring

  Katz: intracranial tumour

  Katz: cholangiocarcinoma in the biliary tree

  Katz: severe ulceration and mange of tail

  The labels were appended with dates and various cryptic notations, which Ullendorf happily explained were details of gender, general condition, method of death – if known.

  ‘You see,’ he expanded cheerfully, ‘Lengerrborn is filled to the bursting brim with cats. We had a brief outbreak of ­supposed bubonic plague here, oh, it must be twenty years ago now, and some bright spark – whose name is Fatzke – told everyone the plague was caused by rats, and that if only they could kill off the rats the town would be saved. He was not, of course, a doctor, and he chose his moment well, waiting until I was well away on sabbatical. But naturally the man could produce a ­neverending supply of cats and everybody was soon clamouring to buy them.’

  Philbert turned on his stool and looked out of the window. The cats were still there, and Ullendorf was still speaking.

  ‘Believe me, Philbert, there were riots! Every home had to have at least one cat, and the whole town went mad with it. Tallies were erected outside each house with notches to show how many rats their Mauser or Inger or Tiddmuss had caught. Ah,’ said Ullendorf, strolling across the room and tapping at the glass of the windows. The cats took no notice and continued their vigil. ‘Well, you can guess,’ he went on, throwing a hand into the air, ‘in no time at all there were no rats to be seen, but pffft! The place was overrun with cats that nobody wanted to feed. Some were dispatched with spades and garden forks but you can never keep a good mouser down, and now they roam the streets in gangs. Gangs I tell you! Frightening, it is,’ and so it was, to Philbert at least, turning his gaze from the identity parade of eyes at the window to Ullendorf, who looked anything but frightened as he continued his horrid tale with a dramatic sigh.