Flights

by Olga Tokarczuk

  The professor’s daughter, a fifty-year-old woman entirely dedicated to him, with delicate hands hidden in cream-coloured lace, is just organizing the girls to clean up. Almost no one remembers what her name is, and she’s perfectly content with ‘Professor Ruysch’s daughter’ and ‘Miss’, as the cleaning women call her. But we remember – it’s Charlotta. She has the right to sign documents on behalf of her father, and the signatures are impossible to tell apart. In spite of her delicate hands, that lace, and her extensive anatomical knowledge, she will not go down in history alongside her father. She will not be immortal like him, in human memory and in textbooks. Even the specimens will outlive her, the same ones she prepared with such enormous dedication, anonymously. All those beautiful tiny little fetuses will outlive her, leading their quiet paradisal lives in the golden liquid, in their Stygian elixir. Some of them, the most valuable ones, rare as orchids, have an extra pair of hands or feet, because unlike her father, she is fascinated by what is flawed and imperfect. The microcephaly she managed to track down and bribe midwives for. Or the gargantuan intestines, hypertrophied, she got from surgeons. Medics from the provinces made Professor Ruysch’s daughter special offers of particular tumours, calves with five legs, the dead fetuses of twins with conjoined heads. But it is to the city’s midwives that she owes the most. She has been a good client, although she knows how to strike a bargain.

  Her father will leave the business to her brother, Henrik, who appears in the painting done thirteen years after that first one – Charlotta sees it daily on her way down the stairs. In it her father is now a mature man with a carefully trimmed Spanish beard. He wears a wig; this time his hand, equipped with surgical scissors, is raised over the open body of an infant. The abdominal walls are already spread, revealing the order of the interior. Charlotta associates it with a beloved doll that had a pale little porcelain face and a rag torso stuffed with sawdust.

  She never got married, which did not bother her, after all she has dedicated her life to her father. She’ll have no children, unless you count those beautiful pale ones swimming in alcohol.

  She always regretted that her sister Rachel was given away in marriage. She used to work with her, preparing specimens. But Rachel had always been more interested in art than science. She had never wanted to wet her hands in formalin and felt sick at the smell of blood. But she had decorated the specimen jars with floral motifs. She had also come up with compositions out of the bones, especially those smallest ones, which she then gave fanciful titles. But she moved with her husband to Den Haag, and Charlotta was left alone, because brothers don’t count.

  She drags her finger along the wooden surface of the shelf, leaving a trace. In a moment it will be wiped away by the cloths of the complying girls. She’s so sorry to have lost the collection, to which she’s given everything. She turns her head to the window so the servants don’t notice her tears, and she sees the ordinary city commotion. She fears that there, in the Far North, the jars won’t be appropriately stored or maintained. The lacquer sealing the lids sometimes loses its cohesion under the influence of the vapours of the preserving mixture, and then the alcohol evaporates. She wrote this all out very carefully in a long detailed missive she included with the collection, in Latin. But can they read Latin there?

  She will not sleep tonight. She’s as worried as if she’d just seen her own sons off on a journey to a distant university. From experience she knows, however, that the best medicine for worrying is work, work for work’s sake, which is its own pleasure and reward. She shushes the frolicking girls, who fear her stern figure. They must think that someone like her will go straight to heaven.

  But what is heaven to her? What would she find in a heaven of anatomists? It’s dark and boring, they’re clustered around motionless, standing over open human bodies, just men in dark clothing that barely stands out from the gloom. On their faces, slightly lit by the glow off their white collars, you can see an expression of satisfaction, or even triumph. She’s a loner, she doesn’t care about being around people. So neither failure nor success concerns her. She clears her throat loudly now, to give herself courage, and kicking up with the movement of her skirt a cloud of dust, she goes out.

