The Anatomist's Dream (31 page)

31

The Bundle of his Life

Morning came, as mornings often do, cold and stiff and grumpy, but not for Philbert, for this was the day he might find news of Maulwerf.

‘It's such a huge to-do in Bremen,' Kwert assured him. ‘We're certain to find someone we know and who knows where Maulwerf is or where he's heading.'

Philbert slipped on the slops of stale beer on the cobbles without caring, nor that he got bitten on the shoulder by a hungry mule, or had to queue ten minutes for the stinking water-closet. Nothing could damp his enthusiasm.

‘How will we ever know where to look?
'
Philbert asked as they set off, his eyes sweeping from the tip of the cathedral across the river and its bridges to the plazas, shambles and ­hurdle-houses, the unfathomable maze of streets and tall, point-headed houses.

‘Now then, Little Maus, you know very well that at all sheep fairs there are entertainers, and they almost always congregate in one place. All we need do is find it.'

Philbert helped Kwert onto the donkey. He still had difficulty walking, even with his sticks, but this morning he was buoyant, feeling stronger, something of the old Kwert back in his bones. They were astonished by the sights and scenes of the enormous city, which neither had visited before. The noise and tumble of people so oppressive the night before seemed today vibrant and alive. There were hats far larger than Philbert's, planted with feathers and flowers, and women with hair much broader and taller than the best of those hats. There were coats that flashed with fur and sparkled with buttons and brooches, capes that swirled around corners, appearing before their wearers, proud and stiff in silver trim. The sounds of livestock chorused through the city streets, pungent smells around every corner, the air stirred up by the miles of bunting and flags that fluttered like washing from every building. At the bleating heart of the city were the animal-greens, where grander colours muted into browns; here, mud-speckled cattle lowed open-throated over fences, sheep shoving each other into wooly-backed lagoons inside their hurdles, squinny-eyed goats head-butting their enclosures as dirt-spattered men and dogs fought to keep everything in.

Kwert and Philbert were soon directed to the vast common grazing lands where the Fairs' folk were settling like goldfinch across the fast-filling fields, all gay and gaudy, twittering at each other as they set up booths, tents and stalls, gossiping, catching up, the townspeople hovering at the edges gawping, coins clinking in pocket and purse, eager to fling themselves into the alternative reality of the Fair, away from the humdrum into a paradise calling out to their hearts' desires. Amongst the push and swell Kwert gravitated instinctively towards the Seers' quarter, following the hierarchies and structures embedded into the large gathering despite the overwhelming impression of chaos. And there was Kwert's old pal Zehenspitze, who could map out your past and future by rubbing his fingers over the soles of your feet.

‘Come on, come on!' he was shouting to the sightseers already gathering. ‘Let me feel the life-force of your feet, where they have been and where they are going. If you heed their wisdom, your path will be sure. Ah yibbelly yes, yibbelly yes.' Zehenspitze nodded his sincerity, then thrust his head into the air, banging a hand against his heart. ‘A fanfare for the feet! A paean to the pod! A song for the spirit of the sole! Let the podognomist divine the direction of your life!'

The first punters were dithering on the edge of Zehenspitze's pitch and he was about to reel them in when Kwert on his donkey tottered into view, his affect so greatly changed for the worse that Zehenspitze cut short his advertisements, advancing with arms outstretched.

‘Oh my dear old friend,' he murmured, helping Kwert indecorously to the ground, ‘whatever has befallen you? Come, come,' he urged, sitting Kwert on the stool normally reserved for paying customers. ‘This last year has not treated you well. Let me get you something . . .'

He shook Kwert warmly by the hand, the other placed on Kwert's shoulder, appalled by the thin brittle of bones poking through his friend's thin skin. He wasted no time, fetched the condiments normally lavished on his more affluent clients – a lit pipe, a glassful of watered brandy, some little cakes and
­krapferl
biscuits, Kwert accepting them with gratitude, soon enlivened, and before long he and Zehenspitze were talking fondly of old times, old scams and pitches. Kwert trusted Zehenspitze implicitly, telling him the gist of his recent adventures, his finding of Philbert, the descent on him of the glanders, the ­disastrous visit to Lengerrborn, Zehenspitze reacting to this last with visible shock and excitement.

