The Marvellous Equations of the Dread

by Marcia Douglas

  Concerning Zion and the Higherstanding of Maths

  The boy is there the next afternoon with his school bag and holey shoes. All night he has searched in his dream for Zion, chopping his way through a thicket of bamboo, guango trees and long john-crow vines. He sits now on an overturned bucket by the bus stop, listening to the clink-clink of Fall-down’s earrings, missing his bus then waiting for the next one and the one after that.

  “Tell me again bout Zion, the place you say Bob must reach,” he says.

  It is Friday and the city is ablaze with heat and vice.

  “Awake, Zion, awake!” Fall-down sings.

  “Shut up,” the boy says. “People can’t even talk serious with you.”

  “Since when you take me serious, anyway?”

  The boy sucks on a tamarind ball and spits out the seed.

  “Alright, respect.”

  “Riddle me this; riddle me that. Guess me this riddle and perhaps not: My mother have many mansions and all of them have a different gate.”

  “So is more than one place?”

  “No, is one place.”

  The boy looks confused.

  “The arithmetics of Zion, youth-man! Maths like that no teach inna school.”

  The boy throws a stone at a bird in the lignum vitae tree behind him. The bird takes off, following the direction of traffic.

  Another bus begins to pull away from the curb and Fall-down watches as a woman runs to catch it, the muskwhiff of her passing filling the air.

  DUB-SIDE CHANTING

  Track 13.0: Under the Nutmeg Tree

  The holy herb fills the yard, swirls around the feet of Marley and His Imperial Majesty, so that soon the two stand in a river of smoke. Marley bends down, fans the air, anxious to peer back into Babylon to find where the true ring might be.

  “Do not look back,” H.I.M. says, and the smoke rises higher, touches their knees. “Since I have been here, I have witnessed it time and time again. Those who look back thlip and fall down, and never come back, and anyway, you do not want to return to 56 Hope Road, falling backwards like a fool.”

  And who is Marley to defy the Almighty? Down in Babylon, there are wars and rumours of wars. Marley feels the rumbling under his feet – gunshots and backfighting and all manner of politricks and wickedness and spoilation of the earth – a youth running across the street at Molynes Road shot in the head; a politician’s girlfriend locked in a freezer, poisoned water; stillborn infants; a stick rammed up a goat’s ass; a man’s slit throat.

  As a sign between himself and Jah, he had been given the ring for the healing of the nation, and now for all his trials and sufferation, he has lost it. Marley looks back at the leaning tree, “STUDIO D” all covered in smoke. Somewhere in the distance there is a faint clink-clink, and he moves toward the sound.

  “Wait.”

  H.I.M. speaks with a quiet assurance, holds up his hands like two tablets of stone. The last in a succession of 225 kings traced back through bloodfire to King Solomon and his court, H.I.M. lifts his voice and Rastafari listens. The indigo sky casts a bluish tinge on his palms, and as he speaks the smoke rises higher, covers his wrists and his slender fingertips.

  “This work is not for you alone. Others will come afther,” H.I.M. says, and his face disappears in the haze.

  HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE

  Angel is Fallen, is Fallen

  “Zion and angelshit to raas,” the boy says, “so whose angel you was?”

  “One time I had a girl right here in Kingston. She sold newspapers and box drink on the street, and I used to follow her so boys like you wouldn’t touch her up.”

  “You too lie!”

  The little brass Africas go clink-clink, but Fall-down does not answer.

  “Mad man!” says the boy and begins to play his make-believe guitar.

  The radio stops mid-note – out of batteries – and Fall-down puts it in the satchel with his shoe brush, bottle of kananga water and ledger book of happen-tings.

  “I don’t believe in no angels,” the boy says, “I deal inna gunfire!” and he shoots out his arm like a machine gun.

  After a while Fall-down says, all quiet, “I used to be an angel in King Solomon’s court.”

  The boy rolls his eyes and looks away. He can see his bus coming and begins to leave.

  “You like sexy girls?” Fall-down pulls at the boy’s sleeve. “I used to be the angel who watched over King Solomon when he made love to his concubines.”

