And the Ass Saw the Angel

by Nick Cave

  Ah played their game and waited. Ah did, and you know, inspiration did not fail me.

  Ah mean, alone, in mah dark refuge – that is to say, here, in the swampland, lying on mah back in mah grotto – ah thought of things to do – ah mean, they were not always mah idea, unnerstand? But ah thought of ways – or rather, the thought of ways came to me as ah lay there within mah triangle of inspiration – yes, inspiration – the harlot, the child-saint and mah custodial angel. Inexorably bound together, this heavenly trio – the pink fabric of the harlot’s nightdress beneath me, laid out like a skin – the image of the child-saint above me, drinking me with her bewitching eyes – and all about me, mah angel, mah divine visitation filling me with her being, inspiring me. Together they guided mah hand, this threesome, guided mah hand in the dark. All about me, like an invisible armour, they protected me from those who would destroy me – destroy mah spirit – whether they were the bloody-minded brutes who worked the cane, the hypocrites who lived in the town, or the booze-bitten bums in the church.

  Each thought that filled mah head during those countless, cloistered hours of inspiration was an afflatus – divine, God-swollen – really, yes, really. Good thoughts. God thoughts.

  But let me just say this – the instructions ah got on the hobos – no, no, forget that. Let me just say this – when all is said and done, ah harboured some mean hate for those stinking bums – some mean hate – and it grew in mah dark retreat – kind of crystallized, became focused, that meanness – yes, it did. Hate inspiration – hate inspiration straight from God.

  X

  The day: 6 October 1952.

  Mule lays down and dies. Euchrid buries both the beast and the stick that killed it. A mound of soft earth at the foot of the water-tower marks the place.

  Euchrid’s father builds a house of cards – twenty-three storeys high.

  Sits all night in front of his master-work, until the morning sun turns the paper palace into gold. Head bent.

  Pa beat Mule to death in autumn, for copper and gold were the leaves. Ah remember because it was the fallen leaves, slippery with morning dew, that made it possible to drag Mule’s carcass over to the old water-tower. His back had been brutally beaten. Ah suspected a broken spine.

  Ah took the long-handled shovel and began digging, man attention being diverted at times from the business of burial by Mule’s cold stare. He was dead and the dead must be buried, everyone knows that, yet his eyes seemed to beg for mercy as if it were ah who had beaten the life out of the poor brute and not Pa.

  Mah spade upturned darker earth and, without any other warning, there upon the blade of mah shovel lay what looked like the skeleton of a small dog.

  Squatting aside the grave and loosing the rust-coloured earth from the fanning bones, ah discovered a child’s tiny skull. Next, a rotting radius and ulna connected to a brittle little hand – and by the time ah had exhumed mah brother’s earthly remains, lifting out all his bones intact and laying them out on a soft floor of fallen, golden foliage, ah was sobbing noiselessly, mah eyes streaming.

  Ah buried Mule’s carcass and laid mah brother’s skeleton out in an old cutlery drawer ah found on the heap. Ah built a simple sliding lid for it, and taking the box with me into the swampland, ah propped it against the inside back wall of mah sanctum.

  He remained there – mah treasured companion – for a good three months, that is, until the day that she spooked the Turk’s nag into the swamp and the townsfolk found mah haven and destroyed it.

  But that all comes later.

  Ah love you, little brother! And ah’m coming home!

  All fear did subside.

  Mah body was seized by a delicious trembling. Shudders of glory. Mah whole being surged with power – with the power. Mah blood smoked in mah veins and kept coming – humming. Singing. Mah blood sang. Pounding through me. Mah heart pulsing, drumming up the blood. The pumps of pleasure berserk and sounding. Mah flesh like warm mud.

  All fear did subside.

  Ah felt as ah had in the church, the day ah found the crippled hobo, when ah stood over him, hacking the air with the shears, looking down at him looking up at me. Watching him whimper. Ah remember his filthy bearded face twisted with terror, his pavid hands trembling, his pathetic sobbing, and how even the purple scar hooked unner one streaming eye was blanched with fear.

  Together We did weed him out. Him and his kind, Kike.

  All fear did subside.

  Ah sat there and watched the billowing smoke come rolling from the blazing church as the fire consumed it – as the Devil reclaimed it. A black hood covered Glory Flats as the fires of Hell raged brightly.

