City of Dreams (74 page)

“It does to a surgeon, Father. Please, let me show you. I’ve some notes and sketches in my room. I made them the last time Grandfather and I did an anatomy on a patient who’d had dropsy.”

Luke held up his hand. “No, don’t go running off for your notes. I’m sure they’re as clever as can be, lad, and I don’t for a moment doubt the accuracy of my father’s observations or yours. But what difference does it make? It can’t help that poor woman who came here looking for a miracle. I can’t supply miracles, Andrew. And neither can you. If you’re going to practice medicine, either as a doctor or a surgeon, that’s something you have to accept. Miracles are not in our gift.”

Andrew took a deep breath. It was now or never. “I know miracles are impossible, Father. But a cancerated liver may not require divine intervention. If a surgeon can cut off a cancerous pappe, why not remove a liver?”

Luke was speechless. Father and son stared at each other for many seconds. Then Luke exhaled and found his voice. “Why not? First, because a pappe is on the outside of the body. That’s what surgery is for, lad. Things on the outside of the body, or manifested there. Second—and maybe most important—we know quite well that a woman can live with only one pappe, but we have no idea whatever that a person, man or woman, can live without a liver.”

“And we never will know until we try.” It was as if Andrew hadn’t heard a word his father said. His voice was becoming more sure as he repeated the argument he’d made to his grandfather a few months before. “If the patient is going to die if we do nothing, isn’t it better to try something? If it doesn’t succeed, where’s the harm?”

“The harm? Where’s the harm! Are you mad, lad? Or completely insensitive to the agony you’re suggesting? What in God’s name do you believe the practice of surgery to be? Your grandfather didn’t train you to become a torturer. We’re supposed to be preventing pain and suffering, Andrew, not creating it. How in God’s name do you expect any patient to withstand the torment while you calmly set about slitting open their belly? How can you dare to—”

“Stop shouting, Father. Please. I’m not going to do any such thing. I know that’s the problem we’ve yet to solve. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

Luke fought to regain his usual calm. “Enough. That’s enough. This barbaric discussion is at an end. And you’re forbidden to mention the subject to anyone else. I will not have you ruining your grandfather’s hard-earned reputation by suggesting he condoned the idea of such torture.”

Andrew sat where he was for a few moments, battling the anger that inevitably accompanied a medical discussion with his father. And the grief of knowing he could never again talk with his grandfather, whose mind had been as open as Luke’s was closed. “Very well,” he said finally. “I apologize for disturbing you, Father.”

“Ah, lad, you don’t disturb me. At least, not the way you mean. There’s no harm in having ideas. You know I still use the breathing tube to help children suffering from
angina suffocativa
, even though it doesn’t always work. And I’m frequently criticized for not doing the conventional thing and raising a throat blister. Innovation is fine. Sometimes it is necessary and helpful. But you mustn’t forget that you’re dealing with living human beings.”

Luke got up and went to the window. Too capable with his hands, the lad was; his deftness with the scalpel had run ahead of his not yet mature judgment. “I know you’re remarkably skilled at cutting, Andrew. Your grandfather told me so, and there was no better judge. But go too far, further than your patients are prepared to have you go, and you will not be able to earn a living as a New York City surgeon no matter how well you do your job. Your grandfather knew that as well. I wish he’d chosen to pass on the lesson.”

Andrew stood up. “He did, Father. But Grandfather was right about the transfusing of blood. And I am right about the possibility of cutting away the liver.”

“Stop! I told you before, that subject is closed.”

“Yes, sir. I apologize.”

“I accept your apology. And I’ve been thinking about your future, lad. I expect I’ll be notified of the official appointment to the charge of the almshouse hospital in a few weeks time, possibly less. Perhaps you’d like to have the care of the wards one day a week.”

Andrew glowed with excitement. “Father, do you mean it?”

“Of course I mean it. One day a week. Give you some real experience. With people who are alive,” he added dryly. “And your job will be to keep them that way.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll make you proud of me. I swear it.”

