Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain (7 page)

Without waiting for the Constable to offer his supporting arm, Sarah raced to her front porch and threw open the door. Foul air tore through her like the clawed paws of a bear, and she bent before the sting of the assault. Nan looked up at her, small in the seat Sarah had pulled beside the settee.

“Can I go now, Missus?” Had she seen a ghost, Nan could not have looked more drawn.

“Fetch a candle,” Sarah demanded. The Constable stood inside now, coughing, hands clenched against the instinct to cover his mouth and nose.

Nicolas would rise, or not. The waiting had ended.

“Untie the linens,” Sarah said, stepping aside so the Constable could approach the settee. He paused a moment, regarding her with something akin to fear. “Come along now,” she said.

“My dear —” the Constable began, but she silenced him with a wave.

“Must I call Doctor Steenwycks?” She moved to stand at the end of what she'd come to think of as Nicolas's sickbed and placed a hand beneath her son's head. Moisture had soaked the sheet and the cushion beneath it, leaving the fabric cold and damp.

The Constable, bent over the boy, ran his fingers between the swathing layers of cloth, watching his own hand move as if it were a rodent, something filthy. He located the triple fold Doctor Steenwycks had pinned shut and worked the metal from the cloth. “May I suggest —”

“I remain here,” Sarah said. The cloth was not yet open, but already she knew that Nicolas had not recovered. She knew without confirmation that her son was no longer alive. She knew. The horrid Negro had taken her son away.

The Constable sighed, his will weak beside the widow's. He stepped back as he slipped the cloth from the boy, allowing the ends of the sheet to fall to the floor. Turning to Sarah, he watched her eyes widen. She pulled her hands
from under Nicolas's head, wiping them on her dress as if she could rub all contact away. The boy's head fell back. His skin had discolored, grotesque as it was the day the midwife first held him aloft, mottled blue and still covered in blood. Sarah had taken the babe in her arms and life had emerged from his lips as a scream that echoed now only in her voice.

“The light,” Nan said. She cupped her dark hand around the flame and extended the burning wick toward Sarah, toward Nicolas. The flesh of her palm glowed; its lines had a deep red hue. The flame flickered. Sarah took it from the girl.

“Leave me, Nan.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Leave my house.”

Nan's eyes narrowed. “Who will care for you?”

“You can't dismiss her,” the Constable interrupted. “She's one of the good ones, your Nan.”

“Gather your belongings,” Sarah continued. “Take Nicolas's old case.”

Nan bowed her head. Her dress, patterned with stains of gravy, wash water, and soot, hung loosely from her shoulders. Her kerchief had slipped back, revealing her high forehead. For a moment she waited, defiant. Then she ran from the room.

“You must not —” the Constable began. But Sarah did
not heed his words, her eyes on the fire, the delicate motion of flame.

“I have,” she said. And the Constable had time just to take the candle from her and set it safely down before she collapsed into his arms, her face powdered and damp and, for the first time in her life, a perfect white.

M
Y
N
AME
I
S
L
UBBERT
D
AS

My name is Lubbert Das, and I was born with a stone in my head twenty-odd years ago. I never learned to read or make sums, I'm fat as a swollen wineskin, and before Father died and Doctor Theodorus Steenwycks discovered me, I chopped firewood from sunrise till mid afternoon, when I had to pile the logs into cart seventeen, which pulled them to the barracks above the Common. At night Mother baked meat pies, or did till the money ran out and we started to burn furniture a few table legs at a time for heat. Now we eat hard bread on the floor, where we still have boards down, and pile our plates in a corner. No one has British pounds, except the people with horses and coaches, and not even they do sometimes.

Since Father died, Mother has worked for the milliner.
Her fingers are always yellow-brown and wrinkled no matter how hard she scrubs them. Her skin is as tough as her voice when she raises it so all the neighbors can hear her say that she and her dim-witted boy won't end up at the almshouse. There's disease at the almshouse, that's what they say, the soldiers up at the Common who always have money for hats. I've delivered six of them to as many officers' wives the past three months. The Sons of Liberty say the British are robbing us and we'll end up like African slaves if we don't change our ways, but the soldiers order more hats than anyone else in the colonies, and Mother says she needs to sell hats or we can't eat.

I don't chop wood for the soldiers anymore; the cart men won't take it. We refuse to supply the enslavers, they say. My ax, bright as the moon, sits in the corner, but I've started to steal what's left of the wood to burn at home because we don't have much but clothes left for our fires. I have my extra wool breeches and a few pairs of stockings; Mother, her summer clothes and Father's old broadcloth coat, which she wears around the house at night. It makes her cry, that faded blue coat, but she won't burn it. I tried to take it from her once so she'd feel better, and she hit me hard across my cheek, and then cried some more and begged God for forgiveness because I knew not what I did.

I wanted to go with Father the day he went to see the cocks fight, and I still thank God for his almighty kindness,
because Father refused and I didn't die when men started drinking and fighting. Instead I met Doctor Theodorus Steenwycks, who came by our house in Church Farm along with the men carrying Father's body. The doctor brought a half tankard of ale, which Mother drank right there. Her face turned red, and she fell asleep just when the neighbors arrived to see what all the wailing was about. Miss Willett wrapped her arms around me, and I thought she might cry, too, but instead she started saying, “Poor dear. Poor dear. Whatever will he do now?”

