The White Body of Evening

by A L McCann

  By the time she found the stationer’s store, which she presumed to be the bookshop the doctor had mentioned, she was feeling a bit light-headed. She looked around the collection of writing materials, stamps and magazines that cluttered the shelves of the dingy shop. A thin, middle-aged woman with yellowish skin appeared at the counter from behind a black curtain, looking as if she’d rather not be disturbed by customers.

  “Can I help you, dear?”

  “I’m after something by Dr Charles Winton,”Anna said.

  “Winton?” the woman said, turning the name over in her memory. “You probably mean Dr W. In that case you’d better follow me.”

  She led Anna back through the curtain into a small parlour area lined with bookshelves. A short, pudgy man sat in a corner smoking a cigar, reading Zola’s Thérèse Raquin. He nodded indifferently at Anna as the woman gestured towards a shelf of thin volumes.

  “Here are our syphilographers,” she said without the faintest trace of irony in her voice.

  Anna read the titles: Morbid Anatomy and the Generative System, Syphilis and its Diffusion Popularly Considered, Satyriasis: Causes and Cures, Syphilitic Madness and the Modern City. She opened one of the books and studied the sketches of diseased genitalia blossoming with bright red pustules. She put the book back and took another: Sexual Pathology by Dr W. Upon opening it she tried not to dwell on the sketches and photographs that shimmered before her. Her hand trembled as she put it back on the shelf, and walked out into the front of the shop. As she left she thought she could hear laughter coming from behind the black curtain. “Not for you then, love?” the woman said. In a moment she was out on the street again, her heart racing and her head reeling. She felt a hand catch her by the arm.

  “Anna,” a man’s voice said solicitously. It was Dr Winton. She didn’t look at him but saw him standing beside her, reflected in the window of the stationer’s shop. He gently led her back inside and sat her down in a chair by the counter.

  “You look flustered,” he said. “Quite normal for expecting mothers.”

  “You followed me,” she replied coldly.

  “I’m sorry, Anna. It was not my intention to offend.”

  He seemed at a loss, grasping for an explanation that eluded him. The woman appeared again from behind the curtain, took a look at the doctor and quickly withdrew.

  “Why don’t I call you a cab?” Dr Winton said.

  “No, thank you.” She regained her composure and stood up, leaving the shop for the second time.

  She walked swiftly back onto Collins Street and then, not wanting to wait for the doctor to reappear, continued towards Spencer Street Station, looking over her shoulder every few paces until she was sure that he wasn’t following her.

  What was she afraid of? She hurried her step, as if in doing so she could avoid the question. She understood just how effortlessly he had compromised her and shuddered at how easily she’d been drawn in. She could never tell Albert. How could she without implicating herself? It was the kind of thing that would simply widen the gap between them. She started sobbing, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her blouse, and kept moving through the din of the afternoon.

  Nearing Spencer Street, she thought she’d take a ferry back over the river to South Melbourne, but as she approached the Collins Street Police Station she could see a crowd gathering outside and noticed that the haphazard movement of people along the pavement beside her had become a steady flow moving towards the same point.

  “What’s going on?” she asked the woman marching along purposefully next to her.

  “Ain’t you heard, then?” the woman replied.”They’ve just got that Howard fellow, what strangled that poor girl in his cellar.”

  “And what do all these people want with him?” she asked.

  “I reckon they’re going to give him what for.”

  A little way ahead people were spilling onto the road. Quite mindlessly, she let herself drift along with the throng. Someone near the door to the building yelled something inaudible that kindled the fury of the mob. As the hint of violence rippled out through the crowd, people pressed harder against the narrow bluestone entrance. There were shouts of rage and the muffled sounds of breaking glass as the police attempted to hold the angry mob at bay. Anna moved to the opposite side of the street, looking on with both wonder and horror. Next to her, two elderly women were holding banners that read “An Eye for an Eye” and “A Tooth for a Tooth”.

