The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

The doctor was polite yet distracted, as he poured my tea and added a dollop of cream without asking me if I preferred it (I didn’t). I was focusing on my books and idle chitchat with Lambshead (I don’t remember what about; that was erased by the next forty minutes), I took a large gulp of the Earl Grey. When the curdled cream hit my system, my skin broke out in a cold sweat and I found myself in the profoundly embarrassing position of needing, if not a toilet, a chamber pot where I could be politely ill.

The doctor took my request in stride, pointing me to the head and saying through the door that it was “only a bit of food poisoning, [I] should get over it posthaste and we can start the interview.”

Louis Pasteur, 1822–95

I’m sure I would have enjoyed looking at the fascinating drawings and pieces of art, including an odd anatomy chart that hung, water-wrinkled, in the curtainless shower, but I was too busy voiding the very fine salmon I’d just had for lunch. And the tea. And the wretched cream. And possibly some stomach lining.

When I returned to him, shaky and pale, but confident I could at least finish this rarest of rare interview opportunities (Lambshead was not often at home in the sixties), he started talking, not about his research but about Louis Pasteur. He derided the French scientist, saying that the world honored him for pasteurization, but Lambshead could easily name fourteen strains of bacteria that could figure out how to maneuver Pasteur’s innovative S-shaped flask.

“You can’t even call that a maze,” he said, laughing.

I glanced at my teacup, with little lumps of curdled cream floating in it, and asked if that was why he refused to use pasteurized milk.

He waved me off, not answering, and motioned me to stand. “If you want to see a way to battle bacteria, come with me.”

He led me back to the kitchen (the cream bottle sat on the counter, the cream clearly separated. I looked away) and out the back door. A cellar door sat flat in the lawn, surrounded by odd purple plants and prickly flowers. I was no botanist, but I was pretty sure they weren’t native to England. I had no chance to ask about them, as he quickly hefted the door open and led me to the basement.

“There’s no light right now, so just give me a second,” Lambshead said. “Pasteur would have killed to see this. He would have eaten his hat.”

There was indeed no light, but the basement was oddly dry and warm, something you didn’t really see in an underground, English room made of stone. The dim daylight that dared to follow us into the basement tentatively touched a couple of shelves, and I gasped. The doctor had taken me to his cabinet, and I could see almost nothing! I could make out a large table in the corner with a single chair, both table and chair covered with various books, maps, and, I think, a taxidermed three-legged platypus.

One shelf had stuffed (although I could swear I saw one move, but it was dark) tropical birds. I tried to make out what was in some glass globes that looked as if they were full of mist and fireflies. Lambshead rummaged in a corner, murmuring to himself. I could make out, “If he’d just held out five years, we could have done so much together, but he died a moron.”

(I later checked on this: Lambshead was born in 1900, and Pasteur died in 1895. I knew Lambshead was a child prodigy, but what he thought a seventy-eight-year-old man would have learned from a newborn, I did not ask.)

I reached out my finger to touch what looked like a finely crafted wooden horse, but then pulled back. Something had shifted, almost imperceptibly, inside.

An ancient spear sat propped in the corner opposite the door, and I peered at it. The spear was filthy, still bloody from the poor victim that had been pierced last. I shook my head. On the floor next to the spear lay at least twenty pots, most of them closed, but one on its side, shattered, with dust spilling out everywhere.

Something that looked like a bouquet of dried scorpions stuck up from another urn, and I decided I would not try to touch anything else.

Then Lambshead made an “aha!” sound, and I heard a crash as he tried to extricate something from a pile. He looked down at the floor and frowned. He said, “That was unfortunate, I should get Paulette to clean that up before it spreads,” and then took my arm. I followed him reluctantly out to the sunny afternoon and watched as he closed the door.