Hair Side, Flesh Side

by Helen Marshall

  Aunt Katica drew closer, and her eyes flashed red. The folds of her skin now were a burnished bronze, gleaming in the light of the cigarette. She took his hand in hers and pressed it against her cheek. There was no give. Jonah felt something hot and metallic underneath his fingertips, like a penny that had been out in the sun too long. But he didn’t want to stop touching it. He hadn’t felt desire for anyone since Sarah had left. He had thought his capacity for it burnt out of him. But Aunt Katica’s age sloughed off her like a second skin: her flesh was smooth, taut, her breasts were firm and perfect, thighs slim and tapered. She tugged him closer, and his erection was stiffer than it had ever been in his entire life, his penis engorged, terribly sensitive. Her smooth, metallic fingers touched it gently, and he almost came right then. But she grasped him firmly, and her fingers were very hot.

  “Is good, yes? You grow big?” she whispered and suddenly there was no air in his lungs for speaking. His white flesh shuddered against her. She leaned in close to kiss him, her tongue darting in and out of his mouth. Their tongues met for a moment, his large and fleshy, hers soft, sharp, forked at the end like a snake’s. But, god, that was even more erotic. She kissed his neck, his chest, flicking across his nipples as if she was tasting them.

  He tangled his hands in her hair, overwhelmed by their combined scent. She smelled dry, like the desert.

  She moved against him now, rubbing his erection between her legs until he was gasping with pleasure, with the pain of wanting her so much.

  She guided him into her then, and he just about dissolved into the hot, liquid warmth of her. He thrust once. Again. He could see the weight of his stomach bouncing with the effort, but he didn’t mind. He seemed to be growing thicker, not with fat, but with muscle, his body expanding, expanding. Suddenly she was a tiny thing next to him. He thrust and he thrust, each stroke engorging him further as if his entire body had grown priapic. Then, at last, release came.

  His muscles contracted, painfully, ecstatically, all at once.

  When he woke, Deborah was sitting by the side of the bed. She had a small, strange smile on her face.

  “Do you want to come down to dinner?” she asked. “Aunt Katica said you’ve been sleeping all afternoon. Feel any better?”

  “I—I think so,” he replied. Jonah found he did feel better. The queasiness and the pain in his stomach had all but disappeared. He looked over at his sister, small and petite, next to the bulking mass of him. His body wobbled as if it had grown an extra set of skin.

  “Are you doing okay here?” She flicked aside a fly that had settled on the sheets. “You don’t seem yourself. Is it—?”

  “It’s not Sarah,” he finished.

  She nodded, her smile sympathetic, not really hearing him. “We thought you were going to get married, Mom, Dad, all of us. I really liked her.”

  There was something soft and accusing in her tone. Like it had been Jonah who had screwed it all up.

  “I know, Sis.”

  “We want you to be happy.” Jonah wondered who the we was. His parents? They hadn’t called after the break up. Petar? He hardly knew the man. “Look, I know Mom and Dad were shit. Arguing all the time. And I know you’re still angry at them—”

  “I’m not—” he protested.

  “—but it’s not always like that. Petar and I, we—”

  Jonah wasn’t listening. He shut his eyes and let the hum of the air conditioner buzz around him. I didn’t want her to go, he thought. I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to love me. He thought about Petar and Deborah kissing, their mouths open, trying to devour each other. His stomach rumbled.

  “Family’s important,” she was saying. “That’s why I brought you here. I wanted you to see what Petar’s family is like. They’re all so close. It’s different. It can be different.

  “You don’t want to end up alone.” Again, that strange smile.

  “I know, Sis,” he repeated. He patted her hand gently, though he wasn’t sure if he was comforting her or the other way round. He wanted to tell her about what had happened in the square, but looking at her just then, the gulf between them seemed so wide, unbridgeable.

  She quirked her lips, tossed her hair back with a sweep of her muscular arms. “So, dinner then?”

  He nodded, and heaved himself out of the bed.

