The Marvellous Equations of the Dread

by Marcia Douglas

  Missed Gate: Many Are Called But Few Are Chosen or; Revelation of Wisdom According to Jah Prophets (1:07)

  (A man is sitting on a stoop by the side of the road, the angle of his cheekbones set to catch Jah bless. Soon as you pass, he pulls something from his pocket.

  “You with the nice shoes. Stop here,” he says. Usually, you hold your head straight and just keep walking, but something about the Kingston 12 in his voice slows down your feet.

  “Two patty and a box drink, and the ring is yours,” he says.

  It’s a lion of Judah ring – black onyx with the dandy one in gold. You have seen those rings before; replicas of Bob’s ring are already everywhere. A jeweller in Brooklyn sells nice ones for seventy-five dollars. In London, for fifty pounds. A friend of yours wears one on his middle finger. In Addis Ababa such rings have always been common as lies. In any event, you do love lions and two patties and a box drink is not a bad price. But this is a madman and you are a reasonable person, no true?

  “Next time,” you say, and keep on going. As you leave, the man bursts into psalm, Awake Zion, Awake. The voice pulls at your tailbone, but you hold your back straight and do not look back.)

  DUB-SIDE CHANTING

  Track 18.0: The Uprising of Fall-down

  Fall-down finds the Prophet’s clothes folded at the bottom of Studio D. The beautiful woman gone, he puts the clothes on, wondering at the marvels of redgreengold underpants in 100% cotton. Still, he misses his Africas’ clink-clink at his ears and the wooden staff which he had made with his own two hands. He runs his fingers over his smooth scalp. What a badluckyness to be in Bob’s skin but have a bald-head.

  H.I.M. is fishing from a bridge by a quiet river, a dog curled asleep at his heels. It jumps up, barking as Fall-down approaches.

  “Lulu!” H.I.M. calls. The dog stops, one ear pricked up, the other down. Both dog and master waiting.

  Fall-down has not thought what he ought to say, and the words which fall from his mouth surprise him.

  “I was there when you tried on Empress Menen’s pointed-toe shoes,” he says.

  At these words, H.I.M. is transported to a March day shortly after his marriage when he and the empress had frolicked behind the closed doors of their bedchamber like two young lions on the red satin eiderdown. He had lost some foolish bet or other and for that she made him try on her pointed-toe Italian slippers, she laughing on the floor.

  “I was there when you cleaned the she-lion with your tongue,” Fall-down says, for the words are streaming out of him now and he cannot stop them.

  “What fallen-angel speaks to an emperor like that?” The twinkle is gone from H.I.M.’s eye.

  “And I made the pet lions in the garden roar at the conception of each of your seven children.”

  At mention of the lions H.I.M. laughs, then becomes quiet. He had loved his lions, but after the coup, Mengistu threw them into the Addis Ababa Zoo to teach them a lesson.

  “I was there when you invited the maid into your bed chamber,” Fall-down says. The smile on H.I.M.’s face disappears.

  “Ça suffit!”

  The emperor has always been wont to speak French when annoyed. Lulu begins yapping around Fall-down’s feet. Fall-down backs away, his arms raised.

  “Is me, Negus,” he says to the little Chihuahua. “You don’t remember –”

  The dog stops barking and Fall-down puts his hand over his mouth to stop the words. H.I.M. kisses his teeth, tsk, and keeps on fishing.

  Track 17.0: BLUE-LUE-lue-lue-lue-lue

  It is evening and the nutmeg tree is quiet. If he stays still, Fall-down can hear the hum of Hector’s sewing machine, the sound distinct though untraceable. Still, he is eager to locate the source. H.I.M.’s dog trots behind, sniffing the ground. The slope is steep and wet and Fall-down trips in Bob’s small boots. He tries to rise, but each time stumbles back – into a patch of wild sea-cloud flowers. He feels as if he is drowning, looks for something to grab onto and finding nothing, slides again into the mass of blue-blue.

