Feebleminded. Ariana Harwicz

the way here so often. That he’s risking everything. That he’ll text me about when we can next meet. I listened with the reverential astonishment of a feebleminded woman getting things muddled, lost in the countless details that engulf her, a plague of microbes on the esplanade. I mistake the swishing of the animals for the plants, sunburnt lizards scuttling into the drainpipes. By the end everything was vague, inexact, blurred. What had he just told me? We were still yoked together. My mouth an elongated snout. Where were those words coming from? Why had he chosen them and not others? What language should we use when we name things? How does anyone manage to speak at all? What had he said. I’d forgotten already. It was the thick liquid of his saliva collecting and separating in his mouth. That transition of a mouth into divinity. Like an incurable genetic condition, he finished his speech and we kissed. And kissing was a steady advance, knife raised high.

      I find a note pinned to the door. ‘Don’t go to bed too late. Tomorrow we’re going sailing.’ The house is filled with snoring and it’s only the two of us. I’m a spectre. I walk with my stomach scrunched up, with the devil in my guts. He falls to my feet. I move through the rooms. There’s nothing, I wouldn’t even say there’s pain. Just these cold hard tiles underneath me. If putting your head in the tiger’s mouth is no use, then what are days even for. I go round the house looking for something but I don’t know what. I pace from room to room, catch a glimpse of mum shapeless in the shower, washing, marking herself up. Too late to have lived, too early to do herself in. I get into her bed without waking her. I climb on top of her and hug her to me. I’m thinning out, becoming just an idea. The idea of love for a man who lives with another, who loves another, hundreds of miles away.

      I go to sleep like I’m staring into the abyss before jumping. I’m being breastfed. A mental divorce from everything and I’m no longer in this big house between my mother’s legs, my mouth no longer sucking on her nipple. These old people aren’t my neighbours any more, and instead I’m ejaculating all alone in the tall fresh grass. There’s a roaring that doesn’t come any closer. And my hand is a melodic instrument that vibrates. I’m completely unaccustomed to society, too long spent watching the mornings go by like an old goat. Fetid teeth, rancid body, skin reeking of fried onion, bacteria, badly-healed pustules. A dog tied up too many times that now growls at the sight of a baby. I can come out in support of fascism, capital punishment, the burning of Gypsies. I don’t have to control my sphincter. I don’t say hello or thank you. I practise remaining immobile on thorns, being cruel to the homeless, I practise absolute silence. I lounge in my basement, my office. I lock myself in and I stink. Outside, the pine trees shine and the sun is tender. Outside, other people live under low ceilings like this one, piling up rubber boots and out-of-date canned food in their wine cellars. Outside, people spend their days slumped in rocking chairs, eating fruit from tins and snoring. And they have lives just like this one, the clammy pressure of a worm in our stomach.

      And crossing the corridor on my way to bed I have a vision: someone on all fours and my head reclining under twin genitalia. My wet mouth inhales that magical air, that nest. I undress, go to bed, turn out the light, in that or any other order. Mum, something’s burning.

      Between six and eight in the morning I swallow a strangely potent mouthful of pessimism. The people I see, the neighbour who’s still alive but has a lump in his throat, below the left earlobe, mowing the lawn with the woman who keeps him company and cooks his meals, his bones getting thinner by the day. Mum’s asleep. Her scoliotic back makes her an alligator. Not just the bedpan, the false teeth, all shrunken and fragile. Also the fluorescent red sunset through the olive trees or over the jet-black sea. And the purest of loves. A local couple: him with his hoof-handled walking stick, her a woman on a bicycle, easily forgotten. It’s hailing, impossible to go out. Hail spiralling down, catching in the trees. Hail drilling holes in the beehives. Hail hitting the canal, the silken summer fruits, the rocks scattered along the road. Hail piercing the shiny slugs. Masturbation and lethargy. And that fatal loss. We won’t go sailing, we’ll stay at home and play bridge all day, play backgammon, Scrabble. Mum will develop a hunchback and the time will come when I say: I’m her. The dead woman I carry with me meanders high above, the wet ground thick with wild berries. The woman I carry parades to and fro, her trembling clit growing bigger.

