The Anatomist's Dream Read online

  Kroonk leant closer, shivering slightly against Philbert’s side.

  ‘Lovely pig,’ she ventured after a while, and stroked Kroonk behind the ears.

  ‘Kroonk, kroonk,’ purred Kroonk as she swapped her allegiance and the girl smiled, Philbert finally opening his mouth and finding words coming out, asking the girl her name.

  ‘Puppelita,’ she answered brightly, ‘Lita to my friends, and you can call me Lita.’

  ‘I’m Philbert,’ Philbert said, emboldened, ‘but mostly I’m called Little Maus.’

  Lita was amused by the name and giggled, and Philbert ­correspondingly blushed. And then Lita did what nobody else had ever done, at least not that Philbert ever remembered, and put out her tiny hand and stroked his taupe.

  ‘Little Maus,’ she said. ‘I like your little maus,’ and then she twisted his taupe’s soft tuft of hair around her fingers, Philbert so astounded he could only look hard at the water, con­centrating on making splashing noises with his feet. Not even Frau Kranz touched his head, and no more did Philbert if he could avoid it. Little Lita was unaware of the boy’s ambivalence and sighed again.

  ‘How lovely it must be to dangle your toes in the river all day long,’ she said, Philbert once again struck dumb, leaving her to carry on the conversation by herself, which she did. ‘Will you be here tomorrow?’ she asked. Philbert nodded mutely, trying to smile, Kroonk kroonking so Lita laughed again, picked up her shoes and headed back to the Fair.

  That moment was forever fixed in Philbert’s memory as if caught in amber, and no matter what else was sent to fill his head, no matter what else would be done to him and his taupe over the years, it remained like an anchor, a starting post, around which the rest of his life would circle forevermore: Lita’s fingers against his taupe, Lita’s fingers in his hair. He would feel them always, just as then, and later would come to realise this was the single point in time when something inside his head switched itself on and began to blink open its eyes; began to take in all that was going on around him.

  Next day found Philbert dangling his feet from dawn through to dusk, toes cold, cramped and crinkled into bladderwrack as he went on waiting right into the night. Only when the moon had risen halfway up the sky did she come, bringing a small bag of violets crushed with almond flakes rolled in sugar, and a bucket of scraps for Kroonk. While they sat there dipping their fingers into the last of the sugar at the very bottom of the bag, Lita asked Philbert about his family and Philbert told her matter-of-factly enough, his tale brief, no more than a sentence, causing the girl to weep inexplicably, putting her arm around his shoulder.

  ‘Poor Little Maus,’ she murmured, and then stood up, pulling him after her, taking him off along the bank and over the bridge and into the dust of the Fair, weaving a way through the maze of stalls and show-tents, Philbert’s ears buzzing and humming with all the noise. She led him behind a threadbare curtain into a small cubicle, whose canvas walls shook as the crowds outside passed by, making the lamp flicker on its hook, nothing for Philbert feeling quite real.

  ‘This is Tomaso,’ Lita introduced a boy whose sad face had two watery eyes in it and another that popped out like a frog from the back of his head. ‘His Mama left him too,’ she said, automatically picking up a spill of apple-wood, ­dribbling water into Tomaso’s third eye. It blinked slowly, as if in pain, but continued to stare off blindly into the middle distance.

  ‘We’re all alone,’ Lita said, ‘though here at least, we have each other.’

  And then she started to sing, and though Philbert didn’t understand the words he had a strong feeling he knew what she was saying as she sang, her voice both soft and brittle at the same time, and with a tune so doleful that tears began spilling from Tomaso’s eyes, at least the two Philbert could see, for the boy had turned a little away from him, holding his head towards the shadows, Philbert recognising the gesture with shock, because it was something he did himself.

  Too soon for Philbert it was the last night of the Fair; the neighbours had called in several times to check on Frau Kranz and now stood once more whispering in the doorway waiting for an invitation inside, an invitation that Frau Kranz refused to grant.

  ‘No need for another visit,’ she croaked. ‘I’m quite well from your last ministrations. Is that you, Philbert?’

