Page 34 of This Vicious Hunger
I stop myself, hesitating, but Olea nods and the motion is so joyous and encouraging that I begin to run. Olea follows and our laughter is bright and buoyant. I drop to my knees at the river’s edge and thrust my hands into the water; it is just as cold and refreshing as I thought it would be. The rain falls around us, warm compared to this, and I lower my arms into the river up to the elbows.
Slowly the excitement fades. I sit back on my heels and look at Olea, who is smiling at me from her spot between the boughs of the trees. It is dimmer here, in the shadow of the trees, and her skin is ghostly pale. She is an angel in chiaroscuro.
“Welcome to my silent little world,” she says.
Chapter Eighteen
In the day and in the night it is the garden I think of before anything else. Its scent follows me from breakfast to class and dinner and bath and bed, that same strangely bitter perfume I have grown to associate with her. Between sleep and waking it isn’t the garden I dream of, but Olea. Olea, Olea, Olea. Her raven hair and eyes like dark pools, her smooth white skin and collarbones and shoulders and the hint of her breasts, her fingers, her lips. Her lips beneath mine.
I wake often, panting, my mouth dry and heart pounding and a slickness between my legs. I am haunted by her the way I was haunted, once upon a time, by my secret books—not the ones I stole from my father, but the ones I hid from Aurelio, and which I cannot allow myself to ever consider again. I will not think about them, I will not…
But when I do not think of them, I think of her.
The laboratory is hot and stinking. Soil and mulch and manure mix in the thick air. We had more rain in that single night thanwe’ve had for six weeks straight, though just two days later there is no evidence at all and the sun is as fierce at the windows as before.
With Petaccia and several other professors off campus this week, there is an aura of festivity. Scholars who would normally be entrenched in lectures and seminars or squirrelled away writing essays take their books out into the square and sit eating havijillia, the little vanilla sugar pastries Isliano is renowned for. I meet Leonardo for both breakfast and dinner for three days—no lasting bitterness from our argument save the now-familiar awkwardness of Leonardo’s apology; we have not spoken of any of it again, of Clara or babies, of strange perfumes or shared delinquencies, and I think we are both glad to push it all aside and start fresh. Again.
This morning we strolled the cobbled pathways between the science buildings. Leonardo chain-smoked his fragrant cigarillos and I did my best not to trip on the uneven stones, my dizziness worse than ever. It seems now to attack me strongest during the day; I wake uneasy and unsteady, and by the time the moon rises I’m about falling over and faint with the same strange hunger—but my nights in the garden, sitting and talking and inhaling the green scents with Olea by my side, help. I should probably try more herbal medicines like the everlasting flowers, but I’m wary of drinking or eating too much, for I know both can cause further problems.
The stench in the laboratory does not help with my nausea today, yet it also doesn’t abate my appetite—a double curse. My stomach gnaws at itself angrily and I drink cup after cup of cold tea in the hope of keeping it quiet until lunch. Petaccia has left me strict instructions for while she is away; I start by taking cuttings of the stronger seedlings in the window troughs and making the slides she has requested, and then I water those of her plants that aren’t part of her current experimentations.
Then there are notes to write and new seeds to plant, some to be mixed with the brown dirt the doctor will apparently be bringing back from her travels. I do it all wearing Petaccia’s custom-made gloves, which have artificially narrowed fingertips so I can select what I need with ease, and rubber tips to help me grip. I avoid thinking about the difference between Petaccia’s scientific approach, her tools and her laboratory, and Olea’s wild garden. I avoid thinking about Olea at all when I am in Petaccia’s space.
Instead I busy myself between tasks by poring over the doctor’s first notebook. I’ve returned to its pages more than once, flicking back and forth, hoping desperately to find something for me. Some hook that drags me in, wakes up the scientist inside me. I’m hungry for discovery, to prove to Petaccia that I can be worthy of her mentorship. Some of the notebook’s pages are exactly what I would imagine from a professor of her tenure—tidy thoughts, well rounded if a little ambitious; other pages are like the ramblings of a madwoman, barely legible in places, what-ifs that question the very basics of nature and the world around us. I return during my laboratory hours to thoughts such asWhat if it is possible for humans to have a complete life cycle as plants do? Is it possible for man to become perennial?AndIf it is true that fungi grows through mycorrhizal networks, could the same symbiotic relationship be possible for other life forms?
I’ve heard murmurs amongst the other scholars, usually when they think I’m not listening, whispers about Petaccia and her “unorthodox” methods. I thumb the pages and scoff. Don’t they see that she is a genius? Yes, her work is unorthodox, but it’s more than that—it’sunprecedented. They’re just jealous because she’s a woman.
But even when I’m focused on my work, it’s hard to avoidthinking about Leo’s warnings about Olea, and about her connection to the doctor—which I’ve yet to get any real answers about. And the idea that Petaccia might smell the garden on me as Leo did is disturbing to say the least, though our conversation about the bitter scent of her odd little eyeball tree gives me hope that it’s not something she might notice. Still, I don’t have to think about that yet, so I push it away and busy myself with more planting and more reading, and with imagining that this laboratory could one day be mine as well as hers.
