A case of curiosities (38 page)

"Where are we stopping?"

The Abbe stared at the passing fields. He was unwilling to respond.

Claude pressed him. "At least, tell me what it is."

Piero could not resist. He lacked the Abbe's talent for keeping secrets. "A cornopard. We made it during your absence."

"A what?"

"He said it was a cornopard," the Abbe repeated, tapping with his hearing trumpet on a horn that protruded from the muslin wrapping.

Claude slid closer to inspect.

"Don't touch it," the Abbe warned.

Claude was insulted by the reproach. "I am no ordinary fumbler."

"This is no ordinary creature. Please be careful."

Claude removed the wrapping and looked at the animal. It rose four hands high from a simple pine base. As the name suggested, the creature had a horn and spotted fur. What made it even more curious was that the horn, taken from a narwhal tusk once thought to have belonged to a unicorn, stuck out from the small of the animal's back.

"It reminds me of the sexual apparatus illustrated in The Pervert's Pleasures ," Claude said.

"We thought placement above the nose was a bit conventional," the Abbe said. "We have composed a journal account of the beast's discovery." He read the text aloud.

Claude, though amused, was perplexed by his two friends' secrecy. "I still do not see why you cannot tell me where we are taking it, and why you and Piero have gone to so much trouble."

"There are a number of items that might help your project considerably. I know of only one man in the vicinity who has them."

"And who is he?"

"All in good time," the Abbe said.

Claude touched the cornopard's stomach. "It almost seems to move."

Piero and the Abbe looked out the window as the carriage entered the Republic of Geneva.

The Abbe suppressed a smile and said, "I am not at all surprised."

Why are we stopping at this miserable place?" Claude asked.

"Geneva will provide us with additional material. I told you," the Abbe said.

"You did not tell me all. This man we are supposed to see, is it the accountant?"

"No."

"Who, then? Who requires this kind of secrecy? Yet another chamber of yours?"

"No. If you must know, it is Adolphe Staemphli."

"Staemphli!" Claude was incredulous.

"Yes. That is why we didn't tell you. Forgive the expression, but why open old wounds?"

"Why indeed, when I can open new ones!"

"You will be opening nothing at all, Claude. You will not even open the doot to the sutgeon's house. Piero and I will negotiate the transaction alone. You will stay with Paul."

Claude fell into a silent fury, recollecting strategies of revenge. He had had ample time to refine his acts of retaliation. Some schemes were purely verbal. For example, a devastating condemnation in front of a Genevan judge, a denunciation that would end with Claude unveiling his mangled hand, to the horror of the court. He also contemplated a more spiteful kind of justice. In one scheme, he imagined the surgeon being forced to drink all the fluid from the preserving bottles he had filled. In another, which was set in the dark and acrid interior of the Red Dog, Claude saw himself calling out, "It is my decision that the accused shall suffer the punishment of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a finger for a finger." Though Claude would act as judge and jury, the tavern patrons would serve as the executioners of his Hammurabian verdict. One by one, they would take from the surgeon what the surgeon had taken from them. An ear for an ear, a toe for a toe. The scene would end with Claude placing the hand of the surgeon, the means by which all the horror had been committed, in the tavern's drop-handled bread cutter. He would leave Staemphli a single eye with which to observe the horror of his reciprocative punishment.

The Abbe interrupted Claude's angry meditation. "You will have to trust us to exact compensation."

"I will do no such thing. I am going to enter the surgeon's house with you."

"You will not."

"I will."

As the coachman negotiated the streets of the town, the argument inside Lucille bounced back and forth like a shuttlecock.

"Your bitterness will ruin our plan," the Abbe said.

"And what plan is that?"

"We will tell you after it is complete."

Piero intervened. "At least, allow him to be present." At heart, he sided with Claude. "Allow him to witness the surgeon's ruination."

"If Claude promises to say and do nothing at all while we are there, I will agree to his presence. But he must promise." Claude reluctantly accepted the conditions of entry.

It was dusk when the Abbe reached up and pounded the knocker—a cast-iron fist holding a ball—at the house of Adolphe Staemphli.

