Fermentation Read Online Free Page A

pressed his body against mine I found the smell and the taste of him repugnant. He tasted of burnt skin and paraffin, like a man who has escaped a burning house or flown upwards from Hell. The smell caught in my throat and made my stomach heave. I wanted to draw back from him, but his grasp was too strong. He pushed me back against the wall and at first kissed my face gently, brushing my eyes and parting my lips with his tongue. Then slowly he knelt down at my feet, drawing his hands down the sides of my body, watching me watching him as he raised my skirt and kissed between my thighs. He slipped my underwear down and brushed his face against my sex and then slowly flicked his tongue against my lips, parting them and delving deep inside me. I could feel his hands caressing my buttocks and his finger working its way into the small firm hole. A spark of pleasure ran through my body. Serge could feel it too. I stood on the tips of my toes and his finger pushed deeper into me; I bent my knees slightly and his tongue flicked up into my sex. Icould not escape but when I was at the point of coming he rose up and stood to face me, his eyes cast into mine like nets round a fish, and he turned me round and pushed my legs as wide apart as they would go. I could feel him stroking my sex, teasing me with his fingers, watching as my body responded to his touch, and then I felt his hardness pushing into me as my face scraped against the cold black wall and all the time he whispered my name into my ear and I could smell the smell of fire.
    Afterwards we walked home in silence and Serge laid me down on the bed and bathed me with cottonwool dipped in warm water and oils. He washed me gently and kissed my arms and legs where I had cut them against the burnt-out walls and drawn blood and finally I fell into a deep sleep. I can't remember ever having slept so long or so soundly. Serge said it was the sleep of the neophyte and then he laughed and countered his statement. ‘Or perhaps of the lost.’

BEAUMONT
    A gentle, sweet, creamy cheese with a soft rosy rind and subtle flavour. Do not eat if distended or bitter.

    ‘I feel sick,’ I said.
    ‘You want to be sick?’
    ‘Yes. I'm going to throw up.’
    Serge stepped out of the way just in time. I sat down on the pavement and vomited into the gutter.
    Until the moment when the thin slip of paper turned from blue to pink we had simply been two people in love, and then I started to vomit. I sat in the bathroom on the rim of the bath and stared at the test result in disbelief Serge knocked on the door to see if I was all right and I slipped the paper out to him.
    ‘What's this?’
    ‘It's a test result.’
    ‘I don't understand,’ he said and I unlocked the door and held out the packet for him to see.
    ‘You’re pregnant.?’
    ‘Yes.’
    He stared at the paper and then turned it over as though looking for a message written in invisible ink.
    ‘It's hardly a message from God. Are you sure? It looks blue to me. That's blue.’
    ‘It's pink. I saw it change colour. That is not the colour it started out as. It's pink. That's why I've been feeling sick.’
    Serge took a step towards me and as he did so he dropped the slip of paper and knelt down to retrieve it. When he stood up he took me by the hand and led me to the bedroom. He made love to me that morning more gently than he had ever done before and when wehad finished I lifted the sheet up over my head.
    ‘You look like an ivory moth,’ he said as I brought the sheet down to rest over us.
    Serge still wanted me to learn to eat fire. I allowed him to keep all his equipment in my apartment in a small kitchen cupboard under the sink. There he stashed bottles of paraffin and torches and sheets of old cotton which he'd tear into strips and bind round the torches.
    ‘I still want to teach you,’ he said more than once every week, usually when he was packing his stuff into his bag ready to go out. ‘Tell me when you're ready. You'd love