Fortune

by Lenny Bartulin

ST GILES OF THE CRIPPLED AND INDIGENT

  Claus von Rolt found the place off Brewer Street in Piccadilly. The proprietor’s name was Hugh Alfred Collins. They’d met briefly many years before, over the sale of a Cuban crocodile (to an Italian prince), and then Rolt had dealt the man’s work in Berlin a few more times (a squirrel monkey, a flamingo, a toucan, a leopard). Though they’d fetched good prices, Collins certainly wasn’t the best taxidermist Rolt had ever seen. But his work managed to hold together, at least until the buyer had returned home with it, and he’d always been well connected with suppliers, from the legitimate naturalists and explorers with government funding (and a willingness to sell spare specimens to private collectors) to the wealthy eccentrics who insisted on hunting the rare species themselves, but tended to die during their naive and ill-equipped expeditions. Hugh Collins also had artistic aspirations; he wanted his work to capture life. Rolt was philosophically partial to the ambition.

  He opened the front door. Inside, a barrage of smells: turpentine, arsenic, camphor, mould and dust; the animal smells of tanned skins and greasy fur; the musty, mangy smell of old feathers; the oiled linseed of wood and the smoked, tannin smell of leather. The place was in desperate need of an open window.

  All around, on the floor and crowded onto tables and shelves, on top of narrow plinths, in the window ledges, there were animals in different poses: down on all fours or up on hind legs, calmly perched on branches or clawing at the bark with wings spread mid-flap, species both docile and baring their teeth. Some were only half complete and showed the wire construction in their chests and the hessian stuffing in their backs, their small, brown featherless wings and empty eye sockets waiting for coloured glass beads. It seemed business was solid for Hugh Alfred Collins.

  Rolt walked through the silent animals. The dusty room felt poised, or frozen. He noted a number of rare species, including a Platypus anatinus, labelled with a tag on its webbed foot. He stopped before the strange creature, no more than a foot long.

  ‘you’re aware that Blumenbach named it Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, which is now the accepted designation?’ Rolt asked. ‘Has been for some time.’

  ‘Of course a Prussian would say that,’ Hugh Collins said, coming out from behind a worktable. There were red-and-yellow-feathered birds laid out there, surrounded by various hand tools, spools of thread and bowls of paste, brown bottles and vials of yellow-coloured liquid, a tin half filled with pellets. ‘But I believe our Mr Shaw was first, Herr Rolt. One should always accept defeat graciously.’

  Hugh Collins was lanky, broad-shouldered, a man of some thirty years. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, revealing large hands and hairy forearms wound in bulging veins, a man who might have swung a blacksmith’s hammer rather than sit hunched over shot punctures in hummingbirds, delicately plugging them with cotton and resin. He wiped each of his fingers separately with a rag, then held out his hand.

  Rolt shook his head. ‘Let’s not spread the arsenic around.’

  ‘A little never hurt anybody.’ Collins smiled and cracked his knuckles.

  ‘your work has become much finer, more expressive. Congratulations.’

  ‘And priced accordingly, my friend.’

  ‘How much for heads?’ Rolt said.

  Collins leaned back against the edge of the workbench. ‘What sort?’

  ‘Human. Shrunken.’

  ‘Oh, righto then.’ He crossed his arms. ‘Well, there have been a few coming in from South America and the South Pacific lately. And from New Zealand now, too, or so they tell me.’

  ‘you haven’t come across any?’

  Collins grimaced. ‘One or two. Bloody awful things.’

  Rolt extracted a small card from his pocket, the name of his hotel written there, and held it out to the taxidermist. ‘you’ll inform me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Collins said. ‘But you know, they’re already faking them. Dead whores from St Giles sold as South Pacific warriors named Akoni. Once they’re dried and sewn up, they’re all dark brown. Impossible to tell.’

  ‘They’re murdering people?’

  Collins laughed. ‘No need. The morgues are full of unclaimed bodies, there’s plenty of stock. The Thames is practically choking on headless corpses.’

  ‘I see.’ Claus von Rolt combed the head of a tiny monkey with his forefinger. ‘Then I must get to the original source.’

  That week, Ludwig von Kleist finally heard back from the English. They’d committed the munitions requested, but had cut the fifty thousand pounds asked for down to twenty. Von Kleist was told, ‘Be sure to use it wisely.’ A letter of credit was written up.

