“I’m a surgeon,” came the reply.
Simon looked himself over: crooked, undernourished and unsteady. His body was a canvas of sores, scars and scabs, most of which he couldn’t remember acquiring. A surgeon, with medicine and knowledge… Simon realized then what an ineffective barrier the door made. A determined child could have unhinged it with a kick. Whoever waited on the landing did so only out of propriety. But still…
“Prove you’re not one of them,” Simon said.
“How would I do that?”
Simon looked down. He couldn’t say, and that had always been part of the problem.
The door had no handle or latch; Simon kept it closed with two nails with a length of wire strung between them. Fingers twisted with arthritis, Simon unwound the wire, but stopped on the last loop.
“I’m very old,” he said through the door. “I don’t see good anymore, and my bones hurt. When I cough, there’s blood.” Earning no response, he added, “I cough a lot.”
“Open the door,” the voice said wearily.
Sick of his own fear, Simon undid the final loop of wire. Keeping behind the door, he pulled it open just a crack to peer onto the landing.
The surgeon was younger than Simon had imagined, but not too young. Neither was he large, or small. He had plain eyes and a simple face which Simon knew he would forget if he turned his back. He did not seem strong, but by the look of his hands – square and thick-fingered – he was certainly not weak. Weak men did not have such hands.
Given his position, Simon felt it within his rights to stare, and he did so defiantly. The surgeon made no immediate move to enter, and they regarded one another a long moment.
“Well,” said the surgeon.
“Do I know you?” asked Simon.
The surgeon squinted one eye. “I don’t think so. No.”
Frowning, Simon pulled the door open in invitation.
The surgeon stooped to pick up a leather satchel and an unlighted lantern. Stepping over the threshold and around the mess on the floor, he went to the middle of the garret and made a casual appraisal of the sagging ceiling and stained walls. Turning to face Simon, he said, “We can’t stay here.”
Simon remained behind the door. “There are worse places,” he said.
The surgeon nodded, shrugged. “Still,” he said. “We should go.”
“I don’t know you. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
The surgeon sighed, as though he’d expected nothing less.
Simon decided he’d seen enough. This was no surgeon. This was a charlatan, and nothing more. He pulled the door as wide as it would go and jerked his head toward the landing.
The surgeon gave him a look of disapproval. “So soon?”
“You can’t help me,” Simon said. He’d been foolish to think so.
“There was a time – you’re old enough to remember – when guests were treated with respect. Guests were offered gifts sometimes.”
“I already told you, I have nothing.”
“No,” the surgeon agreed. But instead of leaving, he set down his bag and lantern, and righted Simon’s chair, fiddling for a moment with the cracked slats before giving up on them. Clasping his hands behind his back, he went to the portal window and bent at the waist to look down at the fog-shrouded street.
“You didn’t evacuate,” the surgeon said. “Why?”
“I did. But I came back.”
The surgeon nodded in disappointment. “Many came back.” Noticing the framed photograph on the sill, he picked it up and straightened to study it. “More than you might think. It was easy to find you at first. There were so many of you. But now—” He shook his head. “You hide so well.”
The surgeon turned from the window, frame still in hand. “You don’t want to stay here, do you? In the city?”
Simon bit back his immediate reply. He would not be tricked. “I survive well enough,” he said.
“Yes,” the surgeon conceded. “On rats. You’re afraid to go outside.” With the frame, he gestured to the landing. “Afraid to open your own door.”
“The mummers—”
“Are everywhere,” the surgeon finished for him. “I know. But you miss your family, don’t you?” He tapped the frame. “You miss—” He turned it to peek at the back. “Nora?”
“Yes.”
The surgeon opened a hand, as though displaying all logic and reason, his case stated and proved. “Then we must leave.”
“You know the way out?”
“Of course.”
“How will we get there?”
“We will walk.”
“I’m too old. I can’t walk that far.”
“It’s not as far as you think. And you forget—” the surgeon hefted his bag “—I’m a surgeon.”
Simon eyed the black bag with suspicion.
“My instruments,” the surgeon explained. “Would you like to see?”
Simon stepped from behind the door. Keeping a safe distance, he watched the surgeon crouch and flip open the latches of his bag. Simon leaned forward, and the surgeon tilted his bag so he could better see.
There were saws with serrated and hooked blades, and various curiously angled clamps. There were pincers, and something like an icepick. The surgeon removed a leather wallet, which he unfolded in three equal parts to display a collection of neatly arranged scalpels. He looked up, and Simon saw a terrible sadness in his eyes, as though these were tools he employed with as much regret as proficiency.
Awed, Simon touched his chest with feeble fingers.
“I can make you better,” the surgeon said, answered the unasked question. “And I will. But you have to come with me.”
Simon nodded.
The surgeon tilted his head to catch Simon’s eye. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” The surgeon flipped his wallet of scalpels closed, replaced it, and snapped his bag shut. “But you can’t go like that.” He made a gesture that seemed to indicate all of Simon. “We have to get you clean first, and wash your clothes, too. You have a bath?”
Simon gestured to a curtained doorway at the back of the garret. “But there’s no water,” he said.
