The Giant, O'Brien

  At full moon they went out with cutlasses, spits, bottles, and pokers, for an informal fight with some Englishmen. Afterwards they chased a Jew, finding themselves part of a light-night mob with drink taken, and passed on from Jew-baiting to window-breaking to tearing up railings.

  The Giant was alone in their chambers. It was a hot night, and he opened the casement. The hour was ten and it was still and grey. The cries and groans of Londoners, their bedside prayers, drifted to him faintly on a breeze dank as the Honduras. Behind him the candle flame guttered, threatened to fail: as if underground. By its feeble light, he stretched out his hands and examined them. I need, I do so need, he thought, a stick for measuring. It may be that I’m seeing what I want to see—or, to be exact, what I don’t want to see. He stretched out his hand, to test its span. His new shoes were tighter, but then a man’s feet swell in the summer heat, it’s what’s to be expected. He crossed the room and ducked experimentally under the door frame. This was more informative. He had been in these rooms some weeks now, and the instructions for ducking were coded into his knee-joints. And it was not his imagination-in the last fortnight, he had to bend them deeper.

  So.

  He drifted back to the window. He looked down into the courtyard. Bitch Mary was standing by the gate, talking to a woman. He saw the pale glowing curve of the child’s skull; her hair streamed silver. She reached up her arms to embrace the woman, and as the woman stepped forward the Giant saw that he knew her; she was the red-head from the cellar, who wore a green kerchief and had punctured Joe Vance with her wit. He almost called down to them; but no, he thought, I will be poor company. He felt in his bones and his gut the truth of what anecdote and observation had taught him: a giant who begins to grow again does not live long.

  Hunter stalks alone, by the crepuscular Thames. He thinks, I have had no opportunity of making actual experiments on drowned persons. Not his fault if he hadn’t. Still, it’s not the season for suicide. Spring kills the melancholy rich man, who seeks relief from his humour; in late autumn the beggars drown themselves, for better reasons, after they have spent the first night of the season in a trough or hole awash with icy rain. Women bearing disgraceful children drown themselves at any season of the year. If his people were only vigilant, he would have a constant supply of them, either for reanimation or dissection. Do not assume she is dead. Beat the water out of her. Tenderise the trollop as if she were a piece of meat. Squeeze her spongy lungs as if you had them in your very fists. And when they drown themselves in the depths of winter, when the ice is breaking up, then there is every hope—for the cold, he already suspects, brings on a shock to the system, which holds a specimen in a kind of suspended life. Properly treated, such a person may be revivified, though he has been under water for ten minutes, twenty minutes … where is the frontier of death?

  What if, he thinks, this state of cold might be artificially induced, and suddenly induced—if a man in possession of his health and spirits, let’s say, were to volunteer to be packed around with Greenland ice … the cold would numb him, the cold would sleep him, and if the supply of ice were constantly replenished … . I want to get a white bear from Greenland … might he not sleep away a year or so? Or would his organs fail? It might be a welcome specific for bored men-about-town: an elegant excuse for failing to visit maiden aunts and plain heiresses. “I am iced up till next June, alas …” Or a good way to evade your debtors, of whom he has plenty. Imagine Howison, ushering them into his freezing-cabinet: “Gentlemen, you may see John Hunter now—but John Hunter is unable to see you.” Yet he doesn’t think, not seriously, of icing himself. His man Howison is a reliable man and wouldn’t let him thaw, but all the same, he has work to do, the progress of his disease to observe.

  The clamminess of his skin, the natural clamminess of the humid night, has turned to a cold sweat that drips down his back. He thinks of the dead. His mind turns to them often. Corpses are my library, he would say, when an importunate bookseller pressed on him the vast Death Encyclopedia (illustrated) of Dr. Knogus-Boggus of Amsterdam or Professor Schniffle-Bum of the Vienna School of Medicine. Experiment, he would say, see for yourself, go in with the knife and lay bare and see what you see.

