What’s Bred in the Bone tct-2

by Robertson Davies

  “Zadok—Zadok, promise me you won’t tell. They’d be after me, and Aunt would want me to have lessons, and I don’t want that yet. I have to find my own way first, you see. Harry Furniss says so; find your own way, and then let anybody teach you that can, but hang on to your own way.”

  “Here’s Madame Thibodeau—ah, ye little scallawag—look at the way you’ve made her great bum hang off both sides of the chair. She’d have you killed if she ever saw that!”

  “But that’s it, Zadok! I’ve got to learn to see what’s in front of my nose. That’s what Harry Furniss says; most people don’t see what’s in front of their nose. They just see what they think they ought to see.”

  “True enough, Frankie, and don’t I know that in my own art; you just have to encourage people to see what they think they ought to see. But come along, now. I’ve got to get you home, and the horse’ll be gettin’ cold.”

  On the way back to St. Kilda, Francis pleaded to know what Zadok was going to do with Old McAllister. If it was art of any kind, hadn’t he the right of a fellow-artist to know? So at last it was clapped up between them that right after he had his supper Francis was to join Zadok again, because Aunt had to go out to a meeting at St. Bonaventura’s—something about the poor and needy—and he would see Zadok at his art, and Zadok would get him home in time to slip into his bed so that nobody, not even Miss Victoria Cameron, would suspect that he had been out.

  In the barn Zadok’s first care was to unload the six boxes which remained in the death-cart, and lock them in an unused stall in the stables.

  “What is that, Zadok?”

  “Oh, it’s just some stuff your grandfather gets from a trusted man in Quebec. Mr. Devinney gets a little slice for the use of the cart. It’s a sideline of his business that we never discuss. Everybody has his secret, Frankie. You have yours; Mr. Devinney has his.”And as he heaved the last case into the stall, Francis thought he heard Zadok say, “And I have mine.”

  I question whether it was a good thing to steer a boy of thirteen into an undertaking parlour that is run by a bootlegger, said the Lesser Zadkiel.

  –I don’t, said the Daimon Maimas. He had been old-womaned far too much by Aunt. He needed a man in his life, and where was the Wooden Soldier? Saving the Empire across the ocean. And his mother was being wonderful to wounded soldiers, but had no time for her son. His grandfather was far too broken to be more than another gentle presence in the boy’s life, though he was very kind, when he thought about it.

  –Grandfather broken?

  –The Senator never got over the destruction of his idol. When Mary-Jacohine got into trouble and had to be married off to the likeliest comer—and a Protestant at that—he never quite believed in anything again. He was a strong man in business and in politics, but those are external things: only a fool gives his soul to them. The pith had been scooped out of him. Look at Marie-Louise: an aging, fat gambler. Look at Mary-Ben: she idolized her brother but she never understood more than half of him. Zadok was the strongest man around the place, as you well know.

  –A rogue, my dear colleague. A rogue.

  –Very well, but a kindly, decent rogue, in the thick of life and death. I had to work with what was at hand, you know.

  –As you say. I have not had to do your work, so I certainly must not find fault with the way you did it.

  –Quite so. And Zadok was something of an artist, as we’ll see, if you will be so good as to go on with your narrative. By the way, do you know how it comes out?

  –I cannot remember all these lives in detail. Like yourself, I am simply being reminded of the life of Francis Cornish.

  The light in Mr. Devinney’s workroom was like the light in Rembrandt, thought Francis; two mean bulbs, hanging above the narrow, slanted table on which Zadok had now placed the bundle which was all that was left of Old McAllister, a mean old sodbuster. Zadok was scrubbing his hands fiercely with yellow soap at a sink.

  “Cleanliness is essential,” he said. “Respect for the dead, and precaution for the living. You never really know what these people died of. So I’ll just throw around some carbolic, and you keep well in your corner, me dear.”

  Well in his corner, perched on two coffin crates so that he had a good view of the scene, Francis had his notebook and pencil ready.

