5. I once dated a woman who thought that you had to cut a cow open to get the milk inside. What a silly thing—the idea and the woman. And what a mess to try. All that blood, curling into the milk, spoiling it. What a waste.
The egg, now. Eggs are more practical. They can be cut out of hens, though this is rarely necessary. And if that happens, and the eggs are covered in down feathers and blood, they can be washed clean, and nothing is ruined—all is perfectly usable. Well, except for the hen, ha-ha!
6. An egg is the most dangerous thing in the universe.
7. Have you ever gone to the farmer’s market and paid a little extra for those brown eggs that look so healthful, the kind that you know were warming under hens that very morning, and carry the carton home, and crack open one, and a fetal dragon flops out into the pan? No? If this ever happens to you, know that the dragons will all be dead. They were taken away from their mothers; they never had a chance to survive. If you put the unbroken ones beneath a heat lamp, they’ll just spoil. These are not Schrödinger’s eggs. There was never a chance you could have hatched a dragon army, and anyway, it would have been foolish to try. Dragons always eventually turn on you, and in a way that makes you regret all of your decisions. Anyway, if you return to the market for edible eggs, the stand will most likely be vacant. Dragon eggshells are a powerful aphrodisiac, though, so don’t throw them away.
8. Hermann Hesse wrote, “The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world.” I know a few truths about Hermann Hesse that aren’t exactly common knowledge, but I can assure you that he is using fewer metaphors in that sentence than you might think. Also, Hermann Hesse was a bastard and I don’t want to talk about him anymore.
9. You look like a person who has eaten a few eggs in her lifetime. How many would you estimate? Five hundred? A thousand? The trouble is that eggs are in everything, so even if you are able to think about your self-prepared and ordered breakfasts, and church potluck deviled egg trays with their easily quantifiable eggs, it’s hard to add up all of the baked goods and cream sauces and mayonnaise on your sandwiches, and anything else that might have contained an egg. But let’s say you’ve eaten one thousand eggs in your lifetime. One thousand eggs, each of which was full of potential life.
Now, don’t look at me like that, I’m not talking vegan-talk, I’m just saying that sometimes food is full of wonder and you really should think about it. Imagine that one thousand chickens could have possibly been born, and they would have gone about pecking and watching and thinking chicken thoughts and dreaming chicken dreams and nibbling and fighting other chickens, and eventually would have fallen beneath the blade or gone to chicken-sleep and never woken up. You are now full of those chickens, their potential wishes and dreams and—don’t laugh!—their experiences. Their lives, and their deaths. Somewhere inside of you, you are contentedly strutting about the dirt, in the sun. Somewhere inside of you, your head is missing and you are chasing a farmer’s terrified child across the yard. I think, in a way, we are all one thousand chickens.
10. It is a really good thing to smash an egg, very satisfying. I don’t just mean just to drop one, but take it in your hand and splat it with all of your might against a hard surface. I once visited a village between two great mountains where this was a common pastime. It could get competitive! The winner was measured by the distance the egg innards were strewn. If the yolk got on the judges, well, that was a bonus. It was a very strange little village with some very strange people, but they had been through a lot of hardships in their lifetimes, so they can be forgiven some eccentricities.
11. I’m pretty sure that the stewardess—my apologies, the flight attendant, you can only say so much nowadays—does have some eggs in the back, with the meal-trays, but perhaps not enough for everyone, and so she doesn’t want to make anybody jealous. Plus, I’m sure first class would take all the eggs if given the chance, and then there wouldn’t be enough eggs for all of us cattle back here, ha-ha! You were probably smart to bring your own eggs in that little lunchbox, even if it does count as your carry-on.
12. People forgot about Patsy Cline’s parallel universe theories because they were so busy singing her songs. Can you imagine a fate worse than that? I’ll never record a ballad as long as I live. Anyway, she believed that all of the parallel universes touched each other in the wet places of the world. Puddles and spilled milk and even bits of the body, all creating little puckers in time and space and touching realities together. She was right, of course. Sometimes, before shows, they would find her in her dressing room pushing her fingers through eggs, calling in a singsongy voice to that child she lost. You know, Patsy herself died in a plane crash. Not a plane like this, mind you, a small one. Not like this. Don’t look so worried.
