Dr. Phibes in The Beginning

by William Goldstein

  There was still some popcorn left when the set ended with “It Had to Be You”, one of Phibes’ favorites. He had met Freemen when the sax man had played the London Palladium two years ago but you can imagine his surprise when Freeman stopped at their table to say hello.

  When are you coming back? Phibes asked.

  When we get invited.

  You're always welcome! We can’t get enough of you Yanks!

  Maybe next year Anton. Remember to look us up if we come.

  That I will.

  Most of the audience stayed on for the final set and the tables that emptied out were quickly filled. A party of five were seated next to them. The hostess pulled two tables together to accommodate the newcomers. Their tweed jackets showed them to be academics which, indeed, they were.

  The older gent was a professor out for a night with his students. The brown-haired woman in the argyle sweater was his wife. The younger but not quite as pretty woman visibly enjoyed the attention of the two young men at the table.

  They knocked off the first round of beer and quickly ordered a second; all the while keeping up a rapid-fire conversation about their work project, where they’d just scored a breakthrough. Just as the house lights went dim for the start of the third set, Phibes picked up the term ’haematopoesis’ in their conversation. His quick glance over at their table did not go unnoticed.

  The older man had a shock of vivid black hair that rose up along the rim of his big round head. He spoke rapidly and with great eagerness, his hair bobbling like some shock ellipsis around his sentences which were, despite the surroundings, quite precise.

  Here is a man who knows his work, thought Phibes, and who does not wish to be misunderstood.

  The woman next to him was no fool either. Tall without being gawky, her shoulders were quite voluptuous even in the shapeless sweater she wore, a sign more of the fashions of the times than of her taste.

  Her mouth, her keen eyes showed she was listening to her hubby alright, keeping him on his toes, Phibes thought as he leaned over to introduce himself.

  Phibes? Hmm, you're here to look at our river.

  So they knew him! The wife, too. She was smiling. Very pretty teeth and all. Good lips.

  What do you think of it? The lips asked.

  Flowing smoothly, Dr….?

  Maximov. She smiled.

  Are you visiting?

  Hah! We live here. Practically natives. He turned to his wife, the ellipsis shaking with the shift. How long has it been, 5 - 6 years?

  7, sweetheart. You’ve been too busy to notice.

  And what about you?! Teaching three courses a semester plus the post-docs. The others at their table perked up their ears at Maximov's mention of them.

  Here Phibes realized that the others were still waiting for him to introduce himself.

  Anton Phibes, he said, offering his hand and, with that same simple gesture gaining entry into the latest frontier of cell biology, a field that, 40 years later, will be known as stem cell research.

  The Russian-born Maximov taught anatomy at the University of Chicago, where he was known as a very hard taskmaster. To maintain decorum, he insisted that his students call him ‘Professor’ at all times to which he replied with a ‘Miss’ or ‘Mr.”. Those who survived their doctorate were allowed the more familiar ‘Prof”.

  His wife called him Alex.

  The press called him a pioneer and had coined the term ’unitarian’ for his theory on blood cell formation. ‘Pioneer’ in any other hands is ’Fool’ and those who try to break new ground in any line of endeavor have long odds stacked against them.

  For every Galileo or Picasso there are millions of failures. So much for thinking that you can beat the odds, especially if you don’t have the moxie.

  Alexander Maximov had the moxie, moxie enough to say that both red and white blood cells came from the same simple beginnings. This common precursor he called the ‘stem cell’. The thought that he might be onto something tormented his colleagues no end.

  Bud Freeman came over to their table again after this set. His signature number was last and they’d played it long and hard. Maximov really got into the music, pumping his fist and taking his old lady out onto the dance floor for a spin.

  And did she ever know how to move, leading her Russian bear around like a circus trainer, not that he was a slouch. Far from it! The man kicked up his heels and stomped with the best of them.

  Freeman teased him about his big feet. May have to take out a few tables. Give him enough space, he said with a laugh.

  She’ll keep me close, Maximov boomed, giving his wife a squeeze around her tiny waist.

