Water by Jennifer Thompson / Fiction / Untitled Books

"The water submerged her entirely and its temperature sat heavily upon her chest and temples. She had to try hard not to let out a sound against the cold, and instead spat what little water had found its way into her mouth with the words ‘Damn him again.’"

Water by Jennifer Thompson

The building of the Szechenyi baths was a florid shade of effeminate peach, nestled within a shady patch of City Park. From nearby its white cupolas could be seen amongst the trees, and a very noticeable smell of sulphur distinguishable from that of the flowerbeds. Martha had miscalculated its distance from the river and found herself tired of walking and sticky from the sun. She had tested already the waters in Gellert, Rudas, Szent Lukacs. Yet apart from a faintly unpleasant scent upon her skin, she had had no luck in remedying her ailments.

Martha disliked most of all the sensation of cognitive-transitioning, and had taken it as a positive sign that she had undergone a take-off, a landing, and a language barrier to make it to Budapest. At the airport she had flagged down a taxi without difficulty, and after pointing to the name of a hotel in her guidebook had felt like adding 'Yes, its true. I am here to be cured!' Even after she had been left alone in her room with the peculiar smell of foreign laundry and the hot traffic down on the street, she remained confident, a characteristic not uncommon to those with a resolute plan.

But by her forth day she was beginning to loose faith. A vein in the back of one leg had begun to feel tender to the touch, and the stomach problems she had brought with her had, if anything, worsened. She still suffered the panic of palpitations, the terror of sharp and momentary headaches. Her clavicle, cervix and some ligaments were still noticeably sore. Worse still than any of those things, Martha continued to look out at life from behind listless eyelids, without exultation nor optimism, with a persistent suspicion of all things both normal and glorious.

She was beginning to loose faith, but there was still some hope left in the Szechenyi baths. Outside, she sat down on a broken bench to smoke a cigarette. A shrunken old woman with a hunchback was collecting glass and plastic from bins. A jogger was busy altering his running shoes. A couple sat in an envelope of shade, sharing a tin of beer. The hair of the girl was shaved along both sides and the tattoo of a Hawaiian flower sat wilting in the heat upon her chest. Every now and then her boyfriend would pick something from her hair, for there had been constant downpours of blossom throughout the city, profuse as a snowfall or volcanic ash. In this gesture was to be found the human element of warmth, but Martha did not feel any of this. She herself had once had a boyfriend, a Catalan lover. Their affair had been passionate, a heady autumn of both anarchy and tenderness. This happened seven years ago and had ended very badly. It was afterwards that Martha began suffering the anatomical grievances that still plagued her to this day. She was thirty years old. She was pale and thin. Her addictions had been limited to mild tobaccos and a certain foreign soap opera. Her friends had stopped trying to match-make because things always ended in catastrophe, but at least she had begun socialising again, in the cheap pubs and sweaty basements of London's west end. Overall she lived simply and without fuss. She ate small meals and drank good wines. She was a high-flier in the fine arts department of a book publishing company. She tried not to think about the Catalan lover and in this way avoided the many emotional complications that offend the private lives of ordinary people.

Martha watched the girl with the tattoo take a swig from the beer. She stubbed out her cigarette with the toe of a shoe and moved inside the grand old building of the Szechenyi baths.

Entering the thermal baths of Budapest, Martha had come to learn, was not without complication. Although the Hungarian guards spoke a few words of English, they were more beneficent than devoted. There was some confusion about the order of things: the ticket, the wristband, a card for use of the locker. While Martha waited in line for an extravagant old lady to finish at the wooden window of the ticket booth, she was watchful over the activity outside. The Szechenyi baths had both indoor and outdoor pools. They had a mineral composition that was high in both magnesium and calcium, offering hydrogen-carbonate medicinal waters. From the books she had digested that gave handy analyses of mineral tempers along with brief biographies of the well-balanced architects that had designed the lavish structures, she was aware that this particular compound was beneficial for the remedy of both gastric despair and complaints of the skeleton. The outdoor pools certainly looked as though they were captive to many shiny bodies each at peace with themselves. The big brown bellies of hairy men bobbed about like Halloween apples. Young boys with suntan lines lazed about upon loungers. Women, their postures held elegantly as the Budapest Opera house, were cannibalistic with the human gossip that came from the lips of acquaintances.

