And the Ass Saw the Angel

by Nick Cave

  With childlike enterprise, Queenie collected the coloured labels off liquor bottles, and when the alcohol ran low Kike would hunt for suitable unbroken vessels amongst the trash that covered the church floor. Standing in the annexe with his sleeves rolled up, he would soak the bottles one by one in the stagnant water of the font, carefully peeling off each paper label and arranging them in neat rows on a bench-seat to dry.

  Ah was about sixteen at the time, and lured by the beacons of knowledge that beckoned dimly through the fog of mah youth-hood ah would climb the steps leading to the pulpit and spy upon the fornicators.

  The booze-shrivelled gimp would immerse himself in the gobbling folds of Queenie’s raw and porcine loins like one engirdled in a huge pink tyre-tube. From the pulpit ah could see his backside, a hairy white knuckle, thrusting with an increasing urgency – a rhythm that began with cursing Queenie to hell and back, but ended in clonic supplication upon her sprawling breasts. Kike, on the other hand, a giant of a man himself, would hammer away at Queenie from beneath his filthy green greatcoat. Sometimes the only thing that would betray Queenie’s presence in congress with Kike would be one numb and dumpling forearm crooked around his steaming neck, two or three liquor labels clutched in its fist.

  Late one afternoon on the last day of the harvest – lay-off day for the majority of the work-force – a bunch of workers got together and stomped the bounce out of laughing Queenie’s ball.

  This is the way Kike put it to me:

  ‘Murdering slime from the camp come whup the fucken custard outa her. Twenny, maybe twenny- five. Queenie ain’t got the God-given brains to be afraid. Get shitted off cause she ain’t puttin up no struggle. No fight. No fucking fun. Slap her about when she starts with the laugh Ha! ha! ha! ha! Shut up Queenie is all I’m thinkin’, shut up. Ha! ha! ha! ha! If only she had’ve been scared. Kicked or squarked or spat or bit, something other than just that laugh. Ha! ha! ha! ha! “Shut it,” they say. “Shut it.” All the while they’re getting drunker and sicker, sicker and meaner, hammering away at her. Some jerkin off over her laughin in the garbage. Ha! ha! ha! ha! “Fucken shut it, you stinking piece of shit,” and I hear her cop a punch that shuts her up for a second or two but that’s all. Ha! ha! ha! ha! and then she’s off again. Before ya know it, they’re puttin the boot in and her body’s jerkin all over the floor. No stopping them now. They stomp on her. But hard. “Scummy shit!” Someone breaks a bottle cross her teeth. Torch her hair. Piss it out. “You sloppy bitch. Queenie! Queen of what? Eh? Queen of this!” And someone jams a beer bottle up Queenie’s cunt. Another slaps his liquor-bottle label on to Queenie’s belly, another slaps one on her forehead, another on her breasts until she looks like an old seaman’s trunk, her legs, her body covered in bruises and blood. Queenie’s dead. No doubts.’

  Kike stopped speaking and hunched over the back of a pew, growling like an animal as he sucked rank air through the cavities of his great cratered beak. He glared at his comrade, the lame’ bo, and cussed.

  Reading from the Bible, the raving cripple hobbled up and down the cluttered aisle, and shouted out the text at the figure of Christ Crucified that hung above the altar – oblivious, it seemed, to the disappearance of Christ’s head, which now lay lost beneath the shredded blue folds of Queenie’s discarded frock.

  ‘… Go see now this cursed woman and bury her: for she is a king’s daughter.

  And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands…’

  The cripple threw back long slugs of moonshine with alarming insistence, his hobble becoming less and less pronounced, less and less painful, until the straight line up and down the aisle began to take on a slightly pacier figure-of-eight course. Kike and me looked on. Listened.

  ‘… In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel:

  And the carcass of Jezebel will be as dung upon the face of the field…

  Kike reached into his coat and produced a piece of blood-speckled paper upon which were printed bold capitals in blunt red pencil.

  ‘Tell me, boy, what ya make outa this? Take it. Look,’ whispered Kike thrusting the paper at me. Ah looked at the page but did not need to read’it. Ah looked back at Kike. Ah shrugged nervously. Cowered just enough.

  He nodded knowingly. His ugly blistered features almost organized themselves into a look of genuine sadness. He looked back to the cripple.

