The Anatomist's Dream Read online

  Philbert didn’t know of this nebulous something-else the Fair’s folk attributed to him, and they in turn were unaware of the true consequence of Philbert’s near-death experience, which was that the lever he’d felt thrown the first time Lita touched his head had taken on a significance he could neither name nor understand. What he did know was that life was short and ­precious and could be snatched away at any moment and that not a second of it should be lost, nor forgotten. The unsettling thoughts he’d had the night Otto gave him the nail were a small start of his understanding; Philbert became convinced that deep inside his head lay a repository of memories waiting for him to reach them: of serinette, donkey, mother and father. Quite why he found it so imperative to track down those ghosts of ages past he didn’t know, only that he sensed them there lurking, tickling like feathers, enough to make him want to bring them back out into the light.

  Philbert could not have expressed a whit of all this if asked, and life went on as usual, or as usual as it had become now that Philbert was part and parcel of the Fair. He performed his duties as quietly and solicitously as always, sat often with Hermann after doling out his numerous ministrations, finding a comfort with him not found elsewhere, not even with Lita with whom, young as he was, he was a little in love. Philbert was ­accustomed to solitude and spent much of his spare time – if not with Hermann – then away from the rest with only Kroonk for ­company, which was as he liked it.

  On one of those Autumn evenings apart, Philbert was sitting on the edge of that ox-bow lake, the banks of the Mohne set ablaze by the low-lying sun, a depth of orange and amber in every reed, on every tree bole, everything exuding a warmth never seen at any other time of year. Philbert was ensconced amongst a heap of fallen leaves, all rustling and rattling by the nudge of the softest breeze, gossiping in small, cracked voices as he watched undiscovered worlds reflected in the smooth water of the lake a few yards below him. It was an evening of content, the Fair’s folk camped up a few hundred yards from where he sat, no show to do, no wonders to perform, no villagers or town’s people to impress. They sat quiet and comfortable, smoking tobacco, or an approximation of it, around their fires, or mending clothes and bits of canvas, repainting boards, brushing down donkeys, chatting quietly, hanging bowls of hare or pigeon stew over the flames.

  Philbert had long since finished his duties, had prepared Maulwerf’s macédoine of vegetables, simmered the quince he had picked, peeled and chopped earlier, setting its fragrant flesh into a wine jelly for a late-night treat, wondering if this time Maulwerf would get even a hint of the scents everyone else took for granted. He’d retrieved Kroonk from Tomaso’s earlier attempts to have her hunt for truffles, which according to Tomaso were more valuable than gold. It was a task Kroonk had apparently been unable to comprehend, uncovering not a sliver of the fungus, spending her time kicking dead leaves into the air with such abandon and obvious joy that Tomaso despaired of her and had sulked off back to his lace-making, a trade he was learning in order to leave the Fair once and for all. Philbert was glad of it. He’d not liked the bitter twist to Tomaso’s mouth when he announced Kroonk’s failure, a bitter twist Tomaso tried to turn into a smile without success.

  Philbert had relished the feeling of cold water on his feet when he’d paddled in the lake’s shallows attempting to perfect the technique Hermann had explained to him of how to stab a fish with a sharpened stick, in the manner of a heron. Things hadn’t gone well. Twice he’d stabbed at his prey and hit his foot by mistake, unaware of the illusion of refraction, and twice had mistaken a strip of weed for an eel, at which point he gave up.