"A surprise to see you" was the best salutation the surgeon could muster as the Abbe hobbled in.

"It has been too long," the Abbe responded. "I have come to renew our relationship of exchange."

"I doubt that my collections would benefit from anything more you or your valley could offer," the surgeon said. "But come in if you must."

"Oh, I must. I must. I have a piece that will surely augment your holdings." The Abbe told Piero and Claude to bring in the muslin-wrapped object. As the young men cradled the cornopard, the surgeon glanced twice at Claude, whose face seemed vaguely familiar.

For Claude, nothing in the appearance of the surgeon had changed: the same stony complexion, the same black cloak proclaiming a somber unity with the elders of the Republic, the same self-righteous manner in evidence the night the Vengeful Widow struck. The surgeon was eager to inspect the specimen, to conduct business without delay, if, indeed, there was any business at all to conduct.

The Abbe had a different strategy.

"I propose that these fellows fetch what we desire from your collections, duplicates I am sure you do not need. We will put them on the table and compare what we wish to exchange. While they gather, we can catch up. I should say here and now that I have long wished to compliment you on your masterwork of medical illustration."

"You have seen it?" The surgeon was pleased. Few men of science—few men in any field — had come upon The Art of Cystotomy.

"Who has not?" the Abbe said. While the Abbe interrogated Staemphli about his work, disingenuously praising the author's persevetance, style, and sensibility, Pieto and Claude wete waved off to the tooms in which the collections wete kept. As they left, Staemphli was tuminating on a musket ball he had extracted using Cheselden's high operation. "The patient had carried it around since the siege of Lille, in Flanders. Four ounces, seven drops, English measure."

"No! By English measure?"

"Yes, yes," the surgeon replied, in a state of uncharacteristic rapture. The conversation moved on to the kidney stone of a camel that was carved with a map of the globe. "I use it as a paperweight."

"Really? How truly interesting. I think a similar one can be seen in Vienna."

After a half-hour of such talk, Staemphli could hold back no longer. "What," he asked, "is this piece you wish to trade? And for what do you wish to trade it?"

"It is an extraordinary piece that reached me just six months ago."

"As descriptions go, my dear Abbe, you are not being terribly precise. I must ask you again, what is it?"

"All in good time. You will see it shortly. But let us talk more about your Art while we wait for the fellows to return." And so the surgeon discoursed on cysts and gallstones and other truly interesting things.

Meanwhile, Piero and Claude worked their way through the collections as quickly as thoroughness allowed. The Staemphli holdings were housed in three adjacent rooms. The first was passed over, since it contained rocks and minerals, principally quartz, metal ores, asbestos, magnets, a few gems, and a pictorial stone collection that rivaled that of Manfredo Settala. The second room took more time to investigate. It was filled with animalia that displayed the Genevan's disconcertingly nonselective and insatiable urges. It was cased from floor to ceiling. In fact, even the ceiling had been taken over by objects suspended from ropes. There were at least three items Claude needed from the second room. Finding them was no easy task. There were no fewer than seven pack rats, including one that was born with three tails.

Piero scoffed at the methods of preservation. "Du Verney, as outlined in Fontenelle." The larger specimens were discolored, especially an eagle with an impressive wingspan hanging overhead. "Terribly stuffed. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole room was threatened." He was only slightly more taken by the mammals. As Claude poked about, Piero matched the items to a list.

"A length of reindeer tendon, the vocal cords of an African monkey, the larynx of a striped hyena, preferably not preserved in alcohol."

With these items collected, they entered the final room, which bore a label that read, in Latin: "Anomalies of Human Variety." They found the last piece on the list — the distended innards of a human ear—and were set to leave, when they came upon a flesh-colored cupboard with a tag, "Appendages of the Misbegotten."

Claude opened the cupboard and scanned the shelves. He had a perverse and uncontrollable need to look. There was a bottled bubo with the affected organs of reproduction still hideously attached. It had come from a Lausanne lawyer. There was also a covered goblet with a fetus in it. The Latin was difficult to decipher. It seemed that the fetus had been grown from a single drop of semen warmed under special conditions. Next to it was a two-headed newborn.