  Ah had proved mah worthiness to Him, and so He pleasured me, that ah should know mah task had been counted and that He was content. That He was content – that was mah ecstasy.

  Ah did not walk alone. He held mah hand.

  And all fear did subside.

  The Ukulites, armed with torches and hay-rakes, looked like ants from where ah was poised, on the rise, near the shack. They barked and chanted and fanned the flames. Ah wondered how they must look to Him, these ants, these frantic specks down below. Ah held out mah hand. They were no bigger than mah thumb. Stretching wide the fingers of mah hand, ah saw that it spanned the width of Glory Flats and ah slowly folded mah fingers in, crushing them all, fire and all, in mah fist.

  Ah laughed and the valley trembled, ringing with it.

  XI

  Most of the peep-holes had corks for bungs, but the plug in mah bedroom wall was moulded from a paper-mash. Ah could find no cork to fit it. The spit-ball that ah made for it was as fat as mah thumb and took all week to dry. Even then it shrunk. Still, it served its purpose and the spy-hole was never discovered.

  Ah plucked the stopper from the wall and a spear of trembling yellow light pierced the darkness of mah room. The air was like dog’s breath on this sleepless summer night. Ah held out mah hand, fingers splayed, and let the play of light hammer at mah palm. The circle of light, heavy and gold in mah hand, shone bright as a new ducat. And ah lay there upon mah back, eyes drawn toward the golden shaft, and just watched as motes of silver dust, curled and serene as sea-horses, floated, rudderless and alone, in and out of the beam. A midsummer-night sadness descended and ah fell victim to it, stifled by its murk and sticky sombre.

  Ah sat up and the beam splashed across mah face, and squinting into the light ah brought mah eye up to the hole. Ah scanned the front room, from wall to wall.

  The door was open for air. A spirit lamp hung in the doorway, throwing a ragged blanket of copper light about the room and spilling the remainder out on to the porch. Every winged bug in a night’s flight clamoured in the doorway in a frenzy of death – stupid gnats knocking their brains out to enter the bright eye. The floor beneath was littered with their singed corpses. The room droned with their madness.

  Pa sat at the table, repairing a huge spring trap with a jaw-span of over five feet. It was his favourite. The Black Bastard. Beside him was a tin of grease.

  Pa looked twisted, like he was being whipped with thistles. A roping blue vein embroidered his beaded brow. His eyes were little slits. His jaw set, Pa ground his cud. Every minute or so, for no apparent reason, an obscenity would leap from his lips as he sat, racked with agitation, testing the trap with a new and heavier spring. Ever since Mule had died, Pa had seemed consumed by a festering rage that he was unable to suppress. Like fighting a needle with a raw nerve.

  Ah changed eyes, mah left cold and stinging, aggravated by the light’s chilly finger.

  Comatose, Pa’s wife, the slobstress, buried an armchair beneath her bulk. Mutinous springs wormed their way out from unner her. She snored.

  Pa wrenched apart Black Bastard’s massive jaws and set the trigger. The spring groaned. Pa painted it carefully with axle grease.

  Ah saw Pa lean back in his chair, his eyes fixed upon the yawning jaws. He folded his arms across his chest. The vein throbbed upon his temple. Ah looked at Ma. To the c
olliding gnats. Back to Pa. He ground his teeth. Minutes passed. The bugs hummed on. Ah changed back to mah left eye. Sleep came merciful.

  When ah awoke, still ah clutched the paper-mash bung. Sitting up, ah felt mah eye drawn toward the peephole. Ah tried to fight it.

  At last, ah peered in.

  XII

  She spooked the nag. That ah know. Ah saw it all. And she saw me.

  Ah was in town on account of it being the night before the ‘burn-off, when cane-workers and Ukulites alike celebrate the beginning of the harvest, and people, on the whole, are too busy eating and drinking and flirting with the neighbour’s wife to make an example of me. But that doesn’t mean that you can go and do a rain dance in the middle of Memorial Square either.

  Ah sat on a painted rock beside the old pump and trough, and, looking between mah knees, ah read the little copper plaque that had been embedded in it.

