What does he do?
He talks. He stands by the window and looks out through the black netting and talks about the same old things. The things he used to talk about. Before.
Like what?
Like himself. Like mist. Drifting out over everything. Blurring all the borders. Or like annihilation. About having annihilated someone and through that annihilation having been himself annihilated in the exact center point of his meaning, like herring that are annihilated as they are rising.
But he is no longer interested in eating the fish?
That’s what I said.
But you are?
I’ve picked up the habit. It’s almost like an addiction.
What is Mr. Kindt doing here, Henry?
It wasn’t me.
Then you persist.
Of course I persist.
Inadvisable, but that’s not what we’re discussing here.
What are we discussing here?
Your ongoing relationship with Mr. Kindt. Since his murder. His great interest in you.
Well what about the wet guy’s interest in him?
Again, that is not the conversation we are having.
You’re right. I’m sorry. Still, I don’t know why he’s bothering me. If anything, I ought to be bothering him.
Why do you say that?
I don’t quite know, it’s just a sense that whatever happened was part of an exchange. But I can’t quite get there. Just like Mr. Kindt can’t quite figure out the swimmer yet. I was thinking maybe I would ask my aunt, if she ever comes back. Maybe she could help. Maybe she’s figured out how it all works.
I’m not sure she has, Henry.
I’m not sure either, but anyway, as you said, we were discussing Aris Kindt. My Aris Kindt. In all his diminished splendor. Would you like to hear more about him? Would that help further our discussion, push us forward, get us somewhere? Shall I play the part, try on the mask, do my dear dead friend, do Aris, as over and over again Aris does himself?
All right.
I was born in seventeenth-century Leiden, where I grew up in solitude, left, by my family, to my own devices, except for the many beatings my father administered. We drank milk in great quantities when it was to be had, and I can still hear the sound of butter being made and smell the churn. My father was a quiver maker, which I became after him although I was not so deeply blessed in this capacity with skill. My mother was a darling woman. My father beat her once too often and she left a scarlet trail across the snow. Then I left Leiden forever because I had to. It was not a lovely life and I used to poach ducks from the canals and for a time lived in an abandoned windmill. That isn’t true. For a time I lived in the most miserable of hovels. My dream was to go to Amsterdam. It was difficult to go to Amsterdam. I kept getting caught. Once I beat a man. Too much. Once also there was an incident involving a young woman. Many incidents. I disliked death. Too much mist. Some nights I would dream about my father and young sister. Also I would dream of New Amsterdam. It was truly new then and every boy had seen the great triple-masters in their dreams. Once I stole a potion from a very old man in Maastricht. I drank the potion and fell into a dream. In the dream I saw a man much like myself lying in a ditch at the edge of a green field covered with frost. I went up to the man and kicked him and he awoke. It was me.
Who do you mean by “me”?
Mr. Kindt. The centuries-old version.
All right, continue.
It’s you, the sleeping man said. I was just dreaming about you. In my dream you were lying in a field just like this one. Oh, I said. Actually, there was never any potion. There was a theft, but it was brandy I stole. I woke up in the field. Cold. I was freezing. I returned to town and tried to steal a man’s cape. The man was a magistrate. I seemed to be in Amsterdam. Then I was hung. A thick mist swirled around me. Then I was harrowed. In a great hall with high dark ceilings and candles and glass jars and an audience in attendance. I was on a stage, on a slab, and a painter had been commissioned to paint me, to paint them.
Rembrandt.
Yes, Rembrandt. The painting is called The Anatomy Lesson. My German author gives much thought to the matter, conjectures that Rembrandt secretly sympathized with Mr. Kindt, saw the violence that had been done to him.
To you.
No. Not to me. Well, yes, to me with this mask on. It’s a little convoluted. Let me take it off for a second. Consider it taken off. O.K., there was a historical Mr. Kindt. A petty thief named Aris Kindt who was hung then dissected then painted by Rembrandt.
With whom you identify.
I’m just Henry again.
With whom Mr. Kindt identified. They shared a name.
Yes. Mr. Kindt, my Mr. Kindt, had borrowed the name from a certain Mr. Kindt who had only used it for some weeks.
Borrowed it?
Let’s just say that the temporary user of the name didn’t need it anymore.
How many Mr. Kindts are there?
At least three, only one of whom, to the best of our knowledge, could swim, but now it’s only the first one that matters.
Why?
Ask Mr. Kindt.
He’s dead, Henry.
Who isn’t?
Dr. Tulp made a note in her book then looked at me.
Anything else?
Lots. Descartes was there, they say, as was, possibly, Sir Thomas Browne. Did you know that in those days we still believed that after death one could feel pain? I certainly could. Most excruciating were the extremities. The first thing he did was to open up my arm.
Or at least, Dr. Tulp said, in the painting the first thing that has been opened is the arm.
Yes, in the painting. Of course a real dissection, as my German writer points out, would begin with the intestines — those areas most given to decomposition. Regardless, there was vigorous applause. I understood the larger part of the audience had been expecting a lesson in female rather than male anatomy — it is female rather than male anatomy that excites in this context, but then what is the gender of the dead? During the lesson, I learned the verb extirpate. Do you know it?
Yes, Henry, I know it.
What I had tried to do was steal the man’s cape.
I think it is time to stop now with this, Henry — you said yourself the mask is off. We’ve done enough for now.
Dr. Tulp was there.
I am Dr. Tulp, Henry.
Dr. Nicolas Tulp of the Royal Dutch Academy, who regularly performed such dissections for the benefit of Amsterdam’s intelligentsia, so that light would replace shadow and their minds would be freed of mist. Little matter that in the center of this, so to speak, sweeping-away of the cobwebs lay a small, recently breathing body.
We have no indication, outside of Rembrandt’s painting, that Aris Kindt was a particularly small man.
I’m small.
No, Henry, you are not. You are quite average.
Well then never mind.
Where is Mr. Kindt right now, Henry?
Oh, he’s around.
But diminished.
Somewhat. Dr. Tulp?
Yes, Henry.
Should I expect you to begin diminishing, so you can take care of your own business, or will you stick around for the odd chat and to perform the occasional minor or major surgery? I guess what I am wondering is, why, Dr. Tulp, are you here? How did you get here?
Dr. Tulp smiled, a little coldly, and didn’t answer.
I looked around the brightly lit office, with its rows and rows of folders and dull, worn office furniture, and shuddered.
I’d like to go home, I said. To Carine and the cats.
This is where you live now, Henry.
Can it, fairly, be called living?
What would you like to call it?
Have you scheduled any more surgeries? Any more scouring and filing and cleaning?
A few. There is more scraping to be done. We must be sure that all the lead is gone.