Solomon's Song

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘How do you know he’s German?’ Numbers Cooligan asks.

  ‘Sailors told me uncle they gets them postcards in Munich, it’s the world capital o’ dirty pictures and absolute filth.’

  ‘Gee, I’d like to go there,’ Cooligan says wistfully.

  ‘Well, you probably can when we’ve conquered the buggers,’ Crow Rigby says.

  The Arab hands Hornbill the bunch of postcards and he shuffles through them all, the others jostling and craning their necks to get a clear look. Although the fat female changes from time to time, the bloke with the socks and suspenders is in every one of them. As if to confirm Hornbill’s uncle’s assertion, one of the poses shows him riding on the back of a buxom Fräulein, who is on all fours. She has whip slashes painted crudely on her enormous bum and he’s holding a riding crop aloft and wearing a German officer’s spiked helmet and, of course, the ubiquitous socks and suspenders with a set of Spanish spurs fitted to his heels.

  ‘There you go, told ya didn’t I, bloody German!’ Hornbill says triumphantly.

  ‘Ten dinar,’ the Arab says, holding up ten fingers, ‘very cheap, special price for you!’

  Crow Rigby looks at the Arab and shakes his head sadly. ‘Sorry, mate, we’d be happy to buy the lot off yiz if only Fritzy weren’t wearing them crook-lookin’ socks!’

  Hornbill hands the man back his postcards and, laughing, they depart for the bazaar followed by what is obviously, even to the untuned infidel ear, a string of profanities in the Arab lingo.

  At the end of a long day of dust and noise, a thousand importunings, strange smells, exotic wares, high-pitched wailing music that seems to drill through the eardrums, too many beers too weak to make them drunk but which sweat back through the pores of their skin within minutes of consumption, it’s almost time to get back to the ship.

  They’ve all bought several cheap brass and enamelled trinkets which they fondly think their mums or sisters will find romantic and exotic. They stop for lunch at a cafe in the bazaar and order mutton, potatoes and chickpeas, which Library assures them is ridgy-didge because it all comes out of the same simmering pot and all the germs have been killed. After this Numbers Cooligan tries a small brass cup of Arabic coffee, thick and sweet, which he pronounces to one and all as delicious, but which collides with the warm beer, lamb, potato and chickpeas and persuades the resident contents of his stomach to retrace its steps so that he is violently sick in an alleyway a few minutes later.

  They also visit three brothels, the first two have a line of British tommies and Indian troops in turbans a hundred yards long and they decide to try somewhere else. While the queue at the third is shorter, the brothel is in a mean street where they come across another dead dog. Far from the glamorous velvet-draped and silk-cushioned bordello they’d fondly imagined, the brothel turns out to be several small dark rooms, each of which is curtained off into four partitions only just large enough for a man to be placed in a horizontal position on a dirty mattress. Crow Rigby and Hornbill would certainly have had their heels intruding into the next-door partition.

  Moreover, the Arab sheilas, except for darker hair and a somewhat duskier skin tone, are dead ringers for the ones on the postcards and even Numbers Cooligan, the only one who hinted of having had previous experience with a woman, decides to give them a big miss. The mandatory lecture Ben has given them about venereal disease suddenly comes into sharp focus. Losing one’s virginity is one thing, but being sent back home with a dose of the clap or something even worse is quite another.

  Finally, with a little more than an hour to go before they have to retrace their steps to the Aden Club to meet Wordy Smith, they each part with a dinar, a day’s pay, to see a live show advertising itself in crude lettering painted onto the surface of a doorway:

  Belly dunce Snakes

  Plise pulled the bell.

  ‘Whatcha reckon, lads? Must be a classier sort of joint, no wogs trying to get us ter go in,’ Cooligan says.

  ‘Most likely the opposite, the rock bottom,’ Library Spencer suggests. ‘Even the Arabs must have some personal standards.’

  ‘I reckon with them whorehouses we’ve already hit rock bottom, we’ve got nothing to lose and if Crow or Hornbill gets bit by the snake it’ll only make ’em ’omesick! What say we go in, eh?’ Cooligan says, obviously feeling better after he’d emptied himself out in the alley.

  ‘Yeah, shit, why not? I’m game if you are,’ Muddy says.

  ‘You ring, Hornbill, you’re the biggest,’ Woggy suggests.

