The Book of Madness and Cures by Regina O'Melveny

Author:Regina O'Melveny [O'Melveny, Regina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2012-04-12T06:00:00+00:00

When at last we reached the anatomy theater, the professor paid our admittance, as was customary, and we entered the hall. We were among the first to arrive, part of an audience that he assured me would be mostly students, some wealthy burghers, a small number of their wives, and other curious townspeople willing to pay the fee. The corpse lay outstretched on the dissection slab, his body beneath a coarse linen sheet.

“And who is the unfortunate youth?” I asked.

“I believe he was some vagrant, probably searching for work in the mills. He was found on one of the back roads, naked and rigid as a block of wood in the ditch next to his bony mule. Someone had stolen his clothes and boots,” Professor Otterspeer informed me. “The wretch lay unclaimed for several days. An ignorant foreigner, no doubt.”

His comment upset me, but I said nothing.

We approached the subject and the professor lifted the cloth.

“He appears nearly intact,” I observed, avoiding the man’s face, “unlike those cadavers removed from the gibbet, which have been scavenged by wild dogs and ravens.”

He lowered the cloth with a peculiar tenderness. “I’m surprised that you can view the corpse so candidly, Signorina Mondini. Most women keep their distance. As perhaps they should, don’t you think?” There was a slight gleam in his eye, which led me to believe he didn’t speak seriously, though he wasn’t entirely in jest either.

I ignored the fact that he would not address me as Dottoressa. I asked, “So you haven’t brought your wife to attend an anatomy, then?”

“Oh no, my wife would never come, though she has no trouble chopping the head off a pullet and yanking out its entrails! I’ve actually tried to persuade her to visit, for I believe the demonstration to be most enlightening. But she sees no point in it, calls it an unsightly spectacle. But there are other wives here I could introduce you to.” Professor Otterspeer sniffed slightly and withdrew a petit-point handkerchief for his florid nose.

“That won’t be necessary,” I replied. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. I didn’t ask how they came by permission to dissect the body. Even though unclaimed, such a corpse in Italy would be buried in a pauper’s grave. In Padua, where for the most part the bodies of criminals were used, dissection was considered the worst possible punishment, inflicted in addition to the death sentence. Some people believed that when the dead were resurrected on Judgment Day, the dissected corpse would wander about searching for its lost parts.

“Well, my dear, your father has certainly raised you with the independence of a good son. I’ll leave you, then, to view our fine collection of skeletons. If you’ll excuse me, I must speak to some of my students.” He bowed and retreated.

When he spoke the word “father”—in fact, every time he’d spoken the word—I felt a numbing cut at the center of me. Now, in this setting, I missed my father more than ever.

I looked

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