He lifted the corpse slightly by the shoulders, deftly moved the head backwards and forwards, and then muttered something to himself, sounding a little surprised.
By now, Laurentius had turned as white as a sheet. The anatomical subject’s hair and beard had been shaved off, but he had recognized the face immediately. He could even remember looking into the old man’s watery grey eyes, just before he had run off with his cage. Just as he had first started to smell that stench. He instinctively grabbed hold of his nose, but it seemed that the corpse had not yet started to putrefy. It even looked like it had been washed before being brought there. It was safe to assume that the old man had not had such a thorough scrub for a long time, if ever in his life before. Estonians were reputed to be stalwart sauna-goers, but it was clear from Laurentius’ first meeting with the old man that such an activity had not been a priority of his. Now, however, his old body had been rinsed down and was lying there in front of Laurentius, sallow and sinewy like an anatomical drawing.
“As you can see the subject has a slight injury to his skull, but that shouldn’t affect our presentation. Assistant, pass me the knife,” said Below, getting underway with the operation.
Laurentius approached the table, his legs wobbling slightly, and handed Below a long knife. Below fixed him with a questioning gaze. With good cause, since Laurentius’ face had now turned ashen grey, roughly the same shade as the corpse lying on the table. Catching Below’s gaze, Laurentius tried to smile, but the result was not convincing.
“First we shall open up the cranium,” Below explained. “To do so we will make a circular incision on the head, and roll back the skin. Then we shall be able to saw the bones.”
He picked up the knife and made the first incision, producing a few drops of thick, red blood. As he watched the professor busy at work, Laurentius was thinking constantly about their conversation that morning. It was true that there was no reason to be afraid of death: once life has departed the body, it will never come back. But he still felt uneasy. The last time he had seen the old man he was living and breathing, moving about.
“After cutting through the frontal bone, the os frontale, I can start on the cranial bone, the os parietale. Take note that the join between the temporal bone and the cranial bone, the sutura squamosa, is very tricky to saw, and in subjects of this age it is normally completely ossified. It is therefore advisable to make the first incision just above that join.”
As Below described the parts of the skull he was examining, Laurentius pointed to the corresponding places on the anatomical skeleton, and the students watched and nodded with serious expressions on their faces. Then Below turned the old man’s head to one side, preparing to make another incision, and paused to take a deep breath. In the course of all the pulling about during the demonstration the old man’s eyes had come open, and he fixed his pensive and sorrowful gaze on Laurentius. Laurentius could now look into those eyes calmly, free from any guilt. Were there still any signs of life there? No, none at all. The old man’s eyes were unfocused, glazed over, like a fish’s eyes after it has been lying in the sun at the market for too long. But back then by the barn they had been full of life, bright blue and piercing. Laurentius had looked into those eyes, and that was why the old man was now lying there on the metal table, dead. That was how it always was. Whenever he looked into anyone’s eyes for too long, they fell ill or died. There was nothing he could do about it. It was his melancholy, the curse which he bore in his soul, the evil eye, which would not succumb to his reason.
Below started to make a further cut, from the forehead to the ears. At that point, Laurentius was sure that he noticed the old man’s eyes flitter slightly. The disgusting smell which he now lived in such fear of started to tickle his nostrils again, barely perceptibly at first. Then he became aware of a foul, thick tobacco taste in his mouth, and he instinctively tried to spit it out. Since the morning, when Clodia had served him breakfast, he had not had to suffer those revolting, hostile stenches. Perhaps it was the sight of death which had heightened his senses’ perception of decay and putrefaction? Perhaps Below had not been right to say that witnessing death meant nothing at all. After all, doctors saw the human body, blood, intestines, bones, but they did not see death itself. The true nature of death did not lie in those things. Laurentius started to experience a sharp throbbing pain in his head and soreness in his eyes. He could feel his own blood and bones, and a tickling like when a hair or feather gets in the eye.
“Feathers?” Laurentius’ train of thought came to an abrupt halt, and the pointing stick slipped out of his hand. He staggered, reached out for support, and very nearly sent the skeleton flying. It swayed on the thin rod it was suspended from, and its bony arms, which had been held up by wire, flailed about wildly. The skull tilted to one side, and now seemed to be looking reproachfully at Laurentius.
Professor Below turned towards Laurentius with an annoyed expression on his face, and some of the students looked up in alarm, but before anyone managed to say anything, they heard a voice calling out.
“Aaah!” came the cry from on top of the table.
The noise was coming from the anatomical subject, who by now had sat up, and was gripping his head in both hands. Blood was gushing through his fingers as he desperately tried to hold the gaping wound together. What had started as feeble whimpering had turned into a hoarse, frantic wailing. Blood was dripping down onto the old man’s shoulders and stomach, and his recently washed body was now smeared with thick red blood.
The students jostled with each other as they tried to back away from the podium, and someone called out “God help us!” Laurentius felt as if he were drunk, and couldn’t properly apprehend what was happening. The entire scene was surreal and grotesque.
