A case of curiosities (3 page)

Claude had grown to appreciate the mole and did not want it removed. It was a source of special interest even in a region that had no shortage of medical oddities, and thus it carried all sorts of privileges. Whenever "the King would visit," Claude was guaranteed a plate of salted peas and a pitcher of licorice water at the Red Dog. He would squeeze his anomaly into a royal likeness and match it to the profile on a proffered coin of the realm. To boost his earnings, he told of the tremendous discomfort he endured coaxing out the King. The deception caught up with him. News of the pain traveled to the kitchens of the mansion house, whose talkative scullion, Catherine Kinderklapper, informed her master of the agony suffered by the Page boy and his royal canker. Because of the Abbe's appreciation of Madame Page's talents, he arranged for the visit from the surgeon who now observed the mole.

Staemphli briefly considered using a raspatory—the tool that resembled a wood file—to remove the corrupted flesh, but this would have proved inelegant. He selected instead a delicate piece of specialized surgical equipment that looked like a miniature hacksaw. He shoved the hand into the snow, checked the leather bit in Claude's mouth, and bowed for momentary prayer. Removing the hand from the bucket, he immediately cut asunder, employing the methods of Sabourin, a fellow surgeon of Geneva. The movements were quick, and the hand was soon returned to the bucket, where it reddened the once-white snow. As the blood drained, the surgeon neatened things up on the table. He again pulled the hand from the bucket and wrapped it in a complicated, almost artful ball of bandaging.

During all of this, Claude's body was motionless, his vision dulled by the brownish cake. His imagination, lively in ordinary circumstances, now raced. He observed the dried wildflow-ers and mushroom strings hanging from the rafters. They began to sway and then dance. He soon felt himself running through a multicolored field of borage, flax, and speedwell, of mint and betony, of green nettle and purple sage. He saw himself chased by the firedogs he had drawn earlier in the evening, only now they were slavering. The last thing Claude observed before falling profoundly into sleep was the surgeon holding the card that had been knocked to the floor: The Grim Reaper had a drop of blood covering his scythe.

As any addict can tell you, the effect of opiates is difficult to gauge even in ideal circumstances. When opiates are bolstered by gin and herbal mixtures, calculating such an effect is next to impossible. Claude slept for a night and a day, and a night again. He awoke in his mother's curtained box bed to the sight of the Abbe, whose kindly disposition provided a pleasant contrast to the surgical nightmare he had carried into sleep. Claude gave his eyes full-fisted rubs with his unbandaged hand, then moaned.

The surgeon ignored his suffering. "Good. He is awake. We must leave now."

The Abbe would have none of it. "What we must do is wait until the boy is out of danger."

"You have been checking him hourly."

"And I will go on doing so." As if on cue, the chime of the Abbe's montre a sonnerie announced that it was time for another inspection. The Abbe brushed the hair out of Claude's eyes and encouraged him to talk. He was still too groggy.

The surgeon said, "It is imperative that I return to Geneva. Obligations."

"Your obligations are here. I might remind you that it was you who wished to perform the operation, despite the weather. You were the one who insisted it be done immediately."

"And it has been done."

"The weather and the boy's mien preclude departure. We will wait." The Abbe spoke with surprising insistence.

The surgeon returned to a stiff rush chair suited to his temperament and feigned reading a medical treatise in quarto. The Abbe gave the patient a wink, as if to say, "Don't pay heed to that spiritless fool. He's an insufferable citizen of the Republic." (Perhaps the wink transmitted slightly less information, but that is the interpretation that should be applied to the conjunction of the upper and lower lid of the Abbe's twinkling eye.) He sensed Claude was cranky and so moved closer to the bed. Raising Claude's bandaged hand, he said, "Fine work. It belongs on the head of some wealthy Oriental merchant." He enhanced this attempt at good humor by providing the sweets he had promised before the operation. From a pocket he pulled a piece of demi-royal and surreptitiously gave it to Claude so that his sisters would not notice.

Using his good hand, Claude fumbled with the violet paper.

"Allow me." The Abbe popped the sugar into the boy's mouth. It was a treat for a child raised on roots and tubers and pinecones.

"I see you can smile," the Abbe said. "A most noteworthy feature." He turned to Madame Page and said, "Your son's smile emanates not from the lips but from the eyes, the source of all truly great smiles."

