Liver: A Fictional Organ With a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes

by Will Self

  A teenage girl was bent over directly in front of Joyce, her long chestnut hair hanging down to the parquet floor, which was spread with newspaper. A woman of almost Joyce’s age — but plump, ruddy-faced, and squeezed into woeful jeans — was aiming a spray can at the silky cascade.

  ‘OK,’ the old-hippieish woman cried, ‘jetzt — aufstehen.’ The girl straightened up, and with her clawed hands vigorously backcombed her laquered hair until it rose up in a great ruff. ‘Und. nächster!’ the woman cried, and the girl scampered away to be replaced by a second, who adopted the same posture and was duly sprayed.

  ‘Well, so, you have converted, yes?’ said a voice right behind Joyce. She jerked round. Quantus tremor est futurus, Quando judex est venturus, Cuncta stricte discussurus. Breath on my neck, moustache prickle; night presses against a cold black pane, vast, impersonal, yet alive.

  ‘Uh — y-yes; sorry — I mean, no.’

  The otter-headed man laughed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he corrected her. ‘I gave you a jump. Marianne always says to me’ — his nut-brown eyes slid away from hers, to where the tight-faced woman was examining a noticeboard — ‘that I am too on your face.’

  ‘I think,’ Joyce said, ‘the expression is ‘‘in your face’’.’

  The moustache pouted. ‘Exactly so, in your face.’

  He was in a loden coat today, olive with horn toggles. He really ought to have a Tyrolean hat as well — its absence made his hydroplaned head seem that much sleeker.

  ‘You must allow me to introduce myself,’ he said. ‘I am Ulrich — Ueli for shortness — Weiss, and this is my — how do you say it? — partner, Marianne Kreutzer.’

  Hearing her name, the tight-faced woman came across and all three shook hands formally. Joyce put her in her mid fifties — older than Weiss — and with her gaunt, angular figure, she hardly seemed mistress material.

  Joyce found herself co-opted by Weiss and the Kreutzer woman. They introduced her to some people: ‘Frau Beddoes, she is visiting from England.’ And showed her round the church. ‘An undistinguished building,’ Weiss said, ‘you will agree.’

  Joyce did. Anglican churches were bad enough, with their tepid air of state-assisted piety, but Catholic ones had always seemed far worse: musty battlefields, where lust and repression fought it out, in the process torturing wooden effigies, then nailing them to the walls.

  The trio stopped in front of a headless figure that stood in a spot-lit embrasure. It wore a blood-spattered toga, and its head rested at its sandalled feet like a gory football. Joyce stared at the severed head; it stared back, the Aztec eyes maniacal.

  ‘You would say,’ Weiss lectured, ‘St Antoninus, but here St Anton for shortness. He was the public executioner at the time of Emperor Commodus, second century, and responsible for the execution of St Eusebius, among many other martyrs. ’

  Joyce registered that Weiss was trying to make all this interesting to her, but she was bored already. Sacred objects, she had always felt, needed to be so much more powerful and affecting than even the greatest artworks; if, that is, they were to perform the tasks assigned to them. Otherwise, what were they? Useless tat; and what did that make God? Only a fervent bargain-hunter in a long white dress.

  Marianne — the Kreutzer woman — had strolled to the next embrasure along. Here she lit a candle and stuck it on a blackened spike spattered with waxy rime. Joyce searched the tight face — its grey eyes closed, its long top lip vertically creased — for evidence of prayer, or yearning, but saw neither.

  Weiss droned on: ‘. then this fellow, this executioner, he is having a dream, you know, a vision thing, Christ comes in his face, yes? And he repents.’ He brought his hand up abruptly, then dropped it. ‘Then it is his turn for the chopping, a martyr also now.’ Except that this sounded like ‘Allzo nao’. Weiss smiled, and upper canines slid from beneath his walrus moustache.

  ‘We Catholics have so many of the saints.’ He took Joyce by the arm and led her on. ‘Sometimes I think too many. No longer is there the selling of indulgences and all those corrupt practices; but the saints, I think this non-believers find hard to. accept: that a man, the Pope, can decide that the naturgemäss — the natural law — has been — how do you say it — suspended.’

  Clearly, Weiss expected a response. Joyce said, ‘I had no idea there were so many Catholics in Switzerland; in England we think of the Swiss as very Protestant — ’

  ‘No music, yes? No dancing. All in the black, yes?’ He laughed. ‘In exact fact there are more Catholics here in Zürich than the Zwinglians. Many Old Catholics allzo; y’know, who, ah, say mass in the Latin.’

  They reached the end of the nave and went into the vestibule. Father Grappelli was seeing off the last of his communicants: an elderly couple, both with ski sticks, both swaddled in full-length quilted coats, who were haltingly making their way down the shallow stairs.

  Seeing them, Joyce remembered that she was ill — dying, in point of fact. Felt, too, Derry’s absence — as acutely as any human presence. Church bells were pealing across the valley of the Limmat, glockenspiel notes struck on bronze. Pigeons wheeled, Joyce’s head spun. She staggered a little, and Weiss tightened his grip.

  Marianne Kreutzer came up beside them, her face betraying little concern. ‘But you are not well, so?’ she said. ‘I think this other time.’

  ‘I’m all right, really.’ Joyce detached herself from Weiss — his cologne was lemony, alcoholic, Father’s bay rum.

  ‘Perhaps you are hungry? It is lunch-time, we would’ — he sought confirmation from his partner — ‘be delighted if you would like to join us.’

  ‘Off course,’ Marianne said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Joyce gathered her carpet bag into her arms. ‘I wouldn’t want to impose.’

  ‘It is not imposing.’ Again, the wolfish smile. ‘You are a guest in our country. Normal times we go to a bistro near to here — but of course you have visited the Kronenhalle?’

  Joyce looked blank.

  ‘No? But really this is too bad, this is the most famous eating place in Zü rich; to be here and not to visit, it is almost a crime — you will please to be our guest.’

  Father Grappelli was lingering, rolling and unrolling his scarf of lamb. He had a tentative expression on his boyish face, and Joyce guessed he was hoping the invitation would be extended to him. It wasn’t. Weiss, coughing Schweizerdeutsch, took the priest’s hand and shook it. Then he explained to Joyce, ‘I will get the car’, before skipping off down the steps while pulling on his suede gloves.

  Joyce turned to Marianne: ‘Please, it isn’t necessary for all this. ’

  Her tight face clenched still more. ‘Frau Beddoes,’ she said, ‘Ueli is not so ordinary Swiss person. He is ausländerfreundlich — you say, friendly to the aliens. That is his. thing, so, come, please.’

  Not deigning to take his hand, Marianne Kreutzer nodded to the rejected priest, then indicated to Joyce the car that was already idling by the kerb, as compact as a travel iron. As he leant across to open the passenger door, Weiss’s otter head dived out of it.

  In the oaken burrow of the Kronenhalle, the Zürichers — sleek, black and dapper as moles — tunnelled their way through mounds of food. Many of them blinked from behind tinted Christian Lacroix glasses, as if even this subterranean ambience were too bright. The Zürich guilds’ coats of arms were painted on to the creamy plaster of the walls, up above the wood panelling. Waitresses bustled among the crisply laid tables, while the hunched maître d’ slowly propelled a trolley up and down the aisles, the silvery lid of which was rolled up, exposing a glistening joint of beef: the meaty pupil of a steely eye.

  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 — Str
auss, 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?’

  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.