The Anatomy Lesson (32 page)

“You do more for us than you should,” she answers. “In all this time, you haven’t told me your name.”

Here, he turns his face away from Flora and watches the lights flit off the water for some time. “Jacob,” he says. “Some call me Jacob the Walloon.”

THE HANDS

Margaretha is still awake and threading her final green stem into her new curtains when her husband at last returns. She is already in her box bed, clad in her sleeping gown and cap, but she has been unable to sleep, knowing the festival has taken over the town, seeing the
beautiful, glistening lights play across the water and reflect in the windows of the mansions along the canal. It is a magical night, the city lit up to glittering, and all in celebration of her husband’s success. She is aglow with pride.

She is alert to any creak of the floorboards or rustling outside her door, hoping soon to hear her husband’s footsteps so that she can receive his firsthand report of the lecture and debate. She does not want to startle him as he arrives, for certainly he expects her to already be abed—the Westerkerk bell has now chimed again, after all, long past her usual bedtime—and yet she hopes he will rap on the door of her chamber nonetheless.

Just as she is setting the green floss on the nightstand, she hears at last the unmistakable groan of the stairs under his step. Yes, she will go to the door and prevent him from seeking his own chamber. She cannot stand to wait until morning to hear his report.

“My love,” she calls from her doorway, her ardor in her voice surprising herself. “Come join me. Tell me everything.”

Her husband is weary, she can see already from the tilt of his chin. He glances up at her, not surprised to find her awake but pleased to have such a warm welcome. His eyes are reddened, the soft flesh beneath them purple and in tiny folds. What a long day it has been already, preceded by a few weeks of frantic preparation and sleepless pacing. If she were a good wife, she’d guide him straight to his chamber, undress him, and tuck him in for the night, demanding nothing, providing only comfort and succor from the world.

But she is too curious, too eager to share in his success. He moves toward her across the corridor and she places her hand in his, leading him into her room and gently closing the door behind her. Now standing, she has a better view of the procession below, a joyful and
haphazard dance of lights glittering across the canals and trailing plumes of white smoke.

“They are celebrating you, my love,” Margaretha says, motioning to her husband to sit in the nearest chair, the one upholstered in red velvet, closest to her bed.

Tulp laughs, modestly. “No, my dearest, they are celebrating merely because they have been given leave to celebrate. No Amsterdammer needs much of an excuse to raise their tankards, especially in these dark nights.”

“You are too self-abnegating,” Margaretha says, circling behind her husband to loosen his lace collar from his shirt. Once she has unclasped it and placed it on the commode, she puts her warm hands to the back of his neck to release the tension where she knows it dwells. He groans with appreciation. She unbuttons the front of his doublet and takes the meat of his shoulders within her hands, gently massaging there. “Have the guild members finished the banquet?”

“I doubt it very much. When I left they were still pounding the table for more oxheads of wine. I left Fetchet with the keys to the stores. He will manage in my stead.”

“He is a useful servant, I think.”

“Yes, indeed. Tonight we had very special circumstances. When I left, I placed a purse of three guilders beside the corpse and a note of gratitude. I suspect he will find it when he goes to bury the parts.”

Margaretha moves around her husband and sits on the wooden edge of her box bed. She takes his hands in her own and begins to gently massage his palms. She can see in the light of her bedside lantern that his face is truly drawn and his expression somehow dispirited. “My dearest, you seem unhappy. Did it not all go as planned?”

He glances up at her and a smile of admiration passes his lips. “It did not go as planned, no,” he says, “not all. But I have no reason to be unhappy except that I am drained from all the activity. I suspect, in fact, that this evening has achieved precisely what I intended, and that tomorrow I shall awaken with a fresh set of pleasures to attend.”

Encouraged by these words, Margaretha presses her fingers more deeply into her husband’s exhausted flesh. “I shall not keep you up late,” she says, “but do indulge me in some part of the tale. Perhaps it is unwomanly, but I do want to know all that transpired. I want to know all that the nobles said. I am pregnant with curiosity.”

