Catacomb Thoughts
“Death is ordinary.” Vollmann opens his work with a stroll through the ostial labyrinth of the Paris catacombs. As he walks down the tunnels, he observes skeletal remains encompassed in the stone and earth walls. Twisted yellow joints and bones lay laterally, achieving a masonry effect. Napoleon’s engineers of death created the tunnels with an ornamental and “sanitary aesthetic, giving a sense of order to the chaos of a death.” Vollmann arrives at the catacombs ready to look upon his future, among the arid, calcified appurtenances of flesh and bone. Vollmann accepts the choking, sickening dust in the air as a salutary reminder of his own limited existence from the decayed corpses around him. Vollmann wants to understand death since one cannot forget what can’t be avoided. When he emerges into the sunlight, Vollmann morbidly juxtaposes the sweet, starchy French pastries with a “bone-colored cheese” stench. Clearly affected by his time in the catacombs, Vollmann sees and tastes death everywhere. A wedding becomes a “hideously cadaverous” parade, and the ornate architecture of the city resembles skeletal remains. Vollmann concludes that he must die. He confesses he cannot read into the meaning of death per se, but interprets death as an “a smell, a very bad smell.”
Autopsy Thoughts
Vollmann discusses a young woman found in a dumpster by investigators, murdered and forgotten. The cause of death seems like the prerequisite for justice, but the moral of death is “empty.” Vollmann touches on the death of his sister when he was nine and his sister Julie was six. In his care, Julie drowned. He notes that only when justice condemns someone to death or the wrongful party is implicated, can we admit that death had a point. Principled suicides have meaning for a greater purpose. But, most accidents and homicides die for nothing. Convicting a murderer and executing him means something, but the killing of his victim will not hold any higher meaning.
Between 1994-1995, around 8,000 people died in San Francisco County. Dr. Stephen became responsible for a fraction of these autopsies. When a body arrives at the office, it is weighed, examined, and zipped into a white plastic bag. Family members try to identify their loved ones in the viewing room, trying to claim the body with a sense of desperate relief. Vollmann then describes an autopsy. In unnecessarily graphic detail, Vollman describes the naked “green and yellow corpse” as a scalpel cuts the flesh from the body’s arms and chest. Intestines are removed, organs weighed, and “the putrefying” brain separated from the body. The morgue doctors are callous in their procedures, but rightly so as they armor themselves to comprehend the unsightly work they do each day. Ironically, the job shelters Dr. Stephen from sadder things, as he previously worked in pediatric oncology. The difference lies within embracing the cold, inevitability of death postmortem versus the life being drained from an innocent child. The former is preferable.
Continuing with his adventures in the morgue, Vollmann comments on the “little cubes of meat” going into pathology labs. Dr. Stephen and his staff contemplate the odorous stench of organs, which Vollmann finds no qualms with. The staff determines the causes of death, from barbiturate overdoses to suicide. According to Vollmann, jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge because of transient emotional causes, like an inoperable liver cancer diagnosis, is completely logical. Suicide from heartbreak is not. Overall, few very homicides are justified, mostly just a waste. Senseless violent crime to effect punishment hold no value. Before venturing back into the bright world of the living, Vollmann checks with forensic texts about the infectious capabilities of the bodies. He emerges light and unburdened. The singularity of the autopsies hold no candle to the multiplicity of the catacomb skulls. He introspects and questions his own fear; he feels most menaced by death when he was the safest among the corpses.
Siege Thoughts
Vollmann continues to think about the Paris catacombs, comparing the beautifully arranged skulls to the Cambodian genocide map of murdered skulls. He then talks of a past love who perished from cancer. She wrote letters to him describing her maddening pain, despair, and yearning for death However, Vollmann cannot comprehend her as a sick and decomposing body. She still holds life and energy in his memories. He is sad, her death was meaningless. So too, he is sad when he thinks about his college, Will and Francis, who were killed in Bosnia. He is not angry and acknowledges the commonality of unfortunate incidents during the war.
Vollmann concludes with some final thoughts on the violence, death, and suffering he has seen. He is haunted by wickedness and personal loss from his time in Sarajevo, working as a journalist. The Angel of Death works in ways we cannot fully understand. Sometimes we have the wrong cells inside our bodies or perhaps we fight in the wrong place at the wrong time. In trying to understand the malignity and sadness of death, Vollmann urges a callous joke or two. Vollmann wants to contribute a sense of comprehension to how and why the Angel kills. Thus, the world is gifted Rising Up and Rising Down.
–A.A.