The Palace of Curiosities. Rosie Garland

of them thumps me on the back.

      ‘See? We’re only jesting.’

      ‘You’re all right, Abel, even if you can’t get it up. Anytime you change your mind, though, first one’s on us. Right, lads?’

      They murmur assent, raising their smokes and cups in a toast. Then, finished with their companionable teasing, they settle to the more stimulating activities of the evening. After some time, the woman completes her labours and departs.

      It occurs to me that I have heard taunts like theirs before, and I scrabble in my head for when it might have been. Last night? Last year? The harder I search, the more elusive the answer. I close my eyes, and it comes to me: I stand encircled, hands bound. My mind stirs unpleasantly and I shake my head. Perhaps I do not want to remember, after all. But now I have called them up, they will not leave me.

       Dead fish.

       Dead man.

      Corpse-kisser.

      I have heard every name before and they do not sting. My mouth fills with bile. I blink, and am back in the cellar. Alfred is peering at me closely.

      ‘You all right, Abel? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

      ‘I am well,’ I lie.

      ‘They don’t mean anything by it,’ he says, and pats my knee.

      ‘I know.’

      ‘Don’t pay them any mind.’

      ‘I shall not.’

      ‘Some men are so,’ he reassures me.

      ‘Yes.’

      He is sitting so close his thigh is pressed against mine.

      ‘Alfred,’ I say quietly.

      ‘Yes, Abel?’ he breathes.

      ‘Please let me speak to you.’

      ‘Is it about today?’ he grumbles.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I am tired, Abel. I do not wish to talk any longer.’

      ‘Please?’

      ‘Go to sleep, Abel.’

      He turns, curving his back away from me. The cellar quietens into sleep.

      I am left alone, now that there are no distractions. I roll up my sleeve, uncovering my left arm. It is the same shape and colour as it was this morning, the hair as dark, and sprouting a thick trail from elbow to wrist in the same fashion. It matches the right arm perfectly, except for the scar: now a pale silver trail.

      I struggle to believe that it is a part of my body; yet when I cut into it, it was as familiar as looking into a dish of potatoes. I try to make sense of this, and tell myself it is because I spend my days and nights cutting open beasts, and am used to the sight of muscle, bone, yellow fat, grey slippery organs. I am not convinced. It is not the same. My flesh is quick; the beasts are dead.

      How could my body accomplish such a feat of healing? I puzzle over this riddle but find no answer. Only a creeping fear: no true, honest man heals like this. Therefore, I am a monster.

      My mind strains to escape from this terrible conclusion, for how can I live with such knowledge, with myself? I desire an answer, and for that answer to be that I am mistaken. My most sincere wish is to be man and not miracle. There is of course only one way to prove that I am a simple fellow who bleeds and heals in the slow, painful way of ordinary folk. I must cut myself again, and prove it wrong.

      With a stolen candle stub in my pocket, I take myself to the yard privy. Alfred does not wake to ask me what I am about. I get out my pocket-knife. My fist closes about the handle, the blade hovers; I press the point into my forearm, where the last trace of the scar remains. I will cut myself in the same spot, and it will bleed, and I will have to bind it up. Yes. I will prove it was nothing more than a freakish mistake.

      I draw the blade along my arm in a straight line, and my skin separates as it should. I close my eyes in relief, but when I open them once more I see the gash beginning to draw shut. It is most curious. I run the blade along the new join and tease it open. My body obeys, and parts its lips, only to begin closing once again the moment I lift the knife away.

      A shallow cut proves nothing. I dig a little deeper. There is pain now, but one that rouses me to a strange wakefulness. As a man swimming underwater breaks the surface and feels breath fly back into his body, so do I fly into myself. My body sparks into liveliness, including that masculine part of me, which also raises its sleepy head. I grind my teeth: how can I possibly feel arousal with the cutting open of my arm? It is shameful. I would rather be the piece of dead meat that everyone calls me than this degraded creature.

      I examine the wound, excitement mixing with horror. It gapes, and I can see through to the dark red within. I have seen enough meat cut open to know there should be blood, and now. Tentatively, I push the knife back in, draw it out once more. This time I should leak, but I do not. I turn my arm around in the small light, wondering at this mystery. The candle shows me what I do not wish to be real: other than a moist smearing on the metal itself, all is dry.

      I stare at my disobedient arm, and once more the ragged edges of skin begin their drawing together. I push my finger into the hole to stop my body re-forming itself, but the flesh closes, pushing me out with a firm pressure, like the tongue of a cow. It takes a little while longer, but there is no halting the knitting-up of the slit.

      I shake my head and tell myself that this is not a proper test. Perhaps only my left arm is possessed of these strange qualities. I should cut a different part of my body – but not my other arm, for that is too similar. I roll up the leg of my trousers to the knee, select a spot on the calf and push in the point of the blade.

      A drop of blood trickles down, catching in the mat of hair. My heart leaps with joy; I am bleeding. But no more follows and already the cut is barely to be seen. I jab at a different spot and feel a fresh surge of hope when a fat red bead falls as far as my ankle. A second drop spills from the wound, followed by a third. Breath gathers tightly in my throat. I am a normal man: I bleed.

      Then the flow thickens, and stops. The wound blinks its eye, and closes. This is not possible. I must be normal; I have to be. There must be some place on my body that does not heal. But where? I drag my trouser-leg up as far as it will go and poke the blade into the pale ochre skin of my thigh. There is barely a smear of scarlet for my trouble. I try again; healing occurs straight away.

      Maybe I need to go faster, to beat my body at its game of healing. But however quickly I jab the point of the knife, each cut starts to close up before I have time to make the next; the quicker I stab myself the quicker the doors of my flesh slam shut, matching my frenzy for hurt with a frenzy for healing. My breath scales a ladder of panting gasps as I climb closer and closer to myself. I am – I am – I am not Abel. Rather, I am not merely Abel. I am broad as the desert, tall as the sky, deep as the ocean. I know the answer to all my questions. It is all so clear, so simple. I am—

      So close. I soar towards the sun of understanding. As my body heals, heat sears my wings and I plummet into familiar darkness. There is no attainment to be found: my hand wearies, and I cease my battle. The knife is barely marked with moisture; the skin of my legs and arms flecked with creamy marks that fade as I watch. A few moments more and they are gone. My ribs heave up and down, and I realise I am weeping. The candle gutters and goes out.

      I do not understand what manner of man can skewer himself with a knife and shed not one drop of blood, and have his body remake itself. I look like a man. I eat, drink, shit, sleep, lift and carry, the same as every one of my fellows. But I am unlike them. I do not know who I am, or what I am.

      I hide a great secret, one that marks me as grotesque. Am I man or animal? I can no longer call myself either: I do not have the comfort of calling myself a beast, for a beast can be butchered for the use of mankind, and I cannot serve any such purpose. Nor can I say that I am a man, for no