Thomas, A Secret Life

by A. J. B. Johnston

  The door swings outward into the entry space where Thomas is now trapped. He turns up the collar of his greatcoat and tugs the tricorn down hard to cover what he can. In desperation Thomas turns to face the wall. His nose is a mere six inches from the stones. With his back to the two moving voices sweeping through the entry Thomas nods his head back and forth, repeating a prayer that his mother used to say every night. He’s pretending to be a crazed woshipper who has chosen the entryway of Saint-Julien to pray.

  The final words of Collier’s parting are said. Thomas hears the priest pad back into the church. There comes the noise of the slow closing of the door that leads outside. Thomas peeks around. Collier is gone. Should Thomas wait? No, he should not. He edges out the door. Collier is sauntering through the yard with his back to the church heading slowly toward the fountain. He is taking his time. He is at most thirty paces away from Thomas, completely unaware.

  An idea arrives, come from who knows where. Thomas touches the second reinette in his pocket. Its familiar shape brings a smile. Will not Gallatin have a good laugh? Sure, why not? As a boy he had quite an arm for throwing rocks.

  Out the apple comes, a hard little golden orb into his hand. Thomas stands where he’ll be able to quickly run and hide. He fixes his gaze, cocks his arm and lets the reinette fly. Sure enough his aim is true. The apple strikes its mark some thirty paces away. The apple explodes into pain, pulp and juice upon the stroller’s head. An instant too late, Collier glares in anger at the porch of the church from which the apple came. He spies no one at all.

  V

  Advancement

  Paris

  October 1726 – February 1727

  “Oh my God,” issues from Thomas’s mouth, words that match the startled look on his face and the queasy feeling now pulsing through his body. He is just through the doorway and at once he is face to face, literally, with the head of a dead body lying on the table. He cannot help his reaction. He turns his gaze away as quickly as he can. Too late. His stomach is heaving, wanting to be sick.

  “But I thought you knew.” Monsieur Verney, the surgeon acting as a tour guide, looks to be more amused than concerned. He shows Thomas a gloating smile. “What else did you think the study of anatomy would entail?”

  He places a hand on Thomas’s back as the young man bends over. He can feel Thomas’s body convulse as he struggles not to vomit.

  “How could we study the body without having bodies before us? But of course we have to take them apart.”

  Verney has given enough comfort to bent-over Thomas. He turns to the other visitor, the elderly Monsieur Salles, and sends him a half-amused look. Verney knows Salles well. The gentleman who has brought Thomas along today is a frequent visitor to the dissecting room. It is a place where one dissects. Bodies, of the human kind. And where inquiring scientists figure out what makes them work. Verney sees Salles every few months, when the elderly fellow comes to the Royal Physick-Garden to see what might be new. Monsieur Salles has not been disappointed yet. There’s always some heretofore unknown or rarely studied wrinkle about this or that body part. Though not a surgeon, an aging financier in fact, Salles takes great interest in the anatomical field. He finds the body a fascinating study and has brought along his prospective son-in-law, Thomas Pichon, to see if he has a similar scientific bent. Apparently not, it would seem, at least not for the dissecting domain.

  “Didn’t know,” comes from Thomas, barely audible, speaking to the floor. He is seated on a hall bench now, facing away from the horror, both arms wrapped tight around his stomach. He gasps for air and takes relief in being so far successful in keeping the stomach down. He pinches his forearms to make them hurt. He hopes the pain will drive away what he just saw: a head separated from its torso. “Bit of a surprise, that’s all,” he says with a weak voice, still not looking up.

  “As I was saying, Monsieur Salles,” says Verney, turning to face a guest whose keen interest in anatomy the surgeon respects, “we’ve been fortunate of late. More than the usual number have come our way. Vagabonds and criminals of course, as usual, those found or executed, but there are some fascinating specimens among them. Here, follow me.”

  Though he remains seated in the hall Thomas can hear the two men carry on their conversation inside the dissecting room. He wishes he could not.