  “No mind. I used to falling,” he says to the dog, “Last time was because I love a girl; she –”

  “Ça suffit!” H.I.M. says. He is standing at the edge of the field. Lulu wags her tail and runs to her companion and Fall-down is not sure whether the Judah lion spoke to Lulu or to him. He decides to hold his tongue, just the same.

  “Bob call for me plain as day,” he says instead, “right in the middle of Half Way Tree.”

  Lulu sniffs around Fall-down’s shoes, then squats and pees on his feet.

  “The prophet was convinced he still needed the ring,” says H.I.M. “Some souls, even great ones, do not learn right away.”

  Lulu’s warm pee trickles in the fallen angel’s shoe, and he remembers – the ring had been left in his trouser pocket.

  STUDIO Z HECTOR

  Track 13.5: Of Zion and Ships and High Seas

  Hector salutes like a captain, then keeps on sewing. He pedals away, conversing with the beautiful black Singer. His house is filled with cerulean blue suits of every description. They bulge out of closets and are stacked onto shelves; hooked to nails on the wall and on hangers swinging from the rafters. One bed is piled so high with cerulean blue that the suits touch the ceiling. “I know where Zion is,” he says.

  HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE

  Second Morning; Dubwise Outside Aquarius

  Next morning there is riddim from all four directions. To the west towards Hagley Park, a street-corner evangelist ti-tings her tambourine. A man beside her speaks in tongues. He is describing sweet Beulah land. A place that can only be revealed in the tongues of angels. To the east, coming down from Hope Road, Bob recognizes the voice of the Upsetter on the car stereo, a new tune he hasn’t heard before. And to the north, at the traffic light, his own voice on a bicycle boom box, moving Jah people.

  But underneath these voices, there is a deep bass dub coming up from the south. The bass so deep it stirs old cotton tree roots underground. A girl reading a book at the bus stop feels the riddim in her loins. She stops and looks down the road, turns the corner of a page to mark the beat. Bob feels it too, dubwise. He follows the ground/bone/base/rock/pulsefull sound, weaving past schoolchildren, a stray dog and a youth selling Jesus slippers, straight to the reverb of thunderclap and three Rastas –this time different ones – reasoning outside the Aquarius Record Shop. Rain. Sends them under the piazza for cover.

  “You can ride a chord to that place. That holy place. Deep is the riff of Jah-Jah majesty. The dubside is the spirit side,” chants the one with the white tam.

  “Which is more powerful, the lion or the lamb?”

  “The lion is the lamb dormant.”

  “Yes-I.”

  “The lamb is the message incarnate.”

  “Yes-I.”

  “Listen breddren, the lion stand before the lamb. But the lamb is the greater.”

  “Yes-I.”

  “I go National Arena and hear Bob roar like a lion. When him open him mouth, him have two-row teeth and is a roar come out.”

  Music is a mystic ting, chants the white tam Rasta.

  “Why bring Bob inna dis? Bob was a man of the flesh like you and me.”

  “Him was a prophet, Rasta. A lion-prophet.”

  “The only true lion is Haile-I. The scripture declare the glory of His Imperial Majesty.”

  We are the lions of Judah. Don’t let anyone fool-ya.

  “Is Bob I talking bout.”

  “Mine you look to the man instead the message,” Bob says.

  Just like the day before, they all turn and look at him.

  “The next prophet will come as a lamb unto us,” says the short one.

  “Mine you miss him.”

  “And the she-lion, she rising,” sings the Rasta, watching a girl coming towards them. She holds a book gilded as scripture. Her hips move deep bass, the way riverstones move water.

  “A prophet is never honoured in his own country,” Bob says.

  The
Rasta with the white tam looks deep into Bob’s eyes. His eyebrows fan in the middle like sacred dark ferns.

  Holy holy is the lamb, he chants and passes the spliff.

  The girl walks past them; her elbow brushes against Bob’s sleeve. A bougainvillea flutters out of her book.

  FROM THE ANGEL’S LEDGER BOOK

  [Maracas]

  Release Day – Kingston 11, “Concrete Dub.” King Tubby feels it.

  The bass rhythm of this island massages the earth’s structure. Vibrates rock underground. Quickens bones of the departed.

