Bright Side of my Condition ePub

by Randall, Charlotte

  No, his children dint die in their beds nor do his wife turn mad and claw at her breasts and tear out her hair. The customers stand outside his shop jingling their coins, still desperate to spend. But he get up with a black fug about his temples, it lure him into the swamp of himself, he huddle by the smoky fire and ask himself about the point.

  Now everyone know this aint a question that lead to sweetness and light, every good thing can lose its point rubbed against the file of gloom. But he wring his big red hands and keep asking, asking, asking, he don’t know how to come to a answer, no one ever teached him. Before yer know it, his customers give up waiting and take their coin to the competition and his wife start complaining the children are hungry and there aint no food in the larder. So he hie himself to the most dangerous portion of the bridge and take a running jump. He fall through the dark into the dark water and as he fall a light strike clean through his startled soul, the light fall on his black fug and show it for what it were, a corruption.

  Like all corruptions, it brung a dark fascination to the corrupted. He wallow in it and call in the bard to sing of it, he finger it and poke it and dwell on the why of it, he love-hate it, he soon come to straight out love it, it obsess him, he betray it to forget it even for a moment, it eat him from the inside out. And before he go splash in the black water, a voice from nowhere say to him, Thou hast lost thyself wilfully, cast away thyself, thou thyself art the efficient cause of thine own misery by not resisting such vain cogitations but giving way unto them.

  Lucky for him the freezing water don’t kill him and he were fished out by some men in a boat, and like the mariner that haunt the wedding and tell of putrid corpses, he go about the town telling of corrupted cogitations, the dark allure of the think poison.

  ‘That’s yer story?’ Toper ask blinking.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And that’s yer cure,’ snarl Flonker, ‘not to dwell too much upon yer melancholy?’

  I nod.

  Now Slangam draw himself up and purse his thin lips and declare he wud be watching me, watching for the moment when I lose my resistingness to them vain cogitations and start rolling my eyes and gibbering to myself. Then I become a dangerous man.

  ‘What yer think yer going to do about it when it happen?’ Flonker ask Slangam.

  I listen with attention for the answer that take a long time to come. Slangam scratch inside his beard and scratch his balls, and his eyes drift to the scar on the ground and drift back to the group, then he look up at the sky and back to his boots, he scratch his violent eyebrows, his tight ears, even in the kingdom of utter power he don’t seem to know what to do with a man that lose his brains.

  ‘We have a meeting when the time come,’ is all he can manage. Then he say he got work to do, can’t sit around all day, and the others sigh and scramble to their feet in case he start hectoring. I jes sit on under the thin tree close to the wound. A man on the cliff of madness can’t be expected to do much. Far as I’m concerned, the time Slangam speak of aint gonna come. Indeed jes the thought them three’s now watching me and hatching a rotten egg jolt me right out of the bittersweet.

  Another winter. Snow come and stay. Long as we been here, snow fall in the winter but soon vanish, not because it aint cold as the balls on a brass monkey but because the rain always soak the ground first and the flakes can’t get no grip. But this morning when I open the door to go for my morning piss, the snow lie deep on the ground. It aint horrid at all. It’s the most lovely surprise I seen in a long time, the smooth whiteness spreading all around, them delicate white ruffles along the branches of the trees, all our equipment ringed with a fluffy scarf and made pure, it all jes make me want to go outside and run about.

  I know I wear what a seal do, but a seal have his clothings stitched up around his ears by God and my stitching aint of the same quality. I already know if I run about for long the snow soon find the leaks in my cape or boots. I don’t care. Don’t we always have to bend under a mountain of weather that’s so mean it make Mincemeat seem kind, rain that never stop, clouds that sit on us week after week, wind that shave our beards clean off? The snow seem like a refreshment.

  Flonker come to the door. ‘Oh fuck, wud yer look at that? I’m going back to bed.’

  Slangam join us. He make a entire concert of noises and none of them is wonder.

  Toper call from inside about what all the fuss is.

  ‘Snow laying down all around,’ Slangam shout back at him.

  Toper come to the door with shining eyes. Then he run boyish into the pure white and a jalousie come up in me like a pain. Why dint I do it first? Now it jes seem I copy him, copy stupid and incredulous.

