It was in the eyes of this butcher that Aloysius saw love of death—the black eyes that tunnelled, like two worm holes, into a dark place. When Service was not watching Inga hungrily out of the corner of his eyes, when he was not poring over the machete or the sharp knife, his eyes would fix themselves on a distant spot and gaze at something he alone could see.
“He vas a beaten child,” Inga said to Aloysius one day.
“How you know dat?” Aloysius asked.
“I know. I can tell.”
“Who beat him?”
“Someone big and cruel.”
“You don’t know dat.”
“I know,” Inga said airily.
“Vhat about me? Anybody beat me?” Aloysius asked.
“Yes.”
“Hah! Who beat me?”
“God. He is the one who beat you.”
“Vhat you talking about? I never see God in me life!”
But she refused to continue with this line of argument, which made Aloysius vexed, so vexed that he sat that evening beside the butcher and recounted the conversation to him in order to get someone to laugh with him at how foolish the German was in her speculations.
But the butcher merely looked stonily at Aloysius and would not talk about his past or argue about the German’s speculations or even chuckle at the wild notion that Aloysius had been beaten by the Almighty.
And he was the sort of man—this silent butcher—whom you could not press too hard because of what you saw coiled deep in the well-bottom of his eyes, watching you.
One week in this rainy season Inga decided that for the time being she had had enough to do with hood. She decided that it was a time for breezing out her body.
Breezing meant that she walked around the camp naked when the breeze blew, that sometimes she lay flat on her back in the guinea grass and hoisted up the pum-pum to the sky to air it out. This was the season when the breeze came off the slopes of the mountain smelling pungently of burning wood, when the trees shook to its touch and the grassland rippled with cat’s paws.
During this week of breezing even the sight of a hood threw her into a violent temper and made her chop viciously with kung fu motions. So Aloysius and Service walked around the small house with their manhoods flowering in their pants and did their best not to look at her as she sprawled out on the grassland with her eyes closed and the breeze cooling her nakedness.
Service killed two chickens in the breezing week and gnashed his teeth and one night even bawled out loud for someone from his past. Aloysius wandered in and out of the camp holding vehement discussions with bushes and squabbling endlessly with the flame heart tree. One night he sat outside the small house and recited every one of his thousand names.
But soon the breezing days were over and she came to her senses and once more demanded hood from them. Once agan they were able to do up their flies without fear of snagging their manhoods between the sharp teeth of a zipper.
“De breezing nearly kill me,” Aloysius whispered one morning to the flame heart tree. “One more week o’ de breezing and me dead.”
“You can’t make pum-pum rule you so,” the tree scolded.
“Dis is de portfolio of pum-pum,” Aloysius said helplessly.
“Pum-pum don’t rule over me.”
“Well, anyhow, everything air out good now so I suppose breezing time over and done wid.”
“Me always thought pum-pum did air condition,” the tree said.
“No, man,” chuckled Aloysius with a hard-won knowledge. “Pum-pum must air out and draw fresh breath once in a while. Dat’s why church woman is so miserable, ’cause dey force deir pum-pum to live inna dark place and draw stale breath like worm. When what pum-pum need is good breezing.”
“Is true, you know!”
“But is de parson dem fault, for dey is de one dat preach dat pum-pum must lurk inna crotch like rat inna tree!”
“Must tie up like bad dog!”
“Eh ah! And why? Who pum-pum ever bite?’
“Who, indeed? Since when pum-pum have teeth?”
The villagers did not take well to this scandalous sight of a white woman and two black men keeping house in the bush. Tongues wagged morning, noon, and night over this arrangement and wherever Aloysius, Service, and Inga walked together in the village they were met with fish-eyed stares from windows, shops, and verandas. When they had passed, heads would shake with foreboding and mouths would whisper out of their corners and knowing smiles would crack lewdly after them.
