Ingenious pain, Andrew Miller [little red riding hood ebook .txt] 📗

poetry, of course, or stories - the boy is blind to them - but books of anatomy, books of maps, books of experiments; books with complex seductive diagrams, books of astronomy, geometry . . . With Mr Collins at his shoulder, December rain on the windows, candles flickering against the long afternoon twilight, James stumbles through some pages of Latin in Harvey's De Motu Cordis. But it is the pictures which snare him: the world beneath the skin; the skein of guts, the globes and bulbs of the great organs; the sheets of muscle strapped around the trellis of the bones; the intricate house of the heart, veins and arteries radiating, curling, branching into tiny tributaries.

Through the slough of the year, Mr Collins feeds the boy Borelli

and Malphigi ('/ have sacrificed almost the whole race of frogs . . .'); Fabricius of Padua; and from its high shelf, the librarian on tiptoe in his mobile pulpit, Vesalius's anatomy, De Humanis Corporis Fabrica, the title page showing the great man, knuckle deep in the abdomen of a female cadaver at the theatre of public anatomy in Padua. James even learns a dozen vv^ords of Greek.

Molina's studio, discovered by James as he discovers everything in this house - the chance turning of a handle, a door untried - is high among the warren of servants' quarters, above the crowns of the trees, level almost with the circling of the rooks. It is cluttered with the painter's domestic junk: paint-streaked shirts, cups and kettles, empty wine bottles, a large broken clock, brushes in jars of fluid. A grey cat squats by a plate of fish-heads, undisturbed by the boy's presence. Molina has his back to him, does not turn from his canvas but reaches back with one hand to wave the boy to a seat, some exploded oriental couch near where the girls are sitting. The twins seem stunned by the fixity of their pose, their dress sparkling, their faces feverish in the light from a dozen candelabras.

Says Molina: 'Ya estd . . . rest now.'

He steps around the canvas, drops the brush into a champagne flute, stretches mightily.

He says: 'So this is the boy they have told me about.' They hold each other's gaze, the painter nodding his head: a tall, gaunt man with thick eyebrows, and a head of thick brown hair tied in a black ribbon. 'And have you come to be painted, my friend?'

The twins say: 'You must finish us first!'

'Have no fear,' replies Molina. 'Your immortality is almost complete.'

The twins jump up from their couch, stand before the canvas, clap their hands delightedly.

'Will you paint us afterwards} Will you? James, you shall never

guess what has happened! Mr Canning says he shall present us at court! Imagine!'

Molina laughs. 'Perhaps James can go too and dance with you at a ball. One after the other. You must ask them now, James. They will be in great demand. My dears, you must sit again, a little while more . . .'

'We're bored! We want to talk to James.'

'James will sit here with us and Hsten to your chatter. Now, like before, yes . . . Your hand, Anna, more so . . . perfect. Now I paint.'

Molina works. When the twins have fallen silent, have entered again the trance of their pose, he says to James: 'The measure of an artist is the quaUty of his attention. You understand? The way he is looking at his subject. Perhaps that is also the measure of a man, no? Tell me, James, you like your new home?'

'Well enough.'

'So, so. I understand you have a very special, hmm, ability. No feeling, no . . . sensation. Truly I cannot imagine such a thing.'

Says James: 'What is your "ability"?'

'This, my friend. Only this poor business with the paint. Look, they are asleep. It is their condition. They must share the same blood. It is not enough. You think they are pretty? I show you something. When they sleep like this you can fire a pistol and they do not wake.'

Molina walks up to the girls, reaches down and takes hold of the hem of their dress. 'Come, James.'

He ravels up the material. Four plump legs in red stockings tied with ribbon above the knees. Four white thighs, very nude, and two neat beards of tight coppery curls. The join is at the hip. Molina takes James's hand, places it just where the flesh is fused; the confluence of bone and blood. There are tears in his eyes.

'It is so soft, no? So . . . No se como se dice ... It feels as if, a little push, and your hand would be inside. I saw this, James, one

time in my home, in Granada ... A man, a Moor, a healer ... he reach into a boy's flesh and take out a part that is bad. No knife, no blood. I saw this myself. The boy had some pain, but little. His mother held him. The Moor reached in . . . like he pulled a fish from a pool. I would like to paint them without their clothes but they are timid. I think if I give them a little wine. Then perhaps they will do it.'

James gently palpates the flesh. He is wondering how the major organs are shared between the twins: bowel and colon, spleen, kidneys, pancreas . . . what if there were not enough, if, for example, they shared a single liver? Was there some way of knowing beforehand, or only once they were on the table? Did Mr Canning know?

Molina lifts the boy's hand away, covers the girls with their dress.

'Have you ever painted, James?'

'At school I used to draw things. I found it easy.'

'I think so. These are painter's hands you have. Artist hands.' He looks at the boy, smiles. It is a kindly, a pitying smile. 'You really feel nothing, my friend?'

James shakes his head. He does not care to be pitied.

'No pain?'

'Never.'

'And pleasure? You feel pleasure?'

No