And the Ass Saw the Angel

by Nick Cave

  It was past midnight by the time ah entered the Ukulite tabernacle, the shears tucked unner mah belt, flashlight in hand. It was near one o’clock when ah left, the great roll of canvas unner mah arm…

  Ah hung it in mah grotto the next day – a kind of figurehead that watched over mah dim retreat. With the kindergraph of the whore in mah hand, ah would marvel at the likeness – the yellow curls, the same sullen attitude, the sense of glum abandon that rested in the bold swivel of puerile hips and the idle bunching of angled bones, the curious tilt of the head and the booty of spilled gold that fell across each shoulder. Ah would lose mahself for hours in the witching pools of their eyes – of her eyes – her eyes – of her witching, pooling eyes.

  VIII

  Beth was afraid of the other children.

  Having spent her early years smothered beneath a scrum of fussing mothers, she had never known the companionship of other children, and when Sardus Swift entered his daughter at Ukulore Valley School fears that had previously lain hidden became manifest in the child. Beth was simply unable to feel at ease with children of her own age. Nor did time serve as a poultice; as the weeks passed by and the first term drew to an end, Mr Carl Cullen, headmaster of U.V.S., suggested to Sardus Swift that his daughter be removed from the school and placed under private tutelage.

  In a gesture that was more than a mere courtesy, for the decision could not be made alone, Sardus met with a handful of the foremost among the adherents, and together they discussed Beth’s future. Her welfare was, said Sardus, ‘as much a community concern as a parental one’. It was decided that, as things stood, more harm than good was being done in keeping the child at school, and that a Mr Henry Mendleson of Davenport, cousin to Wilma F.ldridge, be approached for the position of private tutor.

  Beth secretly grew to despise Mr Henry Mendleson – dreading the daily advent of his shiny, pink pate, which bounced nervously on to her horizon at eight o’clock sharp each morn. She shrank at the sound of his tiny, polished shoes as they squeaked aross the linoleum and stopped outside her door. She hated the little ‘ahem’ that would follow, and the pursy, one-knuckled knock. But what really boiled Beth’s blood was the way he called her ‘Beeth’, with a near-inaudible tremor in his intonation: ‘Morning, Be-ee-th’.

  Yet despite her loathing for Mr Mendleson, Beth thanked God that her sentence at Ukulore Valley School had been terminated. No longer need she feel the terrible enmity that she had faced during the three cold months she had spent as a pupil there. No longer need she face the children who hated her. No longer need she feel their jealous, appraising eyes, hear the scornful whispers and laughs, the cruel taunting rhymes.

  Such had been Beth’s fear of the other children that she had taken to spending her recess and lunch-break on the far side of the peach grove at the back of the school, squatting in the wind-whispering cloisters of the orchard. Her eyes would gaze at the space before her, still and wide and somehow vacant. What worlds so absorbed her as she squatted in the pink and white peach blossom we can only guess.

  IX

  One late-spring afternoon Ma was winding up a five-day drunk in her usual manner, banishing me from the house, to be closely followed by Pa.

  Pa scuttled off around the back of the shack, tossed a few hessian sacks across Mule and filled the saddle bags with the tools of his trade: rope, hunting knife, snake-pincers, chicken-wire muzzles, dog-rod – a forked pole for bagging potentially dangerous beasts, and so on. Then he trotted off down the slope toward Maine. Keeping close to/the cane, where most of the traps had been set, he reset and baited any that had been triggered, tested those still unsprung, and bagged any beast that had been claimed.

  Ah tagged along, careful to keep well hid, crouching behind clumps of periwinkle, peering through the blue and white blooms. But after ten minutes or so ah decided to take a walk along Maine while it was still light.

  Ah had only been walking two or three minutes when ah heard a strange moaning sound. Human sounding, it was, and in great pain – not like the other voices at all, for it seemed that ah could locate the source of this agonizing with little trouble, whereas with the special voices there is a totality about their presence that makes it damn near impossible to… shit, forget it.

  Ah hopped the gully, wriggled through the fence at the bottom of Glory Flats and stepped into the long grass. Ah walked toward the moaning, beating the grass with a stick that ah had handy. The moaning grew louder, more pitiful – and suddenly ah noticed the waist-high grass rustling madly, only a stone’s lob away.