  He throws a coin in the air and catches it. It lands on Marcus Garvey’s head.

  “And I bet you never know that I was there when His Imperial Majesty of Ethiopia, the Elect of God, made love to the Empress while the lions watched?”

  A girl in tight jeans and long plaits comes and stands at the bus stop. She opens a book with a gilded map of Jamaica on front.

  “In the end, I fall from grace because I slept with a pretty woman.” He sighs and watches the traffic. “An angel should not commit such acts with humans, you know. Not even in their dreams.”

  The bus is at the corner; the boy hesitates again then hops inside; this time the clink-clink he hears comes from the little Africas in syncopation with the dawta’s silver bangles. Her gilded map catches the sun.

  “Come back tomorrow, you hear?” Fall-down calls. “I go tell you how to love a girl.”

  LEENAH

  London, 1977: The Language of Zion

  Bob came back to the pub quite unexpectedly one afternoon – searching for fresh orange juice. He held his head back and drained the cup clean, then asked for another one.

  “Yu want to know my vice?” he said. “Woman is my vice.”

  I acted as though I had not understood him, but as I watched his Adam apple bob up and down, I had a sudden need to touch it.

  “Yu too overripe,” I said, and the apple throbbed under my finger. There was mischief in his eyes again.

  He wanted to write me a song, he said, and he pulled the felt pen from behind my ear, and wrote around and around on a paper cup, tapping out beats on the wood counter. When he finished, he sang it right then and there with my hand over the apple, taking it all in.

  He left, still singing, the paper cup twirling on his forefinger, his lion head held high in the cold rain. Dawta of Zion, Jah-Jah Zion calling come. For a long time, I wondered whether the song would make it to the radio; I don’t think it did. But in my silence, the words lived and my locs grew, and I hungered for the company of lions.

  Sometimes I made him a juice of banana, pineapple and mango from the West Indian market. Business was slow and we spoke in between customers. I had fashioned a Rasta sign language, funny I&I-taught motions which he caught onto quickly, me the melody and he the dub root bass. We spoke the same language, me and Bob. My hands moved like music. Like reggae to a one-drop beat. I had taken the signs they taught at deaf evening school and transformed them into full-joy and roots drink/ Almighty Jah and revelation and rice/ run-down and shad and mackerel and green banana and dumpling/ and apprecilove and compellance and/ red green and gold and give thanks and praise/ remembrance of livication; for who is there to teach the true sign for Zion? You must she-magine it yourself.

  “Our lives are crossed,” I said to Bob one day, “like two roads which meet at a junction,” and I lay my arms one over the other.

  “Bloodclaat,” is all he said, and blew a circle of smoke in the air.

  But I understood. He thought I meant I had fallen in love with him. He was used to that. One day I saw him walk by with a woman with long wavy hair. He turned and smiled and gave me a peace sign, and the woman turned and smiled too, confident in the stride of her brown legs, but holding Bob’s hand a little tighter.

  I filled his glass again.

  “Mind you become vain,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Don’t get it in your head that every nice-girl loves you.”

  He looked at me, stirring his drink, pondering my words.

  “Woman to
rise up inna love, no fall,” he said.

  A draft of air came in as a man opened the door and sat at the other end of the counter.

  “Rising or falling, not every pretty woman wants you, you know. And anyway,” I said, “we are joined together in the house of Zion, not love.”

  But I did love him, though not in the falling down way he thought. Deaf-life had made me a standing tree. I stood now like a Royal Poinciana on the other side of the counter. I had my pride and would not let his “bloodclaat” pass without comment, even if he flashed me his country boy smile. A chilly gust blew from a cracked window and I turned and served a glass of beer to the man who had just come in.

  When I returned, Bob was leaning back in his chair, studying me with his river-bottom eyes.

  “Talk Rasta with your hands. I-man understand Rasta.”

  I softened a little then. My hands made I&I and opened like a pod; the insides spilled with black seeds.

