Fermentation (2 page)

‘I know, but you're not from here, are you?’

I shook my head. ‘No. I'm not from round here. I don't know how long I'll stay here.’

Serge lit a cigarette.

‘Why fire?’ I said. ‘Why fire-eating?’

‘Because fire is pure. It's not like other elements. Water and air. They are polluted. Not fire. To breathe fire is . . . Give me your hand,’ he said.

He took my hand in his and turned it over, palm up, and stroked my skin with his fingers. Then he picked up my glass, took out a piece of ice and began very slowly to draw it over my skin. He rubbed it gently at first and then he pressed it into the centre of my palm until my skin hurt and all the while he stared into my eyes. When the ice had melted he drew his cigarette close to my skin.

‘Can you feel it? The heat?’

‘Of course,’ I said and my hand flinched slightly.

He put the cigarette end closer still. Fingers of grey smoke curled around my wrist. The end of his cigarette was burning. I could see the red tip glowing while the smoke rose slowly upwards.

‘Ice burns too,’ he said.

‘That's different. Fire is harsher.’

‘Not really. Let me teach you to eat it. You wouldn't be afraid then.’

‘My mother always told me it was dangerous to play with fire.’

‘Not if you're taught properly.’

‘I might get my fingers burnt.’

‘What if I were to burn you now?’ His clasp tightened suddenly, and instead of looking at me he stared down at the cigarette in his hand.

‘Don't,’ I said and in a moment he had released me. I placed my hand underneath the table.

‘But it mesmerised you. Right?’ he said. ‘Just for a second you wanted it to burn you. Am I right?’

‘No one wants that.’

‘Maybe.’ He threw his cigarette down on to the floor and put it out with his boot. ‘All gone,’ he said, smiling and raising his arms in playful submission.

We talked into the night and when the café closed we walked through the cold, empty streets of the town. Serge wrapped me up in his coat which trailed on the ground like a ballgown. Once we stopped at a shop window full of statues and lamps and plastic bottles in the shape of the Virgin Mary and he told me a story about a young boy he had seen pissing into one of these bottles as he stood behind some caravans at a fairground. Serge had worked in fairs and circuses all over the world and when he wasn't travelling he would perform on the streets of the city where he lived.

When first light crept into the sky I gave back Serge's coat and he left me at the door to my hotel. I lay down on my bed and by the time I awoke the circus had departed.

I didn't believe I would see him again but shortly afterwards a postcard arrived. The painting on the front of the card was called
St George and the Dragon,
only there was a third person in the picture – a woman – and she had the dragon on a lead. There was no writing on the back but three days later I packed my bag and headed for the city on the postmark. I caught the bus that left Cauterets once a day to weave down the mountain into Lourdes, and from Lourdes the night train to the city. The train was full of pilgrims returning from their blessings and cures and I sat wedged between two fat Germans and their pale daughter who stared at me with watery eyes. Outside fields slipped by from daylight into dusk, each filled with varicoloured cattle. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again it was morning and the train had arrived.

It took me seventeen days to find Serge in the city. I wandered the streets searching every quarter where performers worked, visiting every fair and circus asking if anyone knew of him or could tell me where he was. Most people just shook their heads or turned away, and then finally, one afternoon, I found him in the Place St Jean sitting by the edge of a fountain where water spurted from the mouths of three fishes. He wasn't surprised to see me. He'd been expecting me, he said, and I believed
him. I believed he knew I would come. It was myself I doubted.

After I found Serge, I found an apartment at the top of an old grey building over a hairdressing salon. A girl with a pink bouffant and one with a blackcurrant crew-cut smiled at us as we walked past the window and then through a door at the side of the building. The estate agent said the salon gave discounts to tenants. He led me up a stone stairwell to the fourth floor and opened the door of my apartment. Each room was large and empty. The first time I entered a pigeon flew down from the ceiling. The previous occupant had left a window open and the bird flew right past me. When it landed I saw that its foot was missing. There was nothing but a gnarled stump at the end of a thin leg and the estate agent quickly shooed the bird out of the window. Whoever had lived there before had stripped the apartment of everything except a bed and a stained wooden table. The estate agent made some apology for the state of the place but somehow I liked it like that. I liked the fact that it was empty and that birds flew in through the windows. At night you could hear the trains and the sound of people below in the street. Without curtains the room never grew dark.

