Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

Author:Jenny Hval
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

With her dark voice and heavy German accent the song sounded sombre and serious, as if there was no difference between the grave and on the ground.

‘Should we grab a pint? A few people from the seminar are coming.’

‘I’ve got to go I think,’ I answered. ‘Carral’s kind of tired. I promised I’d cook her dinner.’

When I got home, Carral was sleeping on the pillows on the mezzanine. Her bathrobe had loosened and slipped off her, and through the white cotton fabric of her pants I could see a dark, soft mound, a cress bed of hair. Her cheek was squeezed against the window, her breath fogging the glass. Her skin was flushed, feverish. I leant over her.

‘Carral?’

‘Hi.’

She stretched, rubbed her cold cheek.

‘Still not well? Do you want something to eat?’

She shook her head and pulled the bathrobe over herself.

‘Just tea, if you don’t mind.’

I nodded and went down to the kitchen, filled the kettle and opened a packet of biscuits. When I returned to the mezzanine with her tea, she’d fallen asleep again. I sat beside her for a while and read my seminar texts, but every time my fingers touched the paper, I thought of the paper in Moon Lips, how it was brittle and rough from the big stain. Next to me steam stopped rising from the tea. It cooled and pearls of milk fat spread on the surface. The fluid congealed along the edge and started to sink.

Carral’s deep breaths pulled her chest up and released in an even rhythm. With every inhalation her belly, chest, and whole body swelled and collapsed, like a white, slippery dough left to rise. When I eventually lay down next to her, she turned abruptly, grabbed my arm and put it around her.

‘Jo,’ she whispered, ‘are you staying with me?’

‘Of course.’

‘You don’t want to move out?’

Her eyes were still closed.

‘No.’

Carral smiled. Then she pressed me close, hard, as if she wanted to pull me inside her.

My arm is around Carral. This is the second night we have slept in the same bed. Through the railing I can see the dim flickering lights from the rotating chandelier by the front door. Then my eyes slip shut and the rays of light become smaller and smaller until the darkness is impenetrable. The whole apartment is slathered with black grease, as though we are in a tarred lung.

In the morning I got out of bed, and went to get milk and toast. Downstairs in the kitchen were several plates with food from the day before that Carral clearly hadn’t touched. She didn’t want breakfast either.

‘But you haven’t eaten anything at all,’ I whispered.

‘I’m full.’

‘Full of what?’

‘I’m just full-up.’

She was right. Her stomach bulged. Her whole body had swelled in those few hours, and when I snuggled up next to her I could feel how she felt. From her ears I could hear a soft rushing sound, as if from a conch shell. If I closed my eyes, I could hear the house creak and it swayed as though we were at sea.

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