Euphoria by Elin Cullhed

Author:Elin Cullhed [Cullhed, Elin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2022-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

I have written about her, I thought.

Just as she stood on my porch, I saw it: but it’s her, from my poem Three Women, with the marble uterus. I had forgotten the nature of her beauty. Now here she was. And it was I who had invited her.

The husband David behind her, sour and grey.

Her hand was cold when I held it in mine, just as I had thought. We had met before but then the bell had not tolled for our union. That time we met in London, in my beloved apartment, Primrose Hill, she and her author husband David were to rent our flat and we had spoken of slight matters, of no significance. Now she was here again, in our new house, our new life, our existence which had been rearticulated since we last saw each other. The noose had been drawn tighter, especially around Ted. I could see it in his face now as he looked at her, as he took her shawl. It was as if he would have liked to press his snout against the silk and inhale its scent. But I looked at him. With a burn.

I saw how she freed herself from our gazes upon her in the misty summer. Entered our home and became the main character, threw herself at some book tossed on the dining-room table, rocked her hip. Sent an arrow of love into what was ours and had been so closed off to the world until now.

And then in a gust of air I also glimpsed myself: I had thought I was battling the winter and motherhood, and that I loathed the subsequent isolation. But in truth I was complicit with it, I sought it out and loved standing there in the frigid air full of bitterness and tears, abandoned. Loved blaming anything and everything. Loved the smokescreens, the blurriness of not being able to see clearly, of using my writing as my only redemption.

Wrong: I had done everything so fucking wrong!

Now it was May, the early summer month I had longed for. From the outside, everything was as it should be, as usual. But now she had arrived. She the black-haired one, she the childless one, she with a uterus like a marble hall. She who could not bear any children. And she was beautiful like a disgusting Frenchwoman. Like all the dark-haired ones on the continent I had not been able to compare myself to.

Assia Wevill.

Oh, how could it have eluded me that she was the witch! The fatal one, the one I should be careful not to let into our home. How could I have been blind the first time I saw her last year, when we were renting out the flat in London? My jealousy knew no limits now as she set herself free in our home. She was liberated, she was the fiery flame. Ted followed her, he wanted to show Assia the house.

She laughed, she had a cracked, sexy, airy voice. I had children in my arms and at my fingertips.

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