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

Author:Will Self
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2009-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

‘Yes, so, it was only in the advisory capacity Monsignor Reiter was acting. The diocesan staff, they will now be making this second report. The Monsignor is a papal chaplain you know — ’

‘I know.’

‘Good, so, he has returned to Rome.’

They were standing on the church steps, and Weiss spoke as if he regarded Reiter as a rival of some specialized kind, Celibacy being — this was Derry’s fruity, lawyerly disdain — only an extreme sexual perversion.

It was a drear day, the cloud covering the top of the Uetliberg, the spires and cupolas of the old town brownish smudges on the near-distance. Marianne Kreutzer held Erich’s hand cursorily, as if he were human rubbish and she were looking for a bin to drop him in. The young man moan-whistled; he was handsome, but the steady hand of consciousness was needed to draw finer features.

Weiss went over to talk to a man in a navy trench coat. ‘That is one of Ueli’s guild,’ Marianne explained. ‘They are preparing for the Umzug now.’ When Joyce looked perplexed, she continued: ‘It is part off the Sechseläuten, the men, you know, they are having the big gets-together, the big lunch, the big dinner. They tell these special jokes and things.’ Marianne seemed awfully bored, and, observing the grey foreclosure of her handsome features, Joyce wondered, not for the first time, why does she bother?

‘He will, I think’ (Eyezink) ‘ask you to go with him to the Opernhaus; there is a special concert.’ This she said offhandedly, yet this is what she wants. But why? Stylized poses, Marianne and she as Sabine women, Ueli Weiss naked except for a crested helmet, his penis adamant below a moustache of pubic hair. Ridiculous. ‘Und so, you will come to Baden with me, for the spa day? It is a good thing for us girls (Uzgurls) ‘to be. verhätscheln?’

‘Pampered.’ Weiss had rejoined them. Was it Joyce’s imagination, or were his chocolate eyes melting with a vision of this verhätscheln?

Marianne Kreutzer pulled up outside the Saatlenstrasse block the following morning in the compact Mercedes that looked like a travel iron. Joyce was surprised to see Marianne driving — she had thought her one of life’s more accomplished passengers. When they were pressing north along the neat crease of a dual carriageway, Joyce continued her reappraisal. From the way she managed the car alone, Joyce judged Marianne Kreutzer to be no mere ageing geisha, schooled in Catholic ritual and cultural pursuits, but a competent woman of this particular world: the trim farms, neat business parks and geometric plantations of conifers through which the spring sunlight strobed.

Marianne piloted the car with tight precision — and at speed. Light music mingled with car air freshener. She spoke little, yet when she caught Joyce’s eye in the rear-view mirror, she smiled; not her usual constipated smirk but a grin that displayed tightly packed and beautifully maintained teeth, the white pipes of a cherished organ.

‘So, yes, we are going for one night — you

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