I press my nose to the pink plaster in the bathroom. Is it damp that I smell? Is it coming back? My hand on the surface. No, it's not wet. But there's wetness, I know, on the other side of the wall. Waiting, darkly. I can smell it.
The damp can get no wetter in the kitchen. The plaster comes off on my fingers. Brown paste. And the smell, the terrible smell. What's rotting? What's behind the kitchen units? Something has died, back there beyond the wall. And down the plaster the trace of a vertical river. When did it stream? When did it dry up? A track of browner plaster on plaster. And everywhere the smell of rotting. What's died, there behind the cabinets?
It's all to come off Monday. And then the plaster's to come off, and it will be the final encounter. The brick and I. Exposed brick and a man, and great drying machines. Because the machines are to come to dry the place out. Night and day, they'll suck the damp from the air. And the plaster will have been stripped away. Nothing between the damp and I. Nothing but damp brick and I, in the stripped away kitchen.
There'll be no washing machine and no fridge. No oven, and no cabinets. That will all be moved to the living room. In the kitchen, the wrecked floor and the wet bricks, breathing. The damp and I: a final reckoning. If it doesn't dry, say the insurance people, then they'll pull out.
It's beyond them, say the drying company appointed by the Loss Adjuster. No one understands the damp. It's Talumdic. The damp is the enigma at the heart of everything. It draws into it the light of all explanations, all hope. The damp says: I exist, and that is all. I am that I am: so the damp. I will outlast you and outlast everything, says the damp.
Outside, half an inch of rendering now covers the back of the kitchen. Today I placed my palm on its grey surface. Wet. But that's to be expected, what with the rain. But it was still wet. Everything's wet, on both sides of the wall. Apparently there's a gap between two layers of brick. A gap - that's where the source of the damp is, I know it. That's where it is, dark, wet matter without shape. Matter without light, as there are in the dwarf galaxies stripped of gas.
And the damp's still spreading. There's still more of the wall to conquer. 'It'll be in your living room soon', says the damp expert. I nod. Yes, it will be everywhere. The flat'll be made of damp, and spores will fill every part of the air. And I will breathe the spores inside and mold will flower inside me. I'll live half in water like a frog.
It is my own catastrophe, very close to me. A secret catastrophe, spreading from the gap between the layers of brick. I take people out there, to the kitchen, and run their hands along the wall. 'Feel it', I say, 'it's alive.' They're always impressed, and disgusted.
My Visitor, in particular, is disturbed by the damp, and by the dirt that falls from the kitchen. She stands at the threshold of the kitchen, appalled. 'Don't worry', I tell her. 'It's inside the cabinets', she says, in horror. 'I know', I whisper.
The washing powder has contracted into great wet lumps. The salt is a single wet block. The sugar, the same. And where tins stand for an hour they leave a rusty mark. And dirt from the ceiling crumbled over everything. And it's so cold out there, so cold - so wet, the air full of spores. And salt covers the plaster like a beard. Salt in large flakes that you can rub away.
Leave kitchen roll standing for an hour and it's soaked. Leave a dry dishcloth on a worksurface and it's sodden. How wet is the air? Water condenses along the walls. And there are great green splodges where the mold is growing. You can't rub them away. They go deep: great, green splodges like nebulas.
Once, the plaster was a dry pink. Once, for just a few days. Then the damp spread from one corner of the kitchen. We found the source: a leak. A waste pipe. It was fixed, but the damp began to spread outwards, strange sun, strange radiance. Until every part of the kitchen was a wet brown. A brown that became mottled with green, and purple. And then that was covered with salt that somehow grew from the wall. Salt in large flakes I sometimes wipe away with my hand. Was the salt a good omen? A bad one?
Sometimes, it has seemed the damp was drying. Sometimes, I have dared to think: it's in retreat. But in truth, the damp was only gathering itself in darkness to come again. Gathering itself, breathing in, so it could exhale back out and farther this time. Gathering in so it can bloom out, strange star, so its rays might reach the living room, and there begin new work. There's a whole cosmogony at work here. A universe born, expanding. Dark matter and darker matter intertwined. Impersonal life - it's here, I know it beneath my fingers.
Just now, I went out there again, to verify. Is it really that bad? It is that bad. Is it really that wet? Yes, it is wet. Does dirt still fall from the ceiling? It falls, and constantly. And I take a breath. Am I really breathing in spores? I'm breathing in spores. And I touch the wall above the sink - is something really running off on my hands? I look at them. There's something brown. Something wrong. There's a new process beginning in there, I decide. Something else is beginning. A darker brown within brown. A spore within the spore, but with sentience. The king of spores, with a dark intelligence, growing between the walls.
I think the insurance company are going to pull out. I think the Loss Adjuster will shake her head and leave. I think the drying machines are going to fail, and I'll be left on my own in the kitchen, in the dark. The electricity failed there for six months because of the damp. It was dark, only dark, and the oven didn't work; nothing worked there. For a long time, dark, and with nothing working.
Then I got the electricians out. Light! 'Your flat needs rewiring', they said, 'the whole lot.' I ignored them. There was light, and that was enough. And the light is still working. It doesn't flicker; it's steady. Which means you can gaze upon the damp. You can gaze, fascinated at the damp and the plaster mottled with damp. It doesn't hide, the damp. It isn't shy. It is there, obvious. It announces itself calmly. It says, here I am, with quiet plainness. And there it is. A fact. Absolute damp. Damp beyond all damp meters. 'Off the scale', said the drying expert, who'll bring the machines.
I'm going back out there again. I'm supposed to be working. I'm writing something. But the damp is calling me. The damp wants a witness to itself. And who am I but its bard? Make an idiom for me, says the damp. Let me spread in words, too, it says. Let me spread through your blog and through all blogs. The damp seeks a new medium. And it will spread, medium to medium until the pages of the universe are written with damp.
I have to go out there again. The damp is calling, and I am an arm of my damp, I know it now. One night it grew me. One night a spore unfolded itself to make a man, a golem of damp. And the damp wrote its name on my forehead and placed its charm on my tongue. I spoke; I wrote; I was the bard of damp. Write, says the damp. Let me spread there, too, on the page. I write. The blog is wet.
And is it coming back in the bathroom? Is it coming back there, from the brick and from the gap between the bricks? Is something beginning there, too, a kind of Singularity of damp, damp become self-aware? Because a new step is being taken here, I know it. Life has reached another level. Damp will speak. Damp has begun to dream, there between the walls. And what will it say when it comes to itself? What will the damp say when it wakes up?
I don't know which one of us wrote these lines, the damp or I.
