The Butt: A Novel

by Self, Will

  This wasn’t an industrial enterprise at all – it was manmade hell.

  Tom found Prentice slumped by the Portakabins, partly resting on the sloppy gonad of a hessian water bag. Tom picked this up by its handle, then helped Prentice to his feet. Together, they limped back to the checkpoint, Prentice leaning heavily on Tom’s shoulder.

  ‘Did you see . . .’ Prentice croaked, the psoriasis splitting the inflamed skin along his jaw. ‘Did you see inside that bally pit, it’s . . . it – it shouldn’t be permitted.’

  ‘C’mon, Brian,’ Tom teased him. ‘Get a hold of yourself, man. You wouldn’t want a world without aluminium, now would you? There’d be no forks, no planes, no tinfoil to wrap your fags – somebody has to make the sacrifice.’

  Tom was still pumped up when he attached the water bag to the back of the SUV. He got in and drove them all away with manly dispatch. But his rejuvenation didn’t last for long; by the time they were ten klicks away from the mine, Tom was finding it difficult to keep the car on the track. When they had travelled twenty, he had to pull over and let Prentice take the wheel.

  Tom had blundered into a psychic quagmire, and for the next day and a half he floundered there. He was incapable of unzipping his pants without the assistance of his good buddy Brian Prentice. Between feeding sessions – when Prentice coaxed Tom to swallow gritty mouthfuls of oatmeal – and criticism ones – when Gloria hectored him with his ignorance – Tom lay awkwardly along the back seat. The boxes of ribavirin and cartons of cigarettes jabbed his neck, while the desert mutated beyond the filmy windows of the car.

  Once they were away from the bled surrounding Eyre’s Pit, the track to Ralladayo coiled back into the volcanic badlands. They drove over escarpments of crumbling breccia, then through canyons the cliffs of which were threaded with mineral seams. Rocky outcrops, sand-blasted by the wind, had assumed the most phantasamagoric shapes: cellphones of scoria and obsidian digital cameras rushed towards the car. A Tommy Junior-shaped spire of tufa loomed overhead that had geological indifference etched into its stony features. Tom shuddered and, cleaving to Gloria’s parcel, pressed its tattered wrapping to his bristly face. It cooed to him: soon over . . . soon over . . .

  Towards sunset on the second day the track descended, and the badlands vomited them out. A flock of moai, startled by their approach, rose up from the shade of some gum trees and goosestepped away, their useless pigeon wings flapping. Hypersensitized, all three of them smelled water. Gloria said, ‘Nearly there, yeah?’

  Then, without warning, they were, jolting between wonky fence posts, past the welcoming sign: YOU ARE ENTERING TAYSWENGO TRIBAL LAND. SMOKING PERMITTED. RESPECT THE ANCESTORS; then a second: RALLADAYO, TWINNED WITH DIMBELENGE, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO.

  Gloria felt moved to hector Tom some more: ‘Erich von Sasser has given everything to these people, yeah? They revere him as a – well, perhaps they revere him – and we all do – a little more than we should. But that’s no reason for you not to be respectful: he’s brought all sorts of benefits to the Intwennyfortee mob, yeah? Fresh water, education, healthcare. Jobs too – and that’s had a knock-on effect for the rest of the tribe, who range from here to the Great Dividing Range.

  ‘Most of all, Erich’s provided them with a real belief system and a workable social structure, yeah?’

  ‘Given them a real belief system,’ Tom rasped, ‘what the hell d’you mean?’

  But before Gloria could reply, the SUV thrummed over the ties of a wooden bridge and humped into a turning circuit. Prentice hit the brakes – and the flies were upon them, streaming in through the open windows.

  In a plantation of widely spaced gum trees stood a long, low building that reminded Tom of the twins’ elementary school in Milford. It had the same steel-framed windows and modular construction: one classroom bolted on to the next. A short way off there was a structure in complete contrast, a Tyrolean chalet with elaborately fret-worked doors and shutters, and a wide shallow-pitched roof. The incongruity of this dinky wooden confection was completed by the trio of mismatched men who stood upon its raised veranda, a veranda that was sprinkled with snow-white dust.

