Die Familie Schneider

Melmoth

Bruxist
In the shadow of the London Hospital, Whitechapel, a nondescript terrace of Victorian houses, two-up two down, each with a basement and an attic. Most are empty, their windows and doors sealed by the borough, only numbers 14 and 16 seem lived in: the doors painted the same shade of brown, the windows obscured by dusty net curtains. I stand outside one, and S. stands outside the other, we each have ten minutes. Good luck, I say, and in we go.

How many doors have you opened like this, how many hallways have you stepped into? Houses, dwellings, lodgings: you can measure your life in addresses. Some you will want to forget.

A narrow hallway, two sets of stairs, one going down the other ascending. Bakelite brown, the walls are the colour of memory. There will be bedrooms upstairs, and here on your right, through this door, a kitchen perhaps, a living room. All houses are the same, all houses are different. Like families.

So is this the mother, then, who stands at the sink, her back to you as you come through the door, endlessly washing up? She ignores you, the cloth squeaks on the dish, again and again, every two or three seconds. It is the exact same sound as the man in the bathroom upstairs makes, a pathetic whimper, as
he masturbates in the shower, turned away from you, but so close you can see the damp hairs of his back plastered against the tranparent shower curtain. A husband? A brother?

I look at my watch, I've been here for six minutes, trespassing now in the windowless bedroom, invisible to the bagged-up torso slumped against the wall, legs stretched out in front like a doll. My shoes sink into the thick pile of the off-white, dusty carpet; the white flocked wall paper glares in the mirrored panells of the wardrobe. Its very hot in here, hospital hot, the air seems alive, physically crawling into your nostrils. And the smells: rotting fish smothered with oranges ...

At eight minutes I'm out, stepping into the cool cool rain with relief. S. is already waiting.
 
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