I had to push her away because I was having unclean thoughts. Miss Willett has lived next door since I was a baby, and I remember her like a first snow, white and smothering. She used to give me hard candies and apples and sing me songs about the moon and King George of England. She always smiled when she saw me and hugged me close when I ran over to tell her about my day — I'd seen a fish in Fresh Water Pond; I'd watched the sailors arrive from faraway places with dark-skinned men and boxes that smelled as divine as baby Jesus himself.

Miss Willett released me when I pushed her back, and I saw that she did have tears in her eyes. I had to go outside then, because her sister tried to hold me as well, and that's when Doctor Steenwycks asked me if I knew my name. He was standing by the road, which was thick as porridge since the snow melted, his hands in his pockets, a small cocked
hat on his head. He had red gums, fish-innards red, and I couldn't look at him for fear I might make an impolite expression or stare like Mother always forbids me to do. So I just nodded, big nods so he'd be sure to see.

“That's a good man,” he said. “You're the man of the family now.”

I nodded again and folded my hands behind my back like I'd seen the minister do.

“Can you speak?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You understand me?”

He stepped closer, and I feared his opening mouth, but I knew Mother would want me to answer, so I turned my face away and nodded. He leaned closer and whispered, “I've cured men like you — even men so mad they can't dress themselves.” Doctor Steenwycks was the son of a famous doctor. A doctor who cured the dead, Mother told me later, when I asked her about him.

“I dress myself,” I said.

“Would you like to be cured? Would you like that?” Doctor Steenwycks smiled, red lips and gums. “You could care for your mother. Perhaps even find a wife. A good woman like — like a solid pair of bronze-buckled shoes.”

I thought of Miss Willett with her long gray-brown braid. She had a brother who brought her paper-wrapped
slabs of smoked bacon and dried beef, which she sometimes shared with Mother. She smelled like fresh leaves.

“How —” But I couldn't think of the words I needed to say because Miss Willett was there in my head, twirling like she might on Pope's Day, skirt flowing around her ankles, chest pressing against the tight fabric of her one good brown dress.

“There, there.” Doctor Steenwycks placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. “It's not proper to be jumping up and down on the day of your poor father's death. But I'm a charitable man, a man who cannot stand by as fate's hideous hand reduces a good family, one already sorely burdened, to dire circumstance. We Steenwyckses believe in the common good; we help common folk. My father — you may know him, the great Jan Steenwycks — ah, but you wouldn't, of course you wouldn't. My father and I open our doors to people like you. Tell your mother to come by my parlor on Monday. Crown Street, near Trinity Church.”

I repeated Doctor Steenwycks's words so I would not forget them before Mother awoke, which she did two hours later. Doctor Steenwycks and Miss Willett and her sister and all the men who'd arrived with the body had left by then along with Father's corpse. All that remained of the afternoon was a layer of mud and excrement on our floor.

“Dear Mother,” I said, and she ran her fingers through
my hair and kissed my forehead and told me how blessed I was to be a fool. “Doctor Steenwycks says he can cure me.”

T
HE GROUNDS IN FRONT
of Doctor Steen-wycks's house had eleven elm trees and seven white stone figures of unclad people. I touched one to see if it felt warm, but Mother pulled me away. The front porch was big as our house, and covered, and the doctor sat in one corner with a Negro girl. He was reading to her, and she was watching him, but she looked scared, crouched with her dress pulled tight over her knees. I was scared, too, but I followed Mother up two stairs to the porch and over to the corner where I saw that the man wasn't Doctor Steenwycks, but someone much older.

“Theodorus is in the back parlor,” the man said. He smiled, like Doctor Steenwycks had, and I realized that he was the famous doctor, the one who cured the dead.

“I'm very pleased to meet you,” Mother said, and she made a kind of curtsy. I told him my name was Lubbert, Lubbert Das. I was about to ask him to cure my father, when Mother took my shoulder and we walked through the front doors; there were two, and they opened in opposite directions from each other. We passed through four empty rooms with stone hearths and burning fires, till we found Doctor Steenwycks.

“You've arrived,” he said. He'd been writing and his fingers
were stained with black ink. He ran his hand over my head, and I thought he might stain my hair, which is brown but not dark, not like the stains on his hands.

“In France, the operation takes less than an hour. Here, with my tools, it will take somewhat longer.” Doctor Steenwycks looked at Mother, who had borrowed a plumed hat from the milliner. He stared at her a very long time, so long her cheeks changed color.

“He's all I have,” she said.

“We remove only a small portion of the skull, a fragment of bone. Once the pressure in his skull has lessened, the brain membrane will heal. He may — well, suffice it to say that he will be able to secure employment. And with the passage of time, he may one day become an intellectual. Once I've restored the proper flow of blood to his brain —”

“Your father taught you this … this cure?”

“My father has his specialty, I have mine. We are both great doctors, in our own way.”

Mother nodded, and I could tell she was impressed but was trying to hide it, which is why she bit her lip and looked down. Doctor Steenwycks watched her, and I almost said yes because I knew that's what he wanted Mother to say and why he was waiting and I didn't want him to look at her any longer.