City of the Dead

by Herbert Lieberman

  Next a young pathologist, just out of residency and full of the kind of gushing idealism Konig knows will shortly disappear. Then a Messianic salesman from a medical supply house, hawking expensive machinery, evangelizing “the new technology.”

  “Revolutionary,” he calls it. “It will change everything.” It is nearly eleven o’clock when Konig permits several brochures to be pressed upon him, with promises to read them that night, all the while easing the man gently toward the door.

  Then at last he slips with a sigh into his jacket and makes ready to stroll the short distance across First Avenue to the University lecture hall where his students await him.

  »3«

  11:00 A.M. PATHOLOGY LABORATORY,

  NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE.

  “There are very few amenities observed in the autopsy room, ladies and gentlemen.” Konig stands bathed in a cone of white light at the center of an amphitheater on the ground floor of the University Medical School. The course he is teaching is Forensic Medicine 320. He has taught i now for nearly a quarter of a century to a generation of medical students, most of whom had little altitude or interest in the subject, having had their eyes on more lucrative specializations, and there only because the University made it obligatory for them to be there—at least for a year.

  One hundred and fifty youthful, intent faces peer down on Konig now as he whips back, magician-like, the sheet covering the waxen cadaver of a rather handsome middle-aged man.

  “Everything is reduced to its most basic and elemental,” Konig continues, “and unlike the diagnostician, who deals in the luxury of hypotheses, the pathologist deals only in final truth. The cause of death is all that is at issue here.” His eyes sweep up and down the length of the cadaver as he speaks, encompassing in one glance a multitude of detail.

  “All we know about this pleasant-looking gentleman,” Konig continues, “is that he was forty-five years of age with no prior history of cardiovascular disease. There is no history of hypertension, seizures, or convulsions. He was not diabetic and he was on no medications. He had an annual checkup, the last of which took place three weeks ago, was pronounced fit as a fiddle by his internist, and the last time his wife spoke with him, two days ago, he was in a cheerful frame of mind.” Smiling, Konig gazes around at the bright young faces of his audience, then nods to an assistant. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, I believe we are now ready to begin.”

  With a nine-inch-long scalpel, Konig makes three lightning-swift incisions. Two proceeding from each tip of the scapulae, bisecting at a point above the sternum, and from that point plunging straight downward to the pubic symphysis. The three deft slashes form a large letter Y—sort of a cosmic-joke-of-a-Y to denote a man already marked by fatal destiny. Like the Y that stands for YOU.

  Several more slashes of his blade and Konig flays open the neck and chest. With bone cutters, he severs the cartilage joining ribs to sternum, tears asunder a series of small clavicle joints, and then, with a queasy ripping sound, yanks away the whole front of the chest. In no more than a minute, the livid, rigored thing on the table has been split apart like a chicken with all its internal organs gleaming brightly there in place like a bowl of fruit.

  Blood has begun to seep into the small trenches lining the table and collects there in tepid little pools. Konig swings his scalpel round through the inside of the lower jaw, disconnecting the tongue. He tugs sharply downward on the muscle, releasing the larynx behind it, then pulls it out through the yawning neck. Another stroke severs the gullet and two or three more free the heart and lungs. Next he hauls the whole grisly concatenation of things out, holding them up by the windpipe for all his audience to see—once more the cosmic magician producing rabbits from a hat There’s an audible gasp of admiration and some scattered applause as he drops the whole business into a steel bowl held out to him by an assistant.

  The bowl is now held under the tap, the spigot turned on, and while the stream of water is played over the organs, Konig commences his examination of them. He cuts into larynx and tongue in order to detect signs of vomiting or hemorrhage. He rotates the heart in his hand, exposing its chambers, rinsing out the blood, testing each valve for signs of defect. Lastly, he takes a pair of scissors and snips his way up the arteries, searching there for plaque and emboli, as well as in the blood vessels of the heart itself.

  “Nothing remarkable here,” he proclaims.

  Returning to the body, he proceeds to remove the viscera, examining each organ in the same meticulous fashion. He draws off a sample of gastric contents into a small jar, as well as a sample of urine by merely pressing the bladder. He then turns these over to his assistant. “A little something for the toxicology lab, just in case of foul play.”