  There were new faces at the dinner table: the girlfriends were there alongside the cousins, but also several older men and woman, some grey-haired, some burly, some dough-faced with creases in the folds of their flesh from age. But they all had the same sloping foreheads, the same dark eyes. Jonah wasn’t sure how they all managed to fit in the apartment. He felt bulky beside them, and try as he might to take up less space when he was seated at the dining table, he still felt his flesh crowding those beside him. He tucked his elbows in, but there seemed nowhere that he could put himself.

  Aunt Katica stood in the corner, directing an armada of pots and vessels to the table. They drank, all of them, small glasses full of šljìvovica. One, two, three shots they knocked back in quick succession. Jonah’s eyes watered and his stomach burned with the liquor. He noticed, though, that Deborah had not touched hers this evening. “Živjeli!” they shouted, as each glass went down.

  The chatter buzzed around Jonah. He couldn’t make out the slurred Croatia syllables. It all sounded so strange and yet comfortable. The woman beside him—she looked familiar somehow—wore a white knotted dress that stood out against the dark burnished brown of her skin. She smiled genially at him, and clinked her glass against his.

  “You are the brother, yes?” she asked. Jonah nodded. “Good, good. Welcome!”

  Her leg brushed against his.

  And then Petar was hushing everyone. The murmurs died down, and all eyes turned toward him.

  “Deborah and I are so glad everyone could be here tonight.” Deborah stood beside him. He snaked an arm around her, pulling her closer. “Because we have an announcement to make.”

  Jonah stared at his sister, saw the way her hand fluttered against her belly delicately, almost protectively. Her eyes were downcast as if, for once, she didn’t enjoy all the attention. For a brief moment, Jonah almost felt sorry for her. Her glass of šljìvovica still remained untouched. Jonah felt a stab of panic.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said, her voice shy, uncertain. Her eyes darted up to meet Jonah’s. They were wide, blue, maybe a little bit happy, maybe a little bit scared. Petar tugged on her. She turned her face toward him, and then they were kissing with that open-mouthed, fishy kiss of theirs. Her body relaxed into him.

  The cousins burst into a happy chatter, some banging forks against plates, some raising glasses. The šljìvovica went round again. And again.

  Jonah drank to steady himself. The woman beside him murmured something into his ear and patted him on the back. “We are family now, yes? It is good luck, this baby.”

  But Jonah was only half listening. He searched the crowd, looking for a face, and then he found it: Aunt Katica was nodding approvingly, but not at Deborah. She was looking directly at him with eyes that burned through the haze of the alcohol. For a moment, as she drew a cigarette to her lips, he thought her skin flashed gold and metallic. Heat swept through him.

  And then they were all rising from the table, the cousins and their girlfriends, the woman in the white dress, Petar, Deborah. They were spilling out into the night, into the streets, a sea of white teeth set in dark faces. Jonah felt drunk. He was unsteady on his feet, but someone put an arm out to help him. The air was cooler now that the sun had set. Jonah breathed it in, tasting the salt of it on his tongue. Someone jostled him. They were moving now, sweeping past white buildings roofed in red clay tiles. The ground was uneven beneath his feet, but he kept up with them. The alcohol sang in his blood.

  Pregnant. She was pregnant.

  He felt large and clumsy, but this time, somehow part of the crowd. It felt good. A new child. That was somet
hing to celebrate.

  Plum liquor poured down his throat, as the woman in white offered him a slug from a plastic bottle.

  “We are family. Is good!” she shouted.

  The streets seemed to contract around him, and he had to suck in his belly to pass through the narrow corridors, elbows pushing at him, hands pulling him along. His legs and arms felt enormous. He could have been floating, a giant blimp above them, thick sausage-like fingers, legs thick as pillars.