  Tom shaded his aching eyes. The skeletal figure of Hippolyte von Sasser’s brother was unmistakable – they might have been twins. If anything, Erich was even more predatory-looking than the Chief Prosecutor. His skinny legs were emphasized by tight lederhosen; the bib of these and a voluminous cotton shirt provided him with an avian breast. An alpine hat balancing on the sharp summit of his bald head completed the costume. This Von Sasser was a pipe-smoker as well, yet the tiny cumuli that rose from its tall porcelain bowl did little to discourage the flies that preyed on his raptor features.

  Standing beside Von Sasser, his naked chest decorated with the medallions of several cameras, camcorders and voice recorders, was Jethro Swai-Phillips; while on the other side of the imposing anthropologist, his bleached teeth showing in a diplomatic rictus, stood the Honorary Consul.

  For a long time the two groups stared at one another. Gloria sighed deeply. Prentice detached his hands from the steering wheel with an audible ‘tchupp’. Tom hugged Gloria’s ovoid parcel. If the three men on the veranda shifted at all, it only confirmed them in their stasis.

  Then Swai-Phillips broke the spell. He lunged down the wooden stairs and came towards the SUV. From the way he moved, alone – his head tucked well forward, his arms pumping, his sandalled feet dancing in the dust – Tom saw a complete personality change in the once imposing lawyer. Swai-Phillips was doggy – there was no other word for it. He doggily opened the car door and snuffled Prentice out, then he bounded round and did the same to Gloria. He thrust his moustachioed muzzle into the car, while yapping: ‘He’s the man, see, Doc von S, yeah, he’s the man – c’mon Tommy, man. C’mon and meet him – he’s been waiting for you . . . He wants to meet with you . . . tell you stuff, right.’

  Swai-Phillips was without his wrap-around shades. His bad eye was gooey, his good one roved crazily. Flies grazed on his furry top lip. ‘C’mon, Tommy, yeah. C’mon . . .’ He grabbed Tom’s hand and bodily hauled him from the back seat. The parcel came too, in the crook of Tom’s arm. ‘It’s here – it’s now, it’s all times, man,’ he blethered, ‘ ’cause he’s the man, the big bloke . . .’ His Afro agitated like a wind-blown bush.

  Von Sasser stirred. Puffing his pipe, he squeaked down on high leather boots and came over to where Tom stood, his head reeling. The flies moiled in the deep sockets of Von Sasser’s eyes.

  ‘I believe you have something for me, yeah.’ Raucous vowels misbehaved on Teutonic bedrock. ‘Is that it’ – the anthropologist pointed with his pipe stem – ‘under your arm?’

  Mute, Tom passed him the parcel, and as soon as Von Sasser took it he experienced a fresh surge of vigour; his vision pinged into acuity. Then, over Von Sasser’s high shoulder, Tom saw the corrugated-iron humpies of the Intwennyfortee mob. There were at least forty of them, each with its own fenced yard and aircon’ unit. They were strung out along an airstrip, at one end of which stood a light aircraft. A wind sock kicked at the sky. A diesel generator hammered in the near-distance. Of the natives themselves there was no sign. Tom stared into the ice-blue eyes. He felt no fear, for once again he was Astande, the Swift One, the Righter of Wrongs.

  ‘Why’, Tom demanded, ‘was it so important for me to bring this to you? Swai-Phillips or Adams could’ve, after all; they fucking flew here.’

  Von Sasser threw back his head and laughed – ‘Aha-ha-ha’ – then stopped abruptly. He tore away the remaining shreds of newspaper to reveal a translucent pod fastened with two clips. Inside this hermetic egg were five wicked-looking scalpels, formed like embryonic harpoons. ‘It’s difficult to get hold of such beauties,’ he ruminated. ‘These are made by Furtwangler Gesellschaft of Leipzig, right. In answer to your very reasonable question, Mr Brodzinski, because of ritual considerations, they had to be brought here together with the individual they’re going to be used to operate on.’


  Von Sasser darted Prentice a meaningful look. Then, with a ‘Hup!’, he passed the instrument case sideways to Swai-Phillips, who caught it on the fly and sprinted away towards the school building, still yapping: ‘The man, hoo-ee, yeah! He’s the man!’

  It was an unsettling sight, but Tom focused on what the anthropologist had said. ‘Whose ritual considerations?’ he queried.

  ‘Why’ – Von Sasser smiled – a worrying expression – ‘mine, of course.’

