The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night
Jen Campbell
‘It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.’
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Animals
These days, you can find anything you need at the click of a button.
That’s why I bought her heart online.
It was delivered this morning along with my groceries, tucked inside a cardboard box, red oozing out the sides. They’d tied a half-hearted bow around the edges, a tag with promises of customer satisfaction and a thirty-day warranty.
‘Our hearts are played classical music from the moment they begin to grow.
Bred to love. Built to last.’
It is crimson.
I lift it out and the heart spreads itself across my palm like an octopus. I tickle one of its valves and it flops down onto the kitchen counter, panicking. I pick it up again. I’ve heard other men talk of fishing and hauling. Of holding gasping flounder in their fists that they then throw on an open fire.
Perhaps this is it.
The heart flutters.
There isn’t anything quite like holding love in your bare hands.
I read the blood-soaked leaflet stuck to the bottom of the box.
This heart is from a swan.
Good. They say birds are easy to tame.
‘There, there, little one,’ I say. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
I stroke it gently with one finger and whistle birdsong.
It visibly calms.
First things first. You need to treat hearts the same way you treat pets, that’s something my mother understood just fine. You shower hearts profusely and then stop. The stopping is important. You have to wait for the heart to become desperate; wait for it to think you’ve forgotten all about it. Then – and only then – do you smother it again with love and affection.
It’s the only way.
It’s how hearts grow.
It’s how they learn to never leave your side.
Hearts also need good nutrition and plenty of exercise. If you purchase one, make sure you keep it hydrated. If you’re new to this, you need to buy yourself a heart case until you decide whether or not this is The One. Hearts come in all different shapes and sizes, of course, but they don’t need bespoke sleeping quarters. Just somewhere warm and damp, close to human skin. My mother said, correctly, that love can fill any room.
I’d recommend keeping your heart case strapped to your chest under your clothes to stop dogs chasing you down the street. Make sure you buy your heart from a reputable source, too. I once bought a faulty one that took on a will of its own and tried to bury its way under my skin. I’d never felt pain like it. That was the last time I took a seller recommendation from my next-door neighbour. Mind you, he’s been using glass hearts for the best part of a year, now, and neither he nor his partner look happy about it. More fool them.
I slide the swan heart into my heart case and hide it under my jumper, feeling the pulse of both my heart and the swan heart, slightly out of sync. Love needs to be trained in warmth and rhythm and reliability. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
I rinse out the box the heart came in. Cora always likes to say I use too much washing-up liquid but there’s no crime in wanting things clean. I slot the box into the recycling. Recycling is important. You shouldn’t litter the world.
That’s why I’ve kept her.
Most of her, anyway.
I check on Cora, and go into my study to Google ‘swan’.
The Celtic goddess of sleep transforms into a swan every other year.
There are seven types of swan, including mute swans and tundra swans.
Swans aggressively protect their nests.
Swans mate for life.
Swan meat was a delicacy during the reign of Elizabeth I, reserved for the wealthy and noble.
The word ‘swan’ comes from the Indo-European root ‘swen’, which means to sound, to sing.
I do like it when Cora sings.
I put on my shoes to head to the park. On the way out, I spy Thomas watering his garden. He’s humming a tune I’m not familiar with and stands in a sea of blue forget-me-nots. He raises his hand in an effort at hello, but he’s looking elsewhere. I raise a hand back, just in case he sees, and stride away.
Many hundreds of years ago, a poet was walking along the Boyne river in Ireland, and saw a flock of swans flying high above him. He picked up a stone and threw it in their direction and one of the swans tumbled out of the sky. The poet ran to catch it and saw that it was no longer a swan but a woman. Her arm was broken and she looked up at him, wildly, and said: ‘Thank you. Demons came to my deathbed and turned me into a bird. I have been trapped ever since and flying for so long, I didn’t know if it would ever end.’ The poet held her close, then took her home, and her heart was thumping, thumping, thumping.
The number 81 bus is a hive of misery.
The woman sitting next to me is attached to a portable oxygen machine. She tries to hide it under a blanket, but it’s not something you can easily conceal. She’s been sitting down for at least four stops, but I can still hear her breath rattling. She constantly checks her pulse. Every so often she heaves as though her organs are trying to propel themselves out into the world. I grimace. We all do. Stupid woman. I can almost smell the meat rotting away inside her. We turn our heads to the window in unison and pretend she doesn’t exist.
I do a gentle lap around the pond when I arrive at the park. My resting heart rate is approximately fifty beats per minute. This is impressive, of course, but I try not to tell too many people (though inevitably it slips into conversations). I don’t want to make others feel bad about themselves.
I try to focus on my breathing as I jog. I think of two swans and their necks meeting to form the shape of a heart. I think of Swan Lake and mistaken identities. I think of Zeus, tumbling down to earth to cause chaos as a god hidden in a swan’s body, and I yell as a flyaway football narrowly misses the side of my chest. I cross my arms, and continue running, blood pounding in my ears and the swan heart beating so furiously it sounds like it’s trying to take off.
At the far end of the park, there is a bandstand. People are clustered around a brass quartet, who are blue in the face, and a man in a ridiculous heart costume. He dances on the spot, both to keep warm and to draw attention to the moneybox he is shaking in people’s faces: ‘All proceeds go to the British Love Foundation! Please give generously!’
Give me strength. I dodge the crowd and, finally, find what I’ve been looking for. A young boy and his mother are feeding the ducks, and next to those squabbling ducks is a swan. Huge, white, majestic. The swan heart strains to the edge of its case at the sound of water and other birds. There are many people milling around. This might cause a scene. Then again, they do say that love loves an audience. So, I pick up a stone from the side of the path, take careful aim, and fling.