by Edward Carey
Curtius caught every wrinkle and pore, every scar and dimple. For every head, he drew out the region of the eyes, filling sheets of paper with detailed notes and watercolor sketches. When the face is cast, the eyes must for safety be closed up; then, when the heads are finished, they must have open eyes in order to seem alive. Curtius modeled those opened eyes from his drawings and his notes, adding them as each head was finished. With each new person, I noticed, Curtius’ own face seemed to shift; he strained to imitate each stranger’s expression, to mirror that new face, to creep in as wax does.
Welserstrasse was being discovered by Berne people. Carriages sought it out. But one man was not happy about this new business. Surgeon Hoffmann, seeing all those other wax heads diminishing the effect of his, fearing that the hospital might lose its modeler of anatomy, grew restless and uncertain. What Curtius was engaged in now, he warned, could hardly be called science. Should he continue in this peculiar practice—which must be considered as a sideline and nothing more—he would no longer be supported by Berne Hospital. And soon, indeed, his wages were cut off.
That night, as we sat at table in the kitchen, Curtius delivered an extraordinary speech. Though his head was down as he spoke, as if he addressed his soup, I considered myself, not potato and onion and broth, his audience.
“Doctor Hoffmann used to have me model not only for the education of surgeons-to-be,” he began, “but for the education of the people. Small models of diseases. I should be called to take a casting from one of the hospital wards, to sit beside syphilitic sores about the face of a young boy, to copy a woman’s tongue grown rancid or a man brought to nose-loss by disease. And each time, after I had made these little models, I was told to take them from street to street and show them to the people of Berne. This here, I was supposed to say, is smallpox: beware. Or this is an example of a sifilide, here is one with alcohol poisoning, here one with opium damage: look out.”
He paused. He slurped. He continued.
“This was my job, and such a job is not good for relationships. Such a job distances you from everyone else. The arrival on a doorstep of such a man with such a job destroys any happiness within. People shunned me! I wept in complaint to Surgeon Hoffmann, and at last I was relieved of any house calls. Then I stayed indoors and saw no one. But I longed for people, and in the end, though he disapproved, Surgeon Hoffmann allowed me my own servants. And you came to me, and your own poor mother left.
“But now I am no longer alone, now I am welcomed. People come to me, they look at me, and though they do not shake my hand, still they look at me. I used to be only, day and night, with death, with dead things, but now life comes to my door, and I say to life: come in, come in, you’ve been gone so long, welcome, welcome to my house! And I like this new life! But now, Marie, Surgeon Hoffmann has announced that he will not have it! Well, Surgeon Hoffmann does not understand. I shall not go backward! I shall not do it! A kidney always has another kidney nearby, but I was as singular and as lonely as a vermiform appendix. But no longer. Because of you.”
His soup was over. I took the empty bowl.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Yes,” he said.
He did not see me grinning.
CHAPTER SEVEN
There is a distant city.
By the time Curtius’ hospital earnings had been cut off, he was making just enough money from the wax heads to carry on. Curtius looked into the store cupboards and confirmed his supply of wax and other necessary materials. He continued to make only heads. Bills were delivered to Curtius: bills for rent, bills for materials, eventually letters demanding that Curtius pay back several months’ wages, since in these recent months it appeared he had been working not for the hospital but for himself.
One day, Curtius received two foreign visitors. Seeing through the keyhole that they were not from the hospital, I let them in. I said: “Please to step this way, gentlemen.” Two men dressed in suits, one gray, the other white, both out of breath. The one in white had a notebook and a quill and a traveling bottle of ink with a springed cap; there were blue stains upon his jacket. He was all nose and very little chin.
“We have heard of you,” he said to Curtius in good German, though it was clear he was a foreigner. “You are not without your local reputation. So. We had time to spare. So. We are here to see for ourselves.”
Curtius invited the men to observe the wax heads upon the shelf waiting to be collected. The man in white looked at the heads very quickly, then sat down uninvited and started riffling through his notebook. The man in gray spent longer with them, his dark eyes close to theirs.
“You are the likenesses of citizens of Berne,” he said quietly, addressing the heads. “I know you. I hear you in your small corridors, whispering. It’s a hissing sound that you make. A gas of words. I feel your disapproval.”
He turned his back on the heads, stood still for a moment, bent over, and placed his head in his hands, as if he were in some pain, and quietly moaned, “Where is there a little peace?” He took a withered plant from one of his pockets and proceeded to study it, calming now, murmuring to himself, “Picris hieracioides,” words that seemed to soothe him.
The man in white, believing me to be disturbing the man in gray, waved me over. “Leave him alone, unattractive child, come over to me. He does not understand children. He had children of his own, but he sent them away. But I understand you lot. I can tell, for example, that you’re wanting to know what I’m writing in such a furious hurry, aren’t you? Of course you are. Well then, since you’re insisting, I’ll tell you. I’m remembering my walks. A walk has just come back to me. I collect the walks of my life. Some people ask me if I have walked so very far to merit such an activity, but I say to them, it’s not about how far you have walked, but how thoroughly. And believe me, I have walked thoroughly. Of course, now you’re wanting to know where it is that I’ve walked. Aren’t you, little boldness?” This he called me, and very pleased with his own observation, he went on, not caring for a moment how I might take his words: “Little ill-facedness, little minor monster in a child’s dress . . . little thing . . . little howl . . . little crumb of protruding flesh . . . little statement on mankind . . . little . . . little?” he concluded, not certain in the end of what I was, only that I was little, a little of something.
