第五十四章

菲利普在跟会计师当学徒之前曾通过一次考试，凭这层资格他可以进任何一所医科学校学习。他选了圣路加医学院，因为他父亲就是在那儿学的医。夏季学期结束之前，他抽出一天工夫跑了趟伦敦，去找学校的干事。他从干事那儿拿到一张寄宿房间一览表，接着在一幢光线暗淡的房子里找了个安顿之所。住在这儿有个好处，去医院不消两分钟。

"你得准备好一份解剖材料，"干事对菲利普说。"最好先从解剖人腿着手，一般学生都是这么做的，似乎认为人腿比较容易解剖。"

菲利普发现自己要上的第一堂课便是解剖学，于十一点开始。大约十点半光景，他一瘸一拐地穿过马路，往医学院走去，心里有点紧张。一进校门，就看见张贴在布告栏里的几份通告，有课程表、足球赛预告等等。菲利普安闲地望着这些布告，竭力摆出一副轻松自在的神态。一些年轻小伙子三三两两地走进校门，一面在信架上翻找信件，一面叽叽呱呱闲聊，随后沿着楼梯朝地下室走去，那儿是学生阅览室。菲利普看见有几个学生在四下闲逛，怯生生地东张西望，想来这些人也和自己一样，是第一回来这儿的。待他看完了一张张布告，发现自己来到一扇玻璃门前，屋里面好像是个陈列馆。反正离上课还有二十分钟，菲利普便信步走了进去。里面陈列着各种病理标本。不一会儿，一个约莫十八岁的小伙子朝他走过来。

"嘿，你是一年级的吧？"他说。

"不错，"菲利普回答道。

"你知道讲堂在哪儿？快十一点啦。"

"咱们这就去找找看。"

他们从陈列馆出来，进了一条又暗又长的过道。过道两边的墙壁上漆着深浅两种红色。他看到另外一些年轻人也在往前走，这说明讲堂就在前面。他们来到一扇写有"解剖学讲堂"字样的房门前，菲利普发现里面已坐了好多人。这是间阶梯教室。就在菲利普进门的时候，有位工友走进来，端了杯茶水放在教室前边的讲台上，随后又拿来一个骨盆和左右两块股骨。义有一些学生进来，在座位上坐定。到十一点的时候，讲堂里已差不多座无虚席。大约共有六十多名学生，多半比菲利普年轻得多，是些嘴上无毛的十八岁小伙于，也有几个年纪比他大的。他注意到一个大高个儿，长着一脸的红胡子，模样在三十岁左右；还有一个头发乌黑的小个子，年纪比前者大概小一两岁；再一个是戴眼镜的男子，胡子已有点灰白。

讲师卡梅伦先生走了进来。他眉清目秀，五官端正，头发已染上一层霜。他开始点名，一长串的名字从头叫到底，然后来了一段开场白。他的嗓音悦耳动听，说话时字斟句酌，似乎颇为自己这席言简意赅的谈话暗暗得意。他提到一两本书，建议学生买来备在身边，还劝他们每人备置一具骨架。他谈起解剖学时口气热烈：这是学习外科的必修课目；懂得点解剖学，也有助于提高艺术鉴赏力。菲利普聚精会神地听着。后来他听人说，卡梅伦先生也给皇家艺术学院的学生上课。他曾侨居日本多年，在东京大学任过教，卡梅伦先生自以为对天地间的美物胜景独具慧眼。

"今后你们有许多沉闷乏味的东西要学，"他在结束自己的开场白时这么说，脸上挂着宽容的微笑，"而这些东西，只要你们一通过结业考试，就会立刻忘得一干二净。但是，就解剖学而言，即使学了再丢掉，也总比从没学过要好。"

卡梅伦先生拿起放在桌子上的骨盆，开始讲课了。他讲得条理清晰，娓娓动听。

那个在病理标本陈列馆同菲利普搭讪过的小伙子，听课时就坐在菲利普身边，下课以后，他提议一齐去解剖室。菲利普同他又沿过道走去，一位工友告诉他们解剖室在哪儿一进解剖室，菲利普立即明白过来，刚才在过道里闻到的那股冲鼻子的涩味儿是怎么回事了。他点燃了烟斗，那工友呵呵一笑。

