Fish-Hair Woman

by Merlinda Bobis

  ‘From a kind gentleman with his condolences,’ explains the taller one, uncertain about the fat woman who’s gripping the back of a chair. ‘So sorry if we woke you, Mamay Dulce — you’re Mamay Dulce right, I mean, Dulsora Capas? We know it’s a bit late, but our truck — ’

  ‘May the dead bury you in that!’

  ‘Ay, how could you curse us?’ The bearers sway under the heavy load, fidget under her gaze. She is seeking out their souls. They try again. ‘So, where would you like us to put it?’

  She blocks the entrance, they step back.

  ‘Don’t you dare let it touch this house, or I’ll kill you!’

  The gangly boys retreat to the stairs, both nearly slipping — they’re city boys just delivering for the boss, they’d like to be done with it quickly — but wait, is this the right house? She’s charging like a carabao gone crazy, maybe she doesn’t like it.

  ‘But — but the gentleman said — he said this is so much nicer than plain dita, yes, we used — we used only the very best hardwood, I assure you, top quality job, very professional, and silk for the lining.’

  She keeps gripping the chair. ‘Tell His Kindness, the funeral is over.’

  ‘What?’ they ask in unison.

  ‘We had it today.’

  ‘But — but — how could that — we thought, no, we were told, it’s tomorrow — so what do we do now?’

  ‘Get out of this house.’

  ‘But it was made to order, it can’t be used by anyone else, I mean, we followed the gentleman’s prescribed measurements. See, exact length and width, not more not less, so the body doesn’t roll around during the procession — by the way, who died?’

  ‘Out — now.’ Her voice is barely audible, but she has made herself clear, lifting the chair above her head, ready to hurl it at these bearers of insult.

  The men cower back, breathless at the weight of her fury. So like the rock in the good book, the tablet of laws raised ages ago and shattered. But this moment is all hers, and the law is particular, as trivial and compassionless as the judgment of the village: Thou shalt not commit adultery.

  She will smash it to smithereens, to pierce the heart of its maker.

  ‘Get out — out, I said!’

  The coffin vanishes as suddenly as it had emerged from the night.

  The comings and goings hover around the girl on the mat. She sees even in her sleep — Who is it that weeps with the owls? It is a great mother owl kneeling before me. Her wings caught me as I fell from the tightrope hair. I didn’t know owls make funny sounds in their throats and cry like humans. Her tears are washing the scabs on my head and she’s calling me her lovely thing. She whispers, ‘Padaba — beloved.’

  Is it for me or for the bundle that she holds?

  I see my brother Bolodoy behind her. He took so long to return. The feast is over, the gifts have gone home — and what’s that in his hand? Not water from the river but a jar of fireflies. For me or for the owl’s bundle? She scolds and pinches his ears, you truant boy, but her voice is soft as she confiscates the jar and opens it, you must never ever trap light, silly, and sets them free but they stay and circle the bundle in her arms amidst a tender singsong and his ohs and ahs, and I shut my eyes again but I can see through my lids how beautiful ay how bright those lights that kiss the only beloved.

  Chapter 19

  They say I died when I was five years old and Pilar had a change of heart, as if all its little corners had refurbished themselves. Oh, how I wish I had stayed dead. I could have dreamt up life as a perfect coffee grove. But I came back to life, Tony, to dream warily on the page instead. These days, after the act of dreaming a different fate, I always look behind my shoulder at the reader who might tell me what I shouldn’t have written or what I failed to write, or what I so inadequately conjured. Wrong dream, wrong dream, you might say as you push back this page as if it were coffee.

  Imagine acres of prime coffee shrubs with heroes and villains brewing together a coffee-and-World-Vision ad — how can I get it wrong? But I can, we all can, even if I try to retell the coffee grove out of its history. That coffee farm was fifty paces away from the stream where I nearly killed Sergeant Ramon on that night of fireflies.

  Inside me he wilted as the noose of hair tightened around his neck. All lust arrested, all cum recalled as the distended flesh shrivelled — the reflex withdrawal of a dying snail, one without a shell, one so terrified that there was nothing to shrink into but itself. Then his men arrived, eager to take me to the coffee grove before we head for the river.

