The Angel's Cut

by Elizabeth Knox

  Xas did take care of her. He waited patiently for what he expected—an early miscarriage, followed by a slow return to health and happiness. But the miscarriage didn’t happen and he was left waiting, uneasy.

  What he told himself was this: Flora loved Conrad Crow, and Crow was worthy. Flora, finding herself pregnant, would naturally want to have the child of the man she loved. Besides, terminations were almost as risky as pregnancies. Continuing the pregnancy was a good, sane, loving thing to do, Xas told himself. And all he could do—he told himself—was be kind and vigilant and unfailingly there.

  Xas gave up his job, temporarily, he supposed. He had money in the bank, and the Millie Cotton Memorial Flying School no longer needed his profits from the Madill Brothers. He cut out another oblong vegetable bed from the lawn, composted, planted more. He watched Flora round out. And, assiduously, every day, he rubbed lanolin into the scars on her abdomen, and the soft flesh that began to puff out around the pits of scar like pastry rising around a moist halved peach.

  As for Flora—she never announced her intention to have the child she was carrying. She kept her plans to herself—became quiet, dreamy, tentative. She took up reading, picking up one in fifty of the books Xas brought home, reading five pages at a time, a reading that involved a lot of staring into space lost in thought and, in the first months of her pregnancy, sudden naps of narcoleptic intensity, naps she’d come out of feeling as heavy as the stone statue of a swooning saint, as warm as sun-heated stone.

  After ten weeks the tiredness relented and time came back, time and her interior; the future, and an evanescent sensation, like a tiny bait fish flittering inside her.

  No one knew what she was thinking. She was silent and she was cunning. No one but Xas was to know about her pregnancy till it was four months on, and too late for anyone to talk her into a termination. Several times she was speaking to good old friends—Wylie and Avril—but didn’t mention her pregnancy. Wylie would call wanting the lowdown on her quarrel with Crow, Avril to ask whether Flora—or Xas—had seen Cole.

  Avril said that, apparently, Cole wasn’t seeing Sylvia any more. Sylvia was on tour with a hit play, and phoned him every day, but had been turned away from Cole’s Westwood place when she tried to visit on the one night she was passing through town.

  ‘I haven’t seen him,’ Flora said. ‘Nor has Xas. We’ve been keeping to ourselves. Con’s doing that too, probably, just keeping to himself. You know he does that on and off. I guess he’s unhappy that what he had with Sylvia didn’t last.’

  ‘But he made sure it didn’t. I talked to Sylvia. Cole changed—she said. It was after he ran down that man on Wiltshire back in July. He bought himself out of trouble, as usual, then, Sylvia says, just started sleeping in another room, and gradually moved rooms away so that every few nights there was another closed door between them.’

  ‘You know how he comes and goes,’ Flora said to her friend. ‘He pulls the curtains, lies about, lets himself fester a bit. Then he expands his business, or starts shooting a new film, or courting some beauty, or a whole brace of beauties and, before you know it, he’s on the front page of the papers again.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Avril said, then, ‘And how are you? I heard that Connie moved on—the louse.’

  ‘Did he move on?’ Flora asked.

  ‘Darling! Don’t you read Lolly Parsons any more?’

  ‘No. Tell me.’

  ‘Connie went back to Florida to make his hurricane film, and met this girl who was on holiday in Miami. On holiday with her mother. One of those girls brought up on tennis and swimming and horse-riding lessons. Twenty-one years of age, and elegant. I’m sorry Flora, but I can’t at this moment recall her name. A whippy, sporty girl. Apparently Connie even took her out big-game fishing with Papa Hemingway.’

  ‘I see,’ said Flora.

  ‘They’re engaged.’

  Flora listened for a time to Avril’s commiserations. Then she said she had to go. ‘I have something on the stove.’

  ‘All right, darling. But do call me when you finally feel like talking. You know my feelings on the subject of Conrad Crow.’

  Flora put the phone down and gazed at her own ankles, which were swollen. O’Brien padded into the room, took a careful look at her, and deposited himself on her feet, smiling, one eye slitted, chest and chin turned up invitingly. The cat rolled all the way over to offer his woolly ginger belly and all four paws, their dirt-scuffed pads sunk in tufty, colourless fur with the same texture and gloss as asbestos fibre.