  “I hope he gets what’s coming to him,” one of them said, leaning close to Anna.

  The two old women had leathery, weatherworn skin. Anna imagined a pair of ancient vultures lingering over the scene of some public catastrophe, croaking the verdict of a terrible, unforgiving law. For a moment the image in her mind obscured the horror of the murder itself.

  “I only hope the man will have a fair trial,” Anna said.

  “What’s got into you? Don’t pity the bugger. Makes me sick the thought of it, what he done with the body.”

  “Molested the corpse,” the other woman said vindictively, as if she would have liked to see the same thing happen to Anna.”The horrid little pervert!”

  The word “pervert” made Anna think of the doctor’s book. She saw the golden claw wrapped around its turquoise orb. An instant later she pictured Albert reading about the murder the evening after the doctor had put stitches in Hamish’s hand. This confluence haunted her, but its logic, so strongly intuited, also eluded her grasp. She felt as if she were trying to pursue the pattern of a dream that had once seemed perfectly plausible, but that upon waking had unravelled itself into a confused and scattered array of fragments, impressions and insinuations that appeared like blurs of light or shapes obscured in the shadows.

  She continued to Spencer Street, pushing against the bodies rushing past her in the direction of the police station, and then turned towards the river. A fishmonger had littered the pavement and gutter with tiny pieces of offal and bone that stank in the hot sun. Before her, the river trembled yellow and brown, and as the ferry groaned across it she thought she could hear the cries of a delirious mob venting its rage in an atrocious act of collective retribution, hacking away at the body of the prisoner until it was an unrecognisable mass of bleeding limbs and the street a sickening shambles.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As Anna grew larger in the final months of her pregnancy, Albert began to hope that the birth of the child would help him effect a positive change of outlook. Anna held his hand on her belly as the child kicked and turned inside her, but he felt the little rumblings with a sense of confusion that fell well short of her own enthusiasm.

  He sat silently next to her, watching her smile as she rested her hand on her stomach.

  “It’s wonderful,” she said to herself.

  Something in the ease of her manner grated on him. She seemed oblivious to him, unaware of just how much he struggled to keep himself together for the sake of the child.

  He stood up and straightened his jacket. “I’m going to be late,” he said.

  She didn’t say anything. She just smiled, or tried to, as he hurried away from her.

  It was a relief to leave the house in the morning. Albert couldn’t wait to exchange the stench of damp for the fresh air of the bay. But as he got closer to work, bumping along through the city with other clerks and shop assistants, all worn out even before the day had really begun, he felt himself tensing up again.

  He hated Citizen’s Insurance. The tedium of it had eaten into him, leaving him bitter and anxious. He had even begun to fall out with Sid Packard as he showed his increasing impatience. The daily routine of checking accounts, balancing books, calculating bills and issuing letters of payment made him ill with its banality. He couldn’t conceal his temper. Sid tried to tolerate this as much as possible, sensing that Albert was not himself, but when he muttered something insulting to Rodney O’Dell, the young nephew of a co-owner, Sid upbraided him and told him to display a healthier attitude. Albert turned the w
ord “healthier” over in his mind for the rest of the day, wondering exactly what it might mean to display a healthy attitude to work so utterly meaningless.

  His hands trembled as he typed up another letter of request. His fingers hit the keys with unusual force. Finally, at the end of his tether, he bashed the machine with his fists until the letterhead was an incomprehensible mass of inkblots and lacerations. In a blind rage he took a pencil off the desk and slammed it down into the open palm of his hand. The shock of it, and the stinging pain, returned him to his senses. He gazed numbly at the small, graphite-tinged puncture mark in the skin, clenched his hand around a crumpled piece of newspaper and walked into the bathroom to wash the wound.