  Adams had hung back during this exchange. Now he approached them, saying, ‘I think all necessary, ah . . . explanations will be forthcoming in good time, Tom. You must be tired after your long journey. I believe you are to be accommodated in the Technical College. Allow me to escort you there. Herr Doktor has invited you – me’ – he made an inclusive gesture – ‘all of us, to dinner at his house in an hour. I’m sure then he will do us the honour of expounding further.’

  But the skeletal anthropologist made no response to this démarche. He swivelled on his heel, squeaked back up the stairs and disappeared into the gingerbread chalet.

  The College was derelict but in an anomalous way. Bull dust lay inches deep in the wide corridors, and every classroom had had a rock chucked through its window. There was an air of chronic desuetude – the air musty, drifts of dead flies on all the surfaces. Yet wanton destruction was confined to isolated acts of vandalism: a photocopier broken down into its smallest component parts, steel lockers that had been opened like tin cans, a laptop computer that had been snapped into four equal portions, then neatly stacked on a desk.

  Adams allocated one classroom to Tom, the next to Prentice and the one beyond that to Gloria, who hung back, flattening her robe against empty bulletin boards, as the two men ranged along the corridors. Prentice waited outside, smoking against a wall.

  Tom pushed four desks together, then unrolled his swag on the capacious platform. He retrieved his shortie suit from the bottom of his battered flight bag. In the boys’ washroom he shaved himself as best he could. He had to bend down low to capture sections of his sunburned face in the single remaining shard of mirror.

  Back in the classroom he dressed, then got his pocket knife and excised the bundle of currency from its hiding place in Songs of the Tayswengo. He had just put it in his jacket pocket when the clanging of an iron bar began reverberating against the sole intact windowpane.

  The bar was still being struck when Tom stepped out from the main doors. He had one of the Galil rifles slung over each shoulder; he held the handle of the set of cooking pots in his hand, and as he marched towards Von Sasser’s chalet they rattled against his leg. As Tom mounted the stairs to the veranda, Swai-Phillips left off banging and recommenced babbling. ‘Yee-ha!’ he cried in cowpoke style. ‘Howdy, pardner, I see you with my lil’ ol’ eye.’ Seamlessly, he morphed into holy roller. ‘You’ve come to bow down before the man, come to reverence the man! For he speaks of many things! He has a mul-ti-tude of revelations! And yea! Verily! He speaks the truth!’

  Tom placed his hand on Swai-Phillips’s bare shoulder and, concerned, said, ‘What’s wrong with you, Jethro?’

  Instantly, the lawyer transformed: his clownish moustache and goatee froze on his strong features. From the bunch of accessories dangling from his neck, he hoisted up his wrap-around shades. From behind this reassumed mask he fired at Tom: ‘Nothing wrong, Brodzinski. I’ve gotta job t’do and I’ll do it, yeah. I’m the chronicler of this community. I haven’t been favoured with the kindest cut, but-that-needn’t-concern-you . . .’ In his haste to appear sane Swai-Phillips’s words leapfrogged crazily: ‘. . . allnecessarytellyouthat’syoumeimpressionsyourfirst.’

  He thrust a voice camera in Tom’s face: ‘Campthisman-thenjourneyinsurgencykinduvthing, yeah?’ Tom pushed it aside, and it was replaced with a camera. Swai-Phillips pumped the shutter, while ranting, ‘Importantofpicture AnglojoinsVonSasser’sgreatprojectonthemanspot, right.’ Tom placed a hand over the zoom lens and gently pushed it down. Then he sidestepped the lawyer and entered the house.

  A long Formica-topped table was set for dinner with Tupperware plates, brightly coloured plastic beakers, and plastic knives and forks. The room was far larger than Tom was expecting, and there was enough space for three distinct groups of people to have formed. Standing along the walls were Tayswengo women dressed in black togas and sporting discoid hairstyles. Immediately behind each of the place settings were more Tayswengo women, only these were costumed as Bavarian waitresses in dirndls and aprons embroidered with flowers. Their hair had been oiled and twisted into braids. Beyond the table, grouped by a fireplace with pine logs crackling in its grate, were five Anglos: Brian Prentice, Gloria Swai-Phillips, Winthrop Adams and Erich von Sasser. Together with them was Vishtar Loman, the doctor from Vance Hospital.

  Tom tried to catch Dr Loman’s eye, but he was deep in conversation with the anthropologist. Atalaya Intwennyfortee was among the Tayswengo women, her lissom figure hidden in the heavy black cloth. She too avoided Tom’s gaze, instead fidgeting with the hem of her robe.

