The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1)(46)

“Are you back, then? Good; I need your help,” he said. “Start at the far end of that shelf over there.”

“Actually, sir, I haven’t left yet.”

“I beg to differ, Will Henry. You’ve been gone for some time.”

“Only to wash up, sir.”

“Why, were you dirty?” He did not wait for a response. “So you’ve decided you’re not hungry after all?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re not hungry?”

“I am hungry, sir.”

“Yet you just said you were not.”

“Sir?”

“I asked if you had decided you were not hungry after all, and you replied, ‘No, sir.’ That is my memory of it, at any rate.”

“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. I mean… I was wondering… That is, I’ve been meaning to ask if you found my hat.”

He stared at me uncomprehendingly, as if I were speaking an exotic foreign tongue.

“Hat?”

“Yes, sir. My hat. I think I lost it at the cemetery.”

“I didn’t know you owned a hat.”

“Yes, sir. I wore it to the cemetery that night, and it must have fallen off when they… when we left, sir. I was wondering if you might have found it when you returned to… to tidy things up there.”

“I didn’t see any hats, except the one I gave you to destroy. Whenever did you acquire a hat, Will Henry?”

“It was mine when I came, sir.”

“When you came… where?”

“Here, sir. To live here. It was my hat, sir. My father gave it to me.”

“I see. Was it his hat?”

“No, sir. It was my hat.”

“Oh. I thought perhaps it held some sentimental value.”

“It did, sir. I mean, it does.”

“Why? What is so special about a hat, Will Henry?”

“My father gave it to me,” I repeated.

“Your father. Will Henry, may I give you a piece of advice?”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

“Don’t invest too much of yourself in material things.”

“No, sir.”

“Of course, that bit of wisdom is not original to me. Still, much more valuable than any hat. Have we satisfied your inquiry, Will Henry?”

“Yes, sir. I suppose it’s lost for good.”

“Nothing is ever truly lost, Will Henry. Unless we are talking about the evidence my father must have left behind regarding this unholy business. Or the reason you remain standing there uselessly while I look for it.”

“Sir?” He had completely lost me.

“Either get yourself to the market or help me, Will Henry! Snap to it! I don’t know how you manage to draw me into these philosophical diversions.”

“I just wanted to know if you found my hat,” I said.

“Well, I did not.”

“That’s all I wanted to know.”

“If you’re looking for my permission to purchase a new one, get thee to a haberdasher, Will Henry, with the caveat that you do so sometime today.”

“I don’t want a new hat, sir. I want my old hat.”

He sighed. I scampered away before he could fashion a reply. It had seemed a very simple matter to me. Either he had found my hat at the cemetery or he had not. A simple No, I did not find your little hat, Will Henry would have sufficed. I did not feel altogether responsible for the circuitous nature of our discourse. There were times when the doctor, despite being America-born and England-educated, seemed flummoxed by the precepts of normal conversation.

I arrived in town hatless but happy. For a few precious minutes, at least, I was free of all things monstrumological. Particularly trying had been the last two days. Had it been only two days since the old grave-robber had appeared at our door with his ghastly burden? It seemed like two times twenty. Hurrying along the cobblestone streets of New Jerusalem’s bustling center, breathing deep the crisp, clean air of early spring, I thought, for a fleeting moment, as I’d thought more than once since I had come to live with him (as anyone in my position might think), of escape.

The doctor had not thrown bars over the windows; he did not lock me inside my little alcove like a caged bird by night, or shackle me to a post by day. Indeed, when not in need of my “indispensable” services, he hardly took notice of me at all. If I fled while he wallowed in the malaise of one of his melancholic spells, a month might pass before he realized I was gone. Like the afflicted slave laboring in the cotton fields of the old South, I did not worry about where I would go or how I would get there or what I would do once there. Those concerns seemed but trivialities. The point of freedom, after all, is freedom itself.

Often over the years I have asked myself why I never ran away. What bound me to him beyond the inertia to which all humans are susceptible? I was not bound by blood. Not by oath. Not by law. Yet every time the thought of flight flittered across my consciousness, it disappeared as ephemerally as a will-o’-the-wisp, an ignis fatuus, an elusive glow over the marshland of my psyche. To leave him was not unthinkable-I confess I thought of it often-but to be away from him was. Was it fear that kept me by his side, fear of the unknown, fear of being adrift and alone, fear that I might meet a fate far more frightening than service to a monstrumologist? Was it that an unpleasant “known” is preferable to any unpredictable “unknown”?