She lived with him for two or three months, perhaps, when she started to feel troubled. She had not been made welcome by the townsfolk. Whenever she left on some brief errand, to purchase rosemary or sage in the market, to consult a new treatise on chemical reactions in the library, to order a shipment of mercury from the pharmacist, she would walk past the dressmaker’s shop, located directly across from the professor’s house, and always there would be a flock of women gathered on the sidewalk in the summer heat, women in tightly laced shoes, women with bejeweled little purses, women in ridiculous hats, peeking at her from under swaying ostrich feathers or clusters of silk roses, whispering with hot malice as she went by. She assumed that they were scandalized by her mere existence—a girl staying in an unmarried man’s dwelling with no chaperone present; but occasionally she overheard hints of a darker nature. There she goes, the women tittered, tottering in their impossible shoes, a fresh-faced new assistant—but what do you think happened to the other ones, the ones before? That little blond Gretchen, she had such a sweet tooth, the baker adored her? And the voluptuous redhead, what was her name, Elisa, she liked to come into the shop and try on white hats before the mirror, she had such lovely, shiny curls, she dreamed of having a perfect wedding? And oh, oh, do you remember Camille? And remembering Camille, they would smile knowingly at one another.
She brushed off the poisonous gossip, undisturbed by it, for just as she had not been a maiden, so the professor, of course, had had his past diversions. Something, however, had begun to bother her greatly: he no longer mentioned the possibility of her attending his lectures in the fall, and worse, he would not let her into the mystery of his experiments. His laboratory, behind the imposing metal door at the end of the basement corridor, remained off limits to her. She knew that he was working on something extraordinary, something momentous—he had told her as much—but every morning, rising from their passion-tossed bed, he would slap her, at times rather hard, on her naked rump, still reddened and smarting from the blows of the previous night, and say, as he buttoned his exquisitely tailored batiste shirt: “Off to work now, my sweet. Do have the cinnamon ground, and pick up arsenic in town for me, there’s a dear. Oh, and for dinner, let us have your delicious rabbit stew, yes?”—upon which he would saunter downstairs, humming a snippet from some opera into his black-blue beard, while she stayed sprawled in the moist (and, now and then, after a particularly vigorous flogging, bloodstained) sheets, staring sullenly at his retreating back, biting her fingernails to the quick, until she heard the great metal door clanging shut in the bowels of the house.
Then she would get up in turn, dress listlessly, and trudge off to the kitchen to grind the powders and cook the meals he required, feeling unhappy. For not only did she love him—she had begun to think of the two of them as partners, as equals. Surely, she mattered more to him than any of his other assistants could have mattered, all those flighty, featherbrained women who cared more for fashions and chocolates than scientific endeavors and who in the end, having grown bored or disenchanted, abandoned him in search of husbands or careers in glove-making? Surely, surely, she understood him better than any of them? Why, then, was there always the sense of an invisible arm outstretched, holding her at bay, whenever she questioned him about the nature of his research? Why did the door to his laboratory, the door at the end of the basement corridor, remain staunchly locked against her?
“All in good time,” he would say, smiling down at her over the rim of his glass filled with wine so dark it looked like blood. “I promise you, my sweet, you will find out soon enough.”
Another month passed, and the professor announced that he was departing on a short trip to obtain some supplies for his experiments. He would be gone three days. In his absence, he asked her to be a dear and take care of his house. He gave her the keys to all the rooms, an immense bunch whose unexpected weight made her meekly held-out hand dip. He told her she could have the run of the place, could open any door—any, that was, apart from the door to his laboratory, for she had not yet earned the right to learn its secrets.
“This one, right here,” he said, tenderly caressing a huge, jagged key of darkened iron. “A lesser man would hide it, but I trust you, my sweet.”
She accepted the keys with an obedient nod, smilingly suffered a playful farewell slap on her cheek, so harsh that her skin was branded with four round red marks of his fingers, then, the docile smile vanishing off her face the moment his back was turned, went to the window to watch him leave. She no longer loved him. When his chugging automobile, the first in town, disappeared around the corner, she spat at the window, took the jagged key off the ring, and ran down the stairs to the locked basement door.
