The Heart Specialist (25 page)

At the moment, walking along the still damp street, a tote bag beneath one arm, I looked like a housewife, although perhaps more carefully dressed than some of the women I was passing. I’d taken pains with my hair, pinning it so tightly that even Laure would have been proud. Because the weather was good I didn’t need to hide it with a hat. I’d put on fresh stockings as well — not silk like the ones I’d ruined the day before — but of good enough quality that they hugged my legs like a shiny new skin. My dress was green, punctuated with tiny wine-coloured buds. Laure and Miss Skerry had given it to me the previous Christmas, taking the pattern from a well-known Montreal couturier. It was the most fashionable item of clothing in my wardrobe. So fashionable in fact that I’d dared wear it only once before, on Christmas day in St. Andrews East, so the gift givers could see me model it. Miss Skerry must have done the lion’s share of the handiwork. Laure’s shifts of temper were such that these days it was hard to imagine her concentrating for long on a single project, but the dress was beautiful regardless of whose hand had made it. It made me feel almost beautiful.

St. Lawrence Boulevard was the first stop on my itinerary. Plenty of people were out already, crowding the muddy boardwalk. Just in front of me a boy sang out in a striking soprano, “
Herald
. Get your
Montreal Herald
!” A few steps on a man in a red sandwich board was competing with him, yelling about smoked fish.

I was part of this swirling, boisterous scene, swept up in the crowd energy. The sun was already high and I squinted up at it, feeling the warm rays touch my face. What a change from the day before. The ice had just about disappeared, exposing soggy squares of grass. In the gutters beside the wooden ramps the water ran freely.

At last I arrived at the fruit emporium. This was one of my favourite places to shop although I rarely made it down here. The size made me feel like a child. The first floor resembled that of a normal store, with barrels of apples and root vegetables harvested the previous autumn, but the real wonders lay below. I descended into the basement, a cavernous room with treasures imported from places so distant I knew them only as dots on maps. There were oranges, plums, and pineapples with spiky tops, picked green and carried north on ships in whose holds they slowly ripened.

What a sight for eyes dulled by six months of winter. What would it be like to live in a place where such extravagance existed year-round? The people living there probably didn’t react at all to the sight of an orange in April. Maybe a certain degree of deprivation was necessary to the experience of pleasure, just as suffering was an integral part of joy.

The pineapples were right in front of me. I remembered the first time I’d eaten this fruit at the party Mrs. Drummond had thrown in my honour fifteen years ago. It had been like eating sunshine, taking that brightness right inside of me. I picked one up and sniffed. The smell was faint but it was there: sunshine just under the skin.

I was not here for pineapples, however; the fruit I wanted wasn’t available so early in the year. On a big table in the corner I found what I was looking for — jars of bright strawberries boiled in sugar and pectin to last through the winter. It was a poor substitute for the fresh fruit but it was the best I could do. On my way to the cash register I spotted cucumbers and slipped a couple into my bag.

After this I visited the cheese shop and bought a round of brie. Quebec was one of the few places in North America where you could buy good soft cheeses. Settlers from Breton and Normandy started making them here in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, educating palettes like mine in the English and Scottish communities. The cheese I bought that day cost me half a week’s wages, but the man assured me it was ripe and of a fine quality. It came in a wooden case, which was a blessing as I still had several errands to run and didn’t want to squash it. Next I visited the patisserie and finally the wine shop, empty at this hour of the day. I was ashamed to be seen there — a woman alone — but the clerk was respectful enough. He owed me that at the very least because I was buying a magnum of his very best champagne, thereby completely draining my coffers.

By the time I made it to campus, tote bag straining at the seams, the noon bells were ringing and the sun was high. I would have to air myself out and re-pin my hair before the party, but it was good to be out of doors at this hour. Usually I was shut away at work with my catalogues. I had forgotten what a rich, sensual world existed outside the museum’s walls.

The main lawn on campus was newly melted. I breathed in the smell of mud and chlorophyll and excrement, decay that would feed the first delicate green shoots. I felt my entire self opening to the sun just like the plant life pushing through the steaming earth. Ahead of me a boy and a girl walked side by side. They were not lovers — I could tell from the way the girl stiffened when the boy’s arm touched hers. He kept brushing her as if by accident when they both knew it was deliberate. The girl laughed while the sun poured down like honey, anointing us all.

