So medicine it was, that’s where we met. She was looking for the same thing I was — the same self-absorbed image of that which kills everything. The death-demon is always exactly your same age.
During our lectures in anatomic pathology we were always in the front row, right by the dissection table. The yellow gloves I’d wear — too plastic, non-surgical, with no intention of saving anybody from anything. The body, already progressing beyond the fated stages, crossing over into chemistry — it no longer had anything to do with biology.
That’s where we met — I couldn’t help noticing her gaze, which never strayed from the instructor’s hands, never blinked. I liked isolating myself from the group, I would take notes, ignoring the groans of fainting female classmates and the huffing of everyone else who was waiting for this foul-smelling trial — and their entire course of study — to finally be over, so they could rush into the pristine and private practices of their dreams — without blood, if possible, full of well-guarded and wealthy clients.
Like she told me, she wanted to become a pediatrician. The first lie, although I wouldn’t say she was lying to me. She, of course, was always completely sincere — but she was fooling herself.
I’ll admit it, I had a dream that we were going down the white staircase toward the anatomy lab at night. I already know that childhood memories are ineffaceable. But both in childhood and in the youth of a profession, life-changing discoveries are also etched on the memory: tastes, smells, accidental touches, indescribable movements, sometimes overpowering and concrete. However, don’t believe for a second, don’t expect me to say that we cut things up (even if only in my dream), that we sliced off little pieces, organs and limbs, from the unfeeling corpses and that we nibbled on them, testing the flavor — no.
Don’t expect me to say anything more than that — it’s just a dream, right?
They admitted me the third time I applied, but kicked me out by my second year. Chemistry was always terrible — not just for me, but terrible in and of itself, even when I managed to cleverly copy the problems on the entrance exam. I knew that chemistry would find a way to take revenge on me for that scam.
The professor wasn’t impressed by my deep yet rather narrow knowledge of one specific section of the periodic table: the radioactive isotopes. It’s a little too early for you to be curing leukemia, young man. Set aside the actinoids for now, let’s first focus on some of the simpler elements from the first group: potassium, sodium, lithium, and best of all — hydrogen.
Go to hell, I should’ve told him, but I knew that he, too, was just another naïve sucker, an innocent adversary. He was trying to make himself seem important — Mendeleev and the periodic table give you the sense of superiority, as if somebody up there has revealed life’s big secrets to you. The strength of the periodic law.
Yes, young man, The Law is very important, it takes precedence over the little boxes in the table. We can still add on as many little boxes as we want, but the principle is the crucial thing. What is chemistry? We can only understand this by contemplating what an element is. And what is a chemical element, young man?
“A chemical element”—I decide to give him an insolent and absolutely by-the-textbook answer—“is a substance that cannot be broken down or changed into another substance by chemical means. Yes, but by other, physical means, on the atomic level — that’s where the really exciting changes happen — and what changes they are! Just like every sickness, by the way, radiation sickness is also more of a blessing than a curse. But if I were to spell it out for you, especially for you, it might very well blow your mind. Because radiation arrives in a ray of unearthly beauty, my dear professor, with a hint of the cosmos and a headstrong character. It can’t be compared with any other force — it’s corporal, yet incorporeal. And invisible. It’s a foreign substance, yet it permeates into this world boundlessly, because it arrives in waves, and the world as a whole is wavelike, woven out of sinusoids. Its colors excite the eyes. Sounds, aural stimulation, vibrate on the eardrums. Scents, undulating aromas, mobile abstract surges of information, television, radio — a vital stream of fluids!”
Thrown out of the auditorium, I stop in the empty hallway next to the milky-white, paint-smeared window. On the window ledge, on top of the layers of dust, lie the bodies of dead mosquitoes, right in front of the screen. Dead of their own accord. I see two that continue holding their pose — it’s deceptive, as if they could take flight again any second. I reach out, but they remain motionless. I blow on them, the bodies unexpectedly start crawling, far too easily. They look like decommissioned airplanes retired to some deserted airfield, left to time and to themselves. Take this one here, for example — it took off and landed, and afterward didn’t make any other movement. No effort whatsoever to continue. Or perhaps effort was impossible, too strenuous. So that’s it, game over — now it just sits in the same place, as if this act didn’t cause it any particular suffering. Its body is still standing on its legs, it hasn’t flipped over onto its back.
Again, a hallway. Now the door is not slamming behind my back, but is rather there in front of me: K-shev’s room, which I have to enter, for something more than a visit.
I have to enter quietly, to enter slowly. With all my hatred and all my respect.
3. HER FATHER
THERE exist so-called personal forms of leukemia. Some of them deserve to be studied with particular attention, above and beyond the usual care for the sufferer. Certain leukemic syndromes are so rare that they are named after the patient himself: the Leroi Syndrome or Leukemia Familiae Jacobsen. So why shouldn’t there be a K-shev Leukemic Syndrome—strange, but not impossible, right? German medicine could make a new and decisive breakthrough at his expense, while Hamburg could surpass Tubingen and the Max Planck Institute in terms of glory. And K-shev himself would be immortalized in the process. I would guess they’re already at it, they can’t help but notice something strange, something unusual in the arresting pathogenic mechanism. Something that renders useless the gas-transporting blood cells, pumped out of the heart of The Boss.
But such a finding isn’t enough, the Nobel Prize is not awarded for a diagnosis alone — despite sympathetic leanings, despite the fact that the nomination committee knows that Hamburg was where Alfred Nobel founded his Dynamit AG, Alfred Nobel & Co — the oldest factory for explosives in the world.
No, a breakthrough is needed, an explosion — the prize rewards overcoming. The explosion clears away obstructions, so afterward you can pass by freely. However, I’m not sure whether certain postwar-German complexes would allow the doctors here to catch sight of such a solution. But I know, it’s all clear to me.
So — in his arm, in the crook of his elbow, there’s a shunt. A transparent tube leads to the IV drip from its other end. I pull it out — the needle is way too thick, I guess I should’ve expected that. It might hurt, but I don’t have a choice now, there’s no time. I press the tip into my skin, right above the vein. Quiet! Quietly and slowly. Pain, just as I expected. But whatever, it’s nothing to cry about. I’ve waited so long, I’ve retraced this path so many times, now we’re only separated by a few feet of medical grade rubber, the sterile tubing, like a weapon. It guarantees the attack — a pure-blooded memory, without the interference of impurities, without the presence of outsiders — just Comrade K-shev and I, just you and I.