  “Take this fellow. Look here. See the arm Henri just removed. Not half an hour before you arrived. Do you see how the veins and nerves run parallel? And how the muscles have come asunder? A marvellous example, is it not?”

  “It is, it is,” chirps Monsieur Salles in return. “Though quite a lot of goo.”

  Thomas puts his hands over his ears to not hear any more. To be sure, Verney said it was a dissecting room as they were coming down the hall, but Thomas had no idea. He thought dissections were for amphibians and cats. That’s what he’d seen and done as a lad in Vire. Frogs were easily cut and separated and even kind of fun, though the smell of their dead and wrinkled skin could make one’s nose curl. He had no idea that the anatomy studied in the Physick-Garden was of men. Yet there they were on the long table as he came through the door, that head with a face, a man’s face with bushy eyebrows and eyes staring wild, watching him step in. And beyond that head there was the torso, cut completely open at breast and belly.

  Thomas wants to wash away the recollections of what he saw, yet he cannot. There were two surgeons beyond Verney’s outstretched arm. They were working on the torso, one on each side, instruments in their hands. There were cords seeming to tie the cadaver down. Averting his gaze as quickly as he could, Thomas nonetheless glimpsed a skeleton on a distant T-frame along one wall and racks with cutting tools of some sort. There were cabinets along another wall, he now recalls, and benches and stools beside the main table. A man behind Verney was wielding a long knife, or maybe it was a saw. As Thomas spun round to escape he looked down. Within a basket on the floor there were other types and sizes of cutting instruments. What a frightful sight. When at last he glanced back up, past the staring body-less face, he saw the torso one last time and farther on an arm and a leg. A tray of some sort lay between them, full of what looked like bits of flesh.

  “Good thing you’re not in the army,” says Monsieur Salles with a chuckle in his voice as he comes back out into the hall. He gives Thomas a pat on the back. “Or a butcher for that matter.” Salles gives Thomas’s arm a tug, wanting to hoist him up. “Come on. Nothing sharper than a quill for you, I wager. Just the way it is, I suppose. Oh well, straighten up, young man. Let’s go. If you’re not going to look at the dissections, there’s not much sense in staying around.”

  Thomas is not inclined to answer but he does get up, weak and wobbly though he feels. He does not see Monsieur Verney or his assistants again, to thank them for the tour, but he hears them roar with laughter as he walks away, assisted by good old Monsieur Salles. Their laughter does not sting. He accepts that he’s not cut out for the science of the body, as Verney and Salles are wont to call it. Funny, he once imagined that a career in medicine was for him. It appears it was a foolish thought.

  “Thank you, sir,” Thomas says to Monsieur Salles as he starts to get his legs back at the end of the corridor. “I’m fine, I really am.”

  “You’re still pale, but maybe walking by yourself will do you good.”

  Thomas’s thoughts are no longer on whether or not he is going to vomit. He is over that. The question now is the more important one: will his squeamish reaction to seeing bloody body parts have an impact on Monsieur Salles’s acceptance of his pending marriage to his daughter, Marguerite?

  —

  “Oh my,” says Jean Gallatin on hearing Thomas’s tale of queasiness in front of Monsieur Salles retold. “Oh well,” he adds, above the squeaking sounds of the horse-drawn coach, “I guess it could have been worse.”

  “How so?” Thomas leans in to hear.

 
“Not sure.” Gallatin glances out the window at the Paris street scene rolling by. A beggar who had been pretending to be a blind cripple is up and running, chasing away two boys who have taken coins from the hat on the street in front of him. “It’s just what I’m supposed to say, I think.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  Thomas turns away, over to the window on his side. A well-dressed couple is strolling along, their heads swivelling ever so slightly to see if anyone else is noticing how elegant they are. Thomas grimaces in contempt.

  The coach is one Thomas and Gallatin have hired to take them to the outskirts of the city. It’s rolling at quite a clip. It seems that November first, the Feast of All Souls, is a time of relative quiet on the streets of Paris. The pedestrian and coach traffic will pick up later on – it is a feast day after all – but at the moment, early afternoon, there are not many other wheeled vehicles or walkers clogging up the streets.

