The Adulterants

by Joe Dunthorne

  Garthene stepped from the staff exit, held the railing and started down the stairs just as I crossed the hospital car park, my forehead sticky with sweat and smoke. We hugged on the steps then kissed hard, the first real-feeling kiss in some time.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Your hand.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Let’s see.”

  I hoped we’d never again be polysyllabic. She held me at the wrist and I was fully expecting her to waft away the wound but instead she said “Hold on” and went back inside. She came out with a disinfectant wipe and a large, professional gauze, cleaned the wound, then sealed it. Whatever we had needed to tell each other was irrelevant now. We had transcended language.

  I had the key out before we got to our block. There was a knack to the main door and sometimes it took a couple of goes but not today. On the top landing, she pushed her bump against me. I could feel my pulse in my wounded right hand as I pressed it to her crotch. The smell of burning cars as we stepped inside the flat.

  We stayed in the kitchen-lounge, ignoring Lee’s belongings on every surface, ignoring our own bed. She kicked off her work shoes and pushed down her drawstring trousers and knickers all in one. A joyful lack of romantic formality. I did not remove my shirt, button by button, but took it off over my head like a T-shirt. I let my shorts fall. I had to pull the waistband of my boxer briefs up and over my penis in order to take them off. I had taken a long bath that morning, so my genitals were startlingly clean. You could eat your dinner off them. It was broadly canoe-shaped, my penis, widest in the middle, tapered ends. Garthene was naked from the waist down, which is even more naked than someone without clothes. She sat on the edge of the table, on the block print tablecloth, and I knelt. We could hear our phones ringing in our trouser pockets on the floor, and it helped to think of our parents fearing us dead. With my knees on the floorboards, I could feel the phones’ vibrations pass pleasurably up through my legs and into my deep balls, my mother’s worry alive inside me.

  We didn’t say a word to each other. She pulled her tunic over her head. I know it’s uncool to find large breasts mesmerizing but sometimes you have to raise your hand and admit to being ruled by prehistoric instincts. I put my mouth between her legs, my vision completely filled by her bump. I could not see Garthene at all, had no idea of her facial expression, but I trusted that she was happy, relieved to finally work through my guilt. My view was pure womb, rising smooth and taut from her pubis, the strange dark line underneath the skin, her skin warm against my face, the red nipple of her outed belly button. I did not rush to the clitoris. There is more to life than the cold pursuit of measurable status markers.

  She pulled me up to standing. I should say that neither Garthene nor I enjoyed being sexually experimental or degrading one another. People who pride themselves on having no boundaries always think those who choose not to tongue each other’s arseholes and repurpose domestic objects are conforming to societal pressure. I think they are the orthodoxy—with their stamina rings, their mouths zippered shut—while it is couples like Garthene and me with bold, equipment-free intimacies who are brave, daring to look one another in the eye.

  We got going and it was obscenely pleasurable. The best sex of our marriage during the worst civil disobedience in a generation. We hadn’t made love in a while so I found it necessary to tug down my balls, a method from the internet. She held me at the hips and yanked me in toward her, again and again, either fucking something into me or out of herself, hard to tell. The sound of our phones receiving voicemails and texts and calls, the pulse of our parents’ terror. Mild pain in the palm of my hand. Family vehicles steadily aflame in the streets below.

  And when I came I made a strange, choking noise. Garthene gripped my sides and ground herself against me and she came too. The only 100 percent effective contraception is to have a baby up there already. We stayed like that until my penis shrank and slipped out, guiltily, in a hood. I leaned forward over her bump and we kissed and kissed and she was able to continue breathing. All was forgiven. We were in love again, her eyes a little damp, her sinuses clear.

  “You smell that?” I said.

  “The burning?”

  “The burning.”

  “I do.”

  PART TWO

  TELEPHONES RANG IN OUR DREAMS.

  When we woke the next morning, I had five missed calls from my father. I rang him from bed.

  “You okay, Dad?”

  “Pack your bags.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “The police are expecting more trouble this evening.”

  “We haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

  “It’s not safe for you two in that place.”

  That place was London.

  He insisted on paying for us to get a black cab all the way to Lowestoft.

  The moment we pulled up at their house, he emerged from the front door holding his wallet raised high in his hand. He licked his thumb, licked it more wetly than was necessary, before counting out the crisp twenties and passing them through the driver’s window.

  “I don’t need change,” he said, shaking the man’s hand, enjoying the atmosphere of wartime camaraderie.

  My mother came out to the front step, her arms wide for a hug.

  “You’re home now,” she said. “Nothing bad ever happens in Lowestoft! Now come inside and meet our guests.”

  My parents’ house was a five-bedroom converted windmill overlooking the stony beach. They moved here after I left for university. The ceilings were so low that I had to crouch in the doorways and duck between the beams while my father—who had begun to shrink—could glide around untouched. There was a sense they had deliberately bought a house with these dimensions so that I would never move back home.

  Now that they had no responsibilities, they filled their lives with new interests. My father played the viol. Most weekends he practiced courtly waltzes with his early-music quintet. My mother painted. She painted skyscapes with her fingers, smearing the oils on thick, occasionally using a palette knife, never a brush. She was fearsomely productive. Rows of grim cloud banks stood drying in the garage.

