The Children's Home: A Novel, page 6
“But what are they here for, do you think?” the Doctor said.
Engel smiled.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
in which David learns to read
It was true that the Doctor was studying. Soon after they had passed the first few afternoons of backgammon together, Morgan had begun to show him round the garden and then the house. He had taken him to the other three floors, long corridors giving onto barely furnished rooms. The Doctor had lingered in one of these rooms, crossing to the window and looking out towards the hills. “I should like to have this room,” he said and immediately Morgan had told him that it was his. “You know this whole house is yours,” he said, hearing his voice break, aware for the first time that he had made a friend or, rather, that they had each made friends, of each other. “I don’t want the house,” said Crane, with a smile. “I mean the freedom of it,” replied Morgan. “Yes, that I have,” said the Doctor, “and I’m more than grateful for it. But I would like this room for mine. I would like to work here, you see, where I can see the hills.” He pointed towards them. “That’s where I come from, my family, that is. We lived over there until my father died.” Morgan followed the man’s forefinger with his eyes, half expecting to find a house, the house in which Crane’s family might have lived, but all he could see was the blue-gray line of the hills, beyond the garden and the wall and the woods that lay behind it. He had never been there, he had barely been more than twenty miles from the house in all his life, apart from occasional visits to the city with his father and his time in the clinic, and he had no idea where that was, although he had sometimes wondered. He might have asked Crane, who would surely have known; but they had never spoken again about his face, not after that first time. He had thought as he lay in his bed in the clinic that the hardest thing would be pain, but he had been wrong, he realized soon enough, as nurses came and went with their slop bowls and trays of implements and specialists took frozen-faced visitors from bed to bed. The thing that most abased him, that most abased them all, was pity. Crane had understood that. He talked to Morgan’s face as indifferently as the children did.
“What kind of work do you expect to do?” Morgan said.
Crane looked excited. “Well,” he replied, “you have so many books here. Rooms full of books that you haven’t even begun to catalogue. Not just the ones in the library, or in your room, though, God knows, there are more than enough there. I walk around and it’s endless. Books I would guess you’ve never even seen. I was rooting around a few days ago and I found a pile of old medical books, herbariums, works of anatomy, half of them not even in English, in French and German; some of them seemed to be in Arabic, though what I shall make of those I don’t know. It struck me that I could look through them to see what they say. You never know what I might find. I might be no more than a family doctor, but I haven’t stopped wondering.” He rubbed his large red hands together and grinned like a boy. Morgan nodded.
“They were my grandfather’s books, all of them,” he said. “There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of books about medicine, mostly, and a hundred other things. My grandfather wondered too, you see. I’ll have them brought here for you.” And over the next few days the gardeners carried trunks of books to Crane’s room.
As Crane darted among the trunks, he discovered that David wanted to learn to read. The first few days the boy seemed content to sit in the room, on a small chair he had found somewhere else in the house and carried there himself, quietly watching the Doctor arrange the books in one bookcase and then another. Later, as Crane settled into an armchair, with the boy beside him, he became aware that David was leaning forward and moving his lips, not uttering a sound, as though he were reading the words on the page of Crane’s book to himself. The book was written in French, a language the Doctor understood, but with difficulty, and he realized that he was silently mouthing the words as he read, as though listening to himself. David must have thought that reading was that, a sort of silent listening. He closed the book.
“Would you like to learn to read?” he said.
“Is that what you’re doing?” David said. “Are you reading now?”
The Doctor nodded.
“Then, yes, I would,” said David, with a shy smile, as though he had just been offered a slice of cake or a special treat of some kind. He took the Doctor’s hand and squeezed it tightly, so that Crane was unexpectedly moved. “Can you show me how to do it? So that I can help you.”
“Help me?”
“Yes.”
“Help me to do what?”
“To find what you’re looking for.”
“And what’s that, do you think?” the Doctor asked, amused, but also curious. “What am I looking for, do you think?” But David didn’t answer. The Doctor reached for a book in English and opened it to the first page. There was a picture of a plant on the left and, on the right, a description of the plant. The book was old but not too old, he thought. He pointed to the name of the plant, arnica, and pronounced the word, and then the first letter, a. “Yes, yes,” said David, nodding in an anxious, impatient way, “I see. I mean, I understand.”
“Repeat it then,” the Doctor said.
David learned quickly. Sometimes the Doctor felt that the boy was not so much learning to read as remembering a skill he had momentarily lost. His eyes would move down the page with a hungry expression, as though in search of something, even as his lips pronounced the words above. He began to choose the books he wanted to learn from, in a way that made no immediate sense to the Doctor. Not all were books he would have chosen to teach a child his letters, but that didn’t matter to David. If the Doctor hesitated, David sat there and waited, unbudgeable. Soon, within days, it seemed, David was reading alone, taking the books he had chosen to a small chair on the other side of the room. That was when he asked the Doctor if he could teach the others to read, all of them, even the youngest. Even the babies, he seemed to mean.
“Why don’t you show Morgan what you’ve learned first?” Crane said after a moment, wanting to see what David would say. “I’m sure he’ll be so pleased.”