  Hornbill steps up to the door and looks for the bell which is nowhere to be seen. ‘There’s no bloody bell,’ he calls out.

  A short piece of dirty rope protrudes from a hole in the door directly under the lettering. ‘The rope! Pull it!’ Library offers.

  Hornbill tugs on the rope and, without any apparent sound, the door is flung open by an old man sporting several days of white stubble on his chin, wearing a battered top hat and greasy tailcoat together with pyjama trousers and a pair of embroidered slippers just like the ones Muddy has bought for his mum in the bazaar.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemans, belly dunce, welcome!’ he says, bowing with a flourish. ‘One dinar, plise, welcome, welcome!’ There must have been a peephole in the door or something, because the old man couldn’t possibly have responded so quickly to Hornbill’s ring.

  ‘Is that one dinar for the lot, squire?’ Numbers Cooligan asks hopefully.

  ‘No, no, naughty man!’ the old man says, chuckling and shaking his finger at Numbers’ joke. ‘Six dinar, you come all, very wonderful belly dunce.’

  ‘What about the snake?’ Crow Rigby asks.

  ‘Very, very wonderful snake also!’

  They look at each other for affirmation and then Crow nods, ‘Yeah, bugger it, let’s go.’

  The old man stands, blocking their way. ‘You pay me now, gentlemans.’

  ‘We pay five dinars for six, fair enough, Abdul?’ Cooligan offers.

  The old bloke shakes his head. ‘Very wonderful belly-dunce snake, six dinars, five dinars belly dunce not take away clothers.’

  That settles it, with the promise of a bollocky belly dancer the old man has instantly cancelled Numbers Cooligan’s need for a bargain and each of them hands over a dinar, which the old bloke slips into his pocket.

  They are led down a dark passageway with half a dozen soot-eyed children with runny noses staring at them silently from passing doorways. Two of the smallest, both boys, wear no clothes and have protruding little stomachs, their tiny brown spigots pointing to their pathetically thin, dirt-encrusted legs.

  ‘Classy joint orright,’ Crow Rigby whispers. ‘Smell the cat’s piss.’

  ‘No cats here, mate, we had ’em for lunch,’ Numbers Cooligan replies.

  The end of the passageway leads directly to a door which, in another life, was once painted fire-engine red but its brilliance has long since faded to a mostly purplish-brown, the paint peeling in parts to show a dirty white undercoat. The old bloke removes Muddy’s mum’s slippers and places them at the door. ‘Very, very welcome, gentlemans.’ He points to Woggy’s boots. ‘Please to take off the shoeses.’

  They look at each other, uncertain. ‘If he scarpers with our boots we’ll get our pay docked and a month’s kitchooty,’ Woggy warns.

  ‘Crikey, we’ve come this far, we might as well have a Captain Cook!’ Hornbill protests. ‘Besides, even Library could take the old bloke in a blue.’

  ‘We could keep them on our laps,’ Library points out, ignoring Hornbill’s remark.

  They sit down in the passageway and remove their boots and puttees and the old man opens the door using a key tied to the end of his pyjama cord. ‘Please to enter, gentlemans.’

  ‘We’re not gentlemen, we’re Australians,’ Crow Rigby drawls, hugging his boots.

  They enter a small room roughly the size of your average suburban bedroom. Two hurricane lamps with red-tinted glass, hanging from the ceiling at the far end of the room, cast a pi
nkish glow over a platform, which is about four feet square and eighteen inches high, and covered with a fitted carpet of Arabic design. The carpet is worn through to the boards at the centre where the belly dancer has obviously performed a thousand exotic gyrations. The platform and the wall directly behind it are vaguely outlined in pink light while the remainder of the room is in almost total darkness and smells of sweat and stale Turkish tobacco.

  ‘Sit, gentlemans, you like coffee? Arab coffee, very, very wonderful, only two shekels!’

  They all laugh. ‘No thanks, Abdul, Mr Cooligan here may accept your kind offer, but we’ll give the wog brew a miss if yer don’t mind.’

  Their eyes have grown accustomed to the dark and they can now see that the earthen floor is covered with several small overlapping carpets onto which have been thrown eight or nine leather cushions. They all sit down cross-legged facing the stage, preferring to sit directly on the carpet rather than the greasy cushions, their boots resting on their laps.

