Bailey - The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

ELISABETH TOVA BAILEY

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

To biophilia

A small pet is often an excellent companion.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, Notes on Nursing, 1912

The natural world is the refuge of the spirit...
richer even than human imagination.

EDWARD O. WILSON, Biophilia, 1984

Viruses are embedded into the
very fabric of all life.

LUIS P. VILLARREAL,
The Living and Dead Chemical
Called a Virus, 2005

FROM MY HOTEL WINDOW I look over the deep glacial lake to the foothills and the Alps beyond. Twilight vanishes the hills into the mountains; then all is lost to the dark.

After breakfast, I wander the cobbled village streets. The frost is out of the ground, and huge bushes of rosemary bask fragrantly in the sun. I take a trail that meanders up the steep, wild hills past flocks of sheep. High on an outcrop, I lunch on bread and cheese. Late in the afternoon along the shore, I find ancient pieces of pottery, their edges smoothed by waves and time. I hear that a virulent flu is sweeping this small town.

A few days pass and then comes a delirious night. My dreams are disturbed by the comings and goings of ferries. Passengers call into the dark, startling me awake. Each time I fall back into sleep, the lakes watery sound pulls at me. Something is wrong with my body. Nothing feels right.

In the morning I am weak and cant think. Some of my muscles dont work. Time becomes strange. I get lost; the streets go in too many directions. The days drift past in confusion. I pack my suitcase, but for some reason its impossible to lift. It seems to be stuck to the floor. Somehow I get to the airport. Seated next to me on the transatlantic flight is a sick surgeon; he sneezes and coughs continually. My rare, much-needed vacation has not gone as planned. Ill be okay; I just want to get home.

After a flight connection in Boston, I land at my small New England airport near midnight. In the parking lot, as I bend over to dig my car out of the snow, the shovel turns into a crutch that I use to push myself upright. I dont know how I get home. Arising the next morning, I immediately faint to the floor. Ten days of fever with a pounding headache. Emergency room visits. Lab tests. I am sicker than I have ever been. Childhood pneumonia, college mononucleosisthose were nothing compared to this.

A few weeks later, resting on the couch, I spiral into a deep darkness, falling farther and farther away until I am impossibly distant. I cannot come back up; I cannot reach my body. Distant sound of an ambulance siren. Distant sound of doctors talking. My eyelids heavy as boulders. I try to open them to a slit, just for a few seconds, but they close against my will. All I can do is breathe.

The doctors will know how to fix me. They will stop this. I keep breathing. What if my breath stops? I need to sleep, but I am afraid to sleep. I try to watch over myself; if I go to sleep, I might never wake up again.

Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Dont search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.

RAINER MARIA RILKE, 1903,
from Letters to a Young Poet, 1927

at my feet
when did you get here
snail?

KOBAYASHI ISSA (17631828)

IN EARLY SPRING, a friend went for a walk in the woods and, glancing down at the path, saw a snail. Picking it up, she held it gingerly in the palm of her hand and carried it back toward the studio where I was convalescing. She noticed some field violets on the edge of the lawn. Finding a trowel, she dug a few up, then planted them in a terra-cotta pot and placed the snail beneath their leaves. She brought the pot into the studio and put it by my bedside.

I found a snail in the woods. I brought it back and its right here beneath the violets.

You did? Why did you bring it in?

I dont know. I thought you might enjoy it.

Is it alive?

She picked up the brown acorn-sized shell and looked at it.

I think it is.

Why, I wondered, would I enjoy a snail? What on earth would I do with it? I couldnt get out of bed to return it to the woods. It was not of much interest, and if it was alive, the responsibilityespecially for a snail, something so uncalled forwas overwhelming.

My friend hugged me, said good-bye, and drove off.

AT AGE THIRTY-FOUR, on a brief trip to Europe, I was felled by a mysterious viral or bacterial pathogen, resulting in severe neurological symptoms. I had thought I was indestructible. But I wasnt. If anything did go wrong, I figured modern medicine would fix me. But it didnt. Medical specialists at several major clinics couldnt diagnose the infectious culprit. I was in and out of the hospital for months, and the complications were life threatening. An experimental drug that became available stabilized my condition, though it would be several grueling years to a partial recovery and a return to work. My doctors said the illness was behind me, and I wanted to believe them. I was ecstatic to have most of my life back.

But out of the blue came a series of insidious relapses, and once again, I was bedridden. Further, more sophisticated testing showed that the mitochondria in my cells no longer functioned correctly and there was damage to my autonomic nervous system; all functions not consciously directed, including heart rate, blood pressure, and digestion, had gone haywire. The drug that had previously helped now caused dangerous side effects; it would soon be removed from the market.

WHEN THE BODY is rendered useless, the mind still runs like a bloodhound along well-worn trails of neurons, tracking the echoing questions: the confused family of whys, whats, and whens and their impossibly distant kin how. The search is exhaustive; the answers, elusive. Sometimes my mind went blank and listless; at other times it was flooded with storms of thought, unspeakable sadness, and intolerable loss.

Given the ease with which health infuses life with meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly illness steals away those certainties. It was all I could do to get through each moment, and each moment felt like an endless hour, yet days slipped silently past. Time unused and only endured still vanishes, as if time itself is starving, and each day is swallowed whole, leaving no crumbs, no memory, no trace at all.

I HAD BEEN MOVED to a studio apartment where I could receive the care I needed. My own farmhouse, some fifty miles away, was closed up. I did not know if or when Id ever make it home again. For now, my only way back was to close my eyes and remember. I could see the early spring there, the purple field violetslike those at my bedsiderunning rampant through the yard. And the fragrant small pink violets that I had planted in the little woodland garden to the north of my housethey, too, would be in bloom. Though not usually hardy this far north, somehow they survived. In my mind I could smell their sweetness.