My hands were too full to search for my key; luckily the door to the museum was ajar. I barrelled in, carrying the smell of outdoors with me and tracking mud. The air was so foul I almost walked right out again. Jakob Hertzlich was at the table, blowing smoke rings. I watched as one detached from him and wobbled up over his head like a lopsided halo.

“Good morning,” I said to let him know I had arrived.

There was a pause but he did not look up or rise. “Afternoon if I’m not mistaken.”

“Good afternoon then.” He was always so punctilious! In his work for me I appreciated it, but at the moment it made me want to scream. “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, nodding my chin at the smoke.

“Working,” he said, deliberately misconstruing.

I dropped my bags. “And the implication is that I am not?”

“No implication.” He looked up at last, squinting through the haze. “You know what you’re up to. Far be it from me to judge.”

“Precisely,” I said. I waved my hands, making ripples in the air. “What is the meaning of this?”

“You weren’t here. I didn’t think it mattered.”

I groaned and went over to the windows. Opening them was tricky. At one end of the pole was a metal clip one had to fasten to a ring at the top of each window pane. It made me think of a harpoon as it wavered unsteadily in my hands. I was short, that was the problem. If I were a foot taller the task would have been easy. As it was the pole wobbled this way and that, grazing the ring on occasion, but never coming close to real connection.

Jakob did not offer to help. Not that he was doing anything else of value. He was finishing his cigarette. I laid down the pole and stripped off my coat. Sweat beaded on my lip. I could taste the salt, smell the rankness of my own frustration. I went after that window as if my life depended on it, as if the world would end if I were unable to open it.

The concentration demanded by the task calmed me. Work tended to affect me this way. It was like a meditation, a path to still waters. The hook caught and I pulled hard, up and back. The experience was much like fishing: the stretches of silence, the excitement as the rod’s tip bobbed and jerked. The pane slammed down, stopped only by two chains nailed into the topmost ledge, bouncing three times before it settled. The air rushed in. The clean green smells of spring. For the first time since my arrival I took a deep breath.

“I gave the tutorial this morning.”

That stopped me short. “Oh Lord,” I said. My best student came on Fridays. A Jewish boy like Jakob. His name was Segall. It was believed he’d win the physiology prize that year. “I completely forgot. Was he upset?”

Jakob gave a snort of laughter. “No. Worried, if you must know. You’re never late.”

“I had to go to the shops. I’ve bought preserves, cheese, bread and champagne.”

Jakob stared blankly and it was only then I understood. He had not been present when I’d announced the party for Howlett. He had already left the museum.

“We’re having a party,” I said quickly.

“You and I?”

I had to restrain myself from shaking him. “Don’t be stupid,” I snapped. “It’s for Howlett.”

Jakob returned to his work. His shirt, I couldn’t help noticing, was the same one he’d worn the day before, and the day before that. He hadn’t shaved or combed his hair. “You can leave that, Mr. Hertzlich,” I said, pushing the specimens out of his reach and shoving his notes to the side. “We must clean up.”

“I’m not a proud man,” he said, swivelling to face me, “but making parties for windbags wasn’t one of the requisites when I signed on.” He retrieved his notes, went to my desk and sat down.

I took out my pocket watch. It was almost one and I didn’t have time. If Jakob Hertzlich wouldn’t help, so be it. I would remember his insolence, perhaps even speak to Dean Clarke about it, but the choice was his.

I transferred the jars in the process of being labelled to nearby shelves. I wasn’t particularly orderly about it. There simply wasn’t time. After the party we would retrieve them and restart the labelling process, but for now I needed them out of the way. I had to wipe the table down. It was stained and reeked of chemicals, highly unappetizing no matter how accustomed Howlett was to such things. Bad enough that he would be surrounded by excised organs as he nibbled and drank.

From one of my bags I pulled a folded bed sheet that I planned to use as a tablecloth. There was no embroidery or lace trim at the corners, but it was clean and starched and would be an improvement over the stained, nicked wood of the work table. The fit was perfect and the room grew suddenly more formal.