I bought bookshelves, a small desk to write at and a blue velvet couch. The rest of the space remained empty. Serge kept his own apartment on the tar side of the city in a modem development which we labelled the ‘New World’ as the buildings felt empty. Apart from the sky, there was no sign of nature, not a tree, not a plant, not a
weed. Serge said he liked it that way but I hated staying there and gradually he transferred more and more of his belongings to my place.

About a month after I'd moved in Serge bought me a cake smothered in candles. He knocked on my door and when I opened it he stood there holding the cake on a plate high above his head.

‘Close your eyes,’ he said when I had sat down on the couch and blown the candles out.

I heard him cross the room and open the door again. Then he returned and when he told me I could I opened my eyes.

‘I've bought you a present.’

‘Where?’

‘You have to find it.’

I stood up and looked in the drawers of my writing desk.

‘Very cold,’ he said.

I moved over to the window.

‘Antarctic conditions.’

‘Is it in this room?’

‘Maybe.’

I walked through to the kitchen.

‘Much warmer,’ he said, following me in and standing by the table.

I looked round the room at the fridge and then at the cooker.

‘The cooker,’ I said quickly, opening the oven door. Inside sat a glass tank. I crouched down. ‘It's a lizard.’

‘A chameleon, to be precise. It changes colour according to its surroundings,’ he said. ‘Look, I've bought some blue card.’

We took the tank through to the living-room and put it on the floor. Serge propped the card up behind the tank and then we sat down on the couch and waited

‘What do you think he feels when the background is blue?’

‘Sad probably,’ Serge said. ‘Blue is sad.’

‘Not when the sky is blue.’

The chameleon's dark eyes slowly opened and closed.

‘What do I feed it on?’

‘It's a he, and he eats insects.’

‘Not fire?’

‘He's lost his touch. He told me as much when I saw him in the shop. If I have time I might teach him.’

‘Fireflies then?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Thank you for buying him.’

‘I think we shouldn't watch him.’ Serge stood up. ‘He's a watched pot. Get your coat. We'll go out.’

We walked by the river and later we went and sat in a café. Serge ordered a plate of raw red chillies and a bottle of water which he poured into two glasses and then set them in the middle of the table between us.

‘Baptism by fire,’ he said.

‘Baptism's for believers.’

‘Then, as the cliché goes, believe in me. We're christening your new apartment.’

He picked up a chilli with his fingers and put it in his mouth. His eyes widened and as he swallowed he smiled.

‘Your turn.’

‘I'll stick to water, thanks,’ I said, putting my hand out for one of the glasses, but he pushed it back.

‘Just eat one,’ he said, picking another up with his fingers. ‘Eat one. It can't hurt you.’

‘I don't want to.’

‘You're afraid. Eat one. Go on. Eat.’

I picked a chilli up from the plate and together we put them into our mouths. I could feel my mouth smarting with pain and the tears as they ran down my cheeks. Serge put another in his mouth. He was crying too; we were laughing and crying and eating and everyone in the café was watching us. I took two to catch up.

The pain was unbearable but we kept eating and staring at each other and then at the glasses of water. Finally Serge grabbed at one. I sat back and watched him as he gulped the water down, letting it spill over his chin, and then he grabbed the second glass and drank that too. When he had finished I took the bottle, poured some more water and then picked up the glass and took a small sip. He stared at me across the table.

‘Why do you do that?’

‘What?’

‘Pretend.’

I took another sip and then flung the rest of it over him.

‘Baptism by water,’ I said, and stood up to go.

Serge remained motionless for a moment and then began to laugh, the water dripping down his face.

I walked round the table, leant over him and began wiping the water off with a napkin. ‘Everyone's watching us,’ I said into his ear.

