The Anatomy of Deception (14 page)

“It is a remarkable work,” I said.

“Thank you,” he replied. “It is real. That is what is most important. A photograph would provide no more accurate a rendering. Tell me, Dr. Carroll, can you detect any significance more to your area of endeavor?”

“A comparison with your previous medical painting, you mean … of Gross?”

“Precisely correct, Doctor,” he said. “So then, what do you see?”

“In the Gross painting,” I offered, “both the surgeon and his fellows are wearing street clothes, while here Agnew and his assistants are wearing gowns.” It was a lucky thing he hadn’t painted Burleigh.

“That is the easy one,” said Eakins. “Go on.”

“There are only medical personnel near the operating table, which is set off from the gallery by a barrier.”

“Yes.”

“A nurse is assisting.”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Eakins with impatience, “but you are missing the most significant difference.”

I didn’t particularly enjoy being quizzed like a student, but with Abigail standing attentively, waiting to hear my response, I forced myself to think on the point. Then I had it.

“The aseptic instrument tray,” I said.

“Indeed,” he said. Eakins’ intensity was so great that it was fatiguing simply to be in his presence. “Since I painted Gross, immense advances have been achieved in surgical technique, and I wished to portray them. Lister’s teachings on asepsis have finally penetrated American medicine. But there is one recent development that I have not included because Agnew has not.”

“Surgical gloves,” I said, now fully up on the game.

“Exactly. Gloves were introduced earlier this year, but are still experimental. But they will be in common use shortly, I am certain. Halsted is a brilliant man.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to paint him one day,” mused Eakins.

My notice turned to the hangings on the walls. Nudes in art were quite traditional, but I had been unaware that the practice had been transferred to photography. As I looked a bit closer, I could not help but to observe the identity of one of the models.

“Yes, Dr. Carroll,” said Eakins, motioning to a series of photographs of a frontally nude male holding a nude female in his arms, “those are of me. I hope that a man of your learning and sophistication is not repelled by the human form.”

I was too busy staring at the photographs and realizing that they were, in fact, of my host, to remark on my sophistication.

“Photography is the future, Doctor,” he continued, leading me by the elbow, “although with Eastman’s invention I expect a proliferation of amateurish profanities.” George Eastman had introduced the box camera the previous year
and photography had instantly become a wildly popular avocation.

“Look at this series. I took them about eight years ago.” He had stopped at a group of seven photographs of a young woman, completely unclothed, standing either facing the camera, with her back to it, or in left profile. In the frontal poses, she wore a black mask that totally obscured her face. The mask created the sense that the woman had been forced to pose, that her clothes had been removed against her will. To my embarrassment, I found the series arousing, forbidden. But Eakins himself seemed oblivious to the sexual content.

“Look at the musculature,” he declared, “how the entire physique changes depending on whether the model stands evenly, favors one leg, has her hands at her sides or on her hips.” He spun me toward him. “Anatomical accuracy—that is what we get from photography!”

He continued to prowl along the walls, past array after array. One was of a group of unclothed men on a rock ledge at a pond. I found this photograph disturbing as well, and wanted to look away but, not wanting to appear a prude, I instead commented how precisely he had recreated the scene in his painting.

“Painting life
is
life,” Eakins said. “We explore the human condition through truth, not romanticized images. My God, I
despise
the Pre-Raphaelites!”

I did not know what a Pre-Raphaelite was but did not say so. I was aware, however, that while both Miss Benedict and Eakins saw painting as a quest for truth, each saw its realization in opposing artistic styles. Finally, we came to one group of photographs, those of a nude woman from the back and in profile, and I involuntarily stopped.

“Quite correct, Doctor,” said Eakins, “it is Susan.”

It was indeed—eight photographs of the bared breasts, buttocks, and pubis of my hostess. Her figure was quite magnificent and it was all I could do to hold myself from spinning
around and comparing the photographs to Susan Eakins herself. Would nudes of Abigail Benedict be here as well?

Eakins took my stupefaction for awe. “Yes, these are wonderful, are they not?” he said.