“I don’t doubt it, Andrew. Neither did your grandfather.” Luke reached down and opened a drawer in the desk. The package he withdrew was wrapped in oiled cloth and tied with strong twine. “Here. He left these to you. They’re your legacy.”

Andrew knew what the package contained as soon as he saw it. He reached out, struggling to keep his hand from trembling. “Lucas Turner’s journals,” he said, his voice quivering with emotion despite his best efforts.

“Indeed. Your twice-great-grandfather’s surgical journals. And some notes made by your grandfather over the long years of his practice. Treasure them, Andrew. They’re without price.”

The boy’s face darkened and he didn’t immediately take the gift his father was offering. “Lucas Turner wasn’t really my great-great-grandfather, was he? Since we’re all descended from Sally Van der Vries and the savage who violated her.”

“It makes absolutely no difference. Sally was Lucas’s sister. He adopted my grandfather Nicholas. We are not simply Lucas’s only male descendants. We’re Turners by blood.”

It was an argument Andrew had heard before. He leaned forward and took the precious package from his father’s hands. “I will treasure the journals and Grandfather’s notes, Father. With my life. I swear it.”

Luke smiled at the ease with which the young took a vow. “Life is the most precious thing on earth, son. Don’t be too quick to swear it away.”

After the unseasonable cold snap of a few days past, the weather had turned foul. It was warmer than it had been but blowing a gale, the rain sleeting down in almost horizontal sheets. Cuf hunched into his flannel jacket and hurried up the front path of the old house on Pearl Street.

The apothecary shop looked empty from the outside. Cuf pushed open the door. The bell made its customary harsh clang and Phoebe stood up from behind the long wooden counter. “Oh, it’s you, is it?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“What are you come for?”

“Mistress sent me.”

Of course she did, Phoebe thought. Some made-up errand same as always. ’Cause she thinks I got to see my son regular like. Thinks if I do that, someday I’ll forget about the white blood inside him. Never will. I be telling her that twenty-three years ago. Right after she came and saw him in his swaddling clothes. With her belly all swollen like mine had been. “Don’t worry,” Jennet be telling me. “I talked with Amba. She says sometimes women of your tribe have a light-skinned baby. But after a month or two they darken right up.”

Mama be telling me the same thing. Until she died she be waitin’ for my boy to darken right up. Only he never did. So it didn’t help that I called my boy Cuffy ’cause he be borned on a Friday and Mama said back in Africa where she was a queen and I be going to be a princess, that’s what they called babies be borned on Friday. But this Cuffy don’t be one of us. Not Jethro’s son, much as I hoped for that. This boy’s father be one of them evil white men be doing it to me night and day for a month. Either the scout what captured us and killed Jethro, or one of them redcoats that guarded the stockade where they put me after.

So I don’t be having no stomach to look at my boy, and Jennet be taking him in when he be a month old, and my milk be dried up because of how much I be hating my mostly white Cuffy. Took him in and give him to the same wet nurse was looking after Morgan. And my son drank white woman’s milk just like Morgan did. And grew up more white than black. And that’s all fine by me. Least it would be if only she’d stop sending him around and I could be at peace. “What’s the mistress want now?”

“Some of the Health-Giving Tonic.” Cuf nodded toward the barrel that stood at the end of the counter as it always had, and held out the jug Squaw DaSilva had given him. “This much.”

Phoebe shook her head. “A whole jug full? That’s the same amount she be getting a few weeks back. What she be doin’, drinkin’ Tonic for breakfast?”

“Sends it to the houses. To keep the ladies in good form.”

A few moments later he left the shop carrying the brimming jug. The rain had stopped but Cuf barely noticed.

There was a remarkable carriage waiting on Pearl Street, one of the grandest he’d ever seen. The two wooden wheels at the rear stood almost as tall as his shoulder. The closed coach was painted golden yellow. Pictures of cherubs and flowers and scrolls adorned every panel. The driver, a huge black man in scarlet livery, had descended from his front perch and stood beside the gate.