  Gallatin reaches over and taps Thomas on the shoulder. “The butcher crack was especially bad. I mean, after all, he is to be your father-in-law. You don’t expect that from family.”

  “I know.” Thomas shakes his head. “The old bugger thought because I showed an interest in his cabinet of curiosities – he has a very nice collection of rocks and minerals, by the way, and a jawbone of a shark and Indian things from the Americas – he thought that since I was showing an interest in those things, well then I must be a closet scientist at heart. That’s how he fancies himself, as a man of science even though he makes his money in business and finance.”

  Gallatin nods, taking it in. He always likes to hear about how the people above him live and think. He wants to be ready for the day when he gets there himself.

  “‘Anatomy in action,’ said Monsieur Salles.” Thomas holds out his hand as if the rest is obvious. “And naive fool that I was, I agreed to go along.”

  “What ‘Indian’ things does he have? You said they were from the Americas. From Brazil?”

  “No, mostly from Cap Breton, if you know that colony. It’s one of ours, renamed Isle Royale. Louisbourg is its port. Up north somewhere, if I’m not mistaken. Anyway, Salles has a box made out of the hair of some kind of animal, only that hair is really prickles. He called them quills. Oh, and a pair of baskets the Indians strap to their feet.”

  “Baskets? On their feet? Why would they do that?”

  “Maybe not baskets. No, they look more like the rackets of the jeu de paume. You know those?”

  Gallatin nods that he does.

  “Well, the rackets allow the Indians to walk on deep snow, according to old Salles.” Thomas hunches his shoulders, not about to argue with what he was told by the wealthy father of the woman he’s soon to marry.

  “I wonder if he has that right. The rackets are probably just to play some Indian game. Maybe they too have the jeu de paume?”

  Thomas shrugs. He doesn’t know, nor much care.

  “You know, I sell a travel account about that part of the world. Should you want to broaden your reading. I could give you a special price.” Gallatin holds out his hand.

  “Thanks, but no thanks, Jean. The last thing I want to do is cross the ocean. Just imagine tramping around some wilderness. I used to have dreams about that. Running wolves and things. They weren’t good. Anyway, I’m off the point. The point is that my intended’s father thought took me to see anatomy up close. Anatomy, for god’s sake!”

  “Don’t slight anatomy.” Jean Gallatin winks at his friend. “You still have an interest in that subject if I’m not mistaken. Albeit to only the outside parts it seems. The pudding, as some like to call it. Speaking of which, how goes it with the widow?”

  Thomas gives a reluctant smile. He recalls what happened two nights before. He and Marguerite were having a quiet evening at her apartment, sitting in the salon and reading their individual books. Hers was a recent novel of romance and his a tome on the natural history of the Antilles. From time to time one would ask the other if he or she could read aloud certain parts, which they did to good effect. It passed the time and was pleasant enough. No, that’s not saying enough. It was much better by far than the many evenings the two of them otherwise spend alone and apart, Thomas in his apartment and Marguerite in the suite of rooms she inherited from her late husband.

  When Thomas met Marguerite at a dinner party six months ago, she was a widow of two and a half years. The word was she was comfortably well off, which piqued Thomas’s interest right away. He’d taken Jean Gallatin at his word, and had been hoping to find a widow, one with money, if he only could. Though at forty-five Marguerite is now near twice his age, he likes her lively eyes, her sometimes coy gaze, and what he takes to be her steady, quiet ways. Following weeks of Sunday afternoon promenades and other hours of keeping company, he has finally convinced her that they might be right for each other, no matter the difference in age. During their courtship, twice he’d had her upper garments undone, to cup and kiss her breasts. But for the longest time he was not allowed the ultimate touch and then the ride. Biding his time as he was, Thomas still gave his soldier an exercise in the stalls about twice a week. But what a surprise two nights ago when after a long period of silence, each deep into their books and the only sounds a crackling fire, Marguerite suddenly closed her book with a slap and up she stood. Without a word she went and got the screen, the one with oriental designs and black enamel trim. She unfolded it to partition off a portion of the room. Then she went behind the screen and Thomas couldn’t see what she was about. He put down his book and stared at the screen. There was a sound of fabric being pulled.