Martha changed into a tasteful two-piece not without awkwardness, for she was not yet accustomed to the central European indifference that permitted genders to coexist in situations of public nudity. As she stood naked with one skinny thigh through the leg of her bottoms, the flat feet of a large man could be seen making splashes beneath the wooden cubicle door. Since the Catalan lover, the notion of nude physical closeness was not a predicament that Martha felt comfortable with. She threw her belongings into a locker with a degree of violence and headed for the water, for the possibility of a cure.

Because of her interest in architecture and the fine arts, Martha felt immensely refreshed within the bath environment. White pillars stretched the carefully tiled walls. In places colourful mosaics boasted the pleasures of water, in others refined marble statues showed off well-defined shoulders. The several cupolas allowed for daylight to enliven the waters. Not a corner was left without grace.

There were several indoor baths spread across many artful rooms. There was the rotten smell of sulphur, which although unpleasant could be taken as productive if one bore in mind the healing property of its scent. The thermal pools each had their personal temperatures engraved in gold upon the walls.

She walked down the steps of a quiet bath, at a temperature of thirty-four. Four other bathers, reduced to nothing but heads with expressions, watched. Two men were in a corner involved in a game of chess, the skin on their backs burnt a worker's brown. Martha positioned herself upon one of the submerged benches and looked down at the brilliance of her pale flesh. The waters had a certain green hue, making her whiteness all the more luminous. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the rim. The heat of the water always did something odd to her stomach, pressing down upon it as though a third person were sitting there. It was not an altogether unpleasant sensation. She closed her eyes and from somewhere within sprung an image of the Catalan lover.

He had made a slim living with childish yet brilliant portraits that were displayed in several small galleries around the east end. On his brown skin hung a constant smell of sweat and acrylic. When he spoke his English was full of the kind of eccentricities peculiar to foreigners with no interest in language itself. They had met at an opening on Brick Lane, and for the first time in her life Martha had drunk wine until things became funny. He had liked her severe haircut and red lips. She had enjoyed his strong arms and unhewn artistic abilities. For the following five months they had become an entity defined by anarchic sex and tender mornings. When they walked down the street, his heavy brown arm had weighed down upon her shoulders. When they argued her passionate nature had come forth, and his Catalan fire hissed through many degrees, from roaring aggression to melancholy embers. Martha had thought him a bit dim-witted at those times and would never admit that he was correct, believing her own intellect to be far superior to his own.

The movement of a body brought Martha from her trance and she was horrified to find herself thinking of the Catalan lover. She was beginning to feel lethargic. The two men involved in their game of chess did not look up as she left the pool.

In a cylindrical room with several white pillars sat a bath with a temperature of thirty-eight. This was the warmest of the lot, and for this reason its heat was balanced with a second pool lying opposite at twenty. The two were small and empty. Martha had read about the benefits of temperature. One could sit a while in heat and then plunge briefly into the cold, in this way giving a violent and productive jolt to the circulatory system. The thirty-eight was in fact quite hot, but pleasant nonetheless. Sunlight came down from a cupola and made graceful patterns upon the surface of the water. The sensations caused by the heat were both uncomfortable and relaxing at once. Martha closed her eyes and concentrated her thoughts on healing.

It was before the opening of his biggest exhibition yet that the Catalan lover humiliated Martha. Before the event itself he had been staying a while in her apartment, unable to find anywhere suitable to reside himself. Despite the few expected annoyances of cohabitation, Martha had enjoyed having him close by. Although he had disordered her books and made a mess with food, she had taken pleasure from watching French films in company and from having a listening ear into which she could digress her peculiar dreams. On the night of the opening Martha swiftly left the office in which she had been working as an apprentice in a publishing firm, and headed to a nearby market to collect fresh ingredients for a special feast. She also spent time choosing a bunch of delicate yet vocal flowers to give to her Catalan lover.

On entering the apartment block in which she lived, she reapplied a coat of red lipstick and checked her severe black hair. She opened the front door with gallantry and goodwill, only to find the thick limbs of her lover at work on a petite brunette. What came next was a slow-motion of broken glass, clenched fists, and the rough feel of his bristled face against her fisted hand. With retrospect, Martha was ultimately outraged to have responded in such a way, but even more so to being victim of such a clichéd and predictable ending, the kind so badly acted in the kind of soap operas her grandmother had subjected her to on lonely Sundays.

