In the 1930s in Florida, the German-born radiographer Georg Karl Tänzler became deeply enamoured with his tuberculosis patient Elena Milagro de Hoyos. Upon her death, his obsession did not falter: he removed her from her tomb, amateurishly embalmed her, and – according to later reports – may have even had sex with her decaying corpse. It’s an unhinged story with many versions, inspiring songs, podcasts, documentaries and exhibits. In Exquisite Corpse, the Vogel award-winning writer Marija Peričić turns the source material into a novel, retaining all the horrifying details of the reported events, but offering a far more satisfying resolution.
In the novel, Elena becomes Lina, a beautiful young woman living with her husband, her sister and her parents. It may seem reductive to make a note of her looks, but that’s exactly what first captures the attention of Dr Carl Dance (the fictionalised version of Tänzler). The fragile “beauty” of tuberculosis patients is a documented phenomenon: the illness manifests a pale complexion, rosy lips and cheeks, and sparkling eyes. Dance is so struck that he becomes blind to her humanity:
She was by anyone’s standards a beauty, there was no question, but the illness had transformed her into something quite different, something barely human.
Perhaps this is how he can justify his later actions.
At first, Dance presents as a charming, creepy do-gooder who wants to share his wealth and experience with an attractive young woman. But as the story progresses, his delusion spirals out of control: first he convinces himself that Lina loves him; then, after she dies, that she is calling to him from her tomb; then that he is capable of reviving her; and finally that she is welcoming his assaults on her corpse.
He is deranged to the point of absurdity; disquietingly, though, the justifications he offers for his acts carry such familiar elements of control, power and possessive lust that his extreme entitlement seems realistic. The novel and the story that inspired it take place in the 1930s, but the central themes are more relevant than ever. Dance’s control over Lina and his wife, Doris, is insidious and manipulative. He positions himself as a saviour and then a victim so effectively that even when his crimes are revealed he receives fanmail (from men and women). Doris, on the other hand, when she attempts to leave him, is criticised by the public and their friends for not standing beside her husband.
Much like Exquisite Corpse the game, in which players each contribute to a single artwork or story without seeing each other’s contribution, Peričić’s book bounces between multiple narrators. Each character attempts to wrest control of the narrative and the events that unfold. Dance’s section of the text is overly virtuous, self-gratifying and entitled; it positions him perfectly as ghoulish and untrustworthy, but as a narrator he’s unpleasant to spend time with. Greta, Lina, and even Doris all have much livelier voices, although it is more than uncomfortable to experience the events through Lina’s eyes, trapped as she is as a soul, floating near her body as it is violated by Dance.
The Exquisite Corpse game takes its name from a phrase coined by three French surrealists who first played it: “The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.” This line is brought obscenely to life in the novel when Dance brings Lina’s corpse home to his apartment and, worried that he has upset her, force-feeds her wine from his own mouth.
If this sounds disturbing, it is – and yet it’s hard to feel anything but respect for Peričić’s unwavering commitment to her subject. She immerses the reader so deeply in each part of the narrative that the experience is visceral and nauseatingly grotesque, but, as Lina and Doris start to wrestle back control of their lives, liberating as well.
Peričić writes with a tone of gothic horror that sits well with contemporaries like Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch, or Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Beneath the Sea. These works, Peričić’s included, are bold and boundary-pushing, bringing feminist ideology into the space of the surreal, and using the monstrous as a way to explore and ultimately liberate the female in literature from conservative trappings of domesticity, sex, and even their own bodies.
Exquisite Corpse isn’t an easy read. But a book like this doesn’t want to be pleasurable. It is provocative and disquieting, a deliberate disturbance of the status quo of both today, and our bygone era.
Exquisite Corpse is as unpleasant as the source material that inspired it, but Peričić makes the tale her own, handing back power to the women it was stolen from – and reclaiming their story.
Exquisite Corpse by Marija Peričić is out in June through Affirm Press