  ‘Thought so. Ya can’t read. Couldn’t have been you, then. Just as I suspected. If you didn’t write the message and I didn’t write it then it must have been the preacher…’

  The preacher? What preacher? Mah heart pounded. Scalp shrank. Nausea.

  ‘Look at him. He’s mad,’ Kike continued. ‘Used to be the preacher in this here church. Did ya know that? Abie Poe. Was a time when the fanatics hailed him as the saviour. Gathered up cane fronds, laid them before the hoof of his stallion. Builded effigies in his image. In his image! Saviour? Shit! Was a conman. Was a shark. Worse. They say he burned a witch up on Hooper’s Hill. Never believed it. Do now. He is a low man with some dangerous kinda sick. I pity him but I do not forgive him. Killed Queenie, he did. Good as. This note may as well have been her death-warrant. Damn near could have been mine too! Cain’t forgive that. No sir. Can get down on his knees until they bleed but I ain’t forgiving that.’

  Kike looked at me and I looked back at him. Kike wanted to confide in me. Ah wanted to kick his fucken brains in.

  ‘Speak-no-evil,’ said Kike, annunciating each word slowly and clearly. ‘You ain’t been given a proper name yet, Speak-no-evil. I’m gunna start calling you Speak-no-evil. What do you think of that, Speak-no-evil?’ Ah wanted to throw up all over him, then say ‘Fine, Kike. Love it. And what do you think of that?’ But ah managed to smile back at him, knowing that he wasn’t about to get too many opportunities to call me anything, if things continued to fall mah way.

  Ah looked at the gimp. The cripple. Poe! A chill bit at the nape of mah neck and the skin on mah arms grew horripilant and tight. But ah stayed calm.

  Thinking about it now, you know, ah guess ah always knew that the gimp was Poe. Why else would a crippled hobo engender such complete and arrant hatred? Ah’m not the type to go around hating just anyone.

  ‘Just weren’t right of him to write that note, Speak-no-evil. Just weren’t right. All that hot-gospelling and holy-rollering, that’s a trough of hog-slop. Is a fucken phoney and he killed my Queenie. Ain’t getting away with that. Don’t want you hanging around. Gunna get ugly around here shortly. You better piss off – and bring me back a bottle tonight.’

  Kike returned his attention to Poe and ah could hear his booming voice as ah exited the church.

  ‘Sing it, Preacher, and sing it sweet. Is your last sermon. You can tell it to the Devil. Time to meet your maker!’

  Ah returned with a bottle later that evening. Kike was already loaded, oscillating between the supine and the sitting position. As ah ventured down the aisle ah saw Kike for what he was – a low animal – a rogue in a lousy green greatcoat – a great grunting grizzly with blood all over its face and hands – a pie-dog of the baddest blood – a flea-bag – a scum-sack – a shit-hill. Ah handed him the bottle and he uncorked it and took a long, lushy guzzle. Then, slamming the bottle down on the oaken pew, and expelling a rancid belch with a little thrust of his body, he roared for no apparent reason. ‘Aw fuck. Shit. Blaaah. Aaaach. Shit.’ Then cutting a resounding, flapping fart, he swore again and began to examine his bloody hands. He thrust them toward me theatrically.

  ‘The blood. Won’t come off. Wonder if it ever will,’ he queried in a stage whisper. Then he wiped his tell-tale ten – his finkers – down the front of his greatcoat. Damp with the chocolate-coloured blood the spongey felt fabric of the coat seemed to dispense more gore than it was prepared to receive and Kike inspected his sticky scarlet snitchers a second time.

  ‘To the font! We’ll wash this stubborn blood away!’ he bellowed in a manner
of high drama, as if the mere presence of Poe’s blood was sufficient to imbue the stewed giant with all the thespian artifice of the preacher.

  ‘Wash it off!’ he bawled.

  Kike stood suddenly, extravagantly, and slugging the bottle he attempted a cavalier flourish, tangled himself in his greatcoat, and crashed to the floor like a felled pine, cushioned by empty bottles, biscuit boxes, rat-soil and rubble. Trussed in his coat, arms pinned to his sides, he looked up at me with tears welling in his eyes and opened his great mouth to reveal a couple of lonely molars and a swollen green glossa. He began laughing. He was clearly out of control, laughing like that. And laughing.

  Squatting on the pew ah peered down at the creature that juddered and jack-knifed at mah feet, a remugient pupa covered in blood.