  ‘Finally,’ von Kleist said, ‘we can leave.’

  ‘I think I’ll stay a while longer, Herr Kleist,’ Rolt said. ‘I have some personal business to which I must attend.’

  FOR THE GOOD OF MANKIND

  Elisabeth von Hoffmann said, ‘you want to know if the head of the decapitated man is capable of seeing anything?’

  ‘yes! And if they feel, if they sense anything else.’ Dr Antoine Girodet paused, drank some wine, dabbed his lips with a napkin. ‘Are they in pain? And, if so, where is the pain? What is the connection of the mind with the body? Where do feelings reside inside us? In the brain or the heart or in one’s little toe?’ Girodet smiled. ‘Oh, there is much to be learned, Mademoiselle.’

  ‘you hope the guillotined man’s head will simply tell you all these things you wish to know, Dr Girodet?’ Christophe Bergerard asked.

  ‘yes, Monsieur Bergerard—’ Girodet looked over at the door and waved someone in ‘—that is it exactly.’

  A dark mulatto girl came into the dining room and placed a silver platter of roasted meat on the table. Bergerard noticed how exceptionally beautiful the girl was and watched her walk away. Elisabeth had noticed her too.

  ‘Roasted tapir,’ Girodet said. ‘you’ll never eat pork again.’

  They ate and drank and the wine was replenished and other dishes were brought in and placed on the table by the beautiful dark mulatto girl (sweet river fish, smoked eel, crabs). Insects smacked and winged the windows. The heat in the room was lifted and spread thinner by two rectangular, framed canvas sails hanging from the ceiling, operated by a bored Negro who stood near the door and pulled down on a rope, all the time staring at the floor.

  ‘Who will be your participants?’ Elisabeth von Hoffmann asked, disliking the stringy meat that had been served her as much as the topic of conversation.

  ‘Slaves,’ Girodet said. He waved his fork. ‘Runaways.’ He had an agent, apparently, in neighbouring Surinam, who procured Negro slaves on his behalf then smuggled them over the border, avoiding the Portuguese who were confiscating all healthy labour. It was how he’d acquired the young mulatto beauty serving the food this evening, though the agent had planned to keep her for himself. He’d asked a steep price, but Girodet had been unable to resist her.

  ‘My work is for the human race,’ he said. ‘I am an explorer of the ultimate unknown frontier, on a perilous search for the bridge, for the window into the next world. Who can say what we might glimpse and discover?’ Dr Antoine Girodet was sure it would make him famous.

  Christophe nodded, intrigued. Elisabeth stared down at her plate.

  ‘Have you heard of the eminent surgeon and philosopher Jacques de Dieu?’ Girodet said to the young man. ‘you must read his Observations and Conclusions on the Post-decapitatory State of the Brain. It was written in 1793, a magnificent enquiry into fibrillary contractions, corneal reflexes, the effects of severing the fourth cervical vertebrae and so on. He argued that it was indeed plausible there was a lingering of perception, of the eyes seeing and the brain comprehending, after the blade had done its work. And so, a moment of vision, quite possibly between life and death, no?’

  ‘Or a moment of horror,’ Elisabeth said.

  Girodet smiled. ‘We must find out! Can’t you see?’

  ‘And now you have your own blade.’ She put down her knife and fork, pus
hed the plate away.

  ‘I do indeed,’ Girodet said. ‘The blade of the Revolution!’ He turned back to Christophe. ‘Tell me, Monsieur Bergerard, are you squeamish about such things? I am in need of an assistant for my research.’

  OH, HE’S DONE FOR NOW

  Lieutenant Schneppen’s main purpose in life was to action the use of his cane in the training and disciplining of his men—and right now, most particularly, his preoccupation was the exercising and disciplining of Johannes Meyer.

  Schneppen had disliked the boy on sight (a deserter, a coward, tall) and the fact that he could barely hold a rifle correctly, took an eternity to reload and couldn’t shoot a building if it was right there in front of him, drove Schneppen to near insanity. Johannes Meyer was a damning reflection on Prussia, whose defeat at the hands of the French still burned with bright shame in Lieutenant Schneppen’s burly chest, a veteran of the lost Battle of Jena.

  ‘A fucking disgrace!’ he said.