"这股味儿你很快会习惯的。我嘛，已是久而不闻其'臭，啦。"

他问了菲利普的姓名，朝布告板上的名单望了望。

"你分到了一条腿--一四号。"

菲利普看到他和另一个人的名字同写在一个括号里。

"这是什么意思？"他问。

"眼下人体不够用，只好两人合一份肢体。"

解剖室很宽敞，房间里漆的颜色同走廊一样，上半部是鲜艳的橙红色，下半部的护墙板则呈深暗的赤褐色。沿房间的纵向两侧置放着一块块铁板，都和墙壁交成直角，铁板之间隔有一定的距离。铁板像盛肉的盆于那样开有糟口，里面各放一具尸体。大部分是男尸。尸体由于长期浸在防腐剂里，颜色都发黑了，皮肤看上去差不多像皮革一样。尸体形销骨立，皱缩得不成样子。工友把菲利普领到一块铁板跟前。那儿站着一个青年人。

"你是凯里吧？"他问道。

"是的。"

"哦，那咱俩就合用这条大腿罗。算咱走运，是个男的，呃？"

"此话怎讲？"菲利普问。

"一般学生都比较喜欢解剖男尸，"那工友说，"女的往往有厚厚一层脂肪。"

菲利普打量着面前的尸体。四肢瘦得脱却了原形，肋骨全都鼓突了出来，外面的皮肤绷得紧紧的。死者在四十五岁左右，下巴上留有一撮淡淡的灰胡子，脑壳上稀稀拉拉地长着不多几根失去了光泽的头发；双目闭合，下颚塌陷。菲利普怎么也想象不出，躺在这儿的曾是个活人，说实在的，这一排尸体就这么横陈在那儿，气氛真有点阴森可怖。

"我想我大概在下午两时动手，"那个将与菲利普合伙解剖的小伙子说。

"好吧，到时候我会来这儿的。"

前一天，菲利普买了那盒必不可少的解剖器械，这会儿他分配到了一只更衣柜、他朝那个和他一块进解剖室来的小伙子望了一眼，只见他脸色煞白。

"这滋味不好受吧？"菲利普问他。

"我还是第一回见到死人。"

他们俩沿着走廊一直走到校门口。菲利普想起了范妮·普赖斯。那个悬梁自尽的女子，是他头一回见到的死人。他现在还记得当时的惨状给了他什么样的奇怪感受。活人与死者之间，存在着无法测量的距离，两者似乎并非属于同一物种。想想也真奇怪，就在不久以前，这些人还在说话，活动，吃饭，嬉笑呢。死者身上似乎有着某种令人恐怖的东西，难怪有人要想，他们说不定真有一股蛊惑作祟的邪劲儿呢。

"去吃点东西好吗？"这位新朋友对菲利普说。

他们来到地下室。那儿有个布置成餐厅的房间，就是光线暗了点。供应倒是一应俱全，学生同样能吃到外面点心店所供应的各种食品。在吃东两的时候（菲利普要了一客白脱麦饼和一杯巧克力），他知道这位伙伴叫邓斯福德。小伙子气色很好，一双蓝眼睛，一头深色的鬈发乌黑发亮，大手人脚，长得很结实；说起话来，不紧不慢，一举一动挺斯文。他是克里夫顿人，初来伦敦。

"你是不是读联合课程？"他问菲利普。

"是的，我想尽早取得医生资格。"

"我也读联合课程，不过日后我想成为皇家外科协会会员。我打算主攻外科。"

大多数学生学的都是内外科协会联合委员会规定的课程。不过，一些雄心勃勃或者勤奋好学的学生，还要继续攻读一段时期，直到获得伦敦入学的学位。就在菲利普进圣路加医学院前不久，学校章程已有所变化；一八九二年秋季前实行的四年制现已改为五年制。关于自己的学习打算，邓斯福德早已胸有成竹，他告诉菲利普学校课程的一般安排："第一轮联合课程"考试包括生物学、解剖学和化学三门学科，不过可以分科分期参加考试，大多数学生是在入学三个月后参加生物学考试。这是一门新近刚增加的必修课程，不过只要略懂得点皮毛就行了。