  But she doesn’t go home, she’s drawn in the opposite direction, towards the sea, to the port, and after a while she notices from afar the high slender masts of the ships of the East India Company; they sit in the roadstead as little boats float between them, bringing goods to port. Barrels and crates with the logo of the VOC stamped and nailed onto them. Half-naked, glistening with sweat, tanned men bear chests of pepper, cloves and nutmeg down planks. The smell of the sea, fishy, salty, is flavoured with cinnamon here. She goes along the waterfront until she sees from afar the Tsar’s three-master; she passes it quickly because she doesn’t even want to look at it or imagine that the jars are sitting now in some dark hold stinking of fish, dirty, that they are being touched by unknown hands, and that they will have to spend many days there, without light, without human eyes on them.

  She quickens her pace and walks all the way up to the docks, where she sees ships getting ready for their voyages; soon they will be sailing Danish and Norwegian seas. These ships are completely different to the ones belonging to the Company: decked out, painted bright, with galleons in the shapes of sirens and mythological figures. These ones are rather simple, crude…

  She comes upon the scene of a drill. Two officials in black clothing and brown wigs sitting on the waterfront at a spread-out table, and in front of them a sizeable group of recruits – these are fishermen from neighbouring villages, tattered, unshaven, unwashed since Easter at least, with long skulls.

  A crazy thought comes to her mind – that she could dress up in any sort of men’s rags, coat her shoulders in stinking oil, use it to darken her face, cut her hair off and go and join that line. Time mercifully annihilates the differences between man and woman; and she knows she’s not beautiful, that with her already somewhat drooping cheeks and her mouth in the parentheses of two wrinkles she could pass as a man. Infants and old people look the same. So what is keeping her? A heavy dress, the abundance of petticoats, an uncomfortable white coronet that holds tight her miserable hair; her old, mad father, his attacks of greed when with a bony finger he pushes in her direction along the wood of the table a coin for the upkeep of the house? Who in his carefully masked madness has already decided they will begin again from scratch – she is to prepare herself. They will reproduce the collection in a few years, pay the midwives to be on their guard and not miss a single stillbirth or miscarriage.

  She could embark tomorrow; she has heard they still need sailors at the Company. She could get on one of those ships that would take her to Texel, where a whole fleet is waiting. The Company ships are bulky, with great bellies, squat, so they can fit as much as possible – silk, porcelain, carpets and spices. She would be quiet as a mouse, no one would even realize; she’s quite tall and sturdy, and she would bind her breasts with a band of canvas. And even if it came out, they’d be somewhere on the open seas, on the way to the East Indies – what could they do to her then? At most they’d kick her off in some civilized place, for example in Batavia, where apparently – she’s seen this on engravings – monkeys run in packs and sit on the roofs of houses, and all year round fruits grow as in paradise, and it is so warm no one even wears stockings.

  So she thinks, so she imagines, but then her attention is drawn by a big, sturdy man and his naked shoulders, his naked torso, tattooed, covered in colourful drawings dominated by ships, sails, half-naked women with darker skin; it is as though this man wore his life story written out on his own body, these drawings must represent his travels and lovers. Charlotta can’t take her eyes off him. The man throws over his shoulder bundles sewn up in grey canvas and carries it down the planks onto a medium-sized boat. He must feel her gaze on him, because he looks at her fleetingly, neither smiling nor frowning, because she’s no attraction to him. An old maid in black. But she c
an’t take her eyes off his tattoos. She sees on his shoulder a colourful fish, a great whale, and because the sailor’s muscles are working, she has the impression that this whale is alive and that it lives with this man in some sort of unprecedented symbiosis, on his skin, glued to it for all time, travelling from his shoulder blade towards his chest. This big sturdy body makes an enormous impression on her. She feels her legs get slow and heavy, and her body opens up from below, that’s how it feels – it opens up, to that shoulder, to that whale.