  A smile tugged at the corners of mah mouth and ah opened it wide and bared all mah forty-six teeth to the wigging pupa on the floor. Ah could feel mah own gut-muscles dancing but their spasms were, as usual, short-lived, because in the world of the mute the rewards for hilarity are as beggarly as the causes. Or haven’t ah told you?

  Ah squatted on the oaken pew, ringent as a granite gargoyle, mah eyes busily meeting his as the gales of laughter levelled to become less extravagant expulsions of left-over mirth – his stupid, blaked face twitching with little pains – a grimace, a wince, a pursing of his blanching lips. Kike was looking a little green. Ah squatted. Ah watched. Ah waited.

  Then Kike was not laughing at all. Free from the girdle of twisted felt, his squalid cocoon opening into limp and scumbered wings, the chrysalis flapped unsteadily to its feet then flopped on to the pew, massive booted legs stretched athwart the aisle.

  ‘Speak-no-evil, are you listening?’ he said. ‘You listening, Speak-no-evil?’

  Ah was standing now, so that the balance had shifted again, leaving me still in the advantage should the atmosphere darken or the beast snap or things start turning berserk. Ah looked down at Kike. Ah held the bottle inches away from his reaching hand, so that he was forced to strain and stretch a little in order to take hold of it – just a little – ah didn’t want him getting wise just yet.

  He slugged again at the bottle, our eyes locked as he drank. His hands were caked in black blood and each knuckle, shaved raw, was crowned with an angry, purulent abrasion. Beads of cold sweat oozed from his fleshy upper lip, and across his furrowed brow, and made little tracks through the claret smears unncr his eyes. Sprawled so, on the bench, he looked like a very fucken unfunny clown.

  Kike groaned once, long and low.

  ‘Got something ah want to tell ya, Speak-no-evil. Justice was dealt. Queenie rest easy. The balance of the scale is even again. Seen the last of Abie Poe, we have. Was my friend. But listen. Leaving that note at the work camp was unforgivable – just nod if you agree, baw. Asked him to come clean and when he did not, I beat him. Yep. Beat him right up. Asked him again and again. Refused to confess. Was like… was like he really believed he didn’t do it.’

  Kike started to tear at the collar of his greatcoat in an attempt to loosen it from around his throat. He dabbed at his forehead with his sleeve. ‘Can’t breathe so well… Shit… Sweating like a freakin’ sow… Gimme the bottle, will ya, boy… Pain growing in the guts… where was ah? Right. Standing over him and shaking the fucken note in front of his eyes, I’m saying, “Don’t make me kill ya, Poe. Don’t…” His nose already hanging off his face by a thread, so that I’m really looking down the throat of the buggy bastard. And he damn well dared to look me in the eye and say through a mouthful of teeth, “Kill me, Kike… and may the Lord forgive you… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”’

  Kike gripped his stomach and leaned back against the pew. ‘Shit. Head… Guts… Throat… Boy, pass me the bottle… Throat… tight… What, all gone? All empty? Anyway, I yelled at him, “Po-o-o-o-oe! You know what ah’m talking about. The letter. This death warrant! How could you Poe! Even after ah shared her with you. You saw what they did to Queenie. Don’t go with a lie on your lips, Poe. Tell me the truth, Poe. The truth. Or ah swear, ah’ll post this fucken letter in your face…”

  ‘He opened one dying eye. Just a fraction, then… after twenty seconds, maybe thirty… he said… very soft, very slow, very clear, “No-0-000 Kike… You’ve made a terrible mistake, Kike.”

  ‘Said “And so have you Poe. So long, Preacher, see you at your resurrection.” Drove my right fist into his face.’

  Kike was taking a lot longer to go unner than ah had estimated he would. Kike was not a very big man – he was a very big animal, but ah was not so worried. Ah had put enough poison into the Jesus to deck a woolly mammoth.

  Kike tried to stand but lost balance and folded like a deck of cards back against the pew. His voice had become a tremulous croak but ah could detect confusion there, as well as a note of terror, receding and building up respectively.

  ‘… don’t understand him. Denying everything. When he is clearly the only one who could have done it… shit. Feel so goddamn ill all of a sudden… yeah, and ah dragged his body outside and put him under… the… church…’ and Kike stopped his babbling and wrapped his arms around his belly and rocked.

