The Music of Razors

by Cameron Rogers

  “Now, acute osteomyelitis shares many similarities with rheumatic fever. So many, in fact, that some authorities—Kocher and Sahli, to name two—believe them to be different forms of the very same disease. To address that contention we should note that while joint symptoms predominate with acute rheumatism, there is a notable absence of suppuration, and that the patient’s symptoms of discomfort will yield more readily to salicylates than would the symptoms of a patient with osteomyelitis…”

  There was a universe in there—linked, co-dependent, whole—of myriad variety and complexity and workings, all woven together in a lifelong symphony of movement and function. Henry felt privileged—entrusted—beyond his ability to express. This, more than anything, lifted his chin and fixed his eyes on the future.

  “…development of septic endocarditis. Now, gentlemen and…lady…next on our slate is treatment, which we shall discover is carried out along the same lines as other suppurative diseases.”

  Henry’s pen rose and dove with unself-conscious speed from well to paper, staining his fingers like an accountant’s. The words flew from his nib, the line ending with a streak and stab. He looked up.

  The lesson was over. Document folders were tied closed, cases clipped shut. Half the class was already walking out. Henry sighed to himself, placed his pen down, and squared his notes away for the day, bound in sheaves by subject and region and stored safe inside a clasped leather folder. The lecturer acknowledged Henry with a wry smile and a nod as he guillotined his papers upon the podium. Reaching down beside himself for his folder, Henry caught the one and only woman in the class, voluminous skirts packed around her—pretty if only she would recognize the fact, Henry had once thought—still seated on the other side of the room. She had been looking amusedly at him, the serious student, and smiled kindly.

  He grabbed his things and stood too quickly, banging his knee on the underside of the desktop. The woman flinched, and Henry left the building as fast as he could. Marching down the front steps and onto the street, he didn’t slow until he was blocks away. When finally he pressed his kidneys against the peeling fence of a leprous old church and lay a hand to his chest, a black bird looked down from the high corner of the brownstone across the way, and cawed. He felt as if he had been poisoned, as if he might be sick.

  His father had dreams, once, Henry knew. Dreams like dead brothers to him. Sometimes it was a snatch of overheard conversation, a phrase his father mumbled dismissively to himself, or a topic Henry’s mother insisted be avoided. Henry had seen how carrying their corpses had broken him.

  This was the first lesson Henry learned: anything alive within a person can be smothered. Smothered for long enough that thing will die.

  And then it rots.

  The dreams decaying within his father had made of their house a ward, full of sickness. Made it something to be escaped from.

  No woman had ever looked at Henry the way that woman had looked at him. No woman had ever laced her fingers through his. In his family’s world no woman could. First he felt ashamed, and then he felt free.

  He was no longer in his family’s world.

  He closed the front door too loudly behind himself, throwing a scarf about his neck and marching down the nighttime street like a man with a train to catch. He did not know Dorian, he did not even like Dorian, but what was the earthly point of escaping one kind of nothingness only to embrace another? Henry did not know what impatient power it was that had gripped him, but it said enough was enough. It frightened him, to be truthful, and he could not properly explain why it was he made with all speed for the Coat and Arms, only that suddenly his blood was moving—moving, it seemed, as he had never felt it move—and were he to arrive too late to meet Dorian and his friends and engage in whatever may come next, then the remainder of the night would be one of the longest he had ever known. Every day was a day he would never have again. Tomorrow he could be in a watch-house cell, awaiting transport to some godforsaken prison, and that would be that for Henry Lockrose. All he would have for company between incarceration and a short drop would be the knowledge that he had never lived.

  He dragged the back of his gloved hand across each eye, apologizing as his shoulder connected with a passerby. A warm room, a good fire, and something fortifying to drink. If he could have that then anything might happen tomorrow and he would be all right.

