John the Posthumous (7 page)

FOUR

T
he
mother
gives way, in due course, to a red morris—
so named for the disposition of steeples beyond the burial mound, or for the absence of the man’s arms—and then to a blue room. The
son
, the first one, hid
den inside a cabinet or a bureau, something small and
ordinary, or—less likely—a Queen Anne wardrobe, is buried alive.

Perhaps January will allow for another accident on the balcony.

The coffin is for the boy, in all those old storybooks, and the casket for the man. The mortician, the barn wall, the mute swan—these pages are torn in an elegant way.

The
daughter
—disconsolate, contrary, stout—is without a portrait, save for the morgue drawing.

The lid of the coffin, at least on these occasions, is a walnut headboard or a pine door. A so-called
griever’s-knife endeavors to separate the relations
from the remains.

December seems more sensible for a murder.

The
father
waits in the gravery—twitch grass and bracken, as it happens, outside the parish house, with animals collapsing in the background. The
son
, the last one—never mind the claims that the doorframes are composed of bones, or that the bier is a horse on four pickets—wears his brother’s garments.

The coffin, lined with broadcloth or felt, sometimes contains poison for the worms. A surname appears at the bottom of the page—circled, but also crossed out.

FIVE

T
he common wasp measures roughly two hundred hertz. This is well below the frequency of, say, a human scream. Anderson compares the sound of a dying beetle with the sound of a dying fly. (The names of the families escape me at the moment.) The common bee, absent its wings, is somewhat higher in pitch. (Carpenter bees would swarm the porch in August.) The true katydid says “Katy did”—or, according to Scudder, “she did.” The false katydid produces a different phrase altogether, something far more fretful. Wheeler concludes with the house ant and the rasp of a pantry door. Douglas prefers a hacksaw drawn across a tin can. (We found termites in the bedclothes one year.) A sixteenth note, poorly formed, may be said to resemble a pipe organ or a hornet. The children set their specimens on black pins.

P
ritchard—or perhaps Hood—devises a sparrow trap with nine chambers. Miller lists several calls for geese and quail. But the illustrations, in Tilton’s manual, show congregations of jays. Overleaf, grouse hang in a country town. (The door recalls ours, it seems to me.) The lonesome call—a pattern of four noises, according to Walker—can occur in a simple pit. A piano blind can imply a sad family story. (A shot bird makes a brown sound—or so I thought as a boy.) The hunter’s command is “blood”—and now the spaniel endeavors to terrify the guests—or “dead bird.” Evening grosbeaks are seen near the edge of the oaks, beyond the folly, in a row. Yellowhammers drop on the walk. The chains, on some occasions, approximate the timbre of a man’s voice. A certain hex sign describes a child buried alive.

O
rdinary breathing, for a boy, measures roughly ten decibels. Bedside crying, in winter, in a brick house, animals on the walls—roughly eighty. (The rag doll was without hands, I now recall.) A woman says “dear,” or perhaps “door,” and then two names—or perhaps only one. The action of a hinge, according to Dalton, falls between a shriek and a scream. Burns prefers a series of wails, all in the upper register. (The deadbolt was a dark color.) A father’s sobbing, in a corridor and a stairwell, and then in a tiny room, second story, early in the evening—this may be mistaken for toppling objects or for the scraping of a fire grate. (My window faced the road.) Martin lists the rattlebox and the copper pot, but neglects the cat trapped in the attic. The children arrange the knives in three piles.

SIX

B
ut how much lovelier had the wife worn, that evening or the next, the other item, which was quite white, after all, far whiter than the spot at the mouth or the lines of the husband’s cuffs: the rest of his things, woolen by the look of them, trousers and the like, and an odd portion of cloth, folded over the chair. If, as I have been led to understand,
shroud
implies
groom
(the latter deriving
from the former, or vice versa) rather than
dagger
(which is apparently without connection to
dowager
—but how
I regret these grisly, inexpert approximations)—then,
notwithstanding the corpse on the bier, whether
hers or his,
the body may imply, say, the contours of a hornbook or a nuptial bed, or it may, simply, fall.

