The Heart Specialist

by Claire Holden Rothman

  I smiled. “Some things come from Bourret. These days the specimens from the Royal Victoria and the Montreal General arrive with a frequency that makes it difficult for me to keep up. Now I suppose,” I said, nodding at the pail, “there will be material from you too. The majority of the specimens, however, come from Howlett’s autopsies.”

  Dugald laughed. “And that makes you his high priestess, like Apollo’s oracle.”

  I laughed uneasily. “Don’t come to me for truths, Dugald. Tea I can offer, but nothing as grand as the truth.”

  “What became of the illustrious Dr. Bourret?” asked Rivers, replacing the specimen bottle on my desk. “I don’t believe I’ve heard of him.”

  I looked away. I had no answer to that particular query, and this happened to be the truth, as opposed to the rest of the story I’d recounted, which was riddled with omissions. I had besieged William Howlett with questions but he had not seen or heard from his former mentor. “He disappeared.”

  Dugald Rivers rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Must have been an awful scandal to ruin a career like that.” He was looking at me, waiting for elaboration, but I couldn’t. My throat was dry. Were I to utter one more syllable Rivers would understand the emotional depth of my involvement in this history. Seconds ticked by. I could feel colour seeping into my cheeks, and then suddenly Jakob was beside me with the kettle.

  “It was about to sing,” he said. “Do you know where I can find the teapot?”

  I felt a surge of gratitude but hid it and joined in a hunt for the teapot. After I found it I busied myself setting out cups. With exaggerated care I measured two spoonfuls of smoky black twig into the pot. “Have you ever tasted Lapsang Souchong?” I asked Dugald in a voice that I hoped sounded close to normal.

  Dr. Rivers shook his head.

  “You’re in for a treat.” We had returned to safer ground with the subject of food. “If you don’t like it there’s standard fare on the shelf.” I was feeling more in control now. I took up the pastry box and snapped the string with a scalpel. A pair of my favourite tarts stared up like rising suns. “Apricot!” I exclaimed. “I do believe we shall be friends, Dugald Rivers.”

  There was no milk but I did have a supply of sugar lumps and a baguette, half-eaten from lunch, so I put Dugald to work slicing while I peeled a cucumber.

  “Cucumber sandwiches?” he muttered. “Civilized.”

  “One has to have standards, Dugald. Especially given the work we do.”

  Jakob joined us. He liked Dugald, which I fully understood. I cut the tarts in half so he too could partake. It was a pleasure to feed him. On his pittance of a salary he seemed forever hungry.

  It was he who told Dugald that I was working for Howlett. “She’s writing scholarly essays for that man in Baltimore you seem to admire so much.”

  Dugald Rivers stopped chewing. He put down his teacup and reddened.

  Jakob was glancing back and forth between us. “She’s writing a chapter in his forthcoming textbook.”

  Dugald looked at me. “Is it true, Dr. White?”

  I nodded. I was the only woman of one hundred and four physicians invited to contribute to the multi-volume series Dr. Howlett was editing. Dugald’s breath had grown slightly raspy, I noticed. It was hard not to feel sorry for this man who seemed so incapable of dissembling.

  “What is the subject?”

  “Hearts.” I answered with pride, though it was sure to nettle him. The cataloguing work had quickly borne fruit. “It started with that,” I said, pointing at the framed copy of my first published article.

  With my first piece of research into the misnamed Howlett Heart, William Howlett had realized I could write. He had commissioned a statistical survey of one hundred of his other, less spectacular, cardiac specimens, which he also helped me to publish.

  “Dr. Howlett is an expert in circulation, but he needed help with the congenital material,” I explained. No one actually worked in the field of congenital heart defects. There was nothing one could do for these cases save to diagnose and then autopsy them. There was no money in it.

  “You’re damned lucky,” Dugald whispered.

  I shrugged this off. It wasn’t as great an honour as he imagined. It meant gruelling nights at the typewriter after equally gruelling days at my museum work table. The work itself was derivative. I would have traded places in an instant with Dugald Rivers, who worked at a hospital and performed the autopsies that I merely examined afterward and tabulated. “You’re the lucky one. You won a McGill fellowship.”