The surgeon looked troubled. “No water?”
“Not from the pipes. There’s a ditch behind the building. And I push barrels under the gutters for when it rains.”
“Good,” said the surgeon. “We’ll use your pail to fill the bath.”
“I could wash in the ditch,” Simon said.
After a moment’s thought the surgeon frowned. “No,” he said. “The bath is better.”
So Simon pulled up the thick wool scarf he used to protect himself from the poisoned air outside, then he and the surgeon went down together to fill his pail from the ditch.
Seven trips and the tub was more than half full.
After they had emptied the last pail, the surgeon opened his bag and began to lay out his instruments. Simon watched until the surgeon looked up and gestured at him with a set of forceps. “Your clothes,” he said.
Hindered by a sense of modesty and shame, Simon nodded to the curtain. “Wait out there,” he said.
The surgeon shook his head. “Let me help.”
In the cramped quarters of the closet, Simon allowed the surgeon to aid in prying off his soiled clothing. When he had been stripped completely, and was utterly exposed, he felt like hot bones wrapped in ghastly white sheeting. He covered himself with his hands.
The surgeon took his arm and helped him step into the tub. Supported by the surgeon’s arm, Simon lowered himself into the tepid water, where dry scabs of filth peeled away. While Simon scooped water over his arms and chest, the surgeon dragged a sopping rag over his back.
“Now your head,” the surgeon said. He stood and leaned over the tub so that he could support Simon’s neck with one hand. The other he placed firmly on his shoulder. “Hold onto my wrist,” he said. “Like that. Now…look.”
Shivering, Simon looked into the su
rgeon’s face.
“Don’t be afraid,” the surgeon told him.
At that moment, Simon realized that leaving himself so vulnerable had been a grave mistake. “I’m done,” he said. “Get me out.”
He tried to draw his legs under himself, but his feet slipped on the oily porcelain. Water – now cold and foul – sloshed from the tub onto the tile floor. Without leverage, Simon could do nothing but tighten his grasp on the surgeon.
“I didn’t come to hurt you,” the surgeon said.
“Pull me up!”
“This suffering will pass,” the surgeon said. Then he forced Simon under the water, and held him there until he drowned.
***
The surgeon dragged the corpse from the tub and laid it face up on the tile floor. Kneeling beside the body, he studied the withered figure, so diminished by death. He dried the body with care, wiping away the last of the grime and arranging the arms and legs in neat dignity. With a charcoal pencil, he drew a line from the hollow at the base of the old man’s throat down to the thatch of hair in his pelvic cavity. Flipping open the leather wallet beside him, he selected the largest of his scalpels. A deep breath, and he began his work.
***
Simon opened his eyes to the familiar water stains on the ceiling over his pallet. He had been covered with a blanket, which slipped down as he sat up. In disbelief, he stared down at himself. He had been ripped open, bowels to throat, then stitched up again with fantastic skill. Simon touched the sutures gingerly, marveling at what had been done to him.
“Don’t pick at it,” said the surgeon. He was sitting in Simon’s chair by the window, his bag by the door.
“What did you do to me?” Simon asked.
“Only what I promised.”
Clutching the blanket around his waist and using the wall for support, Simon struggled to rise. The surgeon was at his elbow immediately.
“Don’t touch me!” Simon snapped, batting the surgeon’s hands away. The agitation brought on a fit of coughing, and he bent double. When he could breathe again, he turned on the surgeon.
“What did you do to me?”
There was a bump from the closet, muffled by the curtain.
Simon looked toward the back, then at the surgeon, who offered no explanation. Grabbing his candle from the windowsill, Simon started for the closet.
“You shouldn’t,” the surgeon warned him.
Simon swept aside the curtain and thrust his candle into the darkness.
Not much blood was left, mostly in the cracks of tiles and around the drain. Shadows stirred up by Simon’s meager light hunched around the walls.
Something moved in the tub.
Stepping fully into the closet, Simon lifted the candle higher and leaned forward. The sides of the tub were caked with rings of grime, and near the drain was a disordered mound of bones. Some appeared to have been eaten through, as though by insects. Others had been snapped or sawed apart. All were moist with scraps of pale flesh and dried blood.
The candle stuttered; the grisly pile shifted.
Vaguely horrified, Simon backed out of the closet.
“We should leave,” the surgeon suggested.
“What happened in there?” Simon asked.
“You said you wanted to be made well.”
“You said you could do it.”
“And I have.”
Simon looked at the stitched chest, then at his hand, still feeble and spotted with age – still trembling. Fist to mouth, he forced a violent cough. He looked into his hand, then showed his blood-flecked palm to the surgeon. “This is not better.”
“Ah,” the surgeon said sadly. “You’ve misunderstood.”
Misunderstood? Simon took a step forward to squint at this fraud who called himself a surgeon. “No,” he said. “I was deceived. You deceived me.”
A soft scraping came from the curtained closet. Simon half-turned to watch the hanging blanket, expecting something to emerge. He heard the gentle clatter of bones knocking together.
“We should leave now,” the surgeon said.