  A few more deft motions and he has lifted out spleen and liver, sliced them up like a fresh loaf of bread, and dropped sections into several nearby cardboard buckets used for storage and transport of internal organs. “Still looks good,” he cries out.

  The steel sink is now nearly full of organs submerged in roseate water. Konig is now ready for the coup de grâce—a single sweep of the blade across the top of the head that opens the scalp from ear to ear. Several additional slashes and the scalp becomes a pair of flaps which he yanks down over the man’s face in much the same way one might pull off a pair of gloves.

  With the saw blade he then cuts around the skull slightly above ear level and at last lifts off the calvaria—the skullcap—like the lid of a cookie jar. Gleaming there in the cold white light are the membrane sacs containing the brain. Slashing these open, he then works his rubbered fingers under the frontal lobes of the brain, at last lifting it out, whole and intact, from the base of the skull. It is only a matter of moments until he separates the medulla oblongata from the spinal cord, then lets the entire brain slither into a steel bowl, examining it closely as he sluices water over it from the spigot.

  “All appears quite normal, ladies and gentlemen. This is a bit of a riddle,” he announces, although it is really no great riddle to him. The diffuse hemorrhage at the base of the brain has told him all he needs to know. He proceeds to slice the brain into neat sections. “Ah—I beg your pardon. Not so much of a riddle, after all.”

  He holds up a section of cortex dripping with blood. “Ruptured saccular aneurysm in the circle of Willis—a blowout, ladies and gentlemen. No more, no less.”

  With small knives he carefully dissects out the damaged section of artery at the base of the brain, pointing out the weakness in the wall, a small point of fatal rupture about the size of a pea. “A tiny but lethal flaw in an otherwise very capable machine.” He casts a smiling glance around his audience. “Thus fate makes monkeys of us all.”

  »4«

  11:45 A.M. MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE.

  The warm, redemptive sun of April streams across Konig’s back as he chats wearily on the phone with the Deputy Mayor.

  “I’m perfectly aware of that.”

  “You are? Well, I certainly hope you are because you’re damned well going to have to be there.”

  “I want to be. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, Paul,” the Deputy Mayor whines in slightly crazed nasalities. “The Mayor doesn’t want—repeat, does not want—any further embarrassment. He’s had embarrassment enough. When barely a quarter of the year’s gone by and you’ve already got seven suicides in the Tombs, and now another—you know things are getting pretty hairy. I’ve had the Governor’s office, the ACLU, the NAACP, the B’nai B’rith, the Board of Corrections, a half-dozen assorted civil rights groups, and a charming fraternal organization calling themselves the Savage Skulls all eager to see me. Breaking down my door. Serving me with ultimatums and subpoenas. Shouting obscenities up and down the halls.”

  “Well,” Konig says, his mind on some aspect of the curious little defense cuts he’d seen on the thumb and wrist of the young black man up in Harlem that morning, “that’s unfortunate.”

 
“Unfortunate?” There’s a sputtering sound, then laughter full of choking rage. “Goddamned right, unfortunate.”

  “What would you like me to say? I fully realize your concern. I’m sorry. But I’m still going to stand with a verdict of asphyxiation by hanging.”

  “Why won’t you say which of your people did the autopsy?”

  “It’s of no consequence who did the autopsy. Suffice it to say, the conclusion of this department is self-inflicted death by hanging, and I’ll stand behind that.”

  “I’m asking you, Paul, as the sensible man I’ve known for twenty-five years—who conducted the Robinson autopsy? It was Strang, wasn’t it?”

  “Sorry, Maury. You’re wasting your breath. That’s privileged information, and I will not disclose it. Not to you, and not to the Mayor.”

  Konig flinches and pulls his ear from the receiver as it starts to hiss and sputter a stream of invective. “Fine—fine. You love martyrdom. You always have. My friend, Saint Paul the martyr. Well, you will be martyred, because, my dear fellow, now that permission’s been granted to exhume the body and reautopsy this Robinson boy, I think you should know there are several people out for your ass.”

