Burntcoat

by Sarah Hall

I will clean here. Then I will go back to my flat. I’m a fucking idiot.

  You bundled the sheets, held them between your fists, every muscle in your torso stark. Violence or flight; I didn’t know you in this state, didn’t know which might happen. Your face was concentrated, stony, the bruises on your temple faded to pale grey. No small dispute can prepare for the first real conflict, its size and sere.

  In another version you took up your clothes, dressed, and left, slamming the door. I did not see you again. It hangs there, the possibility, in which we are cut apart and freed and lost from each other. In that version, emptiness reaches the edge of the frame; nothing populates it. Everything is the colour of clay. My whole life is lived differently, or is not lived. But you were incapable of abandonment, of refusing kindness.

  Stop. I have it already, I said. If you do, I do.

  You shook your head and looked away.

  No, you don’t.

  Yes.

  I walked forward and took the sheets, and you let go hesitantly, as if putting a small child into the sea. I dropped them and placed my hand on your chest. You kept shaking your head, denying everything, my touch, your acquittal, the disease.

  You can’t leave. Please don’t leave.

  Then we were in each other’s arms.

  We were healthy, with no other conditions. We were young, strong. We would be OK. The assurance we gave each other after we’d stepped from the embrace was as fervent as it was false.

  Later, you called the medical phone line. There was a substantial wait, almost an hour, during which you listened to a recorded message with information about the virus, and Sibelius repeating. You paced the room, stopping in front of Jonah’s photographs, those black-and-white moments from an incidental age.

  The calcifying music suddenly stopped and an advisor took your name and details, asked what symptoms you had. She asked you to take your temperature. There was no fever. Your pulse seemed normal. You answered a series of questions.

  No, no, yes there’s someone with me, no they are not ill.

  She recited standard information, the stages of the disease, its progressive indications – nothing we didn’t know. You were like a schoolboy, listening so hard, making notes. A couple of times you asked the woman to repeat what she’d said. At the end of the call she gave you another phone number; you glanced up at me, then circled and underlined it twice.

  We sat together at the table. You made coffee. Next to the cups I put small glasses of vodka. Now we were truly a couple. Everything before seemed like an introduction, a first dance. You rubbed the back of your head, where the hair was shorter and sharp.

  Was she even a medic? I asked.

  I don’t think so.

  What else did she say?

  Just the same things. Drink a lot. They don’t want you to go to hospital.

  She said that?

  Not in those words.

  But if we need to go …

  I could already sense my failure, a feeling of being mired in old duties, with no experience. We did not talk about the odds, or the research, though we’d both been checking our phones, every new article. You caught my eye, smiled tightly.

  So, I’ll just get better, then I’ll look after you if we need to. Deal?

  Deal.

  There’s no good way to wait for disaster. Redundancy, a hurricane, surgery – the days, the hours before are already afflicted, emptied of true productivity and slippery with fear. I saw you looking at the rashes in the mirror, as if reminding yourself. A low headache began, particular, you said, intimate, like a migraine, and body heaviness like a precursor to a cold, nothing extreme. It was possible to believe the onset would be manageable. There were people – a few – who’d suffered mildly, said it was no worse than flu.

  The next morning you could not drink coffee. You pushed the cup aside.

  I’m sorry, I don’t want it.

  Do you need more sleep?

  It’s not that. The taste. Wow, first it kills your nationality.

  You smiled wanly at your joke. I nodded, but a strange predictive guilt had left me feeling withdrawn. I went down into the studio and sat doing nothing, itching in the hot light of the windows. The wolf and crane were still unfinished, their positioning obviously wrong. Timbers were stacked on pallets, leaning in architraves, and the lump of multi-armed driftwood we had hauled back from the beach seemed nothing more than tidal wrack, a sea folly. Worse – it looked viral. The discomfort of not working, of false progress, was almost equal to the pressure outside the studio. What was the point of any of it? Finally, everything would rot and collapse. This piece, anything I made, would become meaningless, unknowable as a prehistoric spiral on stone.

  As I came back upstairs, I could hear you talking on the phone, fast, formally and affectionately, to your parents. The few phrases I could understand were lost in the flow.

  Baba, evet, evet.

  When you hung up you looked relieved.

  My family.

  Are they OK?

  My sister was sick, but she’s getting better.

  That’s really good.

  Yes.

  For the first time you sounded hopeful, cautiously so. I wasn’t sure if they knew you were here, what privacies and secrets you had kept.

  Did you tell them you might be … unwell?

  No. There’s nothing they can do. My mother would worry herself to death.

  We were still impelled towards each other – a different sickness. Your body responded to mine, to its exposed skin. The nights were hot. We lay close, without covers, the window open, a semen-scented pollen drifting in.

  I feel like I’ve known you a long time.

  It is. It’s been a lot of time.

  You couldn’t help looking, at my chest, the warm, flat nipples, pale-blue veins snaking under their surface, the dark badge. You were hesitant, tired, but the driver was the same, hardening, and wouldn’t lie down. You couldn’t hide it. I reached to touch. I didn’t know any better comfort.