  And it was, just back from his latest riverbank vigil, though Lita had not arrived. The neighbours hovered a few moments more, making a fuss of the boy, patting at Kroonk.

  ‘How well she looks,’ they said, ‘how healthy and plump your little piggy is, Philbert, how smooth her skin.’

  ‘Go away,’ Frau Kranz’s attempted shout was feeble, ‘and get away from the boy and his pet.’

  She emphasised the last word as much as she could, for she knew exactly what those neighbours were about and why so all of a sudden solicitous. She’d seen them licking their lips, the awful glint in their eyes, heard the sharpening of knives upon soap-stones, smelled the firing up of a spit at the end of their street and what it meant. Philbert came in, shutting out the neighbours behind the skinny tin door of the shack, as happy as Frau Kranz had ever seen him, Kroonk’s little curly tail ­wriggling excitedly as she trotted in beside him.

  ‘Come here, Little Maus,’ she whispered, and the boy and his pig came up to Frau Kranz, who was wrapped in her blood-splattered blankets in her chair by her dying fire.

  ‘There’s something I need you to do for me, my Little Maus,’ she faltered, laying a dry and wrinkled hand upon his head as he sat obediently on the floor beside her, letting her fingers brush briefly at his taupe.

  ‘You have to go,’ she said. ‘You have to leave me.’

  The boy turned his head towards her, the panic and bewilderment so evident upon his face that her heart took a final dash at life and beat just a little faster.

  ‘They mean to take Kroonk away from you, dear one,’ she said, thin tears tracking down her parchment cheeks. ‘You must have seen the spit they have set up, down towards the bridge . . .’

  The words came from her slowly, keeping her eyes on Philbert’s, waiting for the shock of realisation that must come. And so it did, a single gasp escaping the boy as he threw his arms around Kroonk’s neck; this small red pig who had been companion, brother and sister to him for as long as he could remember, and silently he wept, and silently he clung to her, Kroonk sitting there on her haunches like an overweight dog, her rounded belly pushing out between her legs.

  ‘I knew this day must come,’ Frau Kranz went on, ‘I’ve been racking my brains for a solution, and now I have it. You must go, and you must take this with you.’

  She fumbled her shaking fingers beneath her pillow and brought out a small wooden box the colour of newborn chestnuts, with a lustre that hinted of sun-warmed forests far away.

  ‘Look inside,’ she said, and Philbert did, lifting out a long, curly tress of hair smelling of chocolate and spices, scents from long ago he half remembered every time he walked past the confectionery shop in town.

  ‘It’s your Mamma’s,’ Frau Kranz wheezed. It had been a day of exertion for her, forcing herself up from bed into chair to endure the overzealous care of overzealous neighbours, trying all the while to come up with a way out of a situation of which she would not, could not, contemplate being even a small part. She had known the moment she woke that a decision had to be made, and now she’d made it, and was about to do the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life, sending away the one person who had ever really mattered to her, the child she’d helped into life and practically brought up those first few years, and done so single-handed in the few years following that. And by sending this child away she knew she was condemning herself to die alone in this little shack, with no one to light up her last few days or hold her hand when she passed into the hereafter. But he was so young, this little boy with his misshapen head, and it was precisely because of that head that she had foun
d an answer at last.

  ‘Hush now, child,’ she said, mustering every last inch and ounce of strength she had left in her. ‘You must take Kroonk and you must go away, my darling, for I cannot protect you any more.’

  The boy was crying freely now, great hiccupping sobs breaking from him as he clutched the box she had given him in one hand and Frau Kranz’s skinny fingers in the other.

  ‘You must go, my lamb,’ she whispered, snatching breath from the air like scraps of autumn leaves. ‘And you must go now. There’s a sack beneath the bed. I’ve packed everything you’ll need.’

  Philbert unwillingly let go her hand and pulled out the sack as she directed him, small hands trembling as he opened its neck, glancing inside, then placing Nelke’s box in with all the rest.

  ‘But where will I go, Mama?’ his voice was thin as smoke, hardly audible, but Frau Kranz heard, her heart squeezing almost shut to hear that one word Mama, a word she’d hoped to hear all her long life, but never had until now, right at the moment she was having to send this surrogate son away from her, knowing she would never see him again.

