City of God (14 page)

“Yes can,” Mei-hua insisted. “Yes can. I will think of a way.”

Ah Chee did not argue. Instead she busied herself tying a string around the neck of the blown-up duck so she could hang it from a hook in the ceiling. Over the next two days she would fan the duck whenever she passed. When she was ready to cook it, the fat would be gone and the skin as dry as paper. Very important duck hang before cooking, short fingers cook man had explained.

When the duck was hung exactly as Ah Chee wished, she turned around to speak to Mei-hua, but the plum blossom was no longer in the kitchen. Neither was the hollow bamboo rod. Ah Chee thought of going after her to continue the argument, then decided against it. Instead she
lit a joss stick and carried it to the picture of the kitchen god. He had heard everything they said. If it turned out badly, come the New Year his wife would carry tales of their stupidity to the Jade Emperor in heaven. Not good.

Incense maybe not enough. Ah Chee found a small pale green china dish decorated with a picture of a swallow in flight, put three drops of honey on it, and carried it to the wooden table that served as Zao Shen’s altar. Sticky things to close up his ears and his mouth.

“I
HAVE HEARD
about this place, Dr. Turner. I thought it time I came to see for myself.”

Tobias Grant was obviously winded by his climb up the four flights of stairs. Nick gave him a few moments to catch his breath and look around. No point in hiding anything and he hadn’t tried. It was inevitable that sooner or later the director would confront him concerning the activities of his small laboratory. Nick had, in a manner of speaking, been looking forward to this visit.

“Have a seat over there by the window, Dr. Grant. And forgive me, but this won’t wait. I like to make them decent for burial. A fresh cadaver…rigor sets in quickly and makes it harder to get the job done. Bloody cold in here besides. Doesn’t help.” There was a small stove in one corner of the room, but it wasn’t adequate to fend off the invasive November chill.

He was sewing up the belly of a woman who less than an hour earlier had died in terrible agony, holding her stomach and retching vicious brown bile. “Liver possibly,” he said, continuing with his task, “but I think it more likely the gall bladder.” He’d extracted both organs, the gall
bladder still connected to the liver by the biliary tract. The bloody mass lay in a chipped china basin on a small table beside the chair he’d offered Grant. “Looks a bit like the jellied pudding they serve in the dining hall here,” Nick said cheerfully. “Not quite set. Give the liver a poke if you like, but don’t touch the gall bladder, please. Liable to burst. I’ve a mind to examine the contents
in situ.
”

Grant looked up, his complexion a sickly green. Nick pretended not to notice. “See all those stiff, thickened spots on the liver? They’re the wrong color. A sure sign of cirrhosis. The whole thing should be soft and squishy like the healthy dark red bits. Comes from that cheap gin the Five Points rabble call mother’s ruin. Drink’s the Irish curse, of course, but while it’s the obvious culprit, I don’t think it’s her liver that killed poor Maggie O’Houlihan.”

Grant at last found his voice. “I did not come up here for an exposition of medicine, Dr. Turner. Though of course I admire your inquiring mind.” He nodded towards the shelf of books and pamphlets in one corner of the room. “What”—the director looked once more at the oozing mess in the basin—“In God’s name, sir, what do you intend to do with it?”

“Not cook it up for the patients’ supper, if that’s what you’re thinking.” The stitching of Maggie O’Houlihan’s belly was complete. Nick clipped the length of catgut and put down the needle. Not an elegant job, but that was hardly the point. He covered the body with a sheet, turned to the basin of water he had someone put here every day, and retrieved the bar of soap he kept on the shelf next to it. “I am going to examine that liver and gall bladder, Dr. Grant.” His ablutions finished, he reached for the linen towel.

“Dr. Turner, it appears to me that Mrs. O’Houlihan’s liver has already had a great deal of your attention.”

“Yes, but I don’t yet know everything it has to tell me. I shall cut a series of thin sections of the organ—from the parts that look normal and those that do not—and compare them. Using that miraculous invention over there.”

He nodded towards the long counter that held most of his kit,
including the bulky and complex piece of equipment that took up most of the space. “It’s a compound microscope. The latest thing. Lenses in the eyepiece as well as the part underneath that’s called the objective.”

