Fermentation (9 page)

Immediately nurses in tall white hats like crowns made from snow took my clothes and shaved me and then they pushed me down one corridor after another. I could hear their squeaky shoes padding against the cold white linoleum and the sound of the wheels.

The birthing room was shiny like the inside of a cool crystal star. They laid me down on a high bed in the centre of the room and stretched me out. First they hitched up one leg into a stirrup and then the other.

‘You must keep breathing,’ a voice said. ‘Take deep breaths. Deep. Deep.’

The pain washed over me, dragging me down like the
tide of the sea. I felt the waves moving over me and I tried to swim above them, tried to breathe in time to the waves, but each new intake of air felt as though I were drawing breath for the first and last time. When the pain receded I took in more of my surroundings. When the pain began again my whole being was centred round my sex as it stretched and opened wider and wider, sucking me in. I tried to remember Serge's face, to bring him in front of me and focus on his eyes. If I held his gaze I could keep my face above water, but the moment I let it go I felt myself sinking, the water folding in soft pleats above my head. I could feel the blood pumping and hear the rain outside. My whole being was separating, splitting open like a ripe chestnut, and the water was trickling and seeping and endlessly falling. Miles and miles of fresh grey water above and beneath me. My clothes and hair were wet. The rain was streaming down. I could feel it seeping into the ground and collecting in underground caverns, flowing in rivers and streams and forming dark lakes in caves beneath me. Bridges no longer spanned rivers, signposts no longer pointed to roads, rivers no longer flowed like ribbons. The water had risen and overcome them all. You couldn't tell where the seas ended and the sky began. You couldn't tell. Things were too dark. And the fish swam through it all: steely blue swordfish, billowing skate, sleek grey dolphins and strange white fish that swam at the bottom of the darkest oceans, all soft bodied, all blindly feeling their way in the dark; electric eels with scabrous teeth.
Fat black eels that slithered and curled through the shallows sensing the presence of blood, the liquid smell of suppuration, and when at last they found me they gnawed and consumed my soft stomachy flesh leaving only a translucent sack of tender skin. They were eating me out bit by bit.

Nurses bent over, their faces smiling close to mine.

‘You're doing well,’ their voices said. ‘Take deep breaths. The head is showing now.’ And then they turned to each other and shook their heads. ‘Her husband should be here,’ they said, as though I were deaf ‘I ate my placenta. It's full of nourishment, you know. I took it home and fried it with eggs.’ I could see their mouths opening and closing and could hear the words as they walked around me. One of them was brandishing a long silvery needle.

‘Push down hard. Push!’ she said, her white crown bobbing up and down like foam on the water. I could feel myself pushing out into the sea and then I caught in a rip and the tide swept me further into the water. I knew I was drifting and a terror seized me that I would not be able to swim back to shore. I was losing my strength and each vein in my body was straining against the weight that was dragging me down and I kept pushing against the body of water, against the stone which was dragging me down. I wanted to rest, to lie at the bottom of the ocean, on this dark sticky bed, with the boom of the waves over me and the seaweed wrapping around me. Keep breathing. ‘Push,’ they repeated as though I were
deaf and I pushed at their hands as they walked around me, against the weight of the water, through the black corridor and the huge dark orifice. Keep breathing, keep breathing. I pushed them away and I pushed upwards and then suddenly I heard the sound of panting in my ear. It was the sound of my own breath and from the shore where I lay I looked back and saw a huge fish jump from the sea and fly through the air, sunlight catching its long feathery fins.

The child was born shortly after midnight. The doctor held her up by her feet and she hung in the air like an object retrieved from the sea. They laid her on my stomach and I touched her tiny hands and feet. ‘You can rest now,’ they said. I remember they pushed me out of the room and bathed me and laid me down in a bed. The child rested in a cot beside me, her small hands spreading out towards the light.

HANDMADE CHEESE

A pale, delicate cream cheese. Often best prepared by grinding salt and pepper over it and eating with fresh bread.

I craved cheese only once after the birth. It was shortly after I returned to the apartment with the child. She had suckled from my breasts and where my milk had spilled I caught a few drops with my fingers and licked off the sweet liquid. My breasts were large and engorged with milk. Sometimes at night when she had drunk her fill, in order that I could relieve the weight I would run a bath and crouch down on all fours in the warm water like a cow in a pond while the milk seeped out turning the bath water white. And then I read in my manual that I could actually collect my milk. The process was similar to massaging the teat of a cow. I had to cup each breast in turn and tease the milk out in drops until it flowed evenly. I placed the milk in a bowl and when that was done the idea came to me to make a small homemade cheese out of it. The old man had given me some rennet and I stirred this into my milk and then let the mixture set. Afterwards I tied the mixture up in a small muslin bag over the sink and let it drip.

