Raine. Elizabeth Amber

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СКАЧАТЬ specimen of ambiguous sex! One willing to be examined for the purposes of advancing science.”

      Jordan lifted a hand and wiggled the tips of her fingers at the audience. A nervous rustling wafted across them. In general, medical men were more accustomed to attending lectures involving the study of cadavers that were far less animated than she. Only the members of LAMAS waved enthusiastically to her, tossing posies and small tokens onto the stage.

      The artist stood suddenly, dragged his chair away, and shuffled through his drawings for a few moments. His footsteps were loud in the momentary quiet as he made to withdraw from the stage.

      Jordan turned her head and watched him go. She saw that he’d finished the last sketch and left it positioned on the easel. He’d portrayed her genitals three times actual size. They’d been faithfully rendered. He really was quite good.

      “Bear witness to this spectacle. This miracle of science,” Salerno went on. Like a conductor, his hands moved in staccato gestures to punctuate his words and lend them added importance.

      Jordan looked beyond him, scanning the sea of faces blurred by darkness. Because of her, Salerno’s reputation had spread far and wide. Today the theater had filled to capacity. Several hundred were in attendance. Candles lit the stage, so they could easily see her. But beyond the candles, the crowd of onlookers appeared to her as shrouds with shadowed features.

      “Hermaphroditism has never been as pronounced in any other subject, now living or dead,” Salerno was saying. “This is a rare opportunity, I assure you. The subject is nineteen years of age. Such cases rarely endure so long. Early death due to venereal disease or suicide are typically the fate of these creatures.”

      Jordan rolled her eyes. “No, really. Don’t bother trying to spare my feelings,” she muttered sotto voce.

      It wasn’t that Salerno was being intentionally cruel to her. He didn’t care enough about her as a person to bother with cruelty. To him, she was merely a medical curiosity. A stepping stone to fame and glory in his chosen field. That she might also be a human being with feelings was immaterial. His lack of empathy made him all the more dangerous.

      In time, Salerno grew weary of his own voice and called for the interrogation to commence.

      “Why the mask?” a voice inquired from the crowd.

      “It is a requirement the subject’s family insists upon,” Salerno replied. “Hence the moniker, La Maschera.”

      “But why specifically the bauta when any mask would have done?” another called.

      “I’ve always worn the bauta of Carnivale,” Jordan returned. “Even before the Austrians.”

      Salerno shot her an annoyed look. She might have to obey him in most things, but she refused to play the silent victim he would prefer her to be. He should be accustomed to that by now.

      Onlookers always questioned the mask, but it had taken on added significance this year. Because some Venetians who still rebelled against Austrian rule had chosen to disguise themselves behind Carnivale masks to make mischief, such masks had recently been outlawed. The festival that had for centuries been so integral to the city was now forbidden.

      “Let me direct your attention to matters below the subject’s neck,” Salerno said, indicating her bosom. His hand was cold as he took the weight of one of her breasts between his thumb and two fingers, lifting. “Paired with what is displayed between the subject’s legs, such objects often draw titters from the crowd.”

      Jordan cringed at the pun, having heard it before from him on every birthday since her breasts had developed. She’d had to bind them every morning thereafter to perpetuate the fiction that she was entirely male.

      “They’re not much proof of sexual ambiguity,” a voice complained. “I’ve seen men with tits as big.”

      “But only fat men, I’ll warrant,” Salerno quibbled. “And this subject is hardly fat.” He let her breast flop free.

      “Let’s hear the subject speak further so that we may judge the quality and timbre of the voice,” someone called.

      Jordan tilted her jaw to a challenging angle. “What would you have me say? That you’re a toad? A prick? An ass?”

      The questioner blushed. Appearing quite sorry he’d dared ask, he meekly added, “The voice is too low to be strictly female, yet too high to be male,” before quickly reseating himself.

      Another man stood. “Has the, uh, subject been clean shaven? Does, he, she, uh—” His words trailed off as he searched for the appropriate pronoun to apply to her.

      Nouns always sprang with ease to the audience’s lips when they beheld her—freak, specimen, subject, monstrosity. At the Paris school of medicine where she’d been taken for observation as a child, she’d been labeled le malade, the ill one. But no one ever knew what pronoun to apply to her. Sometimes they labeled her “her,” sometimes “him,” and worst of all, in imitation of Salerno, “it.”

      “You may to refer to the subject as ‘La Maschera’ or ‘it,’” Salerno informed him.

      “Very well then,” the man continued. “Does it have a beard?”

      “Of course, just look between its legs,” joked another voice from somewhere in the audience.

      The group guffawed. Jordan affected a bored expression. She’d heard the jest before from other doctors in other theaters.

      “I only wondered if its jaw might have been clean shaven before this event in order to throw us off a proper diagnosis,” the man protested.

      Salerno’s hand cupped her jaw, massaging. “Soft as an infant’s behind, I assure you. Come. I invite you to feel for yourself.”

      Jordan steeled herself for what was to come. This invitation would be the first of many.

      The questioner strode forward. His fingers stroked Jordan’s cheeks, neck, and throat. He tilted her jaw one way and then the other. She purposely caught his gaze, hoping to startle him with her unusual obsidian eyes.

      Under her unwavering stare, he quickly dropped his hand. Wiping it on his pants leg, he stepped away.

      “Beardless,” he pronounced to the audience, before striding back to his seat.

      More questions came, thick and fast. None were new to her. But she lay in wait for the one question to which her answer would be new. It would almost be pleasant to see the shock on Salerno’s face.

      “Is the vaginal canal blind?” someone asked.

      “No, there is a small perforation at its climax,” Salerno assured him.

      “How small?” asked yet another.

      “Discover it for yourselves.” Salerno beckoned the two questioners toward the stage.

      Jordan lay back, folding her hands across her midriff. This was proceeding as all the other events had in prior years. In some ways, it was boring. In others, painful. But first and foremost the exploitation engendered a deep, private humiliation in her.

      Salerno produced a pot of СКАЧАТЬ