And the Ass Saw the Angel

by Nick Cave

  Euchrid burst through the front door and on to the porch, the shotgun cradled in his arms. The shotgun was wrapped in newspaper, and the paper was stained with large brown spots as though the gun itself had bled into its wrap. He stood on the porch, his legs apart. Jaw clenched, he spat into the yard, then marched briskly down the steps and strode across to the great wall, ripping away the paper as he went. He pointed the gun at the spot where he had last stood and brought his eye up to the sight. The sun had climbed higher into the sky, and all about him shadows pooled as he stood aiming. There was no sound, within the Kingdom or without. Euchrid lowered the gun and walked across the yard, past the leash pole and the training wires, to the other part of the wall where he had stood listening. And again he raised the shotgun and pointed it at the wall, and again he lowered it and did not shoot.

  And still ah went on thinking. How will ah die? How will ah go? Ah cannot destroy all of them, so what will ah do? Shall ah just wait for them to kill me? To crucify me too?

  Euchrid looked at the shotgun, turning it in his hands. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He had scared himself.

  Or is there a better way? A nobler way?

  He bowed his head and walked inside, still turning the shotgun in his hands. The door slammed behind him. Final.

  Ah walked up the steps and opened the front door of the shack. The door slammed behind me. Kind of final.

  And… and inside… and inside… you know, it’s hard for me to admit this, to come right out and say it, but ah will, ah will… inside mah shack, there in front of mah subjects – O for shame, for shame at mah lack of spunk, mah lack of pluck – and me, their terrible master! Yes, there with all mah dark-eyed subjects playing audience, ah took some certain steps to end it all. Yes, end it all. To defer mah celestial mission permanently and for all time, and in doing so deny mahself mah seat in Paradise, mah place in the Kingdom of God. And ah can barely remember even doing it.

  Ah entered the shack. Right. Ah remember that. The slam of the door. But what happened then was lived by some other part of me, some part that isn’t telling, for the next thing ah recall ah’m down on mah knees with the shotgun clamped between the jaws of a pig-trap and both its barrels jammed in mah mouth. Ah knelt there a while, peering down the length of the shotgun. Ah noticed a taut line of twine attached to both triggers and running the three or four feet to the doorway where it was tied neatly around the doorknob. Ah guess ah was waiting for a visitor to come and kill me. An intruder! Yes! For ah was convinced they would come. Ah had heard them there, behind the wall. Ah had. ‘So let them come,’ ah thought. ‘Let them come. What’s good enough for mah deadtime is good enough for mah livingtime too. Come on,’ ah thought. ‘Ah’m waiting,’ ah thought.

  And ah waited. Ah did. There, on mah knees. One. Two. Three hours, until mah skull split, teeth ached, jaws cramped. Yet still ah waited, sucking death, for someone, anyone.

  And they came. They did. Only not through the front door.

  They – it – she was just there, and very gradually, very wondrously revealed.

  First ah became aware of a faint flimmering of light behind me and to mah right. So stealthily did it encroach upon mah awareness that ah could not pinpoint the very instant of realization. But first it was the light, that is sure. A silver-blue effulgence unmistakably supernatural in its nature. But if it were not the light, if it were not that, then it was the glow of shifting wings and the rank gusted air that stormed suddenly and whipped up the floor trash – the paper, the shavings, the gauze strips, the feathers, the moulted fur. And if it were not any of these things, then it was the voice, yes, the voice that betrayed the identity of mah erumpent, mah shuffling, mah extravagant caller.

  ‘Remember Euchrid, there is a sin unto death,’ came a voice, and gingerly ah slid the barrel out of mah mouth and turned mah face toward it. Could it be? Could it be…

  Mah angel. Mah long lost guardian angel. Mah straight and guiding hand. And O how wonderful, how awesome was her blaze! Ah climbed to mah feet and stood before her. Stiff, ah stretched, arms raxed outward, and ah beheld mah winged theophany. Glory! Glory!

  ‘You have not yet been summoned. Withhold yourself, for the time of your calling is ripe. There is corrupt fruit to be plucked. Do His work, justly and goodly, and you will be thuswise received,’ she said, sort of chiming. And ah noticed that sometimes mah angel seemed to be clad in clinging veils of web, while other times she wore nothing but her teasing pinions, opening them wide when she spoke so as to reveal to me all the luminary delights of her body. Then lowering her crown of golden locks, she would draw silent, wrapping her wings about herself like a sleeping bat or a blue flame, when ah gathered she tuned in on some Godly advice – instruction, warning, or whatever.