This time his smile was a full smile, brightening his kind eyes and turning his soft cheeks ruddy. “I had private conferences after the lecture with several fascinating men,” he tells her. “There is the French mathematician of whom I have told you in the past, and I was also visited by Johannes Wtenbogaert and several burgomasters, who promised to support me in tomorrow’s election. Some decried the fact that I have not yet been selected for the board of the Atheneum. Another told me it was only a matter of time before I should be a strong candidate for mayor.”

“Truly?”

“Indeed,” he says, looking down as if only acknowledging these words to himself for the first time. “It was meant as a compliment more than a prediction, I suppose.”

“Take it for a prediction, though. You will, my love. You will someday be Amsterdam’s mayor.”

In spite of his obvious pleasure in sharing these details of the night, Margaretha can see that she is wearing her husband out. Before she can offer to dismiss him from her chamber, though, he says, “My wife, may I stay with you in your bed tonight? I’m afraid
I have no more energy even to make it to my own chamber. If I am propped in bed, at least, I can talk until we fall asleep.”

“Yes, of course, my love,” she says. “Then let me help you out of your clothes. Here you go. We will climb together into sleep’s kind arms.”

“Thank you, Margaretha. You are my gold.”

THE MOUTH

Normally, Fetchet would be drunk by now, so soused he’d be doing a dance in the middle of the Kloveniersburgwal, maybe trying to get dunked in the canal. Last year during winter festival, he got some partyers to do a little game with him, where he asked them to pass their torches under his feet, so he could prove how high he could jump. Luckily, he’d only been fully aware of this death-defying bravery the next day, after he’d been regaled with his own exploits by a ruby-haired, green-eyed bedmate. If only Fetchet could woo women so successfully when sober.

While the torchlight parade is in full swing on the nearby streets of De Wallen this year, he is digging a grave in the Oude Kerk yard. The church tower has now struck midnight, and still the Leiden woman has not returned for Aris’s remains—he’s glad of that—and now it is up to him to dispose of them. The body will get a Christian burial, though not in the strictest sense of the word.

Some of his parts lie on the ground beside Fetchet in a burlap sack. The organs that were passed around the audience are in a pot on the other side of the hole. He’s prepared to plant them all into this raw earth beneath him, to be mixed together like some kind of unholy stew.

Does it qualify, really, as a Christian burial? Fetchet wonders for the first time as he continues to shovel the dirt. Not being a believer, he was sure he couldn’t know. Next time he runs into a priest, he thinks, maybe he’ll ask. Or maybe he’ll just keep doing his job and not think about it too much. He stops digging and stands the shovel upright in the dirt next to him. He wipes his brow on his coat sleeve and feels the coarse hairs of his wool jacket prickle his face.

He reaches into his right pocket and draws out the three shiny guilders Tulp left for him. They are some of the newest-looking coins he’s ever seen, as if Tulp had gone straight to the mint and taken them from the press. Who paid doctors with such fresh currency? They are certainly satisfying to the touch. He brings one to his lips and places it between his teeth, biting down. It tastes vaguely metallic for a moment, before he tastes the soil from his fingers instead.

He slides the coins back into his pocket and wipes his hands on his pants. He lifts the shovel again. What did Tulp pay him for, exactly? It wasn’t reimbursement for the extra expenses he’d had to pay the vendors in the morning. He hadn’t even told Tulp about all that yet. It wasn’t for what he’d lost on the paradise. Rembrandt had made up for that. It was for managing Kindt’s wench, for keeping her out of the anatomy chamber so he could go on with his dirty business before all those clean men.

No, thinks Fetchet, as he digs his shovel into the ground, I shouldn’t think that. There is nothing dirty about the anatomy. I love the anatomy; it is my birthright, my legacy, my very parentage. I love its ceremony and its pomp; I love the doctor’s feigned authority and the spectators’ awe and civility. But amid all the bloodletting, cutting, lecturing, banqueting, torch-lighting, and
debauchery, the scientists—his beloved Pauw and Heurnius and now Tulp—are doing something important. Like the Egyptians before them, they are building the foundations of a civilization.