Something banged twice on the tub, hard.
Simon might not have moved had the surgeon not pushed clothes into his arms. “Quickly,” he said, the urgency plain in his voice.
Simon dressed hastily, but when he opened his sack and stuffed in his box of coins, his book, and his photograph, the surgeon put a hand on his arm.
“Leave it,” he said.
“But—”
The surgeon took the sack from Simon’s hands and tossed it aside. “Leave it,” he said again.
As they stepped out of the garret and onto the landing, a violent pounding sounded from the closet. Then something like a long, indrawn gasp.
The surgeon dragged the door shut behind them, and – still holding Simon’s arm – ushered them down the narrow stairwell and into the street, where a rust-colored blister of a sun burned weakly.
Hunching against the reeking vapors, Simon allowed himself to be dragged behind the surgeon. Half-way across the street, he cast a glance over his shoulder for a final look at his home, and caught sight of a gaunt face glaring down from his window – a mask made monstrous by jealousy and warped glass.
***
Simon knew they were being followed from the start. He would have known it even had he not seen the mask in the window, or glimpsed the elusive figure trailing them through the murky light. Wrapped tight in his coat and crusted blanket, Simon struggled to keep pace with the surgeon, whom he feared would abandon him if he lagged.
They wandered through a ruined landscape of slouching buildings and crumbling bridges. In some places, entire structures had toppled across the avenue, forcing them to clamber over rubble or skirt pits of stagnant water. The thick waters of the canals were locked tight with wrack and sludge. They stopped only when the sun burned a poisoned red, then slept on the ground in whatever shelter they could find. Simon used his folded coat as a pillow, and every day woke with the oily taste of the city coating his teeth.
He lost track of time.
A day came in which he stepped carelessly, and a spike tore the tender flesh of his foot. On the ground he held his ankle as the blood poured. His cries brought the surgeon back, who crouched to examine the torn foot.
“You can still walk,” the surgeon said.
“No,” Simon wept. “I can go no further.”
“But we’re not far now.”
Simon had been hearing “not far” for what seemed many days. He shook his head, his decision made. “I’m going home.” But as soon as he’d said it he knew he was less capable of going back than of going forward.
“I’ll stay here,” Simon said. Spotting a high window in a building that looked sturdy enough, he pointed. “There,” he said. “I’ll live there.”
The surgeon frowned at the building. “I advise against that. I think you should come with me. We’re not far now. We’re very close.”
Still clutching his wounded foot, Simon laughed at himself for being such a fool. It was a cruel laugh, and it turned itself to tears soon enough. He wept for everything he had left behind only to find himself in a place worse than he’d been before. He remembered a beautiful room with a wondrous view; riches beyond measure; knowledge. He remembered a family. All gone now – abandoned to follow a fraud.
Simon wiped tears from his cheek. “I don’t believe you anymore,” he said plainly. With great effort he stood to face the surgeon, and said, “Goodbye,” with much resolution. Then he turned and walked away.
Favoring his torn and bloodied foot, Simon hobbled several paces toward his new home before bending to pick up a piece of rubble as large as his own fist. He brandished it at the surgeon, a weapon and a warning. “Don’t try to stop me,” he said.
Hands open and raised, the surgeon stepped back. He would not.
Turning his back once more on the surgeon, Simon limped across the fractured street, making his way around slabs of asphalt jutting from open craters. At the bl
asted doors of the building, he looked back to verify that the surgeon had not moved.
“Don’t follow me,” Simon called.
The surgeon raised a hand in acknowledgment, but if he said anything Simon didn’t hear. Discarding his rock, Simon stumbled up the first two flights in complete darkness. He stopped on the third only long enough to fish a candle from his pocket and light it with a match. Gaining the landing at the top floor, he pushed on the first door he found, which scraped the floorboards, but yielded to a shove. He forced the door shut behind him and shot the bolt, a rusted thing barely clinging to the rotten frame. Finally safe, Simon faced the interior of his new home with raised candle.
The room was empty but for an overturned stool by the window. The cracked walls were smeared with filth. The reek of caged animals pervaded. Simon crossed a warped and complaining floor to the window, where he righted the stool and found that his candle fit perfectly into a puddle of hardened wax on the sill. He rubbed at the fractured glass with his sleeve, but could barely see the street through the smoky panes. In a corner, concealed by a castoff blanket, Simon found a book, a little box, and a picture in a frame of pewter. The box contained a stack of well-worn bills; the book had been written in a language he didn’t know; and the picture he carried to the window, tilting it into the diseased light.
A young couple looked out at him: the man with bulging eyes and a pinched face, the woman light of hair and dark of eye. Simon propped them on the sill. In the back of the room he discovered a torn curtain, and behind it a tiled water-closet with broken pipes and a grime-encrusted tub.
***
From the opposite side of the street, the surgeon watched the high window. The old man’s candle appeared, a single point of dim light in the bleak facade of the building. The surgeon did not take his eyes from the window until after the struggling sun had set. In the deepening twilight, movement near a mound of rubble caught his eye. He looked, and something furtive cringed from his gaze.
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