‘The Westphal Affair! My dear Kwert. There's been talk of little else in the taverns! You're practically a hero for just having been there.'

No point in Kwert saying how little of a hero he was. Zehenspitze was, like most of the travelling Fairs' Folk, bang up to date on the politics of the time. Their livelihoods were ­dependant on knowing which principalities would welcome them and which would not, which were lax on papers and town-passports, which trouble-spots to avoid. And Lengerrborn at the moment was of the last. No one would go within thirty miles of the place, especially considering what had happened at the nearby Abbey's Cloth Market a couple of weeks afterwards. It was the epitome, Zehenspitze told Kwert, of the instability shaking the country up and down, foreign armies battering at its boundaries and – far more dangerously – the inner prickling of its citizens who, deprived of land and livelihood by famine and feudal taxes, threatened daily to rise up and murder their nominal protectors in their beds. He knew of the cholera ­epidemic in Silesia that had precipitated a short-lived, hard-crushed revolution, and was amongst the few who'd heard of the Kartoffelkrieg in Berlin when protestors had been run down and shot at like rats. The Westphal Affair, by contrast, was lurid and dramatic. Everyone was talking about it, especially travelling folk like Zehenspitze who cared to keep their heads on their shoulders and their bones inside their skins. The murder of the Lengerrborn Schupos and the daring escape of Von Ebner's supporters from the town gaol were pivotal events for would-be revolutionaries across the land; the cruelty meted out to the recaptured prisoners – especially the one in the cage – made of them martyrs all, and nothing like a host of martyrs to spur a movement on.

‘You don't know the half of it, Kwert,' Zehenspitze leaned in closer, lowering his voice, for who knew who was listening on the other side of the canvas or the thin boards of a booth. ‘When the Handtheyrker guilds were dismantled they responded by dismantling the machinery taking over their jobs. Such a thing could never have happened a few years ago. And then there's the case of the teamsters ripping out the railway lines they only laid last year. The railway was putting them and theirs out of work, you see. Bringing in cheap goods from elsewhere. And only a couple of weeks ago some redundant sailors attacked the company steamships on which they'd formerly worked. Caused a great deal of damage before they were ejected. It's sporadic, Kwert, but it's happening. The revolution is persistent and gaining momentum, and will not soon be stopped. And they know it, Kwert, they know it! Did you hear that Prince William of Prussia – the King's own brother – has already fled? Gone to England of all places.'

Kwert shook his head in disbelief, Zehenspitze not surprised. Apparently you could take the Hesychast out of gaol into a world groaning with injustice and suffering – his own included – but you could not make that Hesychast rise up to action. Navel gazers all – quite literally. He smiled indulgently. He'd known Kwert since they were new-come to their respective callings – Tospirologist and Podognomist – meeting by chance when they'd pitched their very first booths side by side, ­travelling then side by side for two decades before going their separate ways, Zehenspitze to his politics, Kwert to his religion, but friends ever since, meeting here and there, always glad to see one another, always jawing and drinking before diverging back on their separate routes. It occurred suddenly to Zehenspitze that Kwert was not wearing his usual red habit, and it jarred.

‘You've left something out,' he stated quietly, no brandy-cloud to his eyes, and obvious to Zehenspitze that Kwert was carrying some unspoken burden.

‘I have,' Kwert agreed, after a few moments. ‘Forgive me, but I've left out quite a lot. You said I didn't know the half of it, but neither do you. That boy I introduced you to earlier?'

‘The one with the hat?' Zehenspitze asked, looking about him, but the boy was gone, no doubt dipped off into the fair like a squirrel after nuts.