  Seeing that Tom had arrived, Von Sasser broke off and addressed the company: ‘Gentlemen, Ms Swai-Phillips, dinner is served.’

  Von Sasser took the head of the table, the other Anglos whichever was the nearest seat. The natives hunkered down where they had been standing. The waitresses tripped in and out of the kitchen, depositing dish after dish on the table: sauerkraut, Wiener schnitzel, sausages, boiled potatoes, some sort of broth with dumplings floating in it. The light from the setting sun streamed through the fret-worked shutters, scattering shining heart shapes among the fat-filled platters.

  Von Sasser raised his face from his bowl of broth and saw the Galils that Tom had stood by the door. ‘Weapons, Mr Brodzinski? We’ll have none of those in here. This is a peaceful house.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said. ‘My restitutional payment for Atalaya – for the Intwennyfortee.’

  He got up to remove the rifles but was beaten to it by Swai-Phillips, who scampered in the door and snatched them.

  ‘I have the ten thousand here as well.’ Tom pulled out the wad of currency from his pocket.

  ‘Really?’ Von Sasser sounded underwhelmed. ‘Well, Atalaya, no doubt our wayward friends in the north can use the firearms; the cash will go to the common fund. You can have the cooking pots.’

  She darted forward, took the rifles from Swai-Phillips and slung them expertly on her shoulders. Then she picked up the pots and departed. In the still evening she could be heard rattling off towards the native camp. Swai-Phillips took the cash out of Tom’s hands and disappeared into a back room.

  Deflated, Tom sat down. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. He had anticipated an elaborate ceremony, graceful female dancers, preferably naked, shimmying towards him in a line. Then a tremendous ululation as he was shriven by a prancing makkata. Instead, there was only this odd scene: the Anglos, waited on by fräulein impersonators, stolidly working their way through plate after plate of heavy food, and washing it down with beakers full of dry, light, white wine.

  At one point Prentice looked up from his schnitzel and said: ‘I’ve brought the riba–’

  Von Sasser cut him off with a wave of his knife. ‘No need to speak of that either,’ he said. ‘Dr Loman will deal with it at the dispensary tomorrow, right.’ The anthropologist picked up a chunk of rye bread and tossed it to the Tayswengo women sitting on the floor. One of them deftly caught this and subdivided it among her companions.

  Von Sasser acted, Tom thought, more like a monarch than a social scientist. There was ruthless superiority in his every word and gesture to the Tayswengo, while the Anglos were his courtiers: treated with civility, sometimes, yet no more powerful than those who served them.

  As night fell, the waitresses brought in old-fashined brass oil lamps with elegant glass shades. Their soft yellow light welled up, filling the chalet with the distillation of other, more elegant eras. Conversation at the table was general: talk of hunting, rainfa
ll, supply difficulties because of reported bandits along the thousand klicks of track to Trangaden – all matters of predictable importance to an isolated desert community.

  Adams, who was seated on Tom’s right, was talkative, unbuttoned even. He was also – Tom was amazed to see – smoking. But then all the Anglos were smoking. Smoking before the food was served, smoking between courses and – in the case of Prentice and Von Sasser – even smoking within them, inhaling food and smoke simultaneously. Meanwhile, from the Tayswengo women squatting along the wall, there arose the squelching noise of engwegge mastication.

  When the last helping of Apfelstrudel had been served, the cream pot had done its final round, and each of the diners had ladled out a generous dollop, Von Sasser pushed back his chair, relit his pipe and called for ‘Schnapps! Coffee! Double-quick time!’ The waitresses hurried to do his bidding, their dirndls rusting against the chair backs, their aprons suggestive white patches in the lamplight.

  Tom tossed back the first shot of oily schnapps and his glass was immediately refilled. A warm muzziness was creeping over him: there was something almost sexual about this gemütlich scene. Gloria had exchanged her black toga for a high-collared white dress with full skirts, and Tom imagined himself throwing these up and exploring her own suggestive patches.

  He – she – they had survived, mastered the insurgents, got through the Tontines and traversed the desert. The first reparation payment had been made – so what if there had to be others? Nothing was more terrifying than the unknown. Besides, Tom was properly astande now: he had righted his most egregious wrong. Moreover, even though the tobacco smoke lay as heavily over the table as mustard gas in a trench system, he was also – he exulted – utterly free of smoking, no longer a smoker at all.