《Written on the Body》Jeanette Winterson

On the way out I bought myself a large bunch of flowers.

'Visiting someone?' said the girl, her voice going up at the corners like a hospital sandwich. She was bored to death, having to be nice, jammed behind the ferns, her right hand dripping with green water.

'Yes, myself. I want to find out how I am.'

She raised her eyebrows and squeaked, 'You all right?'

'I shall be,' I said, throwing her a carnation.

At home, I put the flowers in a vase, changed the sheets and got into bed. 'What did Bathsheba ever give me but a perfect set of teeth?'

"All the better to eat you with,' said the Wolf.

I got a can of spray paint and wrote SELF-RESPECT over the door.

Let Cupid try and get past that one.

*

Her name is Catherine, she wanted to be a writer. She said it was good exercise for her imagination to invent little scenarios for the unsuspecting. I don't want to be a writer but I didn't mind carrying her pad. It did occur to me, those dark nights, that movies are a terrible sham. In real life, left to their own devices, especially after 7 o'clock, human beings hardly move at all. Sometimes I panicked and told Catherine we'd have to call the ambulance.

'No-one can sit still for that long,' I said. "She must be dead. Look at her, rigor mortis has set in , not so much as a squint.'

Then we'd go to an arthouse showing of Chabrol or Renoir and the entire cast spent the whole picture running in and out of bedrooms and shooting at one another and getting divorced. I was exhausted. The French crack on about being an intellectual resource but for a nation of thinkers they do run around a lot. Thinking is supposed to be a sedentary occupation. They pack more action into their arty films than the Americans manage in a dozen Clint Eastwoods. Jules et Jim is an action movie.

*

When I got to my flat the door was locked. I tried to get in but the chain was across the door. I shouted and banged. At last the letter-box flipped open and a note slid out. It said GO AWAY. I found a pen and wrote on the backside. IT'S MY FLAT. As I feared there was no response. For the second time that day I ended up at Louise's.

*

Louise was the woman I wanted even if I couldn't have her. Jacqueline I hd to admit had never been wanted, simply she had had roughly the right shape to fit for a while.

*

THE NOSE: THE SENSE OF SMELL IN HUMAN BEINGS IS GENERALLY LESS ACUTE THAN IN OTHER ANIMALS.

The smells of my lover's body are still strong in my nostrils. The yeast smell of her sex. The rich fermenting undertow of rising bread. My lover is a kitchen cooking partridge. I shall visit her gamey low-roofed den and feed from her. Three days without washing and she is well-hung and high. Her skirts reel back from her body, her scent is a hoop about her thighs.

From beyond the front door my nose is twitching, I can smell her coming down the hall towards me. She is a perfumier of sandalwood and hops. I want to uncork her. I want to push my head against the open wall of her loins. She is firm and ripe, a dark compound of sweet cattle straw and Madonna of the Incense. She is frankincense and myrrh, bitter cousin smells of death and faith.

When she bleeds the smells I know change colour. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun.

My lover is cocked and ready to fire. She has the scent of her prey on her. She consumes me when she comes in thin white smoke smelling of saltpetre. Shot against her all I want are the last wreaths of her desire that cary from the base of her to what doctors like to call the olfactory nerves.

*

TASTE: THERE ARE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL SENSATIONS OF TASTE: SWEET SOUR BITTER AND SALT.

My lover is an olive tree whose roots grow by the sea. Her fruit is pungent and green. It is my joy to get at the stone of her. The little stone of her hard by the tongue. He think-fleshed salt-veined swaddle stone.

Who eats an olive without first puncturing the swaddle? The waited moment when the teeth shoot a strong burst of clear juice that has in it the weight of the land, the vicissitudes of the weather, even the first name of the olive keeper.

The sun is in your mouth. The burst of an olive is breaking of a bright sky. The hot days when the rains come. Eat the day where the sand burned the soles of your feet before the thunderstorm brought up your skin in bubbles of rain.

Our private grove is  heavy with fruit. I shall worm you to the stone, the rough swaddle stone.