He looked back at Claude. "Well, that's half the bargain. I suppose I should fulfill the other half by telling you a story. What if I tell you of the sugar you seem so pleased to consume?"

After a drink of water to slake the thirst brought on by the opiates, Claude settled under the covers, ready for a tale.

It should be mentioned that tales were a lot more brutal then. The brothers Grimm hadn't yet tidied up the fireside accounts of rape, incest, cannibalism, and greed, nor had Per-rault's elevated courtly renderings infected the oral traditions of Tournay. The Sandman, who is now portrayed as a likable fellow, in Claude's day ripped out children's eyes. Happily, the Abbe represented this ancient and violent tradition.

"Do you know where sugar comes from?" the storyteller queried.

Claude shook his head. Beyond the Abbe's pockets and the Carnival stalls, he was ignorant of its origins.

The Abbe, a man who traced the origins of all matter, expounded. "Most mambu juice (that's what it's called in certain parts of the world) is shipped from Hispaniola. It arrives here in two forms: loaves that sit like conical caps in the confectioner's window, and the rougher palm sugar wrapped in leaves that evoke the texture of the tropics. But the finest sugars—the demi-royal that now travels to your gut, and the royal I cannot afford—are furnished by the slavers of the Pompelmoose Atoll." The Abbe traced a map on Claude's stomach, with his nipples serving as Paris and London and the Pompelmoose Atoll rising out of nethermore parts. Claude giggled.

"You will not laugh when I tell you that while wotk in Hispaniola is fatiguing, in the Pompelmoose Atoll it is death. Do you remember the criminal who was caught for bringing down an ax on the aged carter in Vornet?"

Claude nodded.

Madame Page said, "The carter's daughter found his nose in a bandbox under the bed."

"And the poisoner of Passerale?" the Abbe asked.

"Six children orphaned by a wolfsbane potage," she said.

As the docket grew to include infanticide and immolation, Fidelite and Evangeline moved to the side of the box bed, and Staemphli appeared to turn the pages of his medical treatise with diminished frequency, though he would never admit to listening.

"These criminals all ended up" — the Abbe paused to look around the room — "in the penal colony of the Pompelmoose Atoll, where punishment is determined by the class of crime committed. I will explain. Lesser reprobates transported to the Pompelmoose are forced to work the fields, cutting long stalks into short stalks and short stalks into still shorter ones. The days are longer than long. From the cacophonic caw of the cockatoo" — the Abbe mimicked the cry of the tropical bird — "until the sun gives off its last, dusky sparkle on the waves of the surrounding sea, the prisoners are forced to harvest cane. And that, my friends, is considered a light sentence."

"Lighter than your own," the surgeon mumbled. He was suspicious of eloquence.

"Pickpockets and shoplifts are transported — and, actually, you can add your better grade of thief to the list—for periods of ten to fifteen years. But the harshest sentences are given to the meanest criminals, which brings us to poisoners and ax-men. They, along with rapemasters-general and souls insensitive to the beauty of things well made, are banished to the island's sugar mines. There they work their sticky picks, knocking out boulders of crystallized sugar that are hard as diamonds. In caverns where a single candle reflects off a thousand sutfaces, the criminals are forced to satisfy our Continental desires. (Among the residents of your Republic, my dear surgeon, the annual consumption is put at fourteen pounds a head.) Once brought to the surface of the sugar mine, usually by convicted highwaymen, cullies, and conny-catchers, the big crystals are shattered into smaller rock candy, the kind given on feast days to the deserving.

"The chain of penal dulcitude continues indoors. That is where the female criminals are kept." The Abbe looked at Claude's two sisters. "Yes, that is correct. The fair sex is not immune to the punishments of the Pompelmoose Atoll. Women caught pursuing unmentionable but well-imagined acts are given a most appropriate chore: refinement. Only it is refinement not of themselves but of sugar in the baker's drying room, which Ar-buthnot tells us is heated fifty-four degrees beyond that of the human body. The heat is such that it will kill a sparrow in two minutes. Here they must toil to make pastries, their breasts dripping in the syrupy heat. That is why, incidentally, they are called, in England anyway, tarts."

The cottage's occupants were all ears (especially Fidelite) as the Abbe confected his convicts' chronicle, describing callused hands, screams, and cries for salt in a world of bitter sweetness. He beguiled with great seriousness, mixing the terrors of the valley with the mysteries of distant lands, and in so doing offered up a story that satisfied listener and teller alike.

