Free The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome by Serge Brussolo

shoulders of a wrestler who’d left the ring and let her muscles be sweetly sheathed in fat. Right from the start David had pictured her bare-knuckled, battling the raw, rebellious, clingy dough. He knew kneading called for a great deal of physical strength and quickly gave you arms of steel. Antonine was a warrior princess of the ovens who’d let herself get a little chubby, so as not to frighten customers. She wore her potbelly as a polite disguise, but one punch from her could’ve laid out a junkyard mutt. Her apprentices feared her, and it was said she never thought twice about raising a hand to the pastry chef. When her authority was questioned, she drew herself to her full, fearsome height over the mixer tub, her face white with flour, and sent a ball of raw, gummy dough hurtling right between your eyes, knocking you breathless and almost smothering you. Antonine smelled like flour, David had noticed the first time she’d led him into her bed. As if her body were powdered head to toe and slid beneath your fingertips, almost silky, talcumed. She could’ve crushed David in her wrestler’s arms, butshe let him do as he wished, going with the flow, let herself be docilely manhandled.
    “I want you to knead me,” she said. “Go ahead. Use your fingers.”
    David obeyed, seizing her great white breasts, her thick belly, with delectation. He worked her as if she’d change shape when it was all over, be reborn in another form. Antonine had blonde hair and milky skin. Out of some inexplicable vanity, she shaved her pubic hair. She shared her lover’s passion for breakfast. Like him, she hated cakes, creams, icings, candied fruit, preferring instead the austere nobility of peasant bread and butter with sea salt. In the tiny apartment above the bakery she made coffee the old-fashioned way, her mother’s way.
    “Filtered through a sock,” she said, astoundingly strong, two cups knocked you flat on your back in bed, heart hammering in your chest.
    “You’re my artist,” she cooed at him inanely, slicing thick hunks from the bread she’d made especially for David. He liked making love to her above the sweltering bakery, in the smell of fresh batches, when warmth exalted the fragrance of yeast, blending it with that of the baker’s cunt.
    “I’m the only one who knows how to make the bread you love,” she murmured to him. “Without me, you’d starve to death.” She was right, in a way; apart from his unending breakfasts, all David managed to choke down was a few spoonfuls of soup.
    “Out in the country, soup is a part of breakfast,” Antonine assured him, trying to prove that accepting this substance was in no way a breach of his strange code. She loved feeding himin bed, patting his cheeks, settling the great tray of unfinished wood over his knees. Then she would sit at the foot of the bed and butter the slices almost devoutly, a pudgy geisha with astonishingly graceful gestures. David stuffed himself, sinking his teeth into the chewy inside, glutted with café au lait. Then they would make love again, among the crumbs, and Antonine climaxed with a graceful little yelp, for this woman, with her lavish body, was discreet indeed in expressing her pleasure. She yipped, nose buried in David’s shoulder, kneading the woolen mattress with her stubby fingers. A castaway washed up on his mistress’s belly, David would fall into a light sleep while heat from the ovens erupting below came up through the floorboards, threatening to bake them both where they lay.
    When she wasn’t busy selling bread, Antonine collected dreams. David had come upon this passion the first time she’d had him up to her apartment. On the mantle in the narrow living room he’d suddenly spotted one of his most recent works. A dream of middling size that had met with critical success at auction. Antonine was an avid collector; as soon as an exhibit was announced, she ordered the catalog and spent hours engrossed in the contemplation of the