  And ah inclined mah head and closed mah eyes and listened, and slowly came the pulse of His voice, the double-beat, the low chant and its portentous climb – the time is nigh the time is nigh the time is nigh, it said – and ah wondered as ah deciphered the chant, nigh for what? And word by word, chant by chant, instruction by instruction – go down to the town go down to the town go down to the town – God spelled it out for me. And in time ah learned the business of mah existence, plain and simple – dressed in your best dressed in your best dressed in your best dressed in your best. And with His most precious portent God illuminated the grinding darkness that had whelmed me all mah life, and ah saw the way in which mah life – mah cog – slotted neatly into another smaller cog from which an axle turned that sprung a mechanism which, in turn, ignited a tinder attached to a long wick that fizzed and spluttered down to a pyramid of red sticks – till death us do part till death us do part till death us do part – Boom!!. Till death Booml Till death Boom! Till death…

  KILL BETH BOOM!

  And so ah began the preparations.

  ‘Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…’

  Ah ground the sickle’s screaming lip into the whirring whetstone, pausing to catch mah breath and to sprinkle a little water around. Then leaning into the spin ah resumed grinding, pumping at the treadle furiously and feeling a trifle uneasy that the sickle had kept screaming all through the breather, irrespective of the simple laws of logic. Sparks spat at mah guiding hand. The winch belt whirred up its own rolling rhythm, and ah sat huddled over the bucking contraption as the entire machine whirred and creaked and shogged, until the sickle grinned evil in mah fist, screaming-keen and sharp enough to skin shit.

  All sun and no wind and the air hazed in the heat. Ah slashed mah way across the yard to the great gates of Doghead and mah mind jabbered and rhymed, as it so often did. God surged through me as ah razored the space before me – the blistering, the stifling, the still, still breath kill Beth kill Beth kill Beth.

  Ah climbed up the gate and looped four lengths of rope to the four iron hooks that ah had screwed along the top of the gate earlier. Then ah followed the lines inside, checking as ah went the forked posts that kept the ropes aloft and tapping the ropes occasionally with the flat of mah sickle for tautness, making sure the steel eye-hooks held fast in the doorframe. And lastly, kneeling by mah panting tea chests, ah checked each rope was securely fastened to its kennel’s wire screen.

  Each cage was a wrestling knot of expectancy. Ah had instructed mah beasts earlier on their pending release, their mission of death. Ah had explained to them that the laurels of Glory lay in the spilling of blood, and they had drooled hate as ah clued them in on the enemy. And as ah briefed them on the rudimentary aspects of unarmed combat – go for the throat, bark a lot – they sharpened their fangs on the wire screens and low growls rose deep in their throats. ‘Kill for your King and die for your God. You will find Glory in the spilling of blood,’ ah told them, and it was then that the fearless brutes began their blood-curdling whirring, their freedom song, their serenade of sadness for all of brute creation, yoked or harnessed or bridled or locked in bestial dungeons or scumbered tea-chests filled with straw.

  Ah know that you did well, mah hobbling de
ath-squad, ah know that you did well. To die with the name of the King on your lips, what greater honour could there be? O glory-bitches of Doghead, ah cannot hear your music anymore. How was ah to know that they would come with guns? May the cage of bestial paradise be opened to you. Your King is well pleased. He is.

  That was yesterday, you unnerstand. O yes, past time is rushing, fast approaching, racing and racing toward me. But let it come. Ah’m ready for it. Ain’t afraid of it. Ain’t afraid to die.

  Look! Up there! A herd of sooty smoke-beasts file overhead, romp across this roofless round. Dark smokings from Doghead, no doubt, blacking the blue above. Ah knew that they would burn mah Kingdom down. So let it burn. Burn, fire, burn. Illuminate their madness so that they might see the lunacy within each other’s eyes. Ah have seen you reduce the haunts of whoredom to a handful of lavender ash. And churchdom – how brightly you blazed that night on Glory Flats! – fuelled by the blood of a mongoloid, a gimp and a big bad ‘bo. And now mah Kingdom. Noble fire, noble smoke, noble cinders in the wind. Leave them nothing.