菲利普回解剖室的时候已迟到了几分钟，因为他忘了事先买好解剖用的护袖。他看到好些人在埋头工作。他的合伙人准时动手干了，这会儿正忙着解剖皮肤神经。另外有两个人在解剖另一条腿。还有些人在解剖上肢。

"我已经动手了，你不会介意吧？"

"哪儿的话，继续于你的吧，"菲利普说。

菲利普拿起解剖用书，书已翻到了画有人腿解剖图的地方，他仔细看着需要搞清楚的有关部分。

"看来你对这玩意儿还真有一手呢。"菲利普说。

"噢，其实嘛，我在读预科时就做过大量的动物解剖实验。"

解剖台上话声不断，有谈工作的，有预测足球联赛的前景的，也有议沦解剖示范和各种讲座的。菲利普感到自己比在座所有的人都要年长好多岁。他们都是些毛孩子。但是年纪大小并不说明什么问题，更重要的倒在于你肚子里的学问。纽森，那个跟他在一块儿做解剖实验的机灵的小伙子，对这门课很精通。也许他并不觉得卖弄一下学问有什么不好意思，所以详详细细地向菲利普解释他是怎么干的。菲利普尽管满腹经纶，也不得不在一旁洗耳恭听。随后，菲利普拿起解剖刀和镊子，动手解剖，纽森在一旁看着。

"碰上这么个瘦猴，多带劲，"纽森一面揩手一面说。"这家伙可能有一个月没捞到一点儿吃的。"

"不知道他是得什么病死的，"菲利普咕哝道。

"噢，这我可不知道。凡是老家伙吗，十有八九是饿死的。……嘿，当心点，别把那根动脉割断了。"

"'别把那根动脉割断了'，说得多轻巧，"坐在对面解剖另一条腿的学生发表议论了，"可这个老蠢货的动脉长错地方啦。"

"动脉总是长错地方的，"纽森说，"所谓'标准'就是指永远找不到的东西，否则干吗要称作'标准，呢。"

"别说这些个俏皮话了，"菲利普说，"要不然，我可要割破手了。"

"如果割破手，"见多识广的纽森接口说，"得赶紧用消毒剂冲洗。这一点你千万马虎不得。去年有个家伙只是稍微给刺了一下，他也没把这当一回事，结果染上了败血症。"

"后来好了吗？"

"哪里！没到一星期就报销了。我特地上太平间看过他一眼。"

到吃茶点的时候，菲利普已累得腰酸背疼，由于午饭吃得很少，他早就盼着吃茶点了。他手上有股气味，正是他上午在走廊里第一次闻到的那种怪味。他觉得他手里的松饼同样有这股味儿。

"哦，你很快就会闻惯的，"纽森说，"日后你要是在周围闻不到那股讨人喜欢的解剖室臭味，你还会感到挺寂寞的呢。"

"我可不想被这怪味倒了胃口，"菲利普说。他一块松饼刚下肚，赶紧又追加了一块蛋糕。

the examination philip had passed before he was articled to a chartered accountant was sufficient qualification for him to enter a medical school. he chose st. luke’s because his father had been a student there, and before the end of the summer session had gone up to london for a day in order to see the secretary. he got a list of rooms from him, and took lodgings in a dingy house which had the advantage of being within two minutes’ walk of the hospital.

‘you’ll have to arrange about a part to dissect,’ the secretary told him. ‘you’d better start on a leg; they generally do; they seem to think it easier.’

philip found that his first lecture was in anatomy, at eleven, and about half past ten he limped across the road, and a little nervously made his way to the medical school. just inside the door a number of notices were pinned up, lists of lectures, football fixtures, and the like; and these he looked at idly, trying to seem at his ease. young men and boys dribbled in and looked for letters in the rack, chatted with one another, and passed downstairs to the basement, in which was the student’s reading-room. philip saw several fellows with a desultory, timid look dawdling around, and surmised that, like himself, they were there for the first time. when he had exhausted the notices he saw a glass door which led into what was apparently a museum, and having still twenty minutes to spare he walked in. it was a collection of pathological specimens. presently a boy of about eighteen came up to him.