The worst part of having the laboratory to myself—aside from my own endlessly whirring brain—is the note that the doctor has scrawled at the very bottom of her list, in capital letters so I have no choice but to pay attention.DON’T FORGET MY PARUULUM ARIDA.
For the last two days I have avoided touching the vine as much as possible, except for moving the pot towards the window as I know Petaccia does every morning so it can bask in the sunlight before the light through the window gets too hot. I have always loved plants, always, but I can’t help the way this one makes me feel. There is a vulgarity about it that rubs the very hairs on my skin the wrong way, almost as though it shouldn’t exist.
Petaccia hasn’t yet explained the purpose of the vine to me, nor how it came to be, but I have a sneaking suspicion she has cross-pollinated and bred it herself, which begs the question: Given how sickly-looking it is, why does she have such a fondness for it? She’s usually so ruthless with her failures. I’ve been wary to even approach it, but Petaccia’s note is staring at me and I know what she means by it. She doesn’t mean I should water it and move it from place to place; she means for me to hold it, to give it some contact time with my body.
I wait until the fiddly slide making and seed planting are done,and then wait until I’ve been to the dining hall for my lunch. I wait until the afternoon starts to cool into evening before realising it is no use and I can’t keep putting it off. That the sound I can hear in the laboratory is the gentleswishswishof Petaccia’s pet as it tosses against the desk or the window or its pot like the flick of an angered cat’s tail.
I’m struck by the instant knowledge that if I do not hold and pet this bloody plant, Petaccia will know. And I know, deep in my heart, that no excuse I give will be good enough—and she will not be happy.
I could interrogate why making the doctor angry scares me so, but in the end it doesn’t matter. Petaccia is strange and wonderful and all things in between, but at the end of the day she is still the single reason I am here at all. Not long ago that only meant learning and knowledge and the potential for a future, for all the acclaim and esteem that goes with such a position under her tutelage, but now it means the garden—and Olea—too.
I settle down at Petaccia’s desk to write up my notes. The vine, Petaccia told me, prefers contact with skin—though how it can tell the difference between leather and flesh is beyond me. I’ve avoided it until now, but I can’t go the whole week shirking this part of my duties. I peel off my gloves with a sigh and lift the vine, wilting yellow trumpet-shaped flowers and all, up beside me and do nothing to encourage the way it coils itself around my wrist, my fingers, right up to my elbow—and still it coils. Like before, it is cool to the touch, unexpectedly dense and soft, a little like thin velvet. I whisper my notes aloud as I write with my right hand, stopping occasionally to brush its leaves, which are also softer than I expected despite their sunburnt appearance.
An hour later we are both still sitting there.
“You know, this isn’t so bad,” I say. “I’m sorry I waited until now.” It feels foolish to talk to a plant like a person, but I suppose people do it with dogs and cats and horses—and I’m certain Olea talks to the many plants she grows in the garden. So perhaps it isn’t foolish. Perhaps that’s how they grow so well. “And I’m sorry if I was mean before, even in my head. I didn’t mean to offend you and I certainly don’t want that held against me.”
It occurs to me that I could talk to the plant about things I might not be able to tell anybody else. Speak thoughts that no human should hear. A wobbliness begins in my belly and I laugh it off, the sound echoing in the silence of the lab.
“Does the doctor keep it so warm in here for you?” I ask, lifting theParuulum aridaup slightly, crooking my arm so I can look into the eye of the trumpet flowers. They look smaller than they did earlier, though surely that’s a trick of the mind. “Or is it for those other fellows? You mustn’t mind it. Even I don’t mind it so badly today.”
It is true that the heat doesn’t seem to bother me as much today. Only now am I starting to feel the buildup of sweat on my skin, whereas in days past I would have felt it hours ago and been relieved for a break. In the dining hall at lunch I found myself almostcold. The dizziness, however, is back with a vengeance. I wonder if maybe I’m developing an allergy to milk or eggs—I had both at lunch—but the nausea doesn’t feel anything like true digestive discomfort. It feels as though I am so hungry I have never eaten before in my life. The sunlight burns my eyes, and myskin, and my whole body feels weak. A deficiency, then.It must be, I think.What else?
The vine wriggles less than I’m used to, and although an hour ago I might have been glad, now I notice it with mild concern. It’strue, too, that the flowersdolook smaller than they did earlier, and more wilted. I glance down at the soil, but it is still only the correct level of moist. I check to make sure I’m not crimping or compressing any part of the vine, that none of its leaves are caught against the desk by my chair, but everything looks fine.
Everything, that is, except theParuulumas a whole. I’m sure now that something is wrong. I peer closer at the body of the vine, at the buds I once thought were pustules. They are paler in colour than I recall them being. Paler than earlier today, or only paler than yesterday or the last time I paid attention? I can’t be sure. I move my hand into the beam of sunlight and watch in horror as the edges of the leaves at that side begin to curl and darken, the faintest hissing sound erupting from them.
I yank the vine back into the shadows. The curl of its body around my wrist grows slack. When did I last see it move? A sick feeling begins deep inside me, a tightness in my chest, panic growing so big and so fast that I drop the plant entirely. The leaves and flowers scatter on the desk, their precious nubs coming away from the body of the vine; the yellow flowers crinkle and turn to fine dust, a scatter of gold atop the unpolished wood. All that is left of them is ash.
