Quintessence of Dust Read online

It’s the way the world sounds beneath ten feet of water. Or how the piano sounded to Beethoven.

  Annie and I have signals. Prompts. For her to shout that I’m pushing too hard, or my lip ring is ripping into her, would be a one-way conversation with a deaf person.

  There is no sign language for pain. Only prompts.

  One tap on my shoulder means I am okay to keep pushing. Two taps, and my head is close to tearing the skin. Occasionally, I hear the crowd jeering, a muffled noise that his overbore with the sound of my heart beating, and her heart beating. If I concentrate, I can make out words like, “PUSH! PUSH! PUSH!!” “HARDER! FASTER!”

  To everyone else in our quiet little backwater, we are normal. The little cobbled street we live on is the same as any other street in the area. We have a window basket filled with fuchsia, honeysuckle and pansies, discoloured net curtains and a big red door. We drive a Fiat Uno, and have a cat called Molly that digs up the neighbour’s garden. In summer, we stop and talk to people in the street about the weather and the price of petrol. We walk, hold hands, and dream of raising a family, but at the weekends, we dress in togas, laurel leaves and sandals. At the weekend, we are Sam-Hung and Delabia.

  For a small fee, Annie and I will attend your social club, your stag do, your best friend’s birthday party. You get Annie first. She will start with a strip show, nothing out of the norm. When undressed, I will hand her a prop: a lemon; an orange; a marrow, working up to a watermelon. We have a great deal with the local grocery shop.

  Usually this does it for the punters. They are happy seeing a woman open her legs and consume a small allotment.

  On the odd occasion, there is a demand for more.

  At the end of the show, I go around with an upturned hat. For a few extra Euros, we take it up a notch. The punters usually cave. What could we possibly do to outmatch a watermelon? Place your money in the hat, my friend, and we will show you. When it’s full, I take off my shirt and apply Vaseline all over my head.

  Encore! Encore!

  It’s the way your heart sounds underwater. The way a car alarm sounds to those in peaceful slumber.

  They call me Sam-Hung for a reason. I started out in Amsterdam. While travelling through Europe, a friend of mine introduced me to the owner of a sex club nestled deep in the De Wallen area. The friend was an ex girlfriend who could vouch for my talent. I was given a job that night. Nothing too seedy at first: skin only.

  Acceptance is applause.

  In Amsterdam, the appendage that made you a freak and had previous lovers wince at the thought of it inside them, has all the allure of the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal or Empire State Building: nobody would believe something so big existed unless you’re photographed next to it. To have a stranger stand beside you with it in her hand, a flash bulb go off, a smile…it means so much.

  Three weeks later the club owner offered me a full time slot.

  The slot belonged to an English girl called, Annie. She had worked in a travelling sideshow before moving to Amsterdam. Families spent their entrance fee marvelling at women with beards and deformed children, and those old enough with an interest that lent towards human performance were encouraged to seek out her show. I heard about her through a friend of a friend. She was reputed to be able to take any man, regardless of length and girth. A few of the Negroes in the sex club were big. A man they named Tripod had split one of the new girls once on stage. But when Tripod fucked Annie, she didn’t even let out a murmur.

  The night we first worked together, I was nervous. She could tell and held my hand throughout. She was pretty, auburn hair, alabaster skin that had seen too many days on the road. She guided me that first time, whispering in my ear, telling me what to do. I followed her every instruction. Annie didn’t make any noises for me too. Later that evening we had drinks. We talked. She told me about her condition. A well-respected gynaecologist had found an abnormality in her vaginal walls, which meant very little muscle tissue surrounded her vulva. When she was twelve, a boy broke her hymen by inserting his father’s torch into her. Annie did not bleed. Annie just lay on her back and waited for the feeling of sex to overwhelm her like she had read about in books. It never came. Boys she slept with were either too small or too thin, and after a while, Annie gained a reputation of being a slag. Too loose. Too slack.

  Alone in her bedroom, she tried, if only for a moment, to feel the passion and the joy that accompanies intimacy. She began with an old church candle four inches wide. When that didn’t help, she used a tin of Baxter’s soup, then a mason jar. Her mother’s crystal vase given to her for her fiftieth birthday lost its shine. The 2-litre tin of magnolia paint used to decorate the kitchen walls was emptied of its contents, cleaned and lubed. Nothing helped. She turned sixteen, ran away from home, and joined the circus. Isn’t that what a freak is supposed to do?

  During the week, we walk along the canals, visit the Stedelijk museum and drink coffee in the Bruine Kroeg. We dress in blue denim, Marino lamb’s wool and nice Italian leather shoes. We plan holidays to Greece and the Balearic Islands while shop-gazing at the Negen Straatjes.

  It’s the way a widow’s wail sounds to her dead husband six feet under. Or how the world sounds to a newborn baby.

  One night a drunken student taunted Annie. From behind abnormal walls of skin, the word whore sounds more like, more. The farther I went in, the less I heard. I then felt three taps on my shoulder.

  Prompts.

  I withdrew and saw Annie crying.

  Back home and Annie is wiping the student’s blood off my knuckles and pressing ice against my eye. I told her that the only time I feel safe, and not a freak, is when I’m inside her.

  Hold your breath, she said. Be part of me.

  One…two…three….

  With head coated, I began pushing. The last words I heard was Annie saying she liked me being in her too. Then she tapped once on my shoulder.

  It’s the way the voices from a rescue team sound to a person trapped under a landslide.

  I closed my eyes; her voice suffocated. I heard my breath; smelt the warm flesh of her uterus. I pushed, and kept pushing. Head cleared the vulva, neck too. I pushed my hands up and through, stretching the weakened muscle, prizing the opening wider so it could accommodate my shoulders.

  Annie once told me she could not have children. The doctor had used the term, barren.

  One tap, and I’m up to my waist. My knees.

  Her heartbeat was the only noise, a dull rhythmic thud. I crawled into a ball and rested against the walls of flesh, pushed my head into my chest and brought my knees up.

  It’s the way sanctuary must be for the fallen.

  It’s the way life is before it starts.

  Morning Birdsong and

  the Hell Demons