He scratched his sharp nose and looked down at his shoes and I noticed for the first time that they were both covered in cloth bags that tied up at the ankles, his actual shoes hidden from sight. He undid these bags now and took them off, revealing his shoes: ordinary gentlemen’s black leather, worn in places, with silver buckles.
“There,” he said, slipping one off and passing it to me. “Smell it. Smell it with that conk of yours.”
I smelled the shoe. It was rank.
“Do you know what that smell is?” he asked.
“Is it,” I ventured, for the man had not been kind to me, “foot rot?”
“Paris,” he said. “It is Paris.”
That was my first introduction to the city.
“Paris,” I said.
“I have drawn Paris with these shoes of mine,” he continued, “across the Pont Neuf, along the Rue Saint-Antoine, to the tiny backstreets. So many different sentences of streets have my shoes walked me. I write about what I see; I jot it all down. I ignore monuments, great churches, and historic buildings; I speak of people. Delighted people, miserable people, the ones in between: I know them all. I see them in my walks and contain them in my notes. Open any of my notebooks, in any place, and you will smell and hear the great stench and cacophony of Paris. Read any sentence and you’ll be walking beside me, amidst it all. With these shoes I have seen them: exhausted encyclopaedists, prodigies of chemistry, delegations from the Académie, actors from the Comédie-Française and the Opéra, puppeteers from the boulevards, cobblers of excessive skill, nervous wigmakers, broken street porters, needlessly thorough de
ntists, wildly inaccurate doctors, rag-and-bone men, midwives, madams, pickpockets, the pockmarked and the powdered, those of royal birth and foundlings; every ingredient in the thick soup of Paris!”
It sounded an extraordinarily busy place.
“We are an inseparable trinity,” the man went on, “my right shoe, my left shoe, and I. We have walked through such horrors, we have trod over such things. Sometimes we slipped, we admit it, but always we got up again.”
He lifted me upon his lap. I was not happy with the perch, it did not suit me, it was not pleasant to feel the man’s thighs. Curtius, pretending to be busy at his desk, nearly dropped a large interosseous knife for lower-leg surgery.
“Why do you wear those bags, sir?” I asked.
“Because I will never allow my shoes to touch such unworthy streets as the streets of Berne. I am lost anywhere outside of Paris. But in Paris you can blindfold me, you can spin me around and deposit me anywhere, and instantly I’d know which of the sixteen quarters I am in, and not only that but which street too, in fact even the names of the people who live in that street. I have left my city—a terrible thing for me—to visit the man over there who you disturbed. He’s in exile now. His books are banned in Paris and burned in Geneva.”
I turned to the other man; he was still observing his plant. This, I thought, is a man who writes books? Books that offend people?
“She is my servant,” said Curtius at last. I slid down happily and stood beside my master’s desk.
The man in white pointed at the wax heads. “Altogether, though, you will admit, it does not amount to so very much. There is nothing the matter with the work, that itself is perfectly acceptable. It is the subjects of your work that leave me in doubt. You may just as well have picked up any person from a Berne street and proclaimed him someone worthy of attention, someone who should be queued up to be seen and crowded around, when in truth these people are simply common.”
“I never,” said Curtius, “distinguish. Not with the body parts, not with the heads.”
“Perhaps you should,” the man said. “What you need are faces that deserve your gifts, faces that will challenge you. You could carry on here sculpting mediocrities, but consider this: How will you ever progress if the faces are so dull, so petty-minded, so mean-spirited and obscure? You should come to Paris, find a shop there. You’d be far better off. It is a small tragedy to have your talents wasted on Berne. Think of the heads you could have. All the best heads are in Paris, not here. Ah, but I don’t suppose you will come, will you? Alas, you do not look the type. Well,” he concluded, “if you ever change your mind, I’ll give you my address.”
Tearing a page from his notebook, he wrote down his name and his address, the word Paris inscribed with a flourish and many underlines. His name was Louis-Sébastien Mercier.
“And this here, with the plant,” Mercier said, “we shall call Monsieur Renou. Though it is not his real name. No, we call him Renou to discourage attention. Now, his,” he said, pointing to Renou, “his is quite a head, I’m sure you’ll agree. For your information, since you please me, I’ll whisper who he is: in your own room, standing just over there, is the author of Emile and Du Contrat Social. What do you say to that?”
But we had no knowledge of the works or of the celebrated gentleman.
“Should you ever come to Paris,” Monsieur Mercier concluded when we failed to adjust appropriately to his news, “should you come to where the only pertinent heads are, why not call upon me? I’d like to put you in my notebook—though, alas, coming from Berne as you do, I cannot. But you are singular, I’ll give you that, with your heads and your rude-faced serving child.”
