Poor Things

by Alasdair Gray

  “Very interesting, Baxter. What use is it, medically speaking?”

  “O, it has its uses!” he said, with a smile that greatly annoyed me.

  “I hate mysteries Baxter!” I told him, “especially the man-made sort which are always a fraud. Do you know what most students in my year think of you? They think you a harmless insignificant madman, who dabbles with brains and microscopes in an effort to look important.”

  My poor friend stood still and gazed at me, obviously aghast. I stared stonily back. In a faltering voice he asked if I, too, thought he was that. I said, “If you don’t answer my questions frankly, what else can I think?”

  “Well,” he said, sighing, “come home and I will show you something.”

  This pleased me. He had never invited me to his home before.

  It was a tall, gloomy terrace house in Park Circus, and in the lobby he and his Newfoundland dog were noisily welcomed by two Saint Bernards, an Alsatian and an Afghan hound. He led me straight past them, down a stair to the basement and out into a narrow garden between high walls.5 Near the house was a paved part with a wooden doocot and pigeons, then came vegetable plots and a small lawn surrounded by a low fence. There were hutches on the lawn and some rabbits grazing. Baxter stepped over the fence and bade me do so too. The rabbits were perfectly tame. Baxter said, “Examine these two and tell me what you think.”

  He lifted and handed me one, cradling and gently stroking another on his sleeve until I examined it too.

  The most obvious oddity in the first was the colour of the fur: pure black from nose to waist, pure white from waist to tail. Had a thread been tied round the body at the narrowest part all hairs on one side would have been black, all on the other side white. Now, in nature such straight separations only occur in crystals and basalt—the horizon of the sea on a clear day may look perfectly straight, but is actually curved. Yet by itself I would have assumed this rabbit was what any one else would assume—a natural freak. If so, the other rabbit was a freak of an exactly opposite sort: white to a waistline as clean and distinct as if cut by the surgeon’s knife, after which it was black to the tail. No process of selective breeding could produce two such exactly equal and opposite colorations, so I examined them again with my fingertip, noticing that Baxter was watching me with the same cool, close, curious look I was giving his rabbits. One had male genitals with female nipples, one had female genitals with almost imperceptible nipples. Beneath the fur where it changed colour I felt on one body a barely perceptible ridge where the whole body shrank minutely but suddenly toward the tail, in the other was an equally minute ridge where it expanded. The little beasts were works of art, not nature. The one in my hands suddenly felt terribly precious. I set it carefully down on the grass and gazed at Baxter with awe, admiration and a kind of pity. It is hard not to pity those whose powers separate them from all the rest of us, unless (of course) they are rulers doing the usual sort of damage. I think there were tears in my eyes as I said, “How did you do it, Baxter?”

  “I have done nothing wonderful,” he said gloomily, putting the other rabbit down. “In fact I’ve done something rather shabby. Mopsy and Flopsy were two ordinary, happy little rabbits before I put them to sleep one day and they woke up like this. They are no longer interested in procreation, an activity they once greatly enjoyed. But tomorrow I will put them back together in exactly the way they were before.”

  “But Baxter, what can your hands not do if they can do this?”

  “O, I could replace the diseased hearts of the rich with the healthy hearts of poorer folk, and make a lot of money. But I have all the money I need and it would be unkind to lead millionaires into such temptation.”

  “You make that sound like murder, Baxter, but the bodies in our dissecting-rooms have died by accident or natural disease. If you can use their undamaged organs and limbs to mend the bodies of others you will be a greater saviour than Pasteur and Lister—surgeons everywhere will turn a morbid science into immediate, living art!”

  “If medical practitioners wanted to save lives,” said Baxter, “instead of making money out of them, they would unite to prevent diseases, not work separately to cure them. The cause of most illness has been known since at least the sixth century before Christ, when the Greeks made a goddess of Hygiene. Sunlight, cleanliness and exercise, McCandless! Fresh air, pure water, a good diet and clean roomy houses for everyone, and a total government ban on all work which poisons and prevents these things.”

