Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain (16 page)

“Here it is,” Parkhurst said. The hold was unlocked, open even, the wood cold and salty. The boys stepped, hands forward and searching, into its musty depths.

“I'm going to buy my own boat and sail round the world.” Parkhurst moved deeper into the darkness, his voice muffled.

“I'm building a castle,” Phineas declared. “And only the River Gang is invited.”

“If I had a lump of gold as large as my head,” Quimbly began, though he realized that he hadn't once thought about what he'd do with the treasure. He imagined burying the nugget in the ground, secreted away from everyone except, perhaps, Bettine, who couldn't tell anyone. He considered showing the Fool, asking if he could magnetize it — all thoughts he would never share with the others.

“I found it!” Phineas interrupted. “Tons of it!”

Long and hard and thick as his thigh, the lumps of metal felt warm to Quimbly who ran his hands over them. Parkhurst reached down to lift a small chunk, but stumbled beneath the weight.

“Give me a hand,” he said.

But Quimbly, who felt the pull of the metal, silenced him. “It's pig iron,” he said. “It's all pig iron.”

P
ARKHURST WOULD NOT
leave empty-handed, though the rowboat rode so low in the water that the Hudson poured over the sides. The misshapen iron rested between the benches, rolling back and forth as the boat
lurched forward. The breeze had picked up, and the sky glowed with the soft light of the sun still tucked beneath the horizon.

“Riches,” Phineas muttered. “That's the last time I listen to you.”

Beside him Parkhurst pulled so fiercely and single-mindedly that it was not till many minutes had passed that he realized he'd left his knife on the ship. By then the rowboat was too full of water to turn back.

“I can't swim,” Cobb whimpered. “Can't swim a stroke.”

“Me neither,” Quimbly said, admitting the weakness absently. The boat, he realized, was nothing less than a baquet. A floating vat with water, iron, and wooden sides. He felt warm where the water engulfed his shoes and ankles and splashed his fingertips. The heat spread through his chest and throat. He couldn't swim, his boat was sinking, and he'd returned empty-handed, but he felt grand. “Don't worry.” The shore stretched before them, twenty long yards away. They'd reach it. Even Cobb must know. “We're aligned, don't you see?”

A figure, crouched by the rocks, stood to greet them, and Parkhurst spoke for the first time since leaving the
Sea Witch
. “Good God, Quimbly.” The harsh syllables nearly broke the musical spell. “It's that girl.”

Quimbly searched the shore, found the silhouetted form. Even in shadow Bettine looked pretty, and as they rowed
closer he could make out her smile, her hopeful expression. She carried an oar, as if awaiting an invitation.

“
Das Boot
,” she said, pointing toward the
Sea Witch
.

“I'd kill her, but I don't have my knife.” Parkhurst slapped the water with his oar and jumped out. Quimbly followed, the two tugging the boat to the rocks.

“She'll forget,” Quimbly said. “I know how to make her.”

“You're a fool,” Parkhurst said, “a damned, bloody fool.”

Quimbly held the girl's shoulder. She'd pulled her hair back in a white ribbon, and she wore a brandy-colored dress he'd never seen before. She'd washed her face and fashioned a necklace for herself from bits of broken dishware.

She smiled, not at all afraid. In fact, as Quimbly looked at her, she leaned into his arm, unfolding her fingers to reveal a stolen bracelet. Curing this girl of her memory was not an abuse of power, he decided. The Fool would not mind, would never know. She couldn't be part of the River Gang, no matter how good a thief she became. Besides, he wouldn't be thieving much longer himself. Quimbly reached into his pocket, swung the watch before her eyes as he'd been taught.

“Let me lead you,” he said, the words less important than their sound. Morning light colored the sky: apricot, silver, and green — the thousand shades of her eyes. “Let me tell you a story.”

The words poured from his lips as Parkhurst and the
others dragged the pig iron onto the rocks. “Come on,” they called. “Give us a hand.” But Quimbly ignored them, and he didn't follow when they left for the docks in search of bulging purses and wallets. Animal magnetism was not something he could control, he realized. It flowed through him, his force, the girl's. It collected like gulls around an old carcass, a flock that might lift from the ground any moment and soar. “Come with me,” he said. He'd evoked the Fool's magic. The sun felt hot on his skin. “Come with me.”

She clutched his fingers, and together they ran, past the turn where the Fool waited, past Parkhurst and Phineas and Cobb and the docks, and the markets and lumbering trains. And Quimbly raised his free hand to the sky, toward the celestial bodies he knew were pulling him, him and the girl, through the fluid of life.

N
EURASTHENIA
: A V
ICTORIAN
L
OVE
S
TORY

Naked, Edwin Macready's legs and lower abdomen quivered. His feet and ankles paled to an unsightly yellow; his chest, cruelly carved by his disease, curved as delicate as a china bowl. He folded his hands over his genitals. A sulphurous smell of sparks, long extinguished, filled the air.

“Bit of good news today,” he said, blue eyes gazing longingly to the left of Doctor Steenwycks's shoulder, where a woolen vest and underpants lay exposed on the examination table.

Doctor Benjamin Steenwycks, who had just finished implanting a fist-sized copper electrode in a damp sponge, raised the instrument to the gaslight to observe his work. Behind him coils of wire and sharp-toothed gears hung from hooks on the wall. Scattered hammers, glass jars of
odd nails and screws, and fragments of welded metal gave the small office the feel of a clock repair shop. “Yes?” he said.

