Oysters by Catherine Cheek
“Oysters!” Herr Doktor, the famous scientist, tears open the sack and the oysters spill to the faded carpet in the parlor. He picks up a shell, displaying the shriveled remains of an oyster clinging to one half. Scars creep across her hands, victory wounds from a thousand opened mollusks, but he has eyes only for the rotten bodies. “You did not eat these, wife. It is not the salty slick of an oyster your tongue has been caressing.”
She does not like oysters. She hates their fat slimy bulk, hates the way each glob slides down the throat. It reminds her of the way the Herr Doktor’s hands slid inside that other woman, caressing her loins, caressing her heart, caressing her spleen, her liver, and all those other places Christian men dare not touch. Other people like oysters. Other women are pleased when Herr Doktor, the famous scientist (and a baron besides) gives them oysters laced with medicine to make them fall limp. She remembers the way the prostitute’s hair ornaments clacked against the floor, the way her jaw snapped shut.
“I bought the oysters from a woman at the market. I told her they were for my supper,” she replies, eyes cast down. It’s appropriate for the younger daughter of a tailor to have her eyes cast down before the most famous scientist in the land. Even if she did marry him.
“Then let me tell you something of your trade, Goodwife….”
She stares at the now filthy carpet in the parlor, a room she spent all morning cleaning, and her eye twitches briefly with resentment. He calls her ‘Goodwife’, not ‘Madam’. She is entitled to be called ‘Madam’. She purchased that right with a wedding veil and the bloom of her maidenhead.
“Let me tell you what any good wife should know. Do not buy more than you can eat, and do not spend so long at the fishwife’s shack that all know you lie with her reeking carp of a husband!”
“I only meant to help…with your experiments…” She weeps then, hoping the salt water will buy her mercy. She only meant to entice a fishwife here, or a sailor on leave, trailing after the simpleton wife of the famous Herr Doktor. She had learned to be as cruel as him, and after all, where was the next one to come from? He could not count on a drunkard falling in their well. He could not count on the good fortune of a poxy whore no one would miss. One day he would choose the tailor’s daughter who had given him her body in exchange for no dowry. Pretty, young, obedient, and best of all quiet. Everyone knew that she, the tailor’s younger daughter, was a simpleton. She must be mad as well. Why else would she buy oysters day in and out, more oysters than she could eat, and drag home the briny reeking sacks of them to rot in the midden heap?
“Attend to your own affairs, wife. My experiments are too complicated for a woman’s mind.” He glances at her sideways, eyes like a fish eagle glaring at the gull who has stolen his meal. The anger turns to calculation. She almost misses it, though she has been very vigilant of his moods. His osprey eyes have spotted an exposed morsel of flesh in the flotsam. “Perhaps there will be a way for you to help after all. Come to my laboratory tonight, after the servants are asleep.”
She flinches, though this time he does not slap her when he leaves.
“I do not strike those who help me with my experiments.” He dares chuckle at this, as though she really were a simpleton, and did not know what he meant. “Tell the servants to draw you a bath before you attend to me.”
“Yes, husband.” She almost smiles at his joke, but remembers it is no joke in his eyes. He truly does not remember that he gave her no money to hire help. Deaf Mary died the year before. Only the tailor’s daughter sweeps the hearths now, presses the linen, brews the tea and bakes the bread. (For want of a penny at the baker’s, though the Herr Doktor wears fine kid gloves.) She can hire no gardener to help with the midden. None touch that foul earth but her.
What coin she does have buys oysters? Rotten oysters. The week old oysters that all the fishwives can’t sell. They laugh when they see her, but their laughter is hollow, fearful. One of them might have married the famous Herr Doktor. They might have bartered the affections of their briny fishmonger husbands for the right to be called ‘Madam.’ They see the tailor’s younger daughter coming, and their faces turn to pity. They knew she bargained poorly. They sell her the oysters, rotten oysters, yesterday’s catch, and for her their prices are not dear.
She drags the day’s shells down the back steps of the servants entrance to the garden, and in the waning light, she digs another hole in the midden. Salty tears of fear streak the grime from her face, but she digs anyway, a new hole away from where the others lie. (Who could find the bodies underneath the stench of oysters? A dutiful wife protects her husband.) Would the fishwife trade places with the tailor’s younger daughter? No. If not her, then someone else. Would another poxy whore share Herr Doktor’s bed tonight? No, he will not spare that expense, not when he has a dutiful wife. The stinking hole beckons, deep enough for a grave, with the oysters piled on top as a cairn. She does not want this bed tonight, but someone must lie here. If not her, then someone else. Who?
She turns towards the house. In the window of the laboratory, scores of wax candles cast a warm yellow glow. (Thirty oysters for the price of a candle, she knows.) She cocks her head, and stares at it out of one eye, like a gull who has spotted a golden ring among the flotsam on the beach. She fingers her knife, the knife with which she sliced open a thousand victims’ shells. Her hands have grown strong and deft. One flick of her knife and the oysters bare their insides. The fishwives taught her how. They taught her many things.
Tonight, it will not be her. It will be someone else.
She sets down her shovel and retires to the house, whistling a sea chantey. She sings, caught up in the tune, changing the words to suit her as she caresses the oyster knife.
“…the gull shall kill the eagle
The sea shall be your bride.
I’ll bed you down with oysters.
And sail out with the tide…”
She slips up the stairs, as quiet as the tide. He does not see her, does not hear her, hears only the hum of power crackling back and forth between the wires. Many have come up here, have taken their turn between the crackling blue orbs. None arose again.
Herr Doktor mutters to himself, chuckling quietly as he readies his contraption. “…still one must break a few eggs to get an omelet.”
One must open a few oysters to get a pearl, she thinks.
She pauses at the door. Her fear almost undoes her. A dutiful wife does not strike her husband. Yet, in her darkest heart of hearts, she has done it a thousand times before. As quick as a flash of sunlight, her knife slips between the hard knobs on the back of his neck. Wet red shows on dry calcium white. He falls, stares disbelieving. The membranes of his eyes cloud over.
She buries him in the midden heap among the oysters, then returns to claim her prize. The Herr Doktor has treasures in the rooms above: gold, money, paintings, strings of pearls, and more. What might they purchase, for a woman who learned haggling from fishwives?
At dawn, laden with victory, she sails away.