SEVEN

T
he word
adultery
derives from
cry
—which calls to mind, certainly, the way the blanket folded back—and from
alter
, rather than
altar
, via
reave
. But I flatter
myself that this provides a correct measure of evidence.
Nor does the wood, worse still—Queen Anne at the bottom of the stairs; Martha Washington at the knife box, with a bonnet top and a pierced apron. The posts, don’t you know, later became coffins, just as the headstones later became roads—even if
skulduggery
derives from neither
skull
nor
grave.
The latter, incidentally, is also the name of a town in Pennsylvania—where, as I fancy it, he was born; and where, as it now appears, they stopped—and the name of, more happily, an early children’s game—bleach and stack the bones; carve the hearts in the dirt; place the mice inside.

I recall a pause of some sort.

Criminal conversation
, as the common notion, and as the preferred legal term—
preferred
here a ruptured version of something finer, either hers or his, while
ruptured
, now that we have it, revives for me too keenly
that awful fall—dates from the nineteenth century, in America at least, in a house in Pennsylvania, in a high bed, in—to contort the conceit further—a torn gown. If only it were, say, brass and wool, rather than fourposter and silk, and, say, embroidered hornets, rather
than spotted blood—
to live with
, in the standard defini
tion, or
to live on
, alone there at the top of the stairs. But the finial and the bed, remember, later became theirs, or, better still, were lost to us—a less noisome phrase, this, even if it neglects the fire. Evidently hearts once required a burnt deck, like heartsette, which added a wound, and like matrimony, for the lonely—but unlike blind girl, in which the hearts were marked out.

Were this a medical, rather than a marital, history—you might then excuse so conspicuous a series.

And what follows:

Miniatures sometimes left spaces in place of them. Or, more often, collections of figures, usually in blue dye. These could evoke other bodies, but were not always akin to surgical inscriptions of the day. Models of hearts appeared in wood, and then iron, and then gold. Or ormolu, depending upon the victim, as in the Hessian specimen. They were eventually chipped away for kindling or melted down for buckshot, but most hospital documents omit discussion of this.

Even the earliest primers compare the heart’s
shape to a fist or to a hand waving goodbye.

Matrimonial law, such as it was, and such as it obtained, in particular, at Hunt and Bonelawn and Cripplegate, among other towns less beguilingly named, required excision at the knuckle—one was made to kneel at the foot of the bed, to remove the ring; one was asked to present the family ax—or, in what was thought a more genteel tradition, a white cord at the throat. It was silk on certain occasions, wool on others, such as this one—
tartan, say, bars of
whatever sort—the rot o
f
little concern
here, I am beginning to think. The scarf and the gloves—terribly evident, still, as she had arrived late, or he had, a door there at the end of the corridor—were becoming, though not black, no, not in the way of the apron, painted
something closer to gray, actually, or o
f
the cannon, which
was played with four hands on an embalming table.

She kept her rings in the knife box.

Scar letter
, referring neither to the quaint habit of quotation apparent in some later argument—“I wear my hair in a scar”—nor to the sentiment that the dark
shapes on a page resemble rows of scars, disappears from
dictionaries in the nineteenth century. As does
horn
, incidentally, at least in the sense of
gallows
—the planks, let us imagine, emblazoned with names. The coffins—now, I cannot beg off altogether—were marked with charcoal, the chains displayed near the smallest figures, which may indicate a measure of affection, or, given what had befallen them—the description of the crime; the history of the malady; the form of the contagion—a term in the northern cell, notable at that time for its bone hooks and bronze grille, the former engraved with the prisoners’ symbols, numbers, initials.

Absent, however, were matters of marriage and a house.

And the rest of the evidence retreats, as I do, from the bodies:

They were sometimes mistaken for bundles of cloth. Children sometimes left rats in place of them. Various sadnesses, if not bad weather, attended their arrival. Knives and rifles were found in the graves. Emblems, probably imprinted on the skin, were presented by way of explanation. Evidently they were akin to bridal inscriptions of the day—a hatchet on end; a musket aflame; a dagger pointing south.

But to liken these to the designs on the bedsheets, even were I to omit the blotches of red, indistinct at so great a distance anyway—this might effect too lavish a comparison.

Cuckoldry, my proper topic, introduces fewer such obstructions, as, in this case, we have a cleaver rather than a hat—
rather
does merit something further by now, deriving, if a bit circuitously, from
jackal
, and thus suggesting, among more familiar conceptions, those portraits of mauled boys—and faces painted on shutters, painted on doors, and, in the better houses, carved into walls. If only the wallpaper had offered as pleasing a diversion—or just a fabric like the gown’s, with bleak little seams. The blanket, on the other hand, implies some custom of theirs, her garments set out in a precise way—matrimony, incidentally, once required widow’s weeds and, by the nineteenth century, crosses of moths, pinned—or a brief event at the foot of the bed.

