CoDex 1962

by Sjón

  — I’m called – I am – Loewe! I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.

  He bowed and smiled at the girl, who gulped.

  — And this thing that I have shown you, resting on its silken bed in that hatbox, is my child – my son, if we wish to be precise – and he will be your child too, if you are willing to help me, to give birth to him with me.

  Marie-Sophie gaped in bewilderment at the man, at this crazy invalid who she couldn’t help loving: what did he mean by his child? Their child? This repulsive lump that squirmed like a giant, chopped-up maggot when she touched it. How romantic! She shifted on the bed, hoping that her movement could be interpreted as: “Well, I suppose I should be getting along!” or “You don’t say! You’re called Loewe? And you have the material for a clay boy in the box on the table? And I can give birth to him with you? Well, it’s a nice offer, but perhaps you could explain a little more clearly? I’m just a simple country girl but, ignorant as I am, I’ve always thought that little children, chicks, the birds and the bees, were made in quite a different way from this.” Marie-Sophie raised her eyebrows and shrugged. He smiled back encouragingly.

  — Er, I think it’s probably best if I leave you to it. You’re so much better and I expect you’ve had enough of me hanging over you chattering this past couple of days …

  She leapt to her feet and went to the door with the intention of leaving, then turned to her poor, deranged man and held out her hand to him.

  — It was nice to meet you, Herr Loewe – sir, I mean.

  Loewe took the girl’s hand, studied her, then shot a quick glance at the hatbox.

  — Believe me.

  Marie-Sophie knew he wouldn’t let go of her hand and that she was ready to give it to him. They held hands. He led her into the room, she led him into the room.

  — I’ve devoted my life to creating this lump using dust from under the Altneu Synagogue in Prague, dew from the roses that bloom in the Castle gardens, rain from the cobbles in the ghetto, and more, much more.

  — What? You must tell me everything.

  Marie-Sophie and Loewe paced around the room, as far as its small size permitted, back and forth with the light swing of a Sunday promenade, as he described to her how he had collected his bodily fluids: phlegm, blood, sweat, nasal mucus, bone marrow, excrement, urine, saliva and sperm, kneading them slowly but surely into the clay over the years, along with nail parings from his fingers and toes, hair and flakes of skin. The girl shuddered during the recital, but nothing could surprise her any more; from now on nothing bad could happen. She swung their hands to and fro, and she could happily have hummed along to his speech if she hadn’t found the whole thing sufficiently absurd and amusing as it was.

  He finished his account and they took up position before the table, gazing with starry eyes at the lump of clay in the hatbox, red-cheeked like parents admiring their firstborn in its cradle. She clasped his hand tighter: Our child!

  The girl felt new emotions stirring deep within her soul: twisting, no more than a movement, a rhythmic dum-de-dum, dum-de-dum. They were followed by other movements, haphazard, yet apparently born from the same rhythm: Dah-da, dahh-da-da. Now Marie-Sophie felt the urge to touch the lump again, the stirrings in her mind were attuned to its movements; quick twitches and then a vibration: Dum-de-dum, dah-da, dum-de-dum, dahh-da-da. She concentrated on the dark colour of the lump, listening for the sensation, then became aware of Loewe’s breathing at her side. He was breathing steadily and deliberately through his nose, she could hear the whine of the breath as it forced its way down his nasal passages and out through his nostrils, making them flare and the lobes of his nose tremble.

  I hope he hasn’t caught a cold; it could kill him, the state he’s in.

  Marie-Sophie was about to turn to him and remind him to take care of himself, not to let himself catch a chill, when: Dum-de-dum, dahh-da-da, dum-de-dum, dah-da, dum-de-dum, dahh-da-da. She became the feeling and he became the breath passing slowly and steadily in and out of his body. Marie-Sophie realised her eyes were closed.

  His eyes are closed too, yet I can see the lump – my child – quite clearly.

  They turned to face one another and their gazes met through their eyelids.’

  ‘God, that’s so beautiful!’

