Delp bows curtly to his audience before drawing on the calfskin gloves he customarily dons when delving into the body corporeal. He then clears his throat and fixes his gaze on Dr. Abernathy’s stockings; “Today we will begin with an examination of the principal sanguiferous conduits of the leg. . Quiddle?”
Quiddle, in white smock and cravat, strides briskly to the center of the room, where the two cadavers, large and small, lie side by side on a massive slate-topped table. With a flourish, he uncovers the smaller of the two. There is a murmur from the back row, tailed by a soft ladylike gasp. The doctor turns to the corpse, pointer in hand, and frowns. One of the dwarfs hands, rigid as a claw, is frozen at the neck, his body the size of a child’s, his face an accusation — twisted with rage and agony, eyes locked, lips drawn back from the teeth in a wild desperate grin — monstrous and absurd all at once. “No, no,” Delp whispers, “let’s begin with the other one.”
Obedient and efficient factotum that he is, Quiddle pulls the sheet up over the dwarfs ears and the audience breathes a sigh of relief. As he bends to expose the second cadaver, the apprehension is palpable — the lady’s fingers dart to her mouth, ready to stifle a cry, the students from Leyden are suddenly struck with the architecture of the ceiling, young Freischütz sucks at his pen until his lips turn black. But as it turns out, there’s no cause for alarm: the body is at rest, arms at its sides, face clear and untroubled, a white towel swaddling the groin. If it weren’t for the rope burns and broken blood vessels discoloring the throat, one would never guess that the fellow had died an agonizing and premature death — he could be sleeping, playacting, posing for a diorama of Adonis slain by the boar. A hush falls over the room, all eyes fixed on the limp and pallid form on the operating table.
The dry cutting voice of Dr. Delp is almost an intrusion. “As I was saying, today we will begin with an investigation into the blood vessels of the leg. . ah. . Quiddle, if you please?”
As Quiddle’s scalpel deftly lays open the dermis of the lower leg in order to expose the anterior tibial artery, a strange and wonderful thing happens: a rush of blood — forceful as a geyser — leaps up from the incision to spatter his chest, face and hands, coloring the smock as if it were a canvas.
“The anterior tibial artery,” Delp intones, his back to the table, “branches off at the patella from the posterior tibial artery, which in turn branches off to form the peroneal artery—” He cuts off in midsentence, wondering what has gone wrong. Abernathy is on his feet, speechless, the students from Leyden have dropped their notebooks with a clatter, the faces of the society people are ashen. . and then, as chilling as a summons from beyond the grave comes the groan at his back, subhuman, riveting, terrible.
“Doc-Doctor—” Quiddle stammers.
Delp swings around on a fountain of blood, the drained face of his assistant, and worst of all the trembling eyelids and fitfully clenching fists of the corpse on the table. His mouth falls open, the pointer drops to the floor. With the clear unreasoning instinct of a hunted animal he staggers back, turns, and bolts for the door.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” screams Abernathy, leaping the rail and springing to the floor like a geriatric acrobat. “He’s alive! The fellow’s alive! Stop that blood, man!”
Quiddle is the first to come out of it. Corpses don’t spring to life, he tells himself. Vampires, zombies, ghouls — a patient is bleeding to death. No time for thought, surprise, terror, his fingers are at the wound, pinching off the sheared vessels, and now Abernathy and Delp are at his side, trembling with the urgency of it, shouting for ligature and cautery.
In the gallery, the shock is not so easily overcome. Freischütz has fainted dead away, the students from Leyden are under the seats, the society gentlemen on their feet, as mad and uncertain as horses caught in a burning barn. Beside them, the lady sits rooted to her seat, eyes glazed with shock and incomprehension. But then a new look creeps into her face, a look of certainty and joy. Silently, reverently, she slips to her knees and clasps her hands in prayer. “Blessed be the Lord,” she murmurs. “It’s a miracle.”
Down on the floor, in the midst of the flurry round the slate-topped table — hands and instruments and terse panting commands — Ned Rise lifts his head and opens his eyes on Resurrection Day and the shifting lights and colors of life.
♦ THE LOTOS-EATER ♦
“We thought you were dead,”
“Yes, old boy, sorry to say it, we did.”
“Well, I mean, no word in two years’ time— and then that devastating news from Laidley about your Moorish captivity. . Tell me, confidentially now, do they really take their women from behind?”
Another reception, another round of drinks, another bank of faces. As best the explorer can ascertain, this is the twentieth bash thrown in his honor since he got back a month ago — or is it the twenty-first? The pace is killing. But exhilarating. He goes from one lecture to the next, one drawing room to another. One night he meets a duchess, the next an earl. Mungo Park, son of a crofter, rubbing elbows with the high and mighty — and not twenty-seven yet. Heady, is what it is.
No. 12, St. James’s Place
The Baroness von Kalibzo requests the
honor of your presence at a reception for
Mr. Mungo Park, geographical luminary and
discoverer of the River Niger.
9:00 P.M.
28 January, 1798
Sir Joseph, who isn’t much for these affairs, had warned him about the Baroness. Though she was cousin-german to the King, and of the highest rank and precedence in her own country, her reputation in London was somewhat unsavory. Sir Joseph would only say that she had been “guilty of excess,” and he advised the explorer to decline the invitation. But when it became apparent that Mungo was to be the guest of honor. Sir Joseph agreed that he should attend, if only for an hour or two.
So here he is, basking in the adulation of his social superiors, sipping at his fourth glass of wine, munching crackers smeared with Russian caviar and experiencing the distinct sensation that all is right with the world. Blackamoor servants in periwigs and Cluny lace scurry about, bare-bosomed statuary and portraits by Bonifacio, Titian and Fra Bartolommeo line the walls, a nine-piece orchestra softens the atmosphere. And what’s more, every time he opens his mouth, people in evening dress crowd round him. Is this paradise, or what?
At the moment, Sir Ralph Sotheby-Harp and two other wealthy subscribers to the African Association have worked him into a corner beside a potted fern. They are excited, their faces lambent with the ardor of pure and disinterested scientific inquiry as they press him for details pertaining to the sexual preferences of the various tribes, while the explorer, usually reticent in such situations, finds himself waxing glib under the influence of the wine. “The Foulahs, so I’m told, often have sex while mounted on their camels, and the Serawoolis—” here he lowers his voice while a blackamoor servant refills his glass and his auditors lean forward, “—the Serawoolis actually prefer prepubescent ewes to their women—“
“How unutterably dull.” The Baroness has appeared from nowhere, her head a mass of curls, neckline plunging to the point of no return. “To reduce so vital and transcendent an act as luff to mere lubricity, I mean. Don’t you tink, Mr. Park?”