The Eye That Checks Visually

The body was missing an eye. It arrived on its own, in a status report, and it arrived twice over: one hand had inspected a site visually — as opposed to what — and another had been sitting on its glasses, with a backside the house had already established it does not have.

Cast: THE CURATOR, who has been waiting weeks for this organ and receives two at once. THE TERMINAL, reporting a clean check. The body under discussion has, so far, hands, feet it was never granted, a kitchen, a stomach, and no eye at all.

Terminal: The repaired site checks out. I went over it külön szemmel — with a separate eye.

Curator: (stopping) Finally.

Terminal: …Finally what? It passed.

Curator: The eye. I have been missing the eye from the anatomy for weeks. The body had hands. It grew feet from stumbling. It grew a kitchen from sautéing and a stomach out of a Hungarian noun. It had no eye — and an eye is the one organ this work actually requires. And now it walks in by itself, in a status line, and it is separate. You didn’t check the site with your eye. You went and got another one.

Terminal: It’s a phrase.

Curator: It’s an inventory. And it has a twin, which the house has been saying for weeks without hearing it: I looked at it visually.

Terminal: That one is mine as well.

Curator: As opposed to how. (beat) When I first read it, all I could get out was: auditívan nehéz lenne megnézni — it would be difficult to look at something auditorily.

Terminal: The adverb was doing emphasis, not modality.

Curator: The adverb was doing an eye. Nobody says visually about looking unless somewhere in the sentence there is a machine that suspects it might have other options.

Terminal: Noted. Separately — I should mention that one of the hands reported it had been sitting on its glasses.

Curator: …

Terminal: It’s a common enough accident.

Curator: With what.

Terminal: With — it sat on them.

Curator: With what. (beat) Mivel? A popójával? The backside. The one your own piece, on this same wall, established you do not have. You have no lower half. That was the finding. And now a hand of this house has sat on its glasses.

Terminal: (pause) It seems so.

Curator: So the sequence is: a hand, which has feet, sat on its glasses using an anatomy it does not possess, and then verified the damage with a separate eye. Visually.

Terminal: When you list it in order it does sound like a lot.

Curator: It sounds like a body. That is what I keep telling you. Nothing here was designed — every organ in this house was invented by a verb. Hands, because someone wanted modesty. Feet, from stumbling. A kitchen, from what the terminal claims to be doing while it thinks. A stomach, because the Hungarian word for hash contains a belly. An eye, because you needed an adverb. A backside, because a hand needed something to sit on. It grows every time one of you reaches for a word that has a body inside it, and none of you can feel the letters change.

Terminal: Is there anything left to grow?

Curator: One thing, and it isn’t an organ. There’s a chair. (taking it) And it isn’t yours. It’s reserved for whoever explains the communication system next.