The Anatomy Lesson (16 page)

Next, it was my job to trim the man’s hair and beard. I think that mane had never met a comb, and likely he’d trimmed his beard only with his own folding gully. The whole of his head was mangy like a mutt’s and let off a foul odor, like something between a dog’s legs. I could’ve cut it with a pair of shears, but I managed with one of the surgeon’s tools instead. I trimmed the mane down to a civil militiaman’s cut and shaved all but the chin of his beard.

Once that was accomplished, I got my bucket and filled it with cold soapy water, then dunked my cloth and began to wash him. There was a thick layer of grit all over his flesh, and a line across his belly so thick you’d think it was drawn on him, right where his stomach would’ve met the hem of his jerkin. My cloth moved across his flesh slowly, because his skin was so coarse. I had to check for wax in the ears, globs of snot in the nose.

It’s no small undertaking to make a vagabond look tidy. Think of it: he sleeps by the side of the city gates, bathes in the river or canals, sups by the side of a campfire, never a basin or sponge within reach. I had to press for a while in places to loosen the grime on his skin. I cleaned his feet, which were brown and blistered; under his arms, which smelled like mushrooms and charcoal; under his nails, which were encrusted with black. And I had to check in the private
parts, too. A lot of them soil themselves when they’re hanged, but not that Aris.

After I finished washing the body, I plucked out the eyeballs one by one and put them in a cup. I use a special tool for that, a kind of toothy spoon. I’m used to it now, after all these years, but I’ll tell you that’s the part I like least.

I gave him one final rinse and felt satisfied with my work. Then I put him over my shoulder and lowered him—shoulders, torso, legs, feet—onto the block of ice so as to keep him fresh. He was bigger than me, but I managed to heft him. I’m small but sturdy and used to carrying dead weight.

Then I had to adjust his pose before it stiffened into an uncomely shape. I know what happens to the man in the few hours after he’s hanged and before he’s dissected. The body stiffens and becomes cold and pale. The jaw won’t move anymore, so if you haven’t closed his mouth in time, he’ll look startled throughout the dissection. The joints stiffen and the limbs won’t flex. So that he doesn’t go flat as a board, what I do is bend his elbows and prop up his knees with a stick to give him a lively look.

I stood back and judged my work. This thief could not have had a more solemn and stately bed. There was not much I could do about his scars, but at least I’d made him neat and tidy.

No matter how well I prepared him, though, I knew Tulp would not be pleased with this specimen. The scars, the stump, the rough rope burn. What could I do, though? There was only one hanging, and this was the one they’d hanged. We could not reraise the scaffold and noose someone else instead.

I got a white sheet I’d use to cover him—the same one I later use for the burial—but before I put it over him I let him lie there in the open air. I like to leave them like that for an hour or two till the soul
of the dead man has time to ascend. Or descend, depending on how it goes. I learned that from Otto van Heurne, my second master. He said the Egyptians wrapped mummies up tight so their souls would join them on the trip to the afterlife. I like to let the soul get to the afterlife faster, and sometimes it’s a bumpy road indeed. If you leave a dead body for a few days, you’ll see and hear that soul escape. The flesh swells, the chest rises, foul winds escape its mouth. It makes other … emissions. I tell you this not so you will laugh. It’s the body settling, while the soul finds its release. I think the soul must be like vapors, and when the body doesn’t hold on to it anymore, it flies out through every orifice.

I was cleaning up my tools when I heard a faint rap on the outside door. Only one knock, and then nothing else. Then I heard the swinging of the bolt and footsteps, and a chill rose through my spine.

“There you are, Fetchet,” someone said from the shadows. “Did you not hear me knock?”

“Yes, my liege,” I said to the anonymous voice, for I did not recognize it. Master van Rijn stepped out of the shadows. “It’s only me, Fetchet. I hope you don’t mind I let myself in.”

I reflexively drew the cloth over the corpse, and stepped between it and the painter. “Master, you should not have troubled yourself to come all the way here. You only need to send a messenger and I would ably arrive at your doorstep—”

He pressed into the room. “I’d like to apologize for being so brusque with you earlier,” he continued as casually as if we were meeting on the street. “I rather berated myself after you left for my presumptuousness. Imagine, expecting fantastical creatures to
appear on my doorstep. The fabled footed paradise. Only to order them up and think I can have them. As if I were some kind of king.”

“That is the beauty of our modern times, sire. It’s true that we can now get almost anything from anywhere, if only we wish it. I promise you, if there is a footed paradise in this world, I’ll procure it for you.”

The artist waved his hand in the air. “Indeed, and it’s not why I’ve come. I came because I would like a little time with him.”

He was talking about the body. “I don’t expect he will be much of a conversationalist, Master van Rijn.”

The artist laughed. “My business won’t require an exchange of words. I have been commissioned to paint the commemorative portrait of Tulp’s lesson.”

“Then a true honor has been bestowed on you, Master van Rijn. The great Pickenoy usually paints the guild pictures.” I could see this comment irked him, so I continued. “Of course, I’m sure that your portrait shall far exceed his.”

“The point is, Fetchet, that I would like to have a bit of time to sketch the corpse.”

I thought this a strange request. “He has no money, sire. If he had, I’d have found it in his breeches, I’m sure.”

“What difference would that make?”