I recall the house, from the outside, at night.

The word
adultery
does not, in fact, derive from
cry
—just as you had suspected—and the town, I will concede, suitably antique, and quiet now, stands in lieu of another town, come what may, these stains—cheerfully small—on the blade of the paring knife. The ax-blade was steel on certain occasions, silver on others, depending upon the family—the face already engraved with the surname, and the notch perfectly burnt. The handles later became balusters, which later became posts, row after row after row, as in the preamble about the house—a spine on a white plate; a pile of toile clothing; a swarm of fleas in the evening—and the addendum about the bedroom.

EIGHT

B
ut how much simpler to consider them from afar, from the door, say, or from the corridor and the stairs, the husband in particular, the next morning: examining locks, drawers, cabinets and the like, uncovering and covering, unfolding and folding, all the articles a darker color in a better light—as the wife turns this way.
Costume
comes to mind, preferable as it is to
vesture
, to
raiment
, to
disguise
, or to my own attire, for that matter, warp, weft, and so forth—though you may prefer her ermine collar, or a table of cropped collars in a funeral parlor, the choke-smock conjuring the body as a dress
maker’s form, or as a diagram of red wounds, or as, more
likely, a man in a cutaway, leaving a room.

NINE

I
.

P
erforation of the left atrium, and then the right, as occasioned by a ten-inch blade—this posits obvious complications. The introduction of said blade to the diaphragm (between the seventh and eighth ribs) or to the liver (already afflicted with dropsy, incidentally) would explain a break in the aorta. Passage through the lung (inferior lobe, left-side posterior) into the mitral valve (named for the bishop’s hat, I gather) would explain apoplexy.

In the case of knitting needles, a pair of these, clutched in the customary way—let us imagine a wound somewhat less shapely.

T
he hospitals favor blocked columns, skew arches, brick. Crow steps are always something of a surprise. The city examples, modest as they are, are most notable for their nailhead molding. The county examples have black doors.

If the surgical theater is found on the north side, and the boys’ ward on the south—better, then, to neglect the location of the litter.

The awl is for soldiers rather than spinsters. A hairpin sits between a lancet and a matchbox, just above the bleeding bowl.

A reflection will show the victim in repose.

A wooden version, a model, with the appropriate veins and chambers painted various colors, or stuck with tacks—this accounts for the fire.

T
o repair a hole in the heart, or septal defect, of the type common in children, first determine the site of incision (the sternum seems agreeable) and mark it. Cut accordingly. If the lines remind you of pickets, or of wire, or of your wife’s fingers—look away. Rupture
of the heart, or heartbreak (to use the Victorian term),
requires sawdust and longcloth—though mortification of the organs usually indicates a different complaint.

Transfixion (atrial, through the anterior wall, the tendon well hidden—or tracheal, at the first ring) requires a clean white smock. Extract the blade post
haste. Suture the wound with silver rather than catgut
or silk. Expect death within ten days.

S
ickroom decoration, pertaining especially to the selec
tion of curtains—the depictions vary by circumstance. On Union Avenue, in an upper room. On Broad Street, across from cannons, at the end of a corridor. On New Street, in a house with a blue roof, or a red one, the rot a bit of a pity.

Muslin is more becoming than wool, notwithstanding the examples at hand.

Carpets stain nicely in spring.

Pearl-ash and lime restore scorched linen—and poison the dog.

The affliction dictates the location of the children. At the fire irons for grippe, for falling sickness, for Mother’s consumption. At the door, which is shut, for daggers. The color of the curtains dictates the color of the wood. Or vice versa—as moths cover the walls.

T
o treat dropsy, give vinegar and bitters in one-teaspoon doses, at night—keeping in mind that the father beset by horrors will favor camphor (two scruples should do) and that squills may inspire needless bleeding. Convulsions call for plasters at the throat—and, on occasion, amputation of the child’s hands.

Heartsickness, or Saint John’s complaint (to use the correct term), is akin to black fever, at least in respect of the lesions—but the site of these, if not the pattern, also suggests plague. Were apoplexy to accompany screws or bloody flux, however, or a wound of a particular size (three fingers across, say)—worms would then explain the rattling in the lungs.