The cheese tasted mild and slightly watery. I spread it
on some bread and sprinkled salt over it: to bring out the flavour and when I had finished I lay down on the bed with the child beside me in her cot. I wasn't tired and for a time I lay and stared at her sleeping. Her face was so perfect. Her skin was clear and I liked to listen to the sound of her breathing.

I walked though lemon fields in the hills above Tuscany. They were streaked red with poppies and the heat of late autumn scumbled the colours, bleeding the red.

The chapel stood shaded from the glare of the sun between two cedar trees. I walked around the outside brushing my hand against the cool stone until I came to a window of clear glass through which I could see the altar. It was set very simply with a wooden cross on a white cloth and a small vase of lilies. The light from a stained window above the altar fell down and formed a pool of red on the cold stone floor. I saw all this and then as my eyes grew accustomed to the light I noticed a painting on one of the white stucco walls.

The Annunciation. Mary, dressed in a pale blue mantle; sitting in a small portico of slender Corinthian columns. In front of her, bowing slightly, stood an angel with feathered wings, robed in translucent vermilion. Mary looked to the ground while the angel peered upwards at her face in a gaze of the most curious nature. It transfixed me and it was only after staring at this painting for several minutes that I noticed in the dim
background there was a door, which led to a room, a room with a bed inside.

The angel whose hand was outstretched motioned for Mary to stand up, then took her by the hand and led her through into the bedroom. They began to undress. The angel's robes slipped off easily and fell in a pile along with Mary's thin blue dress. The angel then lay down on the bed and stretched out his legs amongst a huge scattering of pillows which cushioned his wings. Mary climbed on top of him, her legs on either side of his waist. Her back was straight and I could see the tiny bones that made up her vertebrae through her pale skin. She took a clasp out of her hair and it fell blackly down the cream of her skin like a rope of thick treacle.

Mary bends down now, kissing the angel's stomach, running her tongue up the centre of his body, and all the while her body is moving up and down as her whole being rotates round her mouth. The angel places his hands on her head and runs and digs his fingers through her thick black hair.

Slowly then she moves up his body until her legs are either side of his face and she is hovering above it. I can see how he tries to raise his mouth to touch her there, but her hands keep him firmly pinned down. She is enjoying seeing him strain to eat her.

She moves down towards him and his head arches up. She pulls away and then she lowers herself down again. Little by little she lowers herself closer until finally his tongue slips up between her legs, up into her. The
muscles of her slender, crouching legs stiffen visibly. Her whole body tightens as his tongue feels its way into the wet of her flesh and I can see how his sex has grown and hardens.

He begins to push her down his body. His hands are clasped around her waist guiding her down until finally he enters her. The blue counterpane is twisted between them.

Afterwards they rise and dress, then step out into the covered portico. Mary takes her seat, the angel positions himself in front of her, bends his knee and kneels and then very gently, very slowly, unfolds his beautiful golden wings.

I awoke to the sound of the child. Her cry was soft and I picked her up from the cot and held her close to me.

In the days that followed I tried to find Serge. I went to his apartment but when I reached it I found the door boarded up and a sign from the council saying no one was to enter. I walked through the city with the child wrapped up under my coat, asking in all the familiar places whether anyone had seen him or knew of his whereabouts, but most of the performers had left for the winter. Some told me Serge had gone also, some said he was still here. Finally I visited the fountain with the three stone fishes. I sat on the edge of the pool and looked into the water. A few golden leaves had drifted down from the surrounding trees and now lay at the bottom, turning black at the edges.

I packed up the apartment and my suitcases and bought a travelling box for the chameleon. I also visited the cheese shop. Berthe and the old man took turns holding the child and both agreed she was a beautifully fermented specimen; a little early, but most important of all not too ripe. ‘Send me your address,’ the old man said, ‘when you know where you're staying.’

The train journey was longer than I remembered. It is one of those laws. The journey back is always longer than the journey forward. The child slept most of the way and when she did cry I would walk her up and down the corridor and people smiled and touched her face.

When we arrived at Lourdes we took the bus up into the mountains to Cauterets. I could see snow on the peaks. At first we stayed in the hotel but afterwards I found a small apartment in the main square.

You want to know, did he come back? The question is still to be answered. At night when the child is asleep I stand by the window and wait. I think I will see him again. Last night I lit a candle and placed it in the window. I sat with the child in my arms and watched as a moth flew down from a dark corner of the room. It was attracted by the flame and danced around the fire on the tips of its wings. It could not escape unless I extinguished the flame.

In the morning I fed its body to the lizard.