TE20 Migrant Mosaics

The Sad Guest

well, but nothing has ever happened. This cake – she gestured at a second, sliced cake that looked pale and rathermeagre, its porous texture reminding me more of an omelette – I made myself, it’s my speciality. I put a piece of her home-made cake on my plate. She got up and vanished into the hallway, and I heard cupboard doors closing and water running from the front of the flat, beyond the room with the desk and the indoor jungle. I took a bite of the cake – and immediately felt like dropping it back on the plate. After only brief contact with my tongue, I had an overwhelming experience of absolute absence of taste. The bite of cake lingered in my mouth, neither emitting any flavour nor disintegrating in any way; instead, it retained its rubbery consistency as I chewed it. I was able to chew and swallow the piece, as I then established, but my mouth felt no sense of its loss.

Howdoyou like it? asked thearchitect as she returned and poured coffee into cups from a silver espresso pot.

I don’t know, to be honest, I said.

I only bake it for practical reasons, she said. But you’ll come to like it. It’s grown very popular among my acquaintances. I give a lot of it to my friends. It’s very healthy; it’s practically nothing but egg white. And I don’t use any sugar in it. For a while, she stared thoughtfully at the corner of the room and the window onto the courtyard. She was petite and delicate, her lips painted red. She had slim hands, yet as I had noticed straight away, they looked unusually thick-skinned and worn. 37