  “I know just who.”

  “Good. Then you know this is no minor-league stuff, and if there’s the slightest thing fishy—repeat, the slightest thing—you’re going to be hauled before the grand jury so fast it’ll make your head spin. If you think you can bullshit your way out of this one the way you do, Paul—the way we all know you do—with a lot of fast-talking technical argle-bargle, I’m here to tell you you’re sadly—”

  “I told you—I’m perfectly willing to go before the grand jury.”

  “I know you are, goddamn it,” Deputy Mayor Benjamin sighs wearily. “How Well I know that you are. Christ on the cross. Waiting for the spikes and the crown of thorns. Well, don’t worry, Calvary’s coming. You’ll get it, too. And you’ll love every minute of it. Goodbye.”

  No sooner has Konig, fuming with rage, slammed down the phone and taken up his notes in preparation for his court appearance that afternoon than it rings again.

  Muttering, he lets it go on ringing, waiting for Carver to pick it up outside. But she doesn’t. Then it occurs to him that it is noontime and she’s already gone to lunch.

  He resolves not to answer the phone but to go on with his notes. The ring persists for ten or a dozen times, its jarring regularity taking on something of an almost human malevolence. Konig grits his teeth, determined to outlast it. But it is a war of wills and he is losing.

  “Christ,” he snaps and snatches up the receiver. “Konig here,” he snarls, but hears nothing. “Hello. Medical Examiner’s Office. Konig here. Who’s this?” Still no sound other than a faint, distant ringing through the wires. “Hello—hello.”

  He is about to fling the receiver back on the cradle when his arm freezes and he can feel the scalp beneath his gun-metal-gray hair begin to tingle. Then he hears something like a sigh—a long, rather weary exhalation of air—and in that moment he knows who is on the other end.

  “Hello—Lolly?”

  Another sigh.

  “Lolly—Lolly—is it you?”

  He waits. No response, only a rather agitated breathing. There’s no mistake in his mind now. He knows—is absolutely certain—it’s she. She’s trying to reach him from somewhere out there in the great wilderness of the city.

  “Lolly—Lolly, dear—don’t be frightened,” he says, terrified that she’ll hang up. “Say hello. Please say hello. I miss you so much.”

  He waits, but he hears nothing—only the breathing.

  “Lolly—I got your card this morning. It was funny.” He picks up the card and looks at the shaggy comic bear in doctor’s clothing. “I guess I do look a bit like that. Not quite so shaggy though—I shaved my beard. Idiotic to grow one in the first place at my age. Anyway—glad you remembered. You didn’t have to, but all the same, I’m happy you did. You all right?”

  No answer, but there’s the breathing. It seems to have slackened and evened out a bit. He can almost hear her listening with her breath. That was enough for him. “Can’t you say anything? Maybe just hello—just so I can hear your voice. I’d love to hear your voice, dear. That would be the best birthday present.”

  He waits. Still nothing.

  “Lolly, if you won’t talk to me, won’t you at least write? Mail a letter from the Grand Central Post Office. It can’t be traced. All I want is to know you’re all right. That isn’t so unreasonable, is it? If you need money, I’ll send it to you. General Delivery. Care of a mail drop. Anything. Anything you want? Clothing? Food? Please, dear—just tell me you’re okay. That’s all I want. I won’t interfere with your life. I’ve done enough of that already. I know that now. I’ve had a lot of time to think, a lot of time to myself, and I know I was wrong. I’ve been wrong right along. I’m stubborn. A stupid, stubborn, pigheaded fool who believes he knows the right way for everybody. God, what an ass I am.”

  Suddenly he’s laughing. “You know what I’ve been thinking?” He laughs again, but it’s a rather forced laugh. “These past few weeks I’ve been having this persistent memory of you when you were just a few weeks old.

  I used to hold you on my knee and play with you and you would always cry and Mother tried to tell me that it was because my voice was too loud, and that it frightened you. But being the stubborn, stupid ass I am, I didn’t believe her, and I kept playing with you and you kept right on crying. Lolly—” Something catches in his, throat and he starts coughing violently. “I feel so rotten about you.” He coughs. “So goddamn sorry.” Coughs again. “Sorry—so sorry.” Coughing. Coughing. His voice trails off in a singsong lament.

