by E. J. Levy
The morning sky was gaudy with seashell-pink clouds against a radiant aquamarine sky, a painting by Tintoretto or a minor Italian painter. The air was fresh and cool, a breeze coming off the sea. Psyche trotted beside me as we made our way up the Heerengracht to Mrs. Saunders’s coffee shop. The street was already busy—the cheerful clatter of cart wheels against cobblestones, the call of the ragman and the clanging of the tin collector. Mr. Poleman was opening his apothecary shop, unlocking the gate with a rattling sound, the sun a gentle glow through the morning haze, turning the air to gold. It was my favorite hour, even if I rarely rose for it. The click of my bootheels added to the cheerful morning din, a satisfying report. A bell over the door rang, announcing our arrival, and we stepped into the warm bakery.
“Early today, Dr. Perry,” Mrs. Saunders said. “I’ll have your coffee ready in a moment.”
I thanked her and took a seat by the window, where I settled Psyche in my lap before opening the paper. Mrs. Saunders set a plate of two plump sugar buns on the table before me before hurrying off to the counter to prepare my drink. Psyche shook gently beneath my hand, shivering with anticipation. She whined. She was a greedy dog. I lifted one bun to my lips and took a bite, sinking my teeth through the coating of granular sugar—like biting down on sweet sand—into the warm, sweet bread. Satisfied that it was not too hot for Psyche, I prepared her plate, tearing the roll into pieces no larger than a teaspoon, setting them out on the napkin, then setting that onto the table, where she might lift each piece from the cloth and take her breakfast. She looked up at me with gratitude, sugar dusting her lips and fur.
“You spoil that dog,” Mrs. Saunders said, but her tone indicated approval.
“She spoils me,” I said.
“Someone should,” Mrs. Saunders replied.
She was always looking to matchmake. She was the sort of woman others called good-natured, when in fact she was many things but not that. She was steady, dependable, canny, judgmental, observant, an inveterate gossip. She was one of those women vital to the functioning of small communities, on whom others rely to settle feuds and tend the weak, to minister and mend. But it was not from Christian feeling that she did these things, rather from a sense of condescension, practical and impatient. If God was too busy with other matters, she would do her part.
I snapped open the Moniteur Officiel—the news from France long out-of-date but of interest still—when I saw that a woman had been arrested for impersonating a man aboard a naval ship. The item reported that “Madame de Freycinet, who had accompanied her husband to the port of embarkation in Toulon in September, had disappeared thereafter and, dressed as a man, had gone on board the ship that same night, despite the ordinances that prohibit the presence of women in state vessels, without official authorization.…”
It was illegal, of course, to be female on a Navy vessel. It was illegal to be female in so many circumstances—a doctor, a soldier, a university student. Judging by the law, it would seem the female sex was monstrously powerful, in danger of overtaking men at every turn, posing a dire threat—a fearsome force, to necessitate such constraints. One might have thought we were a greater danger to the civic good than opium or gunpowder or the Enclosure Acts combined.
There was “indignation in official circles,” according to the press.
I set the paper down, hoping to disguise the trembling of my hand.
“Is everything all right, Doctor?” Mrs. Saunders asked.
“Perfectly,” I said. But I was restless. I didn’t need the paper to remind me of the risks I ran: impersonating an officer was a crime, as was traveling on military ships, and impersonating a physician. In the possession of a woman, my medical degree would be worthless, my good name a scandal—worse, a joke.
I was rising to leave when my friend Tom Pringle, a poet and publisher, rapped on the glass, having seen me through it, and came in.
He proposed to join me for coffee, but I was just leaving for Government House, I explained.
“How can you stand that autocrat?” he asked.
I smiled. “He has his charms.”
“Charm’s a dangerous thing,” he said. He knocked on the table in farewell.
I stopped into Mr. Poleman’s shop on my way past to inquire about using his laboratory to experiment with the Plat Doom plant, which a local woman had suggested might have value for treating syphilis. Then was off.
Government House was in a flurry of preparations that morning when I arrived, still agitated from what I’d read in the paper. Hearing a commotion from the ballroom, I glanced in as I crossed the foyer and saw it was filled with what looked to be bags of cloth, but which in an instant I recognized as maids, curled on the floor like turtles on the beach, rounded backs, heads drawn into their necks, vigorously rubbing beeswax into the floorboards, bringing the wood to the high shine that boots would destroy that night. One was crouched down beside me in the foyer; I stepped around her as she tilted a beeswax candle over the parquet floor to drip wax before she rubbed the spot; I headed into the governor’s office.
I had forgotten entirely about that evening’s ball.
I went to wait for Lord Somerton more for the pleasure of his company than from any necessity. I would see him tonight at the ball, after all, but I would have to share him then, and I enjoyed being able to claim his company when I chose. To command his attention.
I was seated, waiting for Lord Charles in his office, reviewing my proposal for reforms to the local leper colony, when my dueling partner Cloete stormed in, waving something in his hand in a fury, insisting that the blackguards should be hanged.
“That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?” I said, lifting the broadsheet from his hand to read it. It was another bit of doggerel about Lord Charles and me, lampooning my devotion. The sort of thing we saw often posted around town of late.