  He was performing the age old ritual of boy burying himself in fallen leaves, apart from his head, when he heard the noise of a clopping pony and partially exhumed himself, turned his head, seeing a man walking along the track maybe twenty yards distant, lop-eared donkey and small cart in tow. He wasn’t much interested at first, for he supposed it was just another traveller, a pedlar most likely, wanting to join up with the Fair, an occurrence not unusual when they were on the outskirts of a busy town; until he recalled they weren’t anywhere near a town, busy or otherwise, were deliberately in the middle of nowhere to take their ease before heading into Dortmund. He twisted himself around, observing the newcomer’s progress with some suspicion, long enough with the Fair to be wary of strangers popping up from nowhere, never mind that he’d been one himself. The man looked old and stooped, wrapped around with old grey blankets, man and donkey appearing tired and thin, both hobbling slightly, the cart hiccupping slowly over the stones. Philbert followed their progress, wondering which would collapse first – donkey, cart or man – but was interested enough in their passage for him to shuffle himself free of leaves, put on his boots, call Kroonk and slowly meander his way back to camp.

  Philbert heard the laughter well before he got there, and was astonished to see the stranger sitting, miraculously revived, amongst a knot of people jostling for his attention, waving their hands above their heads.

  ‘Pick me!’ their hands and mouths were saying, ‘oh please pick me!’

  So another Fair’s person after all, and one the rest obviously knew. Philbert was about to head off again, casting one last glance at the stranger, startled to see the man looking right back at him, dark eyes aglint in the failing light. He also noticed that beneath the grey blankets he wore a monk’s habit dyed red as a holly berry.

  ‘Ah, at last!’ Maulwerf shouted. ‘Here he is, Kwert, our Little Maus, a subject I’m sure you’ll find most interesting.’ Philbert dithered but Maulwerf was not to be put off. ‘Here, Philbert. Now,’ he commanded, in his not-to-be-ignored Master-of-the-Fair voice.

  Philbert obeyed and came forward, to cries of, ‘Oh yes!’ and ‘Of course, now this will be good,’ and ‘What do you think he’s going to make of that?’

  The scarlet man fixed him with his eyes and Philbert had the uncomfortable sensation of being pulled forward like a fish on a line.

  ‘Oh my,’ the scarlet man murmured as Philbert came into the fire’s light and everyone else fell silent. ‘Oh my word, Maulwerf!’ said the man, ‘but you did not lie. Come on, boy! Come here. That’s it. Stand before me so I can see you properly.’

  Philbert did as bid, standing like a slave on the block, heart pounding like Otto’s hammer on the anvil, the man in front of him looking at him this way and that, his dark eyes probing and alive, flickering and flecked with speckles of gold. His hand came out and pulled Philbert so close he could see the tracery of broken veins lacing the man’s long nose, his lips moving and pausing over his yellow teeth, and then very gently, oh so gently, he placed his outspread hand upon Philbert’s head, the sleeve of his robe falling back to his elbows, goosepimples rising on hairless skin, Philbert feeling his fingers, cool and almost weightless, as they probed the line of his taupe, setting off a shower of sparks somewhere deep inside his head. More disturbingly, each spark so engendered revealed a scene or a sound; he saw and heard a man singing and swaying his way down a salt-dusted street, weeping, calling out the name of Jehovah; saw and heard the good Frau Kranz telling him tales of how things used to be; had the scent of vanilla and chocolate right there and so strong, and had the strangest conviction that someone else’s tears were running down his cheek and had a glimpse of the tear-giver, long hair pulled back, thin lips that had forgotten how to smile. Then he felt a beard against his skin, damp and unkempt, salt and dust in the air, the awful, all-pervading stench of sickness going through him like the slicing of a knife, sudden and sharp, ceasing just as quickly, leaving him sweating and dizzy, realising the stranger had released him and pulled back, that his eyes no longer glittered, his face unfathomable, the only sounds being the spitting of the fire, the settling of a swan onto the lake, the lifting of the wind from the water as the night came down ­properly upon them and the stars opened up in a welter in the sky.

  ‘Well now, young man,’ the man whose name was Kwert said at last,
lifting Philbert’s chin with one long, cold finger, looking him bang in the eye, a nail in its hole. ‘What have we here? Who are you, boy?’

  Philbert would have moved if he could, but felt like a snake caught on a pitchfork.

