Paradise Rot Page 4

  ‘Have you been home long?’

  ‘All afternoon. Didn’t you hear me before?’

  ‘You were home? No, I didn’t hear,’ she said slowly, without looking up.

  But I could hear her every move as the night settled in, and when we sat on the mezzanine again, I stared at her yellow sweater, trying to see a hint of nipple under the tight-knit wool fabric. There was nothing. Above us the light bulbs swung back and forth, like little golden eggs.

  The Moonlip

  IN THE COMING DAYS I brought more and more things to the apartment: library books and pens, clothes and pillows, tea bags and tinned beans. At the same time the wind was picking up in Aybourne; it dragged seaweed clusters and sand into the town centre, moved benches along the beach walk and bent grass and autumn flowers in the university’s botanical garden to a smooth fur. When I staggered to the tram stop, the silo pipes behind me howled. Shattered windows glared out over the street like the gigantic closed eyes of a sphinx.

  The wind doubled my commute into town, and when I finally reached the Earth Sciences building the door to the lecture hall was closed. On the door was a small noticeboard where an old drawing was pinned, a caricature of a professor with thick bushy hair chasing a group of small, terrified students. Below the drawing it said in printed letters:

  The world of the living is a hierarchy, where each level in the biological chain feeds off of the level below.

  I carefully opened the door and snuck into the auditorium.

  Today’s lecture was about reproduction. Dr Spencer Lipman, whose nickname was Spitlip, enunciated every word slowly and clearly, and every time his lips contracted and split apart again to make a p or a b, he shot tiny spit pearls from his mouth. After a while white froth formed at the corner of his lips. I wiped my own mouth and had to look away, forced to look down in the notebook in front of me. In it I had just written,

  Fungi have varied methods of reproduction. They produce and spread huge amounts of spores. When conditions are right, the population can double in a very short time.

  I couldn’t help but think about the spit-bubbles on Lipman’s mouth, this population of tiny drops spreading like little wet seeds across the auditorium. On my hand a little watery bead blinked.

  The same night I found Carral sleeping on the sofa again, silent and soft, barely breathing. She was in the same position as yesterday. Her neck had sunk into her shoulders, her whole body seemed to have collapsed into itself, her head bobbing loosely on top. Her hair lay curled along the banister. Some of her locks twirled around the railings. Outside, the streets glistened with rain, and further off the last remnants of dusk were tipped into the sea, or maybe they were just clouds.

  The novel I’d seen her read lay open next to one of her sleeping hands. I bent over Carral and studied her face: it was tender and still, not an eyelid moved. When I had reassured myself she was asleep, I took the book. On the back there was a library stamp, and on the inside of the cover was a little envelope with a library card inside. A sticky stain ran along the fore edge. On the front, one side of the cover was torn, while the other showed a pair of full lips, a pack of wolves with their snouts in the air, and a huge, shining full moon at the top of the picture. The title was positioned between the wolves and the moon in slanted script: Moon Lips.

  I leafed through the pages: title page, copyright, contents … The introduction began,

  This isn’t just any romance in your hands, dear reader …

  And then the first chapter:

  Miranda Darling’s lips were full and succulent, the envy of her friends and torment of her frustrated suitors. By day, you might think her mouth like a cherry, and by night, when she graced the balcony to sip a tall glass of Campari, the gloss on her lips rivalled the moonlight.

  I turned the pages for a little while. Moon Lips seemed to be typical pulp. I wasn’t very interested in Miranda Darling or the handsome hero, chasing one another breathlessly through the chapters. While I leafed, I lost my grip, and the book fell open on a much-read page:

  He walked slowly towards the old woman in the crowd, knowing that her glaring eyes could see right through his clothes, to his proud limb … She laughed and said, ‘You’re well-endowed, man-human.’

