Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain

by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

  “Leave me, Nan.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Leave my house.”

  Nan’s eyes narrowed. “Who will care for you?”

  “You can’t dismiss her,” the Constable interrupted. “She’s one of the good ones, your Nan.”

  “Gather your belongings,” Sarah continued. “Take Nicolas’s old case.”

  Nan bowed her head. Her dress, patterned with stains of gravy, wash water, and soot, hung loosely from her shoulders. Her kerchief had slipped back, revealing her high forehead. For a moment she waited, defiant. Then she ran from the room.

  “You must not —” the Constable began. But Sarah did not heed his words, her eyes on the fire, the delicate motion of flame.

  “I have,” she said. And the Constable had time just to take the candle from her and set it safely down before she collapsed into his arms, her face powdered and damp and, for the first time in her life, a perfect white.

  MY NAME IS LUBBERT DAS

  My name is Lubbert Das, and I was born with a stone in my head twenty-odd years ago. I never learned to read or make sums, I’m fat as a swollen wineskin, and before Father died and Doctor Theodorus Steenwycks discovered me, I chopped firewood from sunrise till mid afternoon, when I had to pile the logs into cart seventeen, which pulled them to the barracks above the Common. At night Mother baked meat pies, or did till the money ran out and we started to burn furniture a few table legs at a time for heat. Now we eat hard bread on the floor, where we still have boards down, and pile our plates in a corner. No one has British pounds, except the people with horses and coaches, and not even they do sometimes.

  Since Father died, Mother has worked for the milliner. Her fingers are always yellow-brown and wrinkled no matter how hard she scrubs them. Her skin is as tough as her voice when she raises it so all the neighbors can hear her say that she and her dim-witted boy won’t end up at the almshouse. There’s disease at the almshouse, that’s what they say, the soldiers up at the Common who always have money for hats. I’ve delivered six of them to as many officers’ wives the past three months. The Sons of Liberty say the British are robbing us and we’ll end up like African slaves if we don’t change our ways, but the soldiers order more hats than anyone else in the colonies, and Mother says she needs to sell hats or we can’t eat.

  I don’t chop wood for the soldiers anymore; the cart men won’t take it. We refuse to supply the enslavers, they say. My ax, bright as the moon, sits in the corner, but I’ve started to steal what’s left of the wood to burn at home because we don’t have much but clothes left for our fires. I have my extra wool breeches and a few pairs of stockings; Mother, her summer clothes and Father’s old broadcloth coat, which she wears around the house at night. It makes her cry, that faded blue coat, but she won’t burn it. I tried to take it from her once so she’d feel better, and she hit me hard across my cheek, and then cried some more and begged God for forgiveness because I knew not what I did.

  I wanted to go with Father the day he went to see the cocks fight, and I still thank God for his almighty kindness, because Father refused and I didn’t die when men started drinking and fighting. Instead I met Doctor Theodorus Steenwycks, who came by our house in Church Farm along with the men carrying Father’s body. The doctor brought a half tankard of ale, which Mother drank right there. Her face turned red, and she fell asleep just when the neighbors arrived to see what all the wailing was about. Miss Willett wrapped her arms around me, and I thought she might cry, too, but instead she started saying, “Poor dear. Poor dear. Whatever will he do now?”

  I had to push her away because I was having unclean thoughts. Miss Willett has lived next door since I was a baby, and I remember her like a first snow, white and smothering. She used to give me hard candies and apples and sing me songs about the moon and King George of England. She always smiled when she saw me and hugged me close when I ran over to tell her about my day — I’d seen a fish in Fresh Water Pond; I’d watched the sailors arrive from faraway places with dark-skinned men and boxes that smelled as divine as baby Jesus himself.

  Miss Willett released me when I pushed her back, and I saw that she did have tears in her eyes. I had to go outside then, because her sister tried to hold me as well, and that’s when Doctor Steenwycks asked me if I knew my name. He was standing by the road, which was thick as porridge since the snow melted, his hands in his pockets, a small cocked hat on his head. He had red gums, fish-innards red, and I couldn’t look at him for fear I might make an impolite expression or stare like Mother always forbids me to do. So I just nodded, big nods so he’d be sure to see.