“I know what they say about curio dealers—that we’ll take coins painted on the floor. But there are noble men in this profession, too, sire. I’d have given it to Professor Tulp, because it was he who bought this body.”

“But I am seeking no money from him, Fetchet.”

“Don’t they pay you to be painted?” I asked plainly. “Otherwise, why paint?”

“I only want to have a good look at his arm, because Dr. Tulp has asked me to make a special point of portraying his arm in the picture.”

“Has he?” I thought this over.

“Yes. It’s, well, it’s a longer story.”

“The arm in particular? Did he happen to mention which arm?”

“Which arm? Does it matter which arm?”

“In this case it does, sire. For, you see the convict was a thief.”

“I have to admit, Fetchet, I don’t always follow the thread of your logic.”

“A thief, sire, steals with a hand.”

“Indeed, for he cannot steal with his feet.”

“Unless he is a monkey, sire.”

“Which he is not.”

“It is the hand that gives offense.”

“Well—”

“And that which gives offense must be taken.”

“You mean his hand has been lopped off by the executioner?”

“That’s what I mean, sire. He’s missing his right hand.”

“But he’s been executed. Why take his hand, too?”

“The hand was done before—some other time.”

Perhaps you’re listening to my tale and you think my skull is numb. The truth is that I was trying to buy time. I hoped to give the corpse the opportunity he needed for his soul to escape.

“He has the left hand,” the artist said.

“Indeed. His left hand suits him very well.”

“Excellent. Now we are getting somewhere.”

“You’d like to see the left hand.”

“Yes, that is all I need to see, Fetchet.” He drew out his purse
and held it over his palm. “How many coins will it cost me to end this discourse so you’ll allow me a few moments with this corpse?”

Now, you’ll recall all I’d paid out that day: the haggling vendors, the fee for the paradise, the extra stivers to the magistrate for the new body, and the police escort. I already knew that Tulp would dock me some of my fee because of the missing hand and the scarred body. What profit had I made so far for all my efforts?

“Ten stivers?” Van Rijn guessed.

I thought it over for a moment without giving an answer.

“Fifteen,” he offered, without waiting for my response.

I saw that my hesitation served me well. I kept quiet.

“You drive a hard bargain,” he said, examining my face. “Eighteen.”

“Master, Professor Tulp would not like it very much if he knew I had let you in.”

“I do need to fill the censers with incense in the anatomy theater. How much time do you require? I also have other chores—to pack the peat for the furnace, stoke the fire in the gallery, fix the scented tapers in the candelabra …”

“Whatever time a guilder buys me I’ll take. Incense and candelabras, I guess.”

“Until the next church bell, then.”

As I was walking out of the room, he added, “I must also ask you to be prudent with your words around Tulp.”

“You know my word is …” I stopped myself, since my word had already proven its value as weak. “I assure you, my lips are fastened with sealing wax.”

The artist turned to look at me. “One last thing. You mentioned to me earlier, Fetchet, that it is not only your job to prepare the
body for dissection but also to bury the body parts after the lecture is done …”

“The arm,” I said. “You’d like for me to hold the arm for you after the dissection is through?”

“Swiftly deduced,” he said, clearly not thinking me capable of it.

He put a single shiny guilder in my palm, closed my hand around it. “Go, Fetchet. The tapers want very badly to meet their candelabra. You’ll get it to me tonight?”

“I will, master, I will.”

I silently backed out of the chamber and left the painter with the corpse.

I suppose it reflects on the poverty of the artist’s mind that he cannot conjure his pictures straight out of his own imagination. He must rely upon the world, and the things in it, to remind him of how life operates: what light looks like slanting through old glass, how water seems to churn when it is lapping at a shore, how age can turn skin on a hand nearly translucent. This is precisely why I sketch, why I invite my subjects to sit for me, why I collect so many objects for my curio cabinet. I must start with source materials. In this case: flesh.

I will not call myself a Michelangelo or a Leonardo, but I have cared to know how form follows function in the human frame. I visit the gibbet on the Volewijk to sketch the dead, rotting away in the rain and tossed by the harbor winds. I go to the Kalverstraat shambles to sketch the oxen hanging from hooks at slaughter. I often bring women from the bawdy Breestraat to our studio to sketch
them in the nude. I am not squeamish or licentious, only interested in the truth of life, artistry.

It was a tomblike room under that busy weigh house. On the other side of the great oak door, traders were doing business in grains and tobacco, gin and beer. But in that chamber where I’d met Fetchet, it was silent. The brick walls were slick and glistening with frost. There was a layer of frost on the windows, too, and so there emitted into the room a kind of shimmering, dusted light. It was colder inside than outside. My breath entered the air in great visible plumes.

After Fetchet left me alone, I gazed on the covered form, a landscape of hills with soft and sharp inclines. A muslin cloth was draped over the body. Stretched out on that bed of ice, with only his bare feet and the crown of his head and hair exposed, it struck me that the corpse looked like a kind of holy figure. In fact, the whole scene called to mind Mantegna’s
Lamentation
.

Do you know it? If you come to my studio someday, I will show you my reproduction. Lastman gave it to me to teach me chiaroscuro in fabric folds. It is a portrait of Christ in the tomb, his feet toward the viewer, his head at the top of the frame, the whole of his body foreshortened. Two disciples sit over him and weep, but you barely see them. What you see is a moment of actual serenity; his Christ is not dead but—at rest.