13. Here is the embarrassing truth: I know you. We’ve met before. We shared an egg, once. Don’t you remember? Of course not, it was your first time egg-side, and I’d done it many times before. Just because I’m an old man and you’re some young thing does not mean that we have not shared experiences. You didn’t have a name yet, but I’d recognize that pretty mouth anywhere. I remember seeing you and thinking, she knows so little, but so much of the world is ahead of her. She is so beautiful; maybe one day I will run into her again and see her shining face. So of course, you can imagine my disappointment when I saw you here, familiar, but looking so sullen, so angry. Smile! You survived. We were one of a dozen double-yolks, cracked open and born into this world—well, I was reborn, but it all amounts to the same—and you look pretty good, if I say so myself. So be grateful to live in a world with eggs, which give us life and have so many uses besides.
14. Miss, I don’t think she meant to throw the egg at me per se, she’s just a little worn out from the flight. I am certain that it was an accident. No, I can stay here. It was just an accident. Isn’t that right? Ha-ha!
15. That hardboiled egg looks delicious, and I think I should like a bite.
USMAN T. MALIK
–
Resurrection Points
I WAS THIRTEEN when I dissected my first corpse. It was a fetid, soggy teenager Baba dragged home from Clifton Beach and threw in the shed. The ceiling leaked in places, so he told me to drape the dead boy with tarpaulin so the monsoon water wouldn’t get at him.
When I went to the shed, DeadBoy had stunk the place up. I pinched my nostrils, gently removed the sea-blackened aluminum crucifix from around his neck, pulled the tarp across his chest. The tarp was a bit short—Ma had cut some for the chicken coop after heavy rainfall killed a hen—and I had to tuck it beneath DeadBoy’s chin so it seemed he were sleeping. Then I saw that the fish had eaten most of his lips and part of his nose and my stomach heaved and I began to retch.
After a while I felt better and went inside the house.
“How’s he look?” said Baba.
“Fine, I guess,” I said.
Baba looked at me curiously. “You alright?”
“Yes.” I looked at Ma rolling dough peras in the kitchen for dinner, her face red and sweaty from heat, and leaned into the smell of mint leaves and chopped onions. “Half his face is gone, Baba.”
He nodded. “Yes. Water and flesh don’t go well together and the fish get the rest. You see his teeth?”
“No.”
“Go look at his teeth and tell me what you see.”
I went back to the shed and peeled the pale raw lip-flesh back with my fingers. His front teeth were almost entirely gone, sockets blackened with blood, and the snail-like uvula at the back of the throat was half-missing. I peered into his gaping mouth, tried to feel the uvula’s edge with my finger. It was smooth and covered with clots, and I knew what had happened to this boy.
“So?” Baba said when I got back.
“Someone tortured him,” I said. Behind Baba Mama sucked breath in and fanned the manure oven urgently, billowing the smoke away from us toward the open door.
“How do you know?” Baba said.
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“They slashed his uvula with a razor while he was alive, and when he tried to bite down they knocked out his teeth with a hammer.”
Baba nodded. “How can you tell?”
“Clean cut. It was sliced with a blade. And there are no teeth chips
at the back of the throat or stuck to the palate to indicate bullet trauma.”
“Good.” Baba looked pleased. He tapped his chin with a spoon and glanced at Mama. “You think he’s ready?”
Mama tried to lift the steaming pot, hissed with pain, let it go and grabbed a rough cotton rag to hold the edges. “Now?”
“Sure. I was his age when I did my first.” He looked at me. “You’re old enough. Eat your dinner. Later tonight I’ll show you how to work them.”