  Respect for the dead; Zadok was gentle in unwrapping Old McAllister, who had apparently died in his long underwear, a baggy, liver-coloured extra skin. Quickly Zadok ripped the underwear with a curved knife which Francis recognized as a pruning-knife, and soon Old McAllister was naked, an unimpressive sight, but a Golconda for Francis.

  This was something he had never reckoned on. He would be able to draw the nude figure, which even Harry Furmss insisted was the foremost necessity—after seeing what was in front of your eyes—in becoming an artist.

  Old McAllister was balding and scrawny. His face and hands were tanned a deep brown by sixty-seven years of Ottawa Valley weather, but the rest of him was a bluey-white. His legs were like sticks, and his feet fell outward and sideways. Zadok had cut off his underwear because Old McAllister, according to local custom, had been sewed into it for the winter. Francis knew all about that; most of the children in Carlyle Rural were so encased and they stank amazingly.

  “A bath, for a starter,” said Zadok. “First, though, a thorough swilling-out.” With a large squirt he neatly washed out the rectum of the corpse into a bucket. Then, with a dribble from a short hose, and frequent dabblings of carbolic, Zadok washed Old McAllister; the water fell to the cement floor and vanished down a drain. He washed Old McAllister’s hands, with plentiful lathering of yellow soap, and cleaned the nails with his jack-knife.

  “Always a problem, this,” he said to the busily scribbling Francis. “These fellas never clean their nails from Easter to Easter, but they have to have hands like a barber for the viewing. It’s part of the art, you see. At the end they must look as they’d have looked on their wedding-day, or better. Probably better.”

  He shaved Old McAllister with ample lather and hot water. “Lucky I had some experience as a valet,” he said, “but of course no valet could get away with this.” He deftly poked a finger into the corpse’s mouth to push out the hollow cheeks. The scrape of the razor told of the toughness of Old McAllister’s beard. “Never been shaved more than once a week in his life, I don’t suppose,” said Zadok.

  “Now didn’t I have a roll of cotton-wool? For what we call the orifices.”

  The orifices were the ears, the nostrils, and, to Francis’s surprise, the anus; into each a sufficient plug of wool was stuffed. Then a big chunk into the mouth, and before it was closed a large gob of beeswax was popped in and Zadok held the jaws until they were firmly clamped.

  “This is easy enough in a winter funeral,” he said, “but in summer it’s another thing altogether. I’ve seen funerals where the wax went soft and the mouth opened unexpectedly and you wouldn’t believe the screaming and fainting. But we’ll have none of that with you, old boy, will we?” he said, and gave Old McAllister a friendly pat on the shoulder. “There, now we’ve done the clean-up jobs. Now comes the science. If you feel queer, dear soul, there’s the bucket just by you.”

  Francis did not feel queer. He had got Old McAllister’s right hand—what a hand for knots and lumps! He had got both feet, corns and bunions complete. He was now busy on a full-length, with difficult perspective. That picture that Aunt didn’t like him to linger over in Gems–the Anatomy Lesson, was it called?—lived in his memory and came to his aid. This was great! This was life!

  Zadok had drawn up a machine that sat on a wheeled cart, and looked like a tank with a hose coming out of it, beside his work-table. With a little fleam he lifted a vein in Old McAllister’s arm, inserted a thickish needle that was attached to the hose, and began slowly and watchfully to work a pump-handle on his machine. As he pumped, he sang, in a fine bass, but sotto voce:

  Yes! let me like a soldier fall

  Upon some open plain,


  This breast, expanding for the ball

  To blot out every stain.

  This went on for quite a long time—time enough for Francis to do another drawing, with Zadok’s dark figure standing beside the body. He was proud of his professionalism in roughing in Old McAllister’s privy parts; just six quick lines and a shadow, like Rembrandt. Nothing of the grossness of the boys who drew such things on fences. But of course they were not artists.

  “Here we go for the big one,” said Zadok. Quickly he nicked Old McAllister’s navel, thrust in a larger needle—he called it a trocar—and pumped again. Then, something very delicate, involving the corner of the eye.

  “There, old lad,” he said. “That’ll hold you for a week or two. Now for the real art, Frankie.”

