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

Setting her cigarette down on the edge of the ashtray, Marianne Kreutzer said, ‘These are very bad people, Frau Beddoes; you have done something truly brave and important, we thank you for that.’ Although her frigid tone suggested that she might just as well have administered the poison herself.

Weiss ran on: ‘I am not very involved myself in this thing — but we have friends who are, gegen Fanatiker — who, you would say, make the campaigning against this dreadful thing that they do.’

Joyce stared at him — she felt foolish and vulnerable; of course, they were Catholics — she should’ve kept her mouth shut. Mors slopebit et natora, Cum resurget creatura, Judicanti responsura. Death and Nature shall be astonished, When all creation rises again, To answer to the Judge . She began back-pedalling. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you, Herr Weiss.’ Her tone was correct, off-putting. ‘My decision was impulsive — and nothing to do with Dr Hohl’s ethics — I am still terminally ill, I may want to avail myself of their. of this service at a future date.’

Weiss was not to be deflected so easily. ‘Please, Frau Beddoes, do not think we are das fanatisch — the fanatics — I understand, truly I do; my first wife died of cancer ten years ago. She was still a young woman — ’ He stopped short and asked Joyce: ‘And you?’

Taken aback, Joyce found herself confirming, ‘Cancer.’ Then added, ‘Of the liver.’

Marianne Kreutzer appeared to catch this very English irony; at any rate, her creased lips furrowed a little more — but Weiss missed it. Licensed by the revelation that they were both members of the not very exclusive cancer club, he began, energetically, to fill Joyce in on the local resistance to the goings on at Gertrudstrasse. Weiss confirmed her suspicions: there had been such grotesqueries as body bags propped up in the lift. Then there were the emergency vehicles in near-constant attendance, while the arrival — often by private ambulance — of the suicides seeking assistance created a despairing atmosphere.

‘It is not helpful,’ Weiss said, ‘that there is a cemetery next to this building. The people who live there are not best-off type, but the city council — the canton, also — are thinking about taking the action. I think they will be made to move soon. (Moov zoon.)

‘There is also Hohl. He is, you know, well — he is ein Fanatiker . He is offering now to the people with clinical depression his poison — nothing wrong in their body, only the head.’ Weiss massaged his own smooth forehead, mussing his hair. ‘This is making the difference — even non-Catholics understand this to be wrong.’

While these very weighty matters were being discussed, Joyce tidily dissected her chicken. The Swiss couple were equally methodical eaters, although where she can be packing it away is a mystery . When Joyce laid down her cutlery, Weiss responded as if this action were a diagnostic tool and bluntly asserted: ‘You are in much pain, yes? On the drugs? So. I have talked too much; we can drive you to your hotel if you like this.’

The hunched maître d’, whose short white jacket and cranky manner reminded Joyce of a lab technician at Mid-East, had abandoned his roast trolley for a copper pot, from which he was ladling large dollops of cream on to the strudels and tartes tatin of the diners. Observing this wanton consumption of criminally unsaturated fats, Joyce gingerly patted her belly beneath the table. There was no pain, or watery intimation of flux to come, only the tight sensation of healthy plenitude. The Leberknödel were in there, she thought, happily being digested.

‘No, please,’ she said. ‘I am feeling quite all right. If it’s not too much trouble I think I would like some dessert.’

After the cream pot had done two rounds and they had all been served with tiny cups of espresso, Weiss finally called for the bill.

Joyce reached for her bag and began rummaging for her purse, but her host was having none of this. ‘Please, please,’ he said, warding off the threat of her contributing with open palms. ‘You are our guest, we would be the most upset, wouldn’t we, Marianne?’

Marianne Kreutzer didn’t look as if she would be in the least upset; she had a compact out and was retouching her foundation. Even as a girl, Joyce had found such public attention by a woman to the appearance of her own flesh a distinctly lewd performance. Seeing this elegant — and slightly hostile — Swiss woman doing it, caused Joyce to speculate on the nature of her relationship with Weiss. The sex, she imagined, was necessary — but by no means the most important thing. Despite his assured manner, Weiss was a man-boy, gripped by his enthusiasms — and presumably by childish anxieties as well. Joyce found it easy to imagine his pink, freshly shaven cheek resting between her tired breasts.

Marianne Kreutzer dispelled her reverie by launching into this curious speech: ‘Lenin,’ she began, ‘when he lived in Zürich, in the First War, he said of us Swiss that we could not be having the revolution, because when it came the time to attack the Hauptbahn-hof — the train station — the crowd would be stopping to buy the ticket to go on — Ueli, was ist der Name fur Gleis ?’

‘The platform.’

‘That is it, the platform. But now, well, you are taking time to see Zü rich and our beautiful buildings, our pretty lake, maybe also you are seeing our new kind guests. Black guests, brown guests. People are not so friendly with them; they are invited only by the Government in Berne, I think. There are some times not so long now, when the Swiss in the crowd are not buying the platform ticket!’ She snapped her compact shut for emphasis.

Joyce didn’t know how to respond; it wasn’t at all clear whether Marianne Kreutzer’s remarks had been an endorsement of this revanchism, or simply a description. Pointing out from her severe curls were ears as thin as a fish’s fins; in place of lobes they had diamond studs.

‘What is your hotel?’ Weiss asked, twining his credit card with the strip of receipt.

‘I was staying at the Widder, but, well, to be frank, I’ve decided to stay on for a while in Zürich, and. ’ Joyce bowed her head; she didn’t want Marianne Kreutzer’s accusing eyes on her: she didn’t want to be kin of the uninvited guests. ‘It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s just that it seems too expensive if I’m going to be here that much longer.’

Weiss looked at Joyce’s bag. Its pattern of fleur-de-lys didn’t, she thought, seem out of place in the Kronenhalle. Perhaps I should stay here? ‘So,’ he said, ‘you are without a pension or hotel?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘We have a new kind of taking tax here, you know.’ The waitress had brought Weiss’s loden coat and was hovering by the table, but he showed no inclination to rise. ‘If you are a tourist from European Union country, you may stay as long as you like, but only in a hotel. To rent — just a room only — you must register with the Fremdenpolizei, and then. well, so on and so on, they will check up on you; we know’ — the moustache drooped shamefacedly — ‘the reputation we have abroad. There will be many forms and stamps — too many, I think.’

Joyce rose to this: ‘That doesn’t concern me. I was a professional administrator myself for many years, I’m accustomed to that sort of thing; and if it’s a matter of assets, well, I can produce evidence of sufficient.’

‘Maybe so, maybe so.’ Weiss wasn’t taking Joyce’s competence well. He wants to hang on to me! ‘But foreigners can find it very hard to get the flats and rooms; they are always the last in the line, often times when they are the first — you understand?’