  ‘Yer bloody fool,’ Slangam condemn. ‘Don’t yer know snow turn to freezing slush inside yer clothing? Yer won’t be fit to cook nothing.’

  Toper play on like a mad puppy, he jump and turn and kick snow in the air, and it get too much for me, I have to join him. Them other two stand in the open door and keep on abusing us. Snowflakes, huge, loose, soft, fall down upon us like blessings.

  But a devil take over the snow palace in the night. The next morning the blessings have went black and gritty, it’s jes like a devil smite the snow, jes like he throw down bombs of flame and ash. A thick fog come up off the sea and drown us, we can’t see our hands in front of our faces.

  And it don’t change. The black snow hang on and on, it don’t melt, and the warm spring air don’t come on when it orta. We spend a lot of glum time in the hut. We chew the fat, but of the old there aint nothing to say we aint heared before, and of the new, it always veer along the same character fault.

  Now’s the time the summer orta be coming, but this year the summer aint right. Course the weather aint ever been reliably good but still we can tell the difference in the seasons, and it aint jes the longer days. Some heat usually come in, some drowse in the sun can be done by a felon, the big herb flowers bloom – yair, not always but this year they orta – but this year the sun sit behind a strange cloud. Toper say this cloud got end-of-the-world writ all over it, and the rest of us laugh till the sunsets start.

  It’s hard to say what aint exactly right about them sunsets. One evening when I were asleep by the fire while Toper were out searching for berries, he come back in a lather, he start yelling to us to come and look, the sun come out in a blanket that’s orange and purple and pink when it orta be getting ready for its sleep in the sea. We all hasten to the nearest cliff and indeed the sun is wrapped up in a strange blaze that’s thick like a smoky fire and coloured like a oil painting.

  ‘Tiepolo,’ gasp Fatty.

  ‘It aint no time for yer stupid Persian,’ scold Slangam.

  ‘It’s that pink,’ Fatty say in gaping wonder.

  But somehow no matter how much tiepolo it got in it, the sight look menacing. It have a kind of darkness, it don’t look like a harmless summer sunset, it look like a explosion happen in the sky, like a star explode or a planet, or else the sun’s now thinking it don’t wanna shine no more upon the Earth.

  ‘I dint find no berries,’ Toper whine. ‘I aint found any at all this year.’

  ‘And the spuds is very bad,’ agree Fatty. ‘They still small and straggly.’

  That’s how the summer start and that’s how it go on. Mad sunsets and cold days and no flowers and struggling spuds. And at times the earth move.

  ‘Least it aint a flagrant quake,’ Toper opine.

  ‘Oh? What kind of quake is that?’ Flonker ask.

  ‘Aint yer ever been in a flagrant one?’ he ask in a astonishment.

  ‘If yer mean one that’s actually a quake contrary to one that aint, nobody ever been in one.’

  Toper begin a mad tale of all the quakes and whorlpools and lava flows he seen since he become a sailor. At length Fatty hold up his palm to make him stop and that were a mercy for all of us.

  So the gritty and cold summer days move on. All the penguin fish and albatrosses have their childs, and still no warmness come. A blue-w
hite iceberg visit us from Incognita. The end-of-the-world sunsets get worser and worser, like raging fires in Heaven, orange and tiepolo and violet and all streaked about with black whorls.

  ‘Maybe it’s that Tambora them sailors talk of,’ Toper say.

  ‘What?’ Fatty reply and change in a instant. He were rude and bristling with his own cleverness, now he shrink in horror.

  ‘What’s the matter with yer?’ roar Slangam. ‘How do any volcano in Chinkee land touch us here? Aint we on a island?’

  ‘Yair, but don’t one volcano set off another? We all get blowed to kingdom come.’

  ‘If kingdom do come,’ Slangam say dry, ‘yer won’t fucken know it.’