  She bit his ear to seal the deal just as the waitress brought another round of beer.

  The table plan had changed markedly since the start of the evening. Phibes and the Maximov's were lined up in a row behind their two tables. Two of the post-docs, Eric and Angela, had drifted off. Marc was at the far end of the tables in a tete-a-tete with the dour Miss Josefowicz. But judging from their heads, hers on his shoulder, more than conversation had passed between them.

  Phibes felt a twinge of excitement. The thought that someone was actually warming up to this incessant woman was reward enough for the day he spent in her care.

  Reinvigorated by their dancing, the Maximov's regaled him with some family history. He’d recently changed departments and had to weather the fall-out from that politically risky move. He taught anatomy, which is mostly a fixed science. His reputation as a hard-nose didn’t give his enemies much to go on.

  But his research and the acclaim it garnered him was driving them crazy. Even so, his experiments were so well crafted that their carping never got any traction.

  The heat was rising at the other end of the table where, although Miss Josefowicz was no longer visible, we knew from the undulations in her companion's neck that she was nearby.

  Doesn’t Marc have a seminar tomorrow? Mrs. Maximov observed.

  Just grading papers.

  Hope he doesn’t give them all A's.

  He's a stickler.

  You mean ‘tippler’.

  This is Chicago, my dear. It's why we came here.

  We did nothing of the sort. We came here for your career, Max, and you know it.

  You didn’t do too bad yourself, Professor!

  Two in one family. Tell that to your colleagues!

  They already know it. Makes them love me all the more!

  Maximov‘s sarcasm was engaging. A serious academic is short on ideas. In all Phibes’ dealings with ‘experts’, the ones who were locked into their findings were the most difficult to budge. And that's why the really big ideas - fresh water supply in the rural areas - have to get off the ground before they get bogged down by experts.

  Phibes checked his watch. He had a train to catch at 11 and it was already past 3. If they hurried they could drop off Miss Josefowicz at her apartment and get him back to his hotel for a couple hours sleep. The next train, the Broadway Limited, left Union Station at 2pm but would get him to New York too late to make his ship's connection.

  He’d have to cable the Home Office. American Arrow departed New York on Sunday morning, arriving at Southampton the following Friday. He would miss the Director's Meeting on Wednesday, something he’d never done in his 22 years of service.

  The crowd had thinned out but Miss Josefowicz was nowhere in sight!

  Maximov went up to shake Marc to no avail and was on his way to see the club manager when she emerged from the corridor leading to the powder room.

  Looking fresh as a daisy thanks to some suddenly-acquired mastery of the cosmetic arts - she certainly didn’t have it in her previous life - she took Phibes arm and, after saying their sweet goodbyes to their new friends, were on their way.

  ROOM #4

  The small yellow tag beneath the number read Irgendein Unbekannter (identity unknown). It is a reminder to the Clinic staff that no one knows who is in Room #4.

  What is known is th
at this patient was transferred from the village infirmary in Wilderswill far down the mountainside near the bottom of the valley. That was on March 3rd and here it is the end of May and still no one knows who the patient is, even after two major surgeries, the second of which brought in an eminent American endocrinologist from the Mayo Clinic to consult.

  This pattern, of bringing in prominent consultants from various medical disciplines, would continue throughout the patient's stay.

  The Klingenstein Clinic caters to very sick, very wealthy people. And like everything else in Switzerland, it is very respectful of their privacy. Heads of state, great artists, and industrial magnates go there for treatment. Healing people is the mission of hospitals around the globe and the clinic is very proud of its successes. So proud, in fact, that it will not allow failures to tarnish it. Patients who are beyond help are moved to a nearby monastery to live out their final days.

  This monastery is owned by a venerable clerical institution whose roots go back to the 12th century. It was originally intended to house the bastard offspring of the royal houses of Europe.

  ‘Born in secrecy, live in secrecy, die in secrecy’ is the motto of this gruesome hostelry.

