‘Please don’t worry, it’s a plaster cast from a museum gift shop. Fifteen euros.’
Karen heard a murmur of laughter, the shifting of the listeners’ bodies, the scraping of someone’s chair – a clear sign that the tension had been broken. He’d started well. He must be having a good day today.
She quietly slipped out onto the deck and lit a cigarette, looking at the island of Rhodes as it got nearer, and the big ferries, the beaches still mostly empty at this time of year, and the city, which like some colony of insects climbed up the steep slope towards the bright sun. She stood there, enveloped in a peace that suddenly flowered over her, who knew from where.
She saw the island’s shores, and its caves. Cloisters and the naves carved into the rock by the water brought strange temples to her mind. Something had carefully built them over millions of years, that same force that now bore their small ship, rocked them. A thick transparent power, that had its workshops on land, as well.
Here were the prototypes of cathedrals, the slender towers and the catacombs, thought Karen. Those evenly stacked layers of rock on the shore, perfectly rounded stones, carefully elaborated over the ages, and grains of sand, and the ovals of caves. The veins of granite in sandstone, their asymmetrical, intriguing pattern, the regular line of the island’s shore, the shades of sand on the beaches. Monumental buildings and fine jewellery. What, in the face of this, could those little strings of houses lining the shores ever hope to be? Those little ports, those little ships, those little human shops, where with excessive confidence old ideas – simplified and in miniature – were sold.
Now she recalled the water grotto they’d seen somewhere on the Adriatic. Poseidon’s Grotto, where once a day the sun burst through an opening in the top. She remembered she herself had been next to the column of light as it pierced – sharp as a needle – the green water, and for just an instant revealed the sandy bed below. It lasted just a moment before the sun continued on its way.
The cigarette disappeared with a hiss into the great mouth of the sea.
He was sleeping on his side, with a hand under his cheek, his lips parted. His trouser leg had rolled up and now showed his grey cotton sock. She lay down beside him gently, put her arm around his waist and kissed his back in its woollen vest. It occurred to her that after he was gone she’d have to stay a little longer, even just to tidy all their things up and make room for others. She’d gather all his notes, go through them, probably publish them. She’d arrange things with the publishers – several of his books had already been made into textbooks. And in reality there was no reason not to continue his lectures, although she wasn’t sure the university would invite her to do so. But she would definitely want to take over these mobile Poseidon-like seminars on this meandering ship (if they asked her). Then she’d be able to add a lot of her own things. She thought about how no one had taught us to grow old, how we didn’t know what it would be like. When we were young we thought of old age as an ailment that affected only other people. While we, for reasons never entirely clear, would remain young. We treated the old as though they were responsible for their condition somehow, as though they’d done something to earn it, like some types of diabetes or arteriosclerosis. And yet this was an ailment that affected the absolute most innocent. And, her eyes closed now, she thought of something else: the fact that her back remained uncovered. Who would hold her?
In the morning the sea was so calm, the weather so pretty, that everyone went out onto the deck. Someone was insisting that with such great weather they ought to be able to see in the distance the Turkish coast of Mount Ararat. But all they saw was a high rocky shore. From the sea the massif looked so powerful, dappled with bright splotches of bare rock resembling bones. The professor stood hunched over with his neck wrapped up in her red scarf, squinting. An image came to Karen’s mind: they were sailing underwater, because in reality the water level was high, like in times of flood; they were moving in an illuminated greenish space that slowed their motion and drowned out their words. Her scarf no longer flapped obnoxiously, but rippled, silent, and her husband’s dark eyes looked at her so softly, gently, rinsed by omnipresent salty tears. Glistening even more was Ole’s red-gold hair, his whole body like a drop of resin in the water that would harden into amber soon. And high above their heads someone’s hands were just releasing a bird to scout out the mainland, and soon they’d realize it was known where we were sailing, and just then that same hand was pointing out a mountaintop, a safe spot for a new beginning.
In that same moment she heard screams from up ahead, and instantly a hysterical whistle of warning, and the captain, who’d just been standing nearby, now ran towards the bridge, which, since it was such a violent departure from his usual decorum, frightened Karen. The passengers all started screaming and waving their hands; those leaning against the railings were no longer aiming their wide eyes at the mythical Ararat, but at something down below. Karen felt the ship brake sharply, the deck shifting and shuddering beneath their feet, and at the last possible moment she seized the metal of the railing and quickly tried to catch her husband’s hand, but she saw the professor pawing his way backwards, taking tiny steps, like she was watching a movie playing in reverse. On his face amusement arising from surprise, but not fear. His eyes said something like: ‘Catch me.’ Then she saw him hit his back and head on the iron scaffolding of the stairs, saw him bounce off of them and fall onto his knees. In the same instant from up ahead she heard the bang of a collision and people’s shouting, and then the splash of life buoys and the powerful impact in the water of a life boat, because – as Karen was able to put together from other people’s shouts – they’d rammed into some little yacht.