‘Philbert,' Kwert said, drawing Zehenspitze's attention back. ‘He was the reason we were in Lengerrborn at all, and why we were at the Westphal Club. It was he Von Ebner and his friends had come to see. And it was he who slew the Schupos and set the prisoners free, myself amongst them . . .'

Zehenspitze gasped, his eyes and cheeks bright with excitement.

‘He didn't mean to do it,' Kwert went on quickly. ‘He'd no notion of it, but that was the outcome all the same. And then there's the miracle of St Lydia's to come to terms with.'

Zehenspitze let out a breath and rolled his shoulders. He was a Podognomist of the first order and believed in what he did, but he was also an on-the-ground agitator and Kwert was flinging revolutionary gold dust at his feet.

Philbert had thoroughly checked every stall and booth for folk he knew and found no one familiar. He was right at the back end of the fair where it abutted onto the killing-grounds, men squatted like knots of toads on the mud-churned field, some holding down animals or winching them up on pulleys so as to slit their throats, funnelling their blood into barrels, slicing the hoisted animals, gutting them with nonchalance, skinning them down, peeling their flesh away from their bones. The smell was stomach-churning, the sight morbidly fascinating, the grass beneath the lamps black with blood, steaming with the heat of disgorged intestines, spilt guts, the stinking slurry of last half-digested suppers, all poured as filth upon the ground. Heaving, Philbert sat down heavily, spittle awash in his mouth. Down below he watched a man stagger and lurch amongst the several small and dirty pigs he'd got in exchange for his smaller and dirtier sheep. Nicolas Groben. Philbert butt-shuffled backwards into the shadows. The last thing he wanted was another encounter with that man. Instead he encountered another.

‘Frightened, boy?' asked the person into whom Philbert had inadvertently bumped.

‘No,' Philbert answered quickly, jumping to his feet. ‘But the smell's not good.'

‘Indeed not,' said his new companion, ‘nor is it pleasant to witness the life-force drain from a body, even one so unclean as the pig.'

‘Nothing wrong with pigs,' Philbert said, hard and sure in his new bravery. ‘They're very clean animals, if left to themselves.'

‘Of their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch,' intoned his interlocutor. ‘You wouldn't eat your pig if you had one, would you, boy?'

Philbert shuddered, and agreed he most definitely would not. He could tell from the man's get up that he was a Rabbi, just like Ridente, presumably here to oversee the slaughtering, elect from whom he would advise his congregation to buy their meat in the upcoming days. Not too far away was Groben, pigs unsettled and nervous. He yanked one up from its tether and got it between his legs to steady it, but it was too frightened to obey. It struggled and kicked, squealing horribly as Groben whacked it several times with a stick on the side of its head, panting hard, thick arms bulging, neck pulsing, legs astride the animal as it dropped. He let go the stick, stuck a knife into the creature's throat, the gut-wrenching screams rising up terrible in the night. Enough for Philbert, who moved to intervene no matter the consequences, but down came the Rabbi's hand on his shoulder like a sack of stones, keeping him still as Groben fought to slice his blunt blade through the struggling, squealing skin, the pig pushing and rearing until Groben cursed, grabbed at the tether and wrapped it hard about the animal's neck, pulling it tighter and tighter about its half-sliced throat until it choked, grunted and lay still. Groben breathed hard, stabbing his knife into the ground, taking a rest before he went at the next one, casting his shadow over the last two terrified, stamping, huffing, squealing pigs awaiting their turn. Groben went to stand, then took a single step to the side, a spasm arcing through his body as he dropped his knife, stood still, silhouetted against the light of the many fires and lamps lit on the slaughtering ground, then down he went, slumping into the hurdles, knocking the tethers from the iron spike in the ground, releasing the pigs who went running, running, a small ripple of confusion as they made their way into the night.

‘A good escape,' the Rabbi commented as if he'd been expecting it. ‘That man was not worthy to remain in the bundle of his life, his heart torn in two within him. He took blood badly, and now the blood has taken him.'