  Twelve high school girls wait at a bus stop in front of Holy Cross Church. The liturgy of laughter over one-drop beat.

  Down below, a dead woman’s hip-bone remembers. Dust shifts in the hollow of pelvis.

  September, 1978 – The angel is in love with Bob Marley’s woman. The head of her woman serpent rises.

  May, 1981 – An uncommon spider ropes a story in the rafters of the clock tower at Half Way Tree.

  HERE-SO; HALF WAY TREE

  Hum

  Here it is, late into the second day, and Bob still cannot remember why he has returned. Already, he wants to get outta this structure; is a Alice in Wonderdread bodysuit this to rah. And mi shoulder blades – them heavy; like them don’t fix right. Somewhere on the Dub-side, a nutmeg tree waits on a quiet hill; he longs to light a spliff there and sit and reason at the right hand of Jah. But how to find the way back? There is something he must do first, this much he knows – find an undisclosed gate. Your heart will tell you where it is.

  Still, there is not a soul to turn to. “Is me, Bob,” he says to people who know him. They slam the door or laugh in his face. He walks around Kingston, pausing at each wrought-iron gate, wondering at the fanciful designs – sunburst, Anancy rope, stepping stone. He sees one with a star of Haile-I that makes him stop and touch all six of its points, put his hand through the centre and feel the air on the other side. There is a sign, Beware of Bad Dog. Rhaatid. He could catch a ride to country, but something tells him to stay here-so – in Half Way Tree. There is something about the clock, this ugly, Babylon clock that never tell the right time that keeps him here. He thinks of Leenah. Would she recognize him? Leenah always saw soul-deep, not skin-deep.

  It is afternoon by the time he gets to Mona. Miss Ivy does not recognize him either. She looks him up and down, stands a safe distance and does not open her gate. The iron is black spiral and latched with a padlock. Leenah is not there and Miss Ivy doesn’t know where she is.

  “Last thing I know she had a baby,” she says. A little girl that cry with her mouth closed – make it sound like a hum. “Is you the father?”

  Harmony

  Bob hums a tune as he walks back to Half Way Tree. Jah Jah dawta/ Zion come – his children would like that tune. He hums it over and over, testing the limits of his fall-down voice. It is a new instrument, even scratch-up as it is, and he might as well play it. He hits a deep chord and the sound vibrates in his foot-bottom. He walks all the way to Balmoral Ave., massaging sound under his feet. At Crossroads, he hits another chord and the hum fills his structure, reggae in a capella, a whole sound system in his throat. When harmony enters his locs, his feet levitate above the concrete – just enough to make him trip in the effort to find ground. Who the hell is this raas angel?

  He sits on a wall, takes the book from his satchel. A small book, but heavy-so. And the pages brown like someone soak each in pimento and old rum. The handwriting is at first illegible, the movement of absent-minded black ants across a page. But then his eyes adjust, and he sees – the dark ink, beautiful in its meandering, made clear. He turns a page at random. The words written in bass with tenor layered on top; sometimes a faint soprano seeping through.

  FROM THE ANGEL’S LEDGER BOOK

  [Fende]

  May 24, 1976 – A naked woman wrapped in cellophane faces the clock at Half Way Tree. She recites words so ancient, they are almost unspeakable. Every now and then, she has to stop and look for a syllable in the sky.

  Her name is Beul, but no one knows this, not even she. She attends the spot where the old cotton tree once grew.

  The hands of the clock wait at 7:05. It is the longest minute in history.

  August 14, 1977 – The women on this island walk as though their hips are the pulse of the Milky Way. This is the real reason stars fall.

  Such a walk can make even an angel wish to be human. But angels – even less experienced ones – should know better.

  Still, there is a woman with a mole the shape of Africa on her thigh. And oh-when-she-walks –

  There is an angel who longs to kiss that mole.

  At 2.37 a.m. a young cannibis sativa unfurls her blossom at the bottom of a cemetery. “Bad-ass bass,” a duppy girl whispers.

  Beauty Mark

  Only one woman there is with a mark the shape of Africa on her thigh. Bob had craven for that sweetness too; he remembers this. But how come this raas angel know so much?

