The Anatomist's Dream

by Clio Gray

  Philbert was happy to see him and drew closer, sat himself down on the parapet seat by Hermann’s feet, leaning his back against the brazier, glad of the faint warmth coming from the damp-sunk coals, and more so by the touch of Hermann’s leg against his shoulder; comforted by Hermann’s presence, feeling protected from the bridge and the muffled tumble of its watery ravine and the empty space beneath its arch, the green-gloved rocks and boulders, the horrid dark of the forest on the other side.

  ‘How fitting you should be here,’ Hermann said, nuzzling a toe briefly against Philbert’s arm, spreading out his hand above Philbert’s taupe like a tent. ‘I was just about to leave,’ he added almost absently. ‘Thought I might slip away with the dawn with no one to see me or say goodbye. But here you are . . .’

  ‘Go away?’ cried Philbert, interrupting, jumping up and away from the brazier. ‘But you can’t leave! Why would you be leaving?’ Philbert suddenly realising all at once how much he loved this man, how steady and sure he’d grown within Hermann’s orbit, could not bear that Hermann would go, and so suddenly, and for no reason, unable to get out the words he feared he might’ve blurted out these past few weeks: Please don’t go, Hermann, oh please don’t go. I know you love Hannah more than me, but please don’t go, or at least take me with you.

  ‘Oh my little one,’ said Hermann, as if he was reading Philbert’s thoughts. ‘Come sit down again, let me see you.’

  And Philbert returned, sat down, Hermann’s hand coming to rest upon his uneven crown, the tips of his fingers lightly stroking the soft tuft of his taupe. Hermann sighed deeply and Philbert turned his head towards him, tears already running down his cheeks at what Hermann might say next.

  ‘But it has to go like this, Little Maus,’ Hermann said softly. ‘I’ve been speaking to our friend Kwert and he’s told me all about you, how he’s seen the numinous wrap around you like a cloak. About how you vomited out my evil long before Mr Wharton’s Jelly ever touched my skin.’

  Philbert wiped a hand across his cheek, clutching at Hermann’s hand as it cupped his head.

  ‘You’re really leaving?’ Philbert whispered, grasping at the one straw of meaning he’d taken from Hermann’s words.

  ‘I have to,’ Hermann’s voice was like a husk that has been blown free of its kernel, ‘for it’s all gone, my dear, all gone, and the game is up. But I do thank you, Little Maus. You must remember I will always thank you, and I don’t regret a minute of it, even though it has brought me to my end. You cured me, and now you’ve killed me. Forgive me.’

  And then Hermann extracted his hand from Philbert’s and took hold of the wonderful green chemise Hannah had given him on the day of his resurrection, peeled it off of his skin and over his head and placed the wet folds of it gently into Philbert’s hands.

  ‘Give this back to Hannah, will you?’ Hermann said, his voice calm, falling like petals through the mist and, as Philbert took the gift, he looked up at Hermann, and even through his tears he could see the horrid scales that had returned to Hermann’s skin, the ghastly eczematous patches erupting in rocky, untamed islands on Hermann’s chest and arms; and the moment he saw them he understood the true import of Hermann’s words and tried to free his hands from the green clags of the shirt but he was too late, for Herman had already spread his arms out wide and unbent his knees and was tipping himself backwards in a graceful arc, out and away from the parapet, out and away from Philbert and away from life, giving himself over to the mist, sighing gently as he parted company from everything he had known and loved and was leaving behind, taking his chosen path into the void. Philbert twisted his body out over the abyss hoping to catch at Hermann’s legs but was only in time to see Hermann pass through the pillows of rainbow-stained clouds and the mossed-over boulders that seemed to draw back to allow him passage, the water white and eager to take him; saw Hermann’s so briefly-beautiful body hit and sink, only to rise up again like a new moon for just one second before being carried away, a soft white bole on the dark waters, Hermann lost forever below the arched arms of the bridge.

