Rain DownErin E. Lippincott The whole place looked dusty when you turned the light on. But Beatrice knew that this was deceiving and that it wasn’t dust, but muck. A thick, damp muck that was inherent in the outer city and so had crept into the flat… under door cracks and windows, presumably. Been brought in by people who came - each with their own thin layer of it. Outside it was greyish always. And where the muck couldn’t seep, it clung. It clung with a wet, soggy grip to all the old buildings of the city. Semi-solidified into the depressions between bricks. Into the little spaces between bumps in the cement. It clung to the trees. Made their shade of green a bit darker - almost imperceptibly, unless you knew what to look for. Beatrice hadn’t looked very hard at first. Not at that, anyway. It had seemed mysterious and foggy and... exciting, the way this new place was all dank and misty. All grey. London. There was a sort of darkness to everything that made it seem wet and magnificently aged. Like shrouded in the mists of time or something. With corners fading into vague shadows. But then she’d looked under her bed for something one night and found a huge mass of some former tenant’s hairballs. And then she was putting something on the mantle and discovered a previously invisible, oily grime. She washed off the mantle and she swept away the hairballs but then there were the corners and countertops - the tops of all surfaces. And then, eventually, it was the air itself, so that when she’d go back to the cleaned mantle or under the bed ... the corners...they would be dank again. There would be muck. One evening, when she blew her nose there was a greyness to her mucus. It was the muck. Having breathed it in all day, it was seeping in through her nose the way it had seeped into the apartment. Drifting, oozing in.
Beatrice had come abroad alone. Come from her small college town over the pond and into the wilds of old Europe. She’d come alone but was expected for classes after a certain "settling-in" period. Which was approximately one month. She was alone for that month. Except for an arranged get-together at which she found her classmates-to-be chatting about the way someone said this or that or what pubs they’d been to and how exciting it was and so old! It was an old old city. Beatrice listened to their vigorous chatter and answered their questions when asked where she’d chosen to live. She explained why she wanted to live alone. A "challenge" she said. And then the get-together was over and though she’d gathered a few phone numbers from people and addresses to their exciting new flats, she went back to hers alone. The grey, damp air pulsing around her as she walked back through the thick evening. Thick, damp air. It always seemed as though it would rain. But it never really did. In the month nearly since she’d arrived, it had drizzled once or twice, but not rained. The air was laden with damp but not rain. No... not rain. It was the muck, probably harbouring old moisture. She said this to herself. Nearly out loud. Beatrice imagined 1,000 years of sweat and exhalation from putrescent plague-ridden bodies... the evaporation of blood... the swishing remnants of pre-sewer sanitation. Fires and death. Ugly, ugly dirty bodies giving off too much. Too many particles that over the years had begun to mould into something oppressive. Like the weight of them all in the air. Permanently air bound to haunt the living. The sweat and blood and bad breath of London’s ancient dead. She reached her apartment and opened the door to find the muck waiting for her within. She stood at the threshold for some minutes feeling a depression sink over her. Then she decided that the next day... she would clean. Really, really clean.
Beatrice set her alarm and woke to it at 8. Her room felt vaguely warm but still damp. Quickly dressing she walked out to the corner shop and purchased a plethora of cleaning products all saying the words ‘disinfect’ or ‘dissolves grease’. The day was warm and damp like her room with a lowly sunlight peering slightly through the haze. She swept first. Then she carried huge tubs of soapy water down from the kitchen tap and wiped the floorboards and then around the doors and then the doors themselves. Then she mopped. There was water everywhere. She let the mop saturate so’s to spread the ‘grease-dissolving’ water all over - not wanting to miss any of the long-neglected cracks or crevices. While this dried she peered intently down at it and then, deciding that she couldn’t see properly... went out again to buy stronger lightbulbs. The floor had dried by the time she got back and had the bulbs changed. But when she turned them on to view her work... nothing was altered. There was still the film on the floor and in the corners. A dark haze of muck. She went to the bathroom thinking that the white enamel of the toilet and sink would be easier to see results on and so she used bleach and water and scrubbed until it gleamed. And it did gleam. But when she stepped back from it... it was a small gleam in the middle of a lot of muck. And then the muck crept in on it... she could almost see it happen.... until it didn’t gleam so much anymore. There was something greasy around the screws on the seat. She leaned close and then went and found a thumbtack and scraped at the stuff and found it grimy. Wedged into the cracks. Stuck.
Upstairs to the kitchen, then, and Beatrice heaved a huge sigh because the room seemed contained enough to get something done. It had a door and she shut it and began by filling the sink and then several buckets with hot, steaming water. So hot that she could hardly hold the sponges long enough to ring them out properly. She would melt the grime. She would melt it away until the surfaces... whatever they really were... were exposed again. The suds spilled over the lips of the buckets as the first hour passed. Her shirt soaked through with the cleaning water and then she added to it with her own sweat, dripping down in a line from her head and along the curve of her back. She scrubbed and she peered. When a particular bit of grime wouldn’t budge, she would fill her sponge with the sudsy water and squeeze it out in a cascade over the spot - to let it soak. There were a lot of these spots and the floor quickly filled with a covering of dim water - the muck particles suspended into a sort of gritty sheet which the cloth of her pants soon soaked up until the pieces of semi-dissolved muck were up against her skin. The sweat dripped down and she wiped it away with wet, mucky hands. Landing the particles in her hair and plastering them onto her face. Hours... the whole day.... passed and when she despaired of the floor, Beatrice attacked the stove and the countertops.... the walls. Until it was all a soppy mess of water - and the water seemed only to have released the muck and increased its ability for movement. It was everywhere. Between her fingers and toes. At the corners of her mouth. In her brain. And then more water, coming from her eyes now as she started to cry in frustration and she ran outside into the twilight street that wasn’t even that much greyer than it had been when it had supposedly been day. Only the air was even thicker. Thick with the stuff. There didn’t seem to be any people on the street, but Beatrice didn’t care anyway as she collapsed onto the stairs in front of her door and placed her filthy hands on her filthy face and let her tears roll down until they mixed with the sweat and mucky, soapy water in her already saturated shirt. And then it started to rain. Beatrice kept crying for some time through it, taking it as a beating - adding to her filthy misery. But then she felt a coolness over her hot back and felt the feel of the cloth of her shirt change with it. Then her hair soaked and her skin started dribbling. A cool water that diluted the steamy particles of muck. And then the grit... the muck particles... seemed to be dribbling off and onto the street and she was left feeling smoother and... cool. And the rain fell calmly and consistently on. It rained for what seemed like about an hour and Beatrice sat in it the entire time... watching the drops form a white sheet when she looked through them at the buildings on the other side of the street. The drops rolled over her until she was a smooth, cool covering of water. And they rolled down the buildings across the street. Down onto the sidewalk and the pavement and then away. And Beatrice wondered how old the rain was. Or how new. And how many times this rain in particular had fallen on London. And what it had seen. And how many people it had fallen on and whether they’d been happy or not. And how many times it must have washed away things in order to pave the way for what could come next. And the rain stopped then, and night fell, and Beatrice stood up from the steps in front of her new flat and went inside to get some towels to soak up the mess she’d made upstairs.
|
© 1999 Westminster Writers' Group. Last updated 02/07/99.