  But what if I depart from the blood trail? As storyteller I could confuse the soldiers in a new tale. What if I walk them to an unfamiliar coffee grove instead, where they would be welcomed by this query: Kapeng mahamoton o tsokolateng mapoloton? Very fragrant coffee or very thick chocolate? Each man would be freed from his rifle and handed a cup of his choice. The trigger finger would curl around the tin handle, warm and curved like a wife’s languid mood at breakfast after a night of love in another time. But Ramon’s men were lifetimes away from my imagined idyll when they caught up with us. They arrived in the stream where their sergeant was struggling between coming and dying, his neck bound by my hair.

  ‘Let go!’ The taller man shoved his rifle at my brow.

  I dropped the noose.

  ‘You okay, Sarge?’

  Sarge was gasping for air.

  The other soldier yanked at my hair, yelling, ‘Putita!’ He knew where to hurt most.

  Waves of memory tearing from scalp to toe and spanning the stream, then weaving on, fifty paces away. Putita! Little whore. I heard this before, spoken in hushed tones. I was there when they found the naked body of the church singer Manay Sabel in the coffee grove.

  Soldier logic: because she fed and fucked the enemy. Comrade Sabel collected compulsory taxes from the village. She had advanced in social station, a far cry from the time when she hid pork crackling in her pocket. The communist rebels had appointed her to ‘oversee’ the farms in Iraya; a percentage of their produce must be paid to the people’s cause. It was even rumoured that she was the mistress of one of the cadres. So among the coffee shrubs, a spray of bullets three months before the harvest. And the berries crimsoned overnight.

  But in my own coffee grove, she will be standing behind a hand-mill instead, alive and innocent and with no pork-crackling scent in her pocket, grinding coffee with Mamay Dulce. Together they will welcome the soldiers with very fragrant coffee or very thick chocolate. And the men will be embarrassed about their rifles, and their embarrassment will cloud memory. Why had they come to Iraya? No, not to purge it. Just passing by, Manay Sabel. They will utter the usual greeting of a stranger to the homes of the seen and unseen. ‘Please, may we pass.’ We called this out not only to the homes of the living, but also to the haunts of the spirits: a mound of earth, a wooded spot, a river. Or a distant land?

  Please, dear reader, may we pass — let my memories pass through this page, through your eyes that have seen safer coffee groves. Tony, once you told a story about the coffee street back in Sydney, where friends and lovers gathered over a variety of cups at any time of the day.

  ‘You not work, Mister Tony?’ Pay Inyo, the village gravedigger and storekeeper, was impressed.

  Tony almost laughed.

  ‘Tell me, please, Mister Tony, tell me about many coffees.’

  ‘Espresso, caffe latte, cappuccino; thick chocolate too. And tea, various kinds.’ And his tongue remembered.

  ‘You speak delicious, truly-truly.’ The old man revelled in this dream of beverages, the lilt of strange syllables. ‘Say again, please,’ he urged, hanging on to each word of his favourite white man. ‘Say again so I taste your home, Mister Tony. Only rice coffee in Iraya, see. Or instant from my store, cheapy-cheap. Very fragrant coffee and very thick chocolate? For fiestas and long talks with special-est guests only. But now, no more, no more,’ he apologised, holding out his empty palms.

  Very fragrant. English words that
Pay Inyo learned from his guest. Like very foul: for later, for the smell of the dead.

  Ah, the missed fragrance of coffee. Because there was no time for picking the berries, none for drying them in the sun or toasting the magic seeds, and the hand-mills were rusting with disuse. Time was for survival, for staying small, invisible before the eye of the gun.

  ‘Up, you little whore.’

  The M-16 dug at my temple.

  The other soldier grabbed my hands as I rose, trying to cover myself. He leered at my nakedness, giggling about our new destination. ‘The coffee grove is just around the corner, putita.’

  They took important women there.

  ‘No!’ Ramon snapped between lungfuls of air. ‘Not there!’ he said, barely getting the words out. I could see the marks of my hair around his neck.

  ‘But we’re all in this together, aren’t we, Sarge?’

  The blow was quick and sure, even from a half-strangled man. He buckled over. Then Sergeant Ramon asked, ‘Am I not as chivalrous as your white knight?’ passing a proprietorial hand between my legs. I gagged, my tongue thick with despair and self-loathing. I heard him whisper, ‘They could take you there now, but I won’t let them. We’re going to the river — then we can finish the business, can’t we?’