  Anyway, later that day – yesterday – mah chanters were working mah thoughts, sending them to me in irritating sing-song couplets – get some rope – string and twine – wool and wool – fencing wire – electrical cords – fishing line – gather them up – all you can find – tie them together – in a long line – ain’t much time – ain’t much time – fuclcen brains! Idiot rhyme… it’s enough to make you lose your… Shit! Fuck! Shit! Shit! Shut up. Shut up. Shut up! And in frustration ah booted a tea-chest that sat in the corner and out of it spewed just that – lengths of rope, balls of wool and string, ribbons and belts and a couple of pairs of old bracers, strips of sheet, old bandages, even a kite tail, so ah figgered ah had more than likely been collecting this stuff for some time. They were already tied end to end. So ah coiled up what was to serve as a lifeli… a deathline – and headed for the swampland. Reaching its edge, ah tied one end of the line to the vine-burked bole of a tree that stood on the outer perimeter. Then, using the compass from Captain Quickborn’s chest, ah proceeded in a south-south-easterly direction, uncoiling the line as ah went.

  Ah thrashed at the denser sections of vegetation with mah sickle and ah thrilled at the ease with which it pared all that sought to obstruct mah path – which was not a great deal actually, for it seemed that a pathway of sorts had already been fashioned, and for a while ah was pleased to have struck a natural contour in the umbrage that so conveniently maintained a south-south-easterly slant. But soon ah became aware of the damaged foliage and the trampled unnergrowth, suggesting an animal of some kind had made the track. Putting mah powers of observation to the test, ah surmised that the beast was large and travelling at a furious rate as most of the twigs and vines were broke clean off. In time the answer dawned on me and ah felt a surge of relief at having solved the riddle.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ ah thought, shaking mah head incredulously, ‘even that jug-headed nag that Beth spooked – remember? – even it played a part in the greater. Mystery, in the ultimate fulfilment of God’s Will.’ And ah recalled the time the Turk’s horse, Sorrow, crackling with the electricity of Beth’s hex, tore into this haunted wheel and plunged into the bog. And anyway – and anyway – ah followed the pathway right to the inner perimeter of the swampland, to the edge of the bog, and secured the other end of the line to the trunk of a tree there, thinking that it was sure as hell funny the way the line of belts and wire and string and rope happened to be exactly the length required to make a direct line from the outside of the swampland straight into its heart. Anyway now ah could get within from without in the shortest possible time by just following the line, hand over hand. And just as ah was about to leave ah turned, crouched, and sighted one eye along the deathline – and anyway, two things happened at approximately the same time.

  First off, a niggling little voice inside mah head said, ‘That fucken skew-bald, saw-boned antique came galloping through here over six years ago. No spooked-out flea-bitten nag cut up this path!’

  Ah bent down and picked up a severed twist of vine and examined the cut. It was whistle-clean. A little green. Even a touch sap-damp.

  ‘This track has been forged in the last few days,’ ah thought, and ah threw the cutting into the air and slashed it in half with the razored hook of mah sickle before it hit the ground. Ah was confused and frustrated, angry at mah stupidity and feeling as though there were influences at work beyond mah control, working silently and insidiously.

  ‘Something else did this,’ ah thought, checking the path for further clues, ‘some other animal. Some different beast.’ Then it dawned on me. Yes it did. ‘A wild fucking boar! A razor pig! That’s it! A swamp hog with a really sharp tusk!’

  Ah turned quickly, making to leave this place before mah mind had the chance to contest the wild boar theory. And it was then the other thing happened.

  The outer-ring of the swampland appeared as a series of dark cringing silhouettes, distorted by occasional shouts of daylight, and so it was not until ah was nearly upon her that her silhouette took shape and broke forth into form. The perimeter’s harsh light scattered shadows, and mah head swam and crackled, set alive by her brightness. Flanked by two logwood boles, green with creeping death, the ghost of Cosey Mo appeared unto me.

  Weird insects squawked, zipping through the air in intricate formations as if pulled by invisible strings, darting this way and that, in unison, with subtle plays of pace and position – passing through her, never landing. Evil bees, these sinister insects, proof that the Devil himself was there. Proof that the Devil himself was there. Proof that the Devil himself was there.

  She reached out and bid me come unto her.