  ‘Go to the Fair,’ she said. ‘Ask them to take you in. Offer to do any jobs for them that you can. Show them your taupe, Little Maus, and maybe that will help.’

  She didn’t know much about Fairs but she knew they liked unusual, and that was Philbert. She had no more words, so tired it was hard to draw in breath, could only squeeze Philbert’s fingers lightly as he lowered his head upon her knees, feeling the warmth of his tears soaking through her skirts, looking down on that taupe of his, at the skin stretched taut over it the colour of spilled tea, that incongruous twist of hair growing slightly off centre; she stroked her Little Maus with all the gentleness her long and childless life had given her, stroked it ever more slowly, slowly, slowly, until she was asleep.

  He was too young to understand the full implications of what he was about to do but Frau Kranz’s word was good enough for him, so when her hand fell from his head to her lap Philbert moved, stood up, kissed his good Frau Kranz upon her clammy forehead. Then he picked up the sack she had prepared for him but did not go out of the door as might have been expected, for he’d grasped the import of what might happen to Kroonk if he did. Instead he went to the back of the shack and prised up a loose section of the metal-sheeted wall that was thin, corroded by all the salt that pervaded the whole of Staßburg. It gave easily, and soon wide enough for him and Kroonk to wriggle their way through. Straight into the yard then and down past the chicken coop, and from there to the river meadows where Shminiak and Nelke first lay down together, and on into the darkness, bypassing the neighbours’ spit that Philbert saw burning merrily away at the tail end of their street, just as Frau Kranz had said it would be. His heart was thudding hard. When he was close by the bridge he picked Kroonk up, pulled her to his chest, dragging his jacket as far as he could across her to keep her hidden, holding the sack up in front of them both for a last protection.

  To the Fair, Frau Kranz had directed him, and towards the Fair he went, and over the bridge without any trouble, keeping his head down, moving with the rest of the crowd surging over its back, jostling and laughing as they went to the Last Night of the Fair. He folded himself into the hustle and bustle of folk as they funnelled into the Fair’s Ground, slipping a lead around Kroonk’s neck as he let her down, wary of anyone who might yet recognise her and try to grab her up, moving immediately away from the crowds and down to the river. He listened to the water moving ever onward to who knew where. He listened to all the people shouting and singing, flinging themselves into this last night of holiday, fully aware that tomorrow it would be back to the mines, back to grudge and drudge, back to normality. He moved away, lay down on the river bank, eyes wide open – Kroonk beside him – wondering what to do, how to find Little Lita, make her understand. He was so tired and troubled that he didn’t even realize he’d fallen asleep.

  Next thing he knew he was being awoken by a small hand shaking his shoulder. Philbert started, jumped up, his hand gripping tight about the rope that held him fast to Kroonk, his eyes going straightaway towards the bridge, looking for trouble.

  ‘I’ll not let Kroonk go!’ he shouted, almost before he knew he was speaking. ‘I’ll not, I will not!’

  But the person standing before him was no enemy, no neighbour or townsperson wanting to turn his Kroonk into spit and sausage. Instead it was the one person in the entire world he wanted to see. It was Lita, and she was looking at him so strangely that his throat constricted and would allow out no more words, not even the gasp of surprise he felt but could not express. After his small outburst about the pig she did nothing for a few moments, was merely observing this small boy with his overburdened head and the small pig nuzzling at his knee like a frightened dog. She took a step back from them and glanced across at the river, seeing the lights of the Fair reflecting dimly from the shack she knew to be the boy’s home, precisely because it had been from this very spot she’d first spied him – and his odd little pig – dipping their collective feet into the river. She’d seen in him at that moment something she recognised of old, the very reason she’d crossed the bridge that first night of the Fair just to check it out. And she knew why he was here now, though not the particular reason behind it, but she knew, and was kind, and reached out a hand and took Philbert’s in her own.

