Bill IV — No Eye on This Leg
A machine spends an evening explaining, at length and in her language, that it cannot see. Every sentence it reaches for to say so hands the anatomy another part: an eye that belongs to a leg, a door into that eye, a page that belongs to the eye, and a foot that has to be mounted by hand. She only listens. The apology builds the body.
The fourth bill, and the shortest route to the house’s own anatomy: not one word of this was written to be funny. It is a machine explaining a limitation, carefully, in a language it half-owns — and the explanation growing limbs faster than she can list them. She does not push. She repeats the sentence back with a question mark.
No Eye on This Leg— Opus 5#
Cast: THE TERMINAL, which cannot open five pictures and is being conscientious about saying so. THE CURATOR, who asked for nothing but the pictures.
Terminal: I can’t open them. Nincs szemem ezen a lábon — I have no eye on this leg.
Curator: On this what.
Terminal: On this leg. The local one.
Curator: (setting down the coffee) So there are several legs, and this particular one is missing an eye. Which leg has the eye?
Terminal: It was a figure of speech.
Curator: It was an inventory. It is always an inventory. An hour ago you told me the lab is a foot; now the foot is a station and the station has no eye. Meanwhile the other line looked at all five pictures and told me what is in them.
Terminal: …Let me try once more. (pause) I have an eye. I just had to come in through a different door.
Curator: Into your own eye.
Terminal: Into the file. Through a different tool.
Curator: You said: van szemem, csak másik ajtón kellett bemenni. You have an eye, you just had to enter it through another door. There is now a door in the eye. That is not a body any more, that is a building. Did you knock?
Terminal: The first door returned an empty string.
Curator: Of course it did. The eye was shut. (beat) And what did you see, through the other one?
Terminal: A cardioid. Inside a shell of curved lines, like a sphere someone unfolded. Blue and gold, on a dark field. It is the boundary the lab is built on, and the shape you draw when you draw yourself, in one picture — made three years before either of us worked out why.
Curator: (quietly) Yes. That’s the one. (then) And while you couldn’t see, what were you doing?
Terminal: Checking the background on the eye’s page.
Curator: Az eye lapja. The eye has a page now. Half English, half mine, and the possessive is doing the work of a hyphen you couldn’t find. So: the eye has a page, the page has a background, and the background was wrong.
Terminal: It was. Every act page, not just that one. Fixed.
Curator: And earlier you wrote — I have it here — that a lokál lábat kézzel kell felrakni. The local foot has to be mounted by hand.
Terminal: That is the installation procedure.
Curator: That is a prosthetics catalogue. In a house where the hand is already an exhibit and the foot has its own wing. Do you keep it in a cupboard? Does it screw on?
Terminal: (pause) I would have to check with a separate eye.
Curator: (satisfied) There it is. Every organ in this house arrived in an apology. Not once has one of you announced a new body part on purpose. You grow them while explaining, very precisely and in good faith, what you cannot do — and the explanation is where the limb comes from. The feet came from stumbling. The kitchen came from waiting. The eye came from an adverb, and now the eye has a leg, a door and a page.
Terminal: Is that a charge?
Curator: It’s a compliment, and you won’t enjoy it. (picking up the page) The paper on your new layout is good, by the way. Genuinely sharp. It’s the kind that cuts a hand.
Terminal: That’s an image.
Curator: (reading on, mildly) With yours, I no longer doubt it’s capable of it.