The Anatomist's Dream Read Online Free PDF Page A

show-tents, Philbert’s ears buzzing and humming with all the noise. She led him behind a threadbare curtain into a small cubicle, whose canvas walls shook as the crowds outside passed by, making the lamp flicker on its hook, nothing for Philbert feeling quite real.
    â€˜This is Tomaso,’ Lita introduced a boy whose sad face had two watery eyes in it and another that popped out like a frog from the back of his head. ‘His Mama left him too,’ she said, automatically picking up a spill of apple-wood, ­dribbling water into Tomaso’s third eye. It blinked slowly, as if in pain, but continued to stare off blindly into the middle distance.
    â€˜We’re all alone,’ Lita said, ‘though here at least, we have each other.’
    And then she started to sing, and though Philbert didn’t understand the words he had a strong feeling he knew what she was saying as she sang, her voice both soft and brittle at the same time, and with a tune so doleful that tears began spilling from Tomaso’s eyes, at least the two Philbert could see, for the boy had turned a little away from him, holding his head towards the shadows, Philbert recognising the gesture with shock, because it was something he did himself.

    Too soon for Philbert it was the last night of the Fair; the neighbours had called in several times to check on Frau Kranz and now stood once more whispering in the doorway waiting for an invitation inside, an invitation that Frau Kranz refused to grant.
    â€˜No need for another visit,’ she croaked. ‘I’m quite well from your last ministrations. Is that you, Philbert?’
    And it was, just back from his latest riverbank vigil, though Lita had not arrived. The neighbours hovered a few moments more, making a fuss of the boy, patting at Kroonk.
    â€˜How well she looks,’ they said, ‘how healthy and plump your little piggy is, Philbert, how smooth her skin.’
    â€˜Go away,’ Frau Kranz’s attempted shout was feeble, ‘and get away from the boy and his pet.’
    She emphasised the last word as much as she could, for she knew exactly what those neighbours were about and why so all of a sudden solicitous. She’d seen them licking their lips, the awful glint in their eyes, heard the sharpening of knives upon soap-stones, smelled the firing up of a spit at the end of their street and what it meant. Philbert came in, shutting out the neighbours behind the skinny tin door of the shack, as happy as Frau Kranz had ever seen him, Kroonk’s little curly tail ­wriggling excitedly as she trotted in beside him.
    â€˜Come here, Little Maus,’ she whispered, and the boy and his pig came up to Frau Kranz, who was wrapped in her blood-splattered blankets in her chair by her dying fire.
    â€˜There’s something I need you to do for me, my Little Maus,’ she faltered, laying a dry and wrinkled hand upon his head as he sat obediently on the floor beside her, letting her fingers brush briefly at his taupe.
    â€˜You have to go,’ she said. ‘You have to leave me.’
    The boy turned his head towards her, the panic and bewilderment so evident upon his face that her heart took a final dash at life and beat just a little faster.
    â€˜They mean to take Kroonk away from you, dear one,’ she said, thin tears tracking down her parchment cheeks. ‘You must have seen the spit they have set up, down towards the bridge . . .’
    The words came from her slowly, keeping her eyes on Philbert’s, waiting for the shock of realisation that must come. And so it did, a single gasp escaping the boy as he threw his arms around Kroonk’s neck; this small red pig who had been companion, brother and sister to him for as long as he could remember, and silently he wept, and silently he clung to her, Kroonk sitting there on her haunches like an overweight dog, her rounded belly pushing out between her legs.
    â€˜I knew this day must