Will Self - Liver - A Fictional Organ With a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes

Stripped of his loden coat, Weiss was disconcertingly exposed in a black roll-neck pullover that was so sheer Joyce could see his nipples.

‘So, here, you see’ — the lecture was resumed — ‘the most celebrated Zürich restaurant. Here in this place since the 1800s. Haunt of the writers — Du rrenmatt, Keller, Mann, Frisch. Music-makers also — Strauss, Stravinsky, Perlman. ’ He rattled out the names with scant feeling. ‘I think maybe the artists’ presence more obvious still — Miró, Braque, Chagall. ’ As he pronounced each name he pointed to their respective efforts: small canvases, their oils tastily effulgent beneath downlights. ‘Und there, by your back, Frau Beddoes, Picasso.’

It was a blue boy on a lighter blue foreground, seated, with his naked arms encircling his bare legs. There was a pierrot’s conical hat on his tousled head.

‘Same family, see, the owners — two generations now — have been very clever.’ Weiss leant forward, his black breasts resting on the white linen. ‘Some are saying they took the paintings from the escaping Jews in the war. I think this is but only gossip. See, the, ah, presiding spirit of the place’ — he gestured to a portrait of a formidably beaky matriarch that hung up high by the curved cornicing — ‘Madame Zumstag, by Varlin.’ He snatched at his own snub nose with all five of his plump digits. ‘She does not, I think, look like an anti-Semite.’

Marianne sighed and rattled her menu card. She’s bored, Joyce thought; bored, disapproving and hungry. All three .

A waitress halted at their table; in her trim uniform of black dress, white cap, black hose and white apron, she was perfectly timeless. A stilted bilingual interchange began, as Weiss — unnecessarily, as these were printed in English as well as German — explained the dishes to Joyce: ‘ Mistkratzerli. gebraten, mit gebraten. Mit Knoblauch und Rosmarin — it’s, you would say, a little bit of baby chicken, yes, with the garlic, yes, and rosemary.’

Joyce was fully intending to decline the food, or to have any drink besides sparkling mineral water. But Weiss prevailed upon her: ‘Please, this is a Lattenberg Räuschling, an ’05 from a local vineyard; we are right to have the pride, I think.’ A moist and red lower lip pouted from the luxuriant moustache.

Because of its very rarity, the foody aroma of cigarette smoke in a confined space seemed a special treat . The hushed munching of the diners and the priestly garb of the efficient staff, all of it felt so. enormously pleasing . Then there were Joyce’s insides, which were talking to her again, although not with the barely suppressed hysteria of incontinence, nor oedema’s plummy nastiness. I’m hungry , her stomach blared. A trumpet spreading a wondrous sound .

The cerise wine was clearer than complete transparency. It smelt of fresh-cut hay. Joyce had to restrain herself from glugging. She had never been a drinker — or, rather, Derry had been a whisky drinker, and it always seemed a waste for Joyce to open a full bottle of wine, then leave it in the fridge, expiring beside the mayonnaise.

She ordered the baby chicken for a main course, and some of the Leberknödel soup to start. She hadn’t consulted the English translation, so Joyce didn’t know what Leberknödel was — or were — but soup was always comforting .

The Swiss ordered as well; then, after grudgingly asking whether Joyce minded, Marianne Kreutzer lit a long slim menthol cigarette. The minty acridity suited the woman, while the smoky threads pulled her face still tighter. Weiss began — gently enough — to probe Joyce concerning her widowed status, her former career and the rest of her life back in England. She was happy to impart; however, she remained vague when he asked her the reason for her being in Zürich, and the likely duration of her stay.

Their entrées arrived. Joyce’s soup smelt so heavenly that she shifted uneasily on her seat: surely the hot wire would still be there, only buried deeper? But there was nothing; only the companionable rumble of her stomach, so she took a sip of the soup. It was meaty, herby. tasty . Fleshy dumplings floated in the life-giving broth, and Joyce spooned one up and bit into it, releasing tangible pulses of flavour.

‘Mmm,’ Joyce couldn’t restrain herself from exclaiming, ‘this is absolutely lovely!’

Weiss, who was digging at a tall seafood cocktail with a long-handled spoon, peered at her with his lustreless hazel eyes. ‘I’m glad you are liking it; it is not a very typical Swiss dish — more the German, I think.’ (Eye zink.)

‘And what’s in these dumplings?’ Joyce asked, biting into a second.

‘The dumplings? Ah, so, die Bouillon mit Leberknödel , yes, you would call them liver dumplings.’

Scottie’s Liver Treats. Occult origin . Her body, sad and lonely, tossed without regard across the middle of the bed they had shared for ten thousand nights. Her own middle, a mass of alien tissue, revolting , poisoning her with its blind and senseless growth.

Joyce was laughing; a full-throated guffaw, the like of which she hadn’t experienced in months. She laid down her spoon and picked up her napkin to cover her mouth.

‘You — is everything all right for you, Frau Beddoes?’

Imagine that thick fur against your neck — or your thigh!

Marianne, having shuffled the lettuce leaves and slices of smoked meat on her plate, resumed smoking her lungs.

‘I’m f-fine, really, thank you, Herr Weiss.’

She recovered herself — but only partially. Some blockage had been swept away by her hilarity, and now Joyce found herself telling the moustache — for the man was only a whitish growth hanging off the back of it — far too much: her illness, her loneliness, her pathetic and inadequate daughter, her miserable decline and Phillimore’s indifference.

Then Joyce told Weiss how she had heard about Dr Hohl’s organization because of a high-profile case in England: the woman with motor neurone disease haranguing TV news reporters and chat show audiences, then departing for Switzerland and the afterlife, her wheelchair carried shoulder-high on to the airplane, the litter of a crippled warrior queen.

As she spoke, Joyce noticed that Weiss — whom she had mentally pegged as a cold fish — was becoming more and more agitated: his manicured fingers tugged at his napkin, he spun his wine glass by its stem. As she described her own decision to come to Zürich prematurely, Weiss stilled, grew intent; and Joyce played to this solo audience — for Marianne Kreutzer’s attention was elsewhere, her cold eyes frosting the convivial quartet at the next table: elderly parents, thirtyish son and daughter-in-law; all hale, all hearty, all pink and flaking in a way suggestive of a recent skiing trip.

Joyce slowed down and, as any good storyteller should, took her listener by his figurative hand, led him on to the plane, sat him beside her while she lost control of her fear and her bladder, then led him off again, into the cab, on to the Widder Hotel, sat him at her bedside throughout the sedated night, then took him on again, to Gertrudstrasse.

When they were actually in the suicide flat, and Dr Hohl was mixing the phenobarbital with water, Weiss’s white face swam up from behind his moustache, transfigured by a joyous agony. He was muttering, ‘ Schrecklich. schrecklich . ’ and when Joyce told him how she had, at the very last moment, refused the poison, Weiss took his otter head in his hands, shook it, then exclaimed: ‘Oh, but Frau Beddoes, this is so very wonderful!’ Before urging his disengaged companion, ‘Isn’t it, Marianne, so very wonderful to be hearing?’