Juniper & Thorn(56)
There was an organ for Cautiousness and one for Benevolence, organs for Language and Tune and Time. As it turned out, so many people wanted the topography of their brain mapped by a professional! When Dr. Bakay became the first physician in Oblya to begin practicing this new discipline, even the day laborers saved their kopeks in coffee cans to have him draw up an atlas of their minds.
They could have come to me or Undine for much cheaper.
But that meant meeting with witches. Dr. Bakay was respectable, and would tell them why it was that they were poor, and as it turned out it was not a matter of unfortunate circumstance at all. Maybe your third organ was too small and therefore you did not have enough Attentiveness to stay awake during your shift on the assembly line. Maybe your Approbation organ was far too large and you couldn’t bear to work a menial job that did not give you sufficient praise. Either way, there was little you could do but resign yourself to your station in life, or else try to surmount the hopeless augury of your own mind.
Some had a much better prognosis than others. The minds of Ye huli men, most phrenologists said, were well adapted to capitalism—their twentieth and twenty-fourth organs were enormous! That was why the gradonalchik had to draw up some laws to restrict their activities, since they had such an advantage over the rest. For instance, he banned Yehuli from residing in certain areas of the city, and from working on Sundays, and from purchasing land. I once saw a sign on a bathhouse door: no dogs or yehuli allowed. I did not know if that was one of the gradonalchik’s proclamations, or simply the bathhouse owner’s preference.
Meanwhile, Dr. Bakay chipped away at our clients the way that land developers stripped layer after layer of steppe soil for their wheat planting. I was sixteen and Papa was so angry that he spoke only in short, barbed words, and kicked our poor goblin vengefully.
And then one day Dr. Bakay arrived at our gate, his silver mustache turned upward like a smile. I was afraid that Papa would cast a spell to turn him into a truffle hog or a horned owl, but before he could even summon his magic Dr. Bakay lifted up a bag of rubles and shook it. Dr. Bakay was so clever that he knew without ever meeting him what held sway with my father.
Papa opened the door, grumbling all the while, and let Dr. Bakay into our foyer. He smelled clean and nice, like carbolic soap. He took off his hat and held it in his hands, as decorous and docile as a man a third of his age, and didn’t flinch when Papa bared his teeth at him.
“I don’t let any man into my house for free,” Papa growled.
“Yes, of course,” said Dr. Bakay, and then handed over his sack of rubles like it was nothing. He was still yet to look at me. “I come both as a fellow practitioner of medicine, and, quite simply, as a man of unquenchable curiosity. Some of my clients have spoken of the great wizard Zmiy Vashchenko and his three very talented daughters. One man told me that your daughter Rose cured his toothache for half of what I charge, and only with a fistful of herbs. Another told me that your daughter Undine foresaw his winning poker hand and all she asked for was five rubles. I can pay whatever you would like, Mr. Vashchenko, if you would allow me to indulge my curiosity with one of your daughters.”
Papa made some gruff and sputtering sounds as he pretended to consider it, but I knew that he had made up his mind the moment Dr. Bakay had passed him the money. He put the whole bag into the deep pocket of his robe, then glanced around vaguely, like he had forgotten the architecture of his own house. At last, he gave a sigh and said, “My other daughters are busy. But you can speak to Marlinchen.”
Undine had a client out by her scrying pool and Rose was in her storeroom, squinting over cut lavender stalks. Dr. Bakay gave a nod, and finally his eyes landed on me. They were warm and brown, the light jumping in them like fish darting through murky water. He looked me up and down, from the toe of my slipper to the frizzy crown of my hair, and said, “It’s very nice to meet you, Marlinchen.”
I must have stammered out my own greeting, but I cannot say I remember it. In truth, I did not remember so many things that happened during my sessions with Dr. Bakay. There were certain facts that rose to the surface, like dead things awash in the tide: the particular curve of his thumb, the bristly gray hair on the back of his hand, the way one tooth slid over his bottom lip when he smiled. Everything else sank under and was gone.
Papa led us both into the sitting room and settled into his chaise. I went to take a seat on the couch, but Dr. Bakay said, “Wait a moment. Would you mind standing, please?”
“Oh,” I said, or something equally doltish and feeble, “all right.”
“Your gift is for flesh divinity, is that correct?” Dr. Bakay asked. I nodded. He was standing very close to me, so close that a few loose strands of my hair got caught on his lips and he didn’t notice, or else didn’t bother to wipe them away. “Of course, as a physician, who studies the Body, I am vitally interested in knowing how a talent like that manifests and reflects in the subject’s anatomy. Rather, how does a witch’s anatomy differ from those of mortal women? In other words, Marlinchen, I think there must be something unique about your body, to make such a gift function as my clients have described.”
My cheeks were beginning to pink. Papa was not really listening; I could tell that his attention had gone to the rubles in his pocket and considering what he would do with them and how he might get more of them. His finger rubbed at that swell of fabric as his gaze drifted toward the ceiling. Dr. Bakay pressed the back of his hand to my forehead.