  After that paragraph I turned the pages more slowly. The paper quality changed, thickened almost, as if the pages had been soaked and dried again. Slowly the scene was set for what I guessed was an ancient sex ritual, and I understood that this was where the hero took innocent Miranda’s virginity:

  The three other women gathered behind him, stroked his back and howled like wild animals. Miranda was under him and felt his erection pulse against her opening. She wanted him now. He broke through the soft hymen and thrust his fleshy sword into her tight warm sheath.

  I blushed and something unfolded inside me. I couldn’t help but picture, no, feel, the hero’s huge cock inside my own shamefully untouched body. I looked at Carral. She seemed to be asleep in the exact same position, and I turned back to the book. The sex scene continued in moans and accelerating thrusts. In the middle of all this, a line or two before the hero’s climax, a sentence was abruptly interrupted by a shapeless stain. It wasn’t dark and made the type illegible. I put my finger on the stain: bone dry and naked, timeless. A muscle in Carral’s wrist pulsated, and suddenly it was as if I could feel that same pulse in the stain, in my finger, in my crotch.

  The book fell to the floor with a bang while I hurried down the stairs and up to my own mezzanine, undressed and turned the light off. In the dark the house was so quiet I hardly dared to breathe, and when I put my hand into my pants, as if to grab and keep ahold of myself, I was terrified that Carral could hear what I was doing, that, through the plasterboard, she might discern the sound of underwear fabric among the soft rustling of the sheets. Under the covers, I could still feel my pulse in my fingertip, in my hip, beating against my pelvis, and I lay awake. A noise above me made me think of a bird landing and settling in for the night. It would have to be a big bird, maybe a swan, scraping its heavy bird-feet against the metal plates up there. I imagined that it shook its wings and preened its feathers with its beak, and when I fell asleep I dreamed that the long swan neck stretched down past the metal roofing and all the way to me, and that it put its big swan head under my arm, as if I was a wing.

  The Spores

  THE INSIDE OF THE Earth Sciences building was rounded and painted in earthy colours. The wooden walls in the auditorium curved upwards into a vaulted ceiling. All the chairs, window frames, and desks were variations of green and brown. The inside of the building looked like a well-kept nature reserve. I sat at the back to avoid Dr Spitlip, but today another lecturer had taken his place. He droned on about the development of local spider species. I struggled to pay attention, and in between digressions and slides of fossils, I discreetly read Introductory Mycology:

  In some kinds of fungi (Rhizophydium) fusion between spores leads to transferral of one parent’s genes to the other.

  I thought about the stain in Moon Lips. It had made the writing illegible and left the page coarse and hard against my fingers.

  Later, in the factory, I sat on the mezzanine bent over two small jam jars and tried to occupy myself with local species of spiders and insects. In one jar I had trapped a little white spider I had found on the windowsill, and in the other a reddish-brown earwig picked out of a shrivelled Bloody Ploughman in the compost. The earwig pushed against the glass wall with its scissorarms, cut the air and rocked backwards, only to try again another place. The spider didn’t move.

  The wind outside pushed hard against the walls of the factory with a constant pressure, making the joists creak and complain. Behind me I heard Carral leave the bathroom, unbutton the suit she wore at the office and pull her sweater over her head. I looked around and saw her face disappear into the black fabric. Underneath she wore a short vest that nearly reached her tights, and between them her belly showed, like a porcelain enamel plate. I turned back t
o my jam jars.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Looking at insects,’ I mumbled in reply.

  Softer fibres sounded against skin. When she came up on the mezzanine she was wearing tight white tracksuit bottoms and holding a paper bag in her hand.

  ‘We’re going out with work tonight. Come with if you like. They’re nice people. Some are pretty young too.’

  ‘But isn’t that just for your workmates?’

  ‘No no, it’s totally casual. And I’ve told them about you. They’d love to meet the young Norwegian.’

  I could feel her eyes on me and concentrated on not looking up from the earwig’s jar.

  ‘I hope you told them nice things.’