  Days go by and we watch and watch the sky. At least it stop them others from watching me. Fatty sit in the corner of the hut and mumble, he go off his food, he go off his vodka, no preachy poems spew out of him. I grow indignant and want to ask, why do yer all believe I’m on the brink of madness when Fatty’s the one that turn into a gibbering idiot in the corner? But I don’t bother, I already know the answer. In their ignorant opinions Fatty is scared of a real thing and I aint. I’m jes scared of my own shadder, or life’s shadders. I blow on about violins and bittersweet, and still boast of holding in them mad human passions. The others were teached that aint possible, bosses and priests and poets don’t have no faith in the common man controlling his own self, so the common man learn he can’t and don’t orta.

  Lucky for us a few spuds survive for the next replanting, otherwise that wud be the end of them. But we don’t get to eat none, don’t get to taste them sweet young darlings that yer can rub the skin off with yer thumb. There’s a few old gnarly buggers from last season left in the store shed, they’re full of wrinkles and roots, but we don’t care, Toper fry them up in a good wodge of seal fat and scrape on some rock salt. Fatty come out of his corner to stuff his face. Seem he think the time’s passed when one volcano set off another, it aint long till he find his true self and know everything again.

  The strange weather continue on. I watch the penguins and wish everything for us were simple as their lives, and maybe before Adam and Eve met the serpent and et the apple we do jes live penguin lives. We jes live the way we were made, without no contrivance. The trouble for man is some men were made outright pigs, and they always seem to be the ones that get a hold of everything. It might seem jes a coincidence but maybe it aint, maybe such grasping is the nature of pighood.

  Ah, what do I care.

  I got this new life.

  True it come to me very hard, after many trials and sufferings, after my very bad bout with Toad, but aint that even more reason not to squander it?

  I once hear a man in a tavern say he fall in love with the catastrophe that ruin him. At the time I think, oh no, another lunatick get loose amongst us. Now I see what he mean. Long as them yer love aint dead, all disasters have in them a little bit of sweet poison. It don’t last long, yer have to use its grace in the brief moment it flash at yer, but yer get a kind of permission to remove the harness, look around, start off again. Sure the harness clank down upon yer once more, all of life proceed in harness, but now yer go the way of yer own choosing.

  I choose this. Aint that all I ever wanted to say?

  ‘What?’ chorus them others when I tell of my epifanny.

  ‘He’s tipping,’ Flonker warn, staring hard at me. He know it aint true, I see it in his hard eyes. He know we jes carrying on our battle of wills, he’s afraid I get free, get out from under the control of his northern poets, not that he love them very much, he jes like to be on the podium.

  Toper cross himself.

  Slangam eye me and growl he aint letting me off the wood gathering, the culling and skinning neither, these jobs is so simple even a man with scramble brains can do them.

  ‘Yer don’t have to let me off,’ say I. ‘I dint make the world.’

  5

  Another winter, another spring, another summer. The seasons start to whirl like a hurdy gurdy wheel. Soon I’m gonna lose count of the years. Our planting and growing return to normal. No one talk no more of Tambora or other volcanoes in the ocean or amongst the icebergs of Incognita. No one mention moon snakes or screech owls. Albatrosses are still talked of, but these is real ones, and now I know their habits they don’t frighten me no more. A albatross don’t look for a ship and sink it, it got huge childs to hatch and teach to fly, as well as other more important business.

  A day come more hot than we ever had. I cud take off all my clothings, but I don’t, jes in case them three felons shriek at my depravity. Straightaway I go for firewood, I don’t collect much, jes lurch here and there with a grin and my eyes half shut, jes happy for the feeling of warmness and freedom.

  When I get back and throw down my sticks, I see Toper stretched himself to a fine omelette. I aint sure what Mama bird he robbed the eggs of and I don’t care, I fully come to terms with the marriage of death and eating. I aint filled with revulsion at what God make, aint I food too for a tiger on the prairie if ever I get catched, or for the worms if I get buried in the earth, or for a shark if I fall off a cliff into the sea, aint it a hubris for me to stand outside of it all wagging my finger?

  ‘Why this particular morning do yer exert yerself so?’ Flonker ask as he shovel in his feed.

  Toper shrug. ‘For once it were all easy to gather together. This morning the island seem like a shop.’