Old women, remembering the White Witch of Rose Hall, who had enticed young slave men into her bed and murdered them when she had wearied of their bodies, thought Inga a witch and openly said so. Slack young girls rudely boasted that it was the sweetness of black hood that made the white woman keep two men, and when they passed Inga in the streets they called to her impertinently as though they knew her deepest secrets.
Inga was impervious to insult, to innuendo, to wagging heads or lewd smiles. She swaggered through the village with the cocksure step of one who had lived there all her life. She tramped into dirty shops that stank of fetid cheese and saltfish brine and she plopped down her elbows on the grimy counters and ordered what she wanted as though no eyes were peering sharply at her from every corner, as though voices had not hushed at her appearance and backs had not stiffened and mouths had not snaked into grim lines.
Many a morning she passed in the cemetery behind Mr. Shubert’s small shop, sitting against the trunk of a gnarled lignum vitae tree, a pad open on her knees, making a sketch of the weathered tombstones that rose crookedly out of the green earth like bad teeth.
“Is me family she drawing, you know,” Busha said with alarm when he heard of the German’s practice from Mr. Shubert.
“But me mumma is dere too, Busha,” Mr. Shubert reminded him.
“I know dat,” Busha snapped. “But for every one Shubert in dat graveyard you goin’ find ten McIntoshes.”
Mr. Shubert shrugged.
“What de rass is dis woman doing, drawing me family for?” Busha ranted. “Damn out of order, man! Dis Jamaica is de only country in de world where even when a man dead and in him grave him must still pose for tourists.”
Now, in the countryside of every parish are wicked young schoolboys who act as though Almighty God had appointed them watchmen and criers of the defects, traits, and infirmities possessed by otherwise decent people. If a man has an ear missing because of a horrible accident, the boys will shriek out, “One Ear Hole” when he passes them on the street. If a woman has a big batty, they will trumpet, “Big Batty Woman!” as she flounces past.
Grim silence is the only defense against these taunting urchins. Violence does no good because they repay it in kind and with banker’s interest. Argument does no good because they are schooled in the urchin art of screeching out graphic nastiness about bowel movements and private parts. Chasing them does no good because they fly headlong into the bush flinging taunts over their shoulders.
So the only thing a big batty woman can do is to hold her head high and act as though she does not have a big batty and that the urchins are quite mistaken in shrieking so. Often this attempt at aloofness will drive these wicked boys to bellow their observations at a terrifying volume so that the poor woman’s progress is winded to everyone ahead as the approach of a big batty, not a woman in her Sunday clothes on her way to bow her knee to the Almighty, but a big batty with legs and arms and a mouth and two eyes, a big batty that has boastfully put on a calico frock, a veiled hat, and high-heeled shoes and taken to the streets putting on airs like a bogus voter.
These urchins began shouting too at Inga.
At first she did not understand the boys and mistakenly thought they were greeting her in a boisterously good-humored way. Once she even shouted back playfully at them.
But then one day as she was walking to the strip of pasture where Service did his butchering, they blasted in her ear “Two Hood Woman” so loud that she flinched.
It
was a Saturday evening, villagers were streaming past on their way from the market, and the urchins were perched on a stretch of broken wall beside the road.
When she realized what the boys had said, Inga roared with anger and chased after them. They piled off the wall and scattered into the bushland shrieking, “Two Hood Woman! Two Hood Woman!”
She scaled the wall and singled one out and ran him down in the middle of the cow pasture.
Astonished villagers stood stock-still on the roadway and watched.
The boy threw a wild thump at her and was felled on the grass by a wicked clout to the side of his head.
She started tearing off his clothes. He screamed and wriggled and kicked at her, his voice echoing across the pasture to the foot of the mountains, scattering flocks of goats and herds of cows.
Amazed, the villagers watched from the wall as she ripped off the boy’s clothes. Then she began to take off her own clothes, at which the naked boy scrambled to his feet and tore across the pasture with the white woman in furious pursuit.