Jakob watched me sidelong, and at one point as I swept with a broom in the vicinity of his feet he addressed me. “It’s not worth it.”

I kept on sweeping. I was wearing a lab coat to protect my dress, but it did little to protect my feelings. It was humiliating to be working like a maid, breathing in dust while Jakob sat in my chair, looking on. I was his superior for heaven’s sake. This would not have happened if I’d been a man.

“You’ll exhaust yourself.”

I could not believe his gall. I had been working for over an hour and he’d not lifted a finger. “I’d tire myself less if you’d help.”

Jakob barely flinched. “Why are you going to all this trouble?”

“Your salary depends on him for one thing,” I reminded him. “Much of mine does too.”

Jakob snorted again. “So it’s money? Is that what this is all about?”

I threw down the broom, scattering dirt and debris. “Of course not! He’s a good man, Jakob. He’s been generous to us, can’t you see? He’s backed me with his own money when no one else would offer me a dime. He’s helped me publish. If it weren’t for him I

wouldn’t have won that prize.”

“You’re wrong there.”

I closed my eyes and counted. Jakob was like the male version of the girl in the nursery rhyme with the curl in the middle of her forehead.
When he was good, he was very, very good. But when he was bad, he was horrid
.

“He doesn’t deserve the pedestal, Agnes.” He made a face then rooted in his pocket and pulled out the half-smoked stub of another cigarette.

“Don’t you dare.”

Fortunately he didn’t have a match. He contemplated it, turning it slowly in his fingers before addressing me again. “You’re behaving like a child, Agnes. And it’s not right. You’ll be hurt in the end.” He didn’t look at me but twisted the stub so tightly that the paper tore. “You don’t see it but it will happen. He doesn’t care. Not about you and certainly not about this.” He flung his arm at the room, now vastly improved from an hour’s frantic sweeping and tidying.

“There’s only one thing Dr. William E. Howlett cares about,” said Jakob, spitting out each syllable of Howlett’s name, “and that’s William E. Howlett.”

“That’s enough,” I said. All the happiness and energy I’d felt earlier that morning was leaking away. My head felt achy and tight.

But Jakob Hertzlich wasn’t quite done. “Until yesterday I thought what we were doing here was worthwhile. This museum I mean. I didn’t mind putting in the hours because we were serving people who were learning about medicine and disease. They need to see the organs and tissues first-hand so they’ll be able to recognize them in their clinical practices. We’re serving science,
ars medica
and all that edifying bunk. That’s what I used to think.

“But now I see things more clearly. We’re not serving science here, are we? We’re serving William E. Howlett and his puffed bladder of an ego. This museum is his monument, isn’t it? No wonder he sends money your way. They’ll name it after him when he dies. There’ll be no mention of Agnes White, you can be sure of that.”

I stared at the scraps at my feet. My silence seemed to enrage Jakob, who slammed his hand on my desk. “And you’re so ready to play his game. Open your eyes! Can’t you see that everything he helps you with helps him? It’s his career he’s building, not yours, Agnes. Has he got you so mesmerized you’ve gone blind?”

In a quieter voice he announced that he needed a smoke. “Not here, don’t worry. I won’t disturb your preparations.” He took up his coat and walked out.

As soon as he was gone I collapsed into the chair he’d just vacated — my chair, which happened still to be warm from him. His very particular smell — a mixture of cigarettes and the yeasty smell of his skin — lingered in the air. I couldn’t think of what he’d said, couldn’t bring myself to contemplate it.

Howlett did care, I told myself. He was looking out for me. Jakob Hertzlich was jealous, that was all. He was a bitter man with blighted prospects and I would have to be more circumspect with him in the future. I would discuss the matter with Dean Clarke. I hadn’t feared Jakob during the confrontation but I’d been taken aback by the force of his anger.

Jakob knew nothing of the link between me and Howlett. All he saw was my adulation, which probably seemed pathetic, just as Rivers’s did to me, watching from the outside. But Jakob had no idea that my father stood like a shadow behind Howlett whenever he and I met. I couldn’t blame Jakob for this ignorance but the anger he’d shown was entirely unnecessary.