  “Impossible, Baxter. Britain has become the industrial workshop of the world. If social legislation arrests the profits of British industry our worldwide market will be collared by Germany and America and thousands would starve to death. Nearly a third of Britain’s food is imported from abroad.”

  “Exactly! So until we lose our worldwide market British medicine will be employed to keep a charitable mask on the face of a heartless plutocracy. I keep that mask in place by voluntary work in my east-end clinic. It soothes my conscience. To transplant a simple abdomen would need an operation lasting thirty-three hours. Before I started I would spend at least a fortnight discovering and preparing a body compatible with my patient’s. In that period several of my poor patients would die or suffer great pain through lack of conventional surgery.”

  “Then why spend time refining your father’s techniques?”

  “For a private reason I refuse to disclose to you, McCandless. I know this is not the frank answer of a friend, but I now see you were never my friend, but tolerated the company of a harmless, insignificant madman because other well-dressed students would not tolerate yours. But have no fear for the future, McCandless, you are a clever man! Not brilliant, perhaps, but steady and predictable, which people prefer. In a few years you will be an efficient house-surgeon. All you hunger for will be obtained: wealth, respect, companions and a fashionable wife. I will continue to seek affection by following a lonelier road.”

  While speaking we had re-entered the house and climbed again to the dim lobby where the five dogs sprawled upon Persian rugs. Sensing their master’s hostility they erected their necks and ears and pointed their noses at me, then grew as still as dog-faced sphinxes. In the stairwell above I sensed rather than glimpsed a head in a white cap staring down over the banisters of a landing, perhaps an ancient housekeeper or maidservant.

  “Baxter!” I whispered urgently, “I was daft to say these things. I promise I did not mean to hurt you.”

  “I disagree. You did mean to hurt me, and have done so more than you intended. Good-bye.”

  He opened the front door for me. I grew desperate. I said, “Godwin, since you have no time to publicize your father’s discoveries and your refinements on them, lend the notes to me! I’ll make it my life’s work to publicize them. I’ll attribute everything to you—everything, without ever trespassing on your valuable time. And when the public outcry comes—for there will be huge controversy—I will defend you, I will be your bulldog just as Huxley was Darwin’s bulldog! McCandless will be Baxter’s bulldog!”

  “Good-bye, McCandless,” he said inflexibly, and the dogs were growling, so I let him usher me onto the doorstep where I pled, “At least let me shake your hand, Godwin!”

  “Why not?” he said, and held one out.

  We had never shaken hands before nor had I looked closely at his, perhaps because in company he kept them half-hidden by his cuffs. The hand I intended to grasp was not so much square as cubical, nearly as thick as broad, with huge thick first knuckles from which the fingers tapered so steeply to babyish tips with rosy wee nails that they seemed conical. A cold grue went through me—I was unable to touch such a hand. I shook my head wordlessly at him, and he suddenly smiled as he had done in earlier days when I winced at the sound of his voice. He also shrugged his shoulders and shut me out.

  4

  A Fascinating Stranger

  Then came the loneliest months I have known. Baxter no longer came to the University. The bench was removed from his old works
pace, which became a cupboard again. I strolled round Park Circus at least once a fortnight, but saw nobody enter or leave his front door, and I lacked courage to climb the steps and knock. Yet clean unshuttered windows showed the house was occupied, and I should have realized that when not with a visitor he would prefer to use the servants’ entrance through the back garden. My longing for his company was not mercenary, for I no longer thought him a scientific miracle-worker. My studies showed we could not even graft the forepart of a worm or caterpillar to the hindpart of another. This was twenty years before Jannsky identified the main blood groups, so we could not even transfuse blood. I classified my experience of the rabbits as a hallucination based on a natural coincidence and provoked by something hypnotic in Baxter’s voice, yet at weekends I followed old paths through woodlands and moorlands because they recalled our conversation when we walked them together. And of course, I was hoping to meet him again.

  One cold bright Saturday when winter was becoming spring I walked up Sauchiehall Street and heard what at first seemed an iron-shod carriage wheel scraping a kerbstone. A moment later I recognized a familiar voice saying, “Bulldog McCandless! How is my bulldog this weather?”