The surgeon called them back. They were about to retrace their steps when Claude stopped short. Piero bumped into him, almost dropping the larynx of the striped hyena. Claude reached for a jar he had almost overlooked. The size of the object it contained perplexed him. It was so insignificant, no larger than a caterpillar, but the label left no doubt: "Digitus impudus. Tournay, IX 1780." The object, place, and date all corresponded.

After suppressing his initial nausea, Claude grabbed the jar and held it tightly. For the first time since his youth, finger and hand were united. The reunion provoked vivid memories of the amputation and the events that followed. He recalled the expanse of green baize on which Staemphli had laid his tools, the blood-red snow, the herbs and mushroom strings dancing overhead. Additional notation on the label indicated that the mole, in the shape of the French King, had been filled with black bile. Claude knew that the blackness was nothing more than the ink that had stained his finger.

Piero tried to persuade him to disregard the contents of the cupboard and to quicken his pace, but nothing would make Claude move. He observed that next to the finger there were other jars from Tournay. More bottled memories came flooding back. Claude matched the surgical interventions announced in the Red Dog with the body parts that now floated in the jars before his eyes.

He started to empty the cupboard.

"Put them back! You will ruin everything," Piero said. He was adamant. "You cannot steal them."

"That is right. I cannot steal what was stolen from me."

Piero grew distraught. He gestured wildly. "They will be missed. We will be caught."

Claude refused to listen. "I am going to make him drink every drop of liquid in every single jar!"

"Claude, stop. Have trust in our plan. If you do something rash now, everything will be jeopardized. He is a powerful citizen of the Republic. We have no protection against the laws here. Let us exchange the cornopard for the objects we have gathered up."

Claude rejected Piero's appeals. He cleared the cupboard of the two Tournay shelves.

"Hurry, Staemphli is calling us again."

Through the doors they could hear the Abbe trying to distract the surgeon by interrogating him on the newest methods of lithotomy, but by now his host demanded to see the object up for trade.

"What is it you have brought, then? I must insist you show me. Some large piece of amber with an insect entombed? I have forty-seven already. Or perhaps a pretty shell or rare volume? You will recall that your accountant sold me what I needed. I suspect that your trip will have been a waste for you, and for me. Still, it was pleasant enough to talk about my work."

"Not nearly so pleasant as what you are about to see, I assure you."

The young men entered carrying the jars they wished to trade—Piero had persuaded Claude to keep the Tournay cache out of view—and awaited the Abbe's orders.

"Bring it in. Bring it in," he said. They returned carrying the cornopard. With a flourish, the Abbe revealed the specimen.

"What is it?"

"Why, it is a cornopard!"

"A cornopard? Oh, of course." Staemphli was too proud to admit ignorance.

"Yes, the only one known to have been transported to Europe, though I understand they are quite common indigenously. You no doubt read about it in the Gazette/'

"Yes, I seem to recall something, but refresh my memory. I read so much that the smaller notices often escape my full attention."

"No matter. I have the clipping here. Claude, please read this aloud."

The mention of the name caused the surgeon to look yet again at the young man. Claude read from the document:

Capture of a Cornopard. A creature was found near a lake outside the village of Chocolococa, in the province of Peru. It emerged during the night in order to devour small rodents, untended piglets, and chickens of the area. Its length is three feet; its face is roughly that of a man; its mouth is as wide as its face; it is provided with teeth one-half inch long; it has one horn, located in the small of its back; its fur is tight and mottled; it has four-inch ears like those of an ass, and paws like those of a leopard. It has a striped tail of no discernible function. This small monster was captured by men who had laid traps, into which it fell. It was entangled in nets and brought alive to the viceroy, who succeeded in nourishing it with chopped-up piglets, to which it is quite partial. The species seems to be that of unicorns, heretofore considered legendary.

Staemphli had a hard time containing his excitement. Once or twice he tried to minimize the strangeness of the creature, but his lust to possess overpowered a competing desire to appear reserved. He was too eager to place the cornopard in his collections to challenge its plausibility. He rubbed the fur and gripped the tip of the horn.