  We set to the business of eating and drinking. Dugald Rivers loved my smoky Chinese tea and I loved his choice of tart. With the help of hungry Jakob Hertzlich we devoured every morsel.

  IV

  THE HEART’S REASON

  Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.

  — BLAISE PASCAL

  17

  APRIL 1905

  I had been working in the museum for seven years when Dr. Howlett arranged to visit. The museum had become a second home to me — a third one, really, if the Priory is to be counted — and a sustaining comfort in a life with what sometimes seemed like a disproportionate share of discomforts. Laure’s case was not improving. I didn’t know how Miss Skerry managed for there were fewer and fewer good days for my sister on the family property in St. Andrews East. Huntley had all but abandoned her, which was a relief in every respect but financial. The upkeep of the Priory, the payment of Miss Skerry’s salary and the livelihood of both my sister and my former governess were on my shoulders alone. Miss Skerry was frugal, ingenious at doing much with little, but it pained me not to be able to offer more when her life and my sister’s were so obviously circumscribed and hard. Money was a constant worry. I was underpaid by McGill. Thanks to supplements from Dr. Howlett I was able to scrape by.

  And now he was to come. He had promised a visit several times before but there were so many claims on his time he had not been able to follow through. This time around the chancellor of McGill had commissioned a portrait of him to be hung in the medical building. Howlett had agreed to come for two whole days to “see my dear old Montreal friends,” he had written in a letter several weeks back, “and sit for that damned portrait.”

  The portrait was hardly damned. I would have gladly hugged the chancellor and the portrait artist as well, for that portrait had succeeded where all my petitions and invitations had failed. An ocean now separated us from each other for Howlett was at Oxford, the regius professor of medicine. What was more, he had a new citizenship and name. He was Sir William Howlett, for he’d become a British citizen and been knighted since we last met. Now he was celebrated not only throughout Canada and the United States but in England as well. Dean Clarke had told me Howlett was the personal physician to the British prime minister.

  The day of the visit was wet and cold. April is such a fickle month in Montreal, changing from warm to bitterly cold in the space of a few hours. That day happened to be punishing. A hard wind pushed me up the path through campus toward the medical building. I had slipped on the ice on Sherbrooke Street, ripping holes in my stockings. As soon as I was inside the door I raised my skirt to survey the damage. Both my knees were scraped and bloody. I could wash the knees but my stockings, purchased a week prior specifically for this visit, were ruined. They were silk, imported from London, far beyond my means.

  Students streamed in for their classes, rosy cheeked and buttoned. A timid young man waved as he hurried past. The upper-year students all knew me from tutorials. During my first year at McGill no one had waved. Before Christmas break this year there had been an informal poll and the students had selected me as one of the best instructors on faculty. Students sought me out to chat before class on days without tutorials and on their lunch breaks. It was flattering, even if it meant I no longer had mornings to myself. It was my custom to arrive an hour before Jakob to put the kettle on and putter in sweet seclusion. These days if I wanted solitude I had to show up earlier.


  On a day such as this I longed for my former invisibility. I hoped no one would knock on my office door for an early chat and tea. I could not afford the interruption. The previous night I’d stayed up working far too late, and this morning when my alarm had rung I’d slept right through it and had to run all the way here.

  Three students were lounging by my door. One had his back against the wall, a knee jackknifing out. A second boy facing him was rising repeatedly on his toes. Up and down, up and down, as I approached, his head bowed in concentration. The third one saw me and alerted the others.

  “I’m sorry, boys,” I said, pulling out my keys. “I’m late, as you can see.”

  “We were wondering if you had a minute,” said the one who had noticed me.

  “No minutes today, I’m afraid.” I swung the door open and inhaled the familiar, musty, museum smell.

  “It won’t take long.”

  I relented. I always did. Jakob said I needed to add the word “no” to my vocabulary. I was forever compounding my already complex life with favours such as this. “It’s your one womanly trait,” Jakob had observed. I still hadn’t decided if this was an insult or a compliment.