That’s what he tells himself as he pitches his blade into the hard ground a few more times and thinks about Flora. He keeps shoveling until the hole is deep enough to prevent dogs from unearthing this grave. He’s glad he sent her to the artist. He had a feeling that Van Rijn would find a way to make her forget the arm. It would’ve been cruel to make her go home with a bag full of parts. A man is not his flesh, anyway. A man is a man.

He picks up the burlap sack and empties it into the hole. Turning his face away, he shovels the fresh dirt back into the hole. Using the back of his spade, he packs it down as firmly as he can, or at least enough that it won’t attract dogs. He feels painfully sober, and cold. The wind is picking up.

Without knowing why, Fetchet kneels in the dirt, his hands on either side of him touching the cold ground. He looks at the black soil and then up at the black sky. The celebrants are nearby, singing and dancing like he usually would. He can smell the smoke of their torches, pungent and fresh. He takes a fistful of dirt into his palm and tosses it on top of the grave he’s made.

“Well, then,” he says. “Sleep tight, Aris.” He makes some motions with his hands—not exactly prayerful gestures, but some kind of gestures nonetheless. Then he stands, listening to the church bells finally chime midnight, not bothering to wipe the dirt from his pants.

THE MIND

Descartes has finally put down his pen and screwed tight the lid of his inkpot, since the innkeeper has rapped on his door. He has stained the sleeve of his nightshirt with a blot that has taken the shape of a butterfly’s wing. He curses quietly, and resolves to find a wife who can help him manage such troubles. But whom will he find if he never leaves the Oud Prins?

Outside, he hears a faint shouting that is quickly overpowered by the sound of the midnight bells in the church closer to his hearing. He knows the festival is out there somewhere, but he was able to get back to his inn before the majority of the revelers took to the streets.

Tomorrow the streets will be littered with burned wood and flint, empty tankards and broken glass. He will keep to himself in his rooms until they’ve swept the debris into the canals. Tonight, he must find some way to sleep, though his mind is still astir with all the comings and goings of this eventful day. He wonders where he put that wad of cotton he uses to plug his ears.

He goes to his basin and draws some cold water up to his face, using a bit of soap to rinse his teeth. Using a hand towel next to the basin, he pats his cheeks and forehead dry, and lets the rest of the water sit for a moment chilling his face. The fire seems to have gone out; he does not wish to worry the innkeeper at this hour, so he opens the iron door and peers within. There are still embers glowing in the back. It is merely a question of adding some kindling and a log or two. That should hold him through the night.

He takes some wood out of the basket next to the stove. How much time he spent writing those long letters to Mersenne, he thinks, bending down, lifting his kindling. What possessed him to
write so profusely? His friend surely would not be interested in it all. Perhaps he could keep the pages for himself and simply pen a shorter version, more to the point? Or, he could simply toss those pages all into the fire and begin again in the morning once he finds a clearer head.

He presses the frailest twig into the stove, positioning it atop the hot embers to try and make it catch. The embers glow but seem not to take to the twig, which has no frayed edges desirable to the fire. He chooses another twig, split down the center and shedding its bark. This one should do, he thinks, as he introduces it to the heat. This time the ember licks at the edges and seems to like what it tastes. A small flame erupts along the very end of the branch and then begins eating its way along the twig. Success in so small an endeavor, thinks Descartes, makes it feel as though the whole universe operates in harmony.

Once he is satisfied that the other kindling has caught, he presents a small log in the center of the stove and decides that will be sufficient. If the fire dies, the chill will wake him and he can get started with his work before dawn. The carcass he bought at the butcher’s is in the kitchen, preserved on ice. He will get up early enough so as not to wake the cook and confuse the servants further. The lamb will still be nearly fresh, and he can begin by dissecting its limb to see how closely that resembles the man’s.

Yes, tomorrow he will begin afresh, pursuing his own anatomies with the lessons he has learned today. He will begin with the lamb.

THE EYES

Rembrandt paints. He holds his palette in his left hand, his thumb in the hole, his fingers balancing the board. Cologne earth, Kassel earth, lead white, umber, red lake, vermilion, yellow ocher, red ocher, bone black.