Only Professor Below kept his calm, leaning towards the old man and explaining: “Everything will be all right; you’re with a doctor. A doctor, you understand?” But he shook his head despondently. “He probably doesn’t understand German—will someone please explain to him that I am a doctor? I’ll take a look at his head. I shall need to bandage him, but if he continues being hysterical and thrashing about like this then I’m afraid it will be impossible.” He paused for a moment before shouting above the din which had broken out in the hall. “And who the devil checked the corpse over? I will make sure that he is held to account!”
“Do you suppose…” Sjöbergh started to say in a faltering voice. “Of course, considering that…”
The old man was still yelling in alarm. Given the general commotion and the audience’s state of agitation it was quite possible that he thought he had arrived in hell.
“Who speaks Estonian here?” Below thundered angrily. “Come here right away!”
Then he turned and politely addressed Sjöbergh: “There’s no need for any supposing here; it’s suspended animation, vita minima, a common enough phenomenon. Of course, a decent doctor would have spotted it right away. I thought there was something suspect about this one right from the start. Those dilettantes give us nothing but trouble. They could come and study their subject properly with us, but will they ever! Quacks and charlatans, the lot of them!”
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
“IT DOES INDEED SOUND STRANGE,” Mellinck said, agreeing with Laurentius.
Laurentius nodded worriedly. The morning’s events had left him with an exhausted, hollow feeling, which got worse as he recounted the story to the pastor. Everything had seemed so clear at first, almost as if he had been expecting it. Once he was over the initial shock from what had happened at the anatomical theatre he had experienced the strange feeling of lightness again, as if he had just learnt the solution to a problem which had been troubling him for a long time, as if he had suddenly been cured of his sickness. Everyone else had been thronging about agitatedly, but he had just stood there in their midst, somehow removed, as if he were suspended in mid-air looking down on what was happening. The light in the room had become radiant, clear, golden, but all the colours
apart from yellow were somehow muted, and many objects seemed to have no colour at all. Standing there in the golden radiance, he had watched as Below, who had failed to get anyone to help, subdued the old man with oleum dulce vitrioli and started to stitch up the wound on his head, discussing something with Sjöbergh as he did so. The students, who looked as small as dwarves in a fairy tale, were arguing among themselves, initially in a state of panic, but growing increasingly jolly. It was clear that something bizarre and unusual had happened, but once they had got over the shock it seemed more funny than horrific. Laurentius himself had felt increasingly overcome by a strange, intoxicating euphoria, until suddenly he reached a state of complete lucidity. All of the previous smells and pains had gone. He knew with complete certainty that all he needed to do now was to go to the mortuary and find the peasant woman and bring her back to life. And after that he might even be able to save all the other people who had died or fallen ill from his gaze.
He had hurriedly left the auditorium, rushed down the street and asked the first people he came across the location of the mortuary. People had noticed his grinning face and smiled back at him, happily giving him directions without questioning what he was so looking forward to seeing there. Despite the continuing drizzle he felt as if it were now summer or spring. Even the acrid reek of grey chimney smoke hanging low over the town and the pungent stench of horse dung were sweet and pleasant aromas to him, like the scent of roses. He had gone straight into the mortuary building with a bold and purposeful air and told the guard that he had come from the university under the instruction of Professor Below. A major oversight had occurred with a dead body which had just been delivered, and he had to investigate the matter urgently.
“It was a most regrettable case involving an old man in suspended animation. There are grounds to believe that there may have been other such cases,” Laurentius said, adopting an authoritative tone of voice to try to convince the soldier.
“Very well, but perhaps you wouldn’t mind looking for the bodies yourself ?” the soldier said, seeming eager to comply. He opened a door into a low-ceilinged underground chamber.
Inside, it was even cooler and damper than outside on the street. Arranged across plank beds were ten or so corpses waiting to be buried, all of them cases in which the city was involved in some way. Most of these deaths had been violent, and according to state ordinance any suspicious cases had to be investigated by a judge. Only then could a family member come to take possession of the corpse and lay it to rest, although in present circumstances it would frequently happen that no one came, and the city had to get rid of the corpses itself. There were fears that if the number of dead continued growing as it had then there would be no choice but to consecrate a piece of land beside a cemetery and bury the unidentified bodies in a mass grave for the poor.
Laurentius moved hurriedly from body to body, occasionally peeking under the sheets which covered them. Then he came to a standstill. He recognized those torn foot straps—they were the same ones he had seen poking out from under the sheet when they had carried the bleeding corpse past him, down near the caves. He hastily pulled the cover to one side and looked at the skinny frame of the woman whom he had seen alive only once, after Peter’s theatrical performance. The woman’s arms and legs had been laid out straight; her hair was down, and her head cocked backwards. Laurentius noticed that her face was covered in tiny cuts. He leant forward to try to get a better look at her in the dim light of the room, and recoiled. Surely she had not been lying out long enough for the crows and magpies to peck out her eyes! All he could see there were two black holes. Laurentius stood staring into the empty voids where her eyes had been. Eventually he placed the sheet back over the body with a dejected look on his face. Now there was nothing he could do.