      I’m woken by the click click of a C11 tactical fitted with a laser. Or was it the smell of peat in the air. Or walls of stone and moss. I’m woken by a bittersweet love that’s not real. Or rather than love, long, salty fingers. Traces of cowshit in the air. I’m woken by the thought that everything other than him coming in my arse just gets in the way. Mum on top of me all excited, and I just dreamt she was run over by an automatic car. The woman at the wheel wearing thick glasses and screaming from deep in her organs, how awful, again and again. I can smell petrol. They’ve poured some on the hornets’ nest and the hens are running in frantic circles. Mum, I’m going to faint. I dreamt you were retarded, you’d mistaken me for someone else and got jealous, you kept telling the nurses I was your prince and they winked at me so I’d pretend to be him, your suitor, and you covered my beard with kisses. A tainted night, white thunder falling on bats. You’re exaggerating. I’ll be back soon, get out of my way, I’m off to inhale his molecules and lick my lips. That’s my technique, sometimes it works. His vibration. I’m forever looking for holes to fall into. Dodging those ugly nocturnal doves. There. Let’s call the doctor. The one from the knife experiment? A very cerebral awakening. You have to test your impulses: take the knife by the handle, bring it slowly towards her chest and see for yourself that you won’t really stick it in. What a weird method, right mum? I was this close to slicing you open. The wind carries his smell towards me. Mother Nature brings him to the stables. Could you do me a favour and calm down? What are you on about? Motherfucking Nature won’t bring you shit. Radioactive rays, pollution, that’s all you’ll get from her. Pure vice. Get a hold of yourself, sort out your hair and let’s go. You know the moment when the sweet juice gradually collecting between your legs begins to trickle down? I want that wetness. I want that mollusc-like sloshing that keeps you from walking, that keeps you from living.

      Here we are in the big, barren guest room. Swarms of flies and bluebottles echo inside it, birds with long beaks like horns, the noise of their songs overlapping. Mum delicately stretching her ash-blonde hair on the bed. Her nightdress is a robe. Are we still going sailing? The build-up of rough stones in a centuries-old house like this one, the damp from the cisterns, deafens us. Let’s go to the pub. It’s closed, it only opens at night. How many times do I have to tell you, alcoholics never see the light of day. Mum changes position, puts her legs back up against the wall. She seeks solace from the impossible meaning. And we laugh, we’re always getting the giggles. Two sleepy loons. Let’s go sailing. And we push each other out of the door, laden with equipment as if we’re off to Niagara Falls. We follow the coast to the river, past cabins and steep slopes. And though we carry a stick to scare them, the hunting dogs bark at us all the way. Ever since a dog bit mum on the arse when she was out on her bike she clings to me as we walk. We untie a plastic raft, climb aboard and set off down the river. Rowing through the foam, battling the turbulence. We sail under Romanesque bridges and along the banks of medieval towns, we pass churches in the thick hot rain. For hours we do nothing but let ourselves be engulfed. The river has burst its banks and mum’s afraid, the air growing murkier and murkier. Suddenly there are waves, hollows, whirlpools, we don’t know how to move in the river, how to read it, we’re rowing in opposite directions. The wind pulls us to one bank and the raft gets stuck in the tender earth. Mum has fainted. I could leave her to drown and go home, call 911 from the petrol station payphone come midnight and explain how I lost her when the water level rose. Then they’ll wrap me in a grey blanket to take my statement, my fingerprints, and I’ll cry on some criminal’s shoulder. Or I could help her climb out. We shelter on a round island, huddle on a patch of wet earth until the urge comes to undress and we run pell-mell through the woods, chased by the sound of buzzing. We cross the plains like two islands in a green sea and at one point I see her crouch down in the undergrowth, tribal.

      Mum asleep with hypothermia under the blankets and hot water bottles. If her temperature goes up, 911. If she has an epileptic fit, helicopter. If she dies tonight, burial. I’m sitting on the blue chair facing the fence. On the table, a plate with some cheese and quince jelly. Mourning begins while she’s still alive. The local cats and parrots