The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories (6 page)

Since the fœtus arrived, none of us has loved without regret, fucked without apprehension, yearned without doubt. We break out in a rash when a loved one comes near because we know the fœtus is there too, waiting for us to prove to it everything it already knows.

Was
the fœtus a fœtus? Indeed it resembled one. But if it was, the question had to be raised: when the fœtus grew up, as it must, what would it become? Perhaps we all breathed a sigh of relief when scientists concluded that the fœtus, like the famous axolotl, was a creature permanently immature. Hence its enormous susceptibility, its patience and its eagerness to please. Like the unicorn, it adored virgins, but it had a raging fascination with sexual doings, a fascination that drove April Tip and the rest of her gang, the bad girls and boys of our town, to cruel displays under the streetlights around the park.

At first, though not for long, we believed our fœtus was unique. Of course we speculated about the home it must have had somewhere else, about
others.
But here on earth it seemed a prodigy,
the
prodigy. Soon enough, however, more of them began to appear. Some dropped out of the sky, people said,
slowly and beautifully, their light heads buoying them up. Commentators waxed eloquent and bade us imagine, on the blue, a dot that grew to a pink dot that grew to a kewpie doll that became the creature we know now. Many were found, like the first one, swaying gently in some warm and secret enclosure—warehouses, high school gyms, YMCA dressing rooms. Publicity seekers claimed to have come across fœtuses in infancy: tiny, playful, and virtually blind, like kittens, they bumbled around, falling on their oversized heads, and eagerly sucked on a baby finger, or indeed anything of like size and shape. One was reportedly discovered in a bird’s nest, opening its tiny translucent lips among the beaks. But fœtuses this small have never been held in captivity, or even captured on film. Whether that is because the susceptible creatures lose themselves in their surroundings, striving to become air, a patch of dirt, a falling leaf, or because they never existed in the first place, hardly matters, for the situation remains that none are found, except in stories that are already far from firsthand by the time they reach a credible authority. But we may pause for a minute to wonder whether, if such kittens do exist, they are the offspring of our original fœtus, who for all we know may be capable of fertilizing itself, like some plants, or if they grow from spores that have drifted here from some impersonally maternal comet, or—most mysterious thought of all—whether they spring up in our world self-generated, as sometimes new diseases appear to do, teaching us new pains, just because the world has left a place open for them.

Behind one another’s eyes, it is the fœtus we love, floating in the pupil like a speck, like a spy. It’s looking over your shoulder, making cold drinks even colder, and it doesn’t care what
promises you’ve made. We think we want affection, sympathy, fellow feeling, but it is the cold and absolute we love, and when we misplace that in one another we struggle for breath. Through the pupil’s little peephole, we look for it: the shapeless, the inhuman.

Of course, with such a company of admirers, sycophants, interpreters, opportunists, advisers, prophets, and the like behind it, it wasn’t long before the fœtus was performing many of the offices once seen to by our local pastor: visiting the sick, hosting charitable functions, giving succor to troubled souls. One day Pastor Green simply left town, and no one was very sorry. It was the graceful thing to do, people agreed, and saw to it that the fœtus stood behind the pulpit the next Sunday. At first it held an honorary post; we couldn’t settle on a suitable title, but we did present it with a robe and a stiff white collar, which it seemed to admire. Higher-ups in church office were rumored to be uneasy about this unorthodox appointment, but public feeling was behind it. And there was no question that the fœtus would increase the church’s subscription thousandfold; no one had ever seen such a benefit potluck as the first one hosted by the fœtus. It wielded the ice cream scoop with tireless arm and paid personal attention to every dessert plate.

Of course, the fœtus preferred to hold services in the sandbox, and the citizens appreciated this gesture as a call to simplicity and a sign of solidarity with regular folk. How the fœtus managed to lead us may be hard to understand. At first, its role was to inspire and chide. But it soon felt its way into the post, and began performing those gestures that mean so much to our town: choosing the new paint color for the courthouse (the
fœtus preferred mauve), pouring the first bucket of cement for the new tennis courts. (We could afford it, for money was rolling in: tourists, visiting scholars, and zealots continued to come, prepared to shop, and after a short bewilderment we provided all the kiosks, booths, and lemonade stands they required.) Our fœtus made the covers of the major newsmagazines, and meanwhile, the copycat fœtuses were turning up everywhere, and the rich were installing them in their homes.

The fœtus is made of something like our flesh, but not the same, it is a sort of
über
flesh, rife with potentialities (for the fœtus is, of course, incomplete—always; unfinished—perpetually), it is malleable beyond our understanding, hence unutterably tender, yet also resilient. A touch will bruise the fœtus, the nap of flannel leaves a print on its skin. The fœtus learns from what it neighbors, and may become what it too closely neighbors. Then your fœtus may cease to be; you may find yourself short one member of the household, yet in possession of a superfluous chair, a second stove, a matching dresser. The fœtus sees merit in everything; this is why it brings joy to houses, with its innocence, and is loved by children, but this quality is also its defect. A fœtus will adore a book of matches, and seek to become it; if you do not arrive in time your expensive companion will proudly shape itself into the cheapest disposable. It is one thing to duplicate the crown jewels, quite another to become the owner of two identically stained copies of yesterday’s paper, two half-full boxes of Kleenex, two phone bills.

We all know the fœtus’s helpfulness and amiability, which became more and more apparent as it grew accustomed to our
ways, and admire the dignity of the fœtus, which never fails it even when it is performing the most ignominious of tasks. No one was surprised when it came to be known as, variously, “Servus Servorum,” “Husband of the Church,” “Key of the Whole Universe,” “Viceregent of the Most High,” and, most colloquially, “Vice-God”; other nations may find it odd that our religious leader is of the same species as those creatures that well-off trendsetters purchase for their homes, but those who know better see no contradiction: the fœtus is born to serve.