  “That’s a good man,” he said. “You’re the man of the family now.”

  I nodded again and folded my hands behind my back like I’d seen the minister do.

  “Can you speak?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You understand me?”

  He stepped closer, and I feared his opening mouth, but I knew Mother would want me to answer, so I turned my face away and nodded. He leaned closer and whispered, “I’ve cured men like you — even men so mad they can’t dress themselves.” Doctor Steenwycks was the son of a famous doctor. A doctor who cured the dead, Mother told me later, when I asked her about him.

  “I dress myself,” I said.

  “Would you like to be cured? Would you like that?” Doctor Steenwycks smiled, red lips and gums. “You could care for your mother. Perhaps even find a wife. A good woman like — like a solid pair of bronze-buckled shoes.”

  I thought of Miss Willett with her long gray-brown braid. She had a brother who brought her paper-wrapped slabs of smoked bacon and dried beef, which she sometimes shared with Mother. She smelled like fresh leaves.

  “How —” But I couldn’t think of the words I needed to say because Miss Willett was there in my head, twirling like she might on Pope’s Day, skirt flowing around her ankles, chest pressing against the tight fabric of her one good brown dress.

  “There, there.” Doctor Steenwycks placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. “It’s not proper to be jumping up and down on the day of your poor father’s death. But I’m a charitable man, a man who cannot stand by as fate’s hideous hand reduces a good family, one already sorely burdened, to dire circumstance. We Steenwyckses believe in the common good; we help common folk. My father — you may know him, the great Jan Steenwycks — ah, but you wouldn’t, of course you wouldn’t. My father and I open our doors to people like you. Tell your mother to come by my parlor on Monday. Crown Street, near Trinity Church.”

  I repeated Doctor Steenwycks’s words so I would not forget them before Mother awoke, which she did two hours later. Doctor Steenwycks and Miss Willett and her sister and all the men who’d arrived with the body had left by then along with Father’s corpse. All that remained of the afternoon was a layer of mud and excrement on our floor.

  “Dear Mother,” I said, and she ran her fingers through my hair and kissed my forehead and told me how blessed I was to be a fool. “Doctor Steenwycks says he can cure me.”

  THE GROUNDS IN FRONT of Doctor Steen-wycks’s house had eleven elm trees and seven white stone figures of unclad people. I touched one to see if it felt warm, but Mother pulled me away. The front porch was big as our house, and covered, and the doctor sat in one corner with a Negro girl. He was reading to her, and she was watching him, but she looked scared, crouched with her dress pulled tight over her knees. I was scared, too, but I followed Mother up two stairs to the porch and over to the corner where I saw that the man wasn’t Doctor Steenwycks, but someone much older.

  “Theodorus is in the back parlor,” the man said. He smiled, like Doctor Steenwycks had, and I realized that he was the famous doctor, the one who cured the dead.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you,” Mother said, and she made a kind of curtsy. I told him my name was Lubbert, Lubbert Das. I was about to ask him to cure my father, when Mother took my shoulder and we walked through the front doors; there were two, and they opened in opposite directions from
each other. We passed through four empty rooms with stone hearths and burning fires, till we found Doctor Steenwycks.

  “You’ve arrived,” he said. He’d been writing and his fingers were stained with black ink. He ran his hand over my head, and I thought he might stain my hair, which is brown but not dark, not like the stains on his hands.

  “In France, the operation takes less than an hour. Here, with my tools, it will take somewhat longer.” Doctor Steenwycks looked at Mother, who had borrowed a plumed hat from the milliner. He stared at her a very long time, so long her cheeks changed color.

  “He’s all I have,” she said.

  “We remove only a small portion of the skull, a fragment of bone. Once the pressure in his skull has lessened, the brain membrane will heal. He may — well, suffice it to say that he will be able to secure employment. And with the passage of time, he may one day become an intellectual. Once I’ve restored the proper flow of blood to his brain —”

  “Your father taught you this … this cure?”

