The House Without Windows: A Story
9th June 2005
The heat clung to her and she wore it like a wetsuit. She inhabited it. Her skin wept inside of it. Sluicing through shapeless days that were clogged with sleep-loss and marked only by afternoon electrical storms, she and he then endured sleepless nights with body parts stuck, on points of contact, like sheets of dying rubber. These were nights constricted by the sides of limbs and the sticky space between them. They cohabited but, privately and uncomfortably to each, the other was more of an itch than a presence.
To be sure their room was getting smaller. Or was it bigger? He would run his fingers across the surfaces of the walls, feeling for new cracks everyday. Although she felt the house dilate in the heat and then clench when the thunder rumbled, the cracks were a mystery to him. New cracks appeared where he had doggedly plastered over old ones. She said they should leave them for ventilation. He said they let the ants in and made the house a tornado deathtrap—the latter being precisely the reason why he’d built a house without windows and doors in the first place. Both had long since given up on outside anyway, sensing it only through subtle indoor nuances and the implication that the insect invaders came from somewhere and needed to be sent back there, dead or alive.
Each day the same. The haze would be slovenly until the wind got up around tea time. Then, through one of the larger cracks near the corner, she would watch the sky maneuver clouds for its daily set piece, smell that dungy tinge of the expectant tarmac, and think about other people moving plastic chairs off their patios.
She and he had long since sealed a tacit and mutual pact to stop talking about the heat. Trouble was, it had turned out to be the only thing between them—now a mulch of unuttered thoughts decayed into the unthought atmosphere and thickened it. On good days the heat stood in for communication. On bad days it fried them. It was too hot to eat. If you didn’t eat then there was no need to work. Without work there was no need to leave the house, or sleep, just doze fitfully like he had been doing before he came round to discover there was one body in the room instead of two.
That day he woke fully. Guessed she got up and slipped through one of the wider cracks in the wall—that one she always looked out of and wouldn’t let him plaster. Shock pierced the heat and his wakefulness heightened and stung. He sensed cracks visibly forming under the plaster. Soon, he was seeing the walls become wrinkled with palimpsestic visions of beige and set upon them with his workman’s trowel, mixing the powder with sweat and tears.
Then he panicked as the walls got smaller and lurid projections danced on them. Cracks started to bleed and dribble into one another and the floor undulated as though there might be a breeze among the carpet fibres. He prostrated himself there where it looked like the wind would be but tasted only dust as he mouthed her name. Warning sirens swirled in the air outside. Was that her?
He moved slowly now, as if through a maze of heavy velvet curtains and worst case scenarios, feeling for the reasons she might have left and further down for the memory of her touch, but remembering only the heat—this endless heat, vacuum-sealing him in his confusion, loss and longing. Days seemed to go by, sweating time, and the cracks in the walls were still bleeding and dribbling into one another, now with the faintly gangrenous hue of sense and perception decomposing. The room was inhaling but not giving the air back. He didn’t notice his own breathing becoming sterterous—each ‘in’ trying to hurdle the ‘out’—and then blackness came.
Some time later, one of his eyes told him there was something growling in a cage in the corner. He closed the eye and prayed for rain or deliverance. Then he half-looked again. Either the projections were still there or it was possible that she was back in the room, turning her naked body towards him, one side at a time. No, she was turning away from him and towards it—whatever it was—holding out her palms like a game show assistant under studio lights.
Eyes finally opened, propeller blades blurred his vision and then registered, close to his face. Her laugh was behind them and infused, like everything else now, with the buzz of a squat little machine. There she was—dancing to its pulsating rhythm—a thankful supplicant before a rotating turbine god.
At last the heat was moving. Its movement whirled shivers onto him and moved him forward to kiss her. He closed his eyes and the rain came.
The heat clung to her and she wore it like a wetsuit. She inhabited it. Her skin wept inside of it. Sluicing through shapeless days that were clogged with sleep-loss and marked only by afternoon electrical storms, she and he then endured sleepless nights with body parts stuck, on points of contact, like sheets of dying rubber. These were nights constricted by the sides of limbs and the sticky space between them. They cohabited but, privately and uncomfortably to each, the other was more of an itch than a presence.
To be sure their room was getting smaller. Or was it bigger? He would run his fingers across the surfaces of the walls, feeling for new cracks everyday. Although she felt the house dilate in the heat and then clench when the thunder rumbled, the cracks were a mystery to him. New cracks appeared where he had doggedly plastered over old ones. She said they should leave them for ventilation. He said they let the ants in and made the house a tornado deathtrap—the latter being precisely the reason why he’d built a house without windows and doors in the first place. Both had long since given up on outside anyway, sensing it only through subtle indoor nuances and the implication that the insect invaders came from somewhere and needed to be sent back there, dead or alive.
Each day the same. The haze would be slovenly until the wind got up around tea time. Then, through one of the larger cracks near the corner, she would watch the sky maneuver clouds for its daily set piece, smell that dungy tinge of the expectant tarmac, and think about other people moving plastic chairs off their patios.
She and he had long since sealed a tacit and mutual pact to stop talking about the heat. Trouble was, it had turned out to be the only thing between them—now a mulch of unuttered thoughts decayed into the unthought atmosphere and thickened it. On good days the heat stood in for communication. On bad days it fried them. It was too hot to eat. If you didn’t eat then there was no need to work. Without work there was no need to leave the house, or sleep, just doze fitfully like he had been doing before he came round to discover there was one body in the room instead of two.
That day he woke fully. Guessed she got up and slipped through one of the wider cracks in the wall—that one she always looked out of and wouldn’t let him plaster. Shock pierced the heat and his wakefulness heightened and stung. He sensed cracks visibly forming under the plaster. Soon, he was seeing the walls become wrinkled with palimpsestic visions of beige and set upon them with his workman’s trowel, mixing the powder with sweat and tears.
Then he panicked as the walls got smaller and lurid projections danced on them. Cracks started to bleed and dribble into one another and the floor undulated as though there might be a breeze among the carpet fibres. He prostrated himself there where it looked like the wind would be but tasted only dust as he mouthed her name. Warning sirens swirled in the air outside. Was that her?
He moved slowly now, as if through a maze of heavy velvet curtains and worst case scenarios, feeling for the reasons she might have left and further down for the memory of her touch, but remembering only the heat—this endless heat, vacuum-sealing him in his confusion, loss and longing. Days seemed to go by, sweating time, and the cracks in the walls were still bleeding and dribbling into one another, now with the faintly gangrenous hue of sense and perception decomposing. The room was inhaling but not giving the air back. He didn’t notice his own breathing becoming sterterous—each ‘in’ trying to hurdle the ‘out’—and then blackness came.
Some time later, one of his eyes told him there was something growling in a cage in the corner. He closed the eye and prayed for rain or deliverance. Then he half-looked again. Either the projections were still there or it was possible that she was back in the room, turning her naked body towards him, one side at a time. No, she was turning away from him and towards it—whatever it was—holding out her palms like a game show assistant under studio lights.
Eyes finally opened, propeller blades blurred his vision and then registered, close to his face. Her laugh was behind them and infused, like everything else now, with the buzz of a squat little machine. There she was—dancing to its pulsating rhythm—a thankful supplicant before a rotating turbine god.
At last the heat was moving. Its movement whirled shivers onto him and moved him forward to kiss her. He closed his eyes and the rain came.
posted by Jen at 12:02 PM
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