Dr. Bakay’s remedies were not like Rose’s—they did not care whether you were a bit melancholy when you dispensed them; they did not work differently depending on where the moon was in its cycle; they did not necessitate a witch’s precise, hereditary touch. They worked whether it was high tide or low, whether you were angry or lonely, whether the rabbit whose foot you cut had run clockwise around a birch tree, whether your eyes were gray or green or blue. They were exceptionally good magic, and it was only Rose’s charm and beauty that allowed her to compete.
And then there came a new fad, swept in from the West as if by a very strong breeze, or a particularly propitious current. Sailors dredged it out of their nets along with sturgeons and trout. Phrenology, it was called by our wiser Western counterparts, and though its methods were complex and could be practiced only by doctors, its results were simple enough that even Oblya’s barely literate day laborers could understand it when they paged open the penny presses. You could buy a diagram of the brain for only a kopek, and it was cleaved into sections like a butcher’s drawing, indicating the twenty-seven different Organs of the Mind.
There was an organ for Cautiousness and one for Benevolence, organs for Language and Tune and Time. As it turned out, so many people wanted the topography of their brain mapped by a professional! When Dr. Bakay became the first physician in Oblya to begin practicing this new discipline, even the day laborers saved their kopeks in coffee cans to have him draw up an atlas of their minds.
They could have come to me or Undine for much cheaper.
But that meant meeting with witches. Dr. Bakay was respectable, and would tell them why it was that they were poor, and as it turned out it was not a matter of unfortunate circumstance at all. Maybe your third organ was too small and therefore you did not have enough Attentiveness to stay awake during your shift on the assembly line. Maybe your Approbation organ was far too large and you couldn’t bear to work a menial job that did not give you sufficient praise. Either way, there was little you could do but resign yourself to your station in life, or else try to surmount the hopeless augury of your own mind.
Some had a much better prognosis than others. The minds of Ye huli men, most phrenologists said, were well adapted to capitalism—their twentieth and twenty-fourth organs were enormous! That was why the gradonalchik had to draw up some laws to restrict their activities, since they had such an advantage over the rest. For instance, he banned Yehuli from residing in certain areas of the city, and from working on Sundays, and from purchasing land. I once saw a sign on a bathhouse door: no dogs or yehuli allowed. I did not know if that was one of the gradonalchik’s proclamations, or simply the bathhouse owner’s preference.
Meanwhile, Dr. Bakay chipped away at our clients the way that land developers stripped layer after layer of steppe soil for their wheat planting. I was sixteen and Papa was so angry that he spoke only in short, barbed words, and kicked our poor goblin vengefully.
And then one day Dr. Bakay arrived at our gate, his silver mustache turned upward like a smile. I was afraid that Papa would cast a spell to turn him into a truffle hog or a horned owl, but before he could even summon his magic Dr. Bakay lifted up a bag of rubles and shook it. Dr. Bakay was so clever that he knew without ever meeting him what held sway with my father.
Papa opened the door, grumbling all the while, and let Dr. Bakay into our foyer. He smelled clean and nice, like carbolic soap. He took off his hat and held it in his hands, as decorous and docile as a man a third of his age, and didn’t flinch when Papa bared his teeth at him.
“I don’t let any man into my house for free,” Papa growled.
“Yes, of course,” said Dr. Bakay, and then handed over his sack of rubles like it was nothing. He was still yet to look at me. “I come both as a fellow practitioner of medicine, and, quite simply, as a man of unquenchable curiosity. Some of my clients have spoken of the great wizard Zmiy Vashchenko and his three very talented daughters. One man told me that your daughter Rose cured his toothache for half of what I charge, and only with a fistful of herbs. Another told me that your daughter Undine foresaw his winning poker hand and all she asked for was five rubles. I can pay whatever you would like, Mr. Vashchenko, if you would allow me to indulge my curiosity with one of your daughters.”
Papa made some gruff and sputtering sounds as he pretended to consider it, but I knew that he had made up his mind the moment Dr. Bakay had passed him the money. He put the whole bag into the deep pocket of his robe, then glanced around vaguely, like he had forgotten the architecture of his own house. At last, he gave a sigh and said, “My other daughters are busy. But you can speak to Marlinchen.”