“My technique is not limited to the physical form. The brain, as well, can benefit from the surgical process. It’s a simple matter of mapping the mind, learning what to tweak, to stimulate, to cut out. It requires special instruments and infinite patience, of course.” Father took a sip of tea.
I briefly wondered where cruelty resided in the brain. Whether you could cut it out with a scalpel. I glanced behind me, where Montgomery pretended to read a book. Had he ever tried to stop my father? Was he a prisoner here, or a willing participant?
As if he could read my thoughts, he slammed the book shut and shoved it onto a shelf. His sleeve tore on a loose nail. He pounded his balled fist on the nail as if his anger alone could hammer it down.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
Father smiled thinly. “The proof is right here. Balthazar, won’t you come here for a moment?”
Balthazar shuffled into the room, his hands enveloping the teakettle. Father motioned to a chair. Balthazar sat down, blinking nervously. Across the room, Montgomery’s attention focused on us. A flicker passed over his face, a memory maybe, and he smacked the shelf so hard the books rattled. Edward glanced up at the noise, but Montgomery turned and left through the door.
Coward, I thought, leaving Balthazar to face my father alone.
“Now, take Balthazar.” Father’s voice pulled me back. “One of my finer creations, even able to pass among the streets of London, though admittedly somewhat unusual with the odd slanting forehead and profusion of body hair. He speaks. He thinks. He’s capable of compassion. Why, he even carried a garden slug outside this morning so the chickens wouldn’t eat it. Didn’t you?”
Balthazar nodded.
“Tell me, Juliet, would you call this man an abomination?”
Balthazar grinned. He thought he was pleasing us. He had no notion that Father was talking about his own horrible origin. I remembered that Balthazar was the one who’d taken care of the little sloth on the Curitiba. He’d cried softly when I’d played Chopin on the piano.
“No,” I said gently. Then my resolve hardened. “But I can’t call him a man, either.”
“Nevertheless, a man he is,” Father argued. “A man carved and wrought from animal flesh. Don’t act so horrified, Juliet. It is merely surgery. You are no doubt familiar with some of the more common practices. Setting broken bones, amputations, stitching ruptured skin back together?”
“I am,” I answered cautiously.
“No one questions the hand of a doctor performing such procedures. No one calls it butchery—it is science, and no different from what transpires behind the door of my own laboratory. For it is surgery I perform. Grafting of skin, setting of bones. A more complex scale, mind you. There is a most fascinating procedure, you know, I have only recently perfected, wherein I separate the sternum …”
His explanations continued. Examples, details, complications of his work. They made my throat go dry and my mind whirl. He had really done it.
My father had played God and won.
I had so many questions, but the rush of them caught in my throat. How long did the grafting take to set? Why did he choose the human form? What did a heart split open and sewn back together look like? I shocked myself with my hunger to know.
Edward was strangely quiet, shocked by the horror of it, as I should have been. But as much as I knew I should be repulsed, my curiosity burned so brightly it made my humanity flicker and dim.
Father continued. “Balthazar, for example. He is part dog and part bear.” He traced an imaginary line along the bridge of Balthazar’s nose. “You can see the canine influence in his jaw placement, but examine these ears. Ursine.”
Montgomery’s figure filled the doorway, and my heartbeat sped. He knelt by the bookshelf with a hammer in hand. Thwack. Thwack. Each strike of his hammer against that loose nail made me cringe.
Thwack. Edward leaned forward, somehow able to ignore the hammering. “But what about scars?” Edward asked. “What about broken bones? Your creations don’t show any signs of surgery.”
“A happy accident of my banishment. The island’s isolation means there is almost no disease here. A body can heal in a matter of days if there is no risk of infection. Quite remarkable. I daresay many of my attempts in London failed solely from the polluted city air.” He drew in a lungful to prove his point.
Thwack. The nail drove deeper, as if Montgomery was driving it into my very heart. How hard was it to fix a loose nail? He hit it again and again, determined to set that bookshelf straight. Determined to do something right, after so much wrong.
I pressed the heel of my hand to the aching space between my ribs.
“But what about the pain?” I whispered. Balthazar’s grin faded. From the corner of my eye, I saw the hammer pause in Montgomery’s hand.
Father scoffed and took another sip of tea. “Pain is merely a signal to the brain. Like the urge to sneeze. Uncomfortable, but tolerable.”