Around her people were rising from the deck, nobody else injured, and she was kneeling down beside her husband gently trying to revive him. He was blinking, blinks that were too long, and then he said quite audibly: ‘Pick me up!’ But that couldn’t be done now, his body refused to obey, so Karen lay his head on her lap and waited for help to arrive.
The professor’s well-selected health insurance meant that that same day he got transferred by helicopter from Rhodes to the hospital in Athens, where he underwent a battery of tests. The CT scan revealed extensive damage to the left hemisphere of his brain; he’d had a massive stroke. There was no way to stop it. Karen sat by his side to the end, stroking his already limp hand. The right side of his body was completely stiff; his eye stayed shut. Karen had called his children, who must have been en route by now. She sat up next to him all night, whispering into his ear, believing he heard and understood her. She led him down the dusty road among the ads, the warehouses, the ramps, the dirty garages, down the side of the highway, all night.
But the crimson inner ocean of the professor’s head rose from the swells of blood-bearing rivers and gradually flooded realm after realm – first the plains of Europe, where he’d been born and raised. Cities disappeared underwater, and the bridges and dams built so methodically by generations of his ancestors. The ocean reached the threshold of their reed-roofed home and boldly stepped inside. It unfurled a red carpet over those stone floors, the floorboards of the kitchen, scrubbed each Saturday, finally putting out the fire in the fireplace, attaining the cupboards and tables. Then it poured into the railway stations and the airports that had sent the professor off into the world. The towns he’d travelled to drowned in it, and in them the streets where he had stayed a while in rented rooms, the cheap hotels he’d lived in, the restaurants where he’d dined. The shimmering red surface of the water now reached the lowest shelves of his favourite libraries, the books’ pages bulging, including those in which his name was on the title page. Its red tongue licked the letters, and the black print melted clean away. The floors were soaked in red, the stairs he’d walked up and down to collect his children’s school certificates, the walkway he’d gone down during the ceremony to receive his professorship. Red stains were already collecting on the sheets where he and Karen had first fallen a
nd undone the drawstrings of their older, clumsy bodies. The viscous liquid permanently glued together the compartments of his wallet where he kept his credit cards and plane tickets and the photos of his grandkids. The stream flooded train stations, tracks, airports and runways – never would another airplane take off from them, never would another train depart for any destination.
The sea level was rising relentlessly, the waters swept up words, ideas and memories; the streetlights went out under them, lamp bulbs bursting; cables shorted, the whole network of connections transformed into dead spiderweb, a lame and useless game of telephone. Screens were extinguished. And finally that slow, infinite ocean began to come up to the hospital, and Athens itself stood in blood – the temples, the sacred roads and groves, the agora empty at this hour, the bright statue of the goddess and her little olive tree.
She was by his side when they made the decision to unplug the machine that wasn’t necessary now, and when the gentle hands of the Greek nurse covered in one deft motion his face with the sheet.
The body was cremated, and Karen and his children scattered the ashes into the Aegean sea, believing this to be the funeral he would have wanted.
I’M HERE
I’ve progressed. At first, when I would wake up some place new, I’d think I was at home. It would take me a minute to make out the unfamiliar details, now disclosed by daylight. The heavy hotel drapes, the hefty TV set, my messy suitcase, the meticulously folded white towels. As a new place took shape beyond the curtains, wimpled, enigmatic, frequently cream-coloured or yellow still from the street lamps.
But then I entered into a phase that travel psychologists refer to as ‘I Don’t Know Where I Am’. I’d wake up totally disoriented. Like an alcoholic coming to, I would try to remember what I’d done the previous evening, where I’d been and how I’d got there, going over every detail in an effort to decipher the here and now. And the longer this procedure would take, the more I would panic – an unpleasant state, similar to labyrinthitis, the loss of basic balance, verging on nausea. Where in God’s name am I? But the world is merciful in its particularities, which would always steer me back in the right direction in the end. I’m in M. I’m in B. This is a hotel, this is my friend’s apartment, the guest room in the home of the N. family. Someone’s sofa.
This type of awakening was like getting my ticket stamped for the next part of my journey.
Then came a third phase, which travel psychology refers to as the key phase, the crowning phase. In this phase, whatever your destination might be, you are always heading in that direction. ‘It Doesn’t Matter Where I Am,’ it makes no difference. I’m here.
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
The planet’s witnessing the appearance of new creatures now, ones that have already conquered all continents and almost every ecological niche. They travel in packs and are anemophilous, covering large distances without difficulty.
Now I see them from the window of the bus, these airborne anemones, whole packs of them, roaming the desert. Individual specimens cling on tight to brittle little desert plants, fluttering noisily – perhaps this is the way they communicate.
The experts say these plastic bags open up a whole new chapter of earthly existence, breaking nature’s age-old habits. They’re made up of their surfaces exclusively, empty on the inside, and this historic foregoing of all contents unexpectedly affords them great evolutionary benefits. They are mobile and light; prehensile ears permit them to latch onto objects, or the appendages of other creatures, thus expanding their habitat. They started out in suburbs and rubbish heaps; it took them several windy seasons to reach the provinces and far-flung wilds. But by now they have occupied vast tracts of the globe – from gigantic highway junctions to winding beaches, from the abandoned lots of grocery shops all the way to the bony slopes of the Himalayas. At first glance they seem delicate, frail, but this is an illusion – they are long-lived, almost indestructible; their fleeting bodies won’t decompose for some three hundred more years.
