Summary:
At first, a raindrop falls on the lip of the bottle.
(Revachol/Harry Du Bois, E/NC-17)
A translation of work in Chinese, by a friend who wishes to remain anonymous. He has granted me permission to translate and post it on the archive.
I had no beta, so feel free to point out any mistake or make any suggestion, to help me do the original work justice. Any type of feedback is welcome! :D
Also recorded a podfic, if you’re interested!
Work Text:
At first, a raindrop falls on the lip of the bottle.
That doesn’t stop you from tilting your head back, to swallow the cheap sweetness, the clash of alcohol and artificial taste enhancers hand in hand. The gray sky looms above you like a great battleship, clad with rain clouds rushing in from all directions, like the Franconigerian Cavalries assembling for a grand parade. The smell of sulphur rises in the air, electric charges swimming throughout, the hairs on the nape of your neck standing up in turn, as if caressed by a lover who approaches in silence.
In Jamrock, a baker pulls open the oven door; at the fishing village, a homeless man lights up a bonfire; at capeside apartments, a woman scoops up a shovel of red-hot slag from the boiler. You feel the heat rising inside your body. Your earlobes sense the nuzzle of swifts returning from southern Insulinde, as your neck feels the licks of stray dogs roaming the streets of Coal City. Rain falls on your scalding eyelids, like the touch of cool fingertips. You close your eyes and feel someone’s hand linger upon your chest, once, twice, three times, four times… each time a different one. A hand calloused and solid as iron clamps; a hand lean and slender with thick knuckles; a hand warm and softly lined, but bearing terrible knife marks; a hand in fingerless glove, scented with the residual smell of fuel… Stations of Breath. The nightwatch of the city, pressing you into the corner as they see off the dead.
The wind picks up, burrowing into all the crevices between your skin and your clothes. The tide rises up and rushes into Martinaise Bay, stirring your tongue as micro-organisms swim through it, releasing dimethyl sulphide and flooding your mouth with a fishy, salty taste. The rain clouds finish gathering above you. Thunder and lightning scurry in their bellies, captured by a great skua and hurled from the clouds towards your nipples, an overwhelming tingle. You find yourself moaning, uncontrollably, as all the wavebands on the radio emit an agitated static, in truck cabins, under Frittte signs, in the capeside apartments corridors. Construction workers raise their arms high, their veins bulging hideously in the rain, and with a grunt, thick steel rods ram deep into your body.
There is no point to your struggle - the tracks, the entwined wires, the tentacles of the cephalopods in the sea, the torn-out tapes in the bin outside the video shop, all bind you to the bone. At the financial district of Delta, an elegant corporate woman extends her hand with an emerald ring towards a coffee cup. At Coal City, a female worker with bloodshot eyes extends a hand in blood-soaked bandages towards the fat face of her foreman. At Martinaise, a disco girl in a silver jumpsuit extends her hand with a half-smoked cigarette between her fingers towards the iron-gray dome of the sky. All taking hold of your erection and stroking it, gently, roughly, carelessly.
There’s a clench at your back door as a freight locomotive roars and barges in through the tunnel’s mouth at the Valley of the Dogs, steam overflowing with abandon, hot and damp, condensing on the walls of your intestine. A truck driver licks off the wrapping paper of a sandwich as he twists the key; on the streets of Couron, an underground racer kisses his girl as he shifts gear; in the Industrial Harbour, an RCM officer finishes his one Astra of the day and takes a deep breath as he hits the accelerator - all over the city, induction strokes, compression strokes, combustion strokes, exhaust strokes, pistons moving back and forth inside you, searing you, slamming you, countless engines growling in anger, roaring like thunder, grunting with satisfaction. The oil circulates through roads and veins at a speed higher and higher, making chimneys breathe harder and harder, making your heart beat faster and faster.
On the first floor of Delta Shopping Centre, glossy stockings glisten, stretched over the plastic mannequins. In the shantytown to the south, an old woman lies on a wooden bed, struggling to stretch out her legs twisted by rheumatism. A lighthouse stands straight on the northwest cape, its masonry skin rounded and smoothed by sea wind and tides. Shellfish in the ocean slowly open their calcium carbonate shells to reveal the delicate softness of their intricate innards. A bottle of cream slips from the shelf, the sweet, sticky liquid slowly oozes out. The clouds, weighed down by the heavy water, sink and unceremoniously straddle your hips in the form of mist, twisting and turning with the dancers’ exquisite forms. Deepest in the ruins of the People’s Pile on the banks of la Esperance, the half-dissolved core is still smoldering, intertwined and wrapped with your twitching arousal, red and engorged, sizzling hotter by the second.
Your consciousness is blurring. The villas, the high-rises, the shacks, the ruins, the wilderness, all inflicted upon you, before you and behind you, tenderly caressing you and violently abusing you. Finally, at a bar in Jamrock, in the second booth from the far end, a drunken blonde woman with emerald eyes in a long pearl-white dress knocks over a glass of liquor in front of her. The alcohol spills, cold and strong, flowing and dripping all over your body and down the streets. 80,000 lives let out a sigh of relief along with you, where slumber, haze and wakefulness converge. With the first ray of morning light, the wind rises again, ever so slightly, just enough to bring a golden leaf to your lips. A kiss of the city. Of the great Revachol.
-The End-
创作翻译不易，如果你喜欢我的作品，欢迎来微博啊提问箱啊给我一点点鼓励！反馈是创作者的生命线，每一个表达喜爱的字都让我们付出的心血少一分孤单。❤
