The Palace of Curiosities. Rosie Garland

      

      Eyes closed. Waking. Hands upon me. Voices swarming into my ears. They start with my pockets, ferreting their fingers deeper and deeper into the ruins of my clothing.

      ‘Not much here,’ whines the voice of a boy. ‘Not so much as a bloody wipe.’

      ‘Nothing.’ This sounds like a woman.

      ‘No use.’ And this, a girl.

      ‘It was nice, his jacket, but it’s finished.’

      ‘Waste of bloody time.’ This, another child.

      ‘Now that’s where you’re wrong,’ says a deeper voice, a man. ‘There’s a good doctor at the hospital as will give a few shillings.’

      It seems there is a crowd gathered. I can hear the gentle prowl of the river draining towards the sea. Fingers lift my wrist, let it fall.

      ‘Doctor? Too late for quacks. He’s stone cold.’

      ‘He’s not breathing.’

      ‘He’s a dead one.’

      I wonder if I am the dead man they are talking of so freely. My eyes are sticky with some insistent glue, my mouth also. Neither will open.

      ‘The doctor I know will take a gentleman in any condition, if you get my meaning.’

      ‘Ooh, that’s not right, George. Not decent.’

      ‘What’s he to you, all of a sudden?’

      At that moment my body chooses to unseal itself: eyes crack open, mouth gapes and I cough black water. They spring away: the corpse they thought I was is suddenly too lively for comfort.

      ‘He’s alive!’

      I vomit again, to prove the truth of it. My vision is unsteady. I am surrounded by vole-faced creatures with yellow teeth, breath hanging before them, the bones of their faces harsh. They are the colour of the mud in which they stand.

      ‘Not a chance.’

      ‘Got half the river in him, George.’

      ‘Enough to fill the Fleet ditch.’

      ‘He’ll be a stiff soon enough if he’s swallowed any of that.’

      ‘He’s coming round.’

      The man they call George detaches himself from the pack; lowers himself to my side.

      ‘Give this man his boots back,’ he says.

      ‘They’re mine,’ whines a skinny boy.

      ‘Give him his trousers, at least. Can’t have him walking around with his crown jewels up for grabs.’

      ‘Fuck you.’

      ‘And your sister.’

      Small hands lift me out of the peaceful cushion of slime. I retch with the movement.

      ‘He stinks.’

      ‘So do you.’

      ‘What’s your name, man?’

      ‘Where are you from?’

      ‘Pissed, were you?’

      My head swims with the need for words, for a mouth to form them, lungs to squeeze air, a tongue to shape the sound. There are so many tasks to perform and it is too much for me. I try a word, drawn up from deep inside the well: it meant a greeting when I used it before. They look from one to the other, raising bony shoulders.

      ‘What’s he saying?’

      ‘Don’t ask me. Some wop nonsense,’ says George.

      ‘What are you trying to say? Say it again.’

      I choose a different word. Their eyes remain blank.

      ‘Still a load of codswallop.’

      ‘Here. He’s that Italian fellow. That nob as went missing.’

      ‘Yeah. Look at his eyes.’

      ‘Jumped off Blackfriars Bridge.’

      ‘They said he was shouting, raving. Ladies were screaming.’

      ‘Sank like a stone.’

      ‘But it was a week ago. A week, in that shit? Can’t be him. Can it?’

      ‘Rich bloke, I heard. A real swell.’

      ‘I told you his jacket was nice.’

      ‘Rich? Ooh. They’ll want him back, then.’

      ‘They’ll be grateful, like.’

      The ring of eyes glitter diamonds. One small creature – male or female, it is hard to say for its hair is a felted mat obscuring the face – raises its paw to touch my face, only to be clouted away. It whimpers, but almost instantly reaches out again, to be smacked off as fiercely.

      ‘Grateful to them as found him.’

      ‘Them as saved him,’ corrects George.

      I want them to go away and leave me here. I want to worm myself back into the mud and pull its blanket up over my chin. I am filled with the feeling that I have not been dead long enough. I do not know why, but I want to be dead a good while longer.

      ‘Come on, sir. Say something else.’

      I search for sounds to please them. ‘I am drowned,’ I say.

      ‘What’s he on about?’

      ‘He says he’s drowned.’

      ‘That’s English. Doesn’t sound wop to me,’ says George.

      ‘Well, he looks Italian.’

      ‘Maybe that’s just dirt.’

      ‘He’s got to be that rich dago. There’s no money in it if he’s just some English bastard.’

      ‘Can’t we just say he’s that Italian, George?’

      ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid.’ The man puts his face close to mine. ‘Who are you, then? Eh?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ I reply.

      ‘What’s your name?’

      I scrabble for the answer, paddling in the gutter of my mind, turning up nothing. I try harder. It is not a blank wall I come up against: there is no wall, no structure of any kind. I am void, featureless as the thick stew of human waste in which I am lying. They look at each other across my body.

      ‘He ought to be a goner.’

      George snorts, placing his hand upon me. I see a bird made of blue ink flap its wings in the space between his thumb and forefinger.

      ‘Bird,’ I whisper.

      ‘He’s a nutter,’ someone laughs.

      ‘He’s not right,’ is the opinion of another.

      ‘No one could last a minute in that, let alone a day.’

      ‘He looks like he’s coming out of the mud.’

      ‘Like he was buried in it.’

      ‘He ought to be dead. Why ain’t he?’

      ‘Something’s not right.’

      They begin to shrink back, all but the tattooed man, who regards me with thoughtfulness rather than fear.

      ‘Come on, George. Leave the likes of him be.’

      One of the women throws my trousers back at me; spits.

      ‘I don’t want nothing of him. Ooh,’ she whinnies.