Intimate Distance by Katerina Cosgrove Page A

bitch.’
    He was gone, stumbling through the trees. I wanted to chase him, tackle him, hunt him down. Pinpoint him, wriggling, till he stopped and heard what I was saying. The sun was blinding. I got up slowly and untwisted the thin wire holding the chapel door shut. In the coolness of the interior, I sat on one of the chairs facing the altar. There was a peculiar smell in the air: damp, jasmine, old incense. A shaft of light through the western window fell on the altar screen. Two serpents met with open mouths, eternal, metallic green, glinting on either side of the altar, writhing against each other. I sank to the floor. It was so good in the cool. So good resting my head on porous stone, so good. The frescoed angels looked down at my inert body with no particular expression. I didn’t know where to go next, what to do.
    ALCMENE, WITH HER shadowed eyes and the raised mole behind her left armpit. I spy her naked tonight and want to press myself softly against her, in a moment of submission, perhaps tenderness. I’ve arrived at the hut in darkness, straight from the chapel.
    â€˜Can I stay here?’
    Alcmene brews tea for me and puts me to bed in the middle of the room, sharing her own coarse blankets. I sit up among them and fish out floating flowers from the tea with my fingers, to suck at the petals. The dried flowers have swelled up and regained their colour and plumpness.
    â€˜What are they, Mimi?’
    â€˜Wildflowers I gather from the highest slopes. They don’t have a name.’
    She comes towards me and kneels close.
    â€˜You lie down and go to sleep now. I’ll have a quick wash so I don’t disgust you with my old woman smells.’
    She goes outside and I can hear the bucket being lowered into the well. I stand up, teetering on my mound of blankets. I hide by the door and then step forward into a circle of light so Alcmene will know she’s being watched. She doesn’t look up to acknowledge my presence; continues to wash herself with slow deliberation, letting the water roll down the outline of her body in the light from the moon.
    I want to touch her body, be familiar with it, become intimate with its secrets. But I can’t. I stand apart instead and see the way time has sliced through her skin. Underneath my absurd pity, my fascination, is revulsion. Revulsion: for the body of a woman so different from myself. The marks of brambles and thorns, the sunspots and freckles on her arms and legs like burnt sugar. The skin thinning over her breasts, the girth of her, capable waist, thickness of thighs. I walk away in resignation and let her be.
    As I turn over in the darkness I feel her slip in beside me. She’s careful to keep to her side of the mattress. Then there’s a sound and I sit up. The moon glistens gold and full in a tender sky.
    â€˜Sssh,’ Alcmene soothes. ‘It’s only the animals talking to the ghosts.’
    A donkey cry late at night. Immense sadness, mournful pain.
    IN THE MORNING, I lie with Alcmene on the bed, sheets pushed down to my knees. It’s a hot day, voluptuous in its humidity, its heaviness. The shutters are closed to keep out the heat and there’s a green limpid light from the trees, thick leafed and luxuriant, clustering at the windows. A simple decadence about the way we lie there, together, like the hot mornings of summer holidays I would spend at home with my mother, not a care in the world. Alcmene boils white rice for breakfast, with sheep’s milk and her precious store of sugar. We eat in bed, and I sit up and peel plums, watch the curling skins on my plate. Discolouring, turning brown, and still I haven’t touched the slices of fruit, soft, gold, warm in the heat.
    â€˜Mimi?’
    â€˜What do you want, my child?’
    â€˜Were you never married?’
    â€˜Nobody in the village wanted me.’
    â€˜Oh?’ I hesitate, looking at her slumbering face. ‘Why not?’
    She moves her