voices under the bed
There were voices under the bed. Only at night, but every night. Every night he put his head on the pillow and the voices rose up; at first a low hum, a hollow rhythm, then growing, lifting, insisting, and annotating the darkness with their serious talk. He did not know the language, with its corrugated glottal stops and throaty rolling consonants; a bit like Arabic, he thought.
Or was it the sound of burning he heard? Sometimes he thought this too, and then he imagined the bedroom to be full of smoke, which he breathed deeply in until he slept, although it gave him hot and acrid dreams.
The voices spoke with great urgency at times. They banged doors in the top of his head. Wake up! they might have been shouting. Sometimes he thought he was hearing his own language; words popped out like Necker cubes pushing through themselves, but it was too fast for him to hold the sounds. Then the voices would sink suggestively into honey songs, and he would relax again.
He believed that the voices belonged to the bed, which he had bought in a fire sale. He thought that the bed was telling its secrets: stories of love, childbirth and blood, and all the other things that happen in bed. He believed this and so he felt it a wonderful miracle that the bed belonged to him and spoke to him, and it made him humble.
His wife, on the other hand, never heard a thing. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she was asleep.
corners
The house has a dark face. Dark eyes. A sullen mouth, swinging open on black hinges.
We creep up the stairs into the bedroom, which is fading in the dying afternoon, its colours washed out. He puts his bag next to the door, and I put my small bag down next to it. Dust dances in the air, and there on the bed is a worn eiderdown, thin and laced with holes, and faintly I can smell camphor in the room, and shoe polish and aftershave.
Now he lets go of my hand. He is dressed in a tuxedo and dancing shoes.
In any new room I always walk first to the window. Outside, a slate roof slopes down, and then there is the ashy garden. Beyond that I can see another house facing this one, the back bedroom, and the shine of a face in the window. By this, I know I am being watched. Unless it is only my reflection, glinting like a ghost.
If I reach for him, he will pull away. He does not like me to touch him when he is not prepared. So I stand by the window, where a cold draft whispers around my hands, and I wait. After a moment, he leaves the bedroom, closing the door behind him, and I pull my sleeves over my hands and blow warm breath onto them.
This room is deep and cold at the edges, and its only warmth is sinking down and fading out around the old eiderdown. I sit in the middle of the bed, shivering. Is he coming back? But he is going dancing.
Somewhere else, maybe in the house behind this one, someone like me is sitting in the middle of a bed, on a worn eiderdown, waiting for the sound of steps outside the door. I watch for a long time, as the night comes closer and slowly takes the other inside its mouth.
In the morning, everything is different. The windows are empty and the eiderdown is crumpled on the floor. I sit on the edge of the bed with my small bag on my knees.
When he comes, I stand up and put my hand in his. Now it is not possible to ask where he has been. His tie is undone and he has spilled something on his shirt. I do not complain, for I am still wearing the dress that I died in.
