echoes of my parents’
preservations–familiar fond splotches across the kitchen tiles–and
read their recipes in the residue.
From these remnants, what
they taught me of their craft, and the knowledge I brought back from my
travels, I now make my modest living. These are not quite the preservations of
my youth, for there is even less magic in the world now. No, I must use science
and magic in equal quantities in my tinctures and potions, and each comes with
a short tale or saying. I conjure these up from my own experience or things my
parents told me. With them, I try to conjure up what is so easily lost: the
innocence and passion of first love, the energy and optimism of the young, the
strange sense of mystery that fills midnight walks along the beach. But I
preserve more prosaic things as well–like the value of hard work done
well, or the warmth of good friends. The memories that sustain these
concoctions spring out of me and through my words and mixtures into my clients.
I find this winnowing, this release, a curse at times, but mostly it takes away
what I do not want or can no longer use.
Mine is a clandestine
business, spread by word-of-mouth. It depends as much on my clients’ belief in
me as my craft. Bankers and politicians, merchants and landlords hear tales of
this strange man living by himself in a preservationists’ bungalow, and how he
can bring them surcease from loneliness or despair or the injustice of the
world.
Sometimes I wonder if one
day Lucius will become one of my clients and we will talk about what happened.
He still lives in this city, as a member of the city council, having dropped
out of medical school, I’m told, not long after he performed the surgery on me.
I’ve even seen him speak, although I could never bring myself to walk up to
him. It would be too much like talking to a ghost.
Still, necessity might
drive me to him as it did in the past. I have to fill in with other work to
survive. I dispense medical advice to the fisherfolk, many driven out of work
by the big ships, or to the ragged urchins begging by the dock. I do not
charge, but sometimes they will leave a loaf of bread or fish or eggs on my
doorstep, or just stop to talk. My life is simple now.
Over time, I think I have
forgiven myself. My thoughts just as often turn to the future as the past. I
ask myself questions like When I die, what will she do? Will the arm
detach itself, worrying at the scar line with sharpened fingernails, leaving
only the memory of my flesh as the fingers pull it like an awkward crab away
from my death bed? Is there an emerald core that will be revealed by that
severance, a glow that leaves her in the world long after my passing? Will this
be loss or completion?
For her arm has never aged.
It is as perfect and smooth and strong as when it came to me. It could still
perform surgery if the rest of me had not betrayed it and become so old and
weak.
Sometimes I want to ask my
mirror, the other old man, what lies beyond, and if it is so very bad to be
dead. Would I finally know her then? Is it too much of a sentimental,
half-senile fantasy, to think that I might see her, talk to her? And: have I
done enough since that ecstatic, drunken night, running with my best friend up
to the cadaver room, to have deserved that mercy?
One thing I have learned in
my travels, one thing I know is true. The world is a mysterious place and no
one knows the full truth of it even if they spend their whole life searching.
For example, I am writing this account in the sand, each day’s work washed away
in time for the next, lost unless my counterpart has been reading it.
I am using my beloved’s
hand, her arm as attached to me as if we were one being. I know every freckle.
I know how the bone aches in the cold and damp. I can feel the muscles tensing
when I clench the purple stick and see the veins bunched at the wrist like a
blue delta. A pale red birthmark on the heel of her palm looks like the perfect
snail
preservations–familiar fond splotches across the kitchen tiles–and
read their recipes in the residue.
From these remnants, what
they taught me of their craft, and the knowledge I brought back from my
travels, I now make my modest living. These are not quite the preservations of
my youth, for there is even less magic in the world now. No, I must use science
and magic in equal quantities in my tinctures and potions, and each comes with
a short tale or saying. I conjure these up from my own experience or things my
parents told me. With them, I try to conjure up what is so easily lost: the
innocence and passion of first love, the energy and optimism of the young, the
strange sense of mystery that fills midnight walks along the beach. But I
preserve more prosaic things as well–like the value of hard work done
well, or the warmth of good friends. The memories that sustain these
concoctions spring out of me and through my words and mixtures into my clients.
I find this winnowing, this release, a curse at times, but mostly it takes away
what I do not want or can no longer use.
Mine is a clandestine
business, spread by word-of-mouth. It depends as much on my clients’ belief in
me as my craft. Bankers and politicians, merchants and landlords hear tales of
this strange man living by himself in a preservationists’ bungalow, and how he
can bring them surcease from loneliness or despair or the injustice of the
world.
Sometimes I wonder if one
day Lucius will become one of my clients and we will talk about what happened.
He still lives in this city, as a member of the city council, having dropped
out of medical school, I’m told, not long after he performed the surgery on me.
I’ve even seen him speak, although I could never bring myself to walk up to
him. It would be too much like talking to a ghost.
Still, necessity might
drive me to him as it did in the past. I have to fill in with other work to
survive. I dispense medical advice to the fisherfolk, many driven out of work
by the big ships, or to the ragged urchins begging by the dock. I do not
charge, but sometimes they will leave a loaf of bread or fish or eggs on my
doorstep, or just stop to talk. My life is simple now.
Over time, I think I have
forgiven myself. My thoughts just as often turn to the future as the past. I
ask myself questions like When I die, what will she do? Will the arm
detach itself, worrying at the scar line with sharpened fingernails, leaving
only the memory of my flesh as the fingers pull it like an awkward crab away
from my death bed? Is there an emerald core that will be revealed by that
severance, a glow that leaves her in the world long after my passing? Will this
be loss or completion?
For her arm has never aged.
It is as perfect and smooth and strong as when it came to me. It could still
perform surgery if the rest of me had not betrayed it and become so old and
weak.
Sometimes I want to ask my
mirror, the other old man, what lies beyond, and if it is so very bad to be
dead. Would I finally know her then? Is it too much of a sentimental,
half-senile fantasy, to think that I might see her, talk to her? And: have I
done enough since that ecstatic, drunken night, running with my best friend up
to the cadaver room, to have deserved that mercy?
One thing I have learned in
my travels, one thing I know is true. The world is a mysterious place and no
one knows the full truth of it even if they spend their whole life searching.
For example, I am writing this account in the sand, each day’s work washed away
in time for the next, lost unless my counterpart has been reading it.
I am using my beloved’s
hand, her arm as attached to me as if we were one being. I know every freckle.
I know how the bone aches in the cold and damp. I can feel the muscles tensing
when I clench the purple stick and see the veins bunched at the wrist like a
blue delta. A pale red birthmark on the heel of her palm looks like the perfect
snail
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