The microscope had cost ninety of the three hundred dollars that Sam Devrey donated. Much of the remainder had gone on scalpels and needles and catgut and probes. Plus a few more books of course. The ones in here were only part of his collection, his private rooms were crammed with them. He’d put a little of the money by to pay an assistant, one of the students most likely, but he’d been holding off on making the offer until after this meeting, which he’d known must occur. Manon had advised Nick to confront Grant immediately, but he’d decided against it.
I shall let the director come to me, Cousin Manon. My turf for the encounter, not his.
So far so good.

In spite of himself Grant was obviously fascinated.

“What do you expect to see, Dr. Turner?”

“For one thing, the differences in the tissues. For another, why that gall bladder is pale and yellow when it should be bright green. My guess is that the gall bladder stopped processing the bile as it should and tipped it all into the poor creature’s stomach. Ate her gut away. Just look at the biliary tract. Even with the naked eye you can see—”

The director of Bellevue stood up and extended a forestalling hand. “Enough. Tell me instead, Dr. Turner, if, when you have the answers to all your questions, the unfortunate Mrs. O’Houlihan will be restored to life.”

Nick leaned back on the long counter, slouching a bit so that he and his superior were eye to eye. “The question every short-sighted skeptic asks, Dr. Grant. I expected more of you.”

“And I of you, Dr. Turner. Surely you are aware that anatomies are illegal unless performed on the bodies of hanged villains.”

“A law that can be enforced only if the anatomies are discovered, Dr. Grant. In this case, unlikely. For one thing, no one will come to claim the body of poor dead Maggie O’Houlihan. For another, I’m up here on the fourth floor, where there are only my private apartments. And I’m not about to wave body parts out the window.” That’s how the riot of 1788 got started. Some damn fool of a medical student waved a severed arm
at a small boy peering in the window and told him it was his mother’s. In fact the boy’s mother had died a few days earlier. Pretty soon all of lower Manhattan was full of screaming protesters.

“Much of Bellevue knows about this laboratory of yours, Dr. Turner. How can they not? You don’t cart the cadavers up here by yourself, do you? Or clean up after you’re done.”

“Indeed I do not, Dr. Grant. But I don’t think much of Bellevue gives a tinker’s cuss for what I do up here in my aerie. They’ve plenty of other things to occupy their minds.”

“Perhaps, Dr. Turner. Perhaps not. Both the orphanage warden and the chief apothecary have mentioned the matter to me. You put all our work in peril, sir. If anyone should—”

Nick hooted. “That’s what Frankly Clement and Jeremiah Potter are worried about, is it? Our work, as you call it, being imperiled? By whom, Dr. Grant? The poor and misbegotten who find themselves here? The prisoners? The orphans? Who would listen to them? The objects of our ministrations have no voice, sir. So who in holy hell will speak out about illegal anatomies at Bellevue, when doing so might attract attention to the rest of the self-serving, greedy, stinking misery that abounds in this place? All of which occurs, I might add, on your watch.”

Grant took a moment before he replied. “Dr. Turner,” he said finally, “since you think so little of this facility and my administration of it, and since I have it on good authority that you do not avail yourself of the financial opportunities your work affords, can you tell me why you remain as Senior Medical Attendant of the hospital here at Bellevue? No don’t bother. I will tell you. You stay because of all this.” He waved an arm to indicate the laboratory. “This is what you care about. Bellevue meets your needs exactly as it meets mine. Or those of the warden of the orphanage or the chief apothecary. We all have our passions and our price, Dr. Turner. Even you.”

“I don’t deny that.”

“Very well. Then allow me to make myself clear. I will turn a blind eye to your activities in this small and if I may say makeshift facility, Dr. Turner. And you will do me the favor of discontinuing public discussions
of what you judge to be the unfortunate state of affairs at Bellevue. That mutual silence will suit us both, sir.”

“And if I do not?”

“Then I shall, of course, terminate your employment here. That, as I’m sure you know, is entirely in my authority.”

“An authority granted you by the Common Council.”

“Indeed, Dr. Turner, and something unlikely to change. You may have a cousin who sits on the council, but I have many good friends there. I take pride in friendship, sir, and I make it my business to reward loyalty.”

“You’re saying this dreadful Dr. Grant knows about the kinship between you and my husband?” Carolina had sent for tea as soon as Samuel’s cousin arrived—unannounced and uninvited—at her front door. She gripped her cup and leaned forward. “How is that possible?”

