ROT | Oscar Kopljar
I don’t remember their flat ever smelling like this. Eve always makes sure it is clean, with a lovely scent of church and the kind of perfume that middle-aged women with Finnish designer jewellery wear. Then again, perhaps things change in ten years. Perhaps she’s okay with smells now.
Still, the place looks the same. Definitely not a home where anything should stink. The only thing different is the Persian rug peeking out around the bend of the hallway. It was brown when I was last here, worn down by decades of children running on it, but the new one is a cold blue—Eve’s favourite colour—and its thickness moulds under my feet like velvety play-dough as I walk towards the other end, where the kitchen and living room meet.
Everything the same, everything fancy and clean and designer and the smell is worse. Pictures of their summer house on the wall, a string with Polaroids of their grandchildren, too many to fit on the line. One photo of when we were in Rome together, but I am not in it. I go on, following the smell.
Tentatively I open the fridge. It’s warm inside, but they have emptied it for their trip—just a few jars of the strong mustard dad swears by. I close it and look at the freezer. There is a neat, hand-written list on the door, hanging by a magnet with a picture of the Virgin Mary.
Mince meat: 50 wild boar, 50 beef
Veal 20 kg 19 kg
Lamb 20 kg
Beef 20 kg
Pork 10 kg
Chicken & Fish bottom drawer
I stare. I stare. I open the door for no more than half a second, catch a glimpse of plastic drawers filled with rot-soup, catch a whiff of the smell, run to the balcony to retch and retch and the tears sting. Red floods my vision no matter how much I dry my eyes. The smell of death becomes the taste of death as I try to swallow the fresh air. The autumn wind rushes through the large maples, the rooks caw against the cold grey light which finally wipes away the dripping flesh from my vision. I slip my phone out of my pocket and dial dad.
‘Are you okay angel? Is everything okay? You got in alright? Angel?’
‘I’m okay, but the meat in the freezer is very much not okay. I don’t know how long the power’s been off.’
The silence at the other end is filled with the distinct sound of someone panicking.
‘You can take care of it, right?’ he says, falsely optimistic. ‘Call your brothers, they’ll help.’
‘No, dad, this is more than we can handle. I’ll turn on the electricity again if I can, let it freeze, and then maybe Paul can help you find some kind of sanitation firm or something, and they can come and take it away. At the convent we—’
‘Has the floor been damaged?’
‘Not that I could see. It’s all still in the freezer. It’s just the stench dad, it’s too much. You need like, a gas mask or hazmat gear or whatever.’
‘Alright,’ he says after another silence, and then he guides me through checking the fuses before we say a rocky goodbye. I text Paul: Emergency Dad Call incoming.
He starts typing but doesn’t finish. Dad got to him first.
***
My plan with the sanitation firm doesn’t happen. It’s not Paul’s fault, he tries, but dad is panicking and telling Eve to call the firm, and Eve thinks it too expensive and calls some dodgy movers, and dad calls me to say they will be taking it away but can I please roll up the Persian rug in the hallway so it doesn’t get dirty, and I do.
The movers open the freezer door to empty the meat into trash bags, the rot runs onto the floor in a huge puddle, and they have no idea what they are doing and I have no idea what I am going to do. It’s not their fault no one told them what the job actually entailed—they don’t even have cleaning gear with them. I hurry them out with the freezer and the trash, and between retching and checking so that the stench hasn’t flooded the stairwell I call dad. He apologises, but says I can handle it. So I guess I am handling it, alone, without my sisters, and without Mother Superior’s calm leadership to lean on.
Three times I mop the floor with clean water and unhealthy amounts of floor soap. Twice with disinfectant. I open all the windows. I throw everything in the washing machine at 90°c, including my clothes, and scrub myself off in Eve’s shower, because I used the tub in dad’s bathroom to empty the dirty water.
There are pictures in Eve’s bathroom as well, slotted in with her jewellery on the wall opposite the toilet, so all the guests can see her treasures while they shit. Pearls, diamonds, and grandchildren. She doesn’t even have that many. Just two, but there are more pictures than jewellery. I hurry out of there, find the guest room.
The guest room is worse. An entire wall of photographs. Eve’s children, an obligatory picture of me looking virginal before taking my solemn vows, and grandchildren, grandchildren, grandchildren. The red seeps in from the cherry-wood frames, bleeds over the glass and the glossy smiles. Everything still smells like rot. There was an entire corpse’s worth of meat in that freezer.
All I want is a cup of tea before I close my eyes. The rooks in the trees are cawing, it’s dark and windy and cold, but I have to keep all the windows open. The kitchen stinks, when I try to drink water it tastes of the smell which is lingering in the cabinets, and all I want is a cup of tea. I pop the kettle on, and look for a cup.
All beautiful china, Italian design and English antiques. God forbid that I break them. I move them about carefully in search of—
I find. A kitschy printed mug. One big duck and two little ducklings and the text:
If I knew grandkids were this much fun I would have had them first.
I won’t feel bad if I break this one. For a moment I want to throw it across the room. Then I hear the kettle snap, and I remember the tea.
It tastes indulgent and perfumed, but it’s better than rot. The spotlights of the kitchen send their low glow into the living room, reflect on the dark wall of glass. Somewhere in that reflection is a thinned and blurred version of me—without my habit I am a ghost dressed in hand-me-downs. I don’t look.
Paul texts.
‘still smell?’
