I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell

Author:Maggie O'Farrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2018-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

INTESTINES

1994

I open my eyes to see the French doctor from the restaurant standing over my bed, fists on hips, elbows bent at right angles to her body. I stare at her, astonished, wanting to ask her what on earth she is doing in my room. Has she lost her way? Her mind? Her key? Has she opened the wrong door?

I can’t remember how long it is since I chatted to her, over breakfast, how long I’ve been lying here, ill. Days, certainly—spent prostrate on the unforgiving mattress or crouched in the narrow bathroom—but I have lost track of time by this point, lost track of everything.

She reaches out and touches her hand to my forehead, my arm. I hear her say to Anton, whose face hovers in the background, fearful, dismayed: “She needs to go to hospital.”

Since I arrived here, in this small Chinese town, however long ago it was, I have been unwell, unable to eat much, needing to visit the loo with tiresome frequency, feeling enervated, listless, not sleeping. Then I was gripped by sudden pains, in the middle of the night, and started throwing up; I couldn’t stop. It woke Anton, who came and held my hair out of the way. What came out of me was streaked with blood, mucoid, meaty in texture.

Something is moving within me, deep in the coiled channels of my stomach, something with claws, with fangs, with evil intent. It is gaining strength, I can feel it, drawing it off me. It is as though I have swallowed a demon, a restive one that turns and fidgets, scraping its scales against my innards. I must fold into myself, breathe, grip my hands into fists until the spasm passes.

And now here is this stranger, this French woman, saying I must go to hospital. It is, I decide, too much. I shut my eyes, aiming to block her out, and Anton, and their plans. It seems to me in this moment that there is nowhere so lovely, so restful, as this painted concrete box of a Chinese hotel room. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay right here, on these peach-coloured nylon sheets, with the ceiling fan churning above me, with the curtains shut to keep out the glancing sunlight. Only here can I square up to this demon; only here can I try to gather my resources to face it.

I have reached that dangerous stage in dehydration, in fever, the point where you give up, where you just want to stay where you are, lying curled up on your mattress.

“No,” I say, but I can barely raise a whisper. “I’m okay.”

“She has to go,” the French doctor says, her words clipped but calm. She isn’t talking to me. “It must be now.”

They lift me between them—I am light, lighter than I’ve ever been, I’ll discover later, even in my self-whittling teenage years, the flesh melting from me in a matter of days—and I cling to the peach-coloured mattress.

“No,” I protest, kicking, delirious, furious, the spiked demon twisting within me.

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