Uncertain Weights and Measures by Jocelyn Parr

Author:Jocelyn Parr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Canadian Fiction
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: 2017-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

At the institute, the silence persisted for the first few months of 1928, so that work sounded like the shuffling of papers, the pouring of tea, the clinking of glass jars meeting each other in the sink. Drawers, cabinets, and catalogue trays slid open and closed. The typewriter cartridge shunted back to the beginning with a familiar ding.

The word about Bekhterev’s death seemed to have spread, though I don’t know what would have been said, exactly; only that in the fall we’d been poised to be a central public institution, and by winter, we seemed to have been completely forgotten. For those first months, no one came to visit, not even Luria, whose company I had come to look forward to more than I liked to admit. He was the one person who I could have talked to about missing Bekhterev, so without him I felt like I lacked even the words that would have helped me understand how I felt.

The isolation and silence that fell over us were the first signs that the mood had changed, but something else had, too. Before, we’d been in pursuit of something — an idea, a vision — and now there was the faintest feeling that we were being pursued. I started to see what Sasha meant by the tyranny of the timekeepers, because that was what Zhanna seemed to have become, an observer of our work, even if she was also meant to be part of our team. I realized that Sarkisov must have had personal conversations with each of us, tasking everyone with slightly altered responsibilities that put us on edge, at odds with each other in a way we hadn’t been before. He was our quiet puppet master. I tried to believe what I’d said to Sasha — that I appreciated the idea of someone keeping us on task, that all incitements to productivity were the same, no matter where they came from — but then Zhanna would glance my way, and I’d hate her a little for whatever murky accusation she was communicating with that glance. The atmosphere of appraisal infected us all like a disease. Just as I imagined Zhanna was evaluating my use of time, I started appraising the others, wondering what motivated them, what special role Sarkisov might have given them. It was a lonely way to be.

Instead of sharing how daunted I was by my new responsibilities surrounding the Bekhterev exhibit, I sought sympathy for how much remained to do from the cataloguing I’d begun in the fall. That work had the command of Bekhterev behind it, which meant it was an acceptable reason for delay.

So, I spent January and February absorbed with the specimens we would never display publicly. In the fall I had finished the human specimens — the baker’s wrist, the hand of the thief — but now I was cataloguing the creatures. I emptied the top shelves of their dry specimens — their weightlessness was all that united them — and

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