  The man at the other end drank his beer and watched. I closed my eyes and leaned across the counter, close to Bob’s ear.

  “I&I was not always a deaf girl in London, you know. The sound I&I remember most of all is the dogs in Kingston barking late at night. There was also a lizard which lived behind the photo of my mother on the bedroom wall; I remember its croaking, though I can’t remember my mother’s voice. She died when I was twelve years old; she had give me one of her locs and I lost it. Losing the loc was like losing the key to Zion gate.

  But the last sound I heard before I turn deaf-girl was you, on a jukebox. Someone was playing it in a bar across the street. You were singing –”

  “Duppy Conqueror,” he said.

  He was right. That was the song. And in that instant, I could tell he was stunned at his words, the consonance we shared.

  “You want to know my vice?” I say.

  HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE

  The Desires of the Flesh

  Fall-down stands and draws himself up to his full height. He is a tall man and the red cloth which wraps his head makes him appear even taller. He stretches up and raises both arms as if waiting for flight.

  “I specialize in the desires of the flesh,” he says.

  The boy is suddenly interested. He stops biting his nails and looks up. Fall-down taps him on the head.

  “How old you is?”

  “Twelve, Ras.”

  “Then you old enough to appreciate my line of work.”

  “Yes?”

  “I am not the angel who catch babies when them drop or save planes from crash, you know. No, not me. I am the angel who help a man perform! And make sure a woman satisfy!”

  The boy begins to giggle.

  “Like Cupid?”

  “Nah. Cupid specialize inna love. I specialize inna eros. Two different thing.”

  “Liard!” the boy says, laughing.

  “Stay there laugh. You think Solomon coulda manage so much concubine without help?” Fall-down’s face is serious, a profane scripture.

  “And look the one, Bob. How much woman him did go through?”

  At this, the woman selling box drinks and peanuts next to the bus stop turns around.

  “Listen, I could tell you some tings about what happen inna that bed at No. 56, right there underneath Jah photograph.”

  “I know what you going say – you was Bob angel too,” says the boy.

  “But of course. How you think I reach Hope Road?”

  The boy looks up at the sky as if looking for signs.

  “When Bob was alive, him coulda get any woman him want. And is me show him how,” Fall-down says.

  He twirls his staff around on its end. It spins like a top before toppling into his hand.

  “One time, I steal one of Bob’s pretty woman, you know.” His eyes are wistful. “Is sake a she me fall.”

  “So is Bob fire you!” says the woman, laughing.

  But Fall-down is not listening. He is standing at the curb oblivious to the mayhem of horns and swerving cars, waiting for a Kingston breeze, waiting to take off.

  “I entered her room through the back of her dream,” he says. “I wish I coulda find that dawta again.”

  A big truck speeds by, splashing dirty water, soaking his shoes.

  “But yu bamboo fallen down,” says the woman, her belly shaking.

  The brass Africas begin to jingle. Fall-down steps into the middle of the street. No one pays him much attention – the people are used to madmen and prophets and the fallen-from-grace. He raises his arms in the air, “Deliverance!”

  Only the boy sees the strange little bird which darts on his shoulder, then takes off quick-quick flying across the city of zinc and concrete and mango trash.

  “Tell me about Bob pretty woman!” he calls.

  FROM BLOODFIAH, RECORD OF DREAMSLOST

  Track 7.0: The transgression of Negus

  She read about him in a book she had found in a dream. His name was Negus and he used to be King Solomon’s angel; the angel who advised the king on how to seduce the Queen of Sheba. For in those days, it was written: “There is a place of desire, a tabernacle of Zion, only Negus can find.” In her dream, she wanted to memorize the story line by line, but because it was late, the night almost gone, she saved her page with a croton leaf and closed the book. When she awoke, her pillow smelled of cinnamon, and underneath was a dragonfly with antennae long as guitar strings.