  “My father has his specialty, I have mine. We are both great doctors, in our own way.”

  Mother nodded, and I could tell she was impressed but was trying to hide it, which is why she bit her lip and looked down. Doctor Steenwycks watched her, and I almost said yes because I knew that’s what he wanted Mother to say and why he was waiting and I didn’t want him to look at her any longer.

  “I can’t afford to pay you, not all at once,” Mother said.

  I sat down on the floor because Doctor Steenwycks’s chairs reminded me of the ones the men were burning in the streets. Last time the Sons of Liberty marched through the streets, I tried to explain that the figures they held aloft were not really men, but bundles of straw that would never burn like people. Straw burns bright and quick, and once the fire fades, the black dust makes your insides dark and sore so that even breathing hurts. The Sons only swept me along to the docks, where they threatened to burn stamps in addition to their straw governors, and I thought about my ax and wished I’d brought it with me so that I could chop some of the dock posts down and bring them home to Mother.

  “You drill a small hole in the skull,” the doctor was saying, “an acorn-sized hole.”

  “Won’t the bone shatter?”

  “No, no.”

  Doctor Steenwycks’s parlor had striped paper on the walls, and gold-framed mirrors hung on every side so that we appeared inside the walls: Mother in her mourning black and fancy hat, Doctor Steenwycks, and me, tremendous me, with my back to the others, peering into one mirror while trying to catch myself in another through the corner of one eye. I still believe that if I’d done it, seen myself in two places at one time, I would have disappeared. I would have joined my father in the place behind the glass, where I’d be seen, as I saw my father, only in the thick lines of my nose or in the mossy brown color of my hair. Mother would have nothing if I disappeared. It was selfish of me to try.

  “Next week,” Mother said. “I can bring him next week.”

  Both Mother and Doctor Steenwycks stood, and in the mirror I could see them staring down at me. The room was large and the ceiling high, and for a moment I couldn’t move. I’d remain forever in this one grand room of Doctor Steenwycks’s grand house, which smelled sweet like honeysuckle and old like the docks.

  “You take care of your mother now.” Doctor Steenwycks extended an arm to help me rise, but when I turned from the mirror to take his hand, he’d moved it to the other side. He was backward, like everything since Father died and cart seventeen stopped arriving for my chopped kindling because the British were bad people. Perhaps the king’s soldiers burned their furniture, too, though the only time I’d seen polished wood chairs in flames, the furniture had been stolen. If Mother and I had chairs like Doctor Steenwycks’s, I think we would have preferred the cold to burning them.

  I REMEMBER THE WEEK before my operation because everyone was angry. Miss Willett yelled at her sister because the milk had soured; her sister yelled back because she’d been robbed in the street and lost a dozen eggs and two pounds of butter; Mother complained that the neighbors had ceased to care for her and her plight; the Sons of Liberty rioted in front of the mayor’s house; and the British hauled cannons from their ships to our streets, which they dragged to the walls of Fort George. Since I no longer worked, I walked down to look at the cannons — heavy, like me, only made of dark metal. I would have touched them, but as soon as I neared, the soldiers ordered me away.

  The moon was growing smaller each night, and I was angry, too. I wanted to be cured. I lay on my sleeping mat and imagined Miss Willett. In her long brown dress she danced beside me, only this time, instead of patting my back, she kissed me as I’ve seen Mother and Father kiss. Miss Willett was there when I closed my eyes, when I opened them, when I woke, when I dreamed. Doctor Steenwycks had promised to make me a man Miss Willett might love, and when I saw her outside — hanging laundry or carrying an ordure tub to dump in the river at night — I stared. I saw her hips move and imagined the skin under homespun fabric. I imagined the undergarments I’d seen on her line. I watched her, and Mother saw me watching and told me I’d best go pray to God for forgiveness, and I was angry, but all I could do was drink a bowl of soap water hoping to cleanse my soul.

