by Edward Carey
“I am sorry that it cannot be Mother.”
“It longs for personality,” he said, rushing on when he saw tears coming, “it longs to be something. It just needs a little instruction. Shall we instruct it, little girl, Marie child? Shall you see what a wonderful servant it is, what a great actor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well then, why not hold it? Here, take it. Here, smell it.”
And I took it. And I smelled it.
“It is only wax,” I said, disappointed.
“No! Never! Never only wax! Not ever! All wax is sacred, and this, this here, is the aristocrat of waxes, the very prince among waxes. Greatest of detail collectors, finest of imitators, most honest of matters. This, even here, is a portion of finest beeswax.”
“Finest beeswax,” I repeated so that I might recall the name.
“Made by Asiatic honeybees of the genus Apis. Very good then, let us put it to work.”
“Genus Apis,” I said.
Wax was melted in the copper pan, the pigment was added, and also some resin. He explained how the heat must be watched, how the wax must be mixed very carefully. And then he was ready. First the mold of my face. He brushed the surface of the mold with a substance called soft soap, so that afterward the wax could be easily removed, and then the wax was poured in. At first only the tiniest amount, a very thin surface over the mold, carefully watched over by the doctor. He picked up the mold with his hands and moved it about so that the wax journeyed up and down the surface, so that all air bubbles might be gone; then after a while a second layer was added, and a while after that a third, a fourth, a fifth. For the last two layers, he said, he was only adding thickness to give the cast some strength. And then a few minutes’ wait, only a few, and it was ready. It came away very easily from the mold.
“Is that my face?” I asked.
“Precisely,” he said.
He left me with it. It was still warm, as if it had a life of its own. But soon enough it was cold again. He poured wax into the remaining casts of my head. Each mold revealed its secret. There in front of us were different portions of my head in skin-toned wax, exactly my color, just as he had said. My hair had been flattened down atop my head, and this he cast in wax that was colored brown. Then began the business of fitting those pieces together, of joining the model up. Each bit connected to the next: at the joins the wax had to be attended to, chipped off or cut away, then new warm wax was smoothed over, eliminating the seams, and the neck made flat at the bottom so that the head could stand on its own. The wax head was hollow; the inside was filled with old rags, with hemp waste and some wood chippings. “For strength,” he said.
And there upon the worktable was my head.
“I put that all together,” Curtius said, “not apart.”
I looked at my head: there I was in the atelier, with my eyes closed. A girl, with her father’s chin and her mother’s nose. It seemed to me now that I existed twice as much.
At the end of that first day we had soup in the kitchen.
“Excuse me, sir?” I said.
“Yes, what is it?”
“I have been wondering, sir, about my mother. Where they took her.”
“I cannot say,” he replied. “But we may find out. Surgeon Hoffmann will surely know. We shall ask him when next he comes.”
“I should like to visit her grave.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. We shall ask.”
When we had finished the soup and I had cleared all away, he said, “It is time to go to bed, Marie Grosholtz.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, fearing terribly to return to the attic room.
“You may sleep downstairs, if you wish. In the atelier. But don’t touch anything! Though wait a moment. Tell me, you weren’t frightened in that room alone?”
“I could feel them about the place. All those bits.”
“Yes?”
“And after a while I didn’t mind.”
“Yes? Some people are repelled. Bed now. And sleep hard.”
I returned to the atelier and bedded myself down. There I was, under the table, and also there was my head, on the table. In the night, if I was very quiet, I thought I could hear all the body bits breathing. With my wax head in the room I felt I almost belonged.
I thought, also, that if I was very careful he would keep me.
CHAPTER FIVE
The surgeon again.
Sometimes I was required at the stove, sometimes to pass Doctor Curtius his tools. To be of use to him, I must learn the names. There were compasses and spatulas, there were burnishers and finishers, there were rakes and wires, and paddles and gougers, there were plaster scrapers and catgut for cutting clay, there were whole battalions of different knives with different grooves upon their tips, some with curved noses, some twisted, there were tools made of iron and of lead and of different woods, of hardwood, and softwood, of rosewood and cherrywood, some smooth, some rough, some must be very sharp and others absolutely blunt; all these I must know by name. All these were the familiar business of the sculptor, but they were only a portion of the tools he used. Curtius had many surgeon’s devices that he found essential for his work. They had been christened too and must never be referred to as “this one” or “that one,” nor ever “long tip with bend” or “curved with hook,” but the whole enormous genus must be learned and remembered. There was the family of scalpels, from the straight to the convex to the straight-buttoned to the fistula. There were many cousins of scissors, the straight and the fine-angled, the dilator-holders, the plate tenculums. Here was the cannulated stylet, there the cannulated probe. Do not forget the coin-shaped cautery, nor his brother, the tapered cautery, nor their cousin, the key-shaped cautery. Never confuse a pointed stylus with a seton needle. There are the simplified pelican pliers and those are the tirtoir plyers. That there is a cataract knife, and that a nasal probe, this a tongue depressor, that a gorgeret. And all these odd-looking tools were made for the weedling about inside of people, for the picking at this, for the plucking at that, here to scrape, there to cauterize. But Doctor Curtius did not use them for their original purposes; he had adapted them all for his specific modeling purposes. And it did seem to me they had a very deep thirst to enter inside humans. Whenever I picked one up by its handle, I was always absolutely sensible that it wished to change its direction and burrow into me. You had to be very strong with those tools; they had very determined personalities. You had always to show them who was master, for the moment—the tiniest moment—you became relaxed with them, they were at your skin. Several times they had the better of me, grazing my fingertip or biting my palm, and always to Curtius’ fury. For Curtius they always behaved; he had tamed them all. In his hands they were absolutely meek.
