The Secret Life of the Panda

by Nick Jackson

  “They’ve made bonfires of all the books in the city except for bibles!” Regula wiped her mouth with her lace cuff and stifled a belch. “What do you think to that?”

  “Not quite all the books,” Jan said as he reached for a piece of bread. “I have my library.”

  “You and your books!” Regula snorted. “As if anyone cared!”

  “It may soon be more than books they’ll be burning,” he said. “Perhaps they’ll feel inclined to take revenge for the persecution of their religion and see fit to put to the stake a few Protestant souls.”

  “You’re trying to frighten me, I know.” She mumbled the words, as she continued to stuff the pale slices of veal into her mouth. “But still it’s a pity you didn’t dispose of those books while you had the chance. They might have paid for some of the repairs we need to make.”

  “I dare say.” He watched the maid’s busy hands and inhaled her smell of apple peelings.

  Gesina brushed together a handful of crumbs and took away the soup tureen. Her strong round arms moved carefully about the table: placing dishes, arranging a piece of fruit. She smiled faintly at the dishes and cups and the tableware gleamed back at her. She herself had the solidity of a crafted object, the swelling contours of an earthenware jug. Her big soft cheeks gleamed with satisfaction in the placid moon of her face.

  It was her usefulness that he admired. If only he could have done something useful himself. There were times when he regretted his inability to engage with the business of life. At such times he sensed the beating of a pulse, a concealed core of meaning to life which he had failed to grasp and wondered vaguely whether there might be a sacrifice or a gesture he could make to atone for his past failures.

  *

  12th November 1535

  Dear Balthasar

  Thank you for your gift of money. We fare quite well, though Regula complains at the poor quality of the food we can get. “More rind than cheese” she says. I daresay when she is hungry she’ll eat it. The city has been declared “The True Kingdom of God”—all property is henceforth to be held in common and I’ve heard that some are sharing their wives as well as their bacon. I begin to wonder whether we are indeed isolated now that the roads are all closed.

  Your brother, Jan

  *

  Jan moaned in his sleep and twisted from side to side in his sweated sheets. He dreamed he was picking his way across a landscape charred by fire—a fire that flared up in the distance, intensely red against the sky. He’d thought he knew where he was going but he was afraid he had lost his way. It grew hotter and hotter, a blast of foul heat issued from the mouth of a cave. A human figure white as bone, with the head of a whiskered bird, lurched towards him and opened its beak. The eyes like molten glass reflected the flames of the still burning city.

  “Where are you going?” said the man-bird.

  Jan knew that if he could not tell the creature his destination, then the man-bird would tear out his heart. But, though the name was on the tip of his tongue, he couldn’t speak it. Then his mind became blank. He could only stare at the tattered edges of the cave as they flapped in the foetid breeze. It was a soft-mouthed cave, lined with the smooth edges of decay. The hole was well reamed; it had sucked down many souls.

  A hot wind whistled out of it with the cloying sweetness of carrion. Jan teetered on the brink of the blackness, on the glistening rim of this maw, his feet skidding on the slimy lip. Some part of him smiled at his dilemma. There was an intoxicating warmth inside, so easy to slip into, and end the prickling doubts.

  A woman picked her way towards him through the burning debris. She beckoned him with a bony finger. She had the face of one of the women he had seen labouring in the potato fields, as black and wrinkled as a pickled truffle. Her eyes, large and aqueous, were shot with threads of crimson; the pupils reflected a night without stars.

  “I’m dead,” she said. “We’re all dead.”

  “Not I,” pleaded Jan.

  “Not dead, eh?” She began to laugh, a lurching creaking laugh.

  “What has happened to the city?”

  “Burning,” she said, “all burning to ashes.”

  The thud of the nightmare or the throb of blood was in his ears—the voices still rang in his head—yet slowly the fear ebbed and the grey morning became real. The cold nipped at the lobes of his ears. A smell of burning was in Jan’s nostrils, but it was only the maid raking out the ashes of the fire in his dressing room. He watched through half-opened eyes: the way she had rolled up the sleeves of her dress, the haze of golden hairs escaping from her cap. She turned and her cheeks caught a glimmer of rosy light from the rising sun. He watched her haunches swinging from side to side as she polished the tiles.

  He put one foot out of bed, his leg tensing with the chill. Slowly he straightened up and edged towards the kneeling figure busy with the dustpan.

  “Ah, Gesina!” he croaked, his voice clogged with phlegm.

  The shovel clattered on the hearth as the maid stumbled to her feet. “I should’ve closed the door.”

  “It doesn’t matter; I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Ask, me?”

  “Yes, I have a commission, something I’d like you to do for me; a very important thing…”

  “Important?” Her big hands hung down, the swollen knuckles like the tuberous roots of a plant, and her lips worked silently.

  “My manuscripts must be taken to Amsterdam and delivered to my brother. I’ll make sure that Balthasar pays you for your trouble. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s my life’s work, you understand?” There was silence, except for the buzzing of a fly on the window ledge. “I think, after all we’ve done for you, Gesina, that a little gratitude…” Jan captured the fly between thumb and forefinger and it struggled there, a tiny brittle thing. “I’ve only to tell Regula about that boyfriend of yours…” he said glancing at her belly. He released the insect and it flew to the top of the window and buzzed there in a trivial rage.