  I spoke with her only once that week, as she was folding bed linens into the basket she’d used for as long as I remembered. Mother tells me I have no memory, that things change and I don’t even notice, but I’m certain that Miss Willett’s basket is the same one she brought over to our house the day I was born, filled with fresh apples she’d picked that weekend.

  “How is your mother?” she said.

  She was wearing black, too, and I thought she might be mourning Father, but she explained that her brother had died, that’s why both she and her sister dressed in dark colors. He’d passed quietly in his sleep. Sixty-five to the day, she said, and healthy till he closed his eyes and began to dream. “It’s dreams that kill us,” she said. “And dreams that keep us alive.”

  I nodded, because I was pleased by her smile and couldn’t think of anything beyond the line of her chin, which reminded me of a perfect log — rounded and firm.

  Sunday, the minister spoke about loyalty — to our country, our God, and our king. I counted fifty-six women, fifty men, and three dozen children attending, along with seven odd persons: girls who had breasts, boys who had men’s bodies, and one child who might be either boy or girl. I found the last most troublesome. When the minister asked us to dwell upon the things we held dear, I watched the boy-girl hoping it might become clear — or rather that it might be neither male nor female but something special, like dog or pig or cart horse. Mother cried, and I took her hand. When she prayed, she asked God to make me sane, to guide Father to heaven, and to give her strength in these dark times.

  After church, she scolded me for staring. It wasn’t proper for a man my age to be looking at children, especially girls.

  “Lubbert,” she said. “I need you to help me.”

  I reached for her hand, but she pulled it away and I saw she was trembling. The wind slapped us both, and I wished Father were there to put his arm around her. I stood straight as I could, though my shoulders rolled forward. I stared at the ground. Cobblestones passed, forty-seven, before we turned right and the streets became dirt again.

  At our doorstep, Mother told me she prayed to God every day that I would get better. I nodded, though I was watching Miss Willett, who was tending to her Indian herbs. She’d explained them all to me many times, one for the stomach, one the head, one the throat. All of them had to do with health, though she told me she liked to flavor soup with cat’s foot and roast meat with master wort.

  Mother took some parsley, which she baked into johnnycakes that night. We sat side by side on the floor and devoured them one at a time. We finished them all, even without Father’s help.

  MOTHER GAVE DOCTOR STEENWYCKS a sugar cake, and she wore a new hat — a bright blue one that match
ed her eyes — the day she brought me to him. I knew the way to the doctor’s house and wanted to go alone, but I had trouble explaining, as I always do, and so we went together, she holding my hand. I’d washed my neck and behind my ears, and my skin was still rough where bits of soap adhered. I’d looked for Miss Willett before we left, but she’d not yet risen, or had risen and already left.

  Doctor Steenwycks greeted us at the front door. He held a metal can in one hand, which he said he’d used to water the flowers. I looked at all the flower beds across the front porch, but I saw nothing blooming. Not the season for it, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t see the old doctor or the Negro girl, but I looked for them, too.

  The doctor smiled his horrible red smile and asked Mother to wait in the sitting room while he performed the operation. Mother refused, and so the three of us prepared for my sanity. I sat in one of the chairs this time, Doctor Steenwycks stood over me, and Mother knelt on the floor by my side, her head bent in prayer. She had not removed her hat, and it troubled me, a giant blue eye regarding me without expression. Or perhaps it had expression, but I didn’t care for it: a spiral of blue wrapped in ribbon pulled tightly.

  “Beneath this surface is the cranial vault,” the doctor said. He’d shaved my hair with a straight razor and was running his fingers over my head. I found them comforting, warming. He had soft skin that smelled of lavender oils — more like Mother’s than Father’s, though Mother never wore perfume. “Do you want to feel?”

  “No,” Mother said. “Just remove the obstruction.”

  He showed me his surgical instrument — an obsidian knife he promised could cut through my bones. Again I thought of my ax, though I didn’t care for the thought of the doctor touching it. I watched him in the mirror on the far wall. He looked bigger than me, though I outweighed him by at least three stone, and he fussed over my scalp just as the milliners fussed over wooden heads with felt and tulle.