We sat on the floor and Ma brought lentil soup, vegetable curry, raw onion rings, and cornflour roti. We ate in silence on the meal mat. When we were done we thanked Allah for his blessings. Ma began to clear the dinner remains, her bony elbows jutting out as she scraped crumbs and wiped the mat. She looked unhappy and didn’t look up when Baba and I went out to work the DeadBoy.
*
DeadBoy’s armpits reeked. I asked Baba if I could stuff my nostrils with scented cotton. He said no.
We put on plastic gloves made from shopping bags. Baba lay the boy on the tools table, situating his palms upward in the traditional anatomical position. I turned on the shed’s naked bulb and it swung from its chain above the cadaver, like a hanged animal.
“Now,” Baba said, handing me the scalpel, “locate the following structures.” He named superficial landmarks: jugular notch, sternal body, xiphoid process, others familiar to me from my study of his work and his textbooks. Once I had located them, he handed me the scalpel and said: “Cut.”
I made a midline horizontal and two parallel incisions in DeadBoy’s chest. Baba watched me, shaking his head and frowning, as I fumbled my way through the dissection. “No. More laterally” and “Yes, that’s the one. Now reflect the skin back, peel it slowly. Remove the superficial fascia” and “Repeat on the other side.”
DeadBoy’s skin was wet and slippery from water damage and much of the fat was putrefied. His pectoral and abdominal musculature was dark and soft. I scraped the congealed blood away and removed the fascia, and as I worked muscles and tendons slowly emerged and glistened in the yellow light, displaying neurovascular bundles weaving between their edges. It took me three hours but finally I was done. I stood, surrounded by DeadBoy’s odor, trembling with excitement, peering at my handiwork.
Baba nodded. “Not bad. Now show me where the resurrection points are.” When I hesitated, he raised his eyebrows. “Don’t be scared. You know what to do.”
I took a glove off and placed it on DeadBoy’s thigh. I tentatively touched the right pec major, groping around its edges. The sternal head was firm and spongy. When I felt a small cord in the medial corner with my fingers, I tapped it lightly. The pec didn’t twitch.
I looked at Baba. He smiled but his eyes were black and serious. I licked my lips, took the nerve cord between my fingers, closed my eyes, and discharged.
The jolt thrummed up my fingers into my shoulder. Instantly the pec contracted and DeadBoy’s right arm jerked. I shot the biocurrent again, feeling the recoil tear through my flesh, and this time DeadBoy’s arm jumped and flopped onto his chest.
“Something, isn’t it,” Baba said. “Well done.”
I didn’t reply. My heart raced, my skin was feverish and crawling. My nostrils were filled with the smell of electricity.
“First time’s hard, no denying it. But it’s gotta be done. Only way you’ll learn to control it.”
I was on fire. We had talked about it before, but this wasn’t anything like I had expected. When Baba did it, he could smile and make conversation as the deadboys spasmed and danced on his fingertips. Their flesh turned into calligraphy in his hands.
“That felt like something exploded inside me, Baba,” I said, hearing the tremble in my voice. “What happens if I can’t control it?”
He shrugged. “You will. It just takes time and practice, that’s all. Our elders have done it for generations.” He leaned forward, lifted DeadBoy’s hand, and returned it to supine position. “Want to try the smaller muscles? They need finer control and the nerves are thinner. Would be wise to use your fingertips.”
And thus we practiced my first danse macabre. Sought out the nerve bundles, made them pop and sizzle, watched the cadaver spider its way across the table. With each discharge, the pain lessened, but soon my fingers began to go numb and Baba made me halt. Carefully he draped DeadBoy.
“Baba, are there others?” I asked as we walked back to the house.
“Like us?” He nodded. “The Prophet Isa is said to have returned men to life. When Martha of Bethany asked him how he would bring her brother Lazarus back to life, Hazrat Isa said, ‘I am the Resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.’“
We were in the backyard; the light of our home shone out bright and comforting. Baba turned and smiled at me. “But he was a healer first. Like our beloved Prophet Muhammad Peace-Be-Upon-Him. Do you understand?”