Never before have we been faced with such an aggressive form of being. Some, in a kind of metaphysical rapture, believe it’s in the bags’ nature to take over the world, to conquer all continents; that they are pure form that seeks contents but immediately tires of them, throwing themselves to the wind yet again. They maintain the plastic bag is a wandering eye that belongs to some imaginary ‘there’, a mysterious observer taking part in the panopticon. Others, meanwhile, with their feet more firmly on the ground, assert that these days evolution favours fleeting forms that can flit through the world while at the same time attaining ubiquitousness.
FINAL TIMETABLE
Each of my pilgrimages aims at some other pilgrim; today I finally arrived. This other pilgrim was embedded in Plexiglass or, in the other rooms, plastinated. I had to wait my turn in line to see it, to drift along among these exhibits, beautifully lit, bilingually described. Arrayed before us, they resembled precious cargo brought from very far away, set out for the eye to feast on.
First I examined the carefully prepared specimens embedded in Plexiglass, little bits of the body, exhibits of screws and spans, cotter pins and soldered joints, of those often unappreciated smaller parts we don’t even remember exist. The method is sound – nothing can get in or out. If a war broke out, the mandible I had in front of me right now would most likely still survive, under the rubble, in the ashes. If a volcano erupted, if there was a deluge or a landslide, the archeologists of the future would rejoice in such a find.
But this is only the beginning. We pilgrims advanced in silence, in single file, those behind nudging those ahead. What do we have here, what’s next, what part of the body will we be shown now by these crafty plastinators, heirs of embalmers, of tanners, of anatomists and taxidermists.
A spine extracted from a body and stretched out in a glass case. Retaining its natural curvature, it looked like the Alien – a passenger travelling in a human body towards its destination, an enormous polypod. A Gregor Samsa assembled out of nerves and plexuses, fashioned from a rosary of little bones interwoven with blood vessels. We could say a prayer over it, at least, or lots of prayers, until someone finally took pity and permitted it to rest in peace.
Now there was a whole person – or better said, a corpse, halved lengthwise, revealing the fascinating structure of the internal organs. The kidney, in particular, distinguished itself with its remarkable allure, like a great, lovely bean, blessed grain of the goddess of the underworld.
Further on, in the next room – a man, a male body, slender, eyes that were slanted even though there were no eyelids, no skin at all so we pilgrims could see the starting and end points of the muscles. Did you know that muscles always start closer to the body’s central line, ending more peripherally, further out? And that dura mater is not the name of some sexy porn star, but rather a covering for the brain? And that muscles have starting points and end points? And that the strongest muscle in the body is the tongue?
Faced with this display made up exclusively of musculature, we pilgrims all involuntarily checked to see if what the description said was true, flexing our skeletal muscles, the muscles that obey our will. Unfortunately, there are also disobedient muscles, over which we hold no sway – there’s really nothing whatsoever we can make them do. They settled us in the distant past, and now they govern our reflexes.
Next we learned a lot about the work of the brain, and about how it’s actually the amygdala we owe the existence of fragrances to, as well as the expression of emotions, and the fight or flight impulse. To the hippocampus, meanwhile, that little seahorse, we owe our short-term memory.
The septal area is a tiny little structure in the amygdala that regulates the relationship between pleasure and addiction. This is something we should be aware of when it comes time to deal with our bad habits. We ought to know who we should be praying to for help and support.
The next specimen consisted of a brain and peripheral nerves perfectly arranged on a white surface. You could
easily mistake that red design on its white background for a metro map – here’s the main station, and extending out from it, the main arterial route, and then the other lines that spread out off to the side. You had to admit – it was well planned.
These modern specimens were multi-coloured, bright; the blood vessels, veins, and arteries beautifully displayed in fluid so as to make their three-dimensional networks stand out. The solution in which they float peacefully is no doubt Kaiserling III – it turns out that’s what keeps the best.
Now we crowded around the Man Made of Blood Vessels. He looked like the anatomical version of a ghost. This was a ghost that haunted brightly lit, tiled places that fell somewhere between slaughterhouses and a cosmetics labs. We sighed: we would never have thought we had so many veins in us. It’s hardly a surprise we bleed at even a slight infringement on the integrity of our skin.
Seeing is knowing, we had no doubt about that. Most of all we enjoyed all the cross sections.
One such person-body lay before us now, cut up into slices. And this gave us access to altogether unexpected points of view.
THE POLYMER PRESERVATION PROCESS, STEP BY STEP:
– First, you prep the body as you normally would for dissection, i.e. by draining the blood;
– during the dissection you expose the parts you want to show – for example, if it’s muscle, you have to remove the skin and the fat tissue. At this stage, you position the body as desired;
– next you bathe the specimen in acetone to get rid of any remaining fluids;
– the dehydrated specimen is then immersed in a silicone polymer bath and sealed inside a vacuum chamber;
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