  ‘Ph . . . Ph . . . Ph . . . Philbert,’ he managed to stutter, though no one laughed.

  ‘Philbert.’ The man’s whisper was long and low, dividing the night in two, him and Philbert on one side, everyone else on the other. He lifted his hand again, holding it a hair’s breadth above Philbert’s head and closed his eyes, and for that moment there was no one but Philbert and Kwert in the field by the Mohne, silence all around them, and for a split second Philbert saw another few sparks: a woman throwing a small piglet against a wall – Kroonk, he knew it, recognising the pain of her un­comprehending squeal; saw the same woman chop chop chopping cabbage with a knife as if her life depended on it.

  ‘I feel great things for you, Philbert,’ Kwert whispered, moving his hand away, taking Philbert’s in his own, Kwert’s skin cool and smooth as wind-blown apples collected at dawn before the sun filters down into the orchard. He bent his head towards Philbert, touching his forehead with his own.

  ‘There are many things to come, my little Philbert. I see the shadows of yesterday and tomorrow rising up around you, and it will be hard for you to find your way. But if you’ll grant it, I’ll guide you through the start of your journey and your achievements will be of great wonder.’

  There was movement all around them then as people wrapped themselves close within their cloaks, others turning their heads away, some sniggering with self-imposed bravado at such words, more of them alarmed and worried by them, remembering the time this head-heavy boy was almost hung, remembering the old tale of Death never truly leaving the ones who’ve already been within his grasp, standing unseen and unbidden at their sides; those survivors more alive than the rest of them precisely because of it.

  Philbert was finally loosed as Kwert announced, to no one in particular, that the show was over for tonight, and what he needed now was bread and cheese. There was a slight rustling crescendo as people rose like autumn leaves and the laughter began again, slow and uncertain at first but soon taken over by the general bustle of chatter and talk as everyone melted away from the stranger’s fire, some to fetch him the victuals he’d asked for, most to go and take a drink and discuss what they’d heard tonight.

  Philbert didn’t move. He was as frightened as he was unwilling to leave. He’d no idea what had happened, or if anything had really happened at all, but what he did know was that the path he’d been seeking back into his past had somehow been opened up to him. Lita was the one to lead him away but he heard Maulwerf speaking as they went.

  ‘Well, Kwert,’ he said. ‘Take some wine. I think you have need of it.’

  He glanced back, saw Maulwerf smiling right back at him, and felt Lita’s hand wrapped about his own. He didn’t understand the shenanigans back by the fire, found them faintly ridiculous now, but was glad to be Philbert, and perhaps even a little proud.

  Many years later, Philbert would think on that evening, what might or might not have happened if Kwert – with his yellow teeth, thin lips and thinner donkey – had told Philbert he was just a boy with a lump on his head, giving his taupe a quick poke and moving on after giving some vague predictions of long life and children. Maybe then those sudden outbursts of memory triggered by Kwert’s touch wouldn’t have become the seeds of delusion he would grow up believing: that he had a destiny ­different from the rest. Maybe the dead would not have been dead. And then again, maybe nothing would have changed at all. Maybe all roads do lead to Rome. Maybe it was only hubris for Philbert the Man to believe otherwise, and that the world would have been different if only he’d stayed by the lake ­stabbing his foot with his stick, and never allowed Kwert to lay a hand upon his misshapen head.

  9

  Mr Wharton’s Most Wonderful Jelly

  Philbert woke early the next morning, no one else abroad, still obscurely excited by the night before. Kroonk slept on oblivious beneath their cart so he extricated his arm from her shoulder and chose to wander through the quietness of the camp alone. It suited Philbert that morning, liking the thin curls of smoke and smells wisping from abandoned fires, mingling with the snores that crept through the crevasses and cracks of carts and canvas. He poked around several ash piles until he found a warm parsnip, peeling off the blackened skin, popping the melt of pale yellow pulp into his mouth. His stick-stabbed foot had begun to throb a little as he walked, so he went down to the shallows of the ox-bow lake to dip it into the cool water.