  Then suddenly, bizarrely, he leapt to his legs, crowed like a bird, collapsed on to the pew again and vomited a torrent of blood and bile into his lap. He stared at the marbled egesta, muttering and blowing bubbles. Perhaps that was his way of excusing himself for his behaviour. He did not seem to notice the sound of vehicles climbing Glory Trail, headed for the church.

  It was the sound ah had been waiting for. The signal. Time to get serious, ah thought. Time to get serious.

  Ah got his attention – he was doubled over, blubbering – by pushing him up into a sitting position so that he rested in the corner of a pew, his head lolling about on its massive neck. Ah put down the bottle and pulled a Bible from mah back pocket. He was watching me through very weird, popping eyes. Ugly, florid blotches had sprung up on his face and neck.

  Ah belted him squarely across the face with the Bible. The animal dribbled muck on it. Then as he looked on in disbelief ah flipped nimbly through the foxed pages of the Old Testament. Genesis. Exodus. The wonderful Leviticus. Numbers. Yes, Numbers. Chapter 35. Verses 18 and 19.

  Ah took a red pencil from mah bib pocket. Freshly sharpened. Ah flashed a smile at Kike, all teeth, and looking into his eyes ah licked the tip of the pencil.

  Again Kike heaved violently, but for all the noise he made whilst doing it it was disappointingly unfruitful – a brief spill of watery blood that ran over his bottom lip and hung in scarlet dribbles from his jaw. He remained propped in the corner of the pew watching me operate. Mouth wide open. Unmoving.

  Ah unnerlined the appropriate verses and then in bold capitals, across the top of the passage, ah wrote, and likewise unnerneath the passage, so that the page appeared thus:

  CAN YOU READ THIS, KIKE?

  18 Or he that smite him with an hand

  wherewith he may die, and he die,

  he is a murderer:

  the murderer shall surely be put to death.

  HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

  SPEAK NO EVIL

  Ah took his great, beefy hands and wrapped them around the Bible, and Kike let his head drop and stared stupidly at the pages. The blotches on his face and neck had turned a ghastly grape-colour. Bloody sputum strings dangled and dropped, punctuating the ominous pages with prophetic aptness.

  Ah could hear the vehicles – two, three, four – skidding in the gravel as they pulled up outside the church. Ah heard the crackle of a two-way radio and ah knew the Ukulites had taken seriously the message that ah had pinned to the door of the tabernacle. Ah could hear them breaking down the little slatted gate that let them unner the church. They would find Poe’s corpse and know that the rest of mah note too must be correct, and a few minutes later they would storm the church looking for the murderer.

  ‘Come on, Kike. Comprehend. Work it out, you fool. It’s all over for you, whoremonger. It’s al
l over for all of you. You and Poe and Queenie. All over,’ ah thought.

  Finally Kike lifted his great blotched face, his eyes poisoned, spiralling. He blubbered and bawled and boo-hooed and ah swung the empty bottle like a bat, smacking Kike square across the bridge of his nose and taking him out in one.

  Ah looked at him there, slumped against the back-board of the pew all covered in muck and not making a sound and ah thought to mahself, ‘You are an ass, Kike, you are an ass.’ Then ah brought the bottle down again.

  Ah removed the Bible from Kike’s hands and quickly extracted the incriminating pages, then ah reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and retrieved the first letter ah had written – the one ah had left for the field workers – the letter inviting the cane-men up to the church. Pocketing them, ah disappeared into the annexe, just as the Sheriff brought in from Davenport and his two deputies began battering down the main doors.

  ‘Use the goddamn handle,’ ah thought, as ah slipped out the side entrance and crept down the hill through the tall grass, ‘it ain’t locked.’

  All the way home ah smiled. Ah just could not get rid of it.

  All about were charred black fields. Cane, chopped and stacked, awaited transport to the refinery.

  Later, after everyone had gone, ah went back and sat inside the church. Ah closed mah eyes and simply basked in the knowledge that ah had served God – without even waiting to be asked. Yes, ah had served mah Lord and that was reward enough in itself. In a world full of profiteers it felt good to give. The meek shall indeed inherit the earth. Ah made a pact there and then to maintain this hallowed premises, this temple of the Lord, and keep it free from all intruders. And as ah sat there, humbled by its vastness and its silence, ah could feel God was there with me, there beside me, all about me, deep within me. In time the seraphs sang, filling the great hall with their music. And they sang for me. And they sang for me.