Ever since that night, B\u00e2de had a sharp, stabbing pain in her lower left abdominal part. Usually, she had a resilient body, but in this moment, the discomfort she felt was reaching an alarming level. She mentioned it to her colleague Laura. B\u00e2de listened her esoteric explanations paraphrased from various books and articles Laura read or interviews she heard on the radio. She was a content aggregator, and B\u00e2de was scrolling languidly down her feed, sitting in the armchair in front of her. On the spur of the moment, Laura said, \u201cPain remains in the body,\u201d necking her tea like a massive, lukewarm shot and paraphrasing a pop-science book she\u2019d heard discussed on a podcast, \u201cand it gets passed on to someone else, to your child or to your community. It\u2019s transgenerational.\u201d B\u00e2de thought about the types of pain that might linger in her body and about the community Laura was referring to. She could place the pain in her body, but couldn\u2019t spot a sense of community or any sense of belonging. The pain came to her suddenly, building a crescendo in her consciousness, demanding sharp cut words to describe it: razor, needle, grater, sword and alike.<\/p>\n
The Hausarzt dismissed metaphors and asked her how she really<\/em> felt. It was hard to describe without a visual reference. He continued, referring to a plastic model of the female reproductive system he had under his desk, explaining to B\u00e2de some things she wouldn\u2019t otherwise know. He saved her a couple of hours in her lifetime by explaining things she would otherwise dig out after two or three hours of internet research. He then referred her to a gynaecologist who specialised, he assured her, in issues like this.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The gynaecologist\u2019s name was Silke. B\u00e2de saw her for the first time and the last time that day. In a semi-didactic, semi-friendly tone, she gave her the potted history of her female reproductive system, and B\u00e2de listened attentively. Soon enough, it became evident that Silke had been following the news in B\u00e2de\u2019s country and the upcoming presidential election in June 2021, and drew a link immediately:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou grew up in a place where the sexuality of women was punished,\u201d Silke said, leaning forward on her elbows. There was the barest shimmer of excitement in her voice. \u201cWhat do you expect? How can girls grow up with a normal sense of themselves as sexual beings in a place where the punishment for an unplanned pregnancy could be death?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n B\u00e2de nodded affirmatively, though she disagreed. She was aware of the image Silke had about her country, but she wasn\u2019t comfortable enough to have a superfluous chatter about politics when her legs spread wide in front of a stranger called Silke.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n B\u00e2de and her genitals were put into a jar and labelled with a sloppy, irrelevant historical analysis. Perhaps it was relevant. Would it be diagnosed as \u201chistory\u201d on the paper? The ultrasonic testing showed nothing but a dictator and the echoes of an oppressive political regime. A little fascist leader in the shape of a low pixel, black and white womb. She would not be Silke\u2019s case study. B\u00e2de got up and Entschuldigened her way out of the room.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On the way to the U-Bahn, she decided to take a walk. The air was thinly strewn with drizzle and the grass was richly green and smelled like wet autumnal evening already. She entered the Tempelhofer Feld park from Columbiadamm, leaping over the locked gate; listening to her own footsteps rustling through the fallen crispy leaves and the tiny whispers of trees that move of their own accord after the frenzied chorus of the wind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The landscape itself was birthed long before. It was an immense, flat recreation area where the wind blows from every direction. From behind, a blare of sunlight leaps from the clouds, drawing her shadows on the wet, murky grass: an ink-black, low pixel, inarticulate female body. For an hour she had strode and stumbled, not by the most direct route, since she wasn\u2019t used to making the journey on foot, northwards from Tempelhofer Feld, then found her way to the dog park to her left. She saw a bench and walked towards it. The other person sitting on the right of the side of the bench stiffened when B\u00e2de sat on the other side. The other person left. B\u00e2de, training herself not to take things personally all the time, sitting there alone, watching the dogs playing behind the fences.