  “A lot better for hearing the sound of your ugly voice, Baxter,” said I. “Have you never thought of getting a new larynx? The vocal chords of a sheep would twang more melodiously than yours.”

  He walked beside me at the usual stumping trudge which carried him as fast as my own swift stride. A walking-stick was clenched under his arm like an officer’s baton, he wore a curly-brimmed topper on the back of his head, his chin was held high and an exuberant smile showed he now cared nothing for the glances of other pedestrians. With a pang of envy I said, “You look happy, Baxter.”

  “Yes, McCandless! I now enjoy more flattering company than you ever provided—a fine, fine woman, McCandless, who owes her life to these fingers of mine—these skeely, skeely fingers!”6

  He wagged them in the air before him as if playing a keyboard. I was jealous. I said, “What did you cure her of?”

  “Death.”

  “You mean that you saved her from death.”

  “Partly, yes, but the greatest part is a skilfully manipulated resurrection.”

  “You don’t make sense, Baxter.”

  “Then come and meet her—I would welcome a second opinion. Physically she is perfect but her mind is still forming, yes, her mind has wonderful discoveries to make. She knows only what she learned in the last ten weeks, but you will find her more interesting than Mopsy and Flopsy put together.”

  “So your patient is amnesic?”

  “That is what I tell people but don’t you believe me! Judge for yourself.”

  And the only other words he said before we reached Park Circus were, that his patient was called Bell, short for Bella, and lived in a great clutter because he wanted her to enjoy seeing, hearing and handling as many things as possible.

  As Baxter unlocked his front door I thought I heard a piano playing The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond so loud and fast that the tune was wildly cheerful. He led me into a drawing-room where I saw the music being made by a woman seated at a pianola. Her back was toward us. Curly black hair hid her body to the waist, her legs pumped the treadles turning the cylinder with a vigour that showed she enjoyed exercise as much as music. She flapped her arms sideways like a seagull’s wings, regardless of the beat. She was so engrossed that she did not notice us. I had time to study the room.

  It had tall windows overlooking the Circus, a bright fire under a marble mantelpiece. The big dogs lay somnolent on a hearth-rug, their chins cushioned on each other’s flanks. Three cats sat as far apart as possible on the backs of the highest chairs, each pretending not to see the rest but all twitching if one of them moved. Through an open double door I saw a room overlooking the back garden, and by the fire in this room a placid elderly lady sat knitting, a small boy played with toy bricks at her feet, two rabbits sipped milk from a saucer. Baxter murmured that the lady was his housekeeper, the boy her grandson. One rabbit was pure black, the other pure white, but I decided to draw no fantastic conclusion from this. What made the place strange was a multitude of things on the carpets, tables, sideboards and seats: a tripod upholding a telescope, a lantern-slide projector aimed at a standing screen, celestial and terrestrial globes each a yard in diameter, a half-put-together jigsaw puzzle showing the British Islands, a fully furnished doll’s house with the front open exposing everybody from a thin maidservant in the attic bedroom to a fat cook rolling pastry in the basement kitchen, a toy farm with hundreds of accurately carved and painted animals, a brilliant flock of real stuffed humming-birds wired to a silver stand shaped like a bush with leaves and fruit of coloured glass, a xylophone, harp, kettledrums, an erect human skeleton and glass jars holding pickled limbs and bodily organs. These specimens probably came from old Sir Colin’s collection, but their brown morbidity was contradicted by surrounding vases of daffodils, pots of hyacinths and a great crystal bowl in which tiny, jewel-like tropical fish darted and large golden ones glided. Many books were propped open at vivid illustrations. I noticed a Madonna and Child, Burns Stooping to a Field Mouse, The Fighting Téméraire Towed to Her Last Berth and Kobolds Discovering the Skeleton of Ichthyosaurus in a Cavern under the Harz Mountains.7

  The music stopped. The woman stood and faced us, stepping unsteadily forward then pausing as if to keep balance. Her tall, beautiful, full-bodied figure seemed between twenty and thirty years, her facial expression looked far, far less. She gazed with the wide-open eyes and mouth which suggest alarm in an adult but in her suggested pure alert delight with an expectation of more. She wore a black velvet gown with narrow lace collar and cuffs. She spoke carefully, with a north of England accent, and each syllable was as sweet and distinct as if piped on a flute: “Hell low God win, hell low new man.”