“That’s enough, Thomas,” interposed Susan Eakins, unexpectedly at my side with Miss Benedict. “Allow Dr. Carroll to breathe for a moment.” Standing next to a stranger who was looking at nude photographs of her did not seem to bother her in the least. “Have you eaten?” she inquired of me.

Rather than repair downstairs, she offered refreshments at a small table in the studio. We partook of sandwiches, fruit, and lemonade amidst the smell of oil paints, as Susan Eakins recounted how she had first met her husband. She had, it seemed, come to the 1876 exposition expressly to see “The Portrait of Professor Gross.” Although the painting was ultimately consigned to an army hospital, she had seen it in a gallery, and decided she would study with whoever had been brilliant enough to create it. She enrolled at the Academy the following week, and eight years later, she and Eakins were married.

“I’m told you found my behavior with female students at the Academy somewhat questionable,” Eakins said abruptly. Miss Benedict had obviously mentioned the remark I had made in the coach. “It’s quite all right, you know. I would feel the same in your place…. What a harebrained thing to do. That Eakins must live in the ether. Well, Doctor, I studied with Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris, one of the most renowned painters in France. Do you know what he is most famous for? Slave auctions—painting nude women surrounded by leering men before being taken to what I believe is referred to as ‘the fate worse than death.’

“The real issue, of course, is not my judgment, but this country’s commitment to Puritanism. It stifles creativity everywhere. Can you really tell me that the Neanderthals surrounding medicine are any less backward than those surrounding
art? I simply choose to ignore them. I hope for the sake of the sick that you do as well.”

He was correct, of course. The Professor would never allow Revered Squires or Elias Schoonmaker to suppress his researches, so why should Eakins allow the trustees of the Academy of the Fine Arts to dictate to him? Still, the pursuit of science was intrinsically moral—art was more questionable.

Eakins’ argument also made me more curious about the true nature of the relationship of these three people. Their mutual ease and understanding might merely be friendship—how easily wealth mixed with art—but might also be something more. There was little reason to believe that they would hold more inhibitions in their sexual behavior than they had exhibited anywhere else in their lives. I tried to feel disapproving, but their mode of living was magnetic. What must it be like to live in almost total freedom? Unfettered by society’s conventions, where the very definition of morality is of one’s own making? I had always been taught that such a way of life would lead inexorably to wickedness, yet I felt a draw to this group that could easily overpower reason. Part of that draw, a terrifying large part, was the longing I was developing, deep and desperate, for Abigail Benedict.

“I’d like to show you another canvas,” Eakins said, urging me out of my seat and directing me to the far end of the studio. “I painted this one seven years ago, but I am sending it to Paris to be submitted to the Salon. I’d like your opinion.”

Before me was a painting of an elderly man wearing glasses, seated at a table, leaning over a large sheet of writing paper, completely absorbed in forming characters on the page. The subject was at once intense and serene.

“It is arresting,” I offered.

“Yes,” agreed the painter. “It is called ‘The Writing Master.’ The model is my father. As you can see, I am capable of painting clothed figures.” He gestured back to the table. “But come, Doctor. We must talk.”

After we were again seated, the painter, now quite calm, asked softly, “I wonder, Dr. Carroll, if we might ask your assistance in a matter of some importance?”

“Of course,” I replied. “I am at your service.”

“Thank you, Ephraim,” said Miss Benedict. She reached out and squeezed my hand. “I knew you would help.”

Excited as I was to feel Miss Benedict’s hand on mine, the gesture left me wondering just what I was about to be asked to do. Eakins noticed my expression and laughed easily. “Don’t worry, Doctor, it is nothing nefarious, although there is some delicacy involved. We would ask your discretion.”

“I believe I may be trusted with a confidence,” I replied. This explained the invitation to the studio. There was undoubtedly a professional question in the offing—drug addiction or venereal disease, most likely—but I waited for Eakins to tell me what his predicament might be. I was stung a bit at Miss Benedict’s lack of candor, but nonetheless pleased with the prospect of demonstrating professional sophistication in a room where I lacked sophistication in every other way.