  Philbert knelt on the seat of the parapet and gazed down and down, his throat dry as skink-skin, his screams thin as reeds, and when Hannah and Maulwerf came shouting and beating their way along the bridge towards him he could only hug his knees and cry, had already closed himself off from the world, a single grain of sand caught in the dark and empty shell of his grief, the green shirt scrunched up tightly against his chest; another lick of time going past him, another clicking of the cogs, another hawk flying past a door that was now closed; Hermann leaving him behind, abandoned once more. Another scratch to put on Hermann’s clog almanac, another tack, another cross.

  13

  The Small Gold Ring

  The Fair’s folk couldn’t leave Hochwürden fast enough. Hermann’s death hit them all hard, Hannah and Philbert most of all. They packed up their belongings, put out their fires, rucked up their tents, the town so hung-over it didn’t even notice their erstwhile entertainers as they chivvied and clip-clopped their way down the refuse-littered streets, past the blood-clotted runnels, the broken-down houses, the great barrels of brine and newly slaughtered meat.

  The following days were long and cold and silent, so much so that Maulwerf took the unprecedented decision to skip ahead with his timetable and ignore all further towns they might have stopped at, ordering all instead to head straight for their first winter’s resting destination of Finzeln. Anyone who didn’t like this decision, he told them, could leave when and where they wanted. Some did. Most didn’t, but no one argued, no one having the stomach for it. Hermann had been a staple of the Fair of Wonders for longer than many of them could remember, a man universally well-liked and respected. The hanger-on ­pedlars were the first to slip away to join the autumnal ­remnants of other fairs, the Turk and the Clockmaker disappearing a few days later, though in their case they had the grace to speak to Maulwerf personally, having known both he and Hermann well and for many years, offering their condolences and solemn handshakes, apologising that they could not stay but had to make a living, promising to meet up the following year as they usually did. And it was the night following these last two departures when Otto came up to Philbert and proffered a small pouch.

  ‘The Turk left you this, Little Maus,’ Otto said, shaking his head sadly, trying to get out the words he’d rigorously prepared but could no longer remember. ‘He told me to tell you it was from Hermann,’ was all he managed, before nudging one boot into the dirt, and then the other, and then turning swiftly, his eyes glistening as he walked away.

  Philbert looked at the pouch, weighing its slight bulk in his hand, trying to push back the tears that had already made his throat and eyes red and raw. He pulled the string from the pouch’s neck and looked inside. He could see nothing at all but a small roll of paper that he pulled out with his fingers, finding, to his astonishment that it had been pushed through a small gold ring to keep itself straight. He slid off the ring, holding it loosely in his hand for a moment before he unfurled the paper, seeing there a short sprawl of words he couldn’t understand. Philbert had been assiduous at his letters since Kwert began to school him, but he wasn’t skilled enough yet to make out anything that wasn’t written in bold and delineated letters. Philbert had been avoiding Kwert ever since Hermann’s dive off the bridge because although he couldn’t, to his chagrin, recall every word Hermann had said to him before he went off the parapet, he remembered the gist:

  You cured me. You killed me. Forgive me.

  The words hadn’t made much sense, but he knew Kwert was somewhere at the root of them, and he blamed Kwert – however unjustly – for what Hermann had chosen to do. So it was a hard thing he did, crawling back to Kwert with that little crease of paper he’d removed from the ring. There were, of course, other people in the Fair Philbert could have gone to for its interpretation but he felt Kwert owed him, and more specifically owed Hermann, and knew too
that Kwert would not soften his words but give Philbert a straight answer, whatever the little message said.

  Kwert himself was deeply troubled by Hermann’s demise and the reasons for it, and sadder still to see Philbert so heart-sore and unwilling to take comfort from anyone, especially him. His pulse quickened, therefore, as he saw the small boy edging towards him through the desultory crowd that evening, though he made no show of noticing, carried on mixing and bottling his medicaments, his Adam’s apple as hard and tight in his throat as the stoppers he was jamming into the bottles’ necks.

  ‘Philbert,’ he said warmly, as the boy came to a halt a yard or so in front of him, Philbert’s attention focussed not on Kwert but on his donkey, putting out his small hand to stroke at her lumpy grey fur before wordlessly handing over the piece of paper he’d taken from the pouch. Kwert took it from him and studied it gravely, reading it slowly and with deliberation.