  She clenches her teeth so tight her head roars. She starts to walk along the canal towards him, but in the end she slows and stops. She’s overcome by a strange feeling that the water here is overflowing onto the banks. Gently, at first checking with the first waves the place of its expansion, then it grows bolder, pours out onto the paving stones, and in a moment it’s reached the first steps of the nearest houses’ stairs. Charlotta feels distinctly the weight of the element – her skirts absorb the water, become leaden, she can’t move. She feels this flood in every inch of her body and sees the surprised boats battering the trees; always lined up with their bows against the current, now they’ve lost their direction.

  THE TSAR’S COLLECTION

  The next day at dawn the Russian sailboat with the collection carefully arranged in the hold raised its anchor and headed out to sea. It met with good fortune crossing the Danish straits, and after several days it was received by the Baltic. The captain, in a good mood, was contemplating his recent purchase, a beautifully executed tellurion by Dutch artisans. He had always been interested in such things much more than sailing itself, and deep down he would rather have been an astronomer, a cartographer, someone who reaches beyond the space available to our gaze and our ships.

  From time to time he went down into the hold and checked to make sure the precious cargo was still in place, but somewhere around Gotland the weather changed – after a not-too-violent storm the wind dropped. The air hovered over the sea, forming a great block of atmospheric amber out of August’s final heat. The sails slumped, and this went on for several days. The captain, in order to occupy people somehow, ordered them to roll and unroll the halyards, scrub the deck, and in the evenings he made them go through drills. After dark, his authority lost its outlines somewhat, and he snuck back into the cozy cocoon of his cabin, partly of wariness towards these gruff, primitive sailors, partly on account of his travel journal, which he was writing for his two sons.

  On the eighth day of dead calm the sailors began to be stormy themselves, and the vegetables they’d bought in Amsterdam, especially the onion, turned out to be poor quality and in large part mouldy. Their supply of vodka was already running out – the captain was actually afraid to look under the deck, where they kept the barrels, but the reports of his first officer certainly did not bode well. The captain felt uneasy as nocturnal clattering on deck reached his ears. At first they were individual steps. But then it was several pairs of legs knocking, and in the end he heard a peaceable trot and a rhythmic shouting (could they be dancing?), which finally transitioned into raucous drunken shouts and uneven choruses sung so pathetically and painfully that it reminded him of the wailing of some marine animals. This happened over several long nights, almost until dawn. By day he saw the sailors’ puffy eyes and swollen eyelids and their gazes that avoided him. But both he and his first officer agreed that deepest darkness at stilled sea would hardly favour any behavioural correctives. It wasn’t until the tenth day of silence, when the nocturnal excesses could no longer be tolerated, that he went out onto the deck, in full sun so that his epaulettes and insignia could be seen, and arrested the ringleader, a man by the name of Kalukin.

  Unfortunately, with a trembling heart, he confirmed his suspicions that some of the cargo had been damaged. Some dozen or so of the hundreds of jars they were transporting had been opened, and their liquid contents, a strong brandy, drunk till the last drop. The specimens themselves were still there, lying around on the floor, submerged in tow and sawdust. He didn’t take too close a look at them, out of disgust and fear. The next night he made some men stand with arms in hand to guard the entrance to the hold; a mutiny was close to breaking out. The August heat was driving the men crazy. And the smoothness of the surface of the sea. And the cargo itself.

  In the end there was no other way – the captain had the remains that were left sewn up in a cloth bag and he personally threw them overboard. And as though at the touch of a wizard’s wand, the sea, mollified by this morsel, smacked and moved. Somewhere near the Swedish mainland the wind came in and pushed the Tsar’s sailboat towards home.

  When they got back to Petersburg the captain had to write a secret report. Kalukin was convicted and hanged, and the collection itself, though incomplete, was transferred safely to rooms prepared expressly for it.

  The captain, meanwhile, for his failure to take care of the transport, was sent along with his family to the Far North, where for the rest of his life he organized little fishing expeditions and contributed to the drawing up of more detailed maps of Novaya Zemlya.