  You groaned, when I wrapped my hand round, began to move it. I stroked a thumb across the secreting tip, circling the skin’s arrowhead. You responded but were tense, conflicted.

  Do you think it’s OK?

  I don’t know. Why not? Yes.

  I brought my head down, started with immense care and softness, my mouth like some wet, fragile creature alighting. I wanted you to forget, tried to take you away.

  You had begun touching me, trying to reciprocate, but the receipt was too exquisite; you gave up and lay back against the pillow. You brought your hand to your face. I would have kept going until climax, which seemed not far away, but you roused abruptly, turned me onto my back, knelt between my legs and fitted yourself. You began to move. Your hands were either side of my head, your hips bucking against my thighs, determined, the buttocks squeezing, forcing the energy forward. It seemed perfect, a perfect escape, and then after a few moments it seemed wrong, and unnatural. Something about the position, or the mood, failed. The interior was less sensual, less active, walls of meat. You began moving faster, indisputably, freighted by the sense it wasn’t working. The fuck became a commitment.

  I was mute, and couldn’t tilt to an angle where anything felt right. There was a different smell to your body, in the glands, coppery, sour. It’s the sickness, I thought, altering his chemistry. I found my eyes full of tears and I arched, trying to hide the emotion with arousal, a pretence, but you sensed it, heard the strained note in my voice, saw dark, wet spots on the cotton pillowcase. You stopped, felt my cheek with a thumb and looked down at me, the flesh of your face collapsing forwards. There was unusual sweat on your brow.

  What is it?

  Nothing.

  I’m sorry.

  I put my hand on your hip, pressed the fingers into the flesh.

  Don’t stop, it’s fine.

  It’s not fine.

  You withdrew, sat back. Your chest was glazed too, and you were struggling for air. You looked ill.
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br />   It was the first time we had abandoned anything. A broken arrangement, and now I was sure everything else could break. I desperately wanted to take us back again and leant forward, tried to encourage the hardness back. I tasted myself on you, the rivery flavour. You put your hand on my head, but the feeling had gone. It softened and shrank in my mouth. You apologised again. I hated myself in that moment, the failure of seduction, being stripped of love’s means. I got up from the bed as if we’d argued, and left the bedroom. I heard you calling after me.

  Through the window were the dark roofs of the city, stars that multiplied every night as the pollution cleared, so many they became their own bright solution. A moon, cut away by fractions, always growing back. Everything was a number. The days in confinement. The hours until true sickness arrived. The percentage of survivors. Degrees of lethal hyperthermia. I thought I knew the lessons of impermanence and resilience. Naomi’s. Shun’s.

  I think I know them now, yet find no solace. Is it possible to work with a material so long and still not understand its condition? We are figures briefly drawn in space; given temporary form in exchange for consciousness, sense, a chance. We are ready-mades, disposables. How do we live every last moment as this – savant dust?

  You crossed the length of Burntcoat silently, on the feet of a predator, a ghost. The lamp went on. The living space filled with dim objects and shadows. I felt you standing behind me, your arms circling my stomach and breasts. The hold was tight, uncomfortable, not enough to keep us together were we to fall. I couldn’t see your face, only imagine who you might be.

  The door of the bathroom was open. Opposite, in the long mirror, a woman was being held out of the darkness. Her breasts were pinned and distorted, the nipples like amblyopic eyes. Her thighs shone pale and obvious, the pubic hair twisted into a damp curl as if she’d recently had intercourse. Her arms lay prone at her sides. Whoever had claimed her could see her as she viewed herself, fully exposed, like a woman on offer in a window, or marble statue in the esplanade. A ritted hole in her stomach where she had been made.

  This is not the story. This has never been the story.

  The woman was still, and then her hands reached up and back into the darkness, her pelvis tipped towards the alignment of desire. She stirred whatever was behind her, woke it to perform. Its hands moved to cup her breasts, their significant weight and shape, their erect centres. She stepped her legs apart, commanded attention. The hand went to it, two fingers working the slippery seam, burying into the passageway, bringing moisture to the hood. She watched the pleasure, liked what she saw, her own intoxication.

  She bent forward, and a lover was partially revealed, dressed in shadows, unidentified. She pushed back, found the fix. Her hips were held. She was jolted forward, once, twice, again and again filled and emptied and filled. Her flesh shook and her breasts swung. She looked up through a veil of hair as the darkness slapped against her.

  The woman in the mirror watched me too. My lover’s head was tipping back, exactly the same – its mouth a dark orifice – then falling forward, and righting. We watched each other, copied each other, patrons of the same club. When one of us screamed, the noise that came from the twin’s mouth was primal and victorious. Behind us, released from burden, our partners spilled hotly over our backs, jerking the last of it out with gripped hands.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. I sat beside you in bed and stroked your hair. I was sore and wired and had passed the point of any comfort. You’d made tea from the sage in the yard, the soft green ears torn up and sinking in the mugs, as you used to make from the plants on the hillside near Yeniköy. Your mother’s cure, a remedy for all sick and aggravated states. The taste was earthy, almost perspirant. You’d taken a few sips then lain down, and were sleeping curled on your side. You looked pale in the dawn light, the sheets rumpled around you. An oyster in its shell. The cuts on your back were dry and sealed.