  Gesina nodded. He could see she was anxious to get back to her scrubbing and polishing. The door closed silently behind her and he sat down on his bed to pull on a pair of breeches and begin the ordeal of the day that was dawning in a blaze of red.

  Jan brushed his hair and examined the yellowed whites of his eyes. He was shocked by the haggard look of his cheeks and the deeply gouged lines around his eyes. He could have been looking at a portrait of his father instead of staring into the steely depths of a mirror.

  *

  1st December 1535

  My dear Jan

  Are you sure that there is now no possibility of leaving Münster? A family arrived only the other week, smuggled out somehow. I have a contact who may be able to help. His name is Matthias Bamberg. He may be able to get a safe passage—for one at least. Regula, perhaps, should come here for safety. There is no need for her to suffer.

  Your brother Balthasar

  *

  On the morning that the last of the flour was used up, Gesina, who’d been out on an errand, returned to say that there was a dead man outside in the street. Jan found the body of a man, a Professor from the Anatomical Institute, slumped in a corner where he’d crawled. The russet and brown of clotted blood was caked on his shirt and breeches. There was a deep wound on his neck that gaped like a second toothless mouth. Jan did not peer too closely at the face or look too deeply into the clouded eyes in case the expression returned to him in a nightmare. The man’s lips were flecked with spots of blood where he had breathed and coughed his last. He still had a full purse at his belt.

  *

  “Boiled onions! That’s all Gesina says is for sale. I have a mind to go myself to the market and see whether or not she’s lying.” Regula banged down her knife and glared at her husband. “No-one pays any attention to what I say.”

  “Oh, I was listening, my little dumpling. I was just calculating the cost of the repairs to the doors when the rabble breaks th
em down. Do you not know that the Bishop’s army has encircled the city and shut off supplies of food? They mean to starve out the Anabaptists and the rest of us will suffer along with them.”

  “Don’t talk to me of those people! If it were not for the house, I would pack up tomorrow.” Regula snapped a greasy thumb and forefinger at her husband.

  Jan bit down carefully on a dry crust of bread. “It may be a little late for that,” he added, glancing round at Gesina who had entered silently.

  “What does she want?” said Regula, “I should not be sorry to see the back of her. She is always lurking in corners.”

  “What is it then, Gesina?”

  “There’s a man wanting food and the cook wants to know what she should give him.”

  “Tell her we’ve little enough for our own needs,” said Regula extracting a sliver of onion from between her teeth, “and there is nothing for beggars.”

  “But he … he demands … Because everything, he says, is now common property and it’s his right.”

  “Demands? Common property? What does she mean?” Regula appealed to her husband.

  “The Council of Twelve has decreed that all private property is now illegal.”

  “Then we must leave.”

  “It’s too late for that, as I said.”

  “But surely … we’re wealthy. There’s always a way for those with money—you’ve only to write to Balthasar.”

  “He can’t help us now.” Jan should have sketched the expression on his wife’s face—it would have cheered him in his darker moments.

  *

  15th December 1535

  Dear Balthasar

  I was called to a meeting with the Apostles. What do you think? They profess a desire for knowledge. Those who ordered the burning of all the books now call for a demonstration of my skill as an anatomist. I should have refused but there is no way to turn down such men…

  They reminded Jan of a huddle of crows: the way they hunched, sharp-eyed in their black rags. Three of the twelve were sitting at dinner. A charred creature lay smashed open on a platter of beaten silver. They scooped out the soft insides.

  “Welcome, Doctor Knyp. You find us at our meal. Do you know why we have asked you to come here?”

  “I expect it’s to do with my religious ideas.” Jan looked at the faces. They appeared so ordinary and spoke so softly, but the way they jabbed with knives, skewering the gobbets of silvery flesh…

  “You don’t believe in our mission? You don’t believe in our war against the godless?”

  Jan shuffled his feet and looked down at the floor which was littered with charred fragments of paper and the broken spines of books. “Münster is a religious city. The people believe…”

  “It shall be swept aside, this false religion. Picture the scene, Doctor Knyp: a harlot riding on a beast, a beast with seven heads. She has tempted the Bishop himself with her beauty; this is false religion. But the day will come when the harlot will be brought down by the very beast she straddles. The beast with seven heads will devour her fleshy parts and will burn her with fire.” Three pairs of black eyes gazed at Jan as if he were the harlot.

  “Take our beliefs as your own and everything shall be given to you. You shall enter the True Kingdom and be freed from your false love.” The Apostle took out a square of linen and began to wipe his mouth. “But you must do one other thing for us. We require you to perform a dissection as a proof that God breathed life into man’s soul. We must show people the crystalline heart of man. For it’s a thing of great beauty, the human heart, is it not? In that way they’ll see that we have knowledge as well as truth on our side. Your findings shall be the basis of our proof. The proof that God created man in his image.”

  Jan watched the flickering shadows of flames. They reminded him of the innocent bonfires of his youth. But now there was an urgency to the spitting and crackling of the fires.