  “Everything all right?” Thomas inquired at length.

  “Not yet.” Thomas was sure he heard laughter in Marguerite’s voice. “All right, I’m ready.”

  Up Thomas got in a hurry, rounding the screen. Oh my, it was quite the sight, one he’d seen many times before though not quite as Marguerite was presenting it now.

  “Well now,” was all he said, and unbuttoned his breeches as quickly as he could. They went at it right there on the red divan with Marguerite the one in charge. She told him where and how. It only lasted a few minutes but it was a coupling Thomas will long remember nonetheless.

  “Thomas?” asks Gallatin, waving a hand in front of his seatmate’s eyes.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I was asking how things are going with the widow, your prospective bride. You went into a trance.”

  “I did, didn’t I? Well, it’s going well. We sign the marriage contract in a little over three weeks.”

  “That’s it? Things are going well?” Gallatin sucks in a deep breath. “A model of discretion, you are, my friend. I applaud you. My question was but a test. Will you at least admit to me that I was right? That widows are the best? I was the one who first told you that, if you’ll recall.”

  “Yes, I do recall, and I thank you for that.”

  Thomas is relishing his tight-lipped replies about his pleasuring with Marguerite. There really are, he decides, few things more satisfying than a secret well kept. If the world wants to call such discretion a virtue, then so be it. In that regard, he is as virtuous as any man could be.

  —

  It’s the first time either Thomas or Gallatin has been to a guinguette, one of the unlicenced drinking places just beyond the Paris city limits. They’ve chosen to go to the largest of them, and the most renowned. It’s the Au Tambour Royal, though it is more often simply identified by its owner’s name, Ramponeau. The guinguettes are the talk of the city, places where anything can happen and usually does. They are really just cabarets, but being outside the city they are unregulated. That means there are no taxes on the drinks. Wine and other alcohol are one-half or one-third the cost they are in Paris proper. So instead of being called cabarets, they are known as guinguettes. Customers drink more than usual, then often dance and maybe do things they
might not otherwise get away with. The rumour Thomas and Gallatin have heard is that some customers even fornicate while others watch.

  That there is cheap liquor available in the Ramponeau is obvious to Thomas and Gallatin well before they get to the door. The volume of the voices coming out of the building is loud. The two young men look at each other as they step down from their coach. The ruckus coming from the Au Tambour Royal makes Thomas think of the cheers one hears at public executions. For Gallatin the association is a happier one, of a crowd roaring at the fireworks on the Fête de Saint-Louis.

  Three artisans stagger out the door as Thomas and Jean approach. The artisans are bellowing a rude song that apparently gives them great joy. They refuse to give as much as an inch as they come roaring out through the doorway. Thomas and Gallatin move over to let the singing drunkards stagger past. Right behind them is another group, this time of five people. Among them Thomas recognizes a familiar face. In the lead, stepping over the threshold of the guinguette like he is prancing, comes Voltaire. Thomas sees the famous writer around Paris from time to time, but the two of them have not spoken since that night a few years ago when Voltaire was with Hélène at Le Café Procope. Thomas has not seen Hélène since, not with Voltaire or anyone else. Recently, a few months back, Thomas and Voltaire were both at the same gathering for the release of some dismal poet’s book of disappointing verse. They didn’t speak or rub elbows at all. But Thomas did take note that when Voltaire arrived at the event the sun stopped shining on the author whose night it was supposed to be and shifted over to the grinning, witty one. Thomas thought it rude of Voltaire to have shown up at all, eclipsing the unfortunate poet like that. Nonetheless, Thomas flashes a smile and extends his hand at the entrance to the guinguette.