El Vergonzoso

When I got back from the bathroom she was already in the tiny bed up to her chin. Reluctantly she made room for me. I held her for a while then started moving my hands around. She mumbled something and turned her back to me. I said,

“What?”

“It doesn't feel right“, she said, over her shoulder, angry for repeating herself. I studied the back of her head. Sleep came, must have come.

That evening, on the terrace, in her black t-shirt, leaning on the balcony wall, humming to the skin-warm dusk, she looked as comfortable as I had ever seen her. We watched swifts or swallows or whatever they were fly around the large inner court of the building, making right-angle turns in disregard of momentum, the virtuosi. When my chest began to ache I realised I had been holding my breath.

We went with her flatmate, a small American, to a bar. C's mood seemed light, they talked happily. It was too loud for me to hear everything they said, so I found myself looking around the dim blue room. Illumination came from projections on the walls of explicit porno. The people standing at the edges of the room had intermittent erections and penetrations appear on them. Bass was making the projector jigger and the images twitch.

I started saying, “No, he – “ but suddenly I was going to faint and be sick and could barely stand up. I went to the toilet unsteadily, hands out in front. In there I gripped the basin, preparing for convulsions. My forehead was caved in with heat. I stood panting for a while. Then I came back out, through a crowd that was now under water and said that I had to go. I remember the American girl's confused sympathy. I heard C apologising.

Outside she looked at me and said, ‘You really are green'. We walked, in near silence, through the wet black streets, empty except for orange blossom all over the pavement.

I slept on a kind of catafalque beside her bed and dreamt of a time, far away in which I was present, a real body. Then I was just a severed head, hanging in the cathedral. I vomited up sweetmeats for children. I woke up talking.

Another day, maybe the next, we were walking through a square together. I noticed that the windows of the tenement I was facing were bright white. There were no curtains but I could not see lamps inside. I changed my position. Nor could I see ceilings from which lamps might hang. After moving again I realised slowly that the light was hard day light. There was no building behind the façade, it was only a silhouette held up with scaffolding. One looked straight through the windows to the sky beyond. It's only out to trick you, I thought, this photogenic purgatory.

A little later I was in the kitchen, examining a rupture in the linoleum surface, wishing I was angry. There was a chair pulled up against the cupboards. Suddenly I had a conviction and could see my argument. I kicked the chair. It flew across the room and clattered heavily. Immediately C came in from the terrace. “I'm going out,” I said, my voice wobbling, “I can't look at you.” Her big eye lashes sunk. I felt like I had punched her. And I had meant the opposite of what I'd said.

A bus came and I boarded it. It took me out of the centre and followed the coast through low suburbs and development areas of half-built hotels.

I got off and walked into the gravely countryside. I sat down in a field in the evening sun. I stayed there until night came. It was cold and to get warm, to keep myself occupied, I wandered around the fields. My feet became soaked with dew and the – no, there's no need for these details. Besides, they're not mine. The next day, having waited for what seemed a lifetime, I started back to the city.

I headed to C's flat. I knew it was number 62 and the name on the buzzer was her flatmate's, I just had to look for an Anglo-Saxon name. The numbers went up the street even on one side, odd on the other. I went past 54, then 56, 56a, 56b, 58, crossed the road and – 2. I searched my pockets hoping to find a piece of paper with an address or phone number. Nothing. I checked the numbers on the corners. I even walked a few streets north and south, looking for other 62s and for American names on the panels by the doors. I was both convinced … and incredulous. I went into a tobacconist's and asked. He looked at me apprehensively then replied in rasping dialect, he didn't know. I strained at my memory, trying to picture the route we had taken from the metro station. Was it even the right station? I must have been too upset and self-absorbed to notice. Now I was utterly baffled. I went to one of the wide boulevards and sat on a bench by some old men. Had something been changed? Certainly something had changed. I began to wonder if this was the right city. I checked my pockets again. No papers and – my heart slipped – no passport. I had left everything in the apartment when I fled. I thought of the grises . Mopeds whirred airily. I couldn't work out if she had done this to me or if I had done it on my own. Sunlight tinkered with the sound of the green leaves. Panic turned gradually to defeat. Birds sang.

 

 

By Matthew MacKisack

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