The Vorrh

of perception it changed, taking on sharper and more alarming tinctures. The second tear fell, and she was overcome by the need to go to him – to touch and reassure – and the desire to escape. The table seemed to get brighter as the room blacked around them.
    He started to undress as she watched, unable to do or say anything. As he unbuckled his belt, he became aware of her stillness, its perfection denting the air, and angrily pointed at her blouse while yanking at his trousers. When she did nothing, the pointing hand converted into a clenching fist that snatched the docile lace and wrenched her forward. Pearl buttons flew in all directions, and she was about to cover her startled breasts when he shouted, ‘For me, you for me!’ She closed her eyes and slowly removed the wrecked blouse and the thin straps of her chemise beneath. He pulled away the rest of her clothing, trampling it and cracking the fallen buttons under his impatient, stiff feet.
    His purple cock was enormous, its spiralled barrel twisting and telescoping back and forth with his heavily beating heart. His eye continued to drip tears, now onto her legs as he braced her across the table. The blurrily focused crowd and the now-clumsy architecture smeared on her naked belly and her torn clothing. Their bodies united in the silent light and deep inside she gave up, wanting the keys to be taken away. She wanted to be a child again, with no understanding; to rip her guile into a forgetting womb and pamper offspring by a warm hearth, to let milk drown her lime and become inside out, gloving another life that would fold her to a gentle, smiling death, where all spoke of her wisdom and love. In the long time of silence before he withdrew, a ruthless, automatic kindness unfolded in him, its weight matching the shock of excitement which laughed secretly in Ghertrude. The rawness of both expressions bound them together in a shame that was sublime in the depth of its contradiction.
    He fell back as she leaked on the polished surface of the porous, inert table. Low on its right-hand side, blind to their panting bodies, a drawer lay open in untraceable measures. It exposed a shallowness in its recess which was gently covered with a curved, articulated piece of polished wood. Had they examined it, they would have a found a tiny cleft, oiled by perpetual moisture, concealed beneath the tongue-like flap. It sat, expectant, and totally unnoticed by the pair above it. As they unfurled, and only their white breathing filled the room, it slid closed, becoming seamless and invisible again.
    He stood, his eye still shut; words existed elsewhere. She slanted over the table and gazed across herself. Some previous part of her being wanted to adjust the splutter that moved over her body, twist the focus back into detail and rewind the clock. She watched as he returned to the moment; he began to make small, pinching movements with his finger and thumb, trying to capture the Lilliputian figures that bustled in the streets, to pluck them up. She assumed he was jesting, but discerned no trace of amusement in his stern and twisted expression.
    When they left the tower, they found light and the scent of woodsmoke in the attic. Mutter had found a window and opened it onto the rooftops. He had long since gone, driven away by their animal sounds, which had slid down from above to tantalise the recumbent wires.
    They returned to the third floor. At the door of his dwelling, Ishmael held his hand out towards her. She reciprocated, touched by his gesture of affection. The instant their hands met, she knew she had made a mistake. His rigid fingers were eloquent in their distance.
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘the keys.’
    Thus, the cyclops changed his status in the quiet house on Kühler Brunnen; the next episode of their life together had begun.
    * * *

    By the time the young Tsungali had returned from his trip abroad, the rumours about Oneofthewilliams had sped well beyond the borders of the True People and reached the coast. He had been horrified to learn, upon entering the village, that the chosen one was the same officer who had given him Uculipsa. The Englishman had shown him kindness and taught him to shoot well, had separated himself from the other whites and shown alliance to the True People almost from the moment he had arrived; he had risked the displeasure of his superiors and made himself an outcast by saving the great prize, the blessed young shaman, Irrinipeste, from the