|
by Terry Richard Bazes
 I
being then in my nineteenth year and little more than a beggar -- intent, by
hook or by crook, to become a chirurgeon and yet utterly without means to
feed and clothe my body (much less to learn the merest rudiments of my
profession) -- it came about that at length I did find a way both to
earn my bread and pursue my studies by undertaking to perform a service
-- a wholly necessary and harmless service albeit one from which my more
prosperous school-mates turned away with horror and revulsion. So it
was that I got my sustenance and was suffered to sit with all the paying
scholars -- provided it was in the very backermost row -- and watch whilst our
professor probed the deepest mysteries of a fresh cadaver.
Now just exactly
how and whence these cadavers were supplied were questions my finical colleagues dared not closely entertain, although in gross they knew the truth
and shunned me like a leper. But I cared not a fart for their esteem, so long
as I could learn, and the short of it was that I advanced quickly in my
studies and was oft besought by my professors for a specimen and consequently
was upon ever the most constant look-out for the newly dead.
For this purpose
it was my practice to put on the clothes and countenance of a mourner and,
thus disguised, to frequent the very meanest of country churches in the hope
that there I might chance upon some humble obsequies. If fortune
smiled, and some farmer or laundress had departed this life, then I would
repair under the cloak of starlight unto the churchyard, still in
mourning attire and carrying a fistful of daisies and a Bible, lest I
be questioned of my purpose and require a ready pretext. The great
secret of the art was to work with utmost haste and efface the smallest
evidence of theft. Therefore, by the light of my lantern, I studied the
disposition of each rock, each wreath of flowers -- and, thus informed of the
state to which the grave must later be restored, now proceeded to violate the
soil, but only so much as to permit my shovel to break the very head-piece of
the box. This method, once perfected, allowed me -- in a trice -- to
draw the carcass out, conceal it in a sack, restore the injured earth, and
load my stiffened burden on a waiting dung-cart.
‘Twas in this
manner that I contrived to fill my belly, ensure the progress of my studies
and the comfort of a flea-bit pallet. But equally I ensured the
loathing of my fellows -- and even my professors, though they oft were
beholden to my services, recoiled from my presence and did seem more to
grudge than praise my nimble learning. Indeed, so contradictory was my
position -- as much needed as despised for the performance of my midnight
labors, ahead of my fine classmates but in the rear of their esteem (without
which my future as a surgeon was foredoomed) -- that I began to fear that I
at best would be a physician to the poor, or at worst a wretched leach to
oxen, pigs and horses.
Thus, whilst I lay
abed one evening in my garret, did I meditate my dismal plight and the wreck
of my ambitions, when I heard a sudden knocking on my door. No sooner had I
risen up and inquired who it was, than I had drawn the bolt -- and beheld,
there before me, a creature whom elsewise I would have taken for a mere
cut-purse, had the fellow not been most servile and worn a footman’s livery.
He had, he said, been sent to ask the favour of my services, forasmuch as a
certain noble earl had need of a handsome, young, female carcass -- for which
specimen I would be excellently paid provided it be fresh and that the feet
were shapely and unblemished.
One may easily
conceive with what astonishment I attended this request. Indeed, I do
not wholly recall my stammering response -- save that I would consider on the
matter and speak about it more upon the morrow. Nonetheless, I well recall in
what state of sleepless perturbation I subsequently tossed upon my pallet.
For though I long had regarded my churchyard labors as unavoidable expedients
to the growth of science, I could not readily degrade my somber office to the
lewd employment of a common bawd. For I doubted not that this earl (of whose
profligacy I had heard before) required a female cadaver, not for the
furtherance of science, but to indulge a heinous and obscene appetite.
|