Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain

Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain Read Free Page A

Book: Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain Read Free
Author: Kirsten Menger-Anderson
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the cow brain unfolded before him. Into the center he drove two probes. He knew the texture and composition and where to find the pineal gland. He’d mixed its tough meat with dozens of tinctures, observed the effect on color, size, and elasticity, and noted the mixtures that appeared promising. The answer was there in the body before him.
    â€œOlaf! By God.”
    In the doorway stood Dr. Johannes le Sueur, dressed in his good jacket and crowned hat, just in from a stroll,it seemed. He was not a man to welcome spilled animal blood, particularly on the night of the full moon.
    Turning from the gray-green gland squeezed between his probes, Olaf saw not a man but a monster, an apparition with cruel eyes and clawed hands that could steal what remained of the night.
    â€œYou must let me continue,” he said.
    â€œWhat devil’s work is this?”
    Johannes shut the door and stepped closer. In his hand he held a walking stick, slightly raised, Olaf thought. The metal orb at the top caught the gaslight.
    â€œWhat we have is the soul,” Olaf said. “The seat of man’s soul.”
    â€œWhat you have is a cow skull. Cows have no soul.”
    â€œBut here — here before you —”
    Olaf wanted to tell him about Descartes, about the work that medical men were doing abroad. He wanted to show his piss-prophet colleague what the new science taught, and he wanted his colleague to turn around and go home, or rather, not to have arrived at all. But he could say none of it. He felt the heat in his cheeks, a twitch in the muscle of his shoulder. The gland fell from between his silver implements.
    Johannes stepped forward, and again Olaf tried to form words. Johannes would tell Stuyvesant; Stuyvesant would ban Olaf from the colony, or worse, discover the past thathad driven him to New Amsterdam’s shores. Where would he go? How would he study?
    â€œAway!” Olaf cried, though it was he, and not Johannes who was leaving. The two men passed each other, Johannes moving slowly, walking stick extended in self defense; Olaf armed only with an animal impulse, flight. He grasped the door frame for support. Moonlight spoiled the darkness, lightened it so he could not wear its disguise. Still, he turned and ran, deep into the night.
    W HEN O LAF AWOKE , he was lying prone in front of the stone church near the waterfront. His shirt had torn and he’d lost both shoes and stockings. Rocks pressed the soft upper arch of his feet. The skin of his right arm was broken and bleeding in four lines of red fingernail scratches. His clothes smelled of the ocean, of drying sea bass and slippery brown bladder wrack. He clutched a handkerchief, Adalind’s, the cloth filthy, but still perfumed with nutmeg and cinnamon. Around him fragments of cream-colored eggshell littered the ground. A line of ants disappeared beneath the one step leading to the church door. Night had passed leaving only the effects of forgotten moments. Why had he come here? Had he spoken to Adalind? What twisted path had led him to this spot?
    â€œHave you come for food?” In the doorway stood theschoolmaster who was conducting services while the minister returned to Holland to attend to his ailing father. A fringe of blond hair encircled his bald head like a halo that had slipped a few inches too far. “You needn’t kneel,” he continued. “Is it water you need?”
    Olaf knew the schoolmaster from the few Sunday sermons he’d attended months earlier. The schoolmaster, despite his kind voice and smile, did not seem to recognize him.
    â€œCome inside.” The schoolmaster extended a hand. He stepped forward, past the eggshells and the handkerchief Olaf did not remember dropping.
    â€œI am mad,” Olaf said. He brushed the dirt from his palms. His time in New Amsterdam was done. Other men, great men, would carry on his studies. Not Johannes le Sueur, not this man of God, and not Olaf — certainly not

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