  ‘That’s what it’s like for them natives,’ Flonker say. ‘For us when we first come, it were jes an island of starvation. Now we look about and find food everywhere.’

  ‘Well, aint that a peeling of the eyeballs,’ Slangam retort.

  Toper giggle like a virgin and say, ‘And I’m planning a special meal for later on today. I calculate this is the day when that next batch of vodka come ready.’

  Flonker sit up and look really pleased, and I feel happy as a hakawai. Not that I speak of it – the days is gone when I add my thruppence-ha’penny to any topic.

  Only Slangam don’t brighten.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ ask Toper with his little wounded face. He want for his sour friend to be pleased with him.

  ‘Drunken lying about don’t suit me.’

  Flonker as usual got a answer to that. ‘Well, don’t lie about then. Get drunk and drop dead.’

  I expect Slangam to punch him but he actually laugh. And that were how a good day starting with heat and omelette turn superb. I go off for more wood, because a big meal follered by a drunken collapse need a big fire, and I do the gathering real quick and spend the rest of the time above the penguins. Seem like a mood of exuberance get into the little bodies of them penguins, they all flying through the blue air, jes a whirl of black and white and orange. In the sea the wide mouths of big seals open up and try to chomp them, but that don’t stop the fun, it jes add the spice.

  When I come back with the wood, preparations for the party is in full swing. Toper even have Slangam filleting fishes and picking the small bones out of bird carcasses, for once he do it willingly, talking loud all the while about the excellence of his efforts. Flonker pound up berries and giant herbs for a sauce and Toper announce he’s doing very special things with the potatas.

  ‘Well, don’t do it in front of me,’ say Flonker.

  I start to build a bonfire, we don’t want no piddling small fires when we start feasting. I calculate the rate of wood consumption, go off and get another pile jes to make sure. And so the day move on into twilight when the first slug get poured out into our shells. Out come our skin drums soon as we have a refill. Bang bang, gurgle gurgle, bang bang, gurgle gurgle, I dunno how Toper manage to set the banquet in front of us but he do.

  It’s a great brew for sure, one of the best, the strongest, and even if I don’t see no date palm isles, this isle seem pretty good. The bonfire roar and spit, the special potatas is sweet and smooth as pudding, our drumming enthrall us, before we know it the sun has went down and is coming up again. We all blink and stare l
ike we’re guilty of something. Course we aint, we jes stayed up all night and now our heads throb and our mouths is parched.

  ‘I killed my wife,’ Slangam announce sudden. ‘When yer all say none of us done what we were sent to Norfolk for, it weren’t true. I did do it, and I confess it.’

  When he say these words, he look like the devil got hold of his throat, his words come out hoarse and his face go bright red. Then a bead of sweat come on his forehead like the effort and shame of confessing overheat him. The rest of us hang our dry mouths open. Weren’t we jes about to sleep off our hangovers in front of the dying fire? Now we got a situation.

  ‘Were she a scold?’ Toper ask reluctant. ‘Or a slattern?’

  ‘Neither of them things.’

  ‘A harlot?’ Gargantua suggest with a tired sigh.

  ‘A bad cook?’ ask I glum.

  ‘A bad fuck?’ ask Gargantua.

  Slangam screw up his face and shut his eyes tight and two tears spring out and shine like raindrops, one on each side of his eyelids, but they don’t fall, they jes hang there like they too afraid to drop down his puffy cheeks, or perhaps they don’t know how, our Slangam don’t have much experience of weeping. Then suddenly he go hard and dry like a dead tree trunk in the forest and condemn himself out of his own mouth, ‘I were a hard man to please. And she tried very hard to please me, and it irritate me.’

  I’m exhausted, my head throb, I don’t wanna think. But thinking come without no permission. The thought come to me, is there a man or a woman on Earth that weren’t irritated by someone who try too hard? Aint it a great irritation to see a sad beseeching face looking up at yer, or down on yer, don’t yer jes want to smash away its claim on you, and don’t the ugliness of that put yer in a rage? Of course it’s a rage at yerself, but don’t such a man or woman make it all the fault of the beseecher, accuse him or her of having this bad quality or that, of having this irritating vice or another?