The Females

Начало книги

It was hot, a damp hot hell, sweat emerged from all my pores. I began excreting smells, how strange, as though something within me were starting to mold, an extraordinary fromage, as though I smelled of my eyeballs, which bulged and welled with what seemed a sort of slime, a turbidity likely rising up from my loins, a twinge from the groin that brushed my heart, stinging; it dug slowly into my brain, but I hadn’t felt its onset. — I’d become unfit for the tool shop, and was sent down to the basement to arrange steel casting molds and cutting tools on the shelves, neatly and cleanly, as I was told. Cleanly—but wherever my moist hands touched the molds, rust appeared a few days later. During inspections these spots earned me reprimands, and I began to brush the molds with oil, oil that sizzled on the brown surfaces, emitting a burned smell; but stronger by far was the smell I myself emitted. Great flaking scabs infested my elbows, white eruptions that smelled of sour milk, and I hunkered inert at the table in the humid basement, not even shocked but dismayed to see all my fears confirmed with such absurd consistency, all my thoughts turned almost purposefully into stagnant poison. — Daily, and later several times a day, I masturbated in the basement, treading that shimmering spittle across the concrete floor; there was not the slightest reason for these abuses, not even a physical urge; you swine, I told myself, hurry up, or someone will walk in on you.

Читать дальше →