The carriage landed in such an unfortunate position that the wires of the crinoline wounded her leg and obviously severed nerves, because the limb was left somewhat lifeless. As she was recounting these dramatic events, she raised her skirt and showed the other ladies her leg, immobilized by a leather sleeve with whalebone, held in place by the hoops that also held up her dress.
‘Here’s what crinoline’s good for,’ said the singer.
It was the singer’s gesture – whose voice and performance were much appreciated at the funeral mass – that gave Ludwika the idea. That gesture: lifting up the bell-shaped dress and revealing the mystery of the complicated dome that extended along whalebone and the wires of a parasol.
Several thousand people came to the funeral. They had to redirect cab traffic from the route of the procession. All of Paris came to a stop because of the funeral. When they began the ‘Introitus’, prepared with such diligence, and the voices in the choir struck the vault of the church, people began to cry. The ‘Requiem aeternam’ was very powerful, and everyone was very moved by it, but Ludwika could no longer feel any sadness, having cried it all out already – but she did feel anger. Because what kind of miserable, pathetic world was this, where you die so young – where you die at all? And why him? Why that way? She raised a handkerchief to her eyes, but not to wipe tears, just to be able to clamp down on something as hard as she could, and to cover her eyes, which contained not water, but fire.
began the bass, Luigi Lablache, so warmly, so plaintively, that her anger abated. Then the tenor came in, and the alto from behind the curtains:
Until finally she heard the pure voice of Graziella shooting up like fireworks, like the revelation of her crippled leg, of the naked truth. Graziella sang the best, that was clear, and her voice was only slightly muffled by the curtain; Ludwika imagined the little Italian girl straining, intent, head raised, the veins of her neck swollen – Ludwika had seen her in rehearsals – as she belted out the lyrics in that extraordinary voice of hers, crystal clear, diamond clear, in spite of the heavy curtain, in spite of her leg, to hell with the whole damn world:
A half hour or so before the border with the Grand Duchy of Poznan, the stagecoach stopped at an inn. There the travellers first freshened up and had a small meaclass="underline" a little cold baked meat, bread, and fruit, and then they went off and disappeared, much like the other passengers, into the thicket by the side of the road. For a little while they just enjoyed the buttercups in bloom; then Ludwika took from her basket an ample jar with a brown piece of muscle and tucked it away into a cleverly woven leather pouch. Aniela meticulously tied the ends of the leather straps to the scaffolding of the crinoline level with the pubic mound. When the dress fell into place, it would be impossible to tell that such a treasure lay concealed under the surface. Ludwika turned away several times, covered herself up with her dress, and headed back to the carriage.
‘I wouldn’t get far with this,’ she said to her companion. ‘It’s bashing against my legs.’
But she didn’t have to get far. She returned to her seat and sat straight up, perhaps somewhat stiffly, but she was a lady, the sister of Fryderyk Szopen. She was a Pole.
When the Prussian gendarmerie at the border ordered them to get out of the carriage, when they carefully inspected it to make sure the women weren’t trying to slip something into Congress Poland that might encourage some ridiculous independent inclinations of the Poles, they naturally found nothing.
On the other side of the border, in Kalisz, a carriage sent from the capital was awaiting them, along with several friends. Friends and witnesses to that sad ceremony. In their tailcoats and their top hats, they formed a kind of hedgerow, their faces pale and mournful, their heads turning devotedly towards each package as it was unloaded. But Ludwika, with the help of Aniela, who had been let in on the secret, managed to get away for a moment and extricate the jar from the warm insides of her dress. Aniela, rummaging around in lace, drew out the jar safely and handed it to Ludwika with the gesture of someone handing a mother her newborn child. And then Ludwika burst into tears.
Escorted by several carriages, Chopin’s heart did ultimately make it back to Warsaw.
DRY SPECIMENS
Each of my pilgrimages aims at some other pilgrim. This time in the details draped over oak shelves crowned with a beautifully calligraphed inscription:
Here the so-called dry specimens of internal organs are collected. They are done in such a way that a given body part or organ is cleansed and then stuffed with cotton wool and dried. After drying, the surface of the specimen is coated in a varnish, the same kind used to conserve the surfaces of paintings. Several layers are applied. After the cotton wool is removed, the inside of the specimen is also coated in the varnish.
Unfortunately the varnish is unable to keep the tissues from ageing, so that with time all dry specimens acquire a similar brownish shade.
Here, for example, we have a splendidly preserved human stomach, enlarged, balloon-like, the lining thin as though made of parchment; meanwhile the intestines, thick and thin – I wonder what goods of the world were consumed by this digestive system, how many animals passed through it, how many seeds slipped through, how many fruits rolled through.
Next to it, as a bonus, there’s also a turtle penis and the kidney of a dolphin.
NETWORK STATE
I am a citizen of a network state. Occupied with moving around in various directions, I’ve lost my orientation in the political matters of my country in recent times. Conversations have gone on, negotiations, conferences, sessions, summits. Great maps have roamed over tables where flags have marked conquered positions, vectors drawn to show the directions of the next conquests.
Just a few years ago on the screen of my phone at the inadvertent crossing of some now totally invisible or conventional border, the exotic names of foreign networks would register, ones no one remembers today. We didn’t notice the night-time coups, the contents of the capitulation treaties were never released to the public. Of the movements of imperial armies made up of polite, obliging officials the public was not informed.
My phone, equally polite, immediately informs me as soon as I get off a plane which province of the network state I now find myself in. It also gives necessary information, offers help should anything happen to me. It has emergency numbers, and from time to time for Valentine’s Day or Christmas it encourages me to take part in promotions and contests. This disarms me, and my anarchist moods melt in an instant.