  “Your mother,” he runs on blindly now, having to speak, terrified she might hang up the moment he stops, “your mother, God rest her—your mother,” and suddenly for a moment he sees his child out there in some squalid flat with a naked light bulb, amid the sour gray linen of yesterday’s unmade beds. He can see her huddled before the phone somewhere out there in the jungle of the city—the slight, pretty, sensitive face with the large, startled eyes—her mother’s eyes—listening to his cough-choked voice. He imagines her in some grimy tenement district with its angry outcasts, its prowling predatory creatures. Cold, prideful, and frightened, how ill equipped she was to survive there—a fawn in leopard country.

  “Lolly—Lolly,” he hurries on, “it’s five months now. Can’t we bury this thing? The house is so lonely with you and Mother gone. I’m thinking of selling it. Taking an apartment. It’s too much for me to keep up. Too big.

  I prowl around it at night like a lunatic. Talking to the shadows. I can’t live there anymore. It’s full of ghosts. Can’t we see each other?”

  He waits for some sign of relenting, but none comes. “Please, Lolly. I’m begging you. I’m not ashamed to beg—” The thing catches in his throat and again he starts to cough. The breathing on the other end suddenly stops. For a horrible moment he thinks she’s gone. Left him there dangling.

  “Lolly—-are you there? Lolly, don’t go.” He waits and the breathing resumes once more as if in answer to his question. “Lolly, I’ve had an idea. You know this month I’m making the final payment on the place out at the beach.” He talks rapidly now, speech spilling from him, a little out of breath, just trying to keep her there. “I’ve been thinking, dear—I’ve been thinking—you know, now that Mother’s gone—no reason why you shouldn’t have the house now. I mean, it was always meant for you anyway. That’s why Mother and I bought it in the first place. No reason why you have to wait for me to die to get it.” He laughs oafishly. “I know how you love the place and now you can live out there. Right bn the ocean, where you’ve always wanted to be. I’m having the whole place repainted next month. Putting in a stone patio overlooking the water. Everything’s paid off. You could have it just for the taxes. I mean, I’ll pay the taxes—but it’s your place. All yours. I’ll sign it over today if you’d like. Just g
ive me the word and it’s yours. You can live there by yourself or with anyone you want. Even that friend of yours—” His voice lowers automatically, as if he fears being overheard. “I won’t interfere, Lolly. I promise. I’ll never interfere again. We’ve had some bad times, darling. But that’s all behind us. All I want now is for us to be friends again, and—”

  He is about to go on, but in the next moment he hears a click, heartless and emphatic, then a rather high, distant ringing through the wires.

  “Lolly—Lolly—Lolly—” He is shouting, as if he can bring her back by the sheer force and authority of his voice. But she’s gone, swallowed up once more out there in the great vortex of the city. Suddenly he’s angry, something amounting to rage erupting inside him. Or is it hate? He doesn’t know if it’s Lolly or himself who’s the object of it. He has degraded himself on the phone, pleaded like a feckless old man to someone who would not even deign to speak with him. Perhaps it wasn’t even she, but a perfect stranger. A wrong number or some creep who’d inadvertently blundered onto the line, gotten interested in his story and let him go on pouring his heart out. But, of course, he knows that isn’t so. He knows he’s spoken to his daughter, found her for a precious few moments only to lose her once again to that eerie, impenetrable anonymity in which she chose now to live.

  He flings the phone back on the cradle, and not knowing exactly where he is going, he starts up. But in the next moment he falls back, slumping in his seat, his legs waxen and trembling. He has the feeling that if he could cry he would feel better. He sits there for a while and tries to cry, but he can’t. Nothing will come. He’s not the sort of man to cry. At least not outwardly. He wasn’t even able to cry when Ida died. Instead, he played poker—all night.

  Suddenly he starts to shake. Very shortly he is shaking all over, and now he sits there in the noontime silence of a deserted office building, shaking, in a cold sweat, waiting patiently until whatever the emotion raging through him like a tide recedes.