3

The Quarrel

ONE DAY I ASKED HIM THE EXACT NATURE of his researches.

“I am refining Sir Colin’s techniques.”

“You told me that once before, Baxter, but it is not a satisfying answer. Why refine on out-of-date techniques? Your famous father was a great surgeon but medicine has advanced hugely since his death. In the past ten years we have discovered things he would have thought incredible—microbes and phagocytes, how to diagnose and remove brain tumours and repair ulcerous perforation.”

“Sir Colin discovered something better than those.”

“What?”

“Well,” said Baxter, speaking slowly, as if against his will, “he discovered how to arrest a body’s life without ending it, so that no messages passed along the nerves, the respiration, circulation and digestion were completely suspended, the cellular vitality was not impaired.”

“Very interesting, Baxter. What use is it, medically speaking?”

“O, it has its uses!” he said, with a smile that greatly annoyed me.

“I hate mysteries Baxter!” I told him, “especially the manmade sort which are always a fraud. Do you know what most students in my year think of you? They think you a harmless insignificant madman, who dabbles with brains and microscopes in an effort to look important.”

My poor friend stood still and gazed at me, obviously aghast. I stared stonily back. In a faltering voice he asked if I, too, thought he was that. I said, “If you don’t answer my questions frankly, what else can I think?”

“Well,” he said, sighing, “come home and I will show you something.”

This pleased me. He had never invited me to his home before.

It was a tall, gloomy terrace house in Park Circus, and in the lobby he and his Newfoundland dog were noisily welcomed by two Saint Bernards, an Alsatian and an Afghan hound. He led me straight past them, down a stair to the basement and out into a narrow garden between high walls. Near the house was a paved part with a wooden doocot and pigeons, then came vegetable plots and a small lawn surrounded by a low fence. There were hutches on the lawn and some rabbits grazing. Baxter stepped over the fence and bade me do so too. The rabbits were perfectly tame. Baxter said, “Examine these two and tell me what you think.”

He lifted and handed me one, cradling and gently stroking another on his sleeve until I examined it too.

The most obvious oddity in the first was the colour of the fur: pure black from nose to waist, pure white from waist to tail. Had a thread been tied round the body at the narrowest part all hairs on one side would have been black, all on the other side white. Now, in nature such straight separations only occur in crystals and basalt—the horizon of the sea on a clear day may look perfectly straight, but is actually curved. Yet by itself I would have assumed this rabbit was what any one else would assume—a natural freak. If so, the other rabbit was a freak of an exactly opposite sort: white to a waistline as clean and distinct as if cut by the surgeon’s knife, after which it was black to the tail. No process of selective breeding could produce two such exactly equal and opposite colorations, so I examined them again with my fingertip, noticing that Baxter was watching me with the same cool, close, curious look I was giving his rabbits. One had male genitals with female nipples, one had female genitals with almost imperceptible nipples. Beneath the fur where it changed colour I felt on one body a barely perceptible ridge where the whole body shrank minutely but suddenly toward the tail, in the other was an equally minute ridge where it expanded. The little beasts were works of art, not nature. The one in my hands suddenly felt terribly precious. I set it carefully down on the grass and gazed at Baxter with awe, admiration and a kind of pity. It is hard not to pity those whose powers separate them from all the rest of us, unless (of course) they are rulers doing the usual sort of damage. I think there were tears in my eyes as I said, “How did you do it, Baxter?”

“I have done nothing wonderfull,” he said gloomily, putting the other rabbit down. “In fact I’ve done something rather shabby. Mopsy and Flopsy were two ordinary, happy little rabbits before I put them to sleep one day and they woke up like this. They are no longer interested in procreation, an activity they once greatly enjoyed. But tomorrow I will put them back together in exactly the way they were before.”

“But Baxter, what can your hands not do if they can do this?”

“O, I could replace the diseased hearts of the rich with the healthy hearts of poorer folk, and make a lot of money. But I have all the money I need and it would be unkind to lead millionaires into such temptation.”

“You make that sound like murder, Baxter, but the bodies in our dissecting-rooms have died by accident or natural disease. If you can use their undamaged organs and limbs to mend the bodies of others you will be a greater saviour than Pasteur and Lister—surgeons everywhere will turn a morbid science into immediate, living art!”

“If medical practitioners wanted to save lives,” said Baxter, “instead of making money out of them, they would unite to prevent diseases, not work separately to cure them. The cause of most illness has been known since at least the sixth century before Christ, when the Greeks made a goddess of Hygiene. Sunlight, cleanliness and exercise, McCandless! Fresh air, pure water, a good diet and clean roomy houses for everyone, and a total government ban on all work which poisons and prevents these things.”

“Impossible, Baxter. Britain has become the industrial workshop of the world. If social legislation arrests the profits of British industry our worldwide market will be collared by Germany and America and thousands would starve to death. Nearly a third of Britain’s food is imported from abroad.”

“Exactly! So until we lose our worldwide market British medicine will be employed to keep a charitable mask on the face of a heartless plutocracy. I keep that mask in place by voluntary work in my east-end clinic. It soothes my conscience. To transplant a simple abdomen would need an operation lasting thirty-three hours. Before I started I would spend at least a fortnight discovering and preparing a body compatible with my patient’s. In that period several of my poor patients would die or suffer great pain through lack of conventional surgery.”

“Then why spend time refining your father’s techniques?”

“For a private reason I refuse to disclose to you, McCandless. I know this is not the frank answer of a friend, but I now see you were never my friend, but tolerated the company of a harmless, insignificant madman because other well-dressed students would not tolerate yours. But have no fear for the future, McCandless, you are a clever man! Not brilliant, perhaps, but steady and predictable, which people prefer. In a few years you will be an efficient house-surgeon. All you hunger for will be obtained: wealth, respect, companions and a fashionable wife. I will continue to seek affection by following a lonelier road.”

While speaking we had re-entered the house and climbed again to the dim lobby where the five dogs sprawled upon Persian rugs. Sensing their master’s hostility they erected their necks and ears and pointed their noses at me, then grew as still as dog-faced sphinxes. In the stairwell above I sensed rather than glimpsed a head in a white cap staring down over the banisters of a landing, perhaps an ancient housekeeper or maidservant.

“Baxter!” I whispered urgently, “I was daft to say these things. I promise I did not mean to hurt you.”

“I disagree. You did mean to hurt me, and have done so more than you intended. Good-bye.”

He opened the front door for me. I grew desperate. I said, “Godwin, since you have no time to publicize your father’s discoveries and your refinements on them, lend the notes to me! I’ll make it my life’s work to publicize them. I’ll attribute everything to you—everything, without ever trespassing on your valuable time. And when the public outcry comes—for there will be huge controversy—I will defend you, I will be your bulldog just as Huxley was Darwin’s bulldog! McCandless will be Baxter’s bulldog!”

“Good-bye, McCandless,” he said inflexibly, and the dogs were growling, so I let him usher me onto the doorstep where I pled, “At least let me shake your hand, Godwin!”

“Why not?” he said, and held one out.

We had never shaken hands before nor had I looked closely at his, perhaps because in company he kept them half-hidden by his cuffs. The hand I intended to grasp was not so much square as cubical, nearly as thick as broad, with huge thick first knuckles from which the fingers tapered so steeply to babyish tips with rosy wee nails that they seemed conical. A cold grue went through me—I was unable to touch such a hand. I shook my head wordlessly at him, and he suddenly smiled as he had done in earlier days when I winced at the sound of his voice. He also shrugged his shoulders and shut me out.