The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

89 Rib Report 2009

Oh, now I’m suddenly worried that I could die before the agreed time. I coughed up blood this morning and I couldn’t hide the rattle from Lóa when she arrived at 9:40 on the dot with her dimples so wonderfully full of life. I have an appointment with the body burners on 14 December and I’m determined not to miss it. I’ll ask the girl to put me into a nice dress on the thirteenth, maybe I’ll send her to the shops and ask her to buy me a mortuary dress.

Oh, I can barely move, it gives me a stitch in the breast cavity on my left. Unless it’s a rib. I didn’t break one in my coughing fit this morning, did I? I try to raise myself, as my bladder demands, but there’s just so much pain. The god of old age bends my ribs like a sailor bends a teaspoon. I have two bad choices. Either I allow my sac to leak into the bed and wet my bedsores, or I stagger to the toilet and break another rib. That’s decrepitude for you. It makes you choose between two bad options, because it offers you no solutions except for that final punctuation that puts an end to our existence.

I see here that good old Aussie Aldon has arrived in London and has no doubt booked a double room for himself and Bod. As for me, I wouldn’t mind getting rid of my own bod at the geriatric ward so that I could carry on dabbling here in the garage, without any urine or bedsores. When the body reminds me of its presence, with all its torture and humiliations, I always think of my father, who was forced to march across Europe several times during the war, spending two winters in the trenches and his summer holidays in prison camps.

Where was he in June 1944? When his daughter grappled with the great trio on the Polish plains: first rape, first love, and her first period, and his abandoned wife contended with her German suitors, while his father and mother were put in command of a new country, sailing it into the sunshine of the Great North.