Excerpts from
Water thyme
By Merete Pryds Helle
One Day
And if Hoarfrost riseth up into the Heavens and covereth not he Earth, then it
returneth oft as Rain or other Manner of Moisture.
The water is choppy in the lake in front of the house. Branches from the elm
trees lining the shore hang out across the water, and foam from the crests of
the waves splashes the leaves of the elm tree. The water in the lake is
brackish. The salt in the water has settled, rising from the bottom in arcades
and columns; there are carp swimming through the arches, undisturbed by the
gusts of wind striking the water’s surface. Suspended in the water are
secretions of ambergris from small dead whales. The whales are scattered about
across the lake, the vesicules in their guts swell up, the vesicules supplant
the carp, the water, the salt, and the crests of the waves. The leaf mosaic of
the elm tree hangs out over a sea of swollen vesicules. The vesicules are
exfoliated from the whales which wriggle like piddocks down into the lake bed
made brittle by the salt. The whales disappear down into the mud. The detached
vesicules swell up until they burst; they emit ammonia and pancreatic juice,
and the leaves and the branches of the elm trees drink in the pancreatic juice
and begin to ferment. They drip putrefaction down on to the burst, vesicular
membranes. The membranes breed, they cover the earth, the elm trees, the
fields, the garden in front of the house. The membranes are lapped about in the
first blush of dawn. The sun breaks through the clouds and warms the membranes,
which melt and grow into mammary glands at the edge of the forest. Where the
lake was, with choppy water beneath the hanging branches of the elm tree, a
bramble thicket grows up, already laden with blue-black berries. The juice from
the berries runs down over the thorns and twigs of the thicket. There are
ragged coats of feathers hang from the thorns. Towards evening the feathers
begin to move, acquiring beaks and glazed eyes, feet and wings, and with the
help of the wings they take off from the bramble thicket. A thick cloud of
ragged birds hangs over the house.
Congealed clumps of slime hang among the brambles, and during a shower from
phosphorescent clouds, they pupate, and before long a confusion of dragonflies
and bluebottles are darting among each other. As night falls ears of wheat
appear in the fields together with some scattered poppies and the occasional
cornflower. The grain has lain as seed corn beneath the now dissolved membrane,
and as the corn grows, the ears devour the bramble thicket. From her window in
the morning, Kate can see a radiant cornfield with a few nuances of red and
blue. The ears stand straight in the wind.
Translated by W. Glyn Jones
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