  Ah moved toward it, stick outstretched.

  ‘Mercy! Mercy!’ ah heard someone cry, and, parting the grass with mah stick, ah saw before me a stinking hobo, dressed in black.

  The hobo had shoved his foot into one of Pa’s pit-traps – the lid off a steel drum with about eight cross-cuts made in it, all converging on the centre like a star and covering a ditch about two feet deep. He lay on his back looking at the sky, both hands clutching his bloody leg at the knee. He howled with pain.

  Ah dug out the lid and pulled the two pins that held it together at the lip, and, pulling the lid apart until the fins of tin were freed, ah winced as the hobo slowly lifted his leg from the jaws. His boot was filled up with blood.

  He was a withered man, badly in need of a shave. Propping himself up on one elbow, he lifted his free arm and pointed one chilly finger at me. ‘God strike thee down, if thou leavest me here!’ he hissed. Then he closed his eyes, bared his tiny green teeth and passed into unconsciousness.

  Taking the hobo unner the arms, ah hauled him, inch by inch, up to the decrepit church on Glory Flats, a dark ribbon of blood at his heel.

  Ah left him on the broken steps of the church.

  Ah bolted for home.

  From the hill of bottles stacked against the south wall of the shack ah grabbed a pickling jar. Ah filled it with peel liquor from one of the stills, screwed tight the lid, and footed it down the slope to the gallows-tree, where two crows busied themselves pecking at the stump. With the fat end of mah stick ah dug up the shears, slipping them into mah belt, and without so much as a moment spent on catching mah breath ah headed down the track in the general direction of the church. Even as ah ran ah could feel the hobo’s grim finger, turning steely and barbed as he spat out his forebodement. Lord, ah could hear his sinister warning!

  In the grass again it took me no time to find the hobo’s trail of blood, and with mah brains throbbing horribly ah followed the scarlet river to his boot.

  Ah found it, sticky with flies, where ah had left it. But the bum – he was gone!

  Ah ventured up the steps and passed over the threshold of the house of the Lord. Mah mind was full of the iconoclastic marvels that had touched me so strongly upon former clandestine visits to the church, so many years before. Ah recalled the stations of the cross that peopled the pillars, so intricately and so lovingly executed, and the saints trapped in the leadlight windows – luminaries, staining both chapel and antechamber with their blocks of brilliance. Ah recalled the shock of fire-red – a golden gloriole – a clear, dappled cloth of light – the blocks of colour warm, all-pervading, refulgent, as ah basked in the glory of their saintliness – their martyrdom.

  Ah entered the antechamber and O how this place of worship had fallen from grace. There was a bookcase stacked with hymn books and little bibles, shamefully neglected in their jackets of dust and web. Ah removed one of the bibles. Water had warped the cover and stained the pages, and inside the paper was still damp and spotted in blotches of grey mould. On one page it said:

  5 They have corrupted themselves

  Their spot is not the spot of his children:

  They are a perverse and crooked generation.

  Mah scalp crawled and ah closed the book. A chilly thing. The Bible. Sometimes.

  Ah had left the bloody fly-infested boot outside, but mah act of reverence was unnecessary for it seemed that every gnat in the valley was wont to plague this little vestibule.
All about me they hummed and droned. Winged filth. Desecrators. More flies than at the Crucifixion, ah reckoned. The carpet was caked in filth and littered with trash, no longer the rich crimson pile it had once been. Rat-soil peppered everything, and coiled in the corners was the odd dog turd, evil and reeking. Either side of the closed doors that led into the church itself, on low stone plinths, sat two pot-shaped porcelain urns – one lay broken on its side, the other, inscrutable as it was, seemed to be of high interest to the flies, for they hovered like a black cloud above its mouth and a greedy hum rose from inside. Ah refrained from inspecting it any closer.

  With the Bible in one hand and the pickling jar full of White Jesus in the other and the shears through mah belt and the hammers of mah heart going madly, ah pushed open the door to the church itself. The rusted hinges let forth a long, stammering groan as the heavy door opened and closed behind me.