“It appears that there is in fact no cause for concern; everything’s in order here,” he explained to the soldier in a dispirited voice. “Good day to you.”
He hurriedly left the mortuary, but once outside he immediately came to an irresolute standstill. All he could see in front of him were trees dripping with rainwater; there were no signs of any people around. He looked up at the bare branches, overcome with uncertainty about what he should do next. At that moment a flock of sparrows appeared like a sudden gust of wind and flew past very close, one or two even passing between his legs. The thoughts in his head were also flitting about here and there, whirling around uncontrollably before suddenly disappearing, just like the sparrows. He even felt a little embarrassed about what had happened. Hopefully it hadn’t seemed too odd to rush out of the university like that. He was pretty sure that he had seen Professor Below glowering at him disapprovingly. He might even decide to write to Leiden to find out what kind of impression Laurentius had made there. Based on his behaviour just now, it might well be assumed that he wasn’t quite right in the head. If they started to investigate his background, it could lead to all sorts of bother. Someone might even bring up the circumstances of his departure from Leiden University. If people kept falling seriously ill or having strange accidents after they came into contact with him, then someone might make the link. Such a conclusion could be dismissed as simple superstition, but someone with a keen intellect such as Below would be able to discern the deeper root causes, especially after what had happened in the auditorium.
“But what actually happened back there?” Laurentius thought to himself.
The old man had come back to life. It could have just been a coincidence, of course. But he still couldn’t comprehend how it could have happened. He needed to discuss it with someone, but going to see Professor Below or Sjöbergh would not have been appropriate. The only one left was Mellinck, who had anyway invited him to come and visit. It felt reassuring that he was a pastor, and apparently quite an open-minded one too.
And so he had gone to find Mellinck. At first Laurentius’ haggard and distraught appearance had seemed to make the pastor a little uneasy, but once he started recounting the morning’s events, the pastor’s expression softened. He understood why Laurentius was so upset.
“And so you believe that you somehow caused this old man to come back to life?” Mellinck eventually asked.
Laurentius shook his head apprehensively. He hadn’t dared tell the pastor too much.
“There is actually nothing unprecedented about any of this; as Below himself said, cases of suspended animation are pretty common these days,” Mellinck mused. “Looking at this from a religious perspective, there is also such a thing as the Lazarus syndrome, of course. It is particularly common during times of strife, and its purpose is to honour God. We know from the writings of St Nicholas, for example, that he managed to bring back to life three boys who had been killed by a butcher. It took place during famine, and the city folk were ready to eat them. They had already been chopped up and hung from meat hooks. But it didn’t look like anyone had started eating that old man, did it?”
Laurentius shook his head. “Below had only just managed to make the first incision.”
“Of course, there are plenty of cases of anthropophagy here as well,” Mellinck said with a nod. “I’ve heard some really ghastly stories. But that is probably not relevant to this matter. You said that Below had managed to make an incision. Did the cut disappear when the old man came back to life?”
“No, quite the reverse, the blood started gushing out. It was a horrible sight.”
“So it didn’t disappear, then. What is certain is that a human could never bring someone back to life unaided—God’s intervention is required. But in those cases the person is normally fully restored, like those boys whom St Nicholas saved. There are no injuries left on them at all. Of course, some kind of demonic deception is always possible, but in such cases the person doesn’t truly come back to life, even if his eyes open. And you say that the whole auditorium witnessed the reanimation?”
“Yes, of course,” Laurentius said, sounding slightly put out by the question.
“No cause to take offe
nce,” Mellinck said with a smile. “I simply want to weigh up all the possibilities, one by one… But if you want my opinion on the matter, then what we are dealing with here is simply a chance occurrence. Such things have been known to happen, although I do concede that they are worthy of attention, since they provide another demonstration of the extraordinary times we are living in. There have been no comets sighted recently, and they would normally accompany such unusual events. But it may just be that we haven’t noticed them. It’s recently been overcast all the time, so I haven’t been able to conduct my usual astronomical observations.”
As Mellinck continued to muse in that vein Laurentius started feeling that he might have allowed himself to get too upset by something which may have been unusual, but was nevertheless readily explainable. Below’s suspended-animation theory probably offered the most credible explanation after all.
“By the way, how is that girl whom you took in from the refuge?” Laurentius enquired when it seemed that Mellinck had said everything he wanted to on the topic.
“Ah, her,” said the pastor after pausing for thought for a moment. “Not good. Her fever has not yet subsided; I’m afraid that her humours have been put decidedly out of balance. There is nothing we can do other than to keep her in a warm, dry room and try to somehow bring down her cold, damp humour.”
“I happen to have some medicinal powders with me which I use for my fever—perhaps you could try them?” Laurentius suggested.
“Really?” asked Mellinck with interest. “What kind?”
“Willow bark, prepared according to a Galen recipe. I normally make a tincture from it, but I haven’t had time to recently. The effect is therefore much weaker,” Laurentius explained.
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