  Down, down, they went, along the city walls, until they stood on a pier, the whole riotous lot of them. Jonah could hardly see, but he could smell the tang of the Adriatic, could hear the crash of the waves against the rock. He stumbled, and fell hard against the wooden boards of the dock. The ocean leapt up in a spray between the planks, cool against his skin. There were hands on his shoulders now. He couldn’t quite get up. His body felt too round. He couldn’t get his legs under him. The hands pinched into his flesh like claws, and Jonah looked up to see Aunt Katica standing over him, but her face was different now, like in the dream. Her skin was metallic, and her fingers were long, with sharp nails that tug into him. Those eyes burned, and when she exhaled, a small plume of smoke formed.

  And then the woman, the one who had been sitting next to him, leaned down, her lips brushing lightly against his. His mouth formed a surprised “o” and before he could think, before he could react, she had reached both hands into his mouth, and pried his lips apart, crawling in, all the way, disappearing down his throat.

  He tried to struggle, but his limbs felt so heavy. Aunt Katica’s nails dug into his shoulders. His mouth was opening again, and then one of the cousins climbed in, and then another, and then another: the old men, the young, all those Slavic faces disappearing inside him.

  “They come soon,” Aunt Katica whispered in his ears, looking across the Adriatic, beyond the borders of Croatia. “The young, they are foolish, they forget. But we do not forget. The serpent will always rise again, and it will eat our children, our grandfathers.

  “We cannot forget this. You understand, yes?”

  Jonah squirmed, but he could not escape. They had to crawl over him now; his body was mountainous. He had long since split the seams of his clothes, and he lay naked on the dock, as the line of cousins and uncles and aunts grabbed hold of the thick folds of his skin, pulling themselves atop him.

  “You are family, yes? You help. You protect us, the child. Your sister’s child.” He couldn’t see Deborah or Petar. Did not know if they had been left behind somewhere along the way. There was a fire burning his belly now. The child, yes, the child must be safe.

  “Our blood is your blood.” Aunt Katica whispered. Her tongue flicked out, forked, to tickle his ear. “Is good now.”

  And then she twisted her grip, and he was rolling off the pier into the Adriatic. Inside him, there was an inferno, and the air hissed and twisted into strands of steam that braided above him. He was heavy, so very heavy. The waves lapped over his face and he sank, Aunt Katica’s words whispering in his brain.

  The water felt cool against the heat of his skin, and he did not struggle. He could feel all the cousins inside him, the thick muscles of their bodies, their quiet strength seeping into him. There was a fierce joy to it, as if all the empty parts of himself had suddenly been filled with presence. He opened his mouth, and the water rushed inside.

  Somewhere he could hear Sarah’s voice: I don’t want to see who you are becoming.

  Her face was turning away from his, and his heart felt empty, bombed out, each word dropping with an explosive force that shattered memories of the two of them together, dreams of the future he had once thought they might share.

  His tears mingled with the salt of the ocean, his skin felt hot and molten, moving and sliding, until the water burst in. Then it cooled and grew hard. The shape of it was strange and unfamiliar. His blood sang with a thousand new voices that drowned out the destruction Sarah had wrought. They were with him. He was them, could feel the ache in his bones, bones like the mountains that ringed the country, protective, imposing. He rubbed up against the coastal rock, and felt a screeching kind of pleasure as the sharpness of it made channels in his skin for the water to seep through.

  He took it all inside of him, drank in the jewelled water of the Adriatic.

  His muscles began to respond again, and he stretched, feeling all those bodies, not as a weight, but as a wonderful fullness. He lifted his head, and water streamed off it.

  There stood Aunt Katica on the pier, flame-eyed, beautiful in her grimness, but smiling, smiling down on him.

  “Yes,” she said with a sibilant hiss. “You grow big now. Beautiful, beautiful boy.”

  He opened his mouth, and a tendril of smoke drifted out to wreath around her like a coronet. Then he tensed, corded the thick, ropey tendons, the great bulk of him, and lifted himself out of the water. His body was long and sinuous, gleaming in the light of the moon, and he curled his body around her. She touched her hand against his massive, sloped forehead. Her nails traced along his snout, and around the bunching muscles of his jaws.

  They would come again, he thought, remembering the patchwork rooftops where the bombs had fallen. A flicker of anger burned through him, inferno-hot, and with it something like joy. They would come again.