  No, we cannot — my own business of rewriting the coffee grove is about stalling for time, hoping it could trick memory. So let me weave an alternative tale about us nice folks brewing this exotic spot with coffee cups on our heads and dancing up a fiesta. A postcard shot if you wish, Tony, so you can quell your shudder with a longing sigh for this village in the East.

  Beloved, we will save you in the coffee grove. Here you will feel forgiven with a simple gesture of welcome: Iraya handing you a cup and sitting you down with kindness. My whole village will be in attendance, rapt in the ritual of making very fragrant coffee and very thick chocolate. The soldiers will exercise their gun-weary arms at the hand-mill and they’ll whirr like a swarm of cicadas, promising only the best brew. Then Ramon will arrive in his bicycle with two huge cans of pan de sal, pan de coco and pan graciosa: our welcome breads of salt, of coconut, and gracefulness. And you will break bread with him, for in my new story Ramon was never a soldier, he never held a gun, and he pouted only when the village kids tricked him of an extra piece of pan de sal when he wasn’t looking. And like yours, Tony, his eyes will be clear, oh so clear, they will mirror all the colours of Iraya.

  The scene will be picture-perfect: the ‘laid back peace’ of your own home, Australia, will displace our state of war. The river will always be sweet and tasting only of the hills. My village will drink only of sweetness and never know terror or grief or rage in their mouths, and they will sleep soundly in the night, like you. Oh yes, we can conspire. I will not find you in the water, my love. I will not find anyone. I will not even have to be born. Don’t you wish this sometimes? Stripped of its melodramatic timbre, this is plain heart-talk but with such anguish, one is surprised the breast does not cave in: I wish I was never born. Never the hairless child, never the angel of dead bodies, never the village freak turned village icon. I just have to say this incantation. I just have to tell another story. And all will be saved.

  But can words ever rewrite a landscape? Can the berries suddenly uncrimson with talk? Can bullets be swallowed back by the gun? Can hearts unbreak, because for a moment its ventricles are confused at the sight of a refurbished coffee grove, besieged by peace and domesticity?

  I can dive a hundred times into the river, fish out this or that beloved and tenderly wrap a body with my hair, then croon to it in futile language such as this, but when I lay the dead at the feet of kin and lovers, their grief will just shame my attempt to save it from dumbness. Listen to the mute eloquence that trails all losses, the undeclaimed umbrage at having been had by life. This is a silence no one can ever write and least of all rewrite.

  Chapter 20

  Why not that detour?’ The soldier was still rubbing his bruised jaw, but he was not one to give up. ‘We’ve always been in this together, Sarge.’

  Always together when they surprised Manay Sabel in the coffee grove or when they caught up with the young female guerrilla, the corpse without a face that I found in the river. How many women were shared by these comrades-in-arms?

  ‘Aw, c’mon, Sarge,’ the soldier cajoled, menace in his voice. ‘Just like old times, so don’t be greedy now — ’

  ‘Don’t push it, Pedro,’ his taller comrade warned, but Pedro was unstoppable. ‘We work hard, we play hard — right, Sarge?’

  ‘Shut it, Pedro!’ the comrade snapped, stretching his full height against the swagger.

  ‘So you want to play, soldier?’

  ‘But he’s only joking, Sarge,’ the comrade intervened, forcing a laugh.

  ‘Then let’s play,’ Ramon lunged at the man, ‘you son-of-a-whore!’ but the other sidestepped, landing a fist on his sergeant. It sent him reeling.

  Shocked, the comrade aimed his rifle at the belligerent soldier, yelling, ‘Have you gone mad?’ but Pedro was adamant, going for me from behind.

  ‘Pig!’ I jabbed his stomach with an elbow and heard him gasp. I turned around and struck him full on the face with a fist.

  ‘I’ll kill you for that, putita!’ He yanked at my hair, slamming me against him. I bit his shoulder, deep. He howled and went for my arms, twisting them.

  His comrade watched, weapon ready, but not quite sure where to aim it.

  ‘Put that down, idiot!’ It was Ramon rising to his feet. Then calmly, ‘Yes, we’re in this together … but be a little gentle with the goods.’