  Stepping in from the cold Henry felt his face cracking, the bubble and guffaw of conversation enveloping him like warm water. Removing his hat and gloves he crossed the room toward the bar, a nervous outsider. At the mention of Dorian’s name the barmaid nodded—“that young feller with the sparkle in his eye”—and consulted with the manager as to which room they were in. Two minutes later Henry was taken aside by the mustachioed proprietor—a short man with well-oiled hair, his sleeves held up by garters—and shown down a narrow hall. Even above the din of the pub’s main room Henry had heard their voices singing out from behind the far door.

  Nelly Bly! Nelly Bly! Bring the broom along,

  We’ll sweep the kitchen clean, my dear,

  And have a little song.

  Poke the wood, my lady love

  And make the fire burn,

  And while I take the banjo down,

  Just give the mush a turn…

  The proprietor turned a brass handle and opened the door discreetly onto a dinnertime scene of song and unrestrained laughter.

  The song fell away, cushioned on laughter, and all eyes turned to Henry. He immediately recognized them from observations made from his bedroom window: the Talker, the Fobwatch and his wife—a plain woman with a heart-shaped face. Henry remembered seeing her for the first time and thinking she could be beautiful if she would only recognize the fact. His heart felt faint.

  She smiled, acknowledging Henry’s entry with a polite inclination of her head.

  “I believe you and Henry have met,” Dorian said, and despite feeling suddenly out of place Henry rankled at the Englishman’s presumptuous use of his given name.

  “Why yes,” she said. “I’ve seen you looking down at us from time to time, from your window at Mrs. Brown’s.”

  Henry was adrift, his mind white with embarrassment, when the proprietor lifted his coat from his shoulders, making for an awkward moment. Henry struggled out of it, turning about as he did so.

  “So, Henry,” Dorian exclaimed, as the proprietor hung Henry’s coat on the lion-footed stand by the door. “We were just this moment wondering about you.” The pub laughed and murmured as the proprietor made his exit.

  “That right?” Henry said without thinking.

  “‘That right’? Good Lord, Henry, it’s as if you were raised on a farm.”

  Henry smiled, politely as he could. He was beginning to suspect this assumed familiarity was an attempt on Dorian’s part to place him on the back foot. He would not play that game. “I was raised on a farm,” he said. “May I sit?”

  “Please.”

  Their meal—for which Henry had arrived too late—had been roast duckling. He thought of Mrs. Brown’s watery stew and regretted every spoonful. “What was it you were wondering, exactly?”

  “From whence does he hail,” Dorian replied jovially. “What subjects stir his blood? Why does he never speak?” He leaned forward, confidentially. “The unraveling of enigmas is a subject very close to this group’s heart.”

  The pale-haired talker laughed under his breath.

  “Introductions!” Dorian proclaimed, slouching back again under the momentum of another gesture. “A mutual exposition. Please, allow me. The young man to your right is our Mr. Adam Jukes. Mr. Jukes has an insatiable curiosity and will, I’m sure, provide you with many hours of conversation. Across from you is the estimable Mr. Alfred Dysart. Mr. Dysart is a well-regarded businessman about town. And Miss Finella Riley I believe you already know.”

  The young woman inclined her head once again, having made no mention of their classes together, or the incident that afternoon.

&n
bsp; “It was Mr. Dysart who finagled Miss Riley a place in your classroom. Quite the talking point, as I’m sure you’re aware.” The woman’s eyes lowered. “Young Finella is something of a revolutionary.”

  “I’ve heard nothing but good things about the strength of Miss Riley’s character, Dorian,” Henry insisted. “And lady doctors are not so queer.”

  “Please, sir,” Miss Riley interjected. “My ears aren’t cloth. Until the social order changes, an oddity I am, and an oddity I remain. It is not a burden to me, but a road.”

  “May it be a short one,” Henry said, his heart invading his lungs. He had never spoken to a woman his own age so straightforwardly. She spoke her mind like a man. That was powerful.

  Dorian applauded. “Bravo,” he said. “Bravo. You would have found a kindred spirit in Casanova, my dear.” Henry felt his face threaten to flush at the association.

  “That right,” she said.