The torn shirt flapping off his back, the nude boy dodged and darted with the German hard on his heels, and he bawled out in a terrifying voice for his puppa and mumma.
“Me God!” one villager whispered to another.
With a horrible scream, the boy vanished into the thicket with the white woman close behind him.
Some villagers jumped the wall and rushed into the bush to see the outcome of the chase. The rest stood in the road and loudly debated what they had just witnessed. A crowd gathered and awaited the outcome from those who had followed the white woman and the naked boy.
They returned a few minutes later, blowing hard and waving their hands.
“Dem gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Gone up de road. Gone a bush.”
“Why she tear off her clothes so?”
“Me no know! Me never see nothing like dis in all me born days!”
“Me know why she do it.”
“Why?”
“To rub her batty in de boy face.”
“But kiss me neck!”
“Sweet Jesus, listen to dis now!”
“Is batty rub she goin’ give him. Serve him right. Dem nasty boy always troubling people.”
“Is not batty rub him goin’ get! Is grind she goin’ grind him!”
“Foolishness! What kind a thing is dat? A boy call a woman a nasty name and she hold him down and give him grind? What kind of sense dat make?”
“Me say is grind she goin’ grind him! Me hear ’bout dis woman from long time. Is a hard woman dis, you know!”
“Me say batty rub!”
“Grind!”
“Batty rub!”
“Grind!”
“Batty rub, you damn fool! You think woman give out grind like dat!”
“Grind, you ugly monkey you! She goin’ grind him till him neck broke. You didn’t know pum-pum kill man worse dan gunshot?”
“What you think, Missah Williams?” someone asked an old black man who stood on the edge of the crowd leaning heavily on his cane.
Missah Williams didn’t know. He had never heard of batty rub before. He never knew that women held down men and gave them a grind. All this was new to him.
The crowd was convulsed. Missah Williams did not know whether to join in the general merriment or look vexed at this mocking of one of his age.
The people gathered their baskets, live chickens, and ground provisions and started trekking up the road that climbed the face of the mountain in switchbacks and led to the distant villages.
One rude girl walked beside Missah Williams, teasing him and putting slack questions to him.
“Eighty-eight years now I live on dis earth, you know,” Missah Williams said in a feeble but proud voice. “Every Sunday I go to church and thank God for long life.”
“A lie, Missah Williams!” The girl rolled her eyes saucily at him. “Is woman you go look.”
“Woman?” Mr. Williams stopped in his tracks and stared at her with alarm. “What would I do with woman? At my age woman would kill me stone dead.”
“No, Missah Williams, no say dat. Dat thing prolong life, make white hair turn black again. It make teeth grow back and kinky hair turn straight.”
“Me never knew it was medicine,” Mr. Williams mumbled. “Dis is de new Jamaica way of thinking. In my day we was only trying to have children.”
One afternoon the people of the boy Inga had chased showed up at the house and there was a good deal of shrieking of threats back and forth. The boy’s mother clutched a vicious rockstone and took an oath that she would kill a white woman with it before the sun set. The father stood behind the mother, carried a big stick, and muttered that he was looking for a blond head to crack. An uncle or two and a cousin sheltered with him in the shadow of the stout mother. Service sat on the dirt holding a machete in one hand and a knife in the other and raked the group with a murderous stare. Aloysius ran from one to the other trying to calm everyone down.
At first Inga paid no attention to them but soon she was drawn into the quarrel and started yelling back insults.
The mother bellowed out her grievances on top of her voice.
“She chase me pickney inna de bush! She chase me one boy child like him is goat inna de bush! She rip off de very clothes on him back and make him walk de street naked! She hold him down and do something to de boy so wicked and nasty dat to dis day him won’t tell me what she do!”
“He called me a name!” Inga replied.
“Name?” the mother shrieked indignantly. “Him call you name? I goin’ kill you bumbo! Is only name him call you? Is you bumbo I goin’ kill!?”
“You vant to fight?” Inga invited. “Come. I fight you now. I fight you right here.”
