The White Body of Evening (3 page)

“We got to get going, Bert,” Sid said. “Going to walk back through the gardens. Look after yourself, Anna.”

Sadie and Anna hugged, then Sid took his wife’s hand. Anna and Albert stood on the street watching them walk away.

“They seem very happy,” said Albert listlessly.

“Yes they do,” said Anna.

Albert felt bored and tired. It wasn’t anything to do with Anna specifically. Not really. But she was there, in the midst of the drabness, and that made him indignant.

“Are you all right, Albert?” she asked, noticing his remoteness.

“Yes, I’m fine.” He took her hand and they went inside.

Something in him throbbed. He thought about the prostitute. Was he in love with her? The wretched, cobbled alleys snaking off Little Lonsdale Street had the sickening smell of brimstone seeping up through the pores of the city. The stench was palpable. Only in those filthy, labyrinthine streets, he imagined, would he find love. He would have given anything to possess that girl, anything to know her shameless, impersonal surrender, the dreamlike compulsion of commerce and carnality, the pleasure of places so remote they will never see the light of day.

He watched Anna move about in the kitchen, putting on the kettle, washing up a few dirty dishes. The sounds of such ordinariness grated on him. Weary, he threw himself down onto the couch and closed his eyes. He admired the beauty of his wife as one would admire a handsomely painted portrait. But on the other side, in the dark, frantic city of his dreams, he’d forget all about her. Maybe this is the beginning of madness, he thought. He imagined himself as a raving idiot at Yarra Bend.

Anna had moved to the edge of the living room, and watched as his mouth curled into a smile.

“What are you so amused at?” she asked, smiling herself.

“Nothing, darling,” he answered calmly.

“Would you like a cuppa before dinner?”

“Nup, but I’ll help myself to another beer.”

He sat up on the couch, opened his eyes and looked at her, feeling momentarily refreshed. Yes, she was beautiful. His German wife was a domestic angel of the sort that was celebrated to the point of ridicule in the papers and popular journals. A slight neurotic tremor rippled out along his arms all the way to his fingertips.

“Isn’t that Dr Winton a strange man?” Anna said as Albert stood up and walked into the kitchen.

“Haven’t thought that much about him, to tell you the truth.”

“But the way he talked to you just now was so mysterious.”

“That’s just his manner I suppose. You know he’s a literary type as well. Writes little pamphlets about social issues. I reckon he likes making a bit of a show of himself.”

“Have you read anything he’s written?”

“Wouldn’t waste my time.”

Albert poured himself a beer and took the
Herald
off the sideboard, returning to the couch.

“This Crimea Street business is a nasty piece of work,” he said, scanning the paper. “They say the woman was probably locked in the wine cellar for days before the bloke strangled her and, well, it says here he must have ‘tampered’ with the body. It’s like something from a horror story.”

Anna looked at him as he read the paper. How do they know all that, she wondered. A terrifying image of bleeding, white hands clawing at the earth and stone of the cellar wall sent a chill through her. She closed her eyes. The thought of the violated corpse, still dirty with clay soil, hovered at the limits of her imagination.

“I hope you don’t do anything like that to me,” she said after a moment’s silence.

“Don’t be absurd,” he said. He knew she was being deliberately perverse, that it was her uneasy way of expressing affection.

As she sat down beside him he didn’t notice her anxiousness. Without moving his eyes from the paper he took her hand and kissed it.

A few weeks later on a warm March day, Anna was walking through Emerald Hill past the South Melbourne Town Hall, on her shopping rounds, when she bumped into Dr Winton on the corner of Bank and Clarendon Streets. He had appeared out of nowhere, almost as if he had been waiting for her, his auburn moustache neatly trimmed, his hazelnut eyes sparkling with a mischievous delight. He was, she guessed, in his forties and handsome, in a way. She acknowledged it despite herself. Behind him a cable tram rattled towards the river, disturbing the eerie silence of the afternoon, while an old beggar woman with a wicker basket shuffled across the road in its wake.

“Hello Anna,” said the doctor, lifting himself out of his repose and, with a twirl of a gold-handled cane, positioning himself at her side.

It struck her as forward of him to use her first name like that.