  ‘Yes, Marie-Sophie and Loewe met in each other’s eyes, they crossed over into the dim antechamber of the soul where lovers dwell when they close their eyes together, where thought flutters on rose-pink curtains and we look in even as we look out.

  The girl stepped into the living darkness to join the man and he walked into the darkness to join her.

  She opened her eyes and looked herself in the eye, but it was not her face that was reflected in her pupils, it was he who stood within the arched windows, looking out at himself through her eyes. Dum-de-dum, dah-da, dum-de-dum, dahh-da-da. The girl heard the feeling throb in her body which now housed Loewe, and she felt how the breathing in her new body resonated with the dum-de-dum, how they pulsed together in harmony, each lifting the other: Dum-de-dum, tiss and whee in the nose. He pointed at the lump and now she saw a child begin to take shape in the formless mass. He stroked the clay carefully with her hands; she stretched out his hands and stroked the backs of her own hands, following them on their journey over the unformed matter: a cupped palm formed cranium and nape, dah, tee, then the throat, up a little, and there was a chin; the side of a hand marked out a mouth; thumb pinched against forefinger, a nose; little finger pressed the clay down into eye sockets and mounded up a forehead. Holding the neck carefully he shaped the shoulders in the twinkling of an eye: Dum-de-dum and whee, tiss and da-da. She followed the movement with his hands, letting his eyes stray over her body, watching it work, watching how her shoulders undulated when he ploughed the clay up with a sure touch and freed the child’s short arms, taking what came off and kneading it into tiny patches that he placed on its breasts to make nipples. With the tips of her forefingers he sketched a ribcage and drew lines in it with the tips of her other fingers, whiss, dum-da. He paused and counted the ribs: one, two, three …

  — Twelve.

  Marie-Sophie was startled by her masculine voice and emitted a low chuckle. Loewe looked up from his work and laid finger to lips as if to hush her but blew her a kiss instead, then carried on. He slid her hands under the lump, moulding the two lowest ribs, cupped her palms over the stomach and ran them down the abdomen and out to the hips where he pushed her thumbnails deep into the clay and separated the legs: Dum-de-dum, dah-tee, whiss-de-dum, dahh. He kneaded legs and feet, then rolled the excess material thoughtfully between her fingers. He looked at the girl in his body, drew the towel over the mirror a little to one side, and looked at himself in her body. She caressed his cheek.

  — I know what you’re thinking, but I want it to be a boy. I long for a little boy who will be different from the rest, a peace-loving boy who will grow up to be a good man.

  Loewe shaped a little willy and balls which he placed between the clay-child’s legs.

  — There’s no question of his sex.

  Marie-Sophie gave a low chuckle, and he pinched a tiny scrap off its foreskin and used it to fill in the crotch, before sticking the top joint of her little finger into the clay below, and there was its rectum. The girl saw the blood rush to his cheeks and thought she could feel herself blushing.

  So that’s what I look like when I blush, she thought, dum-de-whiss, tee and dah. I’m actually quite pretty when I blush. Oh, how little we know about ourselves, how little we see of ourselves, yet everyone else knows all about us.

  He looked at her. She wanted to kiss him. She kissed him on the neck, where she liked to be kissed, rather harder than intended. He tilted her head in the hope of another kiss and puckered up her mouth. She smiled.

  — Let’s get on.

  Loewe sighed shyly and continued with his creation. The girl stepped back from the table and took a good look at the lump, which increasingly resembled a real baby: and just
like a real baby, all its proportions were so improbable that it was hard to imagine the ridiculous body ever growing, elongating and taking on the appearance of an adult male.

  * * *

  METAMORPHOSIS

  One morning when Jósef L. woke up at home in bed after troubled dreams, he found himself transformed into a giant baby. He lay on his weak back, which was soft as a feather cushion, and had he been able to raise his head at all he would have seen his belly, distended and pink with a protruding, unhealed navel; the bedclothes hardly covered this bulging mound and seemed ready to slide on to the floor at any moment. His limbs were pathetically spindly compared to the rest of him, and waved awkwardly without his being able to control them at all.’