  The secrecy surrounding Room 4's occupant was equally impenetrable, his identity preserved in silence from the moment he was admitted to the day he left.

  This race of bastards, were it ever to be unshackled, would quickly outpace the so-called legitimate population in intellect and initiative. Outcasts have to work twice as hard to gain half as much as their respectable rivals.

  A monthly bank draft deposited in the Clinic's commercial account by an unknown source paid for #4's upkeep. The Clinic in return sent weekly medical reports in code via ticker tape to a secure terminal somewhere near the North Sea.

  The Klingenstein Clinic is situated in a very narrow, very deep valley, the only structure in this remote crease of earth. Looming above its left shoulder is the renowned Jungfrau. Despite its distance, this great wedge casts a long shadow across the valley, darkening its western slope and scouring it of vegetation. The locals avoid this terrain because its few goat trails are too hard on their feet. Mountaineers, drawn to the Alps for their grandeur, dismiss it as being beneath their effort.

  The result is a forlorn and featureless place whose only natural relief is the infamous Reichenbach Falls. This downspout booms across the valley all year round but is loudest in the late spring and summer when the snow melt, helped by the emergent sun, is heaviest. But unlike the lulling flow of streams and rivers, Reichenbach blankets the entire valley with its harsh clamor.

  The Clinic's management have gone to great lengths to mask the din. All the patients’ rooms are lined with cork and music from the string quartet that plays in the auditorium is piped into them via radio tube. The examining rooms are similarly fitted with cork and are windowless, due to their position in the building's interior. Both surgical amphitheatres have large acoustic baffles embedded along their walls and ceilings.

  Even so, Reichenbach's foreboding boom cannot be fully quenched. It is a constant thorn to the Clinic's management, who have gone so far as to recommend moving to another locale - Germany, perhaps. But the French trustees would have none of it.

  Turning off the Falls, an idea that surfaces every few decades, was quickly dismissed as an engineering chimera.

  TAUBE

  It arrived one day, its brown-grey feathers sleek but dirtied by the wind. The date on its capsule was three years old. Carrier pigeons are noted for their dependability but if the date was true, this messenger had been traveling all that time. What or who delayed him remained unanswered.

  The message in his zinc capsule made little sense. PH4 is a chemist's term for ‘acidic’. Lemon juice and vinegar, those common sharpeners of the palate found in every kitchen, are unlikely reasons for this pigeon's mission. So what was important enough to keep him pursuing it for three years?

  ***

  They called him ‘Old Plum’. He really wasn’t that old but the other folks on Maldine Square gave it to him in a neighborly way. The year was 1916 and after two years of war, the English knew that they had to stick together and see this thing through. It would be over in a few months is what they thought in 1914 but it wasn’t. 1915 came and went; and so after two years of war there was nothing to show for all the fighting on the Western Front and the merchant marine were dropping like flies. 800,000...one million…a million and a half tons a month: there was no stopping the U-boats. It was getting so bad that you couldn’t find a loaf of bread on the shelves after eight o’clock in the morning.

  So the Brits pulled together, even the stand-offish crowd on Maldine Square We're all in the same boat they liked to tell themselves and each other. The watchmaker, the notary and his plumpish wife, the accountant who was drunk most of the time, but who always helped the neighbors with their accounts free of charge (even though he was a Jew). And everyone pitched in to help young Widow Symes. Her brats always had a new pair of shoes to wear and their milk delivery was kept up.

  Close-knit the group was and that's why everybody was so surprised when the Bobbies - must’ve been a dozen of them with their clubs held high - stormed into # 9 and pulled out ‘Old Plum’ still in his pyjamas, with both hands locked up and his feet too.

  But the bugger himself wasn’t surprised. He hung his head down atop his belly which was bigger than anyone imagined, probably because he never went out into the street without his Chesterfield on to cover all that blubber around his waistline.

  ‘Old Plum’ liked to tell everyone that he was a farmer. His kitchen table always had a bowl of peaches or pears on it and he carried a sack of fruit with him when he went out on the street. But you never could get a straight answer out of the man as to where he did his farming and that should’ve been the giveaway.