  ‘Ho, every one that thirsteth,

  Come ye to the waters.’ Isaiah 55:1

  Donated by U.V.S.B. 1921

  Ah listened to a four-man jug band that stomped about on a low trailer, to which the goddamn sorriest looking nag ah had ever seen was hitched. How a horse could get that bowed, ah’ll never know. In an attempt to brighten up the festivities in his own little way, the Turk had crowned his horse in a flame-red fez, complete with black tassel and black elastic chin-strap.

  It was while ah sat there, minding nobody’s affairs but mah own, that mah hair began to bristle and mah hands grew raw and itchy and ah felt this peculiar sensation that ah was being watched. Ah began to sweat, grow short of breath, wheeze. Mah hands burned and pulsed and ah blew on them but that did no good at all, so ah plunged them up to the elbows in the cool water of the trough. Ah held them unner for a full minute – then, when ah felt mah blood seem to level up, ah lifted them out. Ah shook mah arms around until they were almost dry, too afraid to look up and hoping to hell that this feeling – that ah was the object of someone’s scrutiny – would pass. It did not.

  Ah looked up and our eyes locked. Just like in the painting! She was standing beside the nag, patting his neck but staring straight at me. Through me.

  Ah wrenched free and tumbled off the rock. It was only the size of a pumpkin, but ah sprawled on mah side in the gravel, grazing mah hip in the process. It stung like shit. Ah heard some people laugh.

  Ah sat back on the rock, bent low, head between mah knees, wincing in pain, her eyes tearing into me. When ah looked up again she was smiling at me – an evil, gloating grin that showed her small white teeth. She mocked me. A mere child.

  Leaning closer to the nag and patting his nose with her little pale hands, she raised herself up on tippy-toes and whispered something in the horse’s ear. Witch’s words. A hex. She smiled again and again she showed her teeth. A moment or two later, ah saw one white eye roll wild in the horse’s head, then he reared and kicked and reared again. With a freakish neigh, the spooked beast bolted free, crashing through the hedgerow and raising a trail of red dust all down Maine.

  A cheer went up. The men, drunk as lords, piled into their pickups and utilities and charged off after it, bottles and ropes and whoops all going. Impulsively ah jumped in the back of one pickup with about ten other men, but a quarter of a mile up Maine they tossed me out, hardly even slowing down to do it.

  Ah saw in the distance the crazed beast veer off Maine and hoof it part-way up the track that leads to mah place, then veer again, and, splashing through the marshes, disappear into the swampland. Ah tasted blood and fished for a handkerchief, holding back mah head.

  Ah limped down Maine, hardly able to see a foot in front of mah face for fuckeh dust. By the time ah reached mah shack, ah could see men filtering out of the swampland, mah sanctuary, somewhat sobered by whatever had taken place within.

  The following day ah entered the swampland. It was cool and dark and as ah drew closer to mah sanctum, ah detected a sweetness to the air that was foreign to these hidden gardens, these dank and fusty regions – as if a woman had slept the night nearby and then departed. Ah breathed the perfumed air once more and ah remembered… the lavender sweetness of her body… Cosey Mo.

  Something flashed at mah feet and ah thought for a moment that it was simply a tear spent in memory of her, but it was not. It was a piece of bottle – a minikin Prussian vial that had once held the essence of lavender.

  Mah brains roared and bit by bit ah absorbed the horror of it all. A shoebox lid caught in a sling of vine – a bird skull and a Bible illustration all trodden into the mud – a bloodied rag draped across a tree trunk – clumps of hair trapped in a web – empty liquor bottles – the busted skull of mah brother – all scattered helter-skelter in the creeping greenness of the umbra.

  Ah lay down because ah could no longer stand, and ah closed mah eyes on all the ivy and vine and ah opened mah mouth wide, in utter desolation.

  Sorrow was his name. He would answer to no other.

  Fireworks hissed and spat aloft. Heaven’s darkening vault was scoured by whistling jets of spark. Catherine wheels spun, gushing lurid sprays. Sky rockets, spewing fire, tore the night sky with their blazing egress. Wicks fizzed. Bangers exploded. Smoke and blue sparks filled the air. Children stood in mute wonderment, gazing at the circus of spectral showers above, their gawping faces reflecting, in shouts of colour, all the crackling mischief of the cope. It was the night before the ‘burn-off eighth harvest after the rain. It was a balmy summer evening in 1953.

