Дэниел Мейсон - The Winter Soldier

“A lovely idea, Krzelewski. But you must know when to stop.”

Still, Lucius would not relent.

Most classmates made up for limited clinical training by spending their vacations volunteering in provincial hospitals. Lancing milkmaids’ boils, his mother called it, so Feuermann went alone, set broken legs, repaired a pitchfork wound, pronounced a man dead from rabies, and delivered nine babies to fertile country girls so robust they sometimes walked in from the fields in labor. Three weeks later, back at their table at Café Landtmann, Lucius listened as his friend described each case in detail, his tan, child-birthing forearms waving his confident, child-birthing fingers in the air. He didn’t know what made him more jealous: the meals the peasants prepared in gratitude or the sunburnt girls who kissed Feuermann’s palm. Or the chance to deliver a baby using procedures he had only practiced on the satin vagina of a manikin. He had spent the month chasing a mix of iodine and bromine, only to find that Zimmer had switched the labels on the flasks.

“I can’t describe it, truly, words can’t do it justice,” said Feuermann, flipping a coin onto the silver platter of the waiter. “Next summer, we’ll go together. You haven’t lived until you’ve held one in your arms.”

“A milkmaid?” Lucius joked weakly.

“A baby, a real live baby. Pink and lusty. Screaming with life.”

The last straw came in May 1914.

That afternoon, Zimmer called him conspiratorially to his office. He needed Lucius’s help, he said. He had a very peculiar case.

For a moment, Lucius felt that old excitement. “What sort of case, Herr Professor?”

“A perplexing condition.”

“Indeed.”

“ Very mysterious.”

“Herr Professor is being youthfully playful.”

“A case of severe coccygeal ichthyoidization .”

“Sorry, Herr Professor?”

Now Zimmer could not control his giggling. “Mermaids, Krzelewski. In the Medical Museum.”

Since beginning medical school, Lucius had heard the rumor. The museum, with objects from the famous Cabinet of Wonders of Rudolf II, was said to contain, among its centuries of priceless artifacts, a pair of dwarfs, three formalin-preserved angels, and several mermaids gifted to the Emperor after washing up on foreign shores. But no student had ever been inside.

“Herr Professor has a key?”

His answer was a smile, mischievous, revealing gums and pebbly teeth.

They went down that night, after the curator had left.

The hall was dark. They passed tables of torture implements, jars of fetal malformations, a collection of dodo beaks and pickled terrapins, and a shrunken Amazonian head. At last they arrived at a distant shelf. There they were. Not some lovely young girls floating in a tank, as Lucius had always imagined, but two shriveled corpses the size of babies, the dried skin of their faces pulled back over the teeth, the torsos narrowing before they merged into scaly tails.

Zimmer had brought a rucksack. He opened it and motioned for Lucius to set one of the bodies inside. They would take it up to the X-ray machine, to see if the lumbar spine articulated with the vertebrae of the tail.

“With all due respect, Herr Professor,” said Lucius, feeling a faint despondency sneak into his voice. “I really doubt it does.”

“Look at the surface—one sees no glue, no thread.”

“It is a very good hoax, Herr Professor.”

But Zimmer had his monocle on and was peering into the first one’s mouth.

“Herr Professor. Do you really think it is wise to take them? They look… crispy. What if one breaks?”

Zimmer rapped it gavel-like against the shelf. “Very strong,” he said.

Lucius took it, gently. It was light, the skin like dry leather. It seemed to be pinching its eyes shut. It looked outraged.

“Come,” Zimmer said, slipping it inside the bag.

The Medical Museum sat in the basement. They climbed the stairs and walked down the main hall, lined with statues of Vienna’s great physicians. Only a distant light was on. Lucius was thankful that it was evening and his classmates had gone home. The sound of the mermaid rubbing against the canvas of the bag seemed even louder than his footsteps.

They were about to exit, when they heard a voice. “Herr Professor Zimmer!” They stopped, and Lucius turned to see the rector, with a small, dark-haired woman at his side.

The rector approached Zimmer with a broad smile, lifting his arms in greeting.

Zimmer scarcely noticed him. Instead he took the woman’s hand.

“Ah, Madame Professor. What brings you to Vienna?”

“A lecture, Herr Professor,” she answered in accented German. “It’s all lectures these days.”

The rector now had noticed Lucius. To the woman, he said, “This is one of Vienna’s finer students. Kerzelowski… ahem… Kurslawski…”

“K-she-lev-ski,” said Lucius, despite his better instincts. “In Polish, the Krze is pronounced…”

“Of course!” The rector turned. “You’ve heard of Madame Professor Curie?”

Lucius froze. Madame Marie Skłodowska Curie. He dropped his head. “A great honor,” he murmured reverentially. Two Nobel Prizes: in the Polish community of Vienna she was a saint.

Madame Curie smiled. In Polish, she said, “Krzelewski—a Pole?”

“Yes, Madame Professor.”

She leaned in conspiratorially. “What a relief! My God, how sick I am of speaking German.”

Lucius looked uncomfortably at the men, who seemed pleased to see that Madame Curie had found a conversation mate. Not knowing what to say, he replied, “Polish is a beautiful language.”

But the great chemist seemed not to have registered how awkward this sounded. In German, she said to the rector, “Might we bring them to supper? I am happy to meet a fellow countryman.” Then in Polish, to Lucius, “These old men are so boring! I am ready to die.”

Lucius looked to Zimmer, hoping his professor might intervene and suggest they drop the rucksack off at his office, but he seemed to have forgotten that Lucius was still carrying it beneath his arm.

They dined that night at Meissl und Schadn. Madame Curie asked to stretch her legs, and so they walked. Along the Ringstrasse, they were followed at a short distance by a pair of mangy dogs, who whined hungrily at the rucksack. At the door, the maître d’ offered to take the bag, but Lucius said politely that it wasn’t necessary, and as deftly as possible, he slipped it beneath his chair. At the beginning of the meal, Zimmer spoke at some length about his radiological work, and Madame Curie asked sharp questions about contrast agents, most of which Zimmer asked Lucius to field. They had just begun dessert, when the great chemist asked the two professors permission to speak in Polish.

“Of course!”

To Lucius she said, “What’s in the bag?”

“The bag, Madame Professor?”

“Don’t play stupid, young man. Who brings a rucksack into Meissl und Schadn and tries to hide it under the table? It must be something really precious.” She winked. “I have spent the last half hour palpating it with my foot.”

“It is a mermaid, Madame Professor,” said Lucius, who did not know what else to say.

Her eyebrows rose. “Indeed! A dried one?”

“Yes… a dried one, Madame Professor. How did you know?”

“Well, she’s not preserved or we would smell the chloroform. And she’s not alive, as I’d imagine she’d be struggling. I’d be struggling. It is a she, isn’t it? Our exotic things are always female.”

Lucius looked anxiously about. “I have not been able to confirm, Madame Professor. I am unfamiliar with the anatomy.” Then in horror, he realized the unfortunate way this could be misunderstood. Thankful for the dark light of the restaurant, he added, quickly, “I have never seen a mermaid before.”