  As he worked, Zadok, always a genial man, became positively merry. “No time to waste; don’t want him to harden on me,” he said, as he seemed to wrestle with Old McAllister, quickly getting him into socks, trousers, and a shirt that had come in a bundle from the farm. “On with your dancing-pumps, gaffer,” he said, as he fitted the huge, misshapen feet into soft kid slippers. “Now, before the collar and tie, the real fancy-work.”

  “Where were you a valet, Zadok?” asked Francis.

  “Oh, before the war—the Boer War, that’s to say—I was a lot o’ things. Footman for a while; very good experience that, for any future job. Then a valet, because in the war I was batman to my young lord; I’d been a footman in his father’s house, and we went into the Army together, you might say, but him as an officer and me as a private, of course. But we were never apart, not really. Keeping a young officer smart in the field, with them rotten Boers popping up everywhere you didn’t expect them, was a job, I can tell you. Do you know them Boers didn’t wear uniforms? Just fought in their farm clothes? You can’t call that war. But I learned to dress a gentleman to look like a gentleman, dead or alive, so I don’t have any trouble with a chap like this.”

  “But where did you learn all that—about the cotton-wool, and the needles and everything?”

  “Always had a turn that way. I remember when I was just a little lad, at my grandfather’s funeral. ‘I want to see Granda, I want to see Granda’ I kept on at my mother. She thought it was love, and very creditable to me, but it was just nosiness. He went by the palsy route, you see, and I was amazed that he’d stopped shaking. I thought it was the undertaker, old Smout, that had stopped him. Of course, Smout was just a Cornish village undertaker; coffin-maker, really; and he didn’t have the scientific advantages of today. By my standards, Granda was just a mess, rigged up in a cheap shroud, his hair all combed the wrong way. But it was my start.

  “Then in the war we had to bury the dead, and in my lot that work was done under a farrier-sergeant who had no training and no ideas, but he wanted it done proper. That was where my talent came to light. There wasn’t much we could do; no embalming, of course, but we could make ‘em look like soldiers of the Queen, poor lads. With a face wound you could put on a decent piece of plaster. I would have got a medal for my work if it hadn’t been for a misunderstanding, for which I bear no grudge, not now. Other outfits copied our methods, but they went too far. There was one bugger did a nasty business in hearts. He was an officer, so his mail wasn’t censored—gentlemen don’t read other gents’ letters, you see—and he would write home, ‘Dear Madam please accept my condolences on the death of your brave son, who fell like a man with the respect of all his regiment. His dying wish was that his heart should return to England and lay in the church where he learned to be a man when a boy. Can deliver said heart to you on my return to England, suitably preserved, at a very moderate fee. Yours, etc.’ Rotten trick, but what mother could resist? God damn him, wherever he is now.

  “Then I got a bit of real pro training in England, and that’s where I picked up all this. Not that I learned the art of make-up in the embalmers’ parlours. Not the real art. I had that off a pal of mine who played minor clowns in the panto at Christmas. Powder. That’s the great secret.”

  Zadok raised a cloud of violet-scented poudre de riz around the head. “That’s the foundation,” he said.

  Old McAllister’s face, which had turned a dark putty shade, was swiftly painted with a wash that left him a light salmon, and over the cheekbones Zadok brushed some dry rouge of a startling crimson. Next he worked on Old McAllister’s mouth, gently massaging the grim, grey lips into an unaccustomed smile: this he touched up with a red salve that a harlot might have though excessive. Then he rapidly massaged some vaseline into the thin hair, and combed it forward.

  “How do you suppose he did his hair—when he did it? No indications, so we’ll give him Old Faithful.” He combed the hair with a left-hand parting, then quitted the right-hand portion over his finger, giving Old McAllister a nifty, almost a dandified air. Quick work with the collar, the necktie; into the waistcoat, draping a huge silver watch-chain, from which the watch had been removed, over the sunken belly. On with the coat. A piece of card on the tip of which some white cambric was sewn was tucked into the breast pocket of the coat (Old McAllister had not used, or possessed, handkerchiefs of his own). The hands were folded on the breast, as if in Christian acceptance, and Old McAllister was a finished work of art.