The Abbe wrapped up his tale as neatly as the piece of demi-royal that had inspired it: "So when someone asks you if you want a taste of sugar in whatever form, whether in cane, rock, or refined, remember the source of the sweet that tempts you. It bears the labor of street thief, murderer, whore."

The sugar and the story had served to comfort Claude. Combined, they acted as an analeptic, restoring and renewing the spirits. Now that he no longer had either treat, however, Claude felt a throbbing through the turban on his hand. The Abbe observed stains darkening the gauze. He turned to Staemphli and mentioned the efficacy of alum, noting, "I brought some that I mined myself in Liege. It might be helpful."

"The bandage must stay on for at least a week," the surgeon said.

"But the alum will stanch the trouble spot," the Abbe replied.

"There is no trouble. The discoloration is caused by the digestive medicine."

Claude's mother disagreed, arguing that the ointment of crushed nineshirts, a kind of wild garlic, would not cause such stains. "The flannel could be too tight," she said.

The surgeon was now adamant. "A week, including the Lord's day, must elapse before we remove the bandage." The patient moaned with renewed energy, partly out of fear, partly to challenge the surgeon. The Abbe unraveled the bandage despite Staemphli's protests. It was a lengthy process. The flannel and gauze mounted on a stool beside the box bed. When the dressing was removed, the Abbe looked at the surgeon and said, "I was wrong to trust you. The gauze hides a horror." His tone betrayed rage. Claude caught sight of his hand before the Abbe could reapply the bandages. The mole was gone, but so was something else.

Claude fainted.

Where he had once had five fingers, he now had only four. In the gap: a raw and angry sore. Adolphe Staemphli, surgeon and citizen of Geneva, had cut away the middle finger of Claude's right hand.

The subsequent conflict between the mother, the Abbe, and the surgeon was as messy and convoluted as the tangle of bandages. A snarl of exclamations, accusations, and curses from the hostess and the Abbe received looks of moral indignation from the surgeon. In his defense, Staemphli tried to offer a succession of excuses involving the fusion of bones in boys and the odd formation of the hand.

"It had to come off," the surgeon said.

"It most certainly did not," the Abbe cried. "And had you thought so, you should have mentioned that necessity to his mother."

Staemphli tried to play down the gravity of the operation. "What does a child's finger do? Pick a nose, poke an ear, ex-plorate the seven apertures the body is granted by God. It was only one finger of ten. The child has nine others that function as they need to function. War has scattered limbs and organs more vital than his over the fields of battle, and men have picked themselves up and moved on. The child will as well. You must weigh the loss of a finger against the gains of science." Staemphli revealed the real reason for the enlarged excision. "It was essential that the mole be kept intact. The ringer is a commonplace— the mole, unique. It will find a spot in my collection. It will advance understanding and pay tribute to God's greater glory."

"Collection? God's greater glory?" The Abbe was incredulous.

The surgeon replied calmly. "Yes. You know very well I am gathering specimens for a treatise on the surgical arts. It will contain copperplates that will outdo Cheselden's. The child's anomaly is going to fill a gap in my studies." The surgeon was deaf to his own wordplay. He tried to push the dispute away by wrapping it in obscurity. "You will be amused to know, my dear Abbe, that the ignorant use moles for divination and endow these growths with all sorts of silly meaning. My intention is more rigorous. Maupertuis suggests we look at hexadactyly to understand the ill effects of interbreeding. I am of the opinion that moles also should be considered. Why else do you think I am willing to suffer the vagaries of these valley folk? They harbor blasphemy, heresy, and more specific forms of wickedness so effectively kept in check by the Consistory. Do you know what Bacon says? He says, 'Deformed persons are commonly even with nature, for as nature hath done ill by them, so do they by nature, being . . . void of natural affection; and so they have their revenge of nature.'

The Abbe was furious. "Damn you, damn your study, damn your misreading of Bacon. I hope that this deformed person will have his revenge on you. In fact, I declare right now that he will! I should never have brought you here." The Abbe pounded his fist against the kitchen table. "If I had not borrowed from your library, or from your bankers, and if I knew why you had agreed to come, I would not have called you to the valley. It was never my intention to have you fill your jam jars with the extremities of Tournay."