3.
Ever since our marriage, she wrote, the greater part of our time has been spent in places I detested collecting curios, sacrificing myself— And for what? Filigreed amulets of open hands from Tunisia? Canopic jars for a dead man's intestines? Or those unspeakable miniature women? Their heads resting on ivory pillows— their hair arrayed in perfect curls, little smiles playing at the edges of their lips— how can they look so serene when anyone can reach right in and remove their intestines, reach right in and evict their tiny ivory hearts?
4. A pair of slippers owned by Florence Nightingale. Charles Darwin‘s walking stick, topped with a tiny skull carved in ivory, two emeralds for the eyes. A snuff container made from an entire ram‘s head hollowed out, so the snuff replaces the brain, resting on three silver wheels. A radiograph (Germany, 1908) of a child born bearing two spines and two heads. Ceramic women, no bigger than my palm, with removable fetuses. A tobacco resuscitator from 1774: one of a series of kits placed along the banks of the Thames at regular intervals, to revive drowning victims by injecting smoke into their rectums.
ROBERTS ∫ 101