PHILIP MARCHAND

‘The function of humour may not be so much to hold the edges of life together but to indicate when those edges are coming apart’

One of the stories in Irina Kovalyova’s collection Specimen ends on a note of wisdom: “Without imagination, life makes no sense.” The same can be said of humour. Case in point: “Mamochka,” a story in which a Russian woman explains how she “endured low wages, cold winters, potholes in the streets, uniforms, flags, parades and breadlines.” How did she do that? She did that, she says, with humour. She endured with humour because humour seemed to be “the glue that held the edges of life together.”

I know she means. It is certainly the case that characters in these stories with odd or non-existent senses of humour are slightly sinister, like the Botox physician with the menacing surname of “Doctor Payne,” who makes a bad joke and then tries to excuse herself by saying that “Eastern Europeans make lousy jokes.” (Kovalyova doesn’t tell us exactly where Dr. Payne hails from, but it’s likely east of the Danube.)

Of course, even a great sense of humour can become strained under certain circumstances. Eastern Europeans have not had much to laugh about in the past century. (Though adversity, we must all agree, is no excuse for humourlessness.) The function of humour may not be so much to hold the edges of life together but to indicate when those edges are coming apart. It’s a function needed now more than ever, in an age where science and technology have elected themselves keepers of the edges. They are now the glue. Kovalyova, a Russianborn, Vancouver-based scientist and writer seems up to the job of monitoring the situation, if anybody can. She has advanced degrees in chemistry, microbiology and creative writing — a triple threat.

Almost all of her stories have to do with the misuse or degradation of science and technology, starting with a nineteenthcentury tale, “The Ecstasy of Edgar Alabaster,” about a mesmerist experimenting with animal magnetism on a dying man. In “The Side Effects,” the aforementioned Dr. Payne used Botox injections not just to eliminate wrinkles on the forehead but to produce a sensation of wellbeing. In “Gdansk,” about a cultural exchange between Russian and Polish students in the Gorbachev Era, the notion of God seems to be enjoying a revival, partly because science-based activities, such as the growing of crystals, are less promising than they at first appear. For one Russian student, Kovalyova writes, “Crystals were false ideals, because they were supposed to have perfect, exactly repeating patterns, but in reality they always had defects, places where their patterns went all out of whack.” Maybe, another student suggests, God is a little bit like that.

Artificial insemination comes under scrutiny in the title story, “Specimen,” about a young woman named Joy who discovers her father is not her biological father — the latter individual merely supplied his sperm. The problem is the procedure awakens all sorts of questions about identity that the procedure itself cannot answer. Writing to the sperm donor, Joy states, “It has come to my attention that you provided a sperm specimen sometime in 1984. That specimen became me.”

But this is not true. The specimen did not become Joy; Joy is Joy. As her non-biological father points out, “People like to pretend that our genes define the truth for us. But I assure you, Joy, that’s not the case.” To restore perspective requires stepping outside the ambit of science and technology.

The collection’s most grotesque use of science and technology involvess the mummification of Lenin’s corpse in the The Blood Keeper, a novella. The narrator is the daughter, it turns out, of the chief keeper of Lenin’s body. She describes in clinical detail his routine: “Every week there, in a secret chamber, he conducted what he called adjustments, wiping the mummy with hydrogen peroxide, treating its wrinkles with acetic acid, and painting its waxy face with bifonazole.” To no avail: “despite all attempts to curb life, fungi crept along the mummy’s neck, the skin of its ears turned blue, and brown spots became visible on the pads of its fingers.”

The novella is rich with irony, as are all the stories — irony often derived from the contrast between the attempts of science to explain everything and the mystery these attempts only serve to deepen.

But these desperate adults persevere in attempts to explain things to their innocent offspring in the hopes of general enlightenment. The narrator of “Gonos,” a grandfather, contemplates his granddaughter, who now bears the hope of somehow redeeming the preceding generations. “This baby could indeed become the new family nucleus around which they all might recrystallize,” the grandfather thinks. “He could certainly facilitate this process by teaching her marvelous things about science, by explaining to her things about the birds and the bees.”

This is not a rational, scientific hope. It is doomed to failure. Yet the effect on the reader is not depressing — these immensely readable stories demonstrate that we do have imagination, we do have a sense of humour. And if these faculties don’t make entire sense of the world, they do indicate how endlessly interesting that world is.