Free The Dumb House by John Burnside Page A

she did not respond when I began moving inside her, and I became more and more excited. Her passivity enraged me at such moments. I was convinced she knew I was there, and I was trying to provoke her, to make her acknowledge me, but nothing I did made any difference – she lay still, silent, motionless.
    Finally I must have fallen asleep beside her, though only for a matter of minutes. When I woke I was aware of a sensation, something like a memory, though it was a memory I couldn’t place: a mingling of warmth and scent and a faint biscuity smell, a feeling of utter detachment, as if nothing could ever matter: nothing that had ever happened, nothing that was happening now, nothing that might happen in the future. But it was more than that. The sensation I was experiencing was more than the sum of its parts. I looked at Karen Olerud and I felt a surge of violence and desire. I wanted to possess her, once and for all; I wanted to split her body open and suck out her essence; I wanted to drink her, to assume her. She lay with her arms by her side and her legs apart, like a doll that someone had dropped there, as if she couldn’t have moved of her own volition. Sheseemed to be asleep now. I moved over to her, and slipped my hand between her legs. She was still wet. I raised the hand to my face and sniffed; the smell was so sweet, so unlike any other, and I was certain, if I could have peeled away the surface she would smell like that inside, everywhere I touched and tasted. I parted her legs and moved inside her. I wanted to have sex with her one last time, then, as I was coming, I would cover her face with the pillow and hold it down, feeling her struggle for life then give up and fade away, while I moved inside her. I felt certain that, if I did so, something would be released, something I could take into myself.
    She was still sleeping. As I raised the pillow, she stirred and turned her head; at the same time, I became aware of a noise, like someone banging softly and repetitively somewhere in the house. It was a moment before I came to my senses. I wanted to go on moving, to finish what I had started, but I was afraid Mrs Olerud would wake up, or Jeremy would come running into the room and find us. I hadn’t seen him earlier, when I’d sneaked in through the back door. I had assumed he was outside, playing in the garden, crouched under a shrub or crawling through the weeds along the fence, hunting for mice. Now he must have come inside. The bedroom door was still open – perhaps he had climbed the stairs and seen us, naked on his mother’s bed. Perhaps he had hurt himself and was trying to attract attention, lying in the hallway with both legs broken, banging his hand against the baluster.
    As I dressed, the noise stopped. I walked to the far end of the landing, the child’s door was open, but the room was empty. Then, after a moment, the banging began again, a little louder than before. It was coming from downstairs, from the kitchen. I hurried down.
    Jeremy was sitting on the floor, surrounded by food – slicedbread, bright puddles of orange juice, cuts of meat oozing water and thin blood. The fridge was open; it appeared that he had just sat down and pulled out everything he could reach, scattering it around him, rolling bottles across the floor, letting the cartons burst as they fell. It was warm, and the fridge had already begun to defrost; I could see fish on a willow-pattern plate, in a pool of rimy water, splashes of yoghurt, trickles of thaw on the bottles and jars. Now he was banging a tub of margarine on the wet lino, splashing milk and fruit juice and meltwater all over his face and clothes.
    â€˜What are you doing?’ I said.
    He looked up at me. His face was a blur of grease and blood, and I realised he had been eating raw food off the floor, gouging out handfuls of butter and meat from their containers, lapping up the spilt milk.
    â€˜You were hungry,’ I said,