  A South Korean family had been staying with my parents for the last two days. The daughter, who was twelve, was a world-renowned solo violinist performing in my father’s church as part of the Suffolk Festival. My parents enjoyed having performers to stay, took pleasure in their eccentricities—the poet who had sleep-climbed out through the skylight; the jolly, alcoholic Polish brass band who woke the nearest neighbors (half a mile away) with a fabulously woozy rendition of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. My parents always told these anecdotes to new guests and said: “So you’ve got a lot to live up to!”

  We all sat around the big table in the conservatory. My mother brought out an antipasti platter. She was wearing an embroidered kaftan and a wooden necklace. She also had a male-nipple-sized lump of livid pink scar tissue at the top of her chest from where the surgeon had clumsily removed a young tumor. I mention this only because she liked to make a feature of it, the scar, so had arranged her collar and necklace to frame the damage. I like to make a feature of it was one of her things to say.

  “This is Seo-yun,” she said, signaling to the mother of the South Korean family, enunciating her name with elaborate clarity. “She speaks wonderful English. And this is Ha-joon. And this is their daughter, Ji-yoo, though she also likes to use her Western name, June.”

  “Nice to meet you all,” I said. “I’m Ray.”

  They each said my name in turn.

  “And I’m Garthene.”

  They didn’t seem to find Garthene a weird or difficult name, which was refreshing.

  “Even British people struggle to say Garthene!” my mother said, though this was not true, and it was just her who struggled, and not because she couldn’t say it, rather that she just didn’t like to say it. She preferred beautiful things, m
y mother—abstract sculpture, bowls of unusual stones—and had not yet found a way to say Garthene’s name or even a shortened version of it—Garth, Gar, Gee—without using a cheerful or musical tone, as though trying to inject grace into something repellent. For a while, she even tried calling Garthene “Jean” but gave up because it was clearly just a different name.

  “Garthene is a nurse,” my mother said.

  Whenever my mother introduces Garthene to someone, she immediately tells them she’s a nurse, as though to make up for the fact that her name is Garthene.

  “A nurse,” Seo-yun said, then she translated for her daughter and husband and they both looked at Garthene and made appreciative noises, then he asked a question.

  “He would like to know your specialism,” Seo-yun said.

  “I’m in ICU. The intensive care unit.”

  “That’s the really bad one,” my mother said, leaning in.

  “All the nasties,” my father said.

  “Pneumonia,” my mother said.

  “Hemorrhage,” my father said. He stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth, tilted his head, and closed his eyes to signify a sudden, lethal brain injury. The Korean family laughed. Even though I often enjoyed telling people about Garthene’s job, about her proximity to death, I didn’t like to see my parents doing it.

  “It’s not that bad,” Garthene said.

  “It really isn’t,” I said. “Fewer people die than you’d think.”

  Seo-yun nodded but didn’t translate for her family.

  From the conservatory, there was a view straight out to sea, where it was starting to rain. To us Londoners, the dark clouds seemed exotic. Herring gulls were circling and, occasionally, tucking in their wings and plummeting from the sky.

  “And what is your job, Ray?”

  “Ray’s an internet journalist,” my mother said.

  “He’s a reviewer,” Garthene said. “A critic.”

  It was great to hear my wife stick up for me.

  “Oh.” Seo-yun told Ha-joon and June. They widened their eyes and nodded.

  “What is your specialism?” Seo-yun asked.

  “Phones,” my mother said.

  “The future,” Garthene said.

  “The future!” my mother said, and she laughed, just at the thought of it.

  The Korean family laughed too, but only out of politeness.

  We talked some more. We learned that June was on a three-month world tour. This was her last stop in Europe before they headed to Toronto, Vancouver, then down the West Coast. Her father did the accounts, bookings, visas. Her mother was in charge of June’s homeschooling and could accompany her a little on the piano.

  “But I am not a talented musician,” she said. “I am useless. I don’t know where she got it from.”

  Then we all looked at June, who wore glasses, and had very white teeth, and slender pale fingers with which she was struggling to use the fork to spear a sun-dried tomato, this girl whose dexterity had won her a scholarship to the Yehudi Menuhin School. She looked up to find us all staring at her, amazed and scared of her talent, her youth, and she turned to her mother for an explanation, which she gave her, in two short sentences, after which the daughter smiled, blushed and looked down at her plate.

  We went up to our room. It was a room we’d never slept in before. The third spare room. The idea that my parents had rooms I’d hardly seen, let alone spent the night in, was disturbing. We watched the sea from the window. The waves were always noisy here, raking up the stones and throwing them down, sounding like a chip tray sinking into hot oil.

  We heard the young violinist practicing. It came up through the floor. She was playing something slow and sweeping, but with occasional ripples of eloquent quick notes. Her music displayed an emotional intelligence, an honesty of expression, that put into shameful context our small talk around the dining table.

  Garthene and I sat on the bed to listen.

  “Classical music’s good for the baby,” I said.

  I put my hand on her bump. She put her hand on top of mine.

