‘Where do you get them?’ I asked. ‘The bodies.’
‘They’re young people who have, unfortunately, passed away,’ said the doctor.
Stupidly, I said, as though I were looking at the result of a massacre, ‘All at once?’
‘At different times, naturally. And in different parts of the world. They’re transported in the same way as organs are now. That’s not difficult to do.’
‘What is difficult about this process now?’
‘It takes time and great expertise. But so does cleaning a great painting. The right person has to do it. There are not many of those people yet. But it can be done. It is, of course, something that was always going to happen.’
Suspended in harnesses, there were rows and rows of bodies: the pale, the dark and the in-between; the mottled, the clear-skinned, the hairy and the hairless, the bearded and the large-breasted; the tall, the broad and the squat. Each had a number in a plastic wallet above the head. Some looked awkward, as though they were asleep, with their heads lolling slightly to one side, their legs at different angles. Others looked as though they were about to go for a run. All the bodies, as far as I could see, were relatively young; some of them looked less like young adults than older children. The oldest were in their early forties. I was reminded of the rows of suits in the tailors I’d visit as a boy with my father. Except these were not cloth coverings but human bodies, born alive from between a woman’s legs.
‘Why don’t you browse?’ said the surgeon, leaving me with the nurse. ‘Choose a short list, perhaps. Write down the numbers you fancy. We can discuss your choices. This is the part I enjoy. You know what I like to do? Guess in advance who I think the person will choose, and wait to see whether I am right. Often I am.’
Shopping for bodies: it was true that I had some idea what I was looking for. I knew, for instance, that I didn’t want to be a fair, blue-eyed blond. People might consider me a beautiful fool.
‘Can I suggest something?’ said Ralph. ‘You might, for a change, want to come back as a young woman.’
I said, ‘A change is as good as a rest, as my mother used to say.’
‘Some men want to give birth. Or they want to have sex as a woman. You do have one of your male characters say that in his sexual fantasies he’s always a woman.’
‘Yes … I see what you mean …’
‘Or you could choose a black body. There’s a few of those,’ he said with an ironic sniff. ‘Think how much you’d learn about society and… all that.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But couldn’t I just read a novel about it?’
‘Whatever. All I want is for you to know that there are options. Take your time. The race, gender, size and age you prefer can only be your choice. I would say that in my view people aren’t able to give these things enough thought. They take it for granted that tough guys have all the fun. Still, you could give another body a run-out in six months. Or are you particularly attached to your identity?’
‘It never occurred to me not to be.’
He said, ‘One learns that identities are good for some things but not for others. Here.’
‘Jesus. Thanks.’
I took the bag but wasn’t sick. I did want to get out of that room. It was worse than a mortuary. These bodies would be reanimated. The consequences were unimaginable. Every type of human being, apart from the old, seemed available. The young must have been dying in droves; maybe they were being killed. I would make a good but expeditious choice and leave.
When the others fell back discreetly I walked beside this stationary army of the dead, this warehouse of the lost, examining their faces and naked bodies. I looked, as one might look too long at a painting, until its value — the value of life — seemed to evaporate, existing only as a moment of embodied frustration between two eternities. Then I began to think of poetry and children and the early morning, until it came back to me, why I wanted to go on living and why it might, at times, seem worth it.
I considered several bodies but kept moving, hoping for something better. At last, I stopped. I had seen ‘my guy’. Or rather, he had seemed to choose me. Stocky and as classically handsome as any sculpture in the British Museum, he was neither white nor dark but lightly toasted, with a fine, thick penis and heavy balls. I would, at last, have the body of an Italian footballer: an aggressive, attacking midfielder, say. My face resembled that of the young Alain Delon with, naturally, my own brain leading this combination out to play for six months.
‘That’s him,’ I said, across the lines of bodies. ‘My man. He looks fine. We like each other.’
‘Do you want to see his eyes?’ said the nurse, who’d been waiting by the door. ‘You’d better.’
‘Why not?’
‘Look, then,’ she said.
She prised open my man’s eyelids. The room was scrupulously odourless, but as I moved closer to him I detected an antiseptic whiff. However, I liked him already. For the first time, I would have dark brown eyes.
‘Lovely.’ I considered patting him on the head, but realised he would be cold. I said to him. ‘See you later, pal.’
On the way out, I noticed another heavy, locked door. ‘Are there more in there? Is that where they keep the second-division players?’
‘That’s where they keep the old bodies,’ she said. ‘Your last facility will be in there.’
‘Facility?’ I asked. The necessity for euphemism always alerted me to hidden fears.
‘The body you’re wearing at the moment.’
‘Right. But only for a bit.’
‘For a bit,’ she repeated.
‘No harm will come to it in there, will it?’
‘How could it?’
‘You won’t sell it?’
‘Er … why should we?’ She added, ‘No disrespect intended. If, after six months, you change your mind, or you just don’t turn up, we will nullify the facility, of course.’
‘Right. But I would like to see where I’m going to be hanging out — or up, rather.’
I moved towards the door of this room. The porter barred my way with his strong arm.
The nurse said, ‘Confidential.’
Ralph intervened. ‘It’s unlikely, Adam, but you might know the people. Some say they’re emigrating, others “seem” to have died. Others have disappeared, but they come here and re-emerge as Newbodies.’
‘How much of this “coming and going” is there about?’ I asked.
Ralph didn’t reply. I felt myself becoming annoyed.
I said, ‘It is curious, inquisitive types like me you claimed you wanted as “initiates”. Now you won’t answer my questions.’
‘Be a patient patient. Soon you’ll have as much time on your hands as you could want. You will come to understand much more then.’ He embraced me. ‘I’ll leave you now. I will visit you when it’s done.’
‘I’ll feel like a new man.’
‘That’s right.’
I was put into bed then, in my room, and examined by the doctor and his assistant. The doctor was whistling, and I closed my eyes. My body had already become just an object to be worked on. I imagined my new body being taken from its rack and prepared in another room.
After a while, the doctor said, ‘We’re ready to go ahead now. You made a good choice. Your new facility has almost been picked out a few times now. He’s been waiting a while for his outing. I’m glad his day has finally come.’
In so far as it was possible, I had got used to the idea that I might die under the anaesthetic, that these might be my last moments on earth. The faces of my children as babies floated before me as I went under. This time, though, I was afraid in a new way: not only of death, but of what might come out of it — new life. How would I feel? Who would I be?