  After that Albert forced himself to think about the child more insistently. It was an exercise in self-discipline. He’d have to keep his head down, for a while at least. He knew how difficult things could get if he lost his job. All year the streets of South Melbourne had seen groups of unemployed men loitering around the factories and workshops, or making their way to the Sandridge wharves, on the off-chance of finding work. He read newspaper articles daily about the destitute of the city, and the Benevolent Ladies Society talked up a city–wide suicide mania, after an insolvent had secreted himself away in a Fitzroy boarding house to blow a hole through his brain in peace. At the back of Albert’s mind were desperate schemes, like joining Lane’s New Australia expedition and shipping off to Paraguay, or moving up north where they still had gold.

  Of course Anna would never be in it, and with the house and all they wouldn’t be badly off as long as he could stay in work. He told himself this constantly, rehearsing the conditions of the minimal form of sanity that would let him shuffle along the surfaces of life without stumbling too heavily. He swallowed his pride and apologised to Sid who, harbouring a natural affection for Albert, patted him on the back and suggested that they have a drink after work.

  Albert also apologised to the co-owner’s nephew, claiming that he was having some trouble at home. He said this so genuinely that it surprised him. But wasn’t that the truth? While he could tell himself that he loved Anna, after a manner, he was also remote from her, unable to satisfy himself with her, unable to bend her in the way that he secretly craved. Something lurked within him. A clammy, shapeless thing that shifted suddenly out of its repulsive slouch according to its own primitive needs. When Albert felt it move he cowered from himself. It was always there, at the bottom of him, waiting to stir, waiting to grip him.

  “You are suffering from an instinctual deviation,” Dr Winton had told him. It was shortly after the debacle of the wedding night. He had visited the doctor at his rooms in St Vincent Place, complaining of lethargy and weariness. All he was looking for was a tonic or some pills, something to pick him up a bit.

  Winton looked at him, folding his hands over his knee. “Tell me what’s wrong, Albert,” he said. “I can call you Albert, can’t I?”

  Albert fumbled for an answer. He said he had trouble concentrating, tired easily and felt frustrated. Sometimes he felt himself trembling.

  Winton exhaled through his nose and nodded. “What about your private life?” he asked. “Recently married, I understand.”

  “Yes,”Albert said.

  “Tell me what it’s like for you, and your wife. Anna, isn’t it? I knew her aunt.”

  Albert pushed out his lower lip, then quickly sucked it in. The questions kept coming. They were intrusive and humiliating, but the doctor’s authority held him there and impelled him to answer. Albert suddenly felt as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him.

  “Have you ever desired a man?” the doctor asked.

  “No,”Albert replied.

  “Do you associate sexual pleasure with violence?”

  “No,” he replied again.

  “But you have visited prostitutes?”

  He didn’t answer, feeling as if he had been backed into a corner. He tried to explain to himself what exactly had happened on the night of his wedding. They had only talked, but Angelique’s voice lingered with him more powerfully than any physical sensation he’d known.

  “You are aware that syphilis is a disease that can be brought back and spread through the home?” Winton looked into his eyes accusingly.

  Albert sat silently, trying to avoid the doctor’s stare as if he were a criminal awaiting judgement.

  “Your wife is a beautiful woman, Albert,” Winton said. “Any man would desire her.”

  Albert already hated him. Winton seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in articulating his diagnosis and explaining the necessity of self-restraint. “Instinctual deviation.” The phrase filled Albert with guilt.

  And then there was that incident in the street, when Winton had almost let things slip in front of Anna. He might have to kill the doctor, Albert thought. He could wring his neck or crush his forehead, or beat him to a pulp with his own gold-handled walking cane.