With courteous devotion inspired
Dr. Perry went to the temple of prayer
But turned on his heel and retired
When he saw that HIS Lord was not there.
“Perhaps the blackguards might be inked instead,” I said. I handed it back.
“It’s the most infernal insult,” Cloete continued.
“Far worse is said in those regions, surely,” I said, returning to my papers.
“How can you be so blithe, Dr. Perry?” he asked.
“It’s only words.”
“At your expense,” he said. “And the governor’s.”
It occurred to me to destroy the thing before Lord Charles had a chance to see it, not simply to avoid causing him anxiety but to curb his impulse to stifle the press. He was a man who loved a good joke, but not at his expense.
When Lord Charles came in and read the quatrain, he paled, pursed his lips, and dropped the sheet onto his desk, turning from it as from an unclean thing.
“It’s doggerel,” I said.
“The implication is clear, Dr. Perry,” he said. “Men don’t deserve a free press who don’t have the good sense to use it wisely.”
“Who’s to say what’s worth saying—”
“I am,” he said.
I did not argue the point.
I left with the excuse that I must dress for the evening’s festivities. Everyone knew I was the best-dressed young man—a dandy—now that I was the governor’s physician. Now that I could afford to be.
One of the chief charms of the very rich is that they needn’t concern themselves with money, as others must, at least not overtly, as a daily matter. They can afford to pretend it doesn’t matter, that its contemplation and discussion are a failing—moral, social, aesthetic. It was as if the table had been set by fairies, the art provided by the gods, a heady and Olympian indifference that made it easy to forgive the great crimes on which our comfort rested, from which it derived. Slavery, theft. Or worse, not to forgive but to forget all about them, those crimes. I’m ashamed to say I did, with the Somertons.
In their company such considerations seemed base, as i
f I’d dragged in something dead and fetid as I entered their glistening rooms. The ugliness seemed to adhere to he who noticed it; it was a relief—in their company—to pretend that I did not. I became, in a word, comfortable.
Money was like air, or like water to fish—a medium so pervasive, so essential to life that we could hardly perceive it; like time itself, we recognized it only by its passing. So with wealth. It did not occur to Lord Charles that his wealth was unearned, unmerited; it simply was. As he was. But its absence had taught me that nothing was as important—not self-possession, not wit, not even name.
Money absolved all failings: it purchased forgiveness, indulgence, love, friendship, beauty, forgetfulness. The only thing it could not buy off was death itself, at least not yet, though perhaps some future medicine would make it so. I could hardly argue against it: it was only possible to consider larger matters—liberty, justice, love—if one had the leisure that money bought.
I felt I should disapprove, but like General Mirandus I didn’t. I loved this world—superficial, gaudy, petty, insular, extravagant. I understood why Mirandus had delayed his departure from London, his return to Venezuela. This. This was the reason—the social equivalent of tea cakes. The inessential marvelous.
The governor had made me his personal physician (as well as vaccine inspector) after his recovery from typhus, appointments that came with my own apartment at Newlands and a salary of 1,800 rix-dollars. I was at ease among his circle, now that I had money.
When I returned to Government House for the ball that evening, I went upstairs to leave Psyche in the care of a maid; I recall descending the familiar staircase, when I looked out across the guests gathered for the ball, spilling out into the foyer—in their wigs, their satin and jewels, the servants dressed in their best livery, the lamps lit and crystal dappling all of it with brightness. I felt my spirit rise and expand, felt what another man less self-scrutinizing might have mistaken for happiness, though in truth it was relief; I had arrived, had entered the enchanted circle to which it seemed no harm could come. Harm happened to others, outside our rooms, beyond this bright, illumined company. After years of struggling for a foothold, for the rung of security my mother had given her life for, I was here.
I reached out for the banister and went down to join the others.
I made my way to Lord Charles and his younger daughter, Miss Charlotte.
“Who is that tin soldier pestering Miss Georgiana?” I asked, noting the focus of their gaze.
“Captain Stirling Freeman Glover,” Lord Charles said, “but the rank’s inapt. The man can hardly captain himself. Can’t ride, can’t shoot. Appalling at cards. Giggles when he’s drunk.”
“Monstrous,” I said. “Shall I rescue the damsel in distress?”
“Oh, don’t; do stop, Doctor,” Charlotte said. “She’s very fond of him—quite fond, I think. It’s been a long time since she has been fond of anyone new.”
We all knew that she referred to my arrival two years earlier.
In truth I had worried for Georgiana since our return from the Fish River a year ago; since then she had become solemn, devoted to good works. That vice.
“The heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of, isn’t that right, Doctor?” Miss Charlotte said, repeating my line from a previous dinner.
“Damn the heart,” I said. “My stomach has its reasons, and I am convinced by them.”
I wondered if what I felt was jealousy; I was possessive of the family but of Georgiana and Somerton most of all. Irrationally, I felt they were mine.
As I made my way through the crowd toward the banquet room, I scanned the room. I frowned to see Bishop Burnett chatting with George Greig, the publisher. Among the many gathered were the hateful merchants who passed themselves off as medical men with their poisonous patent medicines; they were the true impostors here. I could be hanged for my disguise, but theirs was the true imposture, the greater lie. People died for it.
