Stella Descending by Linn Ullmann

this body, this load of old rocks, might let me down. Because it is constantly threatening to humiliate me, belittle me, make me look foolish.
    There is fear. I am still afraid.
    The archaeologist said nothing about fear. Those stones were not his body. He said the stones were his life, but they were not his body. There is a difference. Before I left him in his workshop, he gave me a stone and asked me to take good care of it because it was very old, probably at least 2,300 years old. And I took this 2,300-year-old stone home and set it on my bedside table, in an ashtray, under the lamp. I would gaze at it respectfully every night before getting into bed. I would think warmly of the archaeologist in his workshop. I would try to imagine where that stone had been, all the centuries to which it could bear witness, were it a living being and not a stone; but a stone it was, and a stone it remained, and as such it could not bear witness to anything at all.
    Then it happened. One evening about three weeks after my return from Italy, the stone was gone. The stone was gone, the ashtray washed and put back in the kitchen closet. Old hag! I thought. Obviously Money had thrown out what she took to be a piece of junk, a worthless hunk of rock.
    She always has to ruin things for me.
    I realized that there was no point in bringing the matter up with her; she would just stare blankly at me, take offense. I mean, what does she know of 2,300-year-old stones or grand designs? For my own part, I felt bad about the archaeologist. The thought of him kept me awake several nights running. Not that there’s anything unusual about that, but this time all I could think about was the lost stone, the archaeologist’s hands, his fingers, the look in his eyes, ancient treasures of great moment. It seemed to me that I had been careless enough to lose a tiny fragment of life itself—not my own life, you understand, but the archaeologist’s. He must have felt it, the loss of the stone—the stone he had given me, entrusted to me—he must have felt the loss like a physical pain.
    In the end, I was so consumed with guilt that I looked up the archaeologist’s telephone number in Italy and called him. In my decent English I explained to the somewhat bewildered gentleman who answered the phone that I had done my best to look after the 2,300-year-old stone, but that an old hag had thrown it away, probably down the garbage chute outside my apartment.
    There was a long silence on the other end of the line. And then the man said, “Ahhh!”
    “Yes?” I said, anxiously.
    “It is all right!” he said. “Not to worry!”
    “Not to worry?” I whispered.
    “No,” he replied, “not to worry!”
    “No?”
    “No!”
    Then he said “Ciao!” and hung up.
    I’ve been cut open, had my insides reorganized, and been sewn up again any number of times. And it has hurt. Even my heart has been slit open and handled. There is nothing more to be got from my body. It cannot be cut open and sewn up again. I have nothing more to give. Before, my fear was abstract, hypothetical, diffuse. I was subject to frequent bouts of melancholy, which suited me fine. With Gerd I could always blame things on my melancholy, thus securing dispensation to do as I pleased: an agreeable arrangement. Now my fear is concrete and prosaic. Take this business of the bath, for example. I have managed to ease my old carcass into the bath without falling over, but I still have to get out again, which means I cannot enjoy the hot water for wondering how that is to be done. I am afraid I will slip on the bathroom floor and crack my head against the edge of the tub. I am afraid I will pass out here, overcome by the heat; afraid of being found by Money, unconscious, naked, helpless; afraid of not being found at all, of turning into a stinking corpse for the neighbors to discuss in horrified whispers; afraid of ending up as an item in the newspaper: “Naked old man slips on bathroom floor, lies dead