  It is good, he thought. He was hungry.

  [ fingernail ]

  LINES OF AFFECTION

  The first time he stepped through the threshold of the door into their tiny two-bedroom apartment, Marissa felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stiffen like cilia. It wasn’t the way he smiled at her, or even the way his right hand brushed lightly against her mummy’s back as he passed her, suitcase in hand, easy-breezy gait like he owned the place. Marissa had seen those before. Those were fine, normal even. It was the way she felt her body start to tingle, like the whole floor had become charged with static. His fingers seemed to give off tiny blue sparks when they touched her mum, and her mummy, in turn, shivered in pleasure.

  Marissa’s body shivered too, until she told it to stop.

  Marissa knew her mummy very well. She had to when they lived in such close proximity. But she had never seen her like this: eyes glassy, fingers twitching like she wanted to touch something—him, probably, just to rub herself all over him like a cat.

  It was new, and it disgusted her.

  “Marissa, darling, I want you to meet someone,” her mummy cooed.

  Marissa did not move.

  “You can just put that over—Marissa, this is Sampson, the one I told you about?—no, don’t worry, I’ll just hang it up.”

  The stranger was taking off his jacket, and Marissa watched with a strange kind of fascination. It was a normal jacket, the kind men had been wearing to the office for years, but on him it was transformed. It whispered like silk, slid off his arms making beautiful noises until—there—it was off, and only a jacket once again. Underneath was a tan dress shirt with tiny buttons, dark as mahogany. She wanted to rub her fingers along them, to slip the little nubs through the thread-lined slits and—pop!—there it would go, one, two, three, all the buttons through, and that shirt slipping off after the jacket. She wanted to . . . she wanted to . . .

  Marissa shrunk away through the doorway.

  Her mummy was already turning away from her, distracted. Her mouth hung open in mid-sentence. Marissa couldn’t remember what she’d been saying. Then her mouth closed, and her mummy touched the stranger’s wrist.

  “I’ll just let you fetch dinner yourself, shall I, sweetie pie?” her mummy murmured. “I’ve got to—we need to . . .”

  She didn’t finish the sentence. Her mummy turned her head, and met the stranger’s eyes. She smiled and electricity seemed to wind around the two of them like a Tesla coil.

  Marissa said nothing.

  In a moment, the two of them had slipped up the stairs.

  Marissa stood in the doorway, clutching the frame un
til her knuckles were white, and she could feel the shape of it imprinting itself in her flesh.

  Upstairs, she could hear the sound of a door closing, and then, after a few minutes, the sounds she hated hearing most.

  “Marissa, honey, pass us the salt, would you? There’s a good girl.”

  They were sitting at the dinner table, the three of them, Marissa, her mummy and the stranger. It might have looked like a proper family, had someone stumbled in from the street. A sleek silver fox of a man, his beautiful wife and daughter. Except it wasn’t quite right. Marissa was sitting on one side, by herself, while her mummy and the stranger shared the other. The table felt lopsided, all the weight shifting over to them like an overbalanced teeter-totter. She nudged the salt carelessly, half expecting it to slide the rest of the way under the combined force of geometry and gravity. It didn’t. She nudged it again until it was close enough that the stranger, with his perfectly clean, half-moon fingernails—beautiful those, she thought—could snatch it from the table.

  Marissa moved a potato around her plate.

  “How was school?”

  “All right.”

  “Did you learn anything interesting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you . . .” And there it was again, her mummy turned idiot as the stranger did something with his hand. He didn’t speak, no, just touched her, briefly, like he was picking a stray hair off her shoulder. Her body arched, and she let out a little moan. Her fork clattered to the table.

  What was she doing?

  Marissa stared at the stranger’s face with all the menace she could muster. You don’t belong here, she yelled at him in her mind. This is our house and our dinner table and our salt, and you don’t belong here! She thought if she yelled it loud enough in her mind, he must be able to hear. But he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were watching the place he had touched, watching the expression on her mummy’s face. And then he smiled, ever so softly, the way a cat purrs.