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The caller was a very young gentleman, tall and distinguished, with piercing blue eyes and black hair that was incongruously already greying at the temples. His face was pale, meticulously shaven, with handsome features and prominent cheekbones. He wore a heavy, very fine cloak.
“Brilling,” he introduced himself. “And you would be M-mr. Sherlock Holmes, I p-presume?”
“I’m Holmes,” said Holmes, emerging from his room in his shirtsleeves, his countenance betraying the positive outcome of the experiment he’d been conducting. “That is Dr. Watson you’re addressing. Please, make yourself comfortable.”
Brilling took a seat of the proffered armchair, more gingerly than Watson would have expected from someone who couldn’t be more than twenty years old and appeared to have an athletic build. He did not remove his cloak.
“I th-think you are the only one you c-can help me,” began Brilling, wringing his hands. “You see, I’m d-dying.”
Watson stifled a protest – nothing about this young, vigorous man could possibly suggest the idea of imminent death. A psychiatric case, then, possibly?
“Continue,” said Holmes, quietly signaling for Watson to let the man finish his tale.
Brilling did not immediately resume speaking – his handsome face was twisted by a grimace of pain, and his eyes were firmly shut. From the way he instinctively bent forward, Watson deduced that he was suffering from some type of colic. He frowned, trying to reconcile the man’s evident pain and self-prophetized looming demise with his robustly healthy appearance.
“A f-few months ago I got married,” Brilling said eventually, beads of perspiration on his pallid brow. “The very s-same d-day my wife g-got m-murdered. I vowed to f-find her killer and avenge her, but my t-time is r-running out and I still have not b-been able to atone for my s-sin.”
“I see,” said Holmes, in an even tone. “And tell me, Mr. Brilling, is the father of your child also a Russian?”
Watson gave a startled cry. Brilling blanched.
“He is,” he admitted, ashen faced. “A c-count Zurov. A moment of weakness – this was m-months before I married. I had n-no idea until…”
He trailed off, miserably, his hand coming to rest on the swell of a stomach that had so far been effectively concealed by his heavy cloak.
“How…?” interjected Watson, unable to restrain himself.
Holmes gave a tight, sympathetic smile.
“A glance at Mr. Brilling’s hands – should I continue to call you Brilling?”
“Fandorin,” groaned the young man, without looking up.
“Mr. Fandorin’s hands, then. A simple glance at them, as I was saying, reveals that he was married in the Orthodox Church, and thus that he wears his wedding ring on the right hand, as is customary in that rite. I would hardly take our Mr. Fandorin for a Greek or Bulgarian subject, so I ventured to presume that he does indeed come from Russia. The Cyrillic monogram on the clasp of his cloak confirmed my theory.”
Watson looked at Fandorin’s hand, still clutched to his prominent stomach, and didn’t see any wedding band.
“I should have said, ‘he used to wear’,” amended Holmes. “Mr. Fandorin wore his ring through the summer, long enough for his hands to tan, but has since removed it. The lapse of time between the tragic death of his bride and his decision to stop wearing the ring she had placed on his finger, taken together with his reference to sin, led me to believe that it was not just sheer shock and grief that prevented him from feeling worthy of displaying the symbol of marital union. Something must have happened over the summer that led you to this very difficult decision, did it not?”
“It became undeniable in August,” murmured Fandorin. “The… the movements inside. After that, I could no longer disgrace Lizanka’s memory.”
“But how could he possibly be with child?” cried Watson in outrage. “Holmes, surely this poor man is suffering from some sort of delusion. He needs help – psychiatric help!”
As if on cue, Fandorin bent double, clutching his swollen middle, and let out a guttural moan.
“I think you will find, Watson,” said Holmes, in a strangely tender tone. “That our gentleman here has needed to overcome his birth circumstances, and carve his own way to manhood, all the way to the church’s steps. Am I correct, Mr. Fandorin?”
Fandorin looked up, bewildered.
“What?”
Holmes frowned.