The key turned with a surprising readiness, and the massive door opened smoothly, too smoothly, on well-oiled hinges, inviting, ushering her in, then swinging shut behind her. She found herself in chilly darkness, took a step, another. The cavernous echoes of her footfalls made her think of infinitely stretching dungeons, of cemeteries, of eternity. She felt for the nearest wall, happened upon a switch, flipped it. A single weak bulb blinked into faint blue life on the low ceiling.
She looked, her mouth grim.
Broad gleaming tables ran the length of the enormous stone-walled chamber, and on them, between intricate machines that bristled with saw blades, spiked wheels, thumbscrews, and guillotines, stood dozens of bottles and jars, the kind her mother used for pickling mushrooms and cucumbers. In their thick greenish liquid swam glowing, white, bloated pieces of the women who had come before her, their names neatly labeled next to each specimen in the professor’s beautiful hand. She saw the heart and the jaw of the chocolate-loving Gretchen—the red hair, once lustrous, now dull, and the breasts, their large nipples like spreading stains of mold, of the fashionable Elisa—the reproductive organs of Camille, who made the townspeople smile. And others, so many others. She read their names aloud as she walked along the tables, and the echoes returned each name manifold, like the last tribute, the final remaining memory tossed briefly between the dungeon walls, then fading, fading, fading, until it was gone in the descending hush.
“Violetta. Helena. Ariadne. Margarita. Isolde. Leonora…”
The door clanged. She swung around. Merlin Stone stood in the doorway, smiling with cruel delight into his glossy beard.
“Well, my sweet, this was too easy, I never even made it to the outskirts,” he said, his tone velvet. “The others, they were such good girls, tormented by their curiosity for days before they dared to disobey me—but you, you had to know about my work, didn’t you? Simply dying to know about it.”
He laughed an easy, leisurely laugh, took a step over the threshold.
“So be it. Now is when you get to find out. I am searching for a woman’s soul—no more, no less. You see, for centuries, serious people claimed that women had no souls, no souls at all. Men had souls, of course, no one debated that—but not women, they said, for women were more like beasts of burden, good for some things, rather useful, in fact, but not endowed with higher sensibilities. Nowadays, though, many argue otherwise, but nobody knows for sure, for nobody has ever found any definitive proof, one way or the other. A mystery, you see, just ready for a superior intellect such as mine to apply itself to the solution—and what a magnificent scientific discovery it would be, to prove the existence of the woman’s soul once and for all. And so many additional questions to ponder!” He picked up a pair of thin black gloves, began to snap them on with the same slow deliberation with which he used to disrobe her, to fondle her, to impale her during their nights of passion. “What physical form would a soul take—a butterfly, perhaps, as some of the ancients believed, or a ghostly reflection of the body, or an electric discharge of sorts, a beam of light? And would it be brought to the surface more easily by joy or by sorrow? Or, say, by terror?” Lightly, lovingly, he ran his gloved fingers over an array of shining instruments, as if over the keys of a piano, lifted one long, long blade, turned it over thoughtfully, set it down again. “And would the soul swell larger if it belonged to a young girl in the bloom of first love?” He met her eyes, smiled; obliviously, she knew, he had mistaken her for a timid virgin during their initial encounter and had thought himself an irresistible seducer, and she had never disabused him of the notion. “Well. I must say, I kept an open mind at the beginning, but now, I have cut up a dozen, two dozen women and have found nothing, nothing at all, so I’m almost inclined to believe that you have no souls after all. Still, a thoroughly dedicated scientist must persevere. Perhaps a soul is simply very small and tucked away, out of sight, hunkering down in some organ, for me to uncover. Now, you, let me see—” He looked her over with care. “Yes, I think I will take your brain. No offense, my sweet, but you just don’t have too many other parts to recommend you.” He strolled toward her, humming a line from La Traviata. “Are you not going to plead? The others did.”