  IRKUTSK-MOSCOW

  Flight from Irkutsk to Moscow. It takes off at 8 a.m. and lands in Moscow at the same time – at eight o’clock in the morning on that same day. It turns out to be right at sunrise, which means the whole flight takes place during dawn. Passengers remain in this one moment, a great, peaceful Now, vast as Siberia itself.

  So there should be time enough for confessions of whole lifetimes. Time elapses inside the plane but doesn’t trickle out of it.

  DARK MATTER

  In the third hour of the flight, when the man sitting next to me came back from the bathroom and I had to get up to let him in again, we exchanged a few polite remarks on the weather, the turbulence and the food. During the fourth hour of the flight, however, we introduced ourselves. He was a physicist. He was returning home after giving a series of lectures. When he took off his shoes, I noticed he had an enormous hole in the heel of his sock. Thus I became aware of the physical presence of the physicist, and from that point forward we spoke in a more ordinary way. He told me stories about whales with great enthusiasm, although his work dealt with something else.

  Dark matter – that was what he worked on. It’s a thing which we know exists, but without being able to access it, with any instruments. The evidence of its existence arises out of complicated calculations, mathematical results. All signs point to it occupying some three-quarters of the universe. Our matter, clear matter, the matter with which we are familiar and which comprises our cosmos, is inordinately scarcer. Dark matter, meanwhile, is located everywhere, says this man in the sock with the hole in it – right here, all around us. He gazes out the window, indicating with his eyes the blindingly bright clouds beneath us: ‘It’s out there, too. Everywhere. The worst part is we don’t know what it is. Or why.’ I wanted to immediately put him in touch with those climatologists who were flying to their conference in Montreal. I got up and glanced around for them, but then right away I realized, of course, that that was not this flight.

  MOBILITY IS REALITY

  At the airport, a big ad on a glass wall all-knowingly asserts:

  МОБИЛЬНОСТЬ СТАНОВИТСЯ РЕАЛЬНОСTЮ.

  Mobility is reality.

  Let us stress that it is merely an ad for mobile phones.

  FLIGHTS

  Over the world at night hell rises. The first thing that happens is it disfigures space; it makes everything more cramped and more massive and unscaleable. Details disappear and objects lose their features, becoming squat and indistinct; how strange that by day they may be spoken of as ‘beautiful’ or ‘useful’; now they look like shapeless bodies: hard to guess what they’d be for. Everything is hypothetical in hell. All that daytime heterogeneity of form, the presence of colours, shades, reveals itself to be utterly in vain – what purpose could possibly be served by beige upholstery, by floral wallpaper, by tassels? What difference does green make to a dress slung over the back of a ch
air? It’s difficult to understand the covetous gaze that fell upon it as it clung to its hanger in the shop window. There are no buttons or hooks or clasps now; fingers in the dark find only vague bulges, rough patches, lumps of hard matter.

  The next thing hell does is drag you out of sleep. You can kick and scream; hell is implacable. Sometimes it provides disturbing images, frightening or mocking – a decapitated head, a beloved body covered in blood, human bones in ashes – yes, yes, hell likes to shock. But more often than not it awakes without standing on ceremony – your eyes open onto darkness, launching a stream of consciousness; your gaze, aimed at nothing, is its advance guard. The nocturnal brain is a Penelope unravelling the cloth of meaning diligently woven during the day. Sometimes it’s a single thread, sometimes more; complex designs break down into prime factors – warp and weft; weft falls by the wayside, and only straight parallel lines remain, the barcode of the world.

  Then you realize: night gives the world back its natural, original appearance, without sugar-coating it; day is a flight of fancy, light a slight exception, an oversight, a disruption of the order. The world in fact is dark, almost black. Motionless and cold.

  She sits straight up in their bed, tickled by beads of sweat between her breasts. Her nightgown sticks to her body like skin about to be shed. She strains to hear in the darkness and catches the quiet whimpering that comes from Petya’s room. For a moment she tries with her feet to find her slippers, but then she gives up. She’ll run barefoot to her son. Beside her she sees the murky outline of a person as it budges and sighs.