Ольга Токарчук - Flights

‘Salad with croutons and some cheeses. What do you think?’

He nodded eagerly, although he wasn’t at all convinced that would fill him up. She poured him a glass of white wine and, without conviction, he brought it to his lips.

She told him in detail about the accident, about the search for the body in the sea, which lasted for a long time, several days, and finally about how it had looked when they had finally found it. He lost all desire to eat. She said that she had been able to preserve a piece of the least destroyed tissue. She was wearing a long, airy grey dress with slits down the sides, with a deep-cut neckline that revealed her freckled body. Again he thought she might cry.

The salad and the cheeses they ate almost in silence. Then she took his hand, and he froze.

He put his arm around her, clevely hiding from her. She kissed his neck.

‘Not like this,’ he blurted.

She didn’t understand. ‘How, then? What do you want me to do?’

But he had slipped out of her embrace, stood up from the sofa and, red in the face, was looking helplessly around the room.

‘How do you want it to happen? Tell me.’

In despair, he realized he couldn’t pretend anymore, that he didn’t have the strength, that there were too many things going on at once, and turning his back to her, he whispered: ‘I can’t. It’s too soon for me.’

‘It’s because I’m older than you, right?’ she murmured, standing up.

He protested uncertainly. He wanted her to comfort him but without touching him.

‘It’s not like there’s a massive difference in our ages,’ he said, as he listened to her clear the table. ‘I’m with someone,’ he lied.

In a certain sense this was true, and truth is always true in a certain sense; he was with someone. He had already been wedded, married, connected by blood. With the Glasmensch and the wax woman with the open stomach, with Soliman, Fragonard, Vesalius, von Hagens and Mole, for God’s sake, who else could there be? Why should he bore into this living, ageing warm body, drill into it with his? With what aim? He felt like he would have to leave, maybe even right away. He ran his hand through his hair and buttoned up his shirt.

She sighed deeply.

‘So?’ she asked.

He didn’t know what to say.

A quarter of an hour later he was standing with his suitcase in the living room, ready to go.

‘Can I call a taxi?’

She was sitting on the couch. Reading.

‘But of course,’ she said. She removed her glasses and pointed to the phone, and then returned to her reading.

But since he didn’t know the number, he thought it would be better if he just went on foot to the bus stop; there had to be one somewhere nearby.

And so he arrived at the conference sooner than he’d planned. After a long debate with hotel reception he managed to finagle a room. He spent the whole evening in the bar. He drank a bottle of wine at the hotel restaurant, and then in bed he began to cry like a little child.

Over the next few days he heard lots of papers and gave his: ‘The Preservation of Pathology Specimens Through Silicone Plastination: An Innovative Supplement to the Teaching of Pathological Anatomy’ – an excerpt from his dissertation.

His talk was enthusiastically received. On the final evening of the conference at the banquet he met a nice, handsome teratologist from Hungary who confided in him that he was about to go to Mrs Mole’s house, at her invitation.

‘To her seaside home,’ – he emphasized the word ‘seaside’. ‘I figured I’d combine the two trips, it’s not really very far from here,’ he said. ‘Everything her husband left is in her hands now. If I managed to get a glimpse of his laboratory… You know, I have my theory as to the chemical composition. Apparently she is in talks with some museum in the States, sooner or later she’ll give all of it away, along with all the documentation. But if I could get access to his papers here and now…’ he went on dreamily. ‘My habilitation would be guaranteed, perhaps even my professorship.’

Fuckwit, thought Blau. This man would be the last person to whom he would admit he’d got there first. And then he looked at him with her eyes, for just a second. He saw his dark hair, gleaming with some sort of gel, and the little sweat stains under his arms on the blue material of his shirt. His already slightly protruding but still slim belly, his narrow hips, his fresh pale skin with the shadow of dense facial hair. His eyes already blurring from the wine and shining with the glory of impending triumph.

Reddened northern faces surprised by sudden sun. Faded by salt water, and that hair after several hours daily at the beach. Bags filled with dirty, sweated-in clothes. In their carry-ons last-minute purchases from the airport: souvenirs for loved ones, bottles of strong alcohol from the duty-free shop. Just men; they occupy the same part of the plane now in a sort of tacit pact. They settle into their seats, buckle their seatbelts – they will sleep. They will make up for those nights without sleep. Their skin still gives off a smell of alcohol, their bodies have not yet managed to fully digest that two-week dosage – after several hours in the air this smell will have saturated the whole plane. In addition to a stench of sweat mixed with remnants of arousal. A good criminologist would uncover more evidence – a single long dark hair snagged on the button of a shirt; trace amounts of organic matter under index and middle fingernails – human, someone else’s DNA; in the cotton fibres of their underwear, microscopic skin flakes; in navels, microquantities of sperm.

Before take-off they get in a word or two with neighbours to their left and right. Reservedly they express their satisfaction with their recent stay – it wouldn’t do to say more, and in any case, it’s understood. Just a few, those most incorrigible, ask last questions about the prices and the range of services, and then – content – they doze off. It all turned out to be so cheap.

An old friend of mine once told me how he hated travelling alone. His gripe was: when he sees something out of the ordinary, something new and beautiful, he so wants to share it with someone that he becomes deeply unhappy if there’s no one around.

I doubt he would make a good pilgrim.

Since I have not received any response to my letter, I will ask to be allowed to write to Your Majesty once more, this time in terms much bolder, though I would not wish them to be taken as excessive familiarity: Dear Brother. Because has not God, whomever He may be, made us to be brothers and sisters? Has he not divided diligently among us our obligations so that we would carry them all out always with dignity and devotion, tending to His works. He entrusted to us the lands and the seas, and to some He gave industry, and to some He gave governance. Some He made highborn, healthy, and attractive, while others He made of lower birth and of lesser physical blessings. With our human limitations, we cannot explain why. All that remains us is to trust that there is His wisdom within it, and that in this way we all form a part of His complex architecture, parts whose purpose we are incapable of divining, but – we must believe this – without which this world’s great mechanism would simply stop working.

Just a few weeks ago, I gave birth to a baby boy, whom my husband and I named Edward. My great maternal joy is marred, however, by the fact that my little son’s grandfather has not yet attained his final resting place. That his unburied body has been exhibited by Your Majesty to curious onlookers at the Prince’s Wunderkammer.