  He was shocked to find someone there already, and more so that it was Kwert. He was kneeling, head bowed so low he must have been staring almost straight into his stomach if his eyes were open, breathing steadily and loud, mumbling the same refrain over and over, though Philbert could not make out the words. Only later did Philbert learn that Kwert was a Hesychast, and this strange way of kneeling was their way of prayer and meditation. For now, though, the Hesychast Kwert took no ostensible notice of Philbert, nor Philbert of him. Philbert went instead a little way off, sat himself on a promontory, dangling his bruised foot into the water, watching the shards of sunlight shimmering down to the white sand below.

  In the quiet, Philbert could hear the man a little better: a strange language, rhythmic, breathing in on one sentence and out with the next, calm and even as the ripples Philbert found himself making with his foot. The whole world seemed to have relaxed with Kwert’s chanting, even the ducks and moorhens dabbling gently in the weeds were quiet, and Philbert saw the oiled brown fur of an otter ciphering in and out of the sunlit water, plashing the surface gently with its paws, watching him warily with one eye, contemplating the sky with the other. After a while, Philbert heard the clatter-batter of Kroonk coming down the bank and she came up beside him, laid her head upon his knee. A distinct smudge of charcoal upon the edge of her snout told him she’d been snuffling for scraps, and was still hungry. The interruption roused Kwert and he stretched, hauled himself up and moved towards Philbert. Once alongside, he pushed off his mud-caked boots, Philbert seeing his white feet, the dirt clogged up between his toes, big blisters on his bunion lumps that were burst and raw, as they dipped into the water next to Philbert’s own. No wonder then, that the man had been hobbling the night before, making him seem so much older than he actually was. Bad feet will do that to a person, as anyone who has tramped a country up and down for all his years will know.

  ‘Thank you for not disturbing me in my meditations,’ Kwert said, his voice gentle and normal, nothing of the frightening intensity his whispers had held the night before.

  ‘That’s alright,’ Philbert replied. ‘It’s good to be quiet in the morning.’

  He turned his head, found Kwert smiling down at him, saw the stubble was grey on his chin, and was relieved he looked just like anyone else.

  ‘I expect you’re wondering who I am,’ said Kwert, offering Philbert his hand as if he were a man and an equal and not a boy maybe eight or nine years old, by the best reckonings.

  ‘I am Kwert,’ he said by way of introduction. ‘Tospirologist and Teller of Signs. I read people’s mottlements and murfles, their warts and whitlows, their freckles and their moles. I can read character in their patterns and tell the future from the way they fall. But to tell the truth,’ said Kwert, tapping the side of his nose confidentially, ‘I make a lot of it up so’s to please and amuse the public, as we all must do. A man has to make a living somehow in this world.’

  Philbert heard him laugh softly, waiting for what else the man would say, knowing every showman has his spiel, and was not disappointed.

  ‘For instance,’ Kwert went on, ‘I can tell by the red marks on the back of your pig that she is well loved and loving, has many friends and is not destined for the pudding-prick. And I can tell by the black marks on the end of her nose that she has a
fondness for potatoes and roasted swede.’

  Philbert smiled, waggling his feet in the water, sending up the silt, clouding the issue, though not for Kwert who added a coda to his previous statement.

  ‘But of course,’ he said, ‘I was telling the truth about you.’

  And before Philbert had time to get startled all over again Kwert stood up, hoisting Philbert with him by the oxters, asking Philbert to help him on with his boots as it was high time they went back to camp and chimed in with the morning’s chores.

  On their return journey Kwert began to lift up rocks, rootling in the damp earth below them, looking for Philbert knew not what, until finally Kwert called Philbert over and pointed with a long, soil-daubed finger.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ he said, prodding the nest of soft-skinned pearls that lay snug in by a tree root. Philbert shrugged his ignorance, and Kwert enlightened him.