Chapter Eighty-Two
Philip La Paiva was drawn by the smell, and, coming upon Modeste asleep in her own excrement, he knew that he, like Brotherus, had found his soulmate at last. He woke her, took her to the pantry, plied her with beans, negotiated a fair rate, went back to her little chamber, and watched whilst she exploded faeces across everything in the room, including the self-abusing closet copromaniac.
Philip’s memories, too, exploded over his consciousness: He had been raised by a father largely absent, off amassing a fortune about which his young son cared not a jot. It was boarding school for him, of course, where, forced to forge an identity for himself, his parents having failed to endow one, he made many friends and won grudging respect from the faculty, none of whom gave a second thought to Philip’s puzzling propensity to spend unjustifiable amounts of time staring at his fellows’ forgotten deposits into the latrines. Weeks into pubescence, he impregnated the daughter of the village baker; Philip’s father sighed and paid to set her up for life, in exchange for not naming Philip as the culprit. The episode soon forgot, Philip swanned off to uni, where he studied zoology, for want of anything better, and, having scraped together a degree, was now loafing about. His mother, whom he barely knew, had recently recovered from a near-fatal disease of some sort, and, because he couldn’t bear a sickroom, he now tagged along with his father on this trip; the first real time they’d spent together since Eli had once half-heartedly taught him to kick a ball around the garden. While all along, Philip had harboured, in the most private, cherished chamber of his soul, a rather inexplicable preoccupation with the refuse our overly critical bodies expel as unworthy of further consideration, refuse which wholly outweighed, for him, any interest in the persons who unthinkingly produced it.
Philip’s eyelids rose to reveal the hellish scene: a little world drowned in sludge, the cleaner’s white eyes blinking dumbly through the thick blackish muck. The smell tore at his nostrils like tiger’s claws, and he vomited over her.
She did not move; she did not complain.
He had finally achieved his dream, but instead of a surge of triumph, all he felt was regretful degradation.
“You must think me a beast,” he murmured.
“Who?” she asked.
“Me, of course!”
“Oh.”
“Well? Don’t you?”
“Don’t I what?”
“Think me a beast! Weren’t you listening?!”
“Listening to who?”
He nodded, accepting that what he valued in her wasn’t her intellect, nor conversational aptitude, but her ability to shit on command. “Do you think. . .do you think you could ever see yourself building a life with me?”
“Building a what?”
“Trudging through the tedium of this world, by my side. In short—become my wife.”
“Your wife?”
“That’s right.”
She considered. “Would I have to give up my job at the hotel?”
“You wouldn’t have to work anymore. Don’t you see? My father’s quite well off, you know.”
“What would I do with all that money?”
“Well, live, of course. Pay for shelter, and clothes, and food.”
“What would I do with any of those things?”
“We need them to live. Wouldn’t you say?”
She considered, then shrugged. “Well, I suppose so, when you explain it like that. Still, I have my dignity, you know. I have my pride.”
“I know you do.”
“I wouldn’t want to take something for nothing.”
“Of course not.”
“I’ve always made it a point to work for my bread.”
“But of course: by submitting to erotic relations with me, involving as it necessarily would the expulsion of your excrement, you would, in a manner of speaking, be working for your bread.”
“Aw, what’dya want an old girl like me for?”
“I find—I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“‘Modeste’.”
“Modeste, I find you utterly enchanting!”
“Aw, go on!” But she could not hide, even amongst her layers of gunk, a bashful smile.
“If it would make you feel better, we could always pimp you out.”
“You don’t say?”
“Indeed. I’ve heard tales of an underground market in shit-fetishism.”
“That’s bloomin’ interesting, now!”
“I knew you would find it so!” He sloshed over to her, and she held him, and slathered shit over his hair sympathetically.
“I’ve had me a good life,” she philosophised. “I’ve been given my own share of triumphs. But this one’s bound to crown ’em all!”
They kissed, and their compact was sealed.