“I've been promoted to head clerk.”

“Wonderful news! And you're feeling —” The doctor nodded toward Edwin's groin.

“Better,” Edwin said, suddenly remorseful. The truth of the matter, as any clerk knew well, was that “head clerk” meant little more than undesired responsibility and additional unpaid hours. No matter how long or hard he worked at the undergarment department at Macy's, he would never afford Doctor Steenwycks's fees. Edwin stood in the scratched copper treatment dish only because the doctor studied neurasthenia in the lower middle class: single men, who paid eight dollars a month to live in dingy boardinghouses, who worked late into the night at factories that rose like flaming candles throughout New York.

Neurasthenia, the doctor claimed, was prevalent among the poor and rich alike, though it was more often diagnosed among the latter. In fact, ailing nerves were the root of all human misery. What but disease could explain the conditions the destitute chose for themselves?

Doctor Steenwycks diagnosed and cured more cases of nerves than any other doctor. He was highly regarded in the medical community. Other doctors as well as patients consulted him on every medical matter: the use of carbolic
acid in surgery, the relationship of clean water to public health, the best treatment for cysts, the repair of fistulas. A man of vast means, descendant from a long succession of brilliant doctors, he worked because passion drove him. And one day, after his cousin Letty died and he inherited the family estate, which would have been his had his father not been such a fool, he would move his practice from the lower floor of his Eighteenth Street brownstone to Orchard Street, his ancestral home, which had four chimneys and a rich history of success. When he spoke of it, the doctor looked very wise, his eyes magnified behind spectacles, his hair a neat coif of brown curls.

“Cure the body, the rest will follow,” he said.

Edwin nodded. The clerk received free treatments, generously scheduled for dawn so that he could depart in time to begin his twelve-hour day, but he was often too tired to follow conversation. Beneath his feet the metal dish felt cold. The thought of failure troubled him as it had each morning since the doctor began treatments three weeks earlier. What if he never again felt the healing shock? What if Doctor Steenwycks turned him out of the clinic before Edwin owned his own shop, like the butcher's assistant the doctor had cured in only four sessions? Or the waiter who now owned a stagecoach and lived in a brownstone on St. Nicholas Avenue?

“You're responding,” the doctor said. A set of pliers
bulged from the slit pocket of his tweed jacket. “The higher doses of current are helping.” He consulted a leather-bound journal, scribbled a quick calculation, and struck a rectangular gong, which rang with a resounding clatter. “Herbert!” he called. “The magneto!”

Herbert, the doctor's diminutive assistant, responded to the summons before the gong ceased to sound. Never once taking his rust brown eyes from Edwin's thin, naked frame, he bowed slightly and stepped forward to grasp the crank handle of the cabinet-sized cylindrical machine. Nickel-plated bars gleamed beside coils that spiraled into the dark core of the device, the place where the current came from, at least so Edwin believed, when the smooth metal cylinder spun. With exaggerated effort, Herbert turned the machine's L-shaped handle. The exposed iron frame trembled to the hum of spinning gears and the clunk of an improperly aligned screw. Doctor Steenwycks, wires trailing from each hand, raised his electrodes.

“Have you spoken to that girl?” he asked.

Edwin's interest in a lady had been the first sign of recovery. And ever since he'd mentioned the short-haired girl, whom he'd first seen on the street outside Macy's, the doctor had asked after her.

“You must speak with her.” Doctor Steenwycks ran the electrode over Edwin's left thigh, and the muscles twitched violently. “You mustn't let your nerves interfere.”

Herbert cranked the magneto rapidly. The odd clunk blurred into the hum of the gears. Again the current shot through Edwin, this time near his abdomen. Shock pounded his flesh. His skin flushed, his breath came in quick bursts. He set his teeth against the pain that coursed through his body. Sweat hung in the air, filling the small office with its rich scent.

E
DWIN BRUSHED BY
the two uniformed policemen who guided the stream of ladies to and from the front doors of Macy's. The clock struck eight, and he decided to forgo breakfast and begin work (his first day as head clerk of the ladies' undergarment department) a half hour early. All of New York was his, he thought as he passed the plate glass windows surrounded by early-morning shoppers. He would rise through society's ranks as gracefully as the moon rose through the night sky. Startled, he realized that he had begun to whistle. He paused, looked about to see if anyone had noticed. Shoppers thronged: skirts, parcels, flat-toed shoes on sooty cobblestone. The day had warmed, contrary to rumors of a strong coastal storm. And there, right before him, was the girl.

Hatless, as usual, she walked with a purposeful stride. She wore her skirt shorter than respectable women — her ankles flashed where the hem grazed the top of her shoes. She carried a pair of long white gloves, as if she'd been
too busy to pull them on, and slung over one shoulder her leather bag bulged with books and papers. Most mornings, she walked on the north side of Fourteenth Street, and Edwin would watch her through the glass of the small coffeehouse, where he sat over coffee and toast. Today she'd chosen the south side, and had Edwin not stepped aside, she would have walked right into him. She must be drawn by his energy. Healthy people, successful people, attracted admirers.

“Good morning,” he said. The words felt good on his lips.

She stared back at him with inquiring blue eyes. “Do I know you?”

“Well, no.” Even as he soared on the morning's infusion of energy, Edwin recognized the first symptoms of his disease descend. His heart beat rapidly, his voice warbled, his palms began to sweat. Had he pushed himself too far? Should he have waited for a few more sessions before addressing her? Confidence was most easily enjoyed alone.