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Fidelity We were getting closer and closer to the edge. But Kate showed no
concern: she carried on calling out the names of the bog mosses and
their percentage ground cover:"Sphagnum recurvum, ten percent;
Sphagnum squarrosum, about fifteen." The Latin names were
beginning to merge with one another; my brain tissues were being rendered
by the sun, now so high it no longer created shadows. My thoughts were
out of control, jumping around at random. A primeval force compelled
me to focus on the opaque, dried-blood-red pool of water a few meters
behind me. I was tempted to ask if she was frightened of what was beneath
us. Deep down. I tried to distract myself by wondering what Nick was
doing back in England and if he was missing me. Kate drank the last of the water. My mouth was dry. What I would give
for a half pint glass of ice with gin and tonic and Angostura bitters.
As she wiped her lips with the back of her hand, I remembered her taste.
Of citrus. A few weeks ago, when at first light, a crowd of us were
carousing through town after the nightclub, Kate and I dived into a
doorway and just kissed. That's all. Only our mouths made contact, so
the sensation from our lips and tongues became intensified, a distillation,
a tincture of lust. And I still wondered whether that taste belonged
to her or some cocktail. My turbulent mind zoomed in on the open pool, all that remained of
the one-time lake, now colonized by the floating peat bog. What if I
fell into this blank, staring eye of the moor? Would there be any support
to pull myself out? Or would I drown? Would I be changed irrevocably,
transubstantiated into a mummified body, preserved by the acid water,
and join whatever was down at the bottom of that liquid limbo? Would
I become the latest bog-man? I failed to suppress these primitive, nonsensical
imaginings, surfacing from the id. But what horrors lay below? No one
knew. No one had ever been down there to look. What would Nick's response
be to such childish, unmasculine imaginings? Kate would know. "Would Nick — ?" "Stop going on about Nick, please," she said. "I just — " "It's intrusive." "Sorry." "He's the best thing that ever happened to me." As I registered the sharpness of her voice, I felt a dislocation, a
falling away of reality. I was nauseous. The ground beneath me was giving
way. The bog, for meters around, was oscillating in response to Kate
jumping up and down. She had brought the topic to a close, madly. "Now you know why the Germans call this a Schwingmoore...
because it schwings," she said. I perhaps gave a brief smile while trying to understand her uncharacteristic
rapid changes of mood. Soon the intense heat of southern Bavaria in August evaporated her
energy. We decided to try and finish our work as quickly as possible.
I studied her as she knelt, magnifying lens in hand, identifying the
plants. Perhaps her allure was a matter of mathematics. The curve of
her nose was deliciously concave. Maybe if I knew enough calculus, I
could find some formula to describe that perfection. Nick was my best friend. Kate had probably decided to partner me for
the survey because we had Nick in common. I should read nothing more
into it than that. I was trying hard to be better than myself. I had
sworn to Nick that Kate would never know about our drunken experiments,
stupid fumbling, those nights when we were supposed to be refining our
bidding systems for the bridge tournaments. I had a solid duty to protect
her. But that overrated Victorian value was melting. In this aphrodisiac
heat, Kate was free with her scent. Like freesias overwhelming a glasshouse.
I forced myself back to my note-taking.
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