David looked doubtful.
“But I want it to be a surprise,” he said, his lower lip jutting out in a gesture so petulant, so childish, that Crane noticed, as he had done before, how rarely David behaved like a child.
“It will be a surprise,” Crane said. “I haven’t breathed a word to him of this. He thinks I’m studying on my own account.”
“No,” said David, shaking his head. “Not the reading. I didn’t mean the reading.” And then he looked anxious, as though he had said too much, and regretted it. He thought for a moment, then came to a decision.
“All right,” the boy said.
“What did you mean, David, by a surprise?” Crane said, his curiosity too strong to be suppressed. “What did you want to be a surprise?”
David closed his book and grinned. The Doctor was startled. David was generally such a solemn boy.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It will be in any case.” Placing the book he was holding back on the shelf, he ran from the room. The Doctor heard him calling to the others, wherever they were. It was true that they seemed to disappear, as Morgan had said, only to reappear when summoned. This time it was David who had done the summoning.
He didn’t teach them all, of course; the babies were far too young and some of the others seemed to show no interest. He chose the two girls nearest to him in age, Daisy and Melissa. It was odd and wonderful to watch the three of them as they sat together in a row on a sofa beneath the window; the Doctor’s room was gradually being filled with furniture. David would sit in the middle and trace the word with his finger, his voice so low that Crane could hardly hear him, while the voices of the girls, less certain, picked up and repeated what he said. At times, David took one of their fingers in his hand and held it to a word, and it seemed to the Doctor that the girl, who was usually Daisy, could see the word more clearly once she had touched the letters, repeating it in a stronger voice and with greater confidence than before. It was odd because they were all so young, but once that sense of oddness had passed, there was nothing more natural than for the three small heads to be bent together over a book of medicine written a hundred years before. Crane watched the way David treated the girls. With Daisy, he was cautious, gentle, eager to help when she was discouraged. Melissa, though, he treated as an equal and Crane observed that within a week she was reading as easily as David. Watching them together, he saw a likeness between them grow, or his awareness of it did, until they looked like twins. He said this to Morgan one day.
“It’s interesting that you should say that. She seemed to know him when she arrived,” Morgan said. “Come to that, she seemed to know us all. She ran to me, I remember, I picked her up and she kissed my cheek.” And he lifted his hand to touch where the kiss had been. “There are times I think they were all together before they came here, wherever they were, wherever that was. Some other place.”
“They’re learning to read, you know.”
Morgan was surprised.
“Really? Was that your idea?”
The Doctor shook his head. “Not at all. It was David’s. Now he’s teaching the girls. Melissa and Daisy. And some of the smaller ones too. Jules, I think, the little dark-eyed one. The two who are always holding hands and won’t be separated. I find it impossible to believe, yet it’s also the most natural thing in the world. You should see them; I’d take you there now, except that I think they’d be annoyed with me for having told you. They want it to be a surprise, I think, though I’m not sure that I’ve understood correctly.” He smiled. “David’s a mystery, as you know.”
“Where do they do it?” Morgan asked.
“Wherever they happen to be,” said the Doctor. “Sometimes they sit in a circle in my room with me, while I work. I’ve seen them in the garden too. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t go to the kitchen sometimes; I don’t know if Engel has seen them or not, I haven’t asked her; but I wouldn’t be surprised. These days, David’s never without a book. It’s as though he were always ready. I think their favorite place is the stairs going up to the first floor. They sit on the top steps, just below the landing, in rows, like mice. You can almost imagine their tails curling behind them.” The Doctor was amused by this picture he had made.
“Do you think I should pretend not to know?” Morgan said.
“I don’t see why you should. Perhaps you could stumble on them one morning. It shouldn’t be that difficult. I’m surprised you haven’t caught them at it yourself.”
“Because I should like them to have a special place to go to do these things,” Morgan said thoughtfully. “They could use the room that used to be my schoolroom if they wanted. It would be nice to think that it might finally serve some purpose.”
What Morgan imagined was a vision of the great house like a constellation, with each of the special rooms like a star. There was his book room, where he would read and play backgammon with the Doctor; there was the room of the Doctor himself, from which you could see the distant hills of his childhood; perhaps at the heart of the constellation was Engel’s kitchen, which smelt of coffee and rising dough; now, and this seemed more right to him the more he considered it, there would be the schoolroom, his schoolroom.
