“I will write to the Holy Father. The letter must leave for Rome today. We need new instructions.” Lahnstein smiled grimly, which, together with his distorted face and the silk patch, made him look like a rare predatory fish from the deepest depths of the ocean. “I think Leo will be more than astonished to learn that Doctor Faustus is residing with Leonardo da Vinci, of all people. He will draw conclusions, just like I am.”
10
WHEN THE BELLS OF THE NEARBY VILLAGE CHURCH CHIMED midnight, three figures clad in black stood around a corpse by the light of a torch.
Karl reached for the scalpel with a steady hand. He placed it between the collarbones and cut down the sternum all the way to the pubic bone, slicing through skin and flesh until he had exposed the rib cage. He put aside the scalpel, picked up a saw, and cut through the ribs. Gleaming below them were two pink flaps, which until recently rose and fell with every breath. Karl was once again wearing his eye glasses, which helped him greatly in the poor light.
“The lungs look fresh,” explained Leonardo as he bent over the open torso, his necklace swinging like a pendulum. “Excellent blood flow. It is easy to tell that this body belongs to a young man. I remember dissecting an old man once, almost a hundred years old, at the Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence. The artery that feeds the heart and other body parts was all dried up, shriveled and withered like the brittle stem of a plant.”
Johann, standing next to Leonardo, nodded pensively. “Age probably dries up the arteries in other places, too. It is possible that such dehydration leads to paralysis. What do you think?”
But instead of replying, Leonardo addressed Karl. “Let us take a look at the heart now. Scalpellum minimum.”
Johann handed Karl another one of those sharp knives that Leonardo had brought for the dissection and which had been laid out on a stool next to the body. Karl carefully cut out the lungs and put them aside.
“Gently, please,” said Johann. “We want as little damage as possible.”
“This isn’t my first dissection,” replied Karl. “I know what I’m doing.” He tried to sound calm and composed but couldn’t entirely hide his excitement. He hoped that in the light of the torch the doctor didn’t see the sweat running down his forehead.
This might not have been Karl’s first dissection, but it was the first he conducted all by himself, and he was watched by the two men he admired the most. Because of their paralysis, neither Johann nor Leonardo was able to hold a scalpel steadily, so they acted as his assistants. The three of them were standing in the shed behind Leonardo’s mansion, the body of the stable boy on a wooden block covered with a wax cloth between them. Karl studied the corpse’s face, which looked as if it was made of wax. Until very recently this young, handsome lad had breathed, laughed, loved, eaten, and drunk, and now he was nothing but a shell, the shed skin of a larva.
It was the middle of the night. Dressed in dark garments, the three had sneaked out of their bedchambers like thieves and met here. Groaning with effort, Karl had lifted the cold body out of the casket and onto the wooden block. They didn’t have much time; the grave diggers would arrive at first light to take the plain wooden crate to Saint Amboise Cemetery. The body already smelled strongly, forcing Karl to press his hand to his mouth and nose from time to time. Leonardo hadn’t yet told them why he wanted to dissect this body.
Karl suppressed the urge to gag and cleared his throat. “How many dissections have you performed, master?” he asked Leonardo as he severed muscles and veins.
“Oh, I don’t recall. Several dozen,” replied Leonardo, gazing into the distance. “Most of them at Florence, because people there are very open to this method of research. I believe dissections are as important for students of medicine and painting as the Latin roots of words are for grammarians.” He paused. “However, they didn’t like this way of thinking in Rome.”
“What happened?” asked Johann.
“It seemed I had a traitor in my own workshop. The pope found out that I skinned three corpses.”
“So he sent you away?”
“There was more than one point of conflict. I was asked to do . . . things that I wasn’t prepared to do. Thankfully the French king was kind enough to grant me asylum. I fled through the mountains in a simple cart.” Leonardo smiled. “And I’ve been here ever since. I was able to take my favorite paintings, including my beloved Gioconda. It wasn’t easy to get the girl across the Alps. The king lets me do as I please, more or less. To him I am like a jester who builds him a funny automaton or sets up fireworks. But he probably wouldn’t approve of this dissection. The king doesn’t want to offend the church.”
Karl nodded. He and the doctor had also performed the occasional dissection. The bodies had mostly been those of executed men that no one claimed and who wouldn’t be buried in consecrated ground. The church considered the dissection of dead bodies a sin, and exceptions were only occasionally granted at universities. God alone created man, and His work oughtn’t be destroyed. The human body was a representation of the entire universe. But how should they understand God’s work if they couldn’t take it apart and study it? How should they find out what causes illness, suffering, and death?
Leonardo leaned over the body again. “Now let us take a look at his heart.”
“I very much hope we will get closer to an answer to our question,” muttered Johann.
“It is just as Socrates once said,” replied Leonardo with a smile. “Teachers are often but the midwives of our answers. We must birth them ourselves.”
With the doctor’s help,