  And yet the dead defy him. Something in their nature. The principle of life has gone out of them—the principle that he knows exists, but he is not sure what it is. He tells his men, you can never be sure, with the hanged no more than the drowned—reanimation is possible—do not pick their pockets, for fear of future prosecution. But when the body is brought to him, and stretched on the slab, it is frequently the case that he finds tears in his eyes. He says to himself, come now, John Hunter, this is mere dissection room nostalgia, mourning for the days when you used to cut shoulder-to-shoulder with Wullie, before you had your schism over the nature of the placenta; it is nostalgia for the early days, when you were a raw boy and not all Europe’s veneration.

  But in his heart he knows it is more than that. It is the dead themselves who move him to tears. Numb to the scents of a hot summer’s evening; deaf to laughter, blind to clouds. Not just still, and not just cold, but waxen, quenched, extinct—and gone … gone where? This is what anguishes him: the question where. He wants to haul them back, with iron hooks. He wants to question them: where? He wants to know if there is a soul and if the soul can split from the body and if so, what is its mechanism for getting out—a usual orifice or permeation through the skin? What is the weight of the soul? If you pushed him, he’d guess a couple of ounces, not more.

  A surgeon does not present himself often at a sick bed, and he is not able to make the moment-by-moment observations available to the physician: the changes in colour and respiration that signal that the wolf death is creeping up the stairs. The surgeon’s patients die violently under his hands, or he judges them beyond his aid and he disdains to practice on them, for there’s no point in mutilation without hope of cure. One would relieve the pain of any human creature, but what is the point in attempting to part a woman from her rotted breast unless she is hale and fit and likely to live to say thank you and pay her bill? Come: let’s be practical.

  But the dead are not practical. They are no use except for cutting up. They answer no questions that are put to them. They lie and stiffen, in their perfect self-containment. They defy understanding. Hunter’s mind dwells on that split second when everything that is, is lost beyond recall. When life and hope go separate ways.

  Pybus and Claffey burst in, disturbing the Giant in his first dew-like sleep. “Wake up Charlie—we have been to a tumult.”

  “Not again.”

  “It was a rare tumult—we rioted against anatomies. It’s one who cuts up persons after they’re dead and pulls out their hearts and eats them.”

  “Their hearts alone?”

  “They like to follow after the carts when it’s hanging day, and they pay over money so they may get the body and then the men—”

  “And then the men—”

  “—and then the men get all in a big mob and try to knock down the hangman—”

  “—steal him away, the dead body—”

  “—rub his neck till he’s back to life—”

  “—rub neck and chest.”

  “Or give him a decent burial.”

  “But still if they can’t get enough hanged, they go into the graveyards, these anatomies, and dig them.”

  “Eat their liver and boil their guts for tripe.”

  “Yes, yes,” the Giant said. “So you rioted a little while, and then you—”

  “There was a man in a carriage, and we took out his horses, cheering, and we ourselves went between the shafts and pulled him, with some Englishmen.”

  “Who was this man?”

  “We don’t know his name. He was the government. One of the horses that was unyoked was led away by a man from Limerick, Fancy Boy Craddock he called himself.”

  “He was not the government, that we pulled along. He was against the government. That was the governm
ent, when we broke their windows.”

  “Oh, was it.”

  “Sometimes, when the anatomy is just going to make the first cut, the corpse sits up and seizes him by the throat. Sometimes the blackguard dies of it, he drops down with shock.”

  “Does this happen often?” the Giant asked.

  “Oh, two or three times in the year.”

  “You wouldn’t think he’d be quite so shocked, then.”

  John Hunter is at home now, and hears a great knocking at his back door, and hollers, “Howison, man, shift yerself.”

  Two men, heaving with effort, dumping their burden on the flags, cursing quietly, fetching out a knife, and hacking at the rope; one sack off, hauled over the head, and he sees a livid, blotched face-

  Swarming up beyond Howison, whose mouth is already opening to argue, Hunter thunders, “I have seen this corpse before.”

  “True,” says the salesman, fawning. “All respect to your eye, Mr. John Hunter, you have seen this corpse before. But I’ve brought it back at a nicer price.”

  It is left to Howison to boot the fellow out of the premises, the fellow and his confederate and his rapidly depreciating asset.