T
he pages are marked in curious ways, though ornamental borders of this sort, especially those that exhibit insects, are far more common before 1700. Plague seems to favor green birds, as it happens, or rows of wagons and houses. Certain names are replaced with urns. Another anatomy presents the ribcage in the form of snakes—with winter scenes at the bottom of every column. Plans of the spine, furthermore, often include
sickles, in addition to the cleavers near the numbers.

In folklore, the towns kill children for skulls. These are set atop sticks or crooks, the sockets filled with cloth. Relics are brought to a meadow, a pasture, a knoll—where the families tell pitiful tales at the funeral pile.

The skeletons in old schoolrooms—these are black, given the inscriptions. They list the illnesses, in order, and relate the terms of the murders. Fits, for instance, with bules—and then the king’s evil. A man and a woman stabbed through the hands on a staircase.

A treatise concerning Mrs. Trundle’s disease, from 1760, cites the demeanor of the bedsheets, and offers an inventory of hospital objects, beginning with a bistoury and a capital saw. The former, according to the annotation, is engraved with the surgeon’s name. The latter has a stag handle, split in the middle. In certain editions, scarecrows
stand in an anteroom
—
an error, I presume, despite mention of a dwarf-wall. The illustration, overleaf, exhibits four dogs on a cross.

I
I.

I
n the first postscript, the hearts
are mistaken for dead birds. Doubtless the ants are thought a dis
appointment. When the horse becomes a house, fur
thermore, termites appear on the floor.

The room would be easier to see in an exploded view.

The sternum, imagined as a sword or a dagger, makes a more worrisome claim. The tail of the pancreas terminates at the spleen.

Listen for rales in the lungs and a catch in the throat.

When the child is supine, as here, the liver hides behind the ribs. The windpipe attracts spiders at night.

In the second postscript, a boy watches the body. It is said to resemble a table of beetles. The heart is said to resemble a skinned animal or a burnt skull. It waits in the rain, at any rate, like other objects.

Embalmed, it is properly brown. It will sink if you drop it into a pond.

In the third postscript, the wife is buried, or set afire, or brought by cart to the mourners. A later translation cites John, at great length, and places the bones and clothing in the road—beside the cleft, as the afternoon passes.

M
aps of the body, in early anatomy, display the organs as houses in a town. The colors are quite bright—or rather dim. The heart is thought to contain eight rooms—or ruins
,
given the eventual corruption of the term.

In line drawings of a particular kind, the heavens divide the victims into wretched sections. The legend, decorated with garlands and the like, abbreviates each name. Diagrams of skeletons behave more obligingly, or at least provide a finer distraction.

Models of the heart, in wooden versions, in old hospitals—these can be nailed to walls or used for kindling. Blankets cover the skulls—while the wardrobe drops four stories.

Were you to arrange my organs on a table, the lungs, I expect, would sit below the hornets, and the heart at one o’clock.

Wound dolls, in the form of Devils, are marked at the throat, the hoof, the tail. The heads are stuffed with horsehair and stitched with wool. The letters concern amputation, but can also show the placement of veins.

Ax mannikins, for surgeons, are said to resemble nuns. Thorns can replace the eyes, surely, though seams are customary. Pinholes suggest a gloomier room, later in the year. The lips are black specks—grime or tar or soot.

Skeletons, on maps of the towns—such figures often replace annotations. In Bonelawn, as Bethlehem was once known, torches mean retreat or flight. In Mildred, there are rowboats for drownings. In Townsend, shovels and pickaxes for disease. Maps of the battlefields use red circles for smallpox and red dashes for blood. Bodies are shown as dots at the bottom of the sheet.

M
y recipe for tripe requires a slip of buff paper, a woman’s name embossed at the top. A fold, lengthwise, should hide nine words. The hand should slant.

Calf’s liver, potted, is better in winter. Calf’s heart is simpler, despite the veins and clots. Sheep’s lights, beaten and trimmed, and then plunged into boiling water, drained, dredged with flour, and baked for two hours—these are garnished with parsley.

Score in squares or present handsome gashes.

Silver should be placed one inch from the edge of the table—the knives, turned in, sitting below the glass, which will topple, or perhaps crack in your hand.

The plate should be white and without ornament. Address the left side first, except when crooknecks or parsnips are in evidence. Remember that the meat can sometimes bleed too amply.

The napkin will fall by the end of the meal.

To remove objects correctly, begin with your wife’s position. If this is empty, begin with the child’s. If the child’s position is empty, carry the carving knife to the sideboard.