“I’m saying – you’ll pardon my crudeness – that you are successfully living as a man, but you were evidently born female. Is that not so?”
“No!” cried Fandorin, his teeth gritted with the force of the contraction that was racking through him. “No, I was born a m-man, and this… this is divine p-punishment for the sin of s-sodomy.”
For the first time in their acquaintance, Holmes was left completely dumbfounded.
“That isn’t possible,” said Watson automatically. “Can I examine you? There must be a medical explanation.”
Fandorin nodded weakly.
“You c-can do whatever you want. I already know there is nothing that could save me from d-dying like a d-dog.”
A few minutes later, under the concerned gaze of the still speechless Holmes, Watson began his examination of Fandorin. Underneath his cloak the young man had strong, broad shoulders, like he had imagined; lean, muscular limbs; a well-formed chest; and an enormous, patently gravid middle – an almost torpedo-shaped protrusion, jutting forth absurdly in front of him, barely contained by a shirt that was strained to its limit.
“Would you stand up and remove your trousers?”
Fandorin did so, wordlessly, and the last vestige of Watson’s hopefulness ebbed away: underneath the ominous swell of Fandorin’s pregnant stomach was a perfectly formed set of male genitalia, with a sizable, flaccid penis and completely normal testes.
Watson swallowed.
“Let me auscultate you,” he said, retrieving his stethoscope. Maybe a tumor?
Fandorin had no objections. Watson bent down, his face a few centimetres from the absurd, unnaturally taut surface of the Russian’s stomach, and almost immediately was able to pick up a strong, unmistakable heartbeat. He cursed under his breath.
“There really is a foetus inside him,” he reported, his mouth dry. “But it’s impossible.”
At this point another contraction hit, forcing Fandorin to drop to his knees.
“Maybe an operation?” ventured Holmes, in a very low tone. Watson looked down at Fandorin.
“Maybe,” he agreed, knowing full well that an attempted Caesarian section on a completely unknown anatomy would almost certainly kill both the child and the young man. “It would have to be in hospital, certainly.”
“N-never,” cried Fandorin. “I’d d-die all the same, and the shame would k-kill my f-father in law.”
“You could be admitted under a pseudonym,” offered Watson, unconvincingly. He felt an enormous amount of pity for the young man bent in agony at his feet – he thought of Holmes’s morphine, of a merciful death… maybe the unnatural circumstances could be concealed after the fact, Fandorin’s honour preserved…
“Watson!” cried Holmes, startling Watson out of his reverie. “Watson, look!”
It was immediately evident what Holmes was referring to: underneath Fandorin, a great puddle of mostly clear liquid had appeared on the sitting room’s floor.
“Those are his waters, aren’t they? And if they are, it means…”
“It means there is a passage,” agreed Watson, grabbing Fandorin by the arm. “Help me get him on the table,” he urged, noting in passing that the young man’s swollen stomach had morphed into a teardrop shape. “I must examine him more in depth.”
With Holmes’s assistance, Watson pried Fandorin’s pale, hairy legs apart, hoping against reason that he would find a vagina nestled behind the now slightly engorged penis and the tight scrotum. His hopes were immediately dashed: Fandorin’s perineum was a completely normal male one, or it would have been – added Watson mentally, wiping beads of cold sweat from his brow – if not for the clear, unmistakable bulge of a head pressing against it from inside.
Fandorin was undeniably on the verge of giving birth, then, or rather on the verge of dying in the attempt.
“His anus,” remarked Holmes quietly. Watson checked it: the puckered opening was slightly loosened, he observed, similar – he involuntarily blushed – similar to how Holmes’s often looked after a good pounding.
“I think it’s dilating,” continued Holmes, ostensibly indifferent to his partner’s perturbation.
Watson glanced at Fandorin, who appeared to have mercifully sunk into a half-faint after his last contraction.
“Do you think he could actually go through with it?”
Holmes shrugged.
“I don’t see which alternative he has,” he said, gently resting his hand on the enormous swell of Fandorin’s lower stomach. “You could give him some anesthetic?”