But instead of the painter, it was Miss Benedict who spoke. “It concerns Rebecca Lachtmann … the subject of the portrait I showed you last evening.”

“Is Miss Lachtmann having a medical problem in Italy?” I asked, taken aback.

“Not exactly,” Miss Benedict replied. Her face, which had reflected only unease the night before, now showed grave concern, fear. “Rebecca does have a … situation … but she is not, I fear to say, in Italy. She has not, as far as I know, ever been to Italy.”

“Where is she then?”

“She is here in Philadelphia.”

“Her parents believe her to be overseas, however?”

“Yes,” said Eakins.

“Why, then, are you seeking my assistance?” I asked, bewildered.

“Rebecca’s problem is of a very personal nature,” Eakins offered. “She did not want her parents to know … her father can be an extremely difficult man….”

“Ephraim has met Jonas,” Miss Benedict interjected somberly.

“So, Dr. Carroll, you know what we mean,” Eakins continued. “Rebecca made elaborate plans to deceive her parents into believing that she was touring Italy when, in fact, she was in the city seeking assistance. But now we have lost touch with her.”

So I was not being asked for medical expertise at all. This was a far more pedestrian errand. “You wish me to make inquiries to see if she is a patient somewhere under another name?”

“That certainly,” replied Eakins. “But also if she has sought treatment through less traditional channels.”

“I am not aware of less traditional channels,” I replied coldly.

“You must help us, Ephraim. Help me,” said Miss Benedict, her voice just above a whisper. “But please do not ask for more information. There are issues of personal intimacy involved.”

I had not come here to be enlisted in an intrigue, especially one initiated by moral weakness. Moreover, I would not know where to begin. Rebecca Lachtmann might be anywhere. She was, in actuality, unlikely to be a patient in any hospital, at least in Philadelphia. Anyone of her description would attract attention no matter what name she used. Yet if I refused to offer assistance, I was certain that I would not see Abigail Benedict again.

“I am not sure how much I can be of help,” I replied, “but I will be pleased to do all that I can. Do you have a sketch?” I glanced about at the walls. “Or a photograph?”

“I have a photograph,” said Eakins. “You will use it discreetly, of course.”

“I understand the nature of your request,” I replied evenly.

Eakins nodded, stood up, and walked across the studio to a large case with many drawers. He pulled open one of the drawers, riffled through the material inside, and extracted a plate. I wondered of what nature the photograph he returned with might be, but Eakins was no fool. The print, although slightly grainy, was of only the head and shoulders of a beautiful young woman with light hair. She was recognizable as the woman in the painting I had viewed at Miss Benedict’s, but only because I had been aware of that fact in advance. More disturbing, however, was another resemblance, one that I had discounted when I had been assured that the subject of the portrait was alive and well in Italy.

I studied the photograph carefully and, though the similitude was strong, there was no way to be positive that this was the woman I had seen in the Dead House.
Distrust coincidence
, the Professor always said. It would have been foolish to conclude that a cadaver I had glimpsed for a second or two in an ice chest and a photograph or a portrait that had intentionally distorted reality were all of the same person. But neither could I definitively conclude that the three pieces of data were unrelated.
Distrust coincidence, perhaps, but do not discount it
. I must approach this problem as any other—accept coincidence only as a working hypothesis, and then test that hypothesis until it is disproved. Or not disproved. “Less traditional channels.” Perhaps. It seemed that I might be able to be of some assistance after all.

As Miss Benedict and I reemerged on Mount Vernon Street, the sun was lower in the sky and a coolness had once again set in. The streets remained busy, although most of the families had disappeared, replaced by couples. As we were about to enter the brougham, I observed a mustachioed man in a derby. He was, I was certain, the same man who had been loitering about on our arrival, but he now wore an overcoat and was at the opposite end of the street from where he had been taking the air previously. What’s more, he had been joined by a second man, similarly attired, and they seemed
engaged in conversation. When we were seated in the coach, I looked out the window, but the corner at which the two men had been standing was now deserted.

“I’m very grateful to you, Ephraim,” Miss Benedict said.