“Hello Doctor,” she said, repressing the faint unease she felt at his open, unflinching, but still very gentlemanly manner. She noticed a large ring on his hand, a golden claw clutching a round, turquoise stone.

“My husband tells me that you’re a writer,” she said, afraid of the silence that might engulf them if she let the conversation flag, for Dr Winton was now walking beside her with a confidence that suggested a more familiar acquaintance.

“Well, yes. I do write a little. I translate short pieces as well, from the French and the German.”

“You speak German?” she asked, barely able to conceal her interest in the idea of a fellow speaker.

“Read it would be more accurate.”

“I’d like to see something you have written.”

“I’m not so sure you would. I don’t mean to be condescending.”

“You don’t believe me?” she said with a laugh.

“I think beautiful young women like you, Anna, would have better things to do.”

“You’re mad,” she said, blushing.

“And your husband is doing well?” he asked.

“Quite well.”

“That’s very good.”

“But I wasn’t aware he had been ill.”

“No?” the doctor asked. “Well, who’s to say that he has?”

“You. You said as much just then.”

“I’ll tell you what, Anna. If you would really like to read something I’ve written, there’s a bookshop in Flinders Lane, quite close to the station. You can normally find the odd book and a pamphlet or two there. In fact, I’d be flattered to think that you’d seek me out like that.” He stopped himself. For a moment he seemed ill at ease. “But they’re dry works,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Written for medical men. Dull stuff for a lay reader.”

“I’m stopping here,” she said, pausing in front of a haberdashery. She was embarrassed at the suggestion of the illicit in the idea of seeking him out, but her curiosity was also aroused by his sudden reserve.

“Well, good day then,” he said, tilting his hat politely and resuming his course with a strut and a twirl of his cane.

What an unusual man, Anna thought to herself. All intrigue and innuendo. He certainly does fancy himself. She watched him move away from her down Clarendon Street until he vanished into the sparsely populated shade of the wide verandahs covering the pavement.

But when she was alone again she suddenly felt aroused. He had called her beautiful, and his completely unabashed manner left her with a sense of well-being. She lingered in front of the haberdashery for another minute or so, looked up ahead to make sure the doctor was not coming back, and then with a truant’s guilt stepped towards the side of the road to hail the next tram into the city.

Half an hour later she alighted at the corner of Queen and Collins Streets and, with a sense of excitement at being driven by a secret purpose, made her way towards Flinders Lane and the bookshop the doctor had mentioned.

She hadn’t expected to find such an odd collection of industries thriving in the narrow alleys of the city. Amongst the warehouses and businesses dedicated to the city’s rag trade, a shop selling glassware cradled undulating pools of multi–coloured light in its dark interior. An optician’s store was marked by two enormous, sombre eyes looking down at her. There was a place selling casting irons and another selling fishing tackle. There was a fancy dress shop with a grotesque collection of masks leering through the glass and a bric-a-brac merchant whose window was crammed with obscure, dust–covered artefacts. As she strolled down the lane she dwelt upon the magical possibilities of what seemed to her a forgotten part of the city into which the bustle of the larger streets had not yet reached.

By the time she found the stationer’s store, which she presumed to be the bookshop the doctor had mentioned, she was feeling a bit light-headed. She looked around the collection of writing materials, stamps and magazines that cluttered the shelves of the dingy shop. A thin, middle-aged woman with yellowish skin appeared at the counter from behind a black curtain, looking as if she’d rather not be disturbed by customers.

“Can I help you, dear?”

“I’m after something by Dr Charles Winton,”Anna said.

“Winton?” the woman said, turning the name over in her memory. “You probably mean Dr W. In that case you’d better follow me.”

She led Anna back through the curtain into a small parlour area lined with bookshelves. A short, pudgy man sat in a corner smoking a cigar, reading Zola’s
Thérèse Raquin.
He nodded indifferently at Anna as the woman gestured towards a shelf of thin volumes.

“Here are our syphilographers,” she said without the faintest trace of irony in her voice.