  * * *

  ‘Not more stories!’

  ‘But this is a literary allusion.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘It adds depth to the story of Marie-Sophie and my father, the invalid, making it resonate with world literature.’

  ‘I don’t care. Tell me about the child, tell me about you.’

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘Yes, dum-de-dum, or I’m off.’

  ‘Well, then, whiss!’

  ‘Dah-da.’

  ‘Tee!’

  ‘Loewe gently picked up the child-lump and laid it on its stomach: he passed nimble fingers over its back, moulding shoulder-blades and spine, hips and buttocks, crooks of knees and ankles. Dah-da-tee. Dum-de-dum-whiss.

  My child! thought Marie-Sophie when he turned the lump over again. Now, who do you take after, my boy?

  Loewe was busy moulding fingers and toes, drawing lines on palms and soles, excavating temples and nape of neck, and forming ears which he placed rather high on the head. Marie-Sophie put a hand on her beloved’s shoulder.

  — We must give him a face. Do you know, he reminds me a bit of my brother, and perhaps of myself, with those little ears like shells, sticking out a bit, yes, like a calf.

  She watched him give the clay a face: the boy’s features were pure, he had high eyebrows and cheekbones while the cheeks themselves were chubby and the mouth sensitive with a pronounced Cupid’s bow. Loewe opened the mouth and stuck her finger inside, pressing the clay into palate, gums and tongue, and turning when he had finished to the girl in his body.

  — Could you open your mouth for me, please?

  Marie-Sophie did as Loewe asked, gaping at him awkwardly while he stroked the fingers of both her hands over his tongue.

  — Thank you.

  He smoothed the clay under the boy’s eyes and tweaked him here and there. The girl closed his mouth: in the hatbox on the table before them lay a sleeping infant who was wonderfully like them both, and suddenly she was seized with an incomprehensible restlessness: whatever were they thinking of to let the poor little mite lie there naked and helpless in a dirty cardboard box? It was plain that they knew as little about children as they did about anything else – what a couple of misfits! Wasn’t it obvious that people like her and the invalid were not to be trusted with small children?

  She wanted to pick the child up at once and press him to her bosom. She wanted to cuddle this dark son of hers against her, rock him gently and sing quietly and reassuringly some of that loving nonsense that the warmth of a defenceless baby calls forth on our lips. Marie-Sophie fumbled instinctively over her flat chest, and suddenly missed being in her own body, but she didn’t want to disturb Loewe who was absorbed in putting the finishing touches on their child; she shifted his feet uneasily behind him: what should she say? Give me back my breasts? No. So she whispered:

  — Isn’t he cold? Shouldn’t we cover him?

  Loewe finished polishing the clay and now began crimping it at knee and elbow; he didn’t look up from his work but answered her question as if he were talking to himself, breaking off every time he wrinkled the child.

  — He can’t feel anything. Not yet. Later. Be ready with something then. A blanket.

  Marie-Sophie stroked a finger across his brow, the brow of the man in her body.

  — His forehead, could you draw a line like this across his forehead?

  He examined his own face.

  — Does it make sense for him to look like me?

  — Yes, it’s a nice line and doesn’t seem to have been caused by worry or anger; it’s just there. And it’s so mysterious when babies are marked out in some way, when there’s something in their appearance or air that we usually think of as a sign of having lived a long time. It gives you the feeling that they’ve come from far away, bearing a message perhaps. I think it’s healthy for people to have children like that around them.

  Loewe nodded and applied the nail of her forefinger to the boy’s forehead.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true, can I touch it?’

  ‘Later. Time’s pressing on, they haven’t got all night…’

  ‘Marie-Sophie admired how the man ran her agile fingers over the child’s body: the creation was nearly finished and she could hardly wait for his eyelids to quiver and existence to be mirrored in his eyes for the first time.

  Yes, good point! They hadn’t yet given him his sight.