  The man’s breath was hot with the pickled stench of an empty stomach. Johannes Meyer stood stock-still, sweating from the endless drills that morning, up and down the parade ground, up and down, up and down, his collarbone aching, and still it hadn’t stopped. He was a thousand miles from everywhere. All the days since he’d arrived had been miserable, intolerable. The grey sky never clearing, the constant drizzle, the dull, penetrating cold that seemed to come up from deep in the ground. And Lieutenant Schneppen, his fellow Prussian, relentless and at his throat.

  ‘Imbecile,’ Schneppen said, this time in German. He struck Johannes with the cane. As the boy stumbled from the blow, Schneppen struck him again, right across his back.

  The other soldiers stepped away. Johannes Meyer suddenly turned, stood and lunged for the lieutenant, crashed him to the ground. He scrambled over Schneppen in a fury, got his hands to the man’s throat. Everything that had ever happened to him, every misfortune, here was the cause.

  ‘He’s going to kill him!’

  ‘Do it!’

  The two men struggled. Schneppen grimaced, made a tight, phlegmy, gargled sound. He took Johannes by the wrists but couldn’t loosen the boy’s hands on his throat.

  The soldiers moved in around them.

  Then, just as it appeared that Lieutenant Schneppen was about to take his last breath of damp English air, two ensigns pushed through the crowd of soldiers. The first one grabbed Johannes in a headlock, the other kicked him in the side. Still Johannes wouldn’t let go. It took a second kick and a tightening of the headlock before he finally released the lieutenant.

  More soldiers pushed through the men.

  ‘Step aside!’

  Lieutenant Schneppen was helped to his feet. He spat on the ground, coughed and spat again. He rubbed his neck and pointed at Johannes.

  ‘Arrest him!’ His voice was a thin, harsh whisper.

  Johannes Meyer lunged, tried to attack the lieutenant again, but was held back. He was thumped in the stomach then dragged away to the guardhouse.

  Somebody said, ‘Oh, that’s it. He’s done for now.’

  BAYMAN QUINCE ROTTERDAM

  He said, ‘Oh, Great Lord, by God, Good Lord Jesus Christ Our Saviour and King!’ He took off his plumed, fur-trimmed cocked hat and held it to his chest. ‘The lame one be dead! And the Devil take his soul and the Heaven be free of his wickedness!’

  He was an old Negro with a huge barrel stomach and a black, silver-tipped cane, dressed in loose, torn stockings and worn heels and a long, dirty white wig that hung over his frayed admiral’s epaulettes. The blue coat was trimmed in gold and silver, and the lace cuffs of his white shirt, gone yellow now from sweat and age, flowered at the wrists. Children had followed him into the tavern, street urchins laughing and running up to pull at his tails when he wasn’t looking. Every now and then (if the children had bothered to count, they would have learned that it was every third time), the old Negro whipped his silver-tipped cane around behind him, fast and without warning, and the children jumped and dodged and laughed hysterically, though some were caught about the legs, the sound a loud and terrible whack. They ran to their friends again and rubbed at the painful welts, laughing through their tears and keen to try their luck again.

  ‘To your health, sir,’ Bayman Quince Rotterdam said to Krüger. ‘And to the soul of that poor horrible Negro, that he might suffer no more than one eternity, and possibly a half again.’

  They were drinking sangaree: Madeira wine, sugar, nutmeg and water. It was still sometime before midday. Krüger had bought a second carafe, which was already more than two-thirds gone. And all of it straight to his head.

  ‘Drink, good sir, drink!’ Bayman Quince Rotterdam said. ‘For we are in mourning and this be a wake!’

  He swung the cane behind him again and caught one of the children across the thigh.

  ‘Many years ago, good sir,’ he said, ‘my beloved owner sailed me to Europe and paraded my esteemed self before the princes and dukes, the princesses and duchesses, and finally before the King of Holland himself. I was celebrated for my intelligence and indeed I was awarded a medal for my comportment. They placed a broad orange sash of the purest, finest silk over my head, with a clasp of solid silver, set with blue and red gemstones and a small diamond. yes, sir, celebrated for my bearing. My beloved owner allowed me my honours; they be earned fairly, he said. But here, upon our return, among this filth and deception and criminal degeneracy, there was no respect to be found. My treasures were taken from me! Stolen by a black devil, my due and glory denied, and now not a single citizen believe my true self. But you believe me, good sir, when I say I be praying his soul, that damn thieving Negro whomsoever he be, that he suffer slow, excruciating torments. And that mean and treacherous Mr Hendrik, oh, it wasn’t him, but he knew who done it and refused to tell. Refused me!’ He drank down his glass of sangaree and poured the remainder from the carafe. ‘Everything here be rotten, yes! Be rotten to the bone and to the marrow.’