  ‘It’s always been like this,’ Lita said, in that oddly high voice of hers that had Philbert thinking back to the serinette his father had given him the morning he’d left, hoping it was in the sack he was clutching as if it was a chicken whose neck he’d just wrung. ‘And maybe always will be,’ she went on. ‘Towns we pass through? The people we see? Always someone to gather up with us when we leave. You’re not the first, Little Maus, and you won’t be the last.’

  She wrapped her warm-as-tinder fingers around Philbert’s lonely own and led him, as she’d done for others before, into a brand new world.

  5

  Introducing the Carneous Mole

  They all left Staßburg along different paths, Nelke with her Frenchman, Shminiak with his sadness and Lamentations, Philbert with his Kroonk and the Fair. Only Frau Kranz stayed, buried in her blankets all the night while her neighbours combed the streets with their newly-sharpened knives. They came back during the night several times, hammering on her doors, shouting out to release the pig, but by then she’d braced a bolt of cloth up against the handle so they couldn’t get in and, after performing this last rite of protection for the boy and his pig, she crawled from door to bed. Several days later, one of her neighbours came looking and did what she should have done before and had her man beat down the door with a sledgehammer. And there was Frau Kranz, curled up like a hedgehog on her bed, surrounded by blood-boltered sheets, her body a sack of rot already leaking out of every orifice.

  No mourning for good Frau Kranz, nor the encomium she deserved, only the shack being put to torch and flame – with her inside – once it had been pilfered of anything vaguely useful, the conflagration surrounded by those same women in their clogs to whom Frau Kranz had so assiduously administered during the Great Grippe; paying that kindness no mind at all and ­spitting into the flames for allowing the boy to escape with the pig they’d been so eager to purloin, assuming it to be communal property having fed it their scraps and chuckings-out, dreaming of all the crackling and moist flesh, soups and pies now beyond their reach. They treated the traitor Frau Kranz no better than they would the coom that gathers at the naves of wheels, or the soot that blackens the oven mouth, pulling down the last of the shack after the burning, and brushing its ashes – and hers – roughly from their hands, as if they’d already forgotten her name.

  By then, Philbert was many miles distant and so in thrall to his new adventure he immediately forgot everything that had gone before, including Frau Kranz and what might have become of her. He was bemused by everything Lita showed him, by the oddities and eccentrici
ties of the Fair, no one giving his taupe a second glance. That first night, Lita tucked Philbert and his Kroonk away up over the tailgate of her travelling caravan, squashing them into a corner between the drawer she used for a bed and the giant Frau Fettleheim, who claimed to be the ­fattest woman in all the world, and whose wheezing filled the small space, along with her grunts and grumblings.

  ‘More mouths to feed, Lita,’ the huge Frau Fettleheim moaned. ‘What were you thinking?’

  But Frau Fettleheim was not a cruel person, and she had not refused the extra company of Philbert and his pig despite her apparent objections. She recognised straightaway, just as Lita had done, that both were cast-offs and had nowhere else to go. Everyone in the Fair understood this because, in one way or another, they’d all been there themselves. It wasn’t long, therefore, before Frau Fettleheim began to pat Kroonk’s head and tickle her ears, especially after Kroonk laid her head on Frau Fettleheim’s knee, at which point she saw in Kroonk rather more of herself than she was comfortable with, this fat little piggling who had been destined, before her escape, to being gutted, sliced, divided and devoured.

  ‘Poor Piggy,’ she said then. ‘Poor little piggy. And of course you must both stay.’

  And so they did, Philbert and Kroonk hugging each other tight that first ever night away from their home, Frau Fettleheim huge and snoring on the one side, Little Lita curled up in her drawer on the other. They both lay awake for a long time, ­listening to the whelps of dogs, the stamping feet of unknown animals, the gentle plash of the river as it wrestled a tree bough down its length, men and women lurching and leaning against the wood of the small caravan, retching or relieving themselves a few inches away outside, owls later screeching close in the darkness, swooping down on wide black wings, claws ­skewering the mice and shrews that ran amongst the debris of the carts, and then the final, empty egg-blown silence when only the faintest fibrillation of wind and water were left once humankind had at last gone away, and all else was left to sleeping.