‘don’t know. think so, but like, it’s stuck in my nose🤢’
‘can imagine, had a neighbour die and not be found for a month, worst thing i ever smelled’
I don’t answer that one.
‘dad said you’re there cause you have doctor’s appointment tomorrow? you ok? he seemed worried.’
‘nothing big, don’t worry. and don’t talk to dad about it’
‘why?’
‘he worries’
Paul types away. I stare at the now half-empty mug. I wish I had smashed it in the stinky red puddle on the kitchen floor and left it all for them. I wish I was free to do that.
‘i mean yeah. you’re staying in THEIR flat last minute. he thinks you’re dying or something’
‘i’m not🙄 i just got someone else’s cancelled appointment first thing tomorrow’
‘i think he’s happy you’re there’
I don’t answer that one either, because I know it’s true. I hate giving dad false hopes, but some things are more important than his feelings. My sisters, my hopes, and of course God—
I’ve run out of tea. Stupid mug was too small.
I sleep in the sofa like I’m stuck at an airport. I’m a curled up, fully dressed ball with all my belongings pulled close, an abandoned mug on the table, lights still on. The rooks quiet down around midnight, the wind picks up, the concrete and metal of the high-rise twang and smack. I hover on the edge of sleep with the smell of death in my dreams, with the colour of blood in my dreams, the sickly feeling of something heavy leaving my body.
***
I don’t like the bright, white corridor, or the fact that the doctor’s name is Gabriel. Not that I mention these things. I sit down and smile at his face. (They didn’t tell me the doctor would be male. I would have taken the appointment anyway, but they didn’t tell me.) His gaze flits quickly between me and the computer screen as he runs through the questionnaire with more enthusiasm than I can muster on this early morning. To him he is a miracle-worker, a dream-fulfiller. To me he is a necessary evil.
‘Any previous pregnancies?’ he asks.
‘One that I know of. Miscarried.’
‘Early miscarriage is common—’
‘Week 19. Ten years ago.’
A short silence. He makes a note, while in my head I note that it’s the first time that I used that word; miscarried. For months it was just he’s gone he’s gone he’s gone ringing in my head, until even those words faded into the void.
‘If everything looks good we should still be able to go ahead with the treatment,’ he continues.
I nod, obligatory smile. Keep smiling until the ultrasound stick is inside me poking around, and he’s commending the lining of my uterus like it’s the Shroud of Turin. My ovaries are good. I see everything on the big screen on the wall while I wonder at the fact that the door isn’t locked, and the assistant nurse is taking notes on his phone—and he could be photographing, couldn’t he, down there, but why would he do that? He wouldn’t, but he could—
Afterwards I sit down by the desk again as if the whole thing didn’t happen. Obligatory smile.
‘So, Mary. You will call us at the beginning of your next period and hopefully we’ll have room for you in the schedule. You will start your injections—the nurse will show you later—and then come in for an ultrasound. We usually perform two to four ultrasounds before we are certain that enough eggs have matured, sometimes more in order to have the best harvest possible. We need to really get your ovaries bubbling, we’d like at least eight but I don’t really feel a win until I have fourteen—’ He lifts a shoulder as if to shrug off some of his eagerness. ‘When we feel confident we schedule the harvest within two to three days.’
He looks so proud. The lines on his face all cut sharp into his skin, just like his smile cuts sharp into me. I can see in my mind how he spends his days in this room meeting desperate couples, soaking in their gratitude, and he expects me to look at him like they do, as if he is God, the life-giver, the only source of hope. Every day I kneel, I bow my head in prayer, and here this man who just touched my most sacred, private place as if it was a tool in his hands, here this man wants me to kneel to him.
He tilts his head at my frown, adopts a frame of pity. ‘Do you have anyone to support you through this? Many single women have a friend or a family member—’
‘I’ll manage on my own, thank you.’
‘…but I can see here that you live in … Quidenham? Quite far?’
‘Yes, but I can stay in London for the treatment. My family are in Paradise until Christmas so I have their flat.’ My smile becomes genuine at his confusion. ‘Texas,’ I add.
‘Ah, well, but you won’t be able to drive after the procedure—’
‘I’ll take a cab.’
A small pause as he looks at his screen again. ‘Oh, yes. I should inform you that your eggs are kept in our freezer for a maximum of ten years.’
The smell of rot enters my nose again. I see the puddle of blood and flesh on the floor. The cool, blue carpet like ice on the past.
I want to scream at him YOU ARE NOT GOD. I want to do that, I want to show him that there is nothing he can do to make it well again, there is no healing in the work that he does, no miracles, no transcendence—
Because… Because I came here to see some holy truth, the truth of life, of maybe, possibly, living up to my name, but there is nothing here but a freezer and a self-satisfied man. I knew that. I knew, and yet—
‘What if I don’t want to wait? What about IVF—or, or a sperm donor? How does that work?’
Even as I speak, I know I am asking just for him. To see Doctor Gabriel excited, and happy, and pleased with me. So that he may feel, at the end of this, as if he has done a good day’s work, while I go back to an empty high-rise flat smelling of rot, kneel before a fridge magnet of the Virgin Mary, and pray.
Oscar Kopljar is an Oxford educated poet and translator with a deep interest in grief, suffering, and the ways in which we endure them. He lives alone deep in a swampy forest in Sweden, where he spends his days rewilding nature, and his nights in poetry and prayer.