  ‘You want to know what it says?’ Kwert asked gently, and the boy nodded. He didn’t speak, but followed Kwert’s example and sat down next to him on the wet log Kwert was using as a stool. Kwert swallowed, remembering how surprised he’d been at the efficaciousness of the ointment he’d given to Hermann, and how Hermann had approached Kwert a few heady weeks afterwards, just a couple of days before they’d reached Hochwürden, saying that he needed more of the Wonderful Jelly, that his symptoms were returning, that he couldn’t go back to the way he had been, not after this brief and euphoric taste of release. Kwert told Hermann then it was not that simple, that the funisi that went into the jelly were hard to come by, especially the most powerful ones – human umbilici – and that anyway timelines and omens needed to align. Kwert was a great believer in the spiritual side of life, convinced that the greater part of Hermann’s healing had come not from the jelly at all but from young Philbert, the boy with that special head that seemed to radiate warmth when he touched it, and could not overlook how spectacularly sick Philbert had been only moments before Hermann arrived at Kwert’s cart, vomiting up – Kwert believed – the darkness that lay at the heart of Hermann’s disease. It was not the answer Hermann wanted but he’d recognised the logic, for he knew – like Kwert, like most of the Fair’s folk – that miracles such as had happened to him could not be brought about by medicines alone, but that God must have had a hand in it. Kwert knew that His ways were mysterious and often worked through innocents such as Philbert, whether or not those innocents understood it.

  Kwert sat beside Philbert now. He wanted to take away the hurt Hermann’s death had so obviously inflicted, acutely aware that Hermann’s words on this little piece of paper might do precisely the opposite. But Kwert was a Hesychast, a man of God, and would not hide the truth.

  ‘It says this,’ he said, and began to read in a wobbling voice.

  ‘My dearest Philbert, my Little Maus, the child of my heart if not of my blood, you who have taken more care of me than any man could have hoped for. I want to thank you for all you have done.’

  So far so good, Kwert thought, glancing at Philbert sat beside him on the log, seeing his small form quiver as he drank in the words and the kindness and closeness that were so implicit, fearing to say more, fearing to be the one to strike home the blow that was about to come.

  ‘Do not forget me,’ Kwert read on quietly, placing his free hand on Philbert’s where it lay, cold and clammy on the wood, ‘for I will not forget you, no matter where it is I am heading. You cured me. You killed me. Forgive me, as I have forgiven you. Yours forever, Hermann.’

  Kwert felt the boy flinch and fight against his protective hand, and though no words came out it was as if Philbert’s whole body had become a howl, the tears pouring down his cheeks as if they could turn back the world, give him back all he had lost, and it was only then that Kwert truly understood how great had been his misjudgement to assign miracles to random causes, random signs, handing over the responsibility of those miracles to one single event, one act, one person – one boy, who surely didn’t deserve to bear such a burden. That Kwert had done exactly that to Philbert, to a child – a child Kwert still firmly believed would go on to do great things – sickened him. He would have cut off his right hand not to have done so, but it was far too late now for platitudes and empty gestures. All Kwert could do from here on in was try to abnegate the ­consequences of his own rash actions and words, take care of Philbert, steer him along right paths. Damn his visions and predictions. The boy didn’t need them, and no more at that moment did he.

  Philbert cried that night on the log beside Kwert, cried with such awful abandon that Kwert almost cried too, pulling the boy close to him, drawing his red habit about his shaking shoulders as if it would protect him.

  ‘Hermann has left you, taken the only path he could,’ Kwert said, once Philbert finally subsided. ‘But be assured, I will never do so. As long as I draw breath I will be here if you need me.’

  He hugged the boy close until neither could breathe and had to disengage, Kwert placing his hand against Philbert’s head, feeling that strange warmth again.

  ‘You and me, Philbert,’ Kwert whispered, rubbing the sleeve of his bright red habit across Philbert’s cheeks and chin to mop up the salty residue of tears now stilled and spent. ‘You and me, Philbert, and a whole world out there waiting for us, through which we will travel together. Always together. Never alone.’

