Chapter 62
Mori’s office was a spacious room with two large windows, but dimmed by old metal blinds of the economical type. There was a controlled disorder in the room, with piles of papers and books stacked according to some logic, and yet misaligned. And there were objects of all sorts sprawled on the grey metal cabinets and the shelves, some models of the human body, some small clay sculptures and a toy, a fabric multi-coloured turtle. And there were pictures on the wall, photos of Mori with a woman, Mori holding a kid by hand, Mori in his bathing suit, grinning with a drink in his hand. There were posters and prints of modern paintings, and childish drawings, probably sketched by the kid in the picture, his child.
“I love your office”, I said, after landscaping the room, bluntly and thoroughly, without trying to conceal my curiosity in any way
Mori laid his gaze on me, dark and sharp through the rounded black-rimmed spectacles, and smiled. The smile was balanced, detached and enigmatic almost, its coolness an oxymoron with the charcoal intensity of his eyes. His dark-brown hair fell softly on his squared face, above the jaw, framing the slightly bloated cheeks.
“Thank you”, he said after a moment
“Thank you for having me here. I haven’t told you about the last episodes, but the situation has slipped out of my hands”
He waited for me to continue, without changing expression, with the same burning attentive gaze in his eyes. I told him about the “accident”, and the hospital and all the rest, wondering if I was pushing myself too far and yet unable to stop at this point.
When I finished my account he said, “If you bring your sample tomorrow we can test it on some cells. After we obtain some preliminary results we can run further tests on some human organs. We are able to reproduce organs starting off from human cells, it’s still a pilot study but it is promising. Testing substances on animals has limited scientific validity when you think about the differences between species. From a scientific standpoint, extrapolating information from animals to humans is a meaningless exercise”
Curt sentences and confidence, a life ethics implied seamlessly in Mori’s scientific choices, stated with a calm that left no room for discussion. I felt small and safe in front of this man, and I loved him for letting me uncoil, for showing me that I got it all wrong but that I could still have some faith in this world.