  ‘On with the show, Abdul, chop, chop!’ Numbers Cooligan calls, trying to sound cheerfully confident, though secretly sharing with the others the thought that they’ve almost certainly blown a day’s pay on what, judging from the surroundings, promises to be a real dud bash.

  ‘I fetch-ed belly dunce,’ the old man announces and disappears through the door, closing it behind him and, by doing so, further adding to the gloomy atmosphere.

  ‘Shit, what now?’ Muddy asks.

  ‘Look, there’s ashtrays,’ Hornbill announces, reaching out and holding up a large brass bowl he’s found on the perimeter of the carpet beside him. ‘Anyone got a smoke? I’m out, smoko’ll help kill the stink in ’ere.’

  Woggy Mustafa fumbles in the top pocket of his tunic and produces a new packet of ten Capstan and foolishly hands it to Hornbill, who removes one and passes the pack around. ‘Hey, fair go, fellas! That’s me last friggin’ pack!’ Woggy protests. The packet is returned to him five cigarettes short. ‘Jesus! Youse bastards all owe me one, ya hear, the next butt bot’s mine?’

  ‘I thought you said your mob were Christian? That’s blasphemy, mate,’ Numbers Cooligan says, happily lighting up. In the flare of the match he discovers that he too possesses one of the large brass ashtrays.

  The door opens and the old man enters, staggering under the weight of a large wooden box with a beaten-brass speaker horn extending from it and reaching into the air well above his top hat. He is followed by a woman clutching to her enormous bosom what appears to be a wicker laundry basket.

  ‘That’s for the cobra, I seen it in books!’ Muddy says excitedly.

  ‘That’s only in India, Muddy,’ Library corrects him, ‘the fakir uses a flute to entice the cobra out of the basket.’

  ‘Well, the old fucker’s maybe gunna do the same here,’ Muddy persists.

  ‘Fakir, Muddy, an Indian holy man,’ Library laughs.

  The woman, undoubtedly and disappointingly the belly dancer, is almost as wide as she is high and wears a red velvet cape which reaches down to her ankles. Even in the dimly lit room it looks much the worse for wear, the hem edged with dirty tassels, several of which are missing, like teeth in a broken comb. The velvet material to which it is sewn is worn down in mangy-looking patches and seems to be attached around her neck by a hook and a curtain ring. It gives every appearance of an old embassy or theatre curtain at the fag end of its life, pensioned off to do the best it can. The fat belly dancer also sports a pair of Muddy’s mum’s slippers with her big toe protruding through the pointy end of the left slipper.

  The old man, wobbling violently at the knees, places the gramophone carefully down to the side of the stage and, staggering back a step or two, is caught in a violent paroxysm of coughing, puffing and wheezing so that he is forced to sit almost doubled up on the edge of the little platform. Finally he seems to recover whereupon he clears his throat and hoicks into a brass spittoon on the floor four feet from him.

  ‘How’s yer ashtray goin’, Hornbill?’ Numbers Cooligan calls as he suddenly realises what the brass bowls placed on the mats are intended for. ‘Don’t stub yer butts in the bottom of ’em, lads, they may not be empty.’

  The old bloke has now recovered sufficiently to wind up the gramophone, then lifting off the lid he sets the turntable going and places the needle arm down onto the thick bakelite record. His hands are shaking like a first-night actor and there is the familiar high-pitched scratching sound as the needle misses its intended groove before gaining traction.

  A high-pitched wail, redolent of the music they’d been hearing all day in the bazaar, issues forth, though it seems to be coming from a great distance in fits and starts, as if it has been tortured by being pulled out of the guts of the machine and threaded piecemeal through the enormous brass speaker. The wailing is of such an indeterminate sound as to make it impossible to decide the gender of the singer.

  The old man climbs onto the stage and stands beside the woman, who, while being no taller than him, is three times as broad and occupies most of the available space. To maintain his balance, he is forced to rest one leg on top of the basket and his hand on the edge of the gramophone.

  The belly dancer hasn’t moved since her arrival. She stands with hands clasped in front of her, staring resolutely into the dark. If she can see them she gives no indication. Her face from the eyes down is covered with one of those masks they’ve seen all day on women in the bazaar.