Martha opened her eyes in a panic and felt familiar palpitations disorganise her heart. For a second time that day she had allowed herself to think of the Catalan lover. The water was becoming almost unbearably warm and the sensation against her stomach mixed with the dizzying green of the water was making her head swim. Spurred on by the fear of fainting she left the bath as quickly as her limbs allowed, plunging feet first and straight as a pencil into the cold pool opposite. The water submerged her entirely and its temperature sat heavily upon her chest and temples. She had to try hard not to let out a sound against the cold, and instead spat what little water had found its way into her mouth with the words 'Damn him again.'

It took a short while for Martha to feel recovered. She was becoming distrustful of the healing properties of the water, and because no miracle had been bestowed upon her she was increasingly more angered. She would try the outside pools and then head back to London that same evening.

The outside pools had something of the past in them, which subdued her irritability to an extent. To cast ones eyes over the scene was like watching an old black and white documentary about leisure activities in the nineteen-fifties, except that instead of black and white the colours were raucous beneath the sunlight. The pools were painted a bright blue, the blue of teenage lusts and flirtations, of suntanned women and finely tuned chests. There was a café where bathers sipped from tall glasses beneath parasols. The large thermal was busy with bodies. A waterfall spat healing waters onto grateful shoulders. On occasion, certain funnels of pressure would erupt from the bottom, causing areas of bubble that massaged and delighted. Martha entered slowly from the steps. The water was warm but cooler than the heat from the high sun. She slipped in up to her waist and walked a while, enjoying the sensation of heavy water upon her thighs.

In the centre of the pool was a circular area, created by blue-tiled walls. Marta found her way there and bent back her neck to the wall's edge, allowing her legs to float upwards from beneath her. Several birds were causing frenzy in a tree. A solitary cloud with no particular shape drifted lazily in the pool of the sky. She closed her eyes and meditated a while about work. Her colleagues would be chattering by the cold-water dispenser in the asphyxiating office heat. A new book about decadence was due to be published, and the artists it contained still needed thumbnail biographies.

Without her realisation, the circular area was beginning to stir. A clever electronic undercurrent was causing the water to surge round its walls. Several other bathers had dived forth, and by the time Martha had woken from her meditations she found herself victim to a synthetic thermal whirlpool that was both forceful and difficult to escape. Revellers whooped and shrieked, attracting the attention of others. From afar the area was comical with heads and limbs, each being pulled around in circles in a feverish tempest of body parts. Martha's first feeling was panic. She felt herself being dragged now backwards, now forwards. She felt the feet and fingers of strangers against her submerged skin. The air was lax with laughter and exclamation. She was aware of the small exit each time she circled, and tried desperately to make her way there but was held back by the amount of bathers wanting in. Her breath was becoming heavy; her head was beginning to spin. Concentrate, was what she thought as she tried to ignore the many sunken limbs entwined with her own. She tried to think of work, of her small and sparse apartment, of the neighbour's cat that often spent time on her balcony. She thought of tickets, of terminals, of a way out. But things were falling into crisis.

As she neared the exit again, a pair of strong hands were pressing tenderly against her hips and guiding her back towards the flow. The noise from the revellers was becoming obscene. Four Italian women were animal with laughter. A teenage boy was moronic with joy.

Somewhere else was an old man, a swimming cap only half pulled over his forehead in an attitude of senility. On his face was an invariable smile with the fun of it, as though he had just discovered the secret to remaining young. Martha was aware of all this. But she was also aware of the strong and tender hands caressing her hips and the small of her back. She tried to swim away and was successful long enough to catch the face of her seducer before his hands had captured her once again. He was slick and suntanned, and like most perverts had a vacant look in one of his eyes. Martha was unsure how to proceed. She was disgusted and outraged, but beneath all this there was a feeling of barbarity. She closed her eyes and felt the tug of the water, the heat of the minerals, the hands of the stranger that were moving slowly over her skin. And from somewhere within came a sudden rip of hysterics, a strange composition of laughter. It joined the clutter of general noise and wrapped itself around the exclamation of foreign tongues. But if one was to listen carefully it could be easily distinguished. For as well as the sound of ecstasy and joy, Martha's laughter held an element of lunacy too.

...................................................................................................................................................................

Jennifer Thompson is a writer of both short prose and non-fiction, and has been previously published in magazines such as Chroma, Pen Pusher, and Smoke. She lives in London and works as a copywriter.

...................................................................................................................................................................

Thursday, 24 March, 2011

In New voices

More

Untitled Books

Your account

Untitled Books

Issue 44 / May 2012

"The water submerged her entirely and its temperature sat heavily upon her chest and temples. She had to try hard not to let out a sound against the cold, and instead spat what little water had found its way into her mouth with the words ‘Damn him again.’"