Winter 2007 Read Free Page B

quarters we breathed in drugs and sweat and sometimes piss. The
operating theaters, the halls, the cadaver rooms, all smelled of bitter chemicals.
Babies in bottles. Dolphin fetuses. All had the milky-white look of the
exsanguinated — not dreaming or asleep but truly dead.
    At home, the smells were
different. My father went out daily in the little boat his father had given him
as a young man and brought back a hundred wonderful smells. I remember the
sargassum the most, thick and green and almost smothering, from which dozens of
substances could be extracted to aid in preservations. Then, of course, sea
urchins, sea cucumbers, tiny crabs and shrimp, but mostly different types of
water. I don’t know how he did it—or how my mother distilled the
essence—but the buckets he brought back did have different textures and
scents. The deep water from out in the bay was somehow smoother and its smell
was solid and strong, like the rind of some exotic fruit. Areas near the shore
had different pedigrees. The sea grasses lent the water there, under the salt,
the faint scent of glossy limes. Near the wrecks of iron-bound ships from
bygone eras, where the octopi made their lairs, the water tasted of weak red
wine.
    “Taste this,” my mother
would say, standing in the kitchen in one of my father’s shirts over rolled up
pants and suspenders. Acid blotches spotted her hands.
    I could never tell if there
was mischief in her eye or just delight. Because some of it, even after I
became used to the salt, tasted horrible.
    I would grimace and my
father would laugh and say, “Sourpuss! Learn to take the bitter with the
sweet.”
    My parents sold the essence
of what the sea gave them: powders and granules and mixtures of spices. In the
front room, display cases stood filled with little pewter bowls glittering in
so many colors that at times the walls seemed to glow with the residue of some
mad sunrise.
    This was the craft of magic
in our age: pinches and flakes. Magic had given way to Science because Science
was more reliable, but you could still find Magic in nooks and crannies, hidden
away. For what my parents did, I realized later, could not have derived from
the natural world alone.
    People came from everywhere
to buy these preservations. Some you rubbed on your skin for health. Some
preserved fruit, others meat. And sometimes, yes, the medical school sent a
person to our cottage, usually when they needed something special that their own
ghastly concoctions could not preserve or illuminate.
    My dad called the man they
sent “Stinker” behind his back. His hands were stained brown from handling
chemicals and the reek of formaldehyde was even in his breath. My mother hated
him.
    I suppose that is one
reason I went to medical school—because my parents did not like Stinker.
Does youth need a better excuse?
    As a teenager, I became
contemptuous of the kind, decent folk who had raised me. I contracted a kind of
headstrong cabin fever, too, for we were on the outskirts of the city. I hated
the enclosing walls of the cottage. I hated my father’s boat. I even hated
their happiness with each other, for it seemed designed to keep me out. When I
came back from my studies at the tiny school created for the children of
fishermen and sailors, the smell of preservatives became the smell of something
small and unambitious. Even though poor, the parents of my schoolmates often
went on long journeys into the world, had adventures beyond my ken. A few even
worked for the old men who ran the medical school and the faltering mages’
college. I found that their stories made me more and more restless.
    When the time came, I
applied to the medical school. They accepted me, much to the delight of my
parents, who still did not understand my motivation. I would have to work for
my tuition, my books, but that seemed a small price.
    I remember a sense of
relief at having escaped a trap. It is a feeling I do not understand now, as if
my younger self and my