  Words, just words, but words Kwert meant with every beat of his heart as he spoke them, and words Philbert clung to like a drowning man at a raft. He held out the small gold ring to Kwert and Kwert undid the thong around Philbert’s neck from which Otto’s nail already hung, and on went the small gold ring beside it before it was tied tightly back about his neck, and the piece of paper from Hermann was placed back in its pouch and back into Philbert’s jacket where it would remain, Philbert swore, for as long as he lived.

  Afterwards, Philbert went to Hermann’s tent. It had been commandeered by Tomaso the day after Hermann’s death with such casual cruelty that everyone – Maulwerf included – had been too upset to immediately countermand. It was only a few pieces of canvas after all, and someone might as well make use of it. The cart the tent folded down neatly into still guarded Hermann’s few effects and possessions. Philbert had previously lacked the courage to go up directly against Tomaso and demand their release, but he did so now. He ignored Tomaso’s shouts and threats of what the hell did Philbert think he was doing, for this was his place now. Philbert roughly shoved the older boy aside, going straight to Hermann’s small stash of belongings, retrieving the clog almanac, tucking it into his trousers, and then took up the hooded glass housing Hermann’s fish.

  ‘Bring that back!’ Tomaso shouted. ‘That there’s a valuable thing . . .’

  But Philbert was already marching out of the tent with it and Tomaso, for all his shouting and swearing bravado, made no move to stop him. Philbert held the glass case still as he could between his hands, going straight for the nearby river. Once there, he placed it down onto the scratchy green grass of the bank and knelt beside it, lifting off hood and lid, tipping it gently until its water began to fall in a limpid stream towards the river, the momentum taking the little fish with it. Philbert watched the bright blue and yellow of it wending off a little hesitantly at first, until its short quarrel between captivity and freedom was taken by the current and away it went – just like Hermann – into the unknown.

  Philbert knew he was most probably releasing little Butterblume into the wrong kind of water, with the wrong kind of food, that it would most likely last a mere few minutes before being swallowed whole by some winter-hungry pike, but there it was. It had to be done. It could not possibly stay with Tomaso, and it was a whole other miracle it had survived so long in his company. Its release felt like Philbert’s own. His way of accepting Hermann’s forgiveness, of moving on from Hermann’s care and love into Kwert’s. He never told anyone about what had been in Hermann’s note – not Otto, not Maulw
erf, not even Lita – not until he met the Turk again, the man to whom Hermann had entrusted the note in the first place, who gave it to Otto to give to him. Philbert met the Turk many times later, but never asked, not until after many years had passed.

  ‘You were so young, Philbert,’ the Turk said then, ‘I knew Hermann a long time, and back then Hermann didn’t know if you would understand. He wanted me to hold onto it until I deemed the time was right. Not that I had any idea of what he was planning to do, only that I knew things were going wrong again and that you were special to him, and that folk like us would always be a little apart from the crowd, different inside our skins.’ He’d raised his eyes then, settling them briefly upon Philbert’s taupe as if it represented every kind of otherness. ‘But I do know this . . .’ the Turk went on, ‘. . . that there was only one time in Hermann’s life when he felt he truly belonged, only one time when he could truly, actually, be close to other human beings, including Hannah, as I’m sure you already know. And he believed you gave him that time and that, once over, he didn’t want you taking the blame for it. He didn’t know if you were ready, but I did. He left me the choice, and I made it.’

  He’d looked at Philbert with his by-then old man’s smile hiding behind his by-then old man’s beard, and added his last three words.

  ‘Was I wrong?’

  We all make choices, the grown-up Philbert thought then. We all push at the boundaries of other people’s lives, sometimes breaking right through the bubble that separates us, without us even knowing it.

  And he knew the Turk had been right, had taken the correct decision. Philbert still had Hermann’s ring about his neck. He’d almost lost it once, the story of which far surpassed any of the supposed miracles of Kwert’s making, and whose consequences had gone so much farther than any of them at the time would have thought possible.