  In such thoughts he found a perpetual nightmare weaving through the monotony of his daily life. Lying in bed, thinking about what Winton had said to him, Albert was afraid of his own rage, his own propensity for violence, the secret life seething within him. For a long time he couldn’t close his eyes. He felt sullied by the doctor’s verdict, accused by the strangeness he felt beside his pregnant wife. He listened to the rhythm of her breathing, sensed the darkness and the creaking of the house descend upon him. For hours they pressed closer and closer and he retreated further and further into himself until, finally, he slipped away into an abyss where the burdens of consciousness and guilt faded, and the darkness came alive with the wanton voices of the fallen and the lost. Every night he returned to this prehistoric dung-pit, a wilderness of bones and seashells and gaunt skeletal bodies languishing outside the city walls. This was his home, his resting place. He was an outcast, a stranger, a shadow.

  In May 1892, Anna gave birth to a son. To see such raw, helpless life convinced Albert that his place was out in the world fulfilling his function as a breadwinner, and for a moment it seemed as if the mantle of responsibility had fallen so squarely on his shoulders that there was no time for anything else. For the first few weeks after the birth he doggedly went off to the city offices of Citizen’s Insurance in the morning and returned promptly at 5.30 p.m. to take care of the household chores. The simple realities of the situation had a gravity about them that he found comforting and distracting.

  Slowly Anna’s body resumed its usual litheness and her breasts became softer. But by then there was Paul to compete for her attention as well. In the evening Albert sat on the couch and read the Bulletin or the Boomerang, trying to distract himself, while Anna nursed the baby and chanted endearments in childish German. The sound of the language rankled.

  He noticed that Anna was speaking more German than English, and began to feel marginalised by the bond, codified in another tongue, between the mother and the baby. He wondered what she was saying about him, wondered whether he was being betrayed by the words he couldn’t understand. Exacerbating this was the constant presence in the house of Hamish McDermott, the child from next door. Since the day Anna had bandaged his hand and called him Liebchen, the child had developed a fascination with her that now, as he was old enough to walk about himself, had him constantly appearing at the front door or sitting attentively on the living room floor while Anna breastfed Paul. With both his parents often working, Anna had agreed to mind the child during the day and in the process had started teaching him her parents’ tongue, which he took up with all the alacrity that children have for new languages. Hamish had acquired a smattering of German from Anna and was now trying to communicate with the baby using a rudimentary German vocabulary. Albert soon felt more alone than ever, and imagined that he’d have to tear this remote language out of his wife’s mouth before she could truly be his.

  One evening he met his brother Robert at the Limerick Arms and brought him home to see his new nephew. When they arrived, Anna was in the living room with Paul and Hamish rehearsing
vowel sounds as if she were conducting an actual classroom, gradually shaping her lips and tongue into words which Hamish repeated to her obediently.

  “Bald ein Blümchen, bald ein Stein, bald erfüllt ein Vögelein dich mit innigem Entzücken.”

  The child mimicked this almost perfectly. Albert stood at the door, dumbfounded.

  “Shouldn’t Hamish be getting home?” he said.

  “Sarah said she’d come by when she gets home from work,”Anna replied.

  “But she’s already home. The light is on. Hamish, why don’t you run and see if Mummy is home already?”

  The child scooted out into the street as Albert assumed command of his living room, leading Robert, who looked a bit sheepish, inside.

  “We hear nothing but German these days,” Albert said by way of apology to his brother.

  “Well, there’s no harm in that,” Robert said.

  “Of course not,” said Albert soberly.

  Robert stayed for dinner and after Paul had fallen asleep the three adults had a supper of corned beef and potato salad which Anna had prepared that afternoon. Robert was a writer at the Melburnian, a weekly publication that blended factual reportage, trivia and society gossip, so their discussion meandered around the news of the day. But Robert was anxious not to let his younger brother feel overshadowed, and constantly returned the conversation to the insurance firm, the baby or something calculated to draw Albert out a bit. Anna was relieved that Robert had come. She knew that Albert was more likely to be amicable in company. As if the presence of a third person formed a liberating breach in the usual routine of the evening, Albert spoke easily and with a degree of good humour. For a moment she felt as if things were quite normal.

  “Rob, tell Anna about that forgery,” he said to his brother as he poured three glasses of warm beer.