Anna read the titles:
Morbid Anatomy and the Generative System, Syphilis and its Diffusion Popularly Considered, Satyriasis: Causes and Cures, Syphilitic Madness and the Modern City.
She opened one of the books and studied the sketches of diseased genitalia blossoming with bright red pustules. She put the book back and took another:
Sexual Pathology
by Dr W. Upon opening it she tried not to dwell on the sketches and photographs that shimmered before her. Her hand trembled as she put it back on the shelf, and walked out into the front of the shop. As she left she thought she could hear laughter coming from behind the black curtain. “Not for you then, love?” the woman said. In a moment she was out on the street again, her heart racing and her head reeling. She felt a hand catch her by the arm.

“Anna,” a man’s voice said solicitously. It was Dr Winton. She didn’t look at him but saw him standing beside her, reflected in the window of the stationer’s shop. He gently led her back inside and sat her down in a chair by the counter.

“You look flustered,” he said. “Quite normal for expecting mothers.”

“You followed me,” she replied coldly.

“I’m sorry, Anna. It was not my intention to offend.”

He seemed at a loss, grasping for an explanation that eluded him. The woman appeared again from behind the curtain, took a look at the doctor and quickly withdrew.

“Why don’t I call you a cab?” Dr Winton said.

“No, thank you.” She regained her composure and stood up, leaving the shop for the second time.

She walked swiftly back onto Collins Street and then, not wanting to wait for the doctor to reappear, continued towards Spencer Street Station, looking over her shoulder every few paces until she was sure that he wasn’t following her.

What was she afraid of? She hurried her step, as if in doing so she could avoid the question. She understood just how effortlessly he had compromised her and shuddered at how easily she’d been drawn in. She could never tell Albert. How could she without implicating herself? It was the kind of thing that would simply widen the gap between them. She started sobbing, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her blouse, and kept moving through the din of the afternoon.

Nearing Spencer Street, she thought she’d take a ferry back over the river to South Melbourne, but as she approached the Collins Street Police Station she could see a crowd gathering outside and noticed that the haphazard movement of people along the pavement beside her had become a steady flow moving towards the same point.

“What’s going on?” she asked the woman marching along purposefully next to her.

“Ain’t you heard, then?” the woman replied.”They’ve just got that Howard fellow, what strangled that poor girl in his cellar.”

“And what do all these people want with him?” she asked.

“I reckon they’re going to give him what for.”

A little way ahead people were spilling onto the road. Quite mindlessly, she let herself drift along with the throng. Someone near the door to the building yelled something inaudible that kindled the fury of the mob. As the hint of violence rippled out through the crowd, people pressed harder against the narrow bluestone entrance. There were shouts of rage and the muffled sounds of breaking glass as the police attempted to hold the angry mob at bay. Anna moved to the opposite side of the street, looking on with both wonder and horror. Next to her, two elderly women were holding banners that read “An Eye for an Eye” and “A Tooth for a Tooth”.

“I hope he gets what’s coming to him,” one of them said, leaning close to Anna.

The two old women had leathery, weatherworn skin. Anna imagined a pair of ancient vultures lingering over the scene of some public catastrophe, croaking the verdict of a terrible, unforgiving law. For a moment the image in her mind obscured the horror of the murder itself.

“I only hope the man will have a fair trial,” Anna said.

“What’s got into you? Don’t pity the bugger. Makes me sick the thought of it, what he done with the body.”

“Molested the corpse,” the other woman said vindictively, as if she would have liked to see the same thing happen to Anna.”The horrid little pervert!”

The word “pervert” made Anna think of the doctor’s book. She saw the golden claw wrapped around its turquoise orb. An instant later she pictured Albert reading about the murder the evening after the doctor had put stitches in Hamish’s hand. This confluence haunted her, but its logic, so strongly intuited, also eluded her grasp. She felt as if she were trying to pursue the pattern of a dream that had once seemed perfectly plausible, but that upon waking had unravelled itself into a confused and scattered array of fragments, impressions and insinuations that appeared like blurs of light or shapes obscured in the shadows.

She continued to Spencer Street, pushing against the bodies rushing past her in the direction of the police station, and then turned towards the river. A fishmonger had littered the pavement and gutter with tiny pieces of offal and bone that stank in the hot sun. Before her, the river trembled yellow and brown, and as the ferry groaned across it she thought she could hear the cries of a delirious mob venting its rage in an atrocious act of collective retribution, hacking away at the body of the prisoner until it was an unrecognisable mass of bleeding limbs and the street a sickening shambles.