Cuf paused beside him. “Fine carriage you’ve got there. And a fine pair of horses to draw it.” The geldings were matched chestnuts with red velvet ribbons braided into their manes, and tall red plumes decorating their bridles. They kept their heads down and pawed the earth, as if impatient to race away. “It’s from London, isn’t it? No one in New York could make a carriage looked like that.”

“From London, yes.” The coachman spoke with his gaze fixed on some spot over Cuf’s shoulder. Cuf would have turned around to see what the man was staring at, but he knew nothing was there. Negro people often avoided looking at him. It was as if his pale brown skin offended them. As if a man had a choice about the color he was born. “My gentleman,” the coachman said, still not meeting Cuf’s direct glance, “he wants to see you.”

“And who would your gentleman be?” The door to the coach had a glass window, but it was entirely covered by a red velvet curtain.

“My gentleman told me to tell you he was an old friend.”

“Old friends come out in the open to meet. They don’t hide. Not even in a fancy coach.”

At last the other man looked straight at him. He was about Cuf’s height, but twice as wide. His dark eyes bored into Cuf’s. “Your skin’s not white,” he said softly, “but you got a white man’s pride in your mouth. I don’t know if you’re one of us or one of them, boy, but unless you want to swallow a few of your teeth, you’ll take yourself inside that coach the way my gentleman asks.”

It wasn’t the man’s loosely curled fists that made Cuf go. The man was big, but Cuf figured he could hold his own in a fair fight. It was the elaborately painted carriage that attracted him. Great God Almighty, no carriage in New York was grander. What must the interior be like?

He thrust the jug of Health-Restoring Tonic at the coachman—“Here, hold on to this”—and strode to the carriage and pulled open the door.

The man waiting for him was dressed in a cutaway coat of pale blue brocade. His long undercoat was colored gold and embroidered with gold thread. Layers of lace ruffles formed the cuffs of his fine linen shirt and showed below the sleeves of his coat. His breeches were dark blue velvet, his knee-high stockings white silk, and his shoes black leather with remarkably large silver buckles. The shoes stuck straight out in front of him. Because sitting on the red velvet seat of the fine carriage, his legs didn’t reach the floor.

“Hello, Cuf,” Jan Brinker said. “Climb up here beside me and close the door so we be talking in private.”

Cuf stared. It took him several moments to find his voice. “It’s really you, isn’t it?” he asked finally.

“
Ja
, of course it really be me. How many dwarfs do you be knowing?”

“None except you. Only it’s been so long.”

“Sixteen years. But you didn’t be forgetting me, did you, Cuf?”

“No, I never forgot you.”

He couldn’t have. The dwarf had been a constant presence in the bordello over by Hudson’s River for the first seven years of Cuf’s life. Then, when Mistress moved them to the new house on the Broad Way in the court part of town, Jan Brinker disappeared from their world. Cuf had heard Tilda and Mistress Flossie talking about the terrible fight the dwarf had with Squaw DaSilva, and how she threw the little man out without giving him a penny of the reward she’d always promised him for saving her life the night Caleb Devrey and his crowd of ruffians burned her house to the ground. But Cuf had never heard any details of the quarrel, or where the little man had gone.

“Chappaqua,” Jan Brinker said as if he could read Cuf’s mind. “When the cheating whoremistress threw me into the street, that be where I went. Chappaqua’s a lake above the Van Cortlandt plantation in West Chester County. So far in the woods, it be t’other side of hell. Almost no one be living there, ’cept a few Quakers. But it’s a good place to brew beer. All the fresh cold water you need be right to hand.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing, brewing beer?”

The little man nodded, smoothing the front of his satin undercoat and adjusting his brocaded coat.
“Ja
. Thousands of redcoats all passing through West Chester on their way to the forts. Thousands and thousands. It’s thirsty they be, Cuf. Very thirsty.”