  “And the subject for dissection? It will be a fresh corpse?”

  “Oh, as fresh as may be.” The eldest of them lurched to his feet. Jan caught the whiff of unwashed body—too much sitting over bonfires, lobbing in books. Winkeldorp, the one they called the Inquisitor, bowed to Jan, “Herr Doctor,” he breathed, “do this for us and we’ll do what we can to preserve you from the mob. If they knew of you being here in Münster they’d tear you to shreds.”

  “And your wife, your charming wife, Regula, is it?” said another of the Apostles with a smile, “When will we have the pleasure of meeting her? She’s a famous beauty by all accounts.”

  “She’s very shy, she never leaves the house.”

  “Why so pale, Doctor Knyp? We only wish to speak with her.”

  “You have a maid too, so I hear?”

  “Ah.”

  A sound of breaking glass interrupted them and the Apostles turned as one, their eyes swivelling, reflecting the crimson light from the window. There was a sound of running footsteps in the street and a staccato yelping.

  “The mob is gathering for a lynching,” grumbled Winkeldorp.

  “Why not leave them to it,” said another.

  “Would you have them rampaging about the streets? There will be no respect for any authority, not even for the servants of God.”

  *

  On his return, Jan took refuge in his library. He tried to read his Bible but found he could make no sense of it. He could not control the urge to engross himself in some new object of study. He could not rein in his searching brain. Even when he was supposed to be contemplating the Holy Spirit, he was distracted by the physical world, by his obsession with the study of nature.

  In a drop of water he found a creature so fascinating that he broke his spiritual resolve: the larvae of a simple animal—a species of water flea. It seemed a miracle of engineering. The fan-shaped respiratory tubes of the larvae recalled the jewelled cogs of a pocket watch, so regular in their contraction and expansion, that they could mark the intervals of time.

  While every tavern in the city was discussing the threat of a siege, Jan Knyp stooped over a drop of pond water, observing, under his lens, a tiny water flea as it spun on its axis through the water. The lurid stories of the soldiers, as they burned and pillaged their way beyond the city’s defences, seemed but ghostly reflections of another world.

  Then the maid, one morning, as she tidied his table when he was having breakfast, upset the glass containers in which his specimens lived. Their world was destroyed at a stroke.

  “It’s like everything. Subject to a greater force,” he murmured, as he watched Gesina picking up the pieces of glass. “We think we are safe in our little world. Then, with no warning, all meaning is obliterated. What a precarious existence is the life of man. None of us is more secure than the tiny water flea.”

  The maid looked at him, one quick scared glance as she stepped back, glass crunching under her heels.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” he continued and found himself laughing. He felt very like a man on a small boat in a wide swift river, spinning in the middle of a furious current, drawing ever nearer to the edge of the invisible cascade. His father would have said he was maudlin—that he was too well protected from the realities of life, that nothing touched him. When the maid returned with a brush and dustpan, he said:

  “Did you know I have a calf with two heads in my cabinet of specimens? You may like to see it sometime.” Because he would have liked to instruct her—or impress her with his knowledge at least.

  But the maid was silent as she swept up the last few fragments of glass.

  “I have lived a harmless existence,” he said, moving the spoon languidly in his coffee, “but still I am not entirely blameless for what is happening—none of us is. Perhaps I should have become a surgeon as my father wanted. Perhaps I might have been of some use.”

  “I’ve cleared up the glass. Can I get you anything?” The girl hovered uncertainly by the door unwilling, he noticed, to come any closer.

  “No, Gesina, you can go.”

>   If he’d become a surgeon like his brother, his life might have been better. But the idea of the poor with their hopeless ailments: the malnutrition that turned them toothless at the age of twenty; the rickets, consumption and cholera; their pathetic gratitude for useless treatments and cures, their blind faith in medicine. No, he could not have worked as a common surgeon.

  *

  “He’s gone mad!” the maid told the kitchen servants. “He asked if I’d ever seen a cow with two heads. That’s what happens to men who are shut up with books all day. Those drawings he makes, they make your blood run cold some of them.”

  “I heard of a woman who gave birth to three lizards,” said the kitchen-boy, as he absently peeled the skin from an onion.

  “Oh shut your trap!” said the cook giving him a cuff that sent him sprawling in the hearth.

  *

  20th December 1535

  Dear Balthasar

  We are indebted to you for your gifts and efforts on our behalf. With regard to Herr Bamberg, Regula insists that she will stay with me. She feels it to be her wifely duty and, much as I have tried, I cannot dissuade her from this decision. In her stead I am sending a young girl with Herr Bamberg. She’s a girl of good family—she can cook and embroider. Promise me that you’ll take care of her education and find her a good husband.

  I’m entrusting her with the bulk of my manuscripts and anatomical studies…

  *

  Jan stood at the window that faced the main square. Red light flickered against the sky. The clouds were illuminated from below by the unsettling glow of burning buildings. He thought he saw knots of people moving in the shadows, haltingly, seeking the shelter of doorways. The Market Square was deserted except for abandoned tumbrels and the skeletons of trees where crows perched.