Gather the scraps in butcher paper or a tall jar.

I
II.

D
isposition of the remains, in an upper room, as nighttime arrives—this accounts for the houndstooth pattern. A flannel housecoat (pointed yoke, open neck) and a gentleman’s possessions (we have few, alas) do seem pleasant facts, certainly, save for the question of the insects. Bluebottles are more likely than houseflies, especially about the mouth, while beetles (carrion, for instance, and bark) are often seen beneath the sleeves.

Removal from the room, in the morning, assuming two bronze clocks, a lampshade, and a rope—but let us neglect the plan of the staircase, please.

T
he dissection tables display bell chains, dowels, twine. The rat-tail hinges are a bit too stout. Names are written out on the near side—brown letters for orphans, blue for Jews.

The clouts rust well, or stand at a charming slant.

The implements, brass and otherwise, are missing from some depictions.

In Germantown, a wooden arm falls afoul of the rail. In Red Bank, organs are replaced with artifacts—and, on occasion, rocks. In Pike Fork, widows are painted gray.

Measurement of the dead, like measurement of a bride, occurs as per local practice, and may require a catlin knife.

The horses and dogs are destroyed behind the morgue.

T
o examine the left atrium, posterior aspect, cut along the septum, ignoring the middle cardiac vein (awfully narrow and black, in this case) and the pulmonary trunk (or the remnant thereof)—and then hold the heart aloft. To examine the right atrium, cut out the lateral wall, disclosing the eustachian valve—though this is often absent in the adult heart. The arteries are best observed from above, except in the event of certain defects, such as those known to afflict widowers in cities. A cross section will show four holes (rather resembling a face, I am afraid) and two appendages, dark at the far end.

To examine the ventricles, in a frontal section, use fingers or shears. Discard in parts.

T
he embalming tables are adorned with gilt figures. Some later examples are famous for their claw-and-ball feet. What a pity, however, about the torn ribbon.

A porcelain basin sits beside a porcelain chamberpot. The cabinets favor eyebolts, strap hinges, white paint.

The jars of arsenic account for the cats.

If drams replace barn-gallons, and nails replace
hands—doubtless this will ruin the view of the wounds.
The first, at the throat, suits the room. The second, at the jaw, is perhaps too extravagantly red.

Superstition dictates that the head face west, and that the frame and grates form a cross. The slats are covered with matting—burlap, presumably, or stammel.

The mold grows best at night.

T
o prepare the remains, use equal parts turpentine (or ammonia, in summer) and mutton tallow (or rottenstone, if need be)—though scalding water will also suffice. Soak the brush in a tin pail. Males require straight-razors with dull blades and pearl handles—except, of course, in cases of decollation. To shut the eyes, use birdlime and wax. Suture the mouth with a length of wire.

The incision at the neck, just above the collarbone, on the right side—this should measure one inch across, keeping in mind the condition of the flesh and the size of the child. Locate the carotid artery. Introduce the solution, which should include, in addition to the usual elements, wormwood and gray sour—the latter in the absence of dye. Drain the blood through a cast-iron pipe.

E
ngravings after 1800 favor the more familiar sign, or something akin to it, though this is easily mistaken for a dead mouse or a bloody hand. A split-head teaspoon of about 1810, then, common in coffins, may startle one. A carving knife of roughly the same moment, such as the specimen found at the New Street house, will likely display letters and numbers—or, to be exact, a name and a date.

In various woodcuts, the heart appears as a crutch-cross or a pitchfork. The former, given this configuration of spikes, also means lightning—and fire, when events warrant. A Devil’s staff, pointing east—perhaps this will remind you of Philip. Inverted, it means murder.

Portraits of the corpses indicate a different
predicament, naturally, given the character of the town.
In a parlor, red words on a dress. At a cannon, a bit of spittle on a lapel. In a wagon, which collapses, rats atop a claw-hammer coat.

Tradition calls for charcoal or black ink. The letter Y, imprinted on the skin, may suggest a thorn of some sort. The letter H
is three blades. There is usually a name, too, I understand—the wife’s, in blue dye.

Engravings on certain rings, in 1860—these reverse the initials, among other errors. The platinum items are a consolation, it turns out, though the ardent phrases appear in the wrong places. A copper trinket of about 1880, found with the garments, resembles a hatpin or a knitting needle, and omits the heart altogether.