Jack O'Connell - The Resurrectionist

Peck studied the image for a moment, frowned at it, unable to recall from where it had come. Then he dropped the bookmark to the floor and read, rendering the English from the old French:

Languor is a tendency to relax and be motionless,

and this is experienced in all the members;

like tremors, it proceeds from the fact

that sufficient animal spirits do not get into the nerves.

A swoon, however, is not far removed from death,

for death results when the fire

which is in our heart

is extinguished altogether,

and we only fall into a faint

when it is stifled in such a way

that there still remains some traces of heat,

which, afterward, may rekindle.

A pause to let the words have their effect.

“As you might imagine,” Peck said, “and like everything else, it loses something in the translation.”

The doctor took great pleasure in reading to Rene. It reminded him of those lost Sundays, years ago, when Alice would sit on his lap downstairs in the study rocker and he would perform her favorite story, shamelessly acting out the dialogue of the princess and the prince and the evil witch with her poisoned apple.

Now he dropped the book onto the floor and put his hands behind his head.

“But the point remains,” he said. “Just like you, my friend. Theories come and theories go. But the salamander remains. Take Tannenbaum, for instance. Been here how long now? But still he believes — he insists — that consciousness is a collection of patterns residing in known space and time. Everything for him comes down to the firing of neurons. Transmission and reception.”

A belch.

“Smug son of a bitch,” looking down at the sallie. “There is a kind of doctor, you know. More common than you’d imagine. Never known a day of doubt. But, tell me, Rene, if you’ve never known doubt, how can you know true faith?”

Peck wanted to roll on his side but the newt looked so comfortable.

“I’ve had years composed of nothing but doubt. Two arousals, Rene,” holding up fingers to illustrate, “two arousals in ten years. In all that time, the only thing I haven’t doubted is the existence of my own mind. But make no mistake, self-awareness is both boon and curse.”

He lifted his head to focus in on his confidant.

“Sometimes I think I amuse you with my confessions. But I can’t help this sense that the mind has its own cupola. Its own refuge. And if I can locate the refuge of consciousness, I can break inside. If not through the front door, then through the back. If not through the back, then through a window. If I can find its lair, I can poke it. And if I can poke it, I can wake it up.”

Suddenly invigorated by his own pep talk, he returned the newt to the glass bowl, then grabbed the flashlight from the floor. Sitting up, he peeled Daniel Sweeney’s latest brain scan from his chest and fixed the film against the cupola window. He thumbed on the flashlight — it was a diver’s lamp and its hundred-thousand-candlepower beam passed through the film and projected the image of the boy’s sleeping brain out over the sea of pines. As the trees rippled in patterns with the wind, the brain itself, enlarged to ten times its true size, also appeared to ruffle and wave.

Peck studied the organ’s topography as he spoke to Rene.

“Our problem, of course, is the father. Always the father.”

He stopped himself and stared at the undulating map of the child’s brain and in the long silence that followed, the newt began to lash his tail back and forth and excrete his toxins into the drying moss at the bottom of his bowl.

“But I promise you that we will deal with the pharmacist,” Peck said. “And one way or another, I will step out onto that ocean and walk upon that water,” face grimacing and fully theatrical now, as he used his finger to mark the places where he would cut open the child’s skull and poke the brain with his monk’s harpoon, spreading the new seed and birthing a new world.

But Rene was no longer listening. He had stopped at that moment when the makeshift bookmark had floated to the floor next to his bowl. And the caped sorcerer caught the salamander’s eye and began to work his dark mesmerism across those vast expanses of myriad dimensions.

. . Needless to say, following the murder of Lazarus Cole, the freaks and their strongman moved through that first night of the Jubilee in a state of stunned disbelief. And yet, they seemed to be the only ones who experienced the aftershock of witnessing such a degenerate and orchestrated killing.

“But remember,” Chick said to them just before the sideshow annex was opened for business, “the Jubilee comes through Mach’pella every year. And according to the bannerline, Lazarus Cole has been with them for seven seasons now.”

“You’re saying,” said Milena as s/he applied talc in the dressing room, “that he’s not really dead.”

“He’s a magician,” said Aziz, doing his stretching exercises. “That’s what he does. It’s all a trick. It’s the art of illusion.”

“I’ve been on the circuit all my life,” the lobster girl said, applying oil to her claws. “And I’ve dated my share of magic men. But I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s obscene, is what it is.”

Bruno had been sitting on a stool, trying to memorize a spiel that Milena had written for him.

“If it is an illusion,” he said, “it’s the best damned illusion I’ve ever seen. And I’ve shared bills and played cards with the best magicians in Bohemia.”

“Even if it is an illusion,” said Kitty, standing atop two orange crates, ironing an evening gown, “it feels like the trick is beside the point.”

“Kitty’s right,” said Vasco, slicking back his hair.

“There’s something wrong with this show,” said Marcel, borrowing the comb and completing the thought.

“Well,” said Milena, picking a feather boa from a steamer trunk, “right or wrong, we’ve got to get to work. It’s showtime.”

BRUNO DID HIS BEST. On this, all the freaks would agree. He made a valiant effort. And if good intentions could fill a sideshow, the annex would have been a straw house that night. He helped each member of the clan up onto his or her particular stage, helped them get positioned, and assisted with props. He rolled down each curtain — the Jubilee had reasonably appropriate banners for a hermaphrodite, a female dwarf, and Siamese twins. The rest got velvet drapes without any illustration. No one complained and everyone hit the boards as confident professionals.

Everyone, that is, except for Bruno. Put him in a ring, on a field, and he would shine. He could box or wrestle three men at a time. He could break chains, heave boulders, hoist the largest livestock on the farm. But what he could not do was bark.

Bruno Seboldt was no salesman. Not so long ago, he would never have imagined a time in his life when this fact would constitute a problem. But tonight, in the country of Gehenna, in the town of Mach’pella, in the company of the Roving Jubilee, it was nothing short of a crippling disability. And he found himself utterly tongue-tied and, for the first time, genuinely fearful.

He stood at the annex entrance, choking in a bow tie, sweating under the band of a straw boater, a bamboo cane looking like a child’s toy in his hand. He tried to recite the patter that Milena had written for him but it was no use. The words he managed to remember came out stilted and ridiculous.

“Step right up,” he began. “See the world’s most astounding individuals. One small fee brings you face to face with eleven wonders of the universe.”