  Next-night as she undressed in the dark, she recognized the silhouette of wings in the breadfruit tree. It was him, Negus, resting naked like a great insect, for he had travelled through falling stars and the bottoms of dreams and needed now to catch his breath. Her dress slipped to the floor, fallen-down bougainvillea, and she watched. When at last he climbed down from his perch and into her room, he was holding the book from the dream. No words passed between them, but she reached for it, the cover still warm from journey. And deep the book played a bass groove; and deep the groove grew a calabash; and deep the calabash was a stone; and deep the stone was a flame; and deep the flame breathed a mirror of secrets; and deep the mirror her nakedness reflected, ripe like Bombay mango.

  The third night, he unfolded his wings – magnificent in their breadth and stitched from the feathers of 307 species of humming birds – and teased her with one quill. The room filled immediately with little glistening things: nutmeg dust, yellow cornmeal, sea salt, shimmered sugar, sequin fish scales.

  The fourth night he appeared at the window all blue-black from the moonshine; his eyes were transparent like bottle-glass and she saw straight through them to the other side where a lizard on a tree bark stretched its wet tongue. This time he brought naseberry and guava cheese; fed her paw-paw and coconut cream; filled her navel with honey and drank it like an elixir; traced a labyrinth on her belly with hibiscus pollen. She was ravenous and partook unashamed, for what did it matter? His palms had no lines and there was no past and no future, only pleasure.

  Fifth night, the night of scent, and the cricket on the windowsill rubbed its legs together. Ras Angel’s nostrils flared like celestial moths as he took her inside of himself in great drafts and little puffs, smelling her up and down, recording each scent – seventeen in all – on the parchment of his thigh. With each pore numbered and counted, for the first time she was known, her name written down.

  The sixth night he oiled her scalp with wisdom weed soaked in rose-olive. Her alive locs moved like spirit fronds and she raised her arms to reveal little hairs humid as baby fern. When he pulled her clothes down below her belly, he found god-bush ready and impatient.

  On the seventh night she waited by the open window. He arrived with a gush of Orion and carrying a guitar carved from cedar and set with cowries and polished stones, each dragonfly string tuned and tightened to the reverberation of longings. For again in the word it is written, “The archangel holds the seventh chord of desire.” And at the end of that tuning, it was she, now, who called him with her eyes, bass root moving up through her woman chamber – chime of star apple, chim
e of blood, chime of purple, chime of sweet water, chime of heat, chime of passionflower, chime of Zion – and she saw herself reflected ripe in her fever as the mirror increased the flame and the flame heated the stone and the stone desired the calabash and the calabash craved the bass and the bass trembled in the book and the book opened in the dream, and the angel said, Yes-I, Yes-I.

  LEENAH

  Beetle

  And then there was the time I came across Bob standing by a lamppost on Cheney Road. He was staring down the long pavement and the row of stuck-together-houses wondering where on Jah earth he had landed. It was cold and he was not dressed for the weather – he wore a denim shirt layered over a long-sleeved tee. When I called out his name, he looked relieved to see me. As he stepped off the curb, he sang a line from his song, Dawta of Zion, Jah-Jah Zion Dawta Come, fog wafting from his mouth.

  “All the raasclaat house-them look the same to me,” he said.

  “Silly.” I poked him in the ribs.

  I helped him back to his little flat off Cheney. The place smelled of herb and orange rind. There was a picture of His Majesty on the wall. We sat by the window smoking and drinking Chinese green tea. He leaned back in his chair absorbing me in his usual way. H.I.M. watched from his place above the bed, wearing his crown of crowns; his velvet cloak looked uncomfortable. It had been almost three years since the reports of His Majesty’s passing.

  “The day the news came, I was folding clothes at the launderette; I saw it on the BBC,” I said.

  “Babylon Bomboclaat C.” Bob pulled at his spliff and watched the smoke float up. “Jah can’t dead. Jah always live. Look, even inna the rain him live. Facts. Facts is facts.”

  We both stared at the rain coming down sideways and drizzling against the window.

  “I still think he died,” I said.

  “Rasta no deal with death.”

  “I mean his body died.”

  I nudged at a beetle on the windowsill with my spoon. It wouldn’t move. We were quiet for a while, smoking. Bob blew a circle into the air.