  What was a farmer doing here in London?, in Bermondsey no less!

  Turns out the bugger was a German spy all along. Kept his eye on the traffic down on the Thames and sent back what he learned - the ships names, their cargo and sailing times - to the Krauts. Carrier pigeons are what he used. Kept a whole flock up on his roof - another giveaway what with all the birdshit down on the street in front of his house. But London is full of pigeons so no one paid it any attention.

  A few days later the Bobbies came and took down the cages and collected the pigeons.

  Oughta shoot ‘em like traitors, the lady in #14 shrilled.

  And bake ‘em in a pie, eh sweetie? Her live-in cackled and pinched her on the bum in broad daylight to show you how friendly things had become on Maldine Square.

  A few of the birds flew off before the crew could lay their hands on them and wouldn’t you know that they were back in a fortnight. Cooing and strutting and looking around for their cages. They were homing pigeons after all and this was their home, observed the dentist in #2.

  Worse, the birdshit just kept building up on the cobbles down below. This was very insulting to the fair folk who wanted better things for themselves and their loved ones, and who looked on Maldine Square as their arrival into that blessed state.

  They're German birds offered Mr. Fairly, the teacher. So let's talk to them in their native tongue.

  And that's why the good folk of Maldine Square, including the red-haired kept woman in #11 and her reclusive beau, took to cooing ‘Taube’, Taube’ whenever the birds were in sight, which was quite often.

  The birds stuck around for the better part of a year after the war. Then one day they were gone, flew the coop so to say. They showed up a few weeks later as if they’d never been away: full of sass and strutting down along the roadway like they owned the bricks.

  London has a lot of pigeons but this bunch stuck to themselves. They’d seen the war and like most veterans, they didn’t have much use for civilian life.

  They're spies don’t you know? Mrs. Livesey exclaimed, shaking her plump jowls for emphasis. Ethel Livesey was a ‘thin woman a fat body’ is how she described hers
elf. The men like me just the way I am, she declared to the other hens on the square, shaking her jowls to celebrate these little victories.

  The real reason the pigeons came back is that there was nowhere for them to be in their homeland. The High Seas Fleet had been scuttled at Scapa Flow and German Naval Intelligence, of which they were a part of, had been disbanded. So they flew back to their old digs in London, taking up residence on the various rooftops of Maldine Square.

  The neighbors weren’t happy to see them come back, what with their droppings, the cooings and puffings of courtship and all that. But other than Mrs. Fairly wanting to have them shot for being spies, there wasn’t much you could do about these carrier pigeons who every year saw their flock diminish.

  You would think that they’d mate - and they did but only among themselves and with meager results. They were stand-offish, just like their hosts. They didn’t mix with local birds. For a little bit more you could say that they put on airs, strutting about with their beaks up in the air and puffing out their chests, the hens skittering around on the pavement with their tails up and squealing when the males chased them.They put up a fight for a bit to preserve honor (but really to keep up appearances) until they finally settled down and let him do his business.

  Trouble was not many chicks got born and those that did got plucked up by the crows as soon as they came out of the shells. The cats got the rest.

  There were a lot of cats in Bermondsey seeing as to how it's a seaman's’ town. Clean and shipshape is how a seaman wants it. He can’t stand rats or mice on land or at sea so a seaman will always have cats around him.

  The regular London pigeons knew this which is why they avoid Bermondsey. But these spies didn’t know any better and thought that the pavement was theirs to enjoy just like home. The cats took care of that real quick. Every other day or so a pigeon carcass would turn up in the gutter with his chest torn open and his wings pulled off.

  The cats hunted them to kill and not to eat. If you’ve ever seen a cat toy with a mouse you’ll know why. Cats toss their mice up in the air, catching them by the head and shaking them till the mouse is gasping for breath and then letting him go, only to pounce on the mouse while he's running for his life and tossing him again, the mouse finally giving up to the shock of it all. And that's what kills him.