  ‘Jeez, they all look like nuns planning a hold-up,’ Crow Rigby exclaimed on first seeing a group of women in the bazaar. The belly dancer’s mask isn’t black, though, but is made of a shiny pink material which reminds Hornbill of his mum’s knickers.

  When they asked Woggy at the bazaar what these masks were called he shrugged. ‘It’s a face apron,’ he claimed, which seemed a fair enough description.

  Above the belly dancer’s shiny pink face apron appear two hard-as-anthracite eyes buried into kohl smudges, which cover her eyelids and extend into the eye sockets and upwards to end a quarter of an inch below her painted-on eyebrows. She too is a dead ringer for Hornbill’s uncle’s postcards. Only her jet-black hair is different, either naturally so or deliberately teased. It consists of an enormous frizzy mop which flops in an eight-inch halo about her face and reaches down to touch her shoulders.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemans, Dames en Heeren, Madame, Monsieurs, Boyses and Girlses, I give you very, very wonderful belly dunce!’ the old man announces, as though addressing an audience of several hundred, throwing his head backwards and forwards with the effort, an emphatic spray of spittle exploding into the pink light.

  On cue the fat lady comes alive and, with a theatrical flick of the wrist, she unhooks the curtain ring securing the cape and flings it aside in the direction of the old bloke who has stepped from the platform just in time to cop the lot. The heavy cloak hits him on the side of the head and knocks him arse over tit.

  This brings a big laugh from the audience but is completely ignored by the belly dancer who is now revealed clothed only in two faded gold tassels which hang from nipple cups glued to her enormous breasts and a pair of Ali Baba pantaloons that balloon to her ankles from her waist. The pantaloons are of the same material as the face apron and Hornbill’s ma’s bloomers and shimmer in the light.

  The belly dancer appears to have a three-tyre thickness of blubber over her stomach and now each of these rotates to the music as she begins to grind her enormous hips. Then, with all her wobbles moving more or less in the same direction, she bends forward slightly and, grabbing her left breast firmly in both hands, gives it a violent twist which sets the tassel rotating. Whereupon she repeats the same exercise with the right tit and now she has everything going, tassels whirring, stomach wobbling and hips grinding as the six lads look on in startled amazement.

  It is a bizarre enough sight and they almost feel they’ve had their money’s worth in sheer grotesqueness when the old bloke, having untangled himself from the velvet curtain, lifts the basket lid.
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br />   ‘Bring on the snake! Let’s see the snake!’ Numbers Cooligan calls out.

  ‘Yeah! The snake! The snake!’ the others chorus.

  But instead of the snake the old bloke pulls out a bottle about eighteen inches high into which is fitted a long cork. He places the bottle on the stage in front of the gyrating, swirling, tassel-rotating, belly-blubbering, hip-swinging dancer, who miraculously, given her weight, stands on one leg and whips off one side of the pink pantaloons and then the other, not missing a beat.

  There is a gasp from the darkness, none of them, except perhaps for Numbers Cooligan, has ever seen ‘it’. And, in this case, ‘it’ is almost a match for her hairdo. ‘It’ is a thigh beard of monstrous proportions and, like some dark, tangled creeper, it straddles the top of her legs as solid as tree trunks.

  Tassels still swinging and everything else going as well, she lowers herself down onto the bottle and using ‘it’ she neatly extracts the cork from the bottle and with a tremendous flick of her hips the cork flies into the air and is neatly caught in the old bloke’s top hat. ‘Very, very wonderful belly dunce!’ he shouts gleefully.

  There is cheering and clapping all around at this amazing display of dexterity and Numbers Cooligan for a start is rapidly becoming convinced they’re getting their money’s worth and then some. But there is more to come.

  ‘Shit!’ Crow Rigby suddenly whispers in a voice loud enough for them all to hear. ‘There’s a bloody snake in the bottle!’

  They all crowd forward to see that the bottle indeed contains a snake curled at the bottom which is now beginning to rise. With everything still moving to the wailing cacophony, which seems a little less scratchy towards the centre of the gramophone record, the belly dancer lowers herself onto the bottle neck and neatly grasps it. She lifts the bottle and arches backwards until she is almost parallel to the surface of the stage. To everyone’s horror the snake, about eighteen inches long, moves forward out of the neck of the bottle into the external furry darkness.