  ‘A little gentle … of course.’ The leering man released me reluctantly, then laughed, a nervous twitter. He sounded almost apologetic. ‘Good sport, Sarge.’

  ‘The coffee grove — you like that spot, don’t you?’

  More nervous laughter. ‘We all like it.’

  ‘Yes, our spot,’ Ramon said as he gestured towards the coffee shrubs, raising his rifle, then quickly he turned around and fired.

  The circuit of shock was never completed; easily the body collapsed.

  ‘Stupid cock!’ Ramon spat at the still figure, clutching its bleeding groin, before he turned to me. ‘Now, get up, woman — help her up, you!’

  ‘Yes, get up, woman!’ The panicked soldier echoed, eyes on his dead comrade — ‘Yes, get up!’ — as he tried to grab me by the hair — but the strands eluded him. Under my scalp, blood was rushing up and my heart was pumping bursting double time.

  ‘Sarge — did you — did you see that?’

  More hair uncoiled from my body, more than twelve metres now slithering away, lashing out like a live whip at the two men.

  ‘Sarge, over here, get over here!’

  A keening streaked through the coffee grove, acute as the pain rising to my scalp.

  ‘I knew she was a witch, Sarge, look at her screaming, writhing like a whore, a whore-witch, even her village suspected so, cavorting like that with her white man, I knew when we arrived in Iraya, Sarge, we should’ve shot her then, why didn’t we, I knew — ’

  ‘Shut up, soldier!’

  ‘Step aside, Sarge — get away from her!’ Rifle raised, he aimed through the mass of whipping hair. ‘I’ll kill you, you fucking bitch!’ The trigger clicked and the berries crimsoned deeper and all the fireflies hid their light.

  In the dark, I heard a cry of surprise and someone falling.

  ‘Sarge? Dios ko, I didn’t mean to — Sarge — Sarge, I didn’t mean — ’

  My hair found the hysterical soldier, wrapped him in a final embrace. It was not long before I heard the snap of bone.

  Chapter 21

  It was quiet for a while. Then through the pain in my scalp, I heard other voices, other altercations. Bittersweet this time.

  ‘Listen, it should be aloe vera and five novenas for Santa Maria Magdalena,’ Pay Inyo tries to convince Mamay Dulce.

  ‘We don’t pray novenas for Maria Magdalena!’ she snaps at him.


  ‘But maybe — ’

  ‘Tell me, why her and not any other saint?’ she queries him.

  ‘Because.’

  ‘I think you’ve made your point.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Dulce.’

  The smooth scalp absorbs the altercation and the sweet herbs gathered from the riverbank. Estrella is five years old and wearing river potions on her head. Maybe she’ll walk the streets of Iraya, holding up her bounty and calling out the names of herbal sweetness: Kulong-kugong, kadlum, verbena, artamesa … Then the neighbours will leave their houses, sniffing her trail. They will say, ‘Hoy, come over here, you hawker of fragrances!’ But the bald child will not stop. She’s not selling. And they will envy her, they with the black tresses.

  ‘Santa Maria Magdalena, that whore in the Holy Book — hoy, Pay Inyo, are you insinuating — just because of Eya’s history — ’

  ‘Dulce, Dulce, please listen to me first.’

  Pay Inyo, the gravedigger, storekeeper and medicine man, is losing his authority under this dear woman’s unblinking scrutiny. Ay, she’s reading me till the secrets of my bones.

  ‘So what now, aber?’

  He’s overwhelmed by her knowing gaze and those beads of sweat above her upper lip when she gets suspicious, ay, ay. He waves a hand, carving out some mute explanation in the air, and nearly knocks from the counter a jar of turu-talinga, those ear-shaped biscuits so popular among the kids. He takes out two ‘ears’, claps them on his own, and turns to the girl. ‘Hoy, you want my ears, little Eya?’

  The bald head, subject of his healing expertise, comes alive, looks up, but only with her eyes. She must not disturb the medicine on her scalp. She smiles at the man with biscuit ears. ‘Yes, Pay Inyo, please-please.’

  ‘You’re not tired yet, child, truly-truly?’

  A shake of the bald head.

  Ay, to have some magic, to bump into a miracle. ‘Here, for being very patient. More ears in the jar … ’ He winks.