Flights

Van Horssen continues his posthumous account of Verheyen’s life and work. After Verheyen’s death, van Horssen looks through Verheyen’s incoherent and often worrying letters, some of which address his own leg. Van Horssen decides against publishing these accounts in order to preserve his mentor’s reputation.

Verheyen discusses the phantom limb phenomenon in Letters to My Amputated Leg. He questions the connection between body and soul and how pain arises through this connection. Verheyen favors rationality over emotion, and reason inspires him to dissect his leg and intimately study its parts. Eventually, Verheyen arrives at the question “Is my pain God?” and wonders what he has been looking for throughout this dissection (211). Verheyen frames his work as “traveling, into [his] own body” without a clear understanding of what he wants to find (211).

The narrator switches to her personal fragments and questions her morality as a writer: “Am I doing the right thing by telling stories?” (212). She believes herself impressionable, “naive,” and adept at writing stories only because she is easily swept up in the potential to travel within them.

The narrator begins a new story about Tsar Peter I of Russia and his trip to Europe in 1697. Peter I is fascinated by Ruysch’s collection of preserved specimens. Ruysch decides to sell his collection to Peter I. Rusych’s daughter, Charlotta, grieves the loss of the collection, as she devotedly helped her father in his work. Ruysch plans to begin his collection anew with Charlotta’s help.

Unable to sleep, Charlotta walks to the port and looks at the ship bound for Russia with her father’s collection on board. She notices a sailor with numerous tattoos, including that of a whale on his shoulder and arm. Charlotta is captivated by this sailor; she attempts to approach him but stops when a feeling of flooding water overcomes her.

The ship leaves the next morning. It stalls near Sweden during a period of hot, windless days. The crew becomes restless and drunk. The captain attempts to keep control over his crew, but they begin drinking the preserving liquid of Rusych’s collection and carousing. When the captain throws the damaged specimens into the sea, the wind suddenly picks up again, and the ship returns to Russia with a partial collection. The captain is sent into exile for his failure.

From the Agile Rabbit Book of Historical and Curious Maps, Tokarczuk includes a map of Nova Zembla, Russia, from 1855 (224). Nova Zembla is an uninhabited island in the far north of Russia.

The narrator begins a fictional tale of Annushka, a wife and mother living in an unnamed Russian city. She wakes one morning to her son Petya’s crying. He has a debilitating illness characterized by pain and immobility. Annushka gives him painkillers. Her husband is unable to help; he was enlisted for two years, returning home with PTSD-related symptoms and depression.

On this day, Annushka’s mother-in-law takes care of both Petya and her son while Annushka runs errands. Afterwards, Annushka returns to the metro, where the number of people overwhelms her. She is carried by the crowd onto a train and returns to her neighborhood. However, upon seeing her apartment building, Annushka returns to the metro, abandoning her family.

Near the Kievsky Station, Annushka notices a woman shrouded in several layers of cloth and shouting incomprehensible words. Annushka approaches her to ask what she’s saying. The woman, Galina, demands food, and Annushka buys them sandwiches from a nearby cart. Annushka confides that she cannot bring herself to return home. Galina advises her to simply forget her address.

Annushka rides the metro trains without direction or pause until the next evening, when she finds Galina and asks where she sleeps. Galina takes her through an underground passage to a boiler room, where the two sleep on the floor. Annushka wakes early and returns to the metro, where to her relief she discovers the morning crowd of commuters: “[H]ow incredibly good—to become part of a crowd that gradually warms up” (250). That evening, she cannot find Galina or the boiler room, so she stays up all night in the station before resuming riding the trains for the next several days.

She runs out of money but then finds Galina, who buys her food from a kiosk. They watch a group of young men who remind Annushka of Petya and the life he would enjoy if not for his illness. Two young women on horseback approach the men. When one horse begins growing antsy, the woman riding it uses her whip. Annushka runs at the woman and punches at her to protect the horse. Galina joins her in pulling the young woman off the horse.

The police notice the scene and arrest Galina and Annushka. The women are released several hours apart, so Annushka cannot find Galina again. Annushka returns to her apartment building and reenters her home.

From the Agile Rabbit Book of Historical and Curious Maps, Tokarczuk includes an undated illustration entitled “Russian map” that features writing and illustrations of heralds and religious iconography (224-25).