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n She thought about the first time she\u2019d experienced the pain, the disturbance, the demanding pain of it, the feeling that it wouldn\u2019t stay localised in one place\u2013that it could spread out, malignant, a threat to her whole being. Perhaps it was nothing to dramatize, she thought, perhaps just a contingent, banal infection, nothing to throw her money around obscure, esoteric K\u00f6rpertherapies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ever since that night, was this the only thing left to her from Taro? Some micromolecules itching her uterus beyond her reach. In an attempt to comprehend an ill fortune, in a manner of searching for an omen as a prelude, she took out the organ donation card she had accidentally taken from Taro\u2019s place. As if it\u2019s a tarot card she pulled to impose a meaning on the chaotic, she scrutinized it:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Organspende, schenkt Leben. 26.03.2018 F<\/strong>\u00fc<\/strong>r den Fall, dass nach meinem<\/strong>\u00a0 <\/strong>Tod eine Spende von Organen\/Geweben zur Transplantation in Frage kommt, erkl<\/strong>\u00e4<\/strong>re ich hiermit.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n JA, ich gestatte, dass nach der <\/strong>\u00e4<\/strong>rztlichen Feststellung meines Todes meinem K<\/strong>\u00f6<\/strong>rper Organe und Gewebe entnommen werden.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Organ donation gives life. 26.03.2018 In the event that donation of organs\/tissues for transplantation is considered after my death, I hereby declare.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n YES, I give my permission for organs and tissues to be removed from my body after the medical determination of my death.<\/p>\n Taro as a life-giver. Taro as a dissected cadaver. Taro\u2019s future corpse as a generous and charitable gesture. It must have been a relief to imagine that his body would someday become one of the hundred cadavers wheeled into the rooms of medical schools. It must have been a relief that his organs and his pains won\u2019t be that of transgenerational.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n A scalpel will slice his blood vessels away. His heart would be grey, no more pulsating, from primary beat to ash grey, scooped up, passed from medical hands to medical hands. They would cushion it and it would shine, as morning light illuminated a line of staples that protruded from the muscle. A heart stitched and stapled, a heart twice removed and held in the hands of others. A process like a delicate ritual. With the ordinary minuscule things, she thought about its many components: an atom of lead scraped from an ancient pencil, the fleck of some long-ago cigarette on his lungs, speckles of dandruff, old, old ash, the smell of his first lover, a fragment of grit picked from a fingernail and the imperceptibly tiny remnants of the cities he visited. B\u00e2de ran her fingers along with the plastic organ donation card to capture Taro\u2019s vague existence. Her imagination couldn\u2019t go further beyond some school-board poster images. She came as close as language permit.<\/p>\n Sitting on that bench, almost daydreaming, sleep was about to weave its fabric into B\u00e2de\u2019s eyes. She felt light after thinking of him dead, looking at his organ donation card. It made him look like a mortal human being, someone like everyone else. Someone with a body and a soul; born into this world, a son to a mother, a warm baby breath, thrown into-this-world, and would depart one day. That was it. She was just a passer-by, a splinter, a flimsy distillation of desire in one\u2019s life. The organ donation card was indeed a tarot card.<\/p>\n He simply fell into her life step by step, with his wide smile, his worn jeans and his witty eyes. One day, his dead grey heart will empty itself of every desire. She will hear his name fly from a crow\u2019s mouth. B\u00e2de was neither happy to be rid of Taro, probably forever, nor unhappy to have lost him, which, considering the apparent intensity of B\u00e2de\u2019s feelings at the beginning, was perhaps surprising. Her will was paralyzed. She was very, very cold and mute, but for many hours made no movement and watched the dogs playing behind the fences. Not until the evening did she gather herself together. Not until a big dog made a scene attacking a small dog in the park.<\/p>\n As she walked back home, the pain began to ease, dismissing sharp cut metaphors, fading into a lukewarm Frauentee shot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ever since that night, B\u00e2de had a sharp, stabbing pain in her lower left abdominal part. Usually, she had a resilient body, but in this moment, the discomfort she felt was reaching an alarming level. She mentioned it to her colleague Laura. B\u00e2de listened her esoteric explanations paraphrased from various books and articles Laura read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":17805,"template":"","categories":[49,10],"class_list":["post-17804","stsp_text","type-stsp_text","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-21","category-prosa"],"yoast_head":"\n