  Even before symptoms truly arrived, there seemed to be profound change, in the way you moved, or sat – against the wall, staring down, your eyes dumbly asking for something that couldn’t be given. The process of illness is also the dissolution of the self. This time there was no instant switch, no click of the fingers as the brain spat its mess. Instead, a week of increasing debility. Your breathing became more difficult, took extra energy, even at rest. It was as if your cavities had been filled with stone aggregate, the way Sean ballasted interior structures. You were so heavy. I helped you between rooms; you had to sit halfway, like an old man. We knew about the cerebral effect – a strange fog, an inability to concentrate. At worst, it was like encephalitis. You rambled, wanted to tell me things, about your family, about hitchhiking in the south, but the stories were muddled, the point of interest was forgotten.

  He is my oldest friend – but I don’t remember his name. What is his name?

  Cem?

  Cem!

  It was nearing midsummer. I was wearing shorts and a vest, but even under several covers you were wracked by chills. I lit the stove. It made no difference. The aches seemed intolerable, marrow-deep, and your spine was a belt of nerves conveying discomfort throughout your body. You’d told me about the illnesses you’d had as a child – asthma, the collapsing lung, giardiasis – this was like nothing else. I’d seen frightening things, my mother’s stapled skull; I thought, I can tend to him, manage, it will be a form of intimacy. We had accelerated through a lifetime’s relationship and now there would be the carer’s duty.

  When you were too weak to get up I helped you piss into a container, emptied it. I brought you small dishes, mashed fruit, broth, things I thought you could tolerate. You were nauseous, couldn’t eat, and didn’t want water.

  You’ve got to drink. Remember what she told us.

  But you groaned and rolled away; lay your head back down like a slab against the pillow.

  The odour of an unwashed body, of disease – that same tang I’d first smelled, but gathering, ripening. You’d always taken such care, washing. I began to hate the sound of my own voice, its unreplied repetitions.

  Here’s some water. I’ve brought you fresh water. Would you like water?

  Your lips were drying and flaking and the weight was falling off. I began to panic, used more force, hauling you up against the bedstead.

  OK, come on, we’re going to try to get something in.

  I left you there, listing to the side, and went to fetch a glass of orange juice. You lifted a hand when I brought it close, weakly fending it away.

  Halit, you have to. Please. Try.

  There was a minute of childish opposition, a tightly closed mouth, distressed sounds. Then you relented, took the glass, spilling it as you lifted it to your mouth and drank half, forcing it down your throat.

  OK, that’s really good.

  You sat still, breathing erratically, and after a few seconds retched. You pushed me away and vomited over the bed, a lurid orange mess, more than could possibly have gone into your stomach. The violence of your body’s rejection gave you some strength. You staggered up and made it to the bathroom, closing the door halfway behind you. I could hear what was happening, the water in the bowl splattering every few seconds, then hollow sounds.

  When it seemed the bout had passed, I knocked on the door and pushed it open. You were on your knees, gripping the toilet, your body shaking. I could see every rib. You made an attempt to get up, failed and slumped to the side. I came to you, put a hand on your back. You were shivering and sweating. There was a rotten silage smell. I wasn’t sure what to do. I ran to the cupboard and got a blanket, covered you.

  Are you OK?

  The question was stupid.

  I have to sort out the bed. I’ll be as fast as I can. OK? OK? I’ll be back in a minute.

  I left you quaking on the floor, went out and balled up the bedding. The smell of the vomit made me gag; it contained something noxious. I stripped off the layers; everything had soaked down. Quickly I sponged the mattress, towelled it, put on a new sheet. T
here was a bucket in the studio with hardened resin inside; I left it by the bed and went back to the bathroom.

  Beside your head on the tiles was a small colourless patch of vomit, umbilical saliva attaching it to your mouth. And another smell, manure-like, faecal. There was a soiled patch on the back of your shorts. You looked unconscious, despite the whimpers at the end of each breath. A streak of reddish vomit was on the cistern where you’d tried to reach for the flush.

  I stood staring down, as if at a destitute in the street or an animal destroyed on the road. Just go to him, I told myself. I crouched down, lifted your head a fraction. Your eyes opened, lost focus, closed again. I knew I should be acting like a softer authority, crooning words, reassuring you. I moved the blanket. Sweat was rolling from under your arms and down your chest, collecting on the tiles.

  Halit. Can you wake up? Halit!

  Your eyes opened, swam, then focused.

  Uyuyor muydum?

  It’s Edith.

  Was I sleeping?

  Your voice was hoarse, burnt by the expulsions.

  You passed out. We have to wash you. We have to get you cleaned.

  Somehow we moved, crawling and lumbering to the bath, and I hauled you in. Your skin was hot. Your beard matted.

  Lift. Lift up.