THE SINK
One of the hideous things that Erwan discovered was the sink in his room.
He discovered this horror twice. Once, in his room at the Halls of Residence. Then, in his room in the Big Pink house.
First, in his room in the Halls of Residence. He used the sink daily. He brushed his teeth using water from it, and cleaned his hands and his face with cold water and soap. He even, once or twice, used the water from the hot tap for his coffee instead of going to the communal kitchen and using the kettle. In part this was because he was lazy; in other part, because he couldn’t be bothered talking to anyone in the kitchen. Nevertheless the water from the hot tap was insidiously disgusting that he couldn’t drink it more than once or twice, and was forced to leave his room and say hello to the people who shared his floor. He even got to know one or two of them, such as Eddie, who played guitar, and the American with a blonde beard who played the saxophone.
Towards the end of his stay in Halls Erwan’s sink developed a peculiar mould around the overflow. He’d watched this horror grow over the course of some months, since its first appearance during the winter. It was blue and slimy; it hid just in view behind the enamel lip like a pervert down a dark alleyway. Erwan was revulsed by it every time it caught his eye. This happened at least twice a day, if not more often, as he brushed his teeth or washed his hands. He shuddered.
Finally, when it came time to evict the Halls, he took a roll of toilet tissue wrapped round his hand and wiped the slimy mushroom out as best he could. He also circled around the plug hole with a stretch of toilet roll. Blue filth came off. He shook uncontrollably and quickly dropped the unspeakable into a blue plastic bag, and departed from the Halls without ever thinking about it again.
The same thing happened to his sink in his Big Pink room. Except this time, it happened much more quickly. The diseased mushroom must have been waiting, hiding behind the clean-ish enamel front, while Emmett innocently went about his business in his room. Then Erwan moved in and the mushroom moved up. It began choking the overflow, reaching out over the sink with eel-coloured flaps, like a flatworm squirming out of a clay riverbed. Erwan never cleaned it, never thought of it as best he could, despite feeling horror and revolt every time he brushed his teeth, which was, after all, twice a day. He had horrible thoughts about poking it with his finger. There were red dots all the way around the bowl.
Once he gave into the lazy temptation to drink from the tap in his room, because the main tap was all the way downstairs, down two flights of stairs, and he was hungover or stoned or both. He never did that again. It was foul, as it had gone through the water storage tank upstairs, and probably no-one had put bleach in that tank for sixty-five years or more.
He also poured beer from a left-over party down the sink one time. Whether this helped or hindered the growth of the mould that lived down there, none could say.
Those are all the stories concerning Erwan’s sinks. There are doubtless similar stories about all the sinks all over the world, never mind the mere fourteen in the nine bedrooms, two toilets, bathroom and kitchen of the Big Pink.
As we have already seen, there was a slice of toast in the bath; it stayed there for two years, preventing anyone from using it.
That left a single shower as the sole means of cleaning every body in the house.
During the first year the shower functioned perfectly. Most people showered in it three or four times a week, or every day. Most people also followed James Hendry’s proscription not to rub more than three times, because to do otherwise constituted masturbation. It was not a safe place to masturbate in any case.
Later, in second year, the usage increased, chiefly because of John McIlroy. He insisted on showering before and after every major daily landmark.
It wasn’t until this second year that the most unfortunate characteristics of the shower room developed: the bracket mushroom, the fork with the hair wrapped around it, the cracks in the kitchen ceiling directly beneath the shower unit – and most dispiritingly of all, the lack of central heating.
Erwan was in the shower. If it wasn’t bad enough that he only had a threadbare bathrobe to wrap himself in, he also had to get clean in this shower. The bracket fungus by his left foot scarcely registered on his attention now. He huddled beneath the rain of hot water, for the shower was electric. The rest of the house was in permafrost. It was December; the winter had only begun.
He stayed under the shower for many aeons of centuries, growing a long white beard, but little wisdom. He thought no thoughts and only felt feelings of comfort at the warmth and dark dread and unhappiness at the thought of getting out. He kept his feet carefully tucked into the tiny circle of cleanliness in centre of the shower basin. The rest was filth: mud, muck, slime, dust with tentacles, microsystems, disease. The worst thing was that the longer he stayed in the shower, the greater the water level rose. He hadn’t the motive ability to leave the shower and scoop out the hairball with the fork. He didn’t even want to acknowledge the fork. So the water level rose. It would rise and rise until it dislodged one of the disgusting islands of slime; the island would float, over his feet, touch his flesh …
He looked at the ceiling, letting the water wash away his sins. Did he have any sins? He didn’t care. The water was getting deeper; already a centimetre thick. He began weeping softly; he didn’t want to leave; he didn’t want to step onto the disgusting linoleum floor, walk the three or four steps to the door where hung his bath robe.
The water rose another millimetre. He began wailing, asking God, whom he did not believe in, to spare him this. God did not listen. The water rose still further.
In a final movment of extreme despair, Erwan flicked the water off and lunged out of the shower before the filth could attack him. He scatteredly drove his arms into the bathrobe and tied it around him, shivering, his hair dripping great beads onto the linoleum. He whimpered and hugged himself. Painfully, he reached down and took the pile of clothes and his slippers in his right hand, and slid the bar open with the other. He scurried upstairs, thinking of only one thing.
He threw his clothes to the floor, opened the door to his room, and flicked on the electric radiator in one single movement. He placed his chair so close to the radiator that it melted away. He sat there, mindlessly whimpering and shivering, for half an hour until he had dried by natural evaporation. He was finally able to rub the remainder of the dampness out of him and put on his clothes, and huddled by the radiator a while longer. After another half hour he reluctantly turned it off. Within minutes all the meagre heat was gone from the room. He put on his jumper, readapting to the cold. He breathed on his hands. He turned on his computer.