  Carral sniggered. ‘Just that you’re Norwegian and good with rotten fruit. Come on, join us. You’ll have to get out and get to know people sometime.’ She pulled out her novel and noticed my jars. ‘You’re doing homework?’

  ‘I’m preparing a lab session, yeah.’

  ‘Are they from the house?’

  ‘I found one in the window and the other in the compost.’

  ‘And how is the compost?’

  Her shoulders shuddered slightly.

  ‘The apples are still there.’

  Carral nodded and opened Moon Lips, put her hand in the paper bag.

  ‘Do you want some muff?’ she asked and fished out a chocolate muffin. Without waiting for a reply she broke it in half and gave me a piece.

  ‘Muff?’ I asked. ‘No thank you. It’s muffin though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sure. But we call it muff. Have some, come on, I can’t sit and munch cake on my own.’

  I took a bit of cake. Carral’s fingers had left deep hollows on both sides.

  ‘Do you know what muff means by the way?’ She giggled while chewing the other piece. I shook my head, and she continued:

  ‘It’s slang for vulva. I don’t know why. Maybe some people think they look like labia …’

  Half the cake was still in my hand. I could see the muscles in her jaw moving up and down while she chewed and swallowed. Her toes pattered on the pillows in front of her. In one of the jam jars the small solitary spider had begun to rock, white and tender like a cameo brooch, a miniature Carral.

  Later she turned on the TV. From behind the jars I saw the blurry images of a body, and when I looked up, I saw a muscular redheaded man on the screen.

  ‘Do you watch this series?’ Carral asked and stuck out her index finger.

  ‘What series is it?’

  ‘Charmed. Maybe they don’t show it in Norway? Three witch sisters …’

  ‘Yeah they do, I don’t watch it though.’

  ‘I know, it’s trash. I like the witch stuff though. You should know the kind of stuff I read.’

  I looked down. Carral continued:

  ‘And that guy’s really hot.’

  The man appeared on the screen again, this time with a woman. She was showing a lot of cleavage and had big inflated lips.

  ‘He kind of looks like Pym,’ Carral said. ‘Weird, I hadn’t thought of that before!’

  ‘Pym? Who’s that?’

  ‘Oh, he’s our neighbour.’

  ‘Pym,’ I said. ‘What a strange name.’

  ‘It’s a nickname. I think it’s actually his last name. Anyway, you’ll meet him soon enough,’ she said and took another bite of cake while staring at the TV.

  Above our heads, at the bar of the Sealion, a happy hour sign blinked in garish pink. I stood among necktie-knots and hairpins that were gradually giving up their hold.

  ‘This is Jo, she’s the new girl in my flat,’ Carral said to the others, smiling with her nose high. ‘She’s so young, so young, little Jo, only twenty, young and innocent.’ I was about to protest, but Carral just kept talking about me, like you’d describe an old photo of yourself: young and serious, fearless and faded, a frozen moment long past.

  ‘How are you finding the brewery?’ Carral’s manager asked me, over the blaring music. He was older than everyone else, maybe forty, and wore a suit. I felt his heavy breath and the warmth from his skin against my cheek. He’s a real jerk, and pretty desperate too, Carral had whispered in my ear. I pulled away a little.

  ‘The brewery?’

  ‘Yeah, the building you live in is an old brewery,’ he said, and added, ‘at least that’s what Carral says.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I answered and looked over to Carral. She’d turned to face a tall, gangly boy.

  ‘The whole Hawthorn district was abandoned for years,’ the manager said. ‘Until they realised they could renovate the old factories as apartments. That was just a few years ago. Some are pretty nice too. Not for me, of course. I like new-builds. And fresh meat.’

  He leant closer again.

  ‘Andrew’s sister’s in your class,’ Carral said and then turned to the tall boy. ‘What’s her name again?’

  ‘Anna,’ Andrew replied. ‘Do you know her?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Isn’t she the pregnant one?’ Carral said.

  ‘Yup. Watch out for biology, little Jo,’ he said with a nod.