  Krüger put a coin on the table and motioned to the proprietor. ‘Mr Hendrik said you might help me find his sister,’ he said.

  ‘Did he now?’

  Krüger put a second coin on the table.

  ‘young Josephine, she shone and now she gone,’ Bayman Quince Rotterman said. ‘Stolen and sold and sent to the east.’ He pointed with his cane over Krüger’s shoulder. ‘Stolen and sold to live with French beasts!’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Bonis burn down the plantation, good sir. Murder the captain, Captain van der Velde, murder the wife and murder the daughters, true. They strung the captain up in a tree. Took his hands. Took Josephine, took everything.’

  Krüger felt a wave of weariness.

  The old Negro smiled, than sang, ‘Rotten brothers, rotten sisters, no manners, no! Every one you see, and everywhere you go!’

  The children ran up and repeated the song behind him; Bayman Quince Rotterdam swung his cane back with a smirk, then licked his lips.

  ‘Do you know where she is?’ Krüger said.

  ‘Oh, good sir, I know all! yes, all there is to know I know!’

  The old Negro poured the remaining sangaree into a flask. They left the tavern and he led Krüger out of town, further up the river.

  ‘It’s going to rain,’ he said, striding with his cane. ‘A good ’un storm!’

  They walked and walked, along the river, through the bends and bushes. Finally a grassy bank, Negroes and naked Indians washing at the water’s edge, and there were others cleaning fish and eels that were heaped upon the grass and inside the canoes. The river was dark green and the branches of dead trees reached up out of the water. Bayman Quince Rotterdam approached a man and they shook hands. There was a young boy beside him, holding a wooden spear for fishing.

  ‘your son has grown, Dante,’ Bayman Quince Rotterdam said.

  ‘And I be shrunken.’

  The boy had long eyelashes, fine-boned cheeks and slender shoulders, light-skinned like his father. His name was Aranjo.
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  ‘Can you take this man to Guyane?’ Bayman Quince Rotterdam asked. ‘He searches for Mr Hendrik’s sister.’

  Dante looked at Krüger with no expression, then down at his son. He knew about all that had happened at Captain van der Velde’s plantation.

  ‘What if she is not there?’ Dante replied.

  ‘Then she is not there,’ Krüger said. ‘But you’ll be paid.’

  Dante nodded. ‘When do you wish to go?’

  LORD OLDHAM FALLS ASLEEP

  The fire warmed the backs of Claus von Rolt’s legs. He’d gone to stand there in order to stay awake. Lord Oldham had been talking about shortages of men for the navy, about another recruitment push through the northern villages and west to Whitehaven, about the Admiralty’s hope for five thousand more men.

  ‘Deserters, that’s the bloody problem!’ he said. ‘Bloody cowards.’

  It was just the two of them. The room was close, the candlelight soft, the cognac glowed in each man’s cheeks and chests. And all the time the Englishman talked, the shrunken head had been calling Rolt from the cabinet. He couldn’t think about anything else.

  ‘We’ll round ’em up though,’ Lord Oldham said conclusively.

  A clock chimed somewhere in the house. Rolt realised he hadn’t been listening; that in fact he’d closed his eyes for a moment and almost fallen asleep, standing up in front of the fire. He opened his eyes, embarrassed, but it didn’t matter. Lord Oldham had dropped chin to chest and was snoring lightly in his deep chair.

  Rolt finished his cognac. He waited a little while, but Lord Oldham didn’t stir. He turned and put the glass down on the mantelpiece. He was wide awake now.

  He went over to the cabinet and opened the glass door (a faint, hollow shudder). He unhooked the plaited leather cord and took the shrunken head out. He cradled it in his palm, surprised at the dense weight. The hair, when he touched it, was coarse and dry and not like hair at all. Rolt carefully put his finger to the blackened skin of its sunken cheeks too, its forehead, the shrivelled, grotesque lips and swollen eyes. The head seemed to be merely asleep, just like Lord Oldham.