CHAPTER TWELVE
in which a box reveals its secret and Morgan is moved
The Doctor was searching through boxes in the dusty attics one day for any more books that might serve his purpose, when he came across a large chest placed vertically against the back wall of one of the many rooms. It was made of finely embossed leather, the color of dried blood, with brass hoops circling it and a brace of large brass padlocks and other attachments the purpose of which wasn’t clear. He tried to open the first padlock and found that, though closed, it had not been locked. He slipped off both this padlock and the next and opened the lid, which—given the upright position of the chest—was more like a door, then stepped back with a startled cry. Inside the chest was a human figure. Overcoming his surprise, he approached the chest a second time and saw that the figure’s two sides, being hinged, could be folded back to reveal the incomplete form of a pregnant woman, naked, with an elaborate hairstyle and carefully painted face. The figure was cut off at the lower thighs, so that the woman’s face was barely above the level of his navel. It was hard to see what she was made of, primarily because the effect was so convincing; his instinct told him she had been fashioned from living flesh. There was perhaps a gleam to her which suggested the use of polish, yet her skin gave the impression of being warm to the touch, to such a degree that Crane was seized by an odd reluctance to let his hand rest on the woman’s head. Her hair had been twisted into a rope and braided with ribbons before being bound around her head in a style that was both prim and ornate. Her lips were vermilion, her eyes dark brown, her face a pallid olive. The skin on the rest of her body was milk-white; it was an antique body in that it had never been exposed to the sun. Her hands were fine and covered with jewels set in rings, which seemed to be real. She had an amber at her neck, set in an intricate web of gold, which emphasized her nakedness. Inside the amber was the hollowed-out carcass of a bee. Aware that he was behaving foolishly, he summoned his nerve and touched the woman’s cheek with the tips of his fingers.
“She’s beautiful,” said David. The Doctor froze, then whipped his hand away.
“How long have you been there?” he said, spinning round, his tone harsher than he would have liked. He felt that he had been caught in some wrongdoing. But David didn’t seem to have noticed Crane’s embarrassment. He was standing with Melissa and one of the babies, the Doctor wasn’t sure which one, beneath the lowest point of the roof that allowed him not to crouch. Melissa had the baby against her breast.
“Oh, ages,” David said. He took the Doctor’s hand in his, guiding it back towards the woman. They touched the face together as Melissa and the baby joined them. It was smooth and cool, quite unlike flesh as it turned out; more like porcelain, thought the Doctor. The baby made a low chortling noise.
“Where is she from?” David said.
“I don’t know.”
“She’s beautiful,” David said again. “Isn’t she, Melissa?”
“Yes,” said Melissa, whispering this word into the baby’s ear.
“And she’s got no clothes on at all,” said David, to the Doctor this time. “Why’s that?”
“I think she’s a model someone must have made so that people can see her body and the baby inside it,” the Doctor said. “Look here, at her tummy, do you see? She’s going to have a baby at any minute,” he said. He examined her body more closely and saw that the nipples had been modeled as finely as the rest, the dark brown areolae stippled with tiny bumps, the painted trace of a hair. But it was only when he ran his hand down her massively distended belly, startled by the unexpected warmth of it, that he felt what he might never have seen with the naked eye.
“Well I never,” he said. “There’s a join here. Look at this, David. Just look at this. There’s a kind of seam.” As he spoke he pressed the palm of his hand against the surface of the woman’s belly. There was a faint click from deep within the figure and the belly opened like a split fruit to reveal, on one side, what would have been the flesh of the fruit beneath the peel and, on the other side, what would have been the kernel. The flesh was a cushion of fat and veins. The kernel was a curled fetus, the head pressed low against the neck of the womb, the fetus almost, but not quite, an actual child. Part of the placenta had been left across a section of the fetus, like a meaty veil. The Doctor reached down between the woman’s legs and found the vagina dilated. Melissa had put the living baby down on the floor so that she could kneel to see better. Before anyone could stop her, she had crawled as near to the woman as she could get and touched the spot the Doctor’s hand had touched. He saw the baby’s tiny fingers enter and reappear beside the head of the fetus, the baby’s wrist encircled by the vagina of the woman. The baby caressed the head of the fetus with the tips of her fingers and then withdrew her hand and turned to Melissa, who smiled and nodded.
The position of the woman’s hands and arms reminded the Doctor of something. Her right hand was raised, palm facing out; her left hand was extended, the palm turned up and slightly cupped, as if to make an offering. That was it; she looked like a votive statue, the kind that was used in ancient Greece. Yet the detail of the fetus and veins, the blood vessels and the folds of the vagina, the overall accuracy of the modeling made it clear that her function was also to describe the female body, to inform and explain herself to others. She reminded him of something else, something he had seen recently. In one of the books in his room, perhaps. Yes, that was it. Moving the baby away a little, despite her protests, he closed the woman’s belly around the fetus and then, for safety’s sake, the chest around the woman.
The children followed him as he ran downstairs towards his study. He was almost at the door when he noticed Morgan at a window at the far end of the corridor. He must have been waiting, the Doctor thought. “Come here,” he shouted. “I’ve got something to show you.” By the time Morgan was in the room, the Doctor had pulled out half a dozen books and was rifling through them, as though he was scared he might forget what he was looking for before he had found it. Morgan stood with the three children, David, Melissa, and the baby, while the Doctor picked up one book and put it down, then picked up another and did the same, increasingly frustrated. “I know I’ve seen her somewhere,” he muttered to himself. Morgan sank down on his knees until his one good eye was level with David, who did not flinch.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“We’ve found a woman with a baby inside her,” David said. “She was in a box in the attic.”
Morgan stood up smartly. “What do you mean, a woman with a baby inside her? A dead woman? A baby? What kind of story is this?” He glanced at the Doctor with unexpected irritation, as though he had been let down. David looked momentarily hurt.
