The Anatomist's Dream (17 page)

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.'

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 jar 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 in
to
the air, ‘in no time at all there were no rats to be seen, but pffft!
T
he 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.

‘Of course the softer ones among us, mostly women like Helge, had grown fond of the wretched things, keeping them for company or in case the plague came back. Pah!' Ullendorf swatted at the window, though the cats remained unmoved. ‘Little chance of that. I could have told everyone if I was here, for the moment I returned I saw those supposed plague victims, hoping for proper buboes, for what an opportunity that would have been! I've a jarful up here somewhere, but not from anyone in Lengerrborn. Those plague-victims of Fatzke's were nothing more than a few itinerants with a nasty outbreak of boils. He'd gone to the trouble of dying them black and told the fellows to sneeze a lot before going in search of idiots to sell his cats to.' Ullendorf laughed. ‘He made a fortune, for it was a jolly good scheme, one way and another. And some people still think him a bit of a hero for taking those old men into his home and nursing them through their final illness, which involved nothing more than a bowl of broth, a couple of coins and a quick ride in the middle of the night to deposit them back from where he'd found
'
em.' Another admiring chuckle from Ullendorf. ‘Crafty devil. For no sooner had the danger of the supposed plague passed than he set himself up in the cat-killing business, selling poisons and fumigants, catapults and peashooters, or
Katzkriegers
as they call them hereabouts. Very popular still, though I'm not so sure I like that streak in him. Painful deaths, some of those poor cats have suffered.'

The stub-eared tom blinked outside the window, fixing his gaze on Philbert as if he was an over-sized shrew waiting to be caught and devoured. It was unnerving, and Philbert began to move back towards Kwert as Ullendorf wrapped up his story, one that he told almost word for word to any newcomers to his house. Kwert had got the whole of it the night before and paid not the slightest attention.

‘As for me, Philbert,' Ullendorf said, tapping at the side of his nose, ‘now I use potassium salts; just a little in their food, and poof – dead in a few seconds. Have to net them first sometimes if they're the wild, scratching kind, stick them in a box to breathe in the fumes, which is not so tidy. You get the odd ­convulsion, which can make dissection harder. Still, once again, as an asphyxiant, you'll get nothing better.'

He started back across the room to the shelves and lifted down a jar or two, showing Philbert more bits of cats and some of dogs, a few rats, several human feet, hands and ears, and a lot of entrails. All had abscesses, ulcers, lumps or bumps of ­differing kinds. He showed Philbert a hand that could have belonged to Hannah, all sprinkled with freckles and white as Philbert's face now was. And then he brought over his grand finale, this time not in a jar, but a boiled skull with a hole in it the size of a small quince.

‘It came from France,' Ullendorf said, ‘and is five thousand years old, at an educated guess. Just think, Philbert. What I did to your head someone did to this gentleman all those thousands of years ago.'