  Loewe stood silently by the table, critically surveying his handiwork; she tugged at his, her arm, and pointed to her, his eyes. He stuck his thumbs into the clay-boy’s face and enlarged the eyeholes.

  — They’re in my trouser pocket.

  The girl fetched his trousers from the cupboard and slipped a hand in the left pocket, but there was nothing there; it had a hole in it.

  — I’ll mend this for you.

  — No, please don’t, I use that pocket for things that can be lost or even should be lost. People love finding things when they’re out for a walk, and that’s my way of taking part in the informal pavement trade. I use the other pocket for things I’ve found and want to keep.

  He laughed apologetically on hearing his girlish voice.

  Marie-Sophie put his hand in the right pocket and, sure enough, there was a leather pouch among the coins and scraps of paper, and through the leather she felt two round objects: the eyes that were destined for their boy’s head.

  Loewe took the pouch from her and extracted the brown eyes and two frames of a film strip – one showing Adolf Hitler making a speech, the other showing the same man at dinner, wiping a gravy stain from his tie – and he laid the pieces of film, one in each eye socket, placed the eyeballs on top of them, then closed them with clay scrapings from under her nails.

  The work was done. Marie-Sophie and Loewe looked into one another’s eyes, swapped bodies again and examined the fruit of their hands: on a dressing table in a vulgar priest’s hole off room twenty-three on the first floor of the Vrieslander guesthouse in the small town of Kükenstadt on the banks of the Elbe lay a fully formed child. The work seemed very good to them. Now nothing remained but to kindle life in the small clay body.

  My father held the ring and asked my mother to do so as well, and together they pressed the seal into the tender flesh, midway between breastbone and genitals.

  I woke to life and her eyes saw my substance.

  The town-hall clock struck twelve.

  The twelfth chime echoed over the town like a premature farewell.

  There was a knock at the door.’

  VII

  17

  ‘Gabriel saw nothing wrong with the maiden’s passionate annunciation; the hands that he had admired at their garland weaving were certainly deft, the well-shaped mouth seared his face and throat, and the small breasts now rose and fell against his robe. No, on the contrary, the maiden’s caresses convinced the angel that he must have known her in the days of old, that they were meeting after a long and painful separation; he mimicked her every movement and touch.

  There came a point when the maiden touched the angel’s skirt.

  He seized her hand: wasn’t that going a bit far?

  The unicorn calf’s idiotic snorting under the pomegranate tree was getting on Gabriel’s nerves: the calf had been making stran
ge noises ever since they started kissing, thereby preventing the angel from losing himself completely in the fire. Wouldn’t it serve the beast right if he went all the way with the maiden and enjoyed her in a manner that the monstrous creature would never be able to experience?

  The angel released the maiden’s hand and half closed his eyes. She stroked slowly up his legs, the folds of his robe bunching between her wrist and forearm. He held his breath; the interplay of soft palm and fresh air felt blissful on his thighs.

  Gabriel was on the point of swooning in ecstasy when the maiden whipped back her hand and let out a shriek. He looked down his body but couldn’t spy anything that could give her cause for alarm: had she overreached herself at last?

  But the maiden was not the only one to be alarmed, the unicorn calf literally jumped out of its skin: the antelope jaw distorted in a terrible scream, the horse body shuddered and shook in a fit of convulsions, the elephantine legs lengthened and shrank by turns and from under the pig’s tail came an insane hubbub and stench, yes, as if a whole legion of foul-breathed demons were blasting on trombones.

  The angel blenched: he had been led into a trap!

  His lust evaporated, he launched himself into the air in a trice and paused at a safe distance from the grove: the calf was metamorphosing into a demon. Around its horn appeared a pewter crown, upside down, the points piercing the flesh of its brow, and to the clown’s immeasurable joy black blood began to trickle down its face. It shook its head, rolled its yellow eyes and licked its face with a forked tongue three feet long.

  It was none other than the cacodemon Amduscias, hell’s court composer, he who tortures the damned with his unbearable clashing and banging.’