Mr. Kindt then spoke a little about Cornelius and about the success of his business and about the important role I had played in ensuring that success. My excellent work that very evening with the accountant — its extraordinary authenticity — was a prime example.
I must confess that I have been very lucky in my business dealings, perhaps because I tend to endorse interesting projects like this one, he said. I do not know how much longer the market for a service like Cornelius’s will be there, but it has already paid, and handsomely, for itself. Mr. Kindt then noted the positive impact the service had had on my life. Not least because I had been presented with an opportunity and had grabbed it. The opportunity had come out of the blue and I had at first gotten involved out of friendship, but in his opinion that in no way undercut the significance of the gesture.
It is simply a matter of stepping forward, he said. A moment arrives and we step forward. Of course there is circumstance but the circumstance is ultimately unimportant. It is the stepping-forward that matters. Just a step and we are there. Don’t you think this is so, Henry?
I nodded slowly to show that I wasn’t quite with him.
I’m simply speaking, dear boy, of assertion in its most elemental form. The organism, engaged in drifting, alters its course. It steps forward. What happens afterward is necessarily adjusted. I stepped forward on the shore of Lake Otsego one night many years ago.
You mean you swam forward.
Mr. Kindt laughed. Of course, he said. There was a moment and I slipped into it. The years, which were to unfurl otherwise, perhaps much less fruitfully, were obliged by my action that night to alter their trajectory.
And Cornelius’s?
Yes, Cornelius’s too. Cornelius was very helpful, in fact, in facilitating the execution of my move forward.
You mean he paid up after you won the bet?
Is that what you mean, Aris? said Tulip, who had been sitting quietly with her legs pulled up to her chest.
Mr. Kindt shook his head.
But he was there, I said.
Oh yes, he was there.
I asked Cornelius about it the other day and he said something about how nice your name was.
Ah? Well, it is a nice name, isn’t it. Rich in consonants and the nimblest, most crystalline vowel. I have often wondered what my namesake thought of it.
Tell us about the first Aris Kindt, Tulip said.
There isn’t terribly much to tell. He has been killed and is lying in the middle of his own misery.
Tulip and I followed Mr. Kindt’s gaze across the room to the framed reproduction of Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson. The painting showed a dead guy being worked over by a doctor. A group of men looked on. There was light on the scene but the corpse’s face was in shadow. Mr. Kindt stood up, walked across the room, and put his finger on the dead guy’s chest.
That, he said, is the sad originator of my name. Well, officially he was named Adriaan Adriaanson. But his alias, his professional name, the one he was killed under, was Aris Kindt.
Your namesake is a dissection victim?
The namesake of my namesake, but yes.
What do you mean, “the namesake of my namesake”? You’ve said that before.
Yes, tell us, Aris, said Tulip.
Mr. Kindt did not tell us. Instead he raised an eyebrow, let it fall, and came back toward us.
I’ve had great occasion to think of him lately, of this unfortunate individual from whom I derive my name, this man who has been given a face by history, an anguished face cast into shadow, a false name that has blotted out the real one, a body whose tenure has been forcibly completed, a body that is being opened so that its interior functions, its revelatory organs, may be apprehended. Hence, I suppose, my interest in our little postprandial games.
He straightened himself up and looked down at his tattooed body.
It is no doubt inevitable that Cornelius’s reentry into my life has brought my thoughts on the matter back to the fore.
I asked him what he meant. He didn’t answer. He did say though that he fully respected what he described as the “recent trend” in his relationship with Cornelius and wanted us both to know that it was perfectly understandable.
Tulip then asked him if he would characterize his relationship with Cornelius as loving or as intricate.
Both, my dear, he said, plopping into his chair. After all, history and night and water and now both of you are involved. What do you say we move on to something else?
At this, Tulip said that she had seen the one-time bartender and second murderer, Anthony, and had had a couple of drinks with him.
He’s glad to be out of it, she said. He thought we were all creepy.
Mr. Kindt said, oh well, you know, he does rather have a point. What has he found to do with himself?
He works as an orderly at one of the hospitals in midtown, said Tulip. Does things like administer shots and serve meals and give sponge baths.
I saw him too, I said. Not long ago. He told me I should think about getting out of the business and find some other friends.
Well, that’s probably not the worst advice, but I do, ha, ha, hope you aren’t thinking of taking it, which reminds me, Mr. Kindt said, then began talking again. At some point in this talking with Mr. Kindt, sitting there with his shirt still off, looking about as much like a crumpled game board as like his namesake, Tulip stood up, put her coat on, and said, let’s go.
TWENTY-TWO
I made my first and only serious play for Dr. Tulp’s affections not long after my latest distressing conversation with Mr. Kindt. I had the feeling, and I was not wrong, that things, if not coming to a head, were shifting into a terrain that would be murkier, more confusing, harder to effectively negotiate, so before one of her scheduled visits I threw off my hospital regalia, scrubbed myself at great length under an extra-hot shower, shaved carefully, then put on the only noninstitutional clothes I had — the ragged but clean three-piece vintage suit I had been wearing when I was brought in. I always used to like to apply a reasonable amount of thick pomade to my hair, and had managed to keep up this practice even when I was spending both nights and days on the streets, but there wasn’t any available in the hospital, so I contented myself with pulling my wet hair back tight against my head and holding it there until it was more or less dry.
Establishing an agreeable ambience in any hospital room is a problem, and for a while I shoved and pulled various objects — like the bedclothes, the dirty linen hamper, the curtains, the TV — this way and that, then experimented with various arrangements of the room’s key infrastructure — the bed, the side table, and the chair. When I was satisfied with the configuration, I made a quick trip around the ward and gleaned two fairly fresh bouquets of flowers and half a dozen still somewhat buoyant green and gold balloons from a recently vacated room, and did a few things with them.
The effect, when I was finished, was interesting, if not impressive, which I thought would be likely to play well with Dr. Tulp. I was certainly hoping this would be the case when she considered me. I had lost a pretty good deal of weight by this point and my suit, which was already a little baggy, fell, let’s say, differently than a suit should, and of course I didn’t have any shoes, only my large white slippers. Also my skin had gone a little sallow during my stay, so that under the bright light in front of the bathroom mirror I had a kind of jaundice thing going. But doctors are trained to see past surfaces, to look at the greatest corporeal horrors and smile, or yawn, so I didn’t have any trouble imagining that Dr. Tulp’s gaze would cut right through the really only mildly deficient portions of my exterior aspect and appreciatively palpitate the softer, richer surfaces beneath. Well, that’s what I was counting on. Just in case, I pulled the curtains closed and turned off all the lights except the one with the dimmer switch beside my bed, which I set nice and low. I then splashed a little alcohol on my cheeks, rubbed them with a dry bar of soap in hopes that some of the fragrance would stick, did the same with my wrists and ankles, then climbed onto the bed, crossed my arms and ankles, and set out to wait.