‘i say, are you first year?’ he said.

‘yes,’ answered philip.

‘where’s the lecture room, d’you know? it’s getting on for eleven.’

‘we’d better try to find it.’

they walked out of the museum into a long, dark corridor, with the walls painted in two shades of red, and other youths walking along suggested the way to them. they came to a door marked anatomy theatre. philip found that there were a good many people already there. the seats were arranged in tiers, and just as philip entered an attendant came in, put a glass of water on the table in the well of the lecture-room and then brought in a pelvis and two thigh-bones, right and left. more men entered and took their seats and by eleven the theatre was fairly full. there were about sixty students. for the most part they were a good deal younger than philip, smooth-faced boys of eighteen, but there were a few who were older than he: he noticed one tall man, with a fierce red moustache, who might have been thirty; another little fellow with black hair, only a year or two younger; and there was one man with spectacles and a beard which was quite gray.

the lecturer came in, mr. cameron, a handsome man with white hair and clean-cut features. he called out the long list of names. then he made a little speech. he spoke in a pleasant voice, with well-chosen words, and he seemed to take a discreet pleasure in their careful arrangement. he suggested one or two books which they might buy and advised the purchase of a skeleton. he spoke of anatomy with enthusiasm: it was essential to the study of surgery; a knowledge of it added to the appreciation of art. philip pricked up his ears. he heard later that mr. cameron lectured also to the students at the royal academy. he had lived many years in japan, with a post at the university of tokyo, and he flattered himself on his appreciation of the beautiful.

‘you will have to learn many tedious things,’ he finished, with an indulgent smile, ‘which you will forget the moment you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.’

he took up the pelvis which was lying on the table and began to describe it. he spoke well and clearly.

at the end of the lecture the boy who had spoken to philip in the pathological museum and sat next to him in the theatre suggested that they should go to the dissecting-room. philip and he walked along the corridor again, and an attendant told them where it was. as soon as they entered philip understood what the acrid smell was which he had noticed in the passage. he lit a pipe. the attendant gave a short laugh.

‘you’ll soon get used to the smell. i don’t notice it myself.’

he asked philip’s name and looked at a list on the board.

‘you’ve got a leg—number four.’

philip saw that another name was bracketed with his own.

‘what’s the meaning of that?’ he asked.

‘we’re very short of bodies just now. we’ve had to put two on each part.’

the dissecting-room was a large apartment painted like the corridors, the upper part a rich salmon and the dado a dark terra-cotta. at regular intervals down the long sides of the room, at right angles with the wall, were iron slabs, grooved like meat-dishes; and on each lay a body. most of them were men. they were very dark from the preservative in which they had been kept, and the skin had almost the look of leather. they were extremely emaciated. the attendant took philip up to one of the slabs. a youth was standing by it.

‘is your name carey?’ he asked.

‘yes.’

‘oh, then we’ve got this leg together. it’s lucky it’s a man, isn’t it?’

‘why?’ asked philip.

‘they generally always like a male better,’ said the attendant. ‘a female’s liable to have a lot of fat about her.’

philip looked at the body. the arms and legs were so thin that there was no shape in them, and the ribs stood out so that the skin over them was tense. a man of about forty-five with a thin, gray beard, and on his skull scanty, colourless hair: the eyes were closed and the lower jaw sunken. philip could not feel that this had ever been a man, and yet in the row of them there was something terrible and ghastly.

‘i thought i’d start at two,’ said the young man who was dissecting with philip.

‘all right, i’ll be here then.’

he had bought the day before the case of instruments which was needful, and now he was given a locker. he looked at the boy who had accompanied him into the dissecting-room and saw that he was white.

‘make you feel rotten?’ philip asked him.

