Art Pact 119

It is a cold day and I lean out of the window with my cigarette, blowing thin smoky breaths into the courtyard where they are whipped away by the winds blowing down from the mountains. I would prefer to smoke inside, of course, but my landlord's nose is so exquisitely sensitive to tobacco that he can tell at a remove of weeks if I have been smoking in the bath, say, or in the cubby-hole formed by the stairs to the building's next floor, where I like to huddle with a book and press my back against the radiator.

"Herr Driscoll," he said the last time we met, his accent darkening the two Ls at the end of my name into a barely audible yawn, "there is too much ate stake when a man smokes. His sperm count reduces, as does the ease with which he"--he coughed, suddenly too prudish to say what he was going to say--"with which he completes his masculine duty. Arteries clog, the lungs become filled with a black ichor from the tar, the results are terrible."

He phrases all his monologues towards me in the form of the damage my behaviour will do to a man's body, wilfully ignoring the fact that I am no man. Besides, I know that all he is really interested is the effect my smoking will have on the leasability of his property. Once a flat has been properly smoked in it is never the same again, spoiled for non-smokers or those whose appetites run towards milder or differently-scented tobacco. It is a form of territory marking.

Below me, in the courtyard, the other stay-at-homes - three men, five women - are doing their laundry, arms bare to dunk into giant pots of water that seem to be boiling, so violent are the clouds of steam rising from them. It is just the humidity and the cold air, I know, but it seems more, as though I am perched on a cliffside overlooking a hot spring. When one of the other women looks up I wave at her, but she does not see me - or, I think less charitably, sees me but chooses not to respond.

I am not well liked in the building. Perhaps it is the landlord who has spread gossip about me, stirring up sentiment to try to force me out. It would be useful for him. He could raise the rent, get someone else in assigned to him by the state, someone who would not smoke in the cubbyhole under the stairs, who would not complain to the housing authority that he was intercepting post and making unwanted advances to the girl in the floor below. Perhaps he has told the others that it is me who is making little Alya's life difficult. It would certainly explain why Mrs. Preton, who lives across the hall from Alya, gave me such a dirty look this morning when we met on the stairs. Mrs. Preton's son underwent the change, she has so far been sympathetic towards me. Her scowl was surprising, and hurtful.

Remembering that makes me feel unwanted again, and the cold air of the courtyard is suddenly bitter. Suddenly careless of what anyone thinks of me I flick my cigarette end out into space and without waiting to see into whose laundry it falls I close the windows and pull the blinds. Scooping up my book from the kitchen counter I scurry through the flat to the cubby hole and sit down to read. Because life is never so easy, I discover that the light from the little overhead stick-on bulb is too dim for me to read by, and grumbling I lift myself up again to go back for fresh batteries. That half-stand half-pushup motion is the trigger: as I am just about upright, my right knee folds backwards with a pop, sending me tumbling forwards. I catch myself on the wall and hold there for a minute while my heart slows, then look down.

The leg has bent backwards into the local form, so that when I experimentally try to bend it my right foot comes up in front of me rather than behind. My left leg is still human. When I stand upright I can see that my left kneecap is normal but the right one has migrated to the side of my leg. There is no pain, but the sight of it is disturbing. I feel queasy. I close my eyes and try not to concentrate on the odd tingling in my muscles.

The change in the joint must, like all the other changes, have been happening for months now. I take deep breaths, deeper breaths, but the rising tide of nausea begins to carry my lunch up into my throat. I want to hop to the bathroom so that I won't have to step on my wrong foot, but as I take the first jump the weight in my left leg seems too much and I am suddenly terrified that the impact might cause it too to transform. Fortunately it does not, but I do not wish to risk trying again. I limp quickly to the toilet, treading lightly on the new leg, and vomit into it from a standing position because I do not want to kneel down.

When the last of the food is gone and the heaving has stopped, a rush of endorphins flood over me. At least some part of my body is still doing its job. I use the relaxing sensation to act, undoing my belt and fly and letting my trousers drop around my ankles. The entire right knee is a rich mottled green-grey, along with about a foot or so of leg either side.

I kick my left foot out of the trousers, then gently test the alien joint. It folds smoothly, just like a human knee but back-to-front, and its range is limited - I cannot make it close to more than forty-five degrees. But it is strong, and pain-free, and unlike my right knee does not crackle when I put weight into it and then release.

I fumble in my pocket for a cigarette, which I light. I blow the smoke directly into the wall so that it will stick to the wallpaper as much as possible. Nuts to Mr. Driscoll, I think to myself.