  Dysart snorted and chuckled to himself, Jukes didn’t get it, and Henry felt a kind of strange anxiety closing his pores. Finella glanced at him quickly. Was that a smile in her eyes?

  Powerful.

  “Equality between the sexes began with him, you know,” Dorian continued, unperturbed. “Perhaps the new movement should regard themselves as ‘Casanovans.’ A lovely connotation, don’t you think?”

  “I doubt Margaret Fuller would have been much in love with the notion of naming a women’s movement after a womanizer, Mr. Athelstane. But I take your point.”

  “He believed women were the equal of men and treated them as such,” Dorian rebutted. “As it should be. The chance configuration of our corporeal forms has little bearing upon our capacity for miracles.”

  Jukes’s glass shot into the air, wine slapping over the sides. “Hear! Hear!”

  Dorian raised his own. Dysart was slow to follow. “Hear. Hear.”

  Henry wished to the Devil that Jukes and Dysart and Athelstane would…vanish. How did a man go about speaking to a woman? He had committed the best part of A Guide to Manners and Dress to memory, but even so the rough habits of a lifetime took some effort to rein in. Back home their parents would have arranged to spend afternoons together, and then he and Miss Riley could have become acquainted, but here…

  “Henry, allow me.” Dorian filled Henry’s glass from a carafe. “To our newest companion. To Henry.” And they drank. “Now that we are done with our introductions, who might you be, young Henry?”

  Finella cocked an eyebrow. “No introduction from the host, I notice.” Dorian waved her observation away, a pretense of modesty. No one pursued it.

  Henry swilled the wine over his teeth, swallowed it down with satisfaction. “My name is Henry Lockrose,” Henry lied, replacing his glass upon the table. Dorian refilled it. Henry swallowed another mouthful. This seemed to please Dysart. “I want to be a surgeon. Now, what’s this talk of enigmas?”

  There had been a man who managed the trick of escaping from their farm a few times a year. He had been a doctor. He would come in on a buggy, dressed neat and sharp and clean as a blade. In a day he would tend to their ills like a miracle worker, leave a few boiled sweets, and be on his way—back to whatever fresh universe he had come from, away from the farm, to someplace where people could be doctors rather than sinners and dirt workers born to live and die in their fear of the Lord.

  It was at a very young age that Henry had decided he would become a doctor. He did not tell his father.

  The publican discreetly reappeared to stoke the fire, bringing with him a tray of small pecan pies and brandy. Dysart slipped the man a few coins and poured a measure of brandy into Jukes’s glass. He then passed the bottle to Henry, seated to his left. Henry filled Dysart’s, and so it went. Even in his current state some elements of Manners and Dress asserted themselves. Shortly after that it seemed they were all on first-name terms.

  “I say!” Dorian suddenly exclaimed. “Did you hear about that fellow they sent to the hospital with cramp?”

  “Ha!” Jukes said. “Yes, he was—” And Finella whacked him in the ribs.

  “It was in the Evening Transcript,” Dorian continued.

  “Don’t read it,” Dysart said.

  “They examined the poor bugger, expecting gout or something I wager, and can you imagine what he actually had?”

  “Gastroenteritis?” offered Finella, surprisingly unfazed by Dorian’s language.

  “Ulceration?” Henry said.

  “No,” Dorian said. “Give up?”

  “I give up,” Finella said.

  “A snake. The man had a bellyful of snake.”

  Finella put her hand to her mouth.

  “Swallowed it when it was a hatchling, apparently. The man used to fit quite a bit. Turns out it had been growing in there for years.”

  “Dorian, that’s horrible,” Finella said.

  “Dorian, that’s bullshit,” Henry replied. His glass was looking empty. Had he just cussed? From the look on Finella’s face he guessed he had. “Not possible…is what I mean.”

  “I assure you,” Dorian said. “It was in the paper.”

  “How did it breathe?” Henry asked.

  “There’s a reason I don’t read the paper,” Dysart mumbled.