‘i’ve never seen anyone dead before.’

they walked along the corridor till they came to the entrance of the school. philip remembered fanny price. she was the first dead person he had ever seen, and he remembered how strangely it had affected him. there was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed. there was something horrible about the dead, and you could imagine that they might cast an evil influence on the living.

‘what d’you say to having something to eat?’ said his new friend to philip.

they went down into the basement, where there was a dark room fitted up as a restaurant, and here the students were able to get the same sort of fare as they might have at an aerated bread shop. while they ate (philip had a scone and butter and a cup of chocolate), he discovered that his companion was called dunsford. he was a fresh-complexioned lad, with pleasant blue eyes and curly, dark hair, large-limbed, slow of speech and movement. he had just come from clifton.

‘are you taking the conjoint?’ he asked philip.

‘yes, i want to get qualified as soon as i can.’

‘i’m taking it too, but i shall take the f. r. c. s. afterwards. i’m going in for surgery.’

most of the students took the curriculum of the conjoint board of the college of surgeons and the college of physicians; but the more ambitious or the more industrious added to this the longer studies which led to a degree from the university of london. when philip went to st. luke’s changes had recently been made in the regulations, and the course took five years instead of four as it had done for those who registered before the autumn of 1892. dunsford was well up in his plans and told philip the usual course of events. the ‘first conjoint’ examination consisted of biology, anatomy, and chemistry; but it could be taken in sections, and most fellows took their biology three months after entering the school. this science had been recently added to the list of subjects upon which the student was obliged to inform himself, but the amount of knowledge required was very small.

when philip went back to the dissecting-room, he was a few minutes late, since he had forgotten to buy the loose sleeves which they wore to protect their shirts, and he found a number of men already working. his partner had started on the minute and was busy dissecting out cutaneous nerves. two others were engaged on the second leg, and more were occupied with the arms.

‘you don’t mind my having started?’

‘that’s all right, fire away,’ said philip.

he took the book, open at a diagram of the dissected part, and looked at what they had to find.

‘you’re rather a dab at this,’ said philip.

‘oh, i’ve done a good deal of dissecting before, animals, you know, for the pre sci.’

there was a certain amount of conversation over the dissecting-table, partly about the work, partly about the prospects of the football season, the demonstrators, and the lectures. philip felt himself a great deal older than the others. they were raw schoolboys. but age is a matter of knowledge rather than of years; and newson, the active young man who was dissecting with him, was very much at home with his subject. he was perhaps not sorry to show off, and he explained very fully to philip what he was about. philip, notwithstanding his hidden stores of wisdom, listened meekly. then philip took up the scalpel and the tweezers and began working while the other looked on.

‘ripping to have him so thin,’ said newson, wiping his hands. ‘the blighter can’t have had anything to eat for a month.’

‘i wonder what he died of,’ murmured philip.

‘oh, i don’t know, any old thing, starvation chiefly, i suppose.... i say, look out, don’t cut that artery.’

‘it’s all very fine to say, don’t cut that artery,’ remarked one of the men working on the opposite leg. ‘silly old fool’s got an artery in the wrong place.’

‘arteries always are in the wrong place,’ said newson. ‘the normal’s the one thing you practically never get. that’s why it’s called the normal.’

‘don’t say things like that,’ said philip, ‘or i shall cut myself.’

‘if you cut yourself,’ answered newson, full of information, ‘wash it at once with antiseptic. it’s the one thing you’ve got to be careful about. there was a chap here last year who gave himself only a prick, and he didn’t bother about it, and he got septicaemia.’

‘did he get all right?’

‘oh, no, he died in a week. i went and had a look at him in the p. m. room.’

philip’s back ached by the time it was proper to have tea, and his luncheon had been so light that he was quite ready for it. his hands smelt of that peculiar odour which he had first noticed that morning in the corridor. he thought his muffin tasted of it too.

‘oh, you’ll get used to that,’ said newson. ‘when you don’t have the good old dissecting-room stink about, you feel quite lonely.’

‘i’m not going to let it spoil my appetite,’ said philip, as he followed up the muffin with a piece of cake.