Undine had a client out by her scrying pool and Rose was in her storeroom, squinting over cut lavender stalks. Dr. Bakay gave a nod, and finally his eyes landed on me. They were warm and brown, the light jumping in them like fish darting through murky water. He looked me up and down, from the toe of my slipper to the frizzy crown of my hair, and said, “It’s very nice to meet you, Marlinchen.”
I must have stammered out my own greeting, but I cannot say I remember it. In truth, I did not remember so many things that happened during my sessions with Dr. Bakay. There were certain facts that rose to the surface, like dead things awash in the tide: the particular curve of his thumb, the bristly gray hair on the back of his hand, the way one tooth slid over his bottom lip when he smiled. Everything else sank under and was gone.
Papa led us both into the sitting room and settled into his chaise. I went to take a seat on the couch, but Dr. Bakay said, “Wait a moment. Would you mind standing, please?”
“Oh,” I said, or something equally doltish and feeble, “all right.”
“Your gift is for flesh divinity, is that correct?” Dr. Bakay asked. I nodded. He was standing very close to me, so close that a few loose strands of my hair got caught on his lips and he didn’t notice, or else didn’t bother to wipe them away. “Of course, as a physician, who studies the Body, I am vitally interested in knowing how a talent like that manifests and reflects in the subject’s anatomy. Rather, how does a witch’s anatomy differ from those of mortal women? In other words, Marlinchen, I think there must be something unique about your body, to make such a gift function as my clients have described.”
My cheeks were beginning to pink. Papa was not really listening; I could tell that his attention had gone to the rubles in his pocket and considering what he would do with them and how he might get more of them. His finger rubbed at that swell of fabric as his gaze drifted toward the ceiling. Dr. Bakay pressed the back of his hand to my forehead.
“Hm,” he said. “Your body temperature does not appear abnormal.”
“I think I’m very ordinary,” I said, with a nervous flutter of laughter. “Aside from being a witch.”
Dr. Bakay’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. “I’ve met very many ordinary girls. I cannot say you are one of them.”
And then, I think, he asked me what I best liked to eat. I told him pork varenyky. He asked me did I like to cook or sew or play dominoes. He asked me if my sisters were kind or mean. He asked me what I thought of the new electric streetlamps, the trams, the art museum on Rybakov Street.
If Papa had been paying attention, Dr. Bakay’s questions would have enraged him; he would have chased the doctor from the house and that would have been the end of it all. But he was not paying attention and with each question I felt myself loosening like a knotted bow, undone and smoothed flat as Dr. Bakay spoke.
“Have you ever considered that your witchery is necessarily fixed to your womanhood?”
I must have blinked at him in awful confusion. My sisters were women, certainly, narrow waisted and wide hipped, their bodies growing to look more and more like our mother’s with each passing day. But I still felt mostly like a child, like a girl, only just beginning to fill out my dresses. Heat crawled over my cheeks as I replied, “I don’t know. I never thought very much of it.”
“Well, I would give the theory substantial weight. Phrenology tells us that men and women are of vastly different Minds . . . women’s fourteenth and eighteenth organs are much larger than men’s, indicating that they have much greater degrees of Veneration and Hope, and their fifteenth organs are positively tiny, suggesting very little propensity for Firmness. And so it must follow that we can map other Organs of the Body using similar methods. Perhaps most fruitful, I think, would be the Organs solely belonging to females.”
I hadn’t realized he had begun to unlace my corset. I was so shocked and all that came out of me was a little sound, not quite a gasp, just a chirp like a wind-buffeted sparrow. My loosened bodice sagged out in front of me and I quickly threw my arms around myself, covering my breasts. My throat was beginning to feel horribly tight, each breath hot and rough and short. I looked toward Papa.
My father was still reclining on the chaise longue, but his eyes had drifted back toward me. I searched his face for any indication of displeasure, any fledgling protest. His lower lip twitched; a muscle feathered in his jaw. His pocket was huge with Dr. Bakay’s rubles. And then he said, “Marlinchen, put your arms down.”