  He is almost at the gas station and can see the clock tower now, a bird on top. And that’s the other thing – he has extraordinary vision, but only from a distance. He’ll need some light to read in the clock tower. A girl sells made-in-China flashlights at the curb. Get your flash, flash it; hurricane flash, flash; I flash for you; nice price too for you. A flash for a spliff, Bob says, taking a bit of herb from his hair. The girl glances at the spliff, then shines a light in Bob’s eye; she catches her breath for a moment, glimpsing a thing unexpected; but then she spits on the ground and walks away. This little light of mine, sings a woman in front of him. He follows her all the way up the road, her grey hair tied up in cloth. Her voice reminds of his mother’s when he was a boy in church, a country hillside pitch, all strong-back and wood smoke; he needs this voice. His mother – in Miami now – would not recognize her son. But for some reason, it does not matter anymore. At the bus stop the old woman turns around, gives Bob some change then steps onto the 46/Meadowbrook. Bob opens his mouth to thank her but no sound comes out. The woman looks out through the window and smiles; her teeth are white as a young girl’s.

  The bus leaves and Bob opens his hand. The change is enough to buy two candles and a box of matches. Outside Aquarius the breddren still reason the mystery of sound. JAH-JAH JAH-JAH JAH-JAH JAH-JAH goes the reverb. It’s late and he crosses the street to the clock. He must enter at just the right moment, when no one is looking.

  At the base of mother-ticking Babylon he sits and waits; wishing that lightning would strike down the tower and be done with it. And then there is a shout – Blouse and skirt! – across the street; a woman flicks open a ratchet knife and another pulls a razor from her bra. In the cuss-cuss and rah-rah palangpang, all eyes and ears are diverted in one direction. The babyfather slinks away in the shadows. Bob opens the door and slips quickly inside.

  FROM THE ANGEL’S LEDGER BOOK

  [bells on a girl’s ankle bracelet]

  March 11, 1977 – The angel, Negus, enters the bedroom of Mr. And Mrs. W. on Maxfield Ave. Mrs. W. catches a whiff of the angel’s scent and is immediately aroused. Mr. W. never knows a thing.

  March 23, 1977 – The angel, Negus, assists at the conception of girl twins. The sound of double fertilization is like bells on a girl’s ankle bracelet.

  March 25, 1977 – The angel, Negus, blows the woman-Lara with breath of a male lion. Neither she nor the babyfather know the true reason she calls Jah name.

  Reminder to self: Angels of Desire work with the seven senses of titillation, creating the conditions for humans to enjoy each other. An Angel of Desire must never physically touch or copulate with humans.

  And such angels must never leave incriminating evidence.

  Duppy Dream

  It’s late and the words have returned to black ants on the page. Bob’s shoulder blades are sore; he hates this dry skin, this clock. A she-spider watches from the corner. You have two club-foot but at least there is no melanoma to rah. He thinks she says that. He blows out the candle
and when he falls asleep, he meets Leenah in his dream. She shows him her Africa, but won’t let him touch it. Tell me my true name, he says. It is a name without syllable, she replies.

  LEENAH

  Of Swallowtails

  I have a recurring dream of two lions side by side. I pass between them and they roar, but do not harm me. I love dreaming. In my dreams I can hear. I hear music and the dj on the radio, and my mother calling my name and Bob saying, Let me see yuh Africa. How far up yuh leg it is? It touch yuh panty?

  In my dreams, only Anjahla is silent. I see her mouth moving but no sound comes out. Her lips say, Mama. I want to hear Anjahla in my dream. In my dream I say, Talk louder Anjahla! Let me hear you. And I see Anjahla’s mouth go, Mama! You can hear me now? I sound like a swallowtail butterfly, Mama. Did you know they are the largest butterflies in Jamaica? And they are almost extinct. I read it in a book.

  Of Apples and Motown

  And there’s this too – us shelling peas together last week:

  “I want to sing a song only fish and creatures in the deep-deep can hear,” Anjahla says.

  “And where does that come from?”