‘These are truly the last days …’ W. is making me listen to Godspeed’s Dead Flag Blues again. ‘Shut up and listen.’ I play this to the students, he says. And he makes them watch Bela Tarr.
The last days! What are we going to do? ‘We’ll be the first to go, says W., we’re weak. Gin?’ Yes to gin, no to the apocalypse. What time is it? Already late, though you can never be sure in the shuttered living room.
I rang W. today to tell him the damp is receding. True, the air is still full of water and little spores of mildew – no doubt of that, but the plaster is lightening, there at the edges where it was most soaked. And the walls run with water no longer. All the same, I’m anxious: am I not in some deep and intimate way linked with my damp? Does it render safely external some perfidious inward state? Now I’ll have to confront the true horror, I was going to tell W. on the phone (he wasn’t about …)
In truth, I depend on my damp, I was going to tell him. It defines me. When I come in the evenings, it’s there, just as it is in the mornings, when I depart. The damp: soaked through the plaster, brown, and in places, greeny-blue. Damp saturating brick and plaster, and devouring the former from within like acid, the plumber said, and the brown and the greeny-blue spreading like a vast bruise. What sin had I committed? What had gone wrong?
What, if there’s no damp, I would have said to W., will I write about here? What will there be to write about, if there’s no damp? The apocalypse, perhaps – there’s always that, but it’s too vast, and too diffuse. The damp is close, the apocalypse everywhere, far and near – but far, even when it comes near. It’s causes are complex; the cause of damp, simple. I want a simple correlate to my inner state, a simple call to externalise in writing what is wrong within.
Do you think I’m rotting inside?, I would have said to W. Have I been cursed? If so, the damp and I are mirrors of one another. I, too, am bruised – but inwardly, and justly. Bruised inside, and because of some great sin, some wrongness, that nevertheless lies at the seat of my identity. It all went wrong somewhere, I tell myself. I took a wrong path. And then the damp began; damp sprang up all around me; all surfaces became wet, and brown, and greeny-blue, just as there was something dreadfully wrong inside me.
My God, your stomach, says W., who is always amazed by its delicacy, its constant ferment. You’re always ill! And it’s true. Pain – from an inward bruise. I’ve been beaten there – and rightly so. I deserved to be beaten, and inside, where no one will see. And I even liked to be beaten thus – it was a kind of relief, an answer, to a general feeling of guilt. Somewhere, at some time, I’ve committed a terrible wrong, I was going to tell W.
But still, the damp is retreating; the plaster is less soaked; the walls no longer run with water, though the new cabinets are still full of mildew and the whole flat smells of wet and rotting. Yes, the oldest smell, the most familiar one: the great rotting of everything, the great saturation. Away for a few days, my return confirmed it: home, for me, will always be the smell of damp, and that first of all. Open the door – yes, the old smell, breathe it in, along with the spores of mildew, ah yes.
I think I will always associate damp with Lacanian psychoanalysis. For it is only at this point, when the damp has returned most forcefully, after the damp proofing, after the visit by the Loss Adjuster (who hasn’t called back), that I’ve begun to get some idea of psychoanalysis. Piles of Zizek beside the bed, which I go through one book after another. Three Finks. A few Lacans. A handy psychoanalytical dictionary – all this will help me with my review, I know that. But it is all changing my relationship to my damp, I know that, too.
Can W. save me? I want to get him to speak about the apocalypse. ‘It’s all over’ – that’s what I want to hear. ‘These are truly the last days’: I want to hear that. Because I fear the damp’s retreat just as I fear its return. Perhaps it is that the damp is returning to itself to regather its strength: withdrawing only to bloom once again across my walls and ceiling, only more magnificently this time, with a new palette of colours. What colours this time? What richnesses? Yes, the damp is regathering itself to return, with more force, with more splendour, and with new and splendid spores to send out into the air.
‘It’s Lacan!’ I wanted to tell W. ‘It’s Zizek! They’re changing me!’ I wanted to tell him. And it’s true: I’m not used to their world. It’s buffeting me. Somewhere in the walls, the plumber told me, a pipe has burst and it’s rotting the bricks from inside. And now my stomach aches and I feel nauseous. Rotting from inside! For all my reading, I can’t keep Lacan and Zizek in my head, I would have told W. I’m not sure where it’s going. Somewhere – I know that, but where it is I’m not sure, that’s what I would have said. I think it’s hollowing something out in me, and that’s why my stomach hurts, I wanted to tell him.
Crumbled brick and wood on my work surfaces: the ceiling continues to cave in; the hole is still wide open. What’s up there? Something terrible. Something dark. A slice between the flats, open. I hear the voices of the tenants upstairs echoing there, ghostly, so I can’t make out what is said. Yes, there is something terrible there, the source of all damp, between the flats.
I’m surprised their washing machine hasn’t come through, said the Loss Adjuster, who’s yet to call back. What’s going on? What negotations? Perhaps she’s arranging for the builders to come and tear everything out. Start again! Get down to the brick! There’s to be drying equipment. And perhaps the kitchen units are to be replaced.
She warned me I wouldn’t be able to cook. I said: I don’t mind!, and meant it. For months, I said, there was no electricity in the kitchen. Nothing worked; I couldn’t cook, even if I wanted to. For months! Because of the damp! Because the electricity was affected by the damp! In the end, I had to get the kitchen rewired. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said the electrician. – ‘Not even in an old house?’ – ‘Never,’ he said.
Lacan and Zizek are behind this somehow, I decide. They’ve brought it on; they’ve exacerbated it. My stomach is in ferment. Vague nausea. And a vague, encompassing feeling of guilt. It’s my fault – but what have I done? But then without my guilt – what am I? What will I have to write about? Are these really the last days of damp?
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