He got up and bowed to the audience.

When we returned we made love on the floor of the apartment with the chameleon sitting in his tank beside us.

‘I'll pay you back for that,’ Serge whispered as he pinned my arms down so that splinters of wood dug into my skin.

I turned my head away. The chameleon was watching us with his still, cold eyes.

‘He's changed colour,’ I said.

The first time we made love we were walking home through the ninth district. It was a few days after I had found Serge and we had been visiting some of his friends who lived by the station. After we left their apartment we walked for a time and then Serge ducked down a small side alley and motioned for me to follow him. This corridor, for that was all it was, a narrow passage leading from one street to another, smelt of piss and old men's excrement. Halfway down Serge stopped and opened a door. He led me into an empty building. When I looked up I could see thousands of stars through blackened beams. The building was completely gutted, nothing but a dry black shell.

Serge had prepared everything; paraffin and torches already lay in the centre of the room.

‘Stand here,’ he said as he led me to an open space near the back of the building.

He lit his torches and then began to walk around me throwing the flames into the air. I could feel the heat against my cold skin as the torches flew inches from my face. I could hear the fire as Serge threw it over my head or past my face and caught it and threw it and caught it again and my eyes became mesmerised by the flames and watching his hands as he caught each torch over and over. When he stopped he came and stood before me; stock still. He tilted his head far back and opened his mouth to eat the flames. He put the fire into his mouth and one by one the torches went out and we stood in the dark.

In general I cannot remember the first time I made love to my previous lovers. I remember particular things about each of them: Luke whose lips tasted of salt from the sea and Jan who liked to bind my hands with cord. Xavier caught my attention by diving underneath me as I swam past him in the local pool. I was in love with Jess for months before he noticed me, and then there was Ethan who took me walking along the railway tracks and fed me raspberries and Klaus in the snow, whose light blue eyes I still feel resting upon me. There was Mark who repaired TV s and liked to make love to old Frankenstein movies and when I kissed Ben I remember tasting oranges. But the moment I first made love to each
of them blends into one slightly awkward unsatisfying memory that I have forgotten or reinvented to suit my mood. The truth of the moment is faint and remote, like books I have read where I remember parts of the plot but more often than not mix the storylines up or confuse fiction with fact.

With Serge it was different. I felt like an animal that has been caught in a car's headlights. He laid the torches down at my feet and easily drew me to him

At first when he pressed his body against mine I found the smell and the taste of him repugnant. He tasted of burnt skin and paraffin, like a man who has escaped a burning house or flown upwards from Hell. The smell caught in my throat and made my stomach heave. I wanted to draw back from him, but his grasp was too strong. He pushed me back against the wall and at first kissed my face gently, brushing my eyes and parting my lips with his tongue. Then slowly he knelt down at my feet, drawing his hands down the sides of my body, watching me watching him as he raised my skirt and kissed between my thighs. He slipped my underwear down and brushed his face against my sex and then slowly flicked his tongue against my lips, parting them and delving deep inside me. I could feel his hands caressing my buttocks and his finger working its way into the small firm hole. A spark of pleasure ran through my body. Serge could feel it too. I stood on the tips of my toes and his finger pushed deeper into me; I bent my knees slightly and his tongue flicked up into my sex. I
could not escape but when I was at the point of coming he rose up and stood to face me, his eyes cast into mine like nets round a fish, and he turned me round and pushed my legs as wide apart as they would go. I could feel him stroking my sex, teasing me with his fingers, watching as my body responded to his touch, and then I felt his hardness pushing into me as my face scraped against the cold black wall and all the time he whispered my name into my ear and I could smell the smell of fire.

Afterwards we walked home in silence and Serge laid me down on the bed and bathed me with cottonwool dipped in warm water and oils. He washed me gently and kissed my arms and legs where I had cut them against the burnt-out walls and drawn blood and finally I fell into a deep sleep. I can't remember ever having slept so long or so soundly. Serge said it was the sleep of the neophyte and then he laughed and countered his statement. ‘Or perhaps of the lost.’