  The nag hid in his feedbag, unnerved by the explosions. All that was visible of his head was a pair of twitching ears, pricked and trembling on either side of a red fez. Its owner the Turk, drunk on home-made wine, slept in a wicker chair.

  Behind Sorrow stood a hay float upon which a fiddler, a largo-phonist, a caller and a man hunched over a box bass gave swing to the proceedings with a string of popular jigs, flings and barn-stomps that had all the cane-workers and their women and a handful of younger Ukulites up on their feet and dancing. Then Ted ‘the Red’ Hanley replaced the caller for some sing-a-longs, and was halfway through the final verse of Portland Town –

  ‘I was born in Portland Town

  I was born in Portland Town

  Yes I was, yes I was

  Yes I was, yes I w…’

  – when the now frantic nag suddenly reared, bucked and kicked. himself free of his clamorous burden, overturning the float and dumping haybales and musicians in the dust.

  The Turk said later that it was the fireworks that had spooked his horse, but Wilma Eldridge, a confirmed music hater, said it was the music that had caused it – especially Ted Hanley’s singing. Ted ignored the remark, more concerned with how he was going to chop his season’s quota of cane with a fractured wrist. Mary Hanley, Ted’s new wife, a tall, intelligent-looking woman with dark eyes and a moustache – the children had been quick to spot the aptness of her nominal spoonerism – stepped forward and said icily: ‘Must we all partake of your sour grapes, Mrs Eldridge? Surely you could peddle your miserable opinions elsewhere,’ causing a titter to ripple through both sectors of the community.

  The spooked nag galloped northward, an ancient bow-backed beast, a thick trail of dust rising at its heel. Then, glimpsing the open marshlands to the north-east, stained yellow with the dying sun, it broke away from the main road and bolted up a largely unused track toward those magical waters.

  The sounds of twenty or so pick-ups coming up the rear, horns blaring and engines roaring, drove the sorry beast galloping onward through the marsh and into the strange circle of vegetation at its centre. The swampland. The spooked horse headed for its heart.

  The drunken followers abandoned their pick-ups as close to the swampland as the marshy sod would allow and, leaving their lights on high beam so that they pointed into the dark arena, the reeling, jeering band – armed with ropes and torches, machetes and bottles – ventured in. They hacked through the woven jungle of vine and creeper, machetes and low-curved sickles swinging.

  When
the mob broke through the thick tyre of growth that encircled the bleak domain of the swamp, they found Sorrow beating wildly at the air with his front legs – his rump and hinds already claimed by the black circle of mud – working himself deeper with each thrusting movement as he made to escape. Bloody foam covered his face as he bit the maddened air, making no sound other than the hollow chopping of his jaws. His eyes bulged and rolled in their sockets as he gulped air and regorged jets of nostril steam. The fire-red fez remained precariously perched on his head.

  Looped ropes lashed out at the animal, slapping the black face of the quag as they missed their mark. The flailing mob of forty-fold took turns at throwing, each trying to lasso the sinking beast as it grabbled the air in blind terror in an attempt to keep its forelegs above the surface. The gamblers took the opportunity to place bets on the outcome. Bottles changed hands.

  Finally, someone succeeded in slipping the gin about its neck and a team of seven or eight men manned the rope and heaved, while those who had placed cash on ‘the swamp’ chanted ‘Sink! Sink! Sink!’

  Sorrow sank.

  What vile sight greeted the eye beneath the tarred curtain of the pit? What horror lurked below? What hell has Hell?

  The pitch skin of the bog closed over the old horse like a secret door and the cheers and hoots of the riff-raff ended sickly, as if the evil eye of the bog had robbed them of laughter. In the awkward silence that ensued, the milling circle gazed at the sinister expanse of quickmud, shuffling and fidgeting, all eyes fixed upon the terrible nothingness. Not a word was spoken. Nor did the sullen bog offer one solitary belch in memory of its meal.

  Then in one mighty purge, the horse crashed up through the blackened mirror, its massive head flung back, wrapped in a hood of black mud. And with the warm soup of death oozing into his open mouth Sorrow did at last surrender. And the mud took him under.