  ‘O God!’ ah thought, sickened by the sight, ‘what have they done to your house?’ But there came no reply – for, clearly, God didn’t live there anymore. Looted, desecrated, vandalized, befouled – the church had been trashed and an abomination was upon everything. All the gold and glory – gone. The stench of all that’s foul and human hung heavy in the air – air that once had been fragrant with incense. The floor was covered in garbage – a sea of open tins and empty bottles, all murky green and brown. The noon-day sun, daring even these premises, burst through the shattered skylight and lay in grimy fragments across them. Great slabs of mosaic had been hacked from the pillars depicting the Passion, exposing patches of grey mortar, and those scenes that were still discernible had been further vandalized by some artless and blasphemous hand. Ah looked to the pillar of Saint Veronica and found her no longer wiping the brow of Our Lord but suckling him on a huge green breast. In the same green paint, words had been scrawled about the walls. The drapes had been torn down and lay across the pews. Dirty blankets, reeking of piss, lay in heaps. Cardboard boxes had been jammed into some of the windows, whilst others had been boarded over. On their ledges, wax-caked wine bottles held candle stumps. Garbage rustled in quick nervous bursts as rats hid in the filth and watched me as ah stood at the back of the church. The smell of death wafted from the font, in which a bloated rat floated on its side in two inches of scum. Blowflies swarmed the pews, their buzzing big in the hollow house. Only the terrible Christ remained undesecrated, nailed to its ebony gesture and hanging high, high above the reach of any unholy hand.

  Standing by the door, ah saw at last the foot of the hobo – itself an obscenity, scarlet with still-dripping blood – poking out into the aisle from the back pew, upon which he undoubtedly lay.

  Ah waded over.

  The bum lay stretched out along the pew, one thin booted leg and one thin arm dangled over the side. The right leg of his trousers had been torn off at the knee, and a hassock, spilling its stuffing, had been pushed under the mangled leg at the calf. Another served as a pillow for his head. He looked to the vaults, and cold and glassy was his stare. He showed no sign of consciousness. Flies busied themselves in the spittle that foamed in the corners of his mouth, and a bloody handprint was smeared across the left side of his face like warpaint. A feather from the hassock sat on his cheek, stuck in the blood. He was not dead, for he breathed – but the breath came slow and hard, a thin whistle accompanying each intake. Ah stood above him, looking down at his bearded, bloody face, and just watched for a while.

  And as ah stood there watching, ah felt mah flesh shudder involuntarily, just the way it had in the antechamber when ah opened the Bible and read the. bit about the crooked children. Something that’s just not meant for explaining was in that hobo’s ghastly expression, the same way it was in those words. A familiar chord was struck in some terrible part of mah brain that mah skin knew and despaired at but which the rest of mah mind refused. Something premonitious, maybe, or something outside of mahself telling me, and me not understanding. Maybe God speaks to you in a lot of ways, not just with His voice. Mah flesh creeped and ah had to take mah eyes off his face. Ah looked to his wound.

  It was an angry wound that bit into his leg either side of his shin. Blood ran down the leg and fell in heavy dark drops from the point of his heel. It was an angry bloody wound but ah am good with wounds.

  Ah always carry at least two handkerchiefs on mah person, especially since mah nosebleeds. Ah took one from mah back pocket and stuffed the Bible in its place. Ah unscrewed the lid off the pickling jar and the dizzy fumes of peel liquor made me gag. Holding mah breath, ah soaked the rag in the liquor, then, stooping over the injured leg, slopped a finger or two directly on to the wound. The bum jumped, then lay as he was, but a horrible note of anguish rose from his throat and did not stop, not even for breath, until ah had finished dabbing at the gash with the sterilized handkerchief. Clean, the wound looked better. Then ah cut the second handkerchief into even strips with the shears and bandaged the ‘bo’s leg. Ah had put down the jar of hooch, still three-quarters full, between his knees on the pew, and as ah finished knotting the dressing ah looked up to see the hobo leaning on one shaky elbow, his filthy fingers wrapped around the pickling jar, taking long, hurried gulps. Gone was his fish-eyed stare. His murky beads darted nervously about their orbits, yet his gaze remained fixed on me all the time, even as he guzzled the poison. Like a babe with its bottle, he cringed and drank and dribbled and grinned and grimaced and stared at me and ah stood by his mended leg, holding onto the shears, and stared right back and that’s the way it was for a minute or two, but no – ah guess it was something more than that – ah guess it was something much, much more. As ah stood there, the great shears cold in mah grip, watching this stinking lowlife cringe like a whipped pup, ah felt, ah guess for the first time in mah whole twenny years, what it was like to be unafraid. Ah knew ah was scaring him, standing so, by the way he’d whimper at the slightest movement ah would make – but there was no stopping me. Ah wanted to yell, ah wanted to yell and laugh mah fucken head off and ah guess that’s what ah did as ah stood there, looking down at him, mah mouth open wide and mah lips curling back off mah teeth and mah whole body rocking with it – mah head thundering with a laugh only ah could hear – the bum, drunk with fear, bawling now and muttering and mah aching face wet with a stream of sudden tears and bawling too, ah guess, and not knowing why and ah remember thinking that the white Christ on the ebony cross was probably crying too and new tears flowed down mah cheeks for Him, for the bum, for me. For all the wretched mongrels that they’ve hammered on.

