“Everything.”
“Now you know why you are my friend. When I saw you reading on a bench-and reading an English translation of a book—I knew that we would get along well. This is a special place. When I run away, I often come here. I spend hours not just learning about natural science but becoming friends with it if that makes sense.” She took his hand and led him in. “Don’t be alarmed,” she said, “Things that are beautiful are often ugly, and what is ugly is often beautiful. I like coming to someplace where everything is true. I hate lies, don’t you? Even ugly truths are better than that?”
He thought about what the mosquito had said. “I’ve been told that truth is sometimes a little ugly.”
“I think it’s always ugly and beautiful-not just a little bit.” They climbed up three flights of stairs. The air in the building smelled like a biology laboratory during the dissection of frogs. They entered: internal organs in glass boxes of formalin; brains; an ear with a joining canal; and then there was an entire baby standing there also in formalin and also inside its large glass aquarium. The child was hauntingly ceramic in a grayish orange or ochre complexion and his body was so tightly rigid. It had calcificans congenita and, she said, it must have been born as a non-movable rock. Then there was a child that had a gigantic, alien head. It had suffered from internal hydrocephalus . It was all there: babies born with amencephaly (some with partial heads and all with no brains); fetuses; four month old fetuses with placentas and umbilical cords (one with hands together as if it were praying or gesturing the “wei”); fetuses that were zygotic twin quadruplets; babies born as Siamese and conjoined twins such as pycopasus twins that were attached from their buttocks and Siamese epionathus parasiticus that each had a brother’s foot inimitably in a mouth; full term fetuses with their chests dissected so that their internal organs were exhibited from the slit; gigantic skeletons; dwarf skeletons; twisted adult skeletons; regular skeletons upright in glass cupboards or in standing coffins each with his photograph above his skeleton—a photograph of what was; fetuses of all sizes and ages; and a naked man and woman in whole with the front skin, muscle and skeleton removed to give full view of their internal organs as one saw their private exterior organs. There they were more than naked and fully intact as if basking in a tanning booth in order to get a suntan-only they were ochre and stiff as ceramic vases and floating in formalin or formaldeyhyde.
He told himself that that from which one should hide he should appreciate since it delivered him from the way he wanted the world to be to what it really was. He repeated this to himself many times to quell the weltering tremble of nausea and to hide his horrified child in the presence of Noppawan. He told himself that seeing this almost delivered him to a new level of maturity. If one could confront this without losing his nerve, he reasoned, he could break from the ghosts of mother and father, the innate need for family, and the wish to be a less damaged “good for nothing.” He could sense the nuance of manhood begin to brew up through him like a hot spring. Passing through another aisle of stocked fetuses, he wondered about his conception. Had it been from loving caresses or a desperate release of stress and frustration on one who had capitulated? Yes, the exhibition was beginning to deliver him into a new awareness and the two of them could sense that it affected the other in the same way and also thrust that individual into a soft sensitive regret for those who were never given a chance to sense themselves against the tactile sensations of the sun, the warmth, the feel of grass under bare feet, the wind, the caresses, the rain, and the respite from inordinate heat and sun. Feeling virile and assured of this new manhood within him, he grabbed her hand swaying it in the pretense of joy as they interweaved slowly around the myriad cabinets. He stared at it all as fully as he could. It was there shelf after shelf with some of it towering so high that he couldn’t see it very well at all.
“I’m so happy that you aren’t afraid. When you come enough it almost seems like there is a spirit hovering above it all and that they appreciate someone being there for them. I know that is silly. I’m not even religious. Maybe it is just that it is very quiet. I often bring my books to the table near the skeletons. I just do some reading. The doctors, the nurses, and the museum curator don’t seem to mind. They just say, “Hi, Piggy.” And again, it is a good place to run away from it all. Maybe it is a bit of a strange place to hide out for most people but most people are scared of their own shadows. If nothing else this museum is a good place to know what death is-or at least come as close as one can. Most people haven’t a clue what really happens to one’s body after death. Decaying corpses would of course be better than this but they are vile to one’s nose with everything going back to the elements and all.” They descended the stairs. She sensed that his hand was very sweaty. “You are glad that I brought you, aren’t you?”
“Sure” he said although he wasn’t fully. He knew that seeing this had made a dark impression on him that he would never be able to shirk. He suspected aptly that this friend of his had intentionally stabbed the little innocence that was in him to match that of her own. Enlightenment had punctured his innocence. Outside, he stuffed his hands in his pockets. He felt a cold numbness in his limbs, a slight coldness toward her, and ennui from memories of his peculiar history that would impair his future relationships with girls. They sat on the stoop.
“I hope you don’t want to run away from me.”
“I’m not running. I’m sitting here with you, aren’t I?”
“Okay, I guess so.”