I question whether it was a good thing to steer a boy of thirteen into an undertaking parlour that is run by a bootlegger, said the Lesser Zadkiel.
–I don’t, said the Daimon Maimas. He had been old-womaned far too much by Aunt. He needed a man in his life, and where was the Wooden Soldier? Saving the Empire across the ocean. And his mother was being wonderful to wounded soldiers, but had no time for her son. His grandfather was far too broken to be more than another gentle presence in the boy’s life, though he was very kind, when he thought about it.
–Grandfather broken?
–The Senator never got over the destruction of his idol. When Mary-Jacohine got into trouble and had to be married off to the likeliest comer—and a Protestant at that—he never quite believed in anything again. He was a strong man in business and in politics, but those are external things: only a fool gives his soul to them. The pith had been scooped out of him. Look at Marie-Louise: an aging, fat gambler. Look at Mary-Ben: she idolized her brother but she never understood more than half of him. Zadok was the strongest man around the place, as you well know.
–A rogue, my dear colleague. A rogue.
–Very well, but a kindly, decent rogue, in the thick of life and death. I had to work with what was at hand, you know.
–As you say. I have not had to do your work, so I certainly must not find fault with the way you did it.
–Quite so. And Zadok was something of an artist, as we’ll see, if you will be so good as to go on with your narrative. By the way, do you know how it comes out?
–I cannot remember all these lives in detail. Like yourself, I am simply being reminded of the life of Francis Cornish.
The light in Mr. Devinney’s workroom was like the light in Rembrandt, thought Francis; two mean bulbs, hanging above the narrow, slanted table on which Zadok had now placed the bundle which was all that was left of Old McAllister, a mean old sodbuster. Zadok was scrubbing his hands fiercely with yellow soap at a sink.
“Cleanliness is essential,” he said. “Respect for the dead, and precaution for the living. You never really know what these people died of. So I’ll just throw around some carbolic, and you keep well in your corner, me dear.”
Well in his corner, perched on two coffin crates so that he had a good view of the scene, Francis had his notebook and pencil ready.
Respect for the dead; Zadok was gentle in unwrapping Old McAllister, who had apparently died in his long underwear, a baggy, liver-coloured extra skin. Quickly Zadok ripped the underwear with a curved knife which Francis recognized as a pruning-knife, and soon Old McAllister was naked, an unimpressive sight, but a Golconda for Francis.
This was something he had never reckoned on. He would be able to draw the nude figure, which even Harry Furmss insisted was the foremost necessity—after seeing what was in front of your eyes—in becoming an artist.
Old McAllister was balding and scrawny. His face and hands were tanned a deep brown by sixty-seven years of Ottawa Valley weather, but the rest of him was a bluey-white. His legs were like sticks, and his feet fell outward and sideways. Zadok had cut off his underwear because Old McAllister, according to local custom, had been sewed into it for the winter. Francis knew all about that; most of the children in Carlyle Rural were so encased and they stank amazingly.
“A bath, for a starter,” said Zadok. “First, though, a thorough swilling-out.” With a large squirt he neatly washed out the rectum of the corpse into a bucket. Then, with a dribble from a short hose, and frequent dabblings of carbolic, Zadok washed Old McAllister; the water fell to the cement floor and vanished down a drain. He washed Old McAllister’s hands, with plentiful lathering of yellow soap, and cleaned the nails with his jack-knife.
“Always a problem, this,” he said to the busily scribbling Francis. “These fellas never clean their nails from Easter to Easter, but they have to have hands like a barber for the viewing. It’s part of the art, you see. At the end they must look as they’d have looked on their wedding-day, or better. Probably better.”
He shaved Old McAllister with ample lather and hot water. “Lucky I had some experience as a valet,” he said, “but of course no valet could get away with this.” He deftly poked a finger into the corpse’s mouth to push out the hollow cheeks. The scrape of the razor told of the toughness of Old McAllister’s beard. “Never been shaved more than once a week in his life, I don’t suppose,” said Zadok.
“Now didn’t I have a roll of cotton-wool? For what we call the orifices.”
The orifices were the ears, the nostrils, and, to Francis’s surprise, the anus; into each a sufficient plug of wool was stuffed. Then a big chunk into the mouth, and before it was closed a large gob of beeswax was popped in and Zadok held the jaws until they were firmly clamped.
“This is easy enough in a winter funeral,” he said, “but in summer it’s another thing altogether. I’ve seen funerals where the wax went soft and the mouth opened unexpectedly and you wouldn’t believe the screaming and fainting. But we’ll have none of that with you, old boy, will we?” he said, and gave Old McAllister a friendly pat on the shoulder. “There, now we’ve done the clean-up jobs. Now comes the science. If you feel queer, dear soul, there’s the bucket just by you.”
Francis did not feel queer. He had got Old McAllister’s right hand—what a hand for knots and lumps! He had got both feet, corns and bunions complete. He was now busy on a full-length, with difficult perspective. That picture that Aunt didn’t like him to linger over in Gems–the Anatomy Lesson, was it called?—lived in his memory and came to his aid. This was great! This was life!
Zadok had drawn up a machine that sat on a wheeled cart, and looked like a tank with a hose coming out of it, beside his work-table. With a little fleam he lifted a vein in Old McAllister’s arm, inserted a thickish needle that was attached to the hose, and began slowly and watchfully to work a pump-handle on his machine. As he pumped, he sang, in a fine bass, but sotto voce:
This went on for quite a long time—time enough for Francis to do another drawing, with Zadok’s dark figure standing beside the body. He was proud of his professionalism in roughing in Old McAllister’s privy parts; just six quick lines and a shadow, like Rembrandt. Nothing of the grossness of the boys who drew such things on fences. But of course they were not artists.
“Here we go for the big one,” said Zadok. Quickly he nicked Old McAllister’s navel, thrust in a larger needle—he called it a trocar—and pumped again. Then, something very delicate, involving the corner of the eye.
“There, old lad,” he said. “That’ll hold you for a week or two. Now for the real art, Frankie.”
As he worked, Zadok, always a genial man, became positively merry. “No time to waste; don’t want him to harden on me,” he said, as he seemed to wrestle with Old McAllister, quickly getting him into socks, trousers, and a shirt that had come in a bundle from the farm. “On with your dancing-pumps, gaffer,” he said, as he fitted the huge, misshapen feet into soft kid slippers. “Now, before the collar and tie, the real fancy-work.”
“Where were you a valet, Zadok?” asked Francis.
“Oh, before the war—the Boer War, that’s to say—I was a lot o’ things. Footman for a while; very good experience that, for any future job. Then a valet, because in the war I was batman to my young lord; I’d been a footman in his father’s house, and we went into the Army together, you might say, but him as an officer and me as a private, of course. But we were never apart, not really. Keeping a young officer smart in the field, with them rotten Boers popping up everywhere you didn’t expect them, was a job, I can tell you. Do you know them Boers didn’t wear uniforms? Just fought in their farm clothes? You can’t call that war. But I learned to dress a gentleman to look like a gentleman, dead or alive, so I don’t have any trouble with a chap like this.”