  Then, further astonishing Francis after an astonishing, rapturous evening, Zadok took Old McAllister’s right hand in his own and shook it cordially. “Godspeed, old man,” said he. Noticing Francis’s astonishment, he said, “I always do that. I’m the last, most personal attendant, you see; the priest is quite another matter. So I always shake the hand, and wish ‘em well. You’d better shake, too, Frankie, as you’ve been here, and drawing pictures, and all.”

  Tentative, but game, Francis shook Old McAllister’s chilly paw.

  “There, old cully, back into the cooler with you, and I’ll deliver you first thing in the morning, in plenty of time for the viewing. And as for you, Frankie my lad, I must get you home and to bed before anybody notices.”

  To Francis’s surprise, Zadok not only took him back to St. Kilda, but came upstairs with him, and after the door had closed on his bedroom went—where? The sound was not of feet going downstairs, but of feet going upstairs, to the third floor, which was Victoria Cameron’s private domain, and to which Francis was forbidden to mount under threat of the severest reprisals, Never, never up there, Francis. So why was Zadok going up there? Another astonishment at the end of an astonishing, enlarging, enlightening day. A memorable day on his journey toward being an artist, a man of the great world of events, like Harry Furniss.

  In the weeks that passed, Francis spent many an enraptured hour in Mr. Devinney’s back room, watching Zadok at work, and sketching for dear life. A variety of subjects came under his view and his pencil. The old predominated, of course, but now and then there was somebody who had, in the prime of life, suffered an accident or an unaccountably severe illness. Once there was a girl of sixteen, whom Francis did not positively know, but whom he had seen in the streets and at the McRory Opera House.

  With female subjects, Zadok’s behaviour was exemplary. As he stripped them on the table, he draped a towel over the pubic region, so that Francis never saw a woman fully naked, much as he wished to do so.

  “Professional discretion,” said Zadok. “No Nosy-Parkering with the ladies. So we always lay a towel over The Particular, you see, dear soul, because no man, professional though he may be, has any call to behold The Particular of any female he deals with in a purely professional capacity.”

  But, oh, how Francis longed to see The Particular, about which he speculated so painfully. What could it be? The very few nudes in Aunt’s collection seemed to have no Particular, or had averted it from the gaze, or put a hand over it. What was The Particular? He put the matter tactfully to Zadok; he was an artist, and ought to know everything about the human body.

  “You must find out your own way, Francis,” said Zadok solemnly; “the buzzem—well, it’s very widely seen and indeed it’s one of the
first things any of us do see, but The Particular is quite another matter.”

  One night in March, as he took Francis to Devinney’s, Zadok seemed depressed. “I don’t care for this, dear lad; don’t care for it at all.”

  What he did not care for, when it was taken out of the cooler, was the body of François Xavier Bouchard, a dwarf tailor, known to Blairlogie’s English-speakers as Bushy.

  His one-storey tailor-shop was a mean building at the top end of Dalhousie Street, and winter and summer Bushy could be seen leaning in the door, waiting for custom. It cannot have been much: sewing on a button or perhaps turning a suit for some thrifty soul, but he seemed to keep bread in his mouth, although, like many tailors, he was shabby in his own dress. He grinned without cease, a dog-like grin that seemed to implore tolerance, respect being beyond his hopes.

  There he lay, on Mr. Devinney’s table, his head huge and his trunk barrel-like, his arms and legs so short that there seemed to be little between shoulder and elbow, elbow and hand, his private parts huge above his tiny legs, although they would not have been excessive on a full-grown man. His head lay at an unusual angle.

  “Hanged himself,” said Zadok. “They found him this morning. Did it two or three days ago, I should guess. Poor, poor little soul. We’ve got to do our best for old F.X., Francis, not that anything can make up for a life like his.”

  The scene which preceded the final scene of Bushy’s life, as Zadok recounted it, was something wholly outside any experience known to Francis, except those terrible quarter-hours in the playground of Carlyle Rural, when boys blew up frogs and tortured cats. This would certainly have reopened the wounds of Jesus.