  “There’s air in the stomach,” Dorian countered.

  “There’s air in the lungs, Dorian.”

  “There is some air in the stomach, Henry,” Finella said. “You know that.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Not much, granted, but if the serpent was ingested as a hatchling it may well have become used to living on less air—”

  “And the occasional chewed-up pie.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Then…then how is it possible, after all those years, that this snake was never, you know…escorted out the back?”

  “Well…”

  “Is this a subject fit for the dinner table?” Dysart interjected.

  “I’m finding it enthralling,” Dorian said.

  “Well,” Finella ventured. “Unless an ingested snake was very inquisitive I would think it might never know the interior of a gentleman’s upper intestine.”

  “If you’ll excuse me a moment,” Jukes said, and made an exit.

  “More port?” Dorian offered amiably.

  Henry offered his glass. “I have to admit, Miss Riley, that I never expected a learned lady to keep company with sensationalists, smokers, and…and…”

  “Scallywags?”

  “Indeed.” He raised his glass. “Cheers.”

  Finella sampled from her glass and replaced it gently on the table. Her fingers remained upon the stem as she said, “I have every reason for spending time with these gentlemen, Mr. Lockrose. I come here simply because we are extraordinary.”

  Henry cocked an eyebrow. “Extraordinary,” he inquired. “Whatever can you mean?”

  “The most effective mediums tend to be women,” Dorian confided as Finella accepted Dysart’s proffered hand and stepped up onto her chair. Henry looked away. “They are also a much more instinctive breed than men. That’s a good thing in this kind of business as it annuls the doubts that keep one from the halls adjoining this world and the next.” Finella stepped from the chair to the table. Her boots sounded dully upon the scuffed wood.

  Dorian had marked the table with white chalk, inscribing a circular sigil upon the use-glossed wood. The interior of the double circle contained a sign the likes of which Henry had never seen, while the space between the inner and outer circle contained four letters, one at each compass point. Working clockwise from the north this is the word it spelled:

  VOSO

  Finella arranged her skirts, sat quickly, and laid herself down, head positioned over the V. Henry did not know where to look.

  “Finella has taken to this with great enthusiasm,” Dorian was saying. “I think she may one day astound us all.”

  “I think young Henry is feeling pretty astounded right now,” Jukes sniggered, and Dorian good-naturedly told him to sh
ut up.

  At the age of twelve Henry had worked up the courage to ask the doctor how one became a doctor. The man had told of places—there in Vermont and far to the south—where such things were learned. Places to learn, he said, if one had the money. Henry was not deterred by pity, and with each visit he had new questions for the doctor, and over time sweets evolved into books. Books kept hidden beneath mattresses, beneath boards, in sacks in trunks. Books on places beyond, books on history, books on medicine. Before that the only book Henry had ever touched was the Bible.

  She lay with her hands upturned beside her, eyes closed, serene. Her breathing became deep and deliberate, and then faded to almost nothing.

  Dysart produced a thin cotton sheet from beside his chair and draped this across Finella, covering her from chin to toe. Whether this was service to ceremony or decency Henry couldn’t tell.

  Henry could read well enough. His mother had taught him at a young age, before his father had bent him to the field. It had not failed him.

  By the age of thirteen Henry had decided he would not be a doctor. He would become a surgeon.

  Over time books evolved into conversations. Stories of life-threatening cases, revolutionary research, hypotheses as to the functioning of the human animal. Life and death in this doctor’s hands.

  By the age of fifteen Henry had decided he would be nothing less than a great surgeon.

  Looking upon Finella’s peaceful face, Dorian said, “One or two of the Fallen have, as part of their respective portfolios, the duty of revealing that which is hidden. I know that something immensely important has been concealed from the world of men, and that I may discover it if I only ask the right questions of the right being.”

  A great surgeon would look inward and see the universe. His skill would clothe him, keep him, and show him the world.

  “I cannot take part in this.”

  People who should be dead would walk on his account.

  “Of course you can, Henry. Of course you can.”