“I guess,” I said. DeadBoy’s face swam in front of my eyes. “Baba, who do you think killed him?”
His smile disappeared. “Animals.” He didn’t look at me when he said, “How’s your friend Sadiq these days? I haven’t seen him in a while.” His tone was casual, and he tilted his jaw and stared into the distance as if looking for something.
“Fine,” I said. “He’s just been busy, I think.”
Baba rubbed his cheek with a hairy knuckle and we began walking again. “Decent start,” he said. “Tomorrow will be harder, though.” I looked at him; he spread his arms and smiled, and I realized what he meant.
“So soon?” I said, horrified. “But I need more practice.”
“Sure, you do, but it’s not that different. You did well back there.”
“But—”
“You will do fine, Daoud,” he said gently, and would say no more.
Ma watched us approach the front door, her face silvered by moonlight. Baba didn’t meet her eyes as we entered, but his hand rose and rubbed against his khaddar shirt, as if wiping dirt away.
Ma said nothing, but later, huddled in the charpoy, staring through the skylight window at the expansive darkness, I heard them arguing. At one point, I thought she said, “Worry about the damn house,” and he tried to shush her, but she said something hot and angry and Baba got up and left. There was silence and then there was sobbing, and I lay there, filled with sorrow and excitement, listening to her grief, thinking if only there was a way to reconcile the two.
*
The dead foot leaped when I touched the resurrection point. Mr. Kurmully yelped.
“Sorry,” I said, jerking my fingers away. “Did that hurt?”
“No.” He massaged the foot with his hand. “I was …surprised. I haven’t had any feeling in this for years. Just a dry burning around the shin. But when you touched it there,” he gestured at the inner part of his left ankle, “I felt it. I felt you touching me.”
He looked at me with awe, then at Baba, who stood by the door, hands laced behind his back, looking pleased. “He’s good,” Mr. Kurmully said.
“Yes,” Baba said.
“So when are you retiring, Jamshed?”
Baba laughed. “Not for a while, I hope. Anyway, let’s get on with it. Daoud,” he said to me, “can you find the pain point in his ankle?”
I spent the next thirty minutes probing and prodding Mr. Kurmully’s diabetic foot, feeling between his tendons for nerves. It wasn’t easy. Over the years, Mr. Kurmully had lost two toes and the stumps had shriveled, distorting the anatomy. Eventually I found two points, braced myself, and gently shot them.
“Feel better?” I said, as Mr. Kurmully withdrew his foot and stepped on it tentatively.
“He won’t know until tomorrow,” Baba said. “Som
etimes instant effect may occur, but our true goal is nocturnal relief when the neuropathy is worst. Am I right, Habib?”
“Yes.” Mr. Kurmully nodded and flexed his foot this way and that. “The boy’s gifted. I had some burning when I came. It’s gone now. His first time?”
“Yes.”
“Good God.” Mr. Kurmully shook his head wonderingly. “He will go far.” He came toward me and patted me on the head. “Your father’s been a boon to our community for twenty years, boy. Always be gentle, like him, you hear me? Be humble. It’s the branch laden with fruit that bends the most.” He smiled at me and turned to Baba. “Let me pay you this once, Jamshed.”
Baba waved a hand. “Just tip the Edhi driver when he takes the cadaver. One of their volunteers has agreed to bury it for free.”
“They are good to you, aren’t they.”
Baba beamed. He opened his mouth to speak, but there was sudden commotion at the front of the clinic and a tall, gangly man with a squirrel tail mustache strode in, followed by the sulky-faced Edhi driver looking angry and unhappy.
Baba’s gaze went from one to another and settled on the gangly stranger. “Salam, brother,” Baba said pleasantly. “How can I help
you?”
The gangly man pulled out a sheath of papers and handed it to Baba. He had gleaming rat eyes that narrowed like cracks in cement when he spoke. He sounded as if he had a cold. “Doctor Sahib, you know why I’m here.”
“I’m not sure I do. Why don’t you tell me? Would you like to take a seat?”
Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2 Page 18