  John Hunter sighs. He wants company, Howison discerns. Weary and wary both, he steps up the stairs. Hunter is brooding amongst his books—of which he has a few, though he says corpses are my library. “Here,” he says, “did I ever show you this curiosity? Never mind the text, man, feel the binding. It’s the skin of William Thorburn, that slew Kitty Flinch, the Wrexham Belle. It cost no little trouble in the flaying of him.”

  He sees Howison’s face, and a mild contempt there. “Do you not believe me?” The pitch of his voice has shot up; his pulse rate risen; heat at his temples.

  “That the flaying was difficult? Oh yes, it would be a job for an operator with a delicate touch. I mean just that I have heard other gentlemen say they have the same book on their shelves, so you must wonder of what extent was Thorburn, to furnish so many libraries?”

  “So I am cheated, am I?” Master yourself, John, he says to himself. Easy, John. “Ah well, it is a trifle. It is no matter.” He slides the volume back in, beside the Osteographia of Cheselden. “Do you know of the Enfield child?” he says, casually.

  Howison pricks up his ears. “Eighteen inches round the thigh, at the age of nine months and two weeks.”

  “Over three feet—they allege—at the age of a year. A most famous prodigy. Pity he died.”

  “Passed away at eighteen months.” Out of respect for the deceased, Howison removes his hat and holds it to his chest.

  “And gone where? Who has the skeleton, that’s what I’d like to know.”

  “There is”—Howison clears his throat—“there is a giant exhibiting in Spring Gardens above the cane shop. If your reverence would like to see him …”

  “What does he charge?”

  “Half-a-crown.”

  John Hunter snorts. “Negotiate a lower rate, or free for me. What’s the use of eminence, if you’ve to put your hand in your pocket for every freak that tawdles through the town?”

  “I’ll try,” said Howison, yawning.

  “Away to your bed,” Hunter tells him. “And leave me to my thoughts.”

  Alone then, he opens the shutter and lets the night into the room. They are at Earl’s Court, and he hears the bark of his bears, his watchdogs’ snarls. He seats himself, and pours a glass. Late at night, the mind refights its old campaigns. There is no such thing as gunpowder poisoning. Get me a savage. Or a dwarf. Or a giant. Half a crown! For a giant! Still: what cannot be cured must be enjoyed. Pay out, see the fellow. Might be of interest. Might be.

  Remember the night the Eskimos came to dinner? George Cartwright brought them, the trader: knowing Hunter liked curiosities. They were a party of five—two men, two squaws, one infant. Cartwright had lodged them at Little Castle Street, showed them about the town, and presented them at court. Considering that they were savages and ate raw flesh, they were able to sit up to the table quite decent. After dinner there was a misunderstanding; he thought to show them his collection, but at the sight of the bones hanging up they became frightened into dumbness. He found out, afterwards, that they thought they were the remains of his previous meals.

  All these Eskimos took the small pox, and died at Plymouth, except for one squaw. He had missed the chance to get an Eskimo for his collection; you cannot handle a small pox corpse, the risk is too great. Still, they are engraved upon his physiognomist’s memory: their heads were long and large, their eyelids folded, their skin bronze. He had little opportunity of hearing their voices. The younger squaw smiled pleasantly, though not after she had seen the skeletons.

  He heard later that the hair of the dead woman had been cut off and carried back to Labrador and given to her friends, and that this was the means of introducing the malady into those parts, over three hundred dying of it at once. He does not know if this is true.

  He remembers how on the night the Eskimos left his house, silent crowds stood in the streets to watch them go. Lamplight shone on their flat brown faces, and he thought they wore expressions of distaste.

  John Hunter presses his head in his hands. Before he fell out with Wullie, they might have been here together at the end of the day, Wullie saying, Damned coarse stuff this, call it claret, I wouldn’t stir it into the meal to fatten a hog … always querying and carping, his queue neatly ribboned, a quizzical finger laid to his cheek, his abuse as crude as any Scottish boy. But now I am here alone, and true darkness coming down.

  He takes down his favourite book, De Sedibus Causis Morborum . On the Sites and Causes of Disease. He opens it on his knees, and stares down at it, sightless. His mind moves slowly. Giovanni Battista Morgagni, the distinguished author, performed over seven hundred autopsies personally, and usually John finds the volume supplies endless diversion. But tonight he cannot be amused. He frets, he turns a page, he stands and shelves the book. Nothing will do but skull arrangement.

