“It’s an experiment,” Hunter said. “You have heard of an experiment, have you?”
“Is it a disease?” the pauper said.
“Y’re way off, man,” said John Hunter. “An experiment isn’t a disease! It’s the thing that imparts the knowledge that makes a man of science like me able to cure the disease.”
“Is that an experiment?” the pauper said. “That blade you’ve got out your drawer?”
“We call this a lancet, not a blade. Brace up, can’t you! My man Howison gave you full information that you were to be in an experiment, you came here to my house on that understanding, and if you don’t like it you can walk out that door.”
“And if I do, will I get a penny for my trouble?”
“No, not a farthing, but my boot up your backside. Trouble? You? What trouble did it give you, to step along to a gentleman’s house and be treated civil? What were you doing else? Watching a cockroach race, were you? Oh, I’d be very sorry to drag you from a cockroach race, I’m sure.”
Calm down, John Hunter. Get a grip. Those arteries of yours are hardening, that blood pressure is shooting up the scale on the instruments not yet within your ken. You feel the blood in your ears, ker-clunk—and if you were to glance into the plain pineframed oval of mirror that lights the north wall of your consulting room, you would see your cheeks, with their outgrowth of ginger bristle, dappled with a flush as rosy as a girl’s. What is modesty in her, is choler in you: not healthy, John.
The pauper cowered against the wall, his hands covering his privy parts. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Give you a wee prick,” Hunter said.
“Will it hurt me?”
“Naw, man.” He plucked at the pauper’s shielding arms.
“Will it make my parts drop off?”
“Naw. It’ll do you good. In fact, it’s a dose of medicine for you, with my compliments.”
The man stared. He had never heard of getting something for nothing.
“Look, now,” Hunter said. “Let me show you how it will be.” Patiently, he unbuttoned himself, and took out his tackle, easing his balls through the placket. Scarlet against its bush of orange hair, his cock was as vivid as the part of some obscene tropical monkey. It lay glowing in the palm of his hand, looking as if it might break out into some violence.
“Come on now,” Hunter said to the pauper. “Fair’s fair. Now show me yours.” The pauper’s eyes were riveted. “I never saw one on a Scotchman before,” he said. “Are they all that colour?”
“Gaze your fill,” Hunter said pleasantly; it was an effort to be pleasant, but it would gain him his end.
“So what … so what are you going to do?”
“I will demonstrate,” Hunter said. He reached behind him and picked up the lancet from the table. “Now watch.” He rolled back his foreskin, bringing the instrument a whisker from his flesh—indicating with it. “I will just give you a tiny touch, right there. A man of vigour, such as yourself, you’ll not feel it. Then you may button up, and I will give you sixpence.”
“Eightpence,” the pauper said.
Hunter breathed freely. “Eightpence,” he said.
The pauper straightened himself a little from the wall, but his shoulders were still hunched protectively as he began to undo his buttons. He had no underwear whatsoever, and smelled rank. Hunter reached forward and seized his pale, shrivelled organ. The pauper yelped. “Get off me!”
“Calm yourself, man. I must examine you, to see are you healthy.”
“Am I?” The pauper’s voice shook.
Hunter pushed back the foreskin with his thumb, as if he were shucking peel.
“Looks all right to me.”
Absorbed, he hardly noticed that his own organs were swinging freely, until a sharp draught from the window caught him. Would have been more professional to button up, he thought, more workmanlike—if Wullie could see him now—but what the hell. He took a firm grip on the pauper. “Hold still now.” He pulled forward the man’s foreskin, jabbed it. In a split second, he slicked it back, then jabbed the head of the organ.
The pauper gave a yelp of horrified surprise. “All done,” John Hunter said. But not—not all done—not—good grief, what was this? The pauper was snarling like a diseased dog, drool running from his mouth and his eyes blank. “Take a hold of yourself,” Hunter shouted. “You act like you’ve taken a mortal wound.”
The man’s wrist shot out. His hand was splayed to a claw. It was starved, but it was sinewy. He grasped Hunter’s wrist, his right wrist. His other hand closed over the knuckle. He drove Hunter’s arm down, down and in, slamming it towards his body. The lancet, trapped in the great man’s fingers, drove hard into the flesh, and ripped a trail of blood from his organ—blood shockingly brighter than the sanguine flesh it sprang from.
With a whoop, the pauper relaxed his grip. The lancet fell to the floor.
Hunter stared down at himself. He moved slowly, reaching for a cloth and dabbing.
The pauper, who seemed to have grown a foot taller, was buttoning himself up with an almost jaunty air. “Now I’ll have my eightpence,” he said.
Ah well, Hunter said to himself. Perhaps it is a happy accident, after all. I should have needed to keep the man