  Carral and Andrew laughed.

  ‘Look at my lips.’ Carral lifted her head and stuck out her neck as she pointed at them. They had swollen and when she spoke, they barely moved in time with her jaw and tongue. Andrew prodded them.

  ‘Do they have to be woken up?’ he asked with a wide grin.

  ‘They’re just wasted,’ Carral answered, ‘sloshed,’ and they both laughed loudly.

  ‘You’re not like the other girls,’ the manager said.

  ‘Really?’

  His eyes were red. They squinted and studied my face. Again I moved back a bit.

  ‘You’re not like the girls in the office, or the girls you meet clubbing,’ he said. ‘You’re not … like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like … skirts and high heels … Your hair … it’s short … You’re wearing trousers … So serious …’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And your face … cheekbones … They’re different … Is everyone in Norway so serious?’

  His face split in half, his eyes still on me while his lips stretched down for the straw in the drink he held in his hand. His lips covered the straw like a horse’s, tightened and sucked.

  ‘Serious, I don’t know …’

  ‘And your English is so fucking great. Serious and clever —’

  ‘Everyone’s taught English at school in Norway.’

  I didn’t enjoy this conversation, how it focussed only on burrowing deeper inside of me. I felt translucent. Could you tell just by looking if someone is a virgin? I looked around the room to find Carral. She was drinking fizzy wine by the pool table and laughing every time Andrew spoke. Her lips were really swollen, and I couldn’t help but think about Miranda Darling’s lips,

  full and succulent, the envy of her friends …

  As she took aim, the yellow curls in her ponytail fell over her shoulder to rest below her ear. Andrew bent over her from behind, thrusted the cue, and for a moment she looked up, straight at me. A paragraph from Moon Lips came to mind:

  He bent over her from behind and parted her legs. She supported herself on the basin and moaned as he teased her underwear down and undid his trousers …

  I could feel my palms getting sweaty, and rubbed my hands against the rough denim on my trousers. The Moon Lips stain throbbed in my fingertips. I was surrounded by sex. The scent of salty bodily fluids flooded the room. The manager had followed me down the bar, and mumbled in my ear:

  ‘I like girls like you, your type, you know … lesbians.’ He poked a finger deep into my arm. ‘Tell me … have you ever … been with a man?’

  ‘I’m leaving now,’ I said, and glanced at Carral by the pool table one last time before walking out the door.

  The trip home was chilly and my hands were cold and slippery, but my fingers did not stop throbbing. On the mezzanine while I waited for the sound
of Carral, I could still feel it. I felt the throbbing against my pyjamas and the seams of my underwear, through epidermis, dermis and hypodermis.

  Then I wake up: there’s a smell of musty paper. I haven’t noticed anything, not a sound; it’s as if she just appeared here. This is the first night we sleep in the same bed. Carral had snuck up here; no questions. There’s no hesitation, no reason, no fear. There’s nothing. Only springs creaking tentatively and the contours of a hand in the dark.

  ‘Hi.’

  Or maybe I’m just dreaming when I hear that.

  ‘Hi.’

  Carral’s face is silver-white in the moonlight. We’re not close. Our bodies watch each other, keeping their distance. We’re like two strangers, in different rooms, at different times.

  The Brewery

  WHEN I WOKE up, CARRAL was gone. The space beside me on the mattress was cold and smooth and the duvet was wrapped around my body like a sleeping bag. There was no trace of her, as if she’d never joined me up here at all. Still I remembered last night in small fragments: the sound of the creaking ladder, the mattress sinking under the weight of our bodies, her warm breath in my hair.

  I played music and turned the volume up as high as it would go to push Carral out of my head. In my headphones, noise and effects enveloped a simple vocal melody. Surrounded by the naked factory I got the feeling I was in a church, a sense of space and grandeur, almost dizzying. The vocalist sung with a mysterious, veiled timbre:

  Alison, I said we’re sinking

  There’s nothing here but that’s okay