  “What if our child is incredibly talented?” she said.

  “It seems unlikely.”

  “But what if? Such a responsibility.”

  “I know,” I said. “Up at the swimming pool, six in the morning.”

  “Standing beside the tennis court, hands raw from clapping, six days a week. For decades.”

  “All the equipment. A Stradivarius.”

  June’s violin was not even a Stradivarius and still it was insured for one and a half million dollars. My father had whispered the figure to us when he showed us to our room. “Her violin is worth more than this house,” he’d said, “and she carries it around in a soft case—terrifying!” People who have loads of money love to talk about people who have even more, in order to try on the costume of poverty.

  “At least our child will dedicate their greatest work to us, later on,” Garthene said.

  “When they accept an award?”

  “Yeah. Or win a grand slam.”

  “Most of all I want to thank my parents.” I leaned down and spoke to the bump. “Without them I would never be where I am now.”

  “They gave up so much for me to thrive.”

  “They abandoned their lives. They lost everything.” I was still talking to our unborn child.

  “Everything?”

  “Everything.”

  We looked at each other.

  Through the floorboards there came the sound of a gorgeous extended tremolo, the note high and true.

  That evening, we watched the news. A presenter stood at the end of our street. We had forgotten completely about our burning city.

  “There’s our flat,” Garthene said.

  Seo-yun looked at Garthene but seemed not to have understood. Or perhaps had understood, but didn’t believe it. The screen showed images of cars on fire. It showed footage of those boys trying to steal the flat-screen from the estate agent’s. I was presumably just out of frame.

  “This isn’t a very good advert for our country,” my father said, and he changed the channel.

  There were more burning vehicles on both ITV and Channel 4. There was a topical news quiz on BBC Two. There was a Hollywood film starring Cate Blanchett on Channel 5. He turned off the TV.

  The violin was on the table between us, in its soft case.

  My dad stared at it.

  “It’s a wonderful instrument,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Seo-yun said.

  “Seo-yun was telling us about the wolf note,” my mother said.

  Seo-yun smiled.

  “A wolf note is one note on a violin that makes a kind of howling sound,” my mother said.

  “Ow-wow-wow-wow-wow,” my dad said, and everyone laughed.

  “Which note is it again?”

  Seo-yun asked June, who replied.

  “It’s a G-sharp,” Seo-yun said.

  My father turned to us. “Some musicians try to avoid violins that have wolf notes, but June says she prefers it this way. She says that a strong wolf gives the rest of the instrument a clarity of tone.” He then put on a Shakespearean voice. “One note suffers so the rest can stay pure.”

  “Though sometimes she puts a special device on the violin to neutralize the wolf!” my mother said.

  “Just the language of it,” my father said.

  “Wonderful,” my mother said.

  “What’s the note called in Korean?” my father said.

  “We just call it the broken note.”

  “Oh, okay,” my father said. “Still.”

  Later, Garthene and I were in bed in the third spare room. The bed was actually two single mattresses covered with a king sheet. It wasn’t possible to cuddle without one person having the feeling that they were falling down into a sinkhole.

  “We’re going to be great parents,” I said.

  “I hope so.”

  “I kind of hate my job anyway,” I said, “so I’d be happy to ha
ve our child completely fill my otherwise empty life.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “I’m willing to throw my career on the bonfire of our child’s extraordinary talent.”

  We each put a hand on her belly. The baby shifted its exceptional hips.

  “Percussionist,” she said.

  “Judo master.”

  We lay there.

  “Would you really give up everything?” she said.

  I wanted to give her the right answer.

  “Of course,” I said.

  She looked up at the ceiling. I watched her face for clues.

  “Was that the right answer?” I said.

  “I actually don’t know,” she said.

  The next day, before we returned home, we went to June’s concert. My father stood at the front of the church and introduced her.

  “With everything that is going on in our country, it is a wonderful privilege to turn our attention to gentler things. We have with us today a young woman who, at twelve years old, is already one of the world’s great players. She is not only technically immaculate, but offers emotional insight rarely heard in players three times her age. Please welcome to the stage Pak Ji-yoo.”

  We had to sit in the front row. The pews were uncomfortable, particularly for Garthene. Every time she shifted her body the wood made a sad mewing noise.

  June began with a very fast, very impressive piece by Paganini. Her posture was incredible. Her hand seemed like a separate animal, like a time-lapse video of a spider preparing its web. Her parents sat next to us and their gaze never once dropped from their daughter’s kind face. Next she played a slow, mournful one. She swayed a little, completely lost to the music. This was a girl who, as far as I knew, had no actual life experience. She’d presumably never fallen in love or had sex or had her heart broken or seen someone die or been punched in the face. And yet she seemed to truly comprehend melancholy. She comprehended it in more depth than I did. And my city was burning. That wasn’t even a metaphor. My life was in actual flames. And still I couldn’t find the music moving.

  The wooden pew beneath me groaned and I looked across to see Garthene’s eyes were wet. It was bad of me to think that her extra emotional sensitivity was due only to surging hormones. But I did think that. Under normal circumstances, I thought, she and I would be unified in our emotional deadness.