The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

On the top shelf of the carved bookcase was this big green book, really heavy; he had to stand on a chair to get it, be really careful not to drop it on Doctor's leather-topped desk, break the skull that Doctor used for a paperweight. A monkey skull, too small to have come from a person, but he liked to pretend it was from a person. One of the midgets in the pictures. Maybe he'd tried to attack the boy's family and the boy had killed him and saved everyone, like a big hero, then peeled off the skin to get the skull.

The green book was old-the date on it was 1908-and it had a long title: The Atlas of Clinical Surgery by Professor Bockenheimer or some weird name like that, from a place called Berlin; he looked it up in his junior encyclopedia and found out it was in Germany.

Someone had written something inside the cover of the book, in this weird, thin handwriting that looked like dead bugs and spider legs, it took him a long time to figure it out.

To Charles, my learned colleague, with deepest gratitude for your kind hospitality and stimulating conversation.

Best wishes, Dieter Schwann

What was neat about the green book was that the pictures looked really real, as if you could put your hand out and touch them, just like looking through a 3-D stereoscope. The book said they were pictures of models. Models made by some guy named F. Kalbow from the-this was a really hard one-Pathoplastic Institute of Berlin.

One model was a guy's face with a hole in it called a sarcoma. The hole covered the guy's nose and mouth. All you could see was eyes and then the hole-inside it was all pink and yellow. Another one was a pecker all squashed up, with some grayish, wrinkly thing around it and a big sore on the tip. Kind of like an earthworm with a red head. One he really liked to look at was this big picture of a butthole with pink flowerlike things all over it. A butthole flower garden.

It was dirty stuff. He wanted to take a knife and cut it all away and peel it, make everything clean and nice.

To be the boss, and save everyone.

The other things he really liked were the knives and tools in the big black leather case that sat next to the monkey skull.

The inside of the case was red velvet. Gold letters were stamped into it: Jetter und Scheerer: Tuttlingen und Berlin. There it was again, that same place, Berlin. It was a doctor city, probably. Full of doctor stuff.

The knives and tools were held in place by leather straps.

There were a lot of them; when you picked up the case it kind of clinked. The blades were silvery metal, the handles some smooth, white, shiny stuff that looked like the inside of a seashell.

He'd like to unfasten the straps and take the knives out, one by one, then arrange them like ice-cream sticks, making letters and designs with them on the desk top. His initials, in knife-letters.

They were really sharp. He found out by accident when he touched the tip of one of them to his finger and all of a sudden his skin had opened, as if by magic. It was a deep cut and it scared him but he felt good, seeing the different layers of skin, what was inside of him. It didn't even hurt, at first; then it started to bleed-a lot-and he felt a sharp, pumping pain. He grabbed a tissue, wrapped it around his finger, and squeezed, watching the tissue turn from white to red, sitting there a long time until the blood finally stopped coming out. He unwrapped the finger, touched the tissue to his tongue, tasted salt and paper, crumpled it, and stuffed it into his pocket.

After that he cut himself from time to time. On purpose-he was the boss over the knives. Little tiny cuts that didn't bleed for long, notches nicked into the tops of his fingernails. There was a squeezing tool in the case, off to one side, and he used it to squeeze his finger until it turned purple and hot and throbbing and he couldn't stand it any longer. He used tissues to soak up the blood, collected the bloody pieces of paper, and hid them in a toy box in his closet.

After playing with the knives, he sometimes went up to his room, locked the door, and took out nail files, scissors, safety pins, and pencils. Laying them out on his own desk, slapping together clay people and doing operations on them, using red clay for blood, making sarcoma holes and butthole flowers, cutting off their arms and legs.

Sometimes he imagined the clay people screaming. Loud, wiggly screams of Oh, no! and Oh, my god! Chopping off their heads stopped that.

That'll show you to scream!

He played with the knives for weeks before finding the knife book.

The knife book had no people in it, just drawings of knives and tools. A catalog. He turned pages until he found drawings that matched the knives in the black leather case. Spent a long time finding matches, learning the names and memorizing them.

The seven ones with the short blades were called scalpels.

The folding one on top with the little pointed blade was a lancet.

The ones with the long blades were called bistouries.

The skinny, round things were surgical needles.

The sharp spoon was a probe and scoop.

The one that kind of looked like a fork with two points was a probe-detector.

The hollow tube was a cannula; the pointy thing that fit into it was a trocar.

The fat one with the thick, flat blade was a raspatory.

The squeezing one off on the side, by itself, was a harelip clamp.

At the bottom of the case was his favorite one. It really Bade him feel like the boss, even though he was still scared to pick it up, it was so big and felt so dangerous.

The amputating knife. He needed two hands to hold it steady. Swing it in an arc, a soft, white neck its target.

Cut, slice.

Oh, god!

That'll show you.

There was other neat stuff in the library too. A big brass microscope and a wooden box of prepared slides-flies' legs that looked like hairy trees, red blood cells, flat and round like flying saucers. Human hair, bacteria. And a box of hypodermic needles in one of the desk drawers. He took one out, unwrapped it, and stuck it in the back of one of the leather chairs, on the bottom, next to the wall, where no one would notice it. Pretending the chair was an animal, he gave it shots, jabbing the needle in again and again, hearing the animal screaming until it turned into a person-a naked, ugly person, a girl-and started screaming in words.

Oh, no! Oh, god!

"There!" Jab. "That'll show you!" Twist.

He stole that needle, took it up to his room, and put it in with the bloody tissues.

A neat room. Lots of neat stuff.

But he liked the knives the best.

More interviews, more dead ends; five detectives working like mules.

Lacking any new leads, Daniel decided to retrace old ones. He drove to the Russian Compound jail and interviewed Anwar Rashmawi, concentrating on the brother's final conversation with Issa Abdelatif, trying to discern if the boyfriend had said anything about where he and Fatma had stayed between the time she'd left Saint Saviour's and the day of her murder. If Abdelatif's comment about Fatma's being dead had been more specific than Anwar had let on.

The guard brought Anwar in, wearing prison pajamas three sizes too big for him. Daniel could tell right away the brother was different, hostile, no longer the outcast. He entered the interrogation room swaggering and scowling, ignored Daniel's greeting and the guard's order to sit. Finally the guard pushed him down into the chair, said, "Stay there, you," and asked Daniel if there was anything more he needed.

"Nothing more. You may go."

When they were alone, Anwar crossed his legs, sat back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling, either ignoring Daniel's questions or turning them into feeble jokes.

Quite a change from the puff pastry who'd confessed to him two weeks ago. Bolstered, no doubt, by what he imagined to be hero status. According to the guards, his father had been visiting him regularly, the two of them playing sheshbesh, listening to music on Radio Amman, sharing cigarettes like best pals. The old man smiling with pride as he left the cell.