Nancy Huston - Infrared

What, after all, is seeing? she says to herself. By the time it gets projected onto our retina, even the real statue is an image. Seeing a photo of it is basically just another way of seeing it, right?

Subra has a good laugh.

Disputatio

They find a convivial greasy-spoon for their early dinner. Unfortunately, the only free table is right next to the toilet; there are incessant comings and goings in that corner and most of the customers forget to close the door when they come out…Still, Rena chooses this moment to return to the subject of the soul’s immortality.

W.C. versus the Great Beyond? The abject versus the sublime? But that’s exactly what is at stake. The very dilemma Michelangelo ran into as he prepared to paint his Last Judgment frescoes — what do people’s bodies look like after resurrection?

‘So tell me,’ she says, stabbing at her tomato and mozzarella salad, ‘just what is this belief you both believe? Can you explain it to me? You, dear Ingrid — tell me, I’m all ears. You say the soul is eternal, but…starting when?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Yes, when does the soul’s eternity begin? At conception? At birth? Or is it whenless, being eternal — extending to infinity both in past and future? Before conception and after death?’

Ingrid is uncomfortable. Though raised a Protestant, she stopped attending church when she married a Jew, reassuring herself with the vague idea that they saw eye-to-eye on important things. Now, avoiding Rena’s gaze, she butters a piece of bread, folds three slices of mortadella onto it and takes a big bite. ‘All I know,’ she says with her mouth full, ‘is that I’ll return to meet my Maker when I die. It’s simple.’

‘And…are humans beings the only ones to be so lucky? Of all the possible creatures in all the billions of constellations, we and we alone, on our tiny planet revolving around its tiny sun in the tiny Milky Way…What about you, Dad? Do you, too, think we’re so unique?’

They hear the toilet flush. An old lady comes out of the bathroom and a powerful effluvium sweeps across their table.

‘I can think of better places to have this conversation,’ says Simon as he rises to shut the door. ‘And frankly, Rena, your tone of voice is a bit offensive.’

Don’t worry, says Subra. He’s smiling to let you know he’s proud of you just the same. You’re his daughter, his disciple. He taught you philosophical fencing. He sharpened the blade you’re needling his wife with right now.

‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be offensive. I just want to understand. Okay. Only humans, then, but…starting when? With Neanderthal? Yes? No? Or that Cro-Magnon guy we ran into the other day — was his soul immortal, too?’

‘Let’s drop the subject,’ Ingrid splutters. ‘You don’t respect anything…’

‘I do. I respect you, believe me. Only Homo sapiens, then, not Neanderthal. I think we can all agree on that. And not animals, of course.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Ingrid says pensively. ‘Sometimes when I look deeply into Lassie’s eyes, I could swear she’s got a soul… Right, Dad?’

Simon nods. Having grown up between a catatonic mother and an overworked father, he has always appreciated the company of dogs.

‘Dogs, then. What about cats? And horses?’

‘Yes, I would think they had souls, too,’ Ingrid says, attacking a plateful of gnocchi. ‘Right, Dad?’

Simon lifts a hand as if to say, why not?

‘But not mosquitoes, right?’

‘Rena!’ Ingrid says, reddening. ‘To you, everything is a joke!’

‘No, she’s right,’ says Simon. ‘I mean, we wouldn’t want to itch and scratch up there in heaven, would we?’

Again the toilet flushes and a heavy-built man comes out of the bathroom, zipping up his fly. Rena thinks of all the flies she has undone in the course of her long love life, all the penises that have entered her body, here, there and everywhere, all the men who have bellowed as they poured into her what Dr Walters called their ‘half-children’—yes, crying out in fear and rage and loss as they hurled themselves over the cliff’s edge, tumbling head over heels into their chromosomes, thrashing about in the tangled threads of their DNA, releasing in a violent spurt the magic potion of their future, a liquid teeming with their offspring, their immortality, returning momentarily to their earlier bodies, their animal, child and savage bodies, their nothingness bodies, passing on the splash of sperm so as never to die, and dying as they do so…

‘I’m not joking,’ Rena tells Ingrid with an ingratiating smile. ‘I’m sincerely trying to understand what a soul is, and on what condition, under what circumstances, it becomes immortal. Okay, then, not mosquitoes. Maybe the soul depends on warm blood? Sorry. All right, we can forget the whole animal issue if you like…but will it have a body?’

‘What?’ Ingrid says in bewilderment.

‘Your soul, when it goes to meets its Maker. I mean, what does a soul actually look like after death? Is it a vapour, an ethereal essence, or does the flesh resuscitate as well? When you get to heaven, will you have a body and all that goes along with it — blood, lungs, toenails, digestive tract — or will you be a pure soul?’

For once, Ingrid feels she’s on firm ground. ‘The Bible says we’ll rise up from the dead on Judgment Day with our bodies intact. Right, Dad?’

‘Absolutely.’

Snippets of Bible passages go floating through their memories.

‘Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere,’ Rena says. ‘And how old will our bodies be, in the Great Hereafter?’

‘We’ll rise up with our bodies in their prime,’ Ingrid says jubilantly. ‘It’s written that the body will recover all its limbs, and that not a hair will be missing from its head. Good thing for you, Dad — you’ll get all your hair back in heaven!’

‘Ha-ha-ha-ha!’ Simon says, rubbing his balding pate to make sure Rena has got the joke.

‘What about babies?’ she asks.

‘What about them?’ says Ingrid, nonplussed.

‘I mean, people who die as babies…Do they, too, rise up with their bodies in their prime?’

‘Rena! You should be ashamed!’

The waiter brings them their desserts.

‘Okay, we can forget about babies, too…to say nothing of foetuses, right? I won’t even mention them. Abortions, miscarriages… down the drain. But, er…what about Hindus?’

‘What about them?’ Ingrid says.

‘Well, you know…Hindus…Muslims…Buddhists…voodoo adepts…the billions of people who happened to be born before Christ — or afterwards, but on non-Christian soil — do they get to meet their Maker, too, or will they—’

‘Stop it! ’ Livid, Ingrid sets down her spoon. ‘It’s impossible to have a serious conversation with you. Anyway, this place is unbearable. It spoils my appetite, it spoils — everything.’

This time they head back to the hotel in silence.

Elettrizzare

About halfway there, Rena’s phone rings. Aziz’s name shines up at her from the tiny screen.

‘My love.’

‘Rena…’

Aziz can barely speak. Rena can tell he has a lump in his throat, like when he was a kid in school and didn’t know the answer to a question and was afraid the teacher would make fun of him in front of the whole class. Instantly, she knows it’s serious. A matter of life and death. If the event took place in the projects around Paris and needs to be conveyed to Florence at once, someone is dead for sure.

Rena presses the phone to her ear — harder, then so hard that it hurts. As she listens to Aziz, the beautiful buildings before her eyes — Palazzo Rucellai, Palazzo Strozzi — are gradually replaced by the housing projects she knows so well, with their graffiti, satellite dishes, leprous walls, broken elevators, rat-infested cellars, young men swamped in hopelessness and rage. Running away from the police this afternoon, two teenage boys had taken refuge in a transformer and died of electrocution.