Fermentation

by Angelica J.

‘I keep telling her to find someone her own age but she laughs.’ The old man looked over at me. ‘Lie down for a while. I think you should rest.’

  I lay down and he came over and brushed his hand over my head.

  ‘You'll be fine,’ he said. ‘Believe me. I know.’

  I closed my eyes. I heard him leave the room and go downstairs. I heard noises from the shop below and outside on the street and then I fell asleep. It was the first deep sleep I had experienced for what seemed like weeks. I slept all through the afternoon and I did not dream.

  Later, when I went downstairs, the old man was waiting for me.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Gammelost. You'll like it. It's good and strong. The neat whisky of cheeses.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Try and rest more,’ he said. ‘You want this baby to be properly fermented, don't you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘So take care of yourself.’

  After I had stepped out on to the street he locked the shop door behind me and waved at me through the window as he hung a sign on the door. The sign read, ‘Closed.’

  It was dark and the street-lamps had been turned on and drew out deep pools of light. I don't know what it was that made me take a different route home, but instead of heading towards the river I turned down one of the many narrow streets and walked for several minutes before branching off again on to a second road, one I thought would bring me out close to the river. This second street must have led me in the opposite direction, however, for very soon I was lost, walking through a district I had never visited before.

  I was alerted to a new smell, one of spices and herbs and sweet incense lingering and mingling in the heat. A short way ahead of me a door opened and a figure stepped out. The figure was swathed from head to toe in black. I could only see this person from behind and could not tell if it was male or female, but some instinct prompted me to follow him or her and so we began to wind our way through the labyrinthine maze where at length this figure was joined by a second. The two walked ahead of me for some time and I followed them past glittering window displays of televisions and hi-fi equipment and shops selling trays of strange-coloured sweets. The figures were my guides until quite suddenly they stopped and looked round. It was only then that I saw their faces, saw that they were wearing beak-like metal masks which glinted in the evening sun and made them invisible. They stared at me for what seemed like minutes as though they were passing judgment, although neither spoke or conferred in any way, and then, their decision made, they turned once more to the street ahead and continued walking. Now, more of these women emerged from doorways and side streets and I realised we were all heading towards a square where a market had been set up with coloured lights strung between the stalls. The square was full of the beaked women wandering through the stalls of many-coloured fish and sea-fruits piled high. There were tables of sunset-pink shrimps and crates of langoustine and shimmering skate and everything smelt of dark seaweed and salt. The women passed through the stalls, their dark eyes peering from the slits in their masks like those of a shark.

  I stood transfixed for a while on the outskirts of this scene, and the people came and went, dancing in dark patterns around me, and through the murmur and the noise of the market I heard a sound like that of a child crying, only I couldn't see any child, only the blackness of the invisible women moving around me, brushing against me. I turned and walked quickly away, all the time feeling that they were following me. I tried to recall the way I had come and walked as fast as I could, retracing my steps, looking for a familiar street sign, but everything was foreign to me; everywhere I looked I could only see strange writing and the curls and waves of the letters made no sense. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath and a man came up to me and asked if I was lost.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied and he asked me where I needed to go and I gave the name of the street where the cheese shop was situated.

  ‘It's very near,’ he said. ‘Come with me and I'll show you.’

  I followed him until we reached the cheese shop where he bade me goodnight.

  When I returned to the apartment it was dark and I didn't see Serge standing in a small recess in the shadows of the stairwell. I had passed him before he spoke my name.

  ‘Hello Odissa,’ he said.

  His voice was quiet and it startled me. He walked up to where I stood and put his hand out as though he were going to touch my arm, and my whole being filled with butterflies. We stood and stared at each other in the dim light.

  ‘How long have you been back?’

  ‘Since this morning. I was saying goodbye to the others. I was on my way to see you.’

  ‘Well, I'm still here, as you can see.’

  ‘Why did you run away like that?’

  ‘I didn't like what I saw.’

  Serge didn't answer. Instead he cast his eyes over my body and then he stepped closer and brushed his lips against mine. I felt his hands slip down over my stomach and my body spin round like a schoolroom globe. His hands spread out over me and he kissed my eyes closed. He was lifting my dress up and stroking my thighs.

  ‘Tell me you didn't sleep with her,’ I whispered. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Her body was soft,’ he said. ‘I kissed her mouth and her breasts,’ he said, kissing my mouth and then opening my dress and putting his mouth to my breasts. I could feel he was hard and he pressed himself against me. The child was between us and he began turning me round just like the first time. ‘I kissed her face. I ran my tongue against her skin, over her scars,’ he said, and I could feel how his hands had touched her and made love to her. He was pushing himself into me now and I saw her face in front of me and felt his hands touching my face and my whole body melting.

  Afterwards I walked past him and opened the door to my apartment. Serge stood on the landing. ‘You wanted the truth. You liked watching. You were there all the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I want to come back, Odissa.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Please?’ He spoke the words softly.

  ‘I'm very tired,’ I said, before closing the door and locking it behind me.

  I did not switch the lights on. I put my bags down on the floor and went into the bathroom. My face was burning and I splashed cold water over and over against my skin. When I had finished I came out and stood by the window in the dark. I stood slightly back so that no one could see me, and yet I could see out. Serge was across the street, leaning against a wall. He lit a cigarette. The glow from the flame illuminated his face. He did not look up at the window but stood and smoked his cigarette. At one point he walked a little way down the street, and for a moment I thought he was leaving, but then he stopped and turned around and came and leant against the wall once again. I watched him as he stood there drawing on his cigarette, running his hand through his hair, and then he threw his cigarette on the ground and very slowly got down on his knees. It was only then that he looked up at my window.

  I took one step forward. Serge did not move from where he knelt. He held his face up towards my window and the light from the street-lamp shone down touching his face and hair. I knew he could see me and I stood there and stared down at him. I remained like that for some time and then I turned away and went through to the kitchen.

  I sat down at the table and took the cheese out from my basket and began to cram the food into my mouth, pushing it in with my hands, hardly stopping to chew before I swallowed and crammed more and more in. The cheese was strong and I could feel my mouth smarting against the assault of the rich salty paste. When I had finished I wrapped the remaining crumbs back in the paper and went to put them away for later.

  My waters burst midway between the table and the fridge. I could feel warmth rinsing down between my legs and when I looked down a huge pool had formed on the dark blue tiles.

  I remember opening the door and then calling the ambulance and afterwards going to the window and looking out but the street was empty. I lay down o
n the floor of my bedroom amongst the cushions and closed my eyes. I had to count but the numbers didn't make sense and I kept losing my place as the contractions rode over me. Eventually two men arrived. They told me their names and asked if I could walk downstairs and when I said I couldn't they brought a stretcher up and made me lie down while they carried me outside to the ambulance like some giant stranded sea creature.

  I remember some of the journey to the hospital, how fast we sped through the streets, but most of all I remember the sound of the rain. I remember listening to the wheels tearing through the wet streets and the sound of the water beating down on the ambulance roof. The two men smiled uncontrollably and as they manoeuvred me from the ambulance into the hospital they stopped for an instant so that I could feel a few drops of the water on my face. The air smelt fresh and cool.

  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 wais
t. 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.