And so for almost an hour they sat and watched, Fandorin lying sedated on the dinner table as more and more contractions forced his anus to open, revealing the dark-haired crown of – Watson still couldn’t wrap his mind around it – the actual infant who was trying to emerge from his body.
“He should probably be awake for what comes next,” suggested Holmes eventually. “He… well, he looks like he’d probably enjoy the experience.”
“Holmes!” hissed Watson repressively, but he had to concede that his partner had a point.
Fandorin’s penis, probably due to the sheer amount of pressure on his prostate, was now completely erect, standing rigidly – tantalizingly – against his enormous belly. Watson briefly allowed himself to picture Holmes in the same situation – stomach absurdly distended, cock hard and wet, arsehole stretched to its absolute limit – and found that he, too, was getting an erection.
“Holmes,” he repeated, with a sternness that was undermined by the blush on his cheeks. “Now it’s not the time and place. We have to help this poor unfortunate gentleman. But you are not wrong, he will really need to push now. Let’s wake him.”
“As you say, doctor,” agreed Holmes with a knowledgeable smirk. Watson felt himself blush even darker.
By the time Watson managed to rouse Fandorin from his ether-induced slumber, the baby’s head was already beginning to make its way out of him.
“что происходит?!” cried the young man in anguish. Holmes, standing at the head of the table, grabbed him by the arms and kept him firmly down, so that he would have the time to recover his wits without risking injury to either himself or the infant.
“You are giving birth, Mr. Fandorin,” explained Watson in the most cheerfully clinical tone he could scrounge up. “Successfully. Now it’s just a matter of a few pushes, and you’ll have a babe in your arms. On the next contraction, if you please…”
Almost immediately, Fandorin’s stomach clenched, and the young man curled forward in pain.
“Push,” instructed Watson soothingly, placing his hand on his patient’s perineum to try and prevent tearing as a couple more centimetres of head slipped out. “You’re doing very well.”
“It’s agony,” groaned Fandorin, his flushed erection still bobbing against the round slope of his lower stomach. “I cannot d-do it.”
“You can and you will,” said Holmes, his hands still on Fandorin’s arms. “Here, rest your back against me. Grab your thighs. Push.”
“The head is almost out,” announced Watson. Fandorin closed his eyes, muttered something in Russian – curse or prayer, Watson couldn’t say – and with a sudden look of calm determination on his handsome face took a deep breath and gave an almighty push. The entire head emerged. Fandorin moaned, his penis so hard now that is was almost purple, and glistening.
“One more!” cried Watson. “One more, Fandorin, you’re almost there… here it comes, the shoulders are out, you’ve done it! You’ve done it, Mr. Fandorin! You have a son!”
Fandorin opened his eyes, bewilderment and joy overtaking his handsome features as he evidently struggled to come to terms with the absurd concept that the squalling infant Watson was holding aloft had really come out of him. His lower stomach was splattered with sperm, a spectacular orgasm having seized him when the infant’s body finally slipped out of him entirely.
“I d-did not d-die,” he remarked, very quietly. “I didn’t. A m-miracle.”
“You didn’t,” confirmed Watson, who had handed the baby to the smirking Holmes and was now carefully examining his patient. “You still need to pass the placenta, I… suppose,” he ventured, eyeing the pulsating umbilical cord emerging from Fandorin still gaping anus and wondering how much sense it made to apply his scant gynecological notions to such an extraordinary case. “This might hurt slightly,” he warned, pressing down firmly on Fandorin’s still very distended stomach. “But it’s necessary to check that… oh.”
“Oh?” repeated Holmes, raising an eyebrow.
Watson palmed Fandorin’s belly again, frowning in concentration, hoping for a mistake, but almost immediately a strong kick against his hand confirmed his worst suspicion. He cursed under his breath. Fandorin looked aghast. Holmes’s expression was indecipherable.
“Mr. Fandorin,” announced Watson, trying desperately for a light tone. “I’m… I’m afraid we’re going to need another miracle very soon.”