Heinrich from Berne Hospital came twice that first week with his boxfuls, loaded with pieces for Curtius to copy. I watched him and began to assist in minor tasks. Here I was among deep objects. Often those diseased pieces that were delivered to us had already been attacked by some anatomy student in the hospital, had been raked to shreds, a torso already riddled with student holes. What yellow and gray skins were heaved onto the worktable. The smell would wipe out all other scent. Long after the source of the stench had gone away it stayed with you very close, inside your mouth, up your nose, in your eyes and skin. Body part, I would wonder, whose were you? A scar, a freckle, a mole, a crease in the cold flesh, hairs along an arm, were enough for wonder. It wasn’t such a horror after a while; it became quite usual, something to expect. Curtius taught me that.
“It’s just a little of a human body, Marie. Nothing to get worked up about. Human bodies are after all such an everyday thing.”
At the end of the week, Surgeon Hoffmann came. He stood before my wax head in wonder. “Well, well, here you are all over again. It is a good likeness, Curtius. A very good likeness.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said.
“Of course, it is of little significance,” he mused, though he seemed unable to look away. “I don’t suppose, Curtius, but no . . . of course not.”
“Sir?”
“I was going to say something unnecessary, something foolish.”
“Sir?”
“Well, that is, Curtius, I was going to wonder, to suggest, that perhaps you could make such a likeness, such an exactitude, of me. Could you? Do you think?”
“Yes, sir. I could.”
“Really?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“You think me foolish?”
“Not at all. If you would like it, sir.”
“I would like it. I believe I deserve to be celebrated, after all. I’ve done very well. I cannot expect bronze statues, but this, one like this, of wax, well, why not? I should appreciate it.”
“It may be done, sir.”
“Good. Yes. Good.”
Curtius went away to the plaster bins. I stepped forward to the older man.
“Do sit down, sir.”
He sat, a nervousness about him now. I placed a sheet around him as if he were at the barber-surgeon’s. Curtius came forward with the oil.
“I must open your shirt a little to expose the neck. Close your eyes, sir.”
“Yes,” he said.
“And keep them closed.”
My master smoothed some oil upon the face. The surgeon flinched.
“I shall be quite under your command, shan’t I, Curtius?”
“You must keep absolutely still,” he said. “It is very necessary that you do. I shall place these straws in your nostrils, and you must breathe through them until I say. And your mouth must remain closed.”
Silence then from the surgeon, silence as we went about him. He had given himself over. His chest upped and downed, sole proof of his continued living. When Curtius pulled the plaster away, there was the man underneath, humbled and vulnerable, blinking, uncertain of us. It was then that I took my moment.
“Excuse me, sir?” I asked the surgeon.
“What is it, child?”
“I was wondering where it is that my mother was taken.”
“Your mother, I’m afraid, is dead.”
“Yes, sir, I do know that. But where is she? I should like to visit her.”
“Visit?” he marveled. “What a notion.”
“When my father died, there was a grave. Where, sir, please, is my mother’s?”
“Child,” he said, “there is no grave.”
“No grave, sir? None at all?”
“No, no, there’s a pit. She will have been put in with many other unfortunates. But not for the students, not to the hospital, on account of Curtius. I would not allow that. Still, a pauper’s grave, you understand. A quick burial, not undignified. Some words said. Quicklime. Put alongside the rest of the day’s penniless dead.”
“But where is this pit? Where is my mother now?” I was by now quite desperate.
“You do not speak to me like that. You may not.”
“Please! Please.”
“Records of such matters are not kept. And the quicklime is . . . quick.”
“Oh, Mother!” I cried.
The surgeon went to Curtius.
“May I see my head?”
“It is in there,” said Curtius, showing the mold, “in negative, in opposite space. But wax shall bring it out.”
“I should like to see it.”
“You may, in time. A couple of days. Come back later. We don’t need you anymore. Not now we have this.”
“I leave my head with you?”
“It is quite safe with us.”
That night, alone in the atelier, I wept into my blanket, for my mother had no grave to visit. Nothing of her, nothing left at all, save her Bible, which seemed to contain only a scrap of her unhappiness. But then, wiping my snotting nose, I came upon a great theory. Here was my nose—my mother’s nose. Here she was then, still. Mother. My mother. Thus I stumbled upon my great nose system: She had left me her nose, and that was all I needed to remember her by. My twin air tunnels, from which I might breathe love and smell love. I was glad of these thoughts, proud of my theory. Here was Mother, here was Father, so I might go on.