  Ah am tired of the taste of salt water.

  Then, like a grotesque puppet jerked alive by some mad hand, another hobo, bigger and meaner, sprung up from the pew in front of us and, roaring like a beast, snatched the jar of hooch from the sorry bastard before me. Leaning against the back of the pew and throwing back his huge head, the thief drank deeply. Forced to remain prostrate upon the pew, the lame ‘bo ceased to snivel and, like a rabid mutt on a short chain, turned vicious – snarling and frothing and bristling upon his back, his fangs bared, his voice a chilling hiss, his tongue cleaving in two. Again, ah shuddered.

  ‘Kike! Christ-killer! Gimme the bottle! Ya stinkin’ sheeny scumbag! It’s mine! Ya hear me? MINE! Kike! K-i-i-i-k-e!!’

  Kike sat, rocking the whole pew back and forth as he roared with laughter, toothless, wet-lipped and red. His swollen nose throbbed like a heart, pumping purple blood through the network of intumescent veins that webbed his face.

  Then Kike bounded down the aisle, nursing the hooch beneath a heavy flannel greatcoat, the stone walls batting his mirth back and forth, echo upon echo, until the laughter became itself a wall that you could’ve stacked shit against all night long and still none of it would’ve found its way over. His efforts to retrieve the jar of liquor frustrated, the lame bum fell silent, lay on his back and stewed.

  Kike weaved his way to the front of the church and seated himself on what was once the altar. Snorting and chuckling he drained the pickling jar empty, then bowled
it down the aisle. He watched it bounce and roll and spin to a stop, and then in a faraway voice he sang:

  ‘… every tear would turn a wheel

  For Johnny, my dead soldier…’

  Whereupon he fell slowly backward, to lie spreadeagled midst the debris.

  The other hobo opened one eye, and, clutching his bad leg theatrically, said in a stage whisper, his voice frail now and al a-tremble: ‘Can ya hear me, boy? I reckon I’m about ready to give up the ghost. I can feel a fanning of angels’ wings. Son, I’m going and God is a-watching! Charity be your middle name. Friend, this is a dying man’s last request. Be a good Christian and lighten this corner. Milk me off a farewell pint. Tap me a jar, that I may go with a smile on my lips. Am I comin’ through, friend?’

  Ah loathed that ‘bo. Hated him. He was vile and filthy and he stank – and there was something familiar about him. He reminded I me of… of… he reminded me of… but ah did nothing to harm him. Instead ah played along with his ruse, tapping off a jar fro the still and bringing it back to the doss house – the church.

  And the next day ah brought them more – and the next. Again and again ah sat dumbly watching the crippled bum bicker and squabble with his ogre-like companion, Kike, over the vile brew, as if it was a matter of life and death. Both of them would engage in long potations with the pilfered liquor, then stumble blindly around, laughing and laughing – and laughing at me.

  They would embark on violent and outrageous arguments of a theological nature, which would inevitably end in Kike pitching empty bottles or cans at the Christ upon the wall. Kike, it turned out, was the artist with the blasphemous hand. He would pay. They both would.

  Neither was aware of the grinding of malign cogs, neither aware that the wheels of an infernal machine were slowly rolling around. That their mute little ‘water-boy’, as they called me, was in fact gradually filling with the stuff of treachery – that ah was the sinister shape lurking behind the curtain.