  Ah could hear the tendons hiss beneath her skin. Ah felt tears upon mah cheeks, upon mah chin. Ah tasted them. Ah could not tell from whom they’d come. Her breasts pulsed with the stridor of a mad heart. Her fingers traced a ticking vein. She lowered me within the network of exposed roots, showed me the slickness there. She passed her mouth along the cobbled heap of mah spine, whispered words against the crooks of mah arms, drew shallow throats of air. She placed the lacquered tips of her fingers against the numb cartilage of mah throat, and, encouraged by the faint vibrations there, ah made a bid to speak. And ah do believe a word then passed mah lips, but with all the yabbering echoing in mah skull the word was lost for ever. One word and the spell was broken and the ghost began to fade. Her body blended with the dimming surrounds, and despite the intensity of mah embrace, somehow she slipped from it, called back to where ah now go.

  Ah felt cold and dirty and sick down amongst the knuckled interclutchment of tree roots, but ah made no effort to rise and collect up mah clothes, all of which ah… all of which she had removed in the frenzy, and which now lay draped about the place. Craning, ah searched for mah sickle. Ah found it in mah left hand. Mah right – mah kill-hand – crackled with the waxen leavings of ectoplasm and ah wiped it on a clump of knotweed. Ah gripped the sickle now with both hands. Ah stared up at the virescent mesh – the garlands of creeper and vine. The canopy seemed to be in a continuous state of flux, swollen and alive. Ah felt as ah had when ah was a mere boy, hidden beneath the bed covers, naked and utterly shamed, striking matches and… ah squeezed the sickle tighter and mah knuckles glowed bloodless and white. The air grew fumid, nauseous. Ah began to shiver, to shudder involuntarily. Something was contaminating mah insides – bad juices, sulphur leaks, bitter acids, bile. Mah breath soured. The great logwoods, centuries old, groaned and creaked. The insidious creepers hissed, shifted. Mah hands tingled, sweated copiously, and ah could feel it trickle down mah wrists and drip on to mah belly. Ah watched it pool there, blood-red and warm. Mah stomach heaved in sudden disgust and ah vomited across mah left arm. Ah gasped like a fish. Ah sweated red everywhere.

  *

  Ah spent last night – the last night – perched in mah turret, looking out over the valley, watching the creeping night swallow up the township as one by one the
house lights died.

  Strange was mah mood or mah shifting of moods. It was like mah heart had begun to turn slowly in its cage.

  Climbing the steps to the turret ah felt exhausted and more than a little edgy, having hauled six of the larger trip-snares across the marshes, floating them on two tyre tubes and lugging them into the swampland. There the ghost of mah father had appeared. He had flitted from tree to tree, keeping his distance as if he were afraid of me. He called instructions to me, which were only just audible because of the space he insisted on maintaining between us, but ah made them out to be, ‘Murder her!’ and ‘Stab at her!’ alternately. Mah initial response was to ignore him and so ah had set the traps and sought to leave that place of ghosts and God. Ah had thought of turning back and confronting him, and ah even did take a few steps toward him in order to breach the gap, but in doing so ah perceived more clearly the nature of the old man’s bark and ah changed mah mind and fled, leaving the tyre-tube raft behind me and scrambling across the marshfields, the turn of his words burning in mah ears.

  ‘Murderer! Saboteur!’ each syllable charged with venom and echoing through mah head, through mah bowels, as ah climbed into the turret.

  ‘Mur-der-rer! Sa-bo-teur!’

  Ah reached into the pocket of mah jacket in search of a handkerchief to wipe mah brow. Ah found there a child’s little white glove and ah laid it out flat so that it covered the wounds on mah right hand. Ah inspected it. Ah held it close to the spirit lamp. It was clearly Beth’s glove, and it seemed to me to be the whitest thing in the whole world.

  Ah remembered a dream ah had had. Of a glove. Of Beth. Ah squeezed three grimy fingers into the glove, and just before closing mah eyes ah glimpsed a slick, taut sky of the deepest blue, the moon a bloodless, flesh-coloured gash in its infinite expanse.

  And mah heart turned, awash on warm waters then tossed on the shores of disgust. Ah opened mah eyes and looked again at the glove and all the whiteness seemed to have gone, smeared like everything else ah could see, everything else ah fucken touched, and ah noticed a rich crimson spot appear in the very centre of the glove, then grow in size and intensity, until ah had to cup mah own hand lest the pooling blood spill over. Ah bound mah hand in a handkerchief.