  ‘I’m going to be all right,’ Flora said to her cat, very determined.

  Flora’s belly grew rounded. She had a peaceful period when the fog of tiredness dissipated. For several weeks, whenever she went to bed, she lay on her back for a time. The baby hated that, and would kick her. She loved to feel it kicking. She’d go to bed early. She wasn’t exhausted but had an apparently unappeasable appetite for sleep. She’d fall asleep quickly and wake up in dreamy increments. Xas would have opened the curtains. He knew she preferred them open in the morning.

  The morning sun whitened the bedroom. Flora rolled over onto her back. The baby woke up and began to kick, little volleys of kicks. The only thing in Flora’s mind was her body and the baby, its intermittent, intimate ticking, kicking, quickening.

  Whatever she did Flora felt she was returning the baby’s signal.

  She ate. She got in the bath. Her belly floated above the waterline like an island, the dry part of her.

  Everything she did, every small act of everyday life, was like a loving murmur, an echo of the baby’s heartbeat. It was a beautiful time.

  Then, at around six months, Flora’s happy unthinking lassitude changed to fear. The belt of scars began to close its grip on her. Before long her swelling belly developed a discernible ripple where the skin wasn’t just tight, but constricted. She could still walk on the level, or on a gentle slope, but if she raised her leg higher than the position where thigh and shin make a right angle at the knee, the distressed skin between the pits of scars would stretch, and part in small splits. She could no longer step over the rim of the bath to shower. Xas had to lift her, and lower her into the bath. He’d wash her feet and hair, then stand her upright, run the shower to rinse her, and lift her out. He began to boil all the towels and sheets. He washed Flora and her bedding every day and, several times a day, sealed the ruptures on the surface of her skin with his spit. Flora surrendered to all these ministrations. She hung a coat over the full-length mirror on her wardrobe door, for what good would it do to watch the progress of that hernia-like pregnancy, the bulge above the belt of scarring? Her womb would not drop. The baby couldn’t grow into her pelvic cavity; instead everything pushed up against her diaphragm, so that she felt short of breath, at first only when she was kicked, then all the time. She had constant heartburn. Bile was always in her mouth. She ate very slowly, and all day. Xas would carry her out into the backyard and leave her to amble about between the beds of his garden. It was a still, sunny winter. O’Brien was old for his age and kept close to home. Flora would wander about, her steps slowing gradually. She’d eventually come to a standstill staring out over the fence at the long view to the mountains. O’Brien would come and flop down at her feet. He’d heave a sigh, and eye the few little blue moths flitting over the seeding chard. Flora would stare at the mountains and think that they had somehow ceased to look real. It seemed to her that there was too much feeling in the view, as though someone had painted it, perhaps with an eye to selling something. The landscape looked less like her old, familiar view, than like the label on a box of Comet Premium Lemons, picturing mountains, lemon groves, a column of smoke from a smouldering pile of prunings, a comet, and big white and yellow splashes of stars.

  Sometimes Flora would find herself muttering, ‘This isn’t real,’ as if she was gently informing someone—the someone behind the view—that she wasn’t fooled by any of it.

  Xas would come out to check on her. He’
d pat the cat, pull a few weeds. He’d never ask her what she was doing. If he had asked she’d have said only that she was occupied—yes—she was occupied, and shortly she’d be vacant, and what more was there to say?

  *

  By the middle of January Flora had given up standing in the garden. Her feet were swollen all the time. She couldn’t sit with them up, because sitting now was guaranteed to split her scars. And, when she lay down, she was acutely uncomfortable. There was a constant pressure on the base of her throat, as of some mass improperly swallowed. She slept only in snatches. For a time hunger would wake her and she’d call for Xas to help her get up. He’d ease her straight body off the bed and tilt her onto her feet—a feat impossible for any human of his size. He’d use his body like a board to brace her own. He was always touching her.