  The three young men hung their coats on hooks I’d hammered behind the door. They stood awkwardly beside the table. Ordinarily they would have sat down with me and opened their books to the matter they wished to discuss. Today this was impossible. The table was so cluttered there wasn’t any space.

  “Spring cleaning?” one of them asked.

  I laughed. “In a manner of speaking.” I wished they would go away. My right kneecap was throbbing and I knew I ought to rinse it. Instead I stood there tending to the three young men. I glanced at the pocket watch inherited from my grandfather that hung around my neck.

  At eight forty-five there was a knock and Jakob Hertzlich appeared. My salvation. He knew his anatomy cold. He could take over.

  Jakob’s ears were bright red. He never wore a hat, probably because he didn’t own one. He greeted the boys but they stayed silent and kept their eyes low. A lot of the students did this with Jakob. He let it pass and kept on with his business as if their behaviour were inevitable, like bad weather. I wasn’t as fatalistic. I glared at the boys, cursing them inwardly.

  Now my irritation shifted to him. His clothes were the same as he’d worn the previous day. The coat I could forgive. He had no money to replace it and besides, Howlett wouldn’t see it. But his shirt was unchanged. His pants were several sizes too big, held up with an old belt. He was so thin he’d pierced extra holes in the leather. No tie. I had asked specifically for a tie.

  “Mr. Hertzlich,” I called. “Do us the honour of taking over this tutorial.”

  The boys simultaneously raised their heads, dogs catching a scent.

  “We’ve got to go,” said one.

  “The bell’s about to ring,” said another.

  I glared at them but Jakob gave only a shrug as they shuffled out. When the door closed after them he turned to me. “It’s winter again.” He blew on his red hands.

  “A hat might help,” I observed.

  “So you keep saying.”

  “Not that you listen.”

  “I listen plenty,” he said, glaring. “You’ve said yourself I never cover my ears.”

  Touché. I smiled but he wouldn’t smile back. “Yes,” I said. “Well today they’re the colour of beets.” He was moody today, perhaps because of the boys.

  “You sound like my mother.”

  I laughed. Peevish or not, Jakob Hertzlich was refreshing. Especially after empty exchanges with my weaker students, such as the three who had just left. How dare they disdain him. It wasn’t only that Jakob knew anatomy and pathology better than anyone on faculty or that he was so clever. It was that he was always himself. I could count on him for a straight answer.

  He was on his knees now, rooting in the icebox near the window. Most mornings I brought buns and milk for him. I harboured vaguely maternal feelings not only for his ears but for his stomach as well.

  “Slim pickings,” he observed.

  “I’m afraid I didn’t buy milk. But there’s no time for tea anyway.” My sympathy was starting to erode.

  He slammed the icebox shut. “When’s he coming?”

  So he hadn’t forgotten. The failure to put on a tie and to fill his stomach this morning was not due to a lapse of memory. Jakob Hertzlich wasn’t one to forget. He was one to let you know when he considered something a waste of time.

  “Now,” I said tersely. “I overslept so there’s a lot of work to do, but first I’ve got to get to the lavatory.”

  “What time did you leave last night?” His voice was suspicious.

  I didn’t want to say because Jakob was sure to disapprove. He considered it unsafe for me to work unaccompanied in the building at night. He’d only left because I had promised that I would leave soon after him. To avoid answering I hurried away into the corridor, which at that moment was packed with students. McGill’s medical school had grown so fast it had been forced up the stairs into what had once been my private wing. An adjacent storeroom had recently been converted into a laboratory.

  It was kind of Jakob to worry about me. He was a good man, on the whole, who laboured without complaint for hours by my side, forgetting meals and sleep. He lost himself in the work, as did I. On the walls of the museum five of his drawings now hung. Over the winter I’d requested a series of anatomical illustrations, all paid for with Howlett’s money. It gave me a means to ensure Jakob had sufficient funds.

  I commissioned a drawing of the Howlett Heart, which Jakob had rendered beautifully. I had it framed. The piece now hung on my bedroom wall. I would have brought it that day for all to see but in my early morning scramble I’d forgotten.