  Candle in hand, he descends to his work room.

  Under the moon the copper vat gleams, the copper vat for boiling flesh from bone. The eyeless stare at him; the nameless specimens grin and peer, a scribble of light on the curve of their jars; the lungs long-dissected take in one whistling breath. In his day he has been heroic in experimentation. He has transplanted a human tooth into a cock’s comb, and seen it take root. He has fed a pig on madder, so its teeth came out red-and-white striped. He has dissected a gibbon! He turns sharply; thinks he sees something in the shadows. The creeping of a polydactyl hand across marble … or perhaps the ripple of flesh and fluid, as conjoined twins elbow for space in their bottle.

  He raises his candle. There are the skulls, in no particular order; or rather, in a chosen disorder, artfully hodge-podged so that no one can eavesdrop on his thoughts. He possesses the skull of a European man, an Australian aborigine, a young chimpanzee, a macaque monkey, a crocodile, and a dog. His stubby hand caresses the cold apertures, the tallow-coloured curves. He arranges them. Croc. Dog. Macaque. A monkey is half-beast, half-man, he thinks. His hand, sweating a little, imparts heat and moisture to the bone. Chimp. Savage. European Male. John Hunter stands back from them. He sees patterns he has no permission to see.

  And sighing, disarranges again; and back upstairs, his tread slow. Something is baying from the cages: something far from home. The moon strikes down on Long Calderwood, strikes a cold kindling in the thatch, stirs brother James in his long-time grave; the night breeze sighs through East Kilbride, and rifles the tops of trees with the fingers of a Chick Lane pickpocket.

  “Grave news,” said Joe Vance, coming in with a paper in his hand. “It’s concerning Patrick O’Brien.”

  “Oh yes?” The Giant looked up, without much interest.

  “They say he’s grown a good ten inches since we left home.”

  “But Paddy is only a boy.”

  “Yes, and the more time to grow! The way he’s going, Charlie, I can’t see how he w
on’t top you in the next three months. I can’t see how he can avoid being less than eight feet and a half. And the worst of it is, he’s threatening to come over.”

  “Well, let him,” the Giant said. “Maybe after his novelty has worn off we can go two-for-the-price-of-one. Besides, it will be company for me. Giants, you know, have much to say when they meet each other.”

  Joe stared at him hard. “I don’t think you quite have a grip on this, Charlie. I know Paddy’s agent, and he’s a slick bugger. All Paddy has to do is set himself up, advertising as, let’s say, ‘P. Byrne, Tallest Man in World,’ take a room somewhere central, and steal away a good half of your future customers. Some jobbin’ will be paid to run off a few handbills, and there’ll be you traduced and trampled, Charles. Then even if we come at him with the full force of the law, he can easy go to Bath, or where-so-ever, get the easy pickings, and deny you the fruits of a lucrative provincial tour.”

  “Oh. Am I going on tour?”

  “It was in my mind.”

  “Call it a progress, there’s a good man. Tour has a low sound about it.”

  “Don’t say that word low. I dream by night that I see Patrick as tall as the treetops.”

  The Giant leaned forward, and opened his hand. He clapped it across Joe’s chest, spanning it. “Send out Pybus for a tool of measurement.”

  “What can you mean?”

  “Look, Joe Vance. Come here to the table. Do you see this knot in the wood? Now, do you see there, what you might call a mark or score?”

  Joe nodded.

  “You see the space? A month ago, my fingers could not bridge it.”

  Joe stared at him. “You’re growing, Charlie?” A sly grin crept over his face. “You’re growing?”

  “My head is lengthening and stretching. I feel the pain deep in my bones, as if the close knitting of my skull were beginning to ease itself, beneath my scalp, and unstitch. I feel a pain in my jaw, as if the swing of it were to be tested, as if the swivel cannot support the greater weight that is to come. My feet are bursting from my boots, Joe. See here—I’ve had to slit them. My knee-joints and ankle-bones are oppressed.”