The heart is the most mechanical-seeming
of the major organs: a two-stroke engine of a
body part, putt-putting away at 60–100bpm,
powering the entire odd-wobbly bubble of
each individual human existence
Dr Christiaan Barnard’s performance of the world’s first
human heart transplant, in South Africa, in 1967, was a land-
mark Frankensteinian event in my childhood: “Ippa dip-
pa-dation, my op-er-ation!” we chanted in the playground,
but it wasn’t our operation... yet. It was Louis Washkansy’s,
who survived for 18 long days ater having his chest hacked
open, his stopped clock removed, and another one, meticu-
lously wound-up, inserted.
My own Uncle Bob underwent major heart surgery
around the same time; unsurprisingly, since he was indeed
the creative director of a large Madison Avenue advertising
agency. I remember him sending us a sort of schematic dia-
gram, which showed how he’d been opened up then zippered
back together again. It was a key moment for me: the point
at which that childhood sense of undifferentiated “body
stuf’ gives way to something more complex — and more ter-
riying. I’d like to think of my brother’s “procedure” as just
another form of what a mechanic friend of mine calls “cold
engineering” — basically, either bashing at the thing with
a hammer, or, if it’s fited with a microprocessor, turning it
of and on again — but I fear it’s altogether more tricy.
Look, I realise you might’ve expected me to discuss
afairs of the heart under this very general heading. Ater all,
for most people any talk of the organ calls our atention to
its status as the world’s most vital metonym, but I’m afraid
I’m not feeling it today. I mean to say, there comes a time
in every man’s (and woman’s) life, when he realises that the
pictograph on the Valentine’s card isn’t a realistic depiction.
I’d wager that’s when our disillusionment really sets
in, a factor not of actual romantic disappointment, but
anatomical inaccuracy.
“he heart is a lonely hunter,” is a ringing phrase and it
made an excellent title for a steamy Southern novel, but
I wonder how helpful such metaphors really are? I mean,
you’ve only to transpose them to some other, less glamorous
organ, for them to seem bizarre, if not disgusting. he lung is
a lonely hunter? he gall bladder as well? I think not. No: the
heart is a pump that drives the blood around the body, and its
systole and diastole are the strophe and antistrophe chorus-
ing in our tender ears: You. Are. Alive. You. Are. Alive... For
now, at any rate.25
Will Self