The fœtus floats outside your window while you are having sex. It wants to know how many beads of sweat collect between your breasts and at what point, exactly, they begin their journey south, it wants to know if your eyes open wide or close at orgasm, if at that time your partner is holding your hand with his hand or your gaze with her gaze. It wants to know if your sheets are flannel or satin, if you lie on wool blankets or down comforters. And when fluids issue from the struggling bodies, with what do you wipe them up: Towels? Paper products? A T-shirt pulled out of the laundry? It wants to know if the bedside alarm is set before or after the lovemaking; it wants to stay informed, your love is its business.

The fœtus is here to serve us. If we capture it, it will do our bidding; we can bind its great head with leather straps, cinch its little hips tight. Then the fœtus willingly pulls a plow, trots lovers through a park, serves salad at a cookout. It does not scorn menial tasks, for to it all endeavors are equally strange, equally marvelous.

…

Only when it is time to make love must you bind the fœtus tight, lock it in its traces, close all the doors and windows. For at that moment the fœtus will rise in its bonds, larger and more majestic, and its great eyes will open and inside them you could see all of space rushing away from us—as it is! It is! The fœtus is sublime at that moment: set guards, and they will respectfully retreat; dogs, and they will lie down with their heads between their paws, blinking. And even if the fœtus is in tight restraint, you will feel it risen in your pleasure bed, the air will turn blue and burn like peppermint on your wet skin, and the shadows under the bed and the corners of the room will take on the black vastness and the finality of space. You will continue loving because that is our human agenda, what is set for us to do, though we know the fœtus whom we also love is suffering in its straps. Indeed, we make the fœtus suffer again and again, though we are full of regret and pity, and these feelings swell in our chests and propel us together with ever greater force, so we seem to hear the fœtus’s giant cry, deafening, every time we slam together. We love cruelly, and in pain.

The cancer appeared in my living room sometime between eleven and three on a Thursday. I am not sure exactly when, because I suffer from bouts of migraine, and sometimes I miss things, or see things that aren’t there, flashing shapes like the blades of warrior goddesses, the vanes of transcendental windmills. A little airborne sprig could go unnoticed some while.

It was barely visible, a pink fizz, like a bloodshot spot of air. It was so small there was no great wonder in its hanging there, the way a feather might rest on an updraft. It is hard for me to admit it now, but when I first saw it, I thought it was pretty. I blew on it. It drifted sideways, but when I looked for it later, it was back where it had been before.

The cancer grew with improbable speed. At first I watched it curiously, almost fondly. Near the center it distended and grew as solid as meat. The branches divided and divided again. It was a starfish with split ends, an animal snowflake.

I did not speak of it to anyone. Once, the neighbor came to ask me to restrain my hedges. She was a nervous woman with a face too old for her hair. Her child was with her, that little
blond creature I had once attempted to befriend. The child paid me no attention, but stared past me in the direction of the living room. I intercepted her gaze out of instinct, not any fear I could have named.

I looked at the cancer every day. Perhaps it was as big as a chicken—no, a parakeet—when I set my hand against it. I took one of its twigs and bent it back on itself. I did this out of curiosity, no more. When the tips darkened and began to wilt, I let go and looked up. The little girl was looking at me through the fogged window, her white fingers like claws on the edge of the sill. When she caught my eye she dropped out of sight. By nightfall the limb had straightened itself again, though it was a darker purple where the damage was.

Of course I tried to oust the cancer, though I felt ashamed of myself as I jabbed it with the broom, trying to force it out the window. I had tied a kitchen towel around my head, as if I thought the cancer might tangle itself in my hair in its panic. What a figure of fun I seemed to myself, especially when the cancer proved impossible to budge! I should be more clear: it was possible to shift it, but something invisible bound it to the center of the room, and the farther it was from that point, the
more insistently it sought to return. (Not like an animal struggling, mind you. More like a buoyant object one tries to force under water.) Finally, I trapped it in my apron—I also wore an apron—and hobbled to the front door with it straining between my legs. On the front porch I met the postman. We looked down at the large mass struggling inside my apron. When I raised my eyes, I was met by such a grotesquely knowing, indeed sympathetic gaze that I dropped my bundle and stepped back, setting the door between us. After this I stopped trying to evict the cancer. Besides, I had thought of something worse than a cancer in my living room: a cancer tapping on my window, or leaning on my doorbell for all the world to see.

Another time I held a match to the tips. They curled into spirals, tight as watch springs, then turned to ash and fell off.

After the operation the little girl had stopped going to school. She seemed to live in the yard. When she spotted me at the window she stopped whatever she was doing until I went away. She was always carrying something: a large piece of chicken wire, a carburetor, a brick. I never saw her with a toy.

I knew that in some way I had secreted the cancer, sneezed it from a nostril. It was not from outside. Every success it enjoyed was evidence against me. In it, you could watch my fault take concrete form; it was a kind of malignant trophy. I thought I could live with it, at first. It is some comfort to get what we deserve, even when we deserve nothing good. Perhaps I was proud of my error, because it was so brightly colored, and took such definite form. To have it was to have something, that was certain. In private I might fit a ring onto one of its digits, a gaudy ring with a yellow stone. I looked at it, you could almost say lovingly: what lawless circus beauty. The stink of the big
cats, the glare of the lights! I forgot myself, brought my hands close, almost petting the hairy fringe. But afterwards ran scalding water on my palms.