  Then she flung both arms out straight toward me and kept them there.

  “Give only one hand to new men, Bell,” said Baxter kindly. She dropped her left hand to her side without otherwise moving or altering her bright expectant smile. Nobody had looked at me like that before. I grew confused as the offered hand was too high for me to shake in the conventional way. I surprised myself by stepping forward, rising on tiptoe, taking Bell’s fingers in mine and kissing them. She gasped and a moment later slowly withdrew her hand and looked at it, rubbing the fingers gently with her thumb as if testing something my lips had left there. She also cast several astonished but happy little glances at my fascinated face, while Baxter beamed proudly on both of us like a clergyman introducing two children at a Sunday-school picnic. He said, “This is Mr. McCandless, Bell.”

  “Hell low Miss terr Candle,” she said, “new wee man with carrot tea red hair, inter rested face, blue neck tie, crump pled coat waist coat trou sirs made of brown. Cord. Dew. Ray?”

  “Corduroy my dear,” said Baxter, smiling as joyfully on her as she on me.

  “Cord dew roy, a ribbed fab brick wove ven from cot ton Miss terr Make Candle.”

  “Mac Cand less, dear Bell.”

  “But dear Bell has no candle so dear Bell is candle-less too, God win. Please be Bell’s new Candle you new wee candle maker.”

  “You reason beautifully, Bell,” said Baxter, “but have still to learn that most names are not reasonable. O Mrs. Dinwiddie! Take Bell and your grandson down to the kitchen and give them lemonade and a doughnut sprinkled with sugar. McCandless and I will be in the study.”

  As we climbed the stairs Baxter said eagerly, “So what do you think of our Bella?”

  “A bad case of brain damage, Baxter. Only idiots and infants talk like that, are capable of such radiant happiness, such frank glee and friendship on meeting someone new. It is dreadful to see these things in a lovely young woman. She only looked thoughtful once, when your housekeeper led her away from me—from us, I meant to say.”

  “You noticed that? But it is a sign of maturity. You are wrong about the brain damage. Her mental
powers are growing at enormous speed. Six months ago she had the brain of a baby.”

  “What reduced her to that state?”

  “Nothing reduced her to it, she has risen from it. It was a perfectly healthy little brain.”

  His voice must have had hypnotic qualities for I suddenly knew what he meant and believed him. I stood still and clutched the banister feeling very sick. I heard my voice stammer a question about where he got the other bits.

  “That is what I want to tell you, McCandless!” he cried, putting an arm round my shoulder and lifting me easily up the stairs with him. “You are the only one in the world I can talk to about this.”

  As my feet left the carpet I thought I was in the grip of a monster and started kicking. I also tried to yell but he put a hand over my mouth, carried me to a bathroom, held my head under a cold shower, carried me to his study, placed me on a sofa and gave me a towel. I grew calmer while using it, but nearly panicked again when he handed me a tumbler of grey slime. He said it was concocted from fruit and vegetables, that it strengthened the nerves, muscles and blood without over-stimulating them, that he drank nothing else. I refused it, so he hunted in cupboards under a lot of glass-fronted bookcases until he found a decanter of port nobody had tasted since his father died. As I sipped the dark ruby syrup I suddenly felt that Baxter, his household, Miss Bell, yes and me, and Glasgow, and rural Galloway, and all Scotland were equally unlikely and absurd. I started laughing. Mistaking my hysteria for a return to common sense he gave a sigh of relief that sounded like a steam whistle in the room next door. I winced. He produced cotton wool from a drawer. I plugged my ears with it. He told me the following story.

  5

  Making Bella Baxter