“You disapprove of the extravagance, Dr. Perry?” said a woman I recognized from other balls, the fiancée of an officer, as I recall, misreading my expression.
“How could anyone disapprove of anything so delightful?”
“And yet you disdain those in possession of it.”
“I disdain good instruments turned to bad ends.”
“Is beauty not an end in itself?”
“For many.”
“But not for you.”
“I admire beauty, and enjoy it, but I cannot help thinking of the stain.”
“Admit it. You are a man of good works, Doctor.”
“You make it sound like an affliction,” I said.
“You must admit, there’s hardly anyone duller than those devoted to the vice of good works. God preserve me from good men.”
I wondered if this was a way to sound out my feelings on Miss Georgiana, who’d become conspicuously devoted to good works since our return from the Eastern Cape.
“You would keep bad company?” I smiled. It was dangerous to flirt with another man’s fiancée, but it was hard to avoid, here where flirtation was as popular as whist.
“I would keep interesting company,” she said.
“Ah, well. Then I won’t keep you,” I said.
The line got a laugh, as I hoped it would; I bowed and moved off into the crowd.
I was crossing the foyer on my way to the banquet hall when I heard my name and looked up, thinking I’d been called. A small knot of men stood at the base of the staircase, evidently discussing me.
“Is there anything the doctor doesn’t inspect?”
There was a reply I couldn’t hear and a laugh. I paused beside a column to listen.
“It’s said he’s the natural son of the Earl of Basken…” one said.
“Or Lord Somerton,” another added.
“Certainly, the doctor appears young enough to be His Lordship’s son.”
“No one knows.”
“He’s like Athena, sprung from the head of Zeus.”
“Perhaps he’s like Athena in more ways than one?”
“His brilliance?”
“He is an uncommonly delicate man.”
“Gentlemen,” I said, as I stepped out from the column and passed near their circle. I was alarmed to realize that I recognized only one of them. My reputation extended beyond my ken; I was widely known and evidently envied.
I left the ball soon after, claiming that a medical emergency called me away. In truth I had lost my taste for the intrigues of society. I had begun to hate public dances, where I had to share my friend. I was jealous, fearful, a distasteful possessiveness had taken possession of me, visiting me in dreams of betrayal, dreams of being mocked by my love.
When there was nothing to lose, I had feared nothing. But now Lord Somerton’s friendship, the esteem of his family, our intimate dinners and the sunlit apartment at Newlands, my brace of grey horses and a red carriage, my good name—it was a lot to lose. And it should have made me cautious, but it made me belligerent instead in the face of any threat, quick to parry danger. The lesson learned too well in youth: to overcome an adversary, seize the offensive. I had not yet learned the limits of this. Though I would.
What is it men see in a fuck out of doors? Something agricultural in the whole affair. I understand a preference for open windows, the scent of the sea, the sound of the surf coming through; fearful as I was of observation, that was a pleasure. Flesh on flesh in the cool of the evening. The sound of rain against the flagstones or steps.
But I never understood his predilection for a fuck outside; Lord Charles showed a decided preference for it. I did not. As I lay on my back looking up into the treetops silhouetted against the cloudless sky, I recall saying (politely, I thought), “Could you finish,” breathless. He grunted in reply. Back aching as he pressed me against the ground, back and forth, up and down against the packed earth until I burst out laughing, begging him to stop, finding the whole too hilarious for words, and he stood, straightened, yanke
d up his breeches. It was a while before he wanted to have sex again. Nevertheless we met daily, spoke late into the night. Our days and nights settling into sweet routine. Indifferent to the consequences, to the possibility we might be observed.
It was many months—perhaps a year—before he summoned me to Government House one afternoon, calling me away from my hospital rounds; I found him in his office, agitated, pacing.
“I’ve had a letter,” Somerton said, holding out to me a page that I did not take. “From the colonial administrator in London.”
“Bad news,” I said. It had not occurred to me he might be offered a commission elsewhere.
He turned toward the window, his back to me, and said, “He urges me to marry.”
I felt the air go out of me. I reached out a hand to steady myself against a chair. “I see. And will you?”
“I told him it’s impossible.”
I was embarrassed by my relief. “Is it?”
“There’s only one woman I could marry.”
“Elizabeth,” I said. Absurdly, I felt wounded, even as I knew his statement was just.
“Only one woman living.” He turned to me.
It seemed an unkind joke. “Do you mock me?” I asked.
“I would marry you.”
“Ask anything but that.”
“I am offering you my love,” he said. I noticed he did not pace. He did not move from the window. His stillness unnerved me.
“I believed I was already in possession of it,” I said.
“Then,” he smiled, “I am offering you my good name.”
“It’s a very good name, but it would be a poor bargain for me, surely.”
“Must you speak of marriage as if it were a trade in horseflesh?”
“Why must you pretend it’s not? When a man marries, he gains a wife and her estate. From his perspective, it naturally appears a romantic proposition. A woman loses her name and her property. I’d lose far more than that.”