“Fight?” the father scoffed. “Me wife don’t fight nobody, you know! When my wife fight is murder she committing. A-hoa!”
“Hush up you mouth!” the woman flung at him over her shoulder. “Make me talk!”
“No fighting!” Aloysius begged. “No fighting. Ve not fighting today.”
“Me say she hold down me pickney, you know, Missah Aloysius?” the woman appealed to him. “She strip de clothes off him back. Is naked him come home naked, you know?”
And so it went on for an hour or two, the quarrel pulsating between nastiness, rancor, and grumbling. Eventually, the screeching family members beat a sullen retreat, trailing violent oaths and blasphemous threats after them. They vanished to a hill where they made a last stand, discharging volleys of bad words. Aloysius raced between the house and the withdrawing family, trying to patch matters up and occasionally igniting them to another blast of furious cursing.
“I don’t understand these people,” Inga muttered. “They come here to make a lot of noise.”
“Dey need chopping,” Service said darkly.
Blowing hard from running, Aloysius returned to the house.
“Dem gone!” he panted. “Me quiet dem down. What a worries ’pon me head today. Lawd Jesus, Inga, what you do to dem pickney?”
She grinned wickedly and would not tell.
After that incident the boys never again called out their mockeries to Inga. They sat on the same stretch of wall and they shouted their biting epithets at everyone who passed. But they did not shout at Inga.
On a Saturday morning they sat on the wall and chorused out loud greetings to “One Nose Hole,” “Cave In Batty,” “Crook Foot,” and “Peel Head Parson.” Even when Busha drove past the boys screeched out, “Big Belly Busha!” after him.
But only stony silence greeted Inga. She walked past the wall slowly, even pausing to look hard at the urchins and pretending to sniff a wild orchid that grew on the shoulder of the road.
When she finally moved away it was with the hesitant step of the daydreamer.
“Fatty Chin!” she heard them yell.
Inga turned and saw an old woman wobbling past the taunting boys, a heavy basket on her head, an ugly chin dripping
off her face, an aura of grim dignity in her every leaden step.
* * *
Days later Inga said to Aloysius, “I am the only one vithout a name to those boys. I am sorry I did vhat I did. Now I feel lonely and unnamed.”
“You can take one o’ me name,” Aloysius said. “Me have a thousand o’ dem.”
“Vhich one can I have?”
“‘Impracticable.’ Take dat one.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You want ‘Loquacious’?”
“That is not a voman’s name.”
“Take one of him name!” Service spat with disgust. “Which one o’ dem madder, to rass?”
So it went in the first weeks under the rule of pum-pum.
Chapter Sixteen
Busha took sick one night in this same month, awaking with a crushing pain in his chest. At first he lay quietly in his bed hoping the pain would go away, but when it did not he got up and padded to a window and peered out the burglar bars at the dark pastures.
A night bird sang and the fields shone with the crystalline blue light of a half moon.
Why me? Busha asked himself peevishly. Why did he have to be the one to wake up with a pain in his chest when so many other hearts beat soundly in this district? With almost no effort at all he could count scores of peaceful sleepers within a walking distance of where he now stood worrying over the pain in his chest. Just to prove it he began a head count of the sleepers in the district. Down the road slept Mrs. Thompson and her seven children; over that dark ridge were the Lydfords, all fifteen of them no doubt snoring; up the hill a piece were the Crockers, who numbered eight slumbering children, one husband, one wife, the wife’s mother, and ten dogs.
All this fretful thinking and nighttime arithmetic made the pain worse. Busha gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it.
But there was no ignoring such pain. It came from too deep down inside his chest; it caused his chest to ache like a bad tooth. Busha peered over his shoulder at the bed where Sarah lay sleeping.
“Everybody sleeping peacefully,” he said loudly in the dark room. Sarah did not stir so Busha bellowed: “De whole world sleeping!”
The Lunatic Page 12