  Sometimes Flora would feel she had a number of bodies: a distorted body of unevenly stretched skin, her belly and fat fluid-filled feet, and her own scarcely altered body of bone and muscle. Then there was the baby. The baby wasn’t her, but it was there all the time. And then there was the angel, capable, gentle, warm and as wholly savoury as the sunlight. He was there, and was like the sun touching her. He was there and as animal as ever, but, as the weeks went on, he seemed to dissolve, or Flora’s whole exterior world blended with the angel and became something indefinite in which she was immersed—she, her pains, the baby’s small hard back resting spine-out to the right of her navel, its rummaging movements, the vertiginous rollercoaster lurches she felt when its rummaging displaced her intestines. All these sensations took place inside a fine fence of pain made from the weeping splits in her scarred skin. Beyond that was the world, warmth and nourishment, bathwater, the springy, sweet-smelling body that cradled her own, and the tongue that numbed the sting of air on her exposed flesh, and briefly dissolved the barrier between her body and her world.

  Venice

  Late January, 1939

  Xas got Flora up and helped her to the toilet. Her feet were so swollen that her steps reverberated in her bones, and her skin prickled with the vibrations. Her bladder felt full, but there was very little urine. What there was of it was strong and stung. When she stood up she saw the water in the bowl was dark yellow.

  She’d lost her appetite. Xas asked her if she wanted something to eat, but she shook her head. She took a few mouthfuls of water, but then felt sick. She lay down again and drifted. O’Brien came and lay under one of her arms, against her side. Whenever she woke he was still there, purring furiously. Once she woke to hear the cat’s purring and a murmur, too, of incomprehensible speech. Flora couldn’t understand what Xas was saying but his words came down like rain and seemed to thin her muddy thoughts and make them fluent again. She opened her eyes and said, ‘Are you praying? You don’t need to pray.’

  ‘I’m not praying.’

  She went to sleep. She dreamed that she was carrying a vase of flowers toward the end of a long corridor. It was night. She’d been asked to remove all the flowers from her grandmother’s room. At night, she was told, there would be a competition between her grandmother and the flowers for the air in the room.

  Flora woke up. She was cramping, and the bed was wet.

  The baby came quickly, and easily, because she was very small. Xas held her in his cupped hands. She was motionless, covered in Flora’s inner oils and her own waxy coating of vernix. He watched the cord pump. He set her down on the sheet between Flora’s legs and touched her chest with a fingertip. Flora tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Xas put his wet hand on Flora’s chest and pressed her back. He bent his head and took the cord in his mouth. It was still twitching minimally. He bit the cord in two, held the severed end upright, pinched it closed, picked the baby up and put her down between Flora’s breasts. Flora strained to raise her head, looked, gave a little moaning sob and dropped her head back on the pillow.

  Xas saw that his hand was trembling; he paused a second, his fingers an inch from the baby’s tiny, pale, secretive face. He made his hand be still, then gently pinched the baby’s cheeks so her mouth opened, her thin lips forming a small beak. He put his mouth to hers and sucked gently. A quantity of salty fluid flowed into his mouth. He touched her ribs with his free hand. Three fingers spanned the entire length of her rib cage. He felt the baby’s chest depress faintly, and blew, or began to blow, but spoke instead, spoke into the sepal of her open mouth. He told her to live. Said, ‘Live,’ in his own tongue, his fingers and lips immediately feeling the effect of his word as the tiny body flashed with warmth, and stirred. Then his instruction seemed to come back at him like an echo, not from the slight depth of that body, but from the future. He had a moment of panic, and his throat hardened with it. He knew he’d done something extraordinary, something unreasonable. He couldn’t take it back, all he could do was come up with something to mitigate whatever it was he’d done. He whispered, with nothing like the same urgency or certainty, ‘For a hundred years, at least.’ There was blood in his mouth. His throat was bleeding.

  The baby was wriggling now, her face screwed up. She was crying. She had his blood in her mouth and seemed, between complaints, to be savouring it, her lips rubbing together and cheeks sucking.

  Xas sat up and pulled a second pillow under Flora’s head. He picked up Flora’s arms and placed her hands over the wriggling baby. Flora opened her eyes and stared. ‘Oh—look!’ she said.

  Xas waited for the contractions to begin again, gentler this time. The placenta, glistening, deep red, slipped out between Flora’s legs. Flora seemed scarcely to register this. She was frowning at her baby. ‘Is she too small?’