“All the good heads are in Paris?” asked Curtius, shocked.
“Nowhere else,” said Monsieur Mercier, nodding and smiling. “Come on, dear Renou—for Renou it is today—on we must go.” Turning back to us, he explained, “We were being pursued in the city, and finding ourselves near your street, we decided to duck in awhile. But now it is likely safe to venture on. We thank you for your time.”
Curtius showed them to the door, shook the energetic hand of Mercier (whose feet were now fully shod and bagged), and bowed to the distressed author, who in response looked the other way.
I gave the visit barely any significance.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Which is a worrisome one.
Surgeon Hoffmann returned at last with final warnings and dark clouds. Very soon, he told Curtius, indeed before the week was out, bailiffs would be coming. Everything he possessed would be claimed by Berne Hospital unless he was somehow capable of immediately paying his considerable debts. He was ruined, the surgeon said, he was drowning in his debts. There was, however, one possibility, one hope that he might be saved: Surgeon Hoffmann, describing himself as a kind man, and as Curtius’ only friend, had arranged for him to have a room within Berne Hospital itself, so that he might be kept inside the grounds of that great dark monolith, and be succored by it. There he could be looked after, he could be watched over, he could work on his anatomical models without any fear of distraction—he could, in short, said Surgeon Hoffmann, be happy.
“Am I in trouble?” asked Curtius. “Am I in very great trouble?”
“Yes indeed, Philip. I am afraid you are.”
“I don’t like to be in trouble. I don’t like it at all. I’m worried, Surgeon Hoffmann, worried and also frightened.”
“It is not good for you to have so many worries, Philip,” the surgeon replied, “let me take them from you. You were not made to battle the commotions of this world; you were made to be looked after. A person of your type always needs protection. Come to the hospital, there’s a room for you already assigned. You’ll be given your meals every day, everything will be taken care of, there’ll be no worries for you anymore. You shan’t get muddled in your finances again, and since the hospital will provide you with all your needs, you will have no need for money yourself. I shall see to your comfort myself and I alone shall instruct you on your labor. I shall keep you thoroughly occupied in the spirit of surgery. So, Philip, be sensible, while I can still help you. Should you decline my help, I am very much afraid that people will come for you and put you in prison.”
“Prison!” gasped Curtius.
“For stealing from the hospital. What you have done is not lawful.”
“I did not know! I did not know!”
“But you will be safe, Philip, within the hospital walls. Keep the rest of the world beyond those walls, let it do what it may, but you shall be safe inside.”
“I shall be safe?”
“Indeed yes.”
“Making models?”
“Of course.”
“Not heads?”
“Sometimes, perhaps, heads. The insides of heads.”
“But I don’t want the insides anymore. They bear down upon me, the insides do, and they turn me,” said Curtius. “I’m much happier making heads.”
“Philip, are you happy now?”
“No, no, I must admit that I am not.”
“And that is because you’ve been making heads. It is the only cause of your present unhappiness.”
“And my servant? She will come with me? She and I in that assigned room?”
“That is not really within the laws of the hospital. Besides, you shan’t be needing a servant, since everything will be provided for you. You are not really capable in the end of having a servant, are you? But I am here to help. Work can be found for her in the laundries.”
“Among so many diseased sheets, in so much sickness?” my master muttered.
“Will you come now, Philip?” asked the surgeon. “I think that you should.”
“Very well. Yes, the laundries.”
“Sir, sir?” I begged.
“Paris,” whispered Curtius.
“Did you say something?” asked the surge
on.
“Nothing at all,” my master said. “Surgeon Hoffmann, could I, do you think, be allowed a little time to pack my things alone? I’m such a precise person; I do like to do things exactly and in peace. It will take me a week, I should think.”
“Very good. I shall send porters. In a week. Well done, Philip, you are being sensible. Your father would be very proud.”
With that the surgeon left. I never saw him again.
“I’m very brave now,” Curtius whispered as soon as the door was closed. “I’m not frightened at all. You can’t frighten me, Surgeon Hoffmann—well, well you can, in fact you do,” he said to the door. “I’m very frightened, but I’m packing it in with you and Berne. Such a dull, petty-minded place. So mean-spirited and obscure. There are no good heads here, none at all. Not even yours, Surgeon Hoffmann.”
Curtius went into the atelier; he began packing up his tools.
“Can I help, sir?” I asked.
He did not reply.
“Sir,” I asked, “what is happening?”
“Paris, Marie,” he said, “Paris.”
He said nothing about my going with him. He said nothing about me at all.
“Am I coming?” I asked. “I can light the stove. I know the names of most things. I can smooth people’s faces down, I can put straws up nostrils. I can do all this. In time, much more. Sir, please, please take me.”
Curtius stopped his business. He lifted me up onto his tabletop and crouched down, so that our heads were at the same level. “Something has happened,” he said, tears springing from his eyes. “Have you not noticed? Something extraordinary. Just as the smaller radius bone is fused to the taller ulna, just as the fibula is to the tibia: we are connected. You and I.”
“Sir?”