CHAPTER SIX
Heads.
Curtius made a head of the surgeon. It was a wrinkled head, sagging down slightly at the mouth. A slight frown marked permanently upon the forehead. Thin lips.
“With your head,” said Curtius to me, “I felt a great discovery and contentment. With this new one, I feel an anxiety. I must behave in front of this head. I will not be sorry when it is taken away.”
Surgeon Hoffmann returned and stood before his wax head. He was very taken by it; there was moisture in his eyes. He sighed very deeply, flared his nostrils.
“Yes,” he said, “that is me, I admit. How strange to see myself from every angle, to walk around . . . me. As if I were not I at all, but someone else. I had not fully known myself before. Yes, well done.”
I do not know whether the last sentiment was delivered to Curtius or to the wax head; certainly he was looking at the head when he said it. He took the head and went back to Berne Hospital. We were neither of us sad to see them go.
Two days later, we had a visit from the hospital chaplain, requesting a head of himself. He was very eager for it, so Curtius took the commission, but when it was made and he came to collect it, he looked a little saddened, as if he had hoped to see some saint presented to him but found only a little balding man with a dimpled chin.
We worked very well together in Welserstrasse, I thought, Doctor Curtius and I. Though on occasion, I admit, I was in his way.
“Sir? Please, sir, do you mind?”
“What?”
“All those bits, sir, on this wall, the healthy bits—gathered up, do they really all fit inside a person?”
“Yes, every person has every one of those.”
“Never!”
“Yes!”
“It cannot be!”
“I tell you it is.”
“We’re quite crammed up to the brim, aren’t we, sir?”
“Marie, I am trying to work! It used to be quiet in here. Read a book.” Then he seemed to stop, as if in inspiration. “Better yet, take this charcoal and this piece of paper, go to the corner there, and draw something.”
“Draw what, sir?”
“Draw . . . draw that.”
“What is it?”
“The medulla oblongata, the bulb of the spine.”
“Medulla oblongata. Bulb of the spine. Yes, sir. It looks like a rat with a center parting.”
“Draw!”
Thus it was that I began to draw. When I was not required at the stove, or to pass him his tools, I sat in the corner and drew.
The fourth head Curtius made was that of a hospital governor. Having seen the heads of the surgeon and the hospital chaplain, the governor wanted his own. Here is a truth: people are very fascinated by themselves. He came to Welserstrasse; Curtius was astounded by the attention. The hospital governor put the hospital governor’s head in the hospital atrium. He contrived to stand in front of it, often. Soon people who had nothing to do with the hospital, people who were entirely healthy, perhaps even sprightly, people whose only disease was curiosity, entered through the black gates of the hospital just to see the hospital governor standing beside the hospital governor’s head.
I drew Curtius’ father’s modeling tools, I drew kidneys and lungs, I drew bones and tumors, the better to know them. I drew Marta, I drew Father’s jawplate, I drew myself. I was not good, not at all, not at first, but I was eager.
“Those are just scribblings, Marie,” Curtius said. “Come with me.”
I followed him into the kitchen. There, he took up a loaf of bread,
pulled some white away from the crust, rolled it into a ball, and walked back to the workroom. He took up my drawing—it was a gallbladder, or meant to be—and with the ball of bread rubbed the paper, until what was upon the paper, which had regained most of its former whiteness, was now on the bread ball, which was very black.
“When you make mistakes, and you do make mistakes, go to the kitchen. Bread.”
One afternoon as I was drawing, he asked me, “What’s that?”
“It’s one of those,” I said. “A liver, hepar.”
“Is it really?” he asked. “Look again. Bread.”
Later he said, “No, not yet, still not yet. Look again, look harder. Bread.”
I learned the names of the bones of the body by drawing them, I studied organs of generation and how many bumps there are upon a spine, and I drew everything. I looked at anatomical drawings in his books and copied them in pencil. At night I fell asleep with a pencil in my hand. I drew Curtius.
Thanks to the governor’s wax head, some people of Berne began to hear of the name Doctor Curtius and the place Welserstrasse. They began to call. Take my likeness, they said, and Curtius took it. Head of a chandler. Head of a bladesmith. Head of a banker. Head of an officer. People kept coming, one or two a week.
I opened the door to the people of Berne. “Please to come this way, sir,” I said, and showed each visitor to a seat. Each one stared at the shelves full of Curtius’ work. “Wonderful, aren’t they?” I said. “Wonderful,” the visitors responded nervously. I laid towels around their necks and fronts, gently removed their wigs, washed their faces, and pinned back their hair. I asked them to close their eyes and laid some oil over their eyelashes, over their eyebrows, around their chins, and at the top of their foreheads. I carefully inserted quills into their nostrils. I was always very gentle. I prepared the heads of Berne for Curtius. “Berne people no longer come through this door in many pieces,” Curtius happily observed, “but always and only whole.” The only things missing were women. No woman ever came to Curtius.
