I caught W.’s illness a few weeks ago, and we are both still ill, commiserating on the phone. What have you been up to? Chapter two of his introductory book, he says, in which he’s ruining Heidegger. What a traversty! Didn’t I warn him about such a project? But he’d promised a friend he’d write it, he says. ‘It’s all about friendship.’
In the evenings, ill, W. watches bad TV. But he’s still up in the early hours to write. ‘Well, I call it writing, but …’ And what have I been up to? The flat, I tell him, is worse than ever. The kitchen was damp proofed and the old units replaced, and everything in there is white and new, but the damp has come back again, and worse than ever, filling the new cupboards with mildew.
The walls, newly plastered, are wet through, and there is water on their surface, not merely condensed there, but gently streaming. And small snails fall through the hole in the ceiling. Sometimes I find them in my mug, and I don’t mind them, not like the slugs, that still leave great trails around the house, which you can see in their winding profusion only when you shine the light just so.
‘It’s a disaster,’ I tell him. ‘You’ll have to sue’, he says. Last night, I called the plumber round again, and he said he’d never seen anything like it. ‘A total disaster. The brick’ll crumble.’ And if it crumbles? The flat upstairs will come down on top of mine. But then my flat is slowly tilting into a mineshaft, into which they might both disappear.
It’s like being on a ship, I told our guests over the weekend, Mladen Dolar, Jodi and Mark, when it tilts one way as it rides the waves. But it never rights itself, I tell them. It’s always leaning to starboard. I’m waiting in this morning for the loss adjuster. There was a leak, once upon a time, from the waste pipe upstairs. The joists are wet through and crumbling and there is doubt they can hold up the ceiling.
But that was that, and at least the problem was diagnosed by the swearing plumber. But then, horribly, last week, the damp in the ceiling seemed to grow, spreading itself out brownly above me. And this was a new ceiling, too, because of the damp. But there’s no stopping it – the damp is spreading, and it spreads down the walls, which, though damp proofed are all wet to the touch.
At night, I can smell the wet air from my bedroom. And what’s that smell in the bathroom, also newly replastered and damp-proofed? Is it damp that’s returning there, too? My hand on the plaster. Still dry. But the smell! Something is wrong, very wrong. All this I tell W., who sometimes laughs and sometimes says, ‘my God’. I remind him of what he said last time, or what I made him say remembering and writing it down here: ‘damp follows you like a dog.’
In any case, I’m fit for nothing anymore, I tell him, except rocking back and forth as the mildew spores float around me and the slugs leave trails on my wooden floors. I read Henry Green and listen to Donny Hathaway, or sometimes Albert Ayler I tell him. And over and over again.
Then there’s the leak below the house, I tell W. You can hear the water streaming. The plumber says maybe it’s spraying up into the walls, and maybe that’s the cause of the damp. But how to persuade the water company to come out? ‘Tell them you threatening to sue’, says W.
Meanwhile, I throw out my pots and pans which are rusting in the kitchen. Nothing is salvagable. The tins in my cuboards rust into the plastic. The washing power box has liquified. The walls, once a new, replastered sand, have turned deep brown, and in places, green. All along the window ledge: deep green. What horror! And through the hole in the ceiling small snails sometimes fall, but I don’t mind that.
I’ve had a dozen experts on damp come and go, each with their own explanation. The swearing plumber and I rejoiced when we found the leak. It was that all along. But it wasn’t that. There was something worse, something horrible. Something that always returns to its place, dripping. Something dripping water down its maw like the alien from the films. And that follows me from place to place, everywhere, rotting the walls of my flat.
It’s like acid, said the plumber last night, it’s eating the brick away. You have to do something about it. You can hear it, he says, turning off the stopcock, and going upstairs to turn off their stopcock.Well, can’t you? And he’s right. A great streaming, a rushing. Water somewhere close and rushing, spraying up into the wall and rotting it from within.
But one of the men from the water company says on the phone, that the water would flow down and not up. These old lead pipes, he says, burst and let water into the ground. That’s what happening, he says. And what will the loss adjuster say today? What will be her verdict? Will the insurance pay up?
The plumber pities me so much I have to press money on him. He doesn’t want to take it. He’s never seen anything like it, he says, standing, looking up at the ceiling. He seems hypnotised. He won’t leave, but just stands, looking. And even when he’s out of the front door, he’s still shaking his head. ‘It’s terrible, man.’ And so I go inside to read Henry Green, I tell W. And listen to Donny Hathaway, and sometimes Albert Ayler.
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