  I steadied my pocket watch, which was swinging in great arcs to match my stride. I had perhaps twenty minutes before Howlett was due to arrive. My knees were no longer bleeding but they needed a rinse, and my hair, which I’d pinned in haste at my flat, had unravelled. I felt disordered, unbalanced. My fall on the ice had been no accident. It was an expression of my inner state. Freud had published books on the subject in Vienna but I did not need to read them. I could write one myself about dark forces and compulsions. I was almost at the lavatory door when I saw him.

  Time stopped. The nine-o’clock bell rang muffled and distant. The students faded into the background. It was like the films I sometimes went to see at the Salle Poirier, unfolding in silence. The roar of an ocean filled my ears.

  “Dr. White!”

  His voice was exactly as I remembered. But how short he was! This I had not recalled. When he came up beside me our eyes were practically level.

  It had been six years but nothing about William Howlett had changed, even if he had moved to England and been knighted. He was fifty-six, an age at which most men turn old, but he was slender and quick, with eyes that seemed to devour every detail of the world around him.

  He took my hand and lifted it. Was he going to kiss it? I looked around in panic. Medical students made fun of everything and a dowdy old girl like me being kissed in broad daylight would be great fodder. But Howlett had other things in mind. He scrutinized the tips of my fingers.

  “Nicely healed.”

  He had remembered. He had not pushed me completely out of his mind.

  “It’s wonderful to be here,” he said, gesturing at the hall. “The building hasn’t changed one bit. Only now you are here to welcome me as your father once did.”

  For several seconds I couldn’t speak. There it was. He’d had the courage to say it, to put it right there in the open. I looked around to see if anyone had heard.

  “I … we expected you later,” I said stupidly. How awkward could I be? My first words to him made it sound as though he were not welcome. His face fell a little. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ve caught me off guard. It’s such a surprise after all these years, such a pleasure … words can’t express … I’ve been l
ooking so forward …” Complete silliness. My stomach turned, my head spun. I steadied myself against the wall.

  When we returned to the museum Jakob Hertzlich was sitting on top of the icebox, gnawing a heel of day-old bread. He did not stand when we entered, nor did he stop chewing. I could have thrown something at him. He looked far younger than his twenty-eight years with his surly, unshaven face.

  “This is my assistant.” I pronounced his name.

  Jakob gave a curt nod and swallowed. He did not stand until I asked him to round up Mastro and Rivers and Dean Clarke, at which point he jumped off the icebox and, seizing another chunk of bread, moved to the door.

  Howlett watched in silence. As the door closed he raised an eyebrow.

  “A bit rough around the edges.” I regretted the words as they came out. Jakob Hertzlich had told me that in one orthodox sect of his religion if you talked behind a person’s back you had to seek that person out afterward and admit the transgression.

  But Jakob was in the wrong here, wasn’t he? He was often surly with people in the department, myself included. He did not know the meaning of good manners. How dare he subject Sir William Howlett of all people to such treatment?

  My distinguished guest laid his coat and walking stick on a chair and began a tour of the museum, peering into my glass cabinets, which lined the room on all sides from floor to ceiling. As he gazed he stroked his moustache.

  Dean Clarke was the first faculty member to arrive. He took Howlett’s hand in both of his and shook it warmly. Dr. Mastro came next and shook Howlett’s hand with great seriousness. He seemed nervous. Several times in the past week he’d dropped in on the museum to inquire about my preparations, fearing they wouldn’t be sufficient. Dugald Rivers came in last, muttering apologies. “I thought we were convened for ten,” he said, shooting me a dark and meaningful look, as though I’d plotted to keep Howlett all to myself. Howlett’s warm greeting instantly improved his humour.

  That morning we were five — Dean Clarke, Dr. Mastro, Dugald Rivers, Jakob Hertzlich and me. Five devotees, or rather four, as Jakob made it clear he was a conscript. I had primed him in the preceding weeks, recounting anecdotes and offering articles and texts, but it was obvious that these efforts of mine did not have the same effect as having worked or studied alongside the man. I had tried to convey Howlett’s uniqueness but my descriptions had fallen on deaf ears. The previous day Jakob had stayed after hours to help me lay everything out: eighty-six specimens arranged by function with blank cards propped against them.