  ‘She is very small.’

  ‘She can’t be two pounds,’ Flora said.

  ‘No.’

  Flora’s gaze drifted beyond the baby, past Xas—not to stare into space, but at the corner of the bedroom. She smiled. ‘You can keep her alive,’ she said.

  ‘We can,’ Xas corrected. He rolled the placenta to the foot of the bed. The sheet dried its surface and it was very sticky by time he had it out of his way.

  ‘What’s that?’ Flora said. ‘That’s not my insides?’

  Xas laughed. ‘No. It’s the placenta.’

  ‘Of course,’ Flora said.

  ‘Let’s wait a moment. I’ll get more pillows in a moment. Then maybe you should try to see if she wants to suck.’

  ‘Her mouth is so tiny.’

  ‘It can be done. I saw her swallow.’

  Flora sounded peevish. She said, ‘How come you know so much?’

  ‘I don’t. But I’ve seen babies this small before. When I came back to the States on Lake Werner I went to Coney Island and there I happened to see premature babies in warm ventilated boxes—incubators—in Courney’s exhibition. Babies at an amusement park. People were coming back every week to see how they got on.’

  ‘She doesn’t need an incubator,’ Flora said. ‘Does she?’

  ‘Well—we don’t need the charity of an amusement park. We can afford to get her cared for in a hospital,’ Xas suggested. ‘Hospitals have incubators for those who can pay.’

  ‘If I’d wanted a hospital I’d have gone to one already.’

  ‘You’ve been asleep for months. In a way. You haven’t been thinking. You haven’t actually declared what you want.’

  ‘I made you marry me.’

  It was true. Three months back Flora had dragged Xas in to apply for a licence. The application took a while because he wasn’t a citizen. But, eventually, they did get their five minutes at City Hall. Xas had been surprised by Flora’s insistence—he hadn’t thought she’d mind so much, either on her behalf, or the baby’s, about its illegitimacy. But now he did understand. Flora, her hair tangled, face and body puffy and striped by fissures of split skin, some weeping lymph, some blood as well—this battered woman, less than an hour after giving birth, fixed him with her gaze and said, ‘We’ll register her birth as soon as possible. And you will be her father.’ She was glaring at him.

  ‘All right,�
�� Xas said.

  ‘She’s yours,’ Flora said.

  ‘Ours. All right.’

  ‘We don’t need a hospital. She’ll live if we stay together. If I feed her, and you hold her.’

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  ‘You must hold her all the time,’ Flora said, her face set and determined.

  He nodded.

  Flora relaxed. She took a deep breath and her eyes wandered around the room, once giving off a happy flash of light, as though her gaze had struck a spark off something. She said, ‘Find me more pillows. I’ll sit up now and try to feed her.’

  Xas got off the bed. He fetched the pillows from his own room and arranged them behind her. She could sit, but was too tired to support the weight of her own arms. She needed another pillow to put the baby on. He went to get the cushions from the cane chair that sat in the corner of Flora’s room. He was a little confused when he reached the chair. It had been pushed back into a pot plant, though he didn’t recall there being a pot plant in the room. He grabbed the cushions and extracted them from the greenery, brought them to the bed and arranged them. He asked, ‘Is the room warm enough?’ When Flora had gone into labour he’d carried the living room heater into her bedroom. It was a cylindrical heater with four elements, it had been on all night and was giving off heat like a stone garden brazier heaped with coals.

  ‘The sun will come in soon,’ Flora said. Then she began to weep at the sight of her breasts, globes of white flesh netted with blue veins, each much bigger than the baby. Her nipples were huge. ‘How can I do this?’ she wept.

  ‘She’s asleep now anyway,’ Xas said. ‘Don’t try till she wakes up.’

  Flora drooped, she warmed the baby between her breasts, her fingers cupped over the tiny skull.

  Xas saw that the baby’s ears were still attached to the skin of her head, like the ears on a partly finished sculpture. He saw that she had no fingernails. He saw the blood vessels in her fingers, the continual faint flashing of red. He bent to the baby and sniffed her sticky scalp. She smelled new and familiar at the same time. Then her scent blasted into his head and wiped out everything, momentarily but utterly, every interest, desire, loyalty.