She was close enough for Nick to smell the floral scent she wore. It was nothing he could put a name to, but delicious. He’d told himself he wouldn’t find her so damnably attractive now he knew she was married. Unfortunately that was not true. “The Turner and Devrey families were among the earliest settlers of New York,” he said. “I imagine a great many people know the connection between them.” He put down his cup, and she immediately reached for the teapot. “No more, thank you.” He set his spoon slantwise across the rim, the signal that he was done.

“Only one cup? You do not like our blend, Dr. Turner?”

“On the contrary. I’ve seldom tasted a more delicious brew. Or, dare I say, one more beautifully served.” Her deep blue cotton frock was simpler than the sumptuous gown she had worn to Manon’s reception, and her hair was pulled back in a tumble of curls with a few ringlets escaping around her face. She was enchanting.

“Apparently you do dare, Dr. Turner.”

“What?”

Carolina laughed. “To tell me that my tea is delicious and beautifully served. You dare to flatter.”

“But it’s not flattery. I—”

She laughed again. “I am teasing you, Dr. Turner. Are you quite sure you will have no more tea?”

“Quite sure. And please…We’re cousins by marriage. Can’t I be Cousin Nicholas? Or even Cousin Nick?”

“That will please me. And I am Cousin Carolina.”

He could think of nothing further to say. The envelope he’d brought lay on the table between them. He glanced at it; Carolina did as well.

“I can’t say when my husband will return home. He works very late many evenings. It is of course a great responsibility to have charge of a large fleet of sailing ships. As a man with a responsible post of your own, I’m sure you understand that, Dr.—Cousin Nick.”

“Yes, of course.” He felt a tingle of pleasure that she’d chosen the familiar form of his name. “As you say, working late goes along with responsibility.” Undoubtedly she was sincere. It wasn’t possible she knew anything about Sam Devrey’s arrangements on Cherry Street.

“As do I, Cousin Nick. Understand, I mean.” He must not think she was criticizing Samuel. But today was November 11, Samuel’s birthday. Carolina had gone to the butcher herself and selected a joint of beef that promised to be tender as well as succulent. Even now it was turning on the spit before the fire below stairs in the kitchen. Surely her husband would come home to dine on his birthday.

“It doesn’t matter,” Nick said. “There’s no need for Cousin Samuel to read this now. It’s only a contingency plan, as I said.”

“I see. Your letter is to be used in case Dr. Grant denounces you to the council?”

“Yes. I’ve set forth an explanation of the conditions at Bellevue as of this date, what I said to Dr. Grant, and his reply. If the council becomes involved, I’d appreciate Cousin Samuel—or someone—producing this document.”

“I can’t speak for my husband, of course, but if that does happen…” She left the rest in the air.

“I was wondering,” he said, “would you be good enough to date and seal the letter? After you’ve read it, of course.”

“I have no need to read it, Cousin Nick.” Carolina got up and went to a small chest over by the window. “But I do have a question.”

“Ask away.”

“If the conditions at Bellevue are as dreadful as you and Cousin Manon say they are, why go to all this trouble to protect yourself?” She had returned to where he sat, carrying a slant-topped wooden correspondence box. “Surely you could find other employment. Why do you remain in such a terrible place, Cousin Nick?”

He hesitated. “There’s a noble explanation,” he said finally, “and one that’s perhaps not quite so high-minded.”

“Which one is true?”

“Both, after a fashion. If I left now, I’d feel as if I’d deserted people in dire need, and I know that whoever Grant put in my place would likely be chosen precisely because he would care only for the opportunity for profit the appointment offers.”

“That, I take it is the high-minded reason.” She was busying herself meanwhile with a stick of sealing wax and a small candle.

“Does it sound absurdly pompous?”

“No, it does not.” She had one of the new lucifers, a small wooden stick tipped with chemicals that flared into flame as soon as she rubbed it on a strip of pumice. Her nose wrinkled at the smell of the burning sulfide, but the candle was instantly alight. In seconds she was able to drip a blob of pale lilac wax over the fold, then, while it was yet warm, press into it the mark of her engraved wedding band. “There,” she said. “Properly sealed. And I shall write the date. Will that do, Cousin Nick?”

“Admirably.”

The ring had been her mother’s. It had pleased Papa for her to wear the same one as the woman he had cherished. Carolina often thought that if her mother had lived, she might have a more clear idea of how things were supposed to be between a man and the wife he loved. Perhaps her expectations were unreasonable. “And now will you tell me the other reason, Cousin Nick?”