‘What yer doing here?’ I cry when that sad white face first appear before me.
‘What are you? And how do yer find me?’
‘I pay a Monsure. Yer Mama tell me yer came to a convent.’
‘I were too sick to reach the convent. I were found fainted on the street and brung here by a benefactor.’
‘A benefactor? What sort of benefactor bring yer to a place like this?’
‘Benefit is in the eyes of the beholder.’
‘Well, such eyes are mad.’
‘Indeed they were. They once see love as kind and faithful. But they were cured.’
At this reproach I feel a shame fall upon me like a hooded cape. It take a few moments to free myself. Then I say, ‘Why yer don’t go home to yer Mama?’
‘Aint got no money.’
‘I give yer some.’
‘Yer won’t take me with yer then?’
‘Yair, yair, come with me!’ I cry out. The tears prick at my eyes at this dream come true.
She get a strange smile on her face. It look both cruel and satisfied. Maybe it satisfy her to hear I still love her. But now she say cruel, ‘I don’t wanna be seen in the village street.’
‘They already forget …’ I stop in a fluster.
‘Forget what yer done to me? Maybe. People don’t care for long, unless the ruin touch their selves in some way.’
‘Well, then.’
‘But I don’t forget. And I prefer it here where I can help.’
‘Help? Are yer now a mad doctor?’
She stare at the floor at this abuse.
‘What, then? How can a girl like you help paupers and lunaticks?’
‘I work as a ward aid.’
‘A what? A unpaid skivvy yer mean?’
She don’t answer.
‘And how did yer obtain this post? Who speak for yer?’
‘Speak? I were beyond speech when I were brung here. But when I come out of the infirmary, I speak for myself.’
‘Infirmary? Were you a lunatick too then?’
‘That’s right. Love have many lunaticks here.’
Now a rage come upon me. Why don’t she leave the past alone?
‘What are yer doing here?’ she ask blunt, and it do disconcert me.
‘Yer already know. I come for you.’
She stare at me with wide eyes. ‘Yer really mean it?’
Do I? How can a man know what he mean when nothing run according to the picture in his head? And when that man is young, and don’t know how to keep separate his thinking from whatever attack or flatter him from the outside, how do he even keep the picture uncorrupt? Soon the smiling bride turn pale and wan and the bride dress rot down to a straitjacket.
‘I wud not go with you anyhow,’ Mary say. ‘I found a place here.’
‘What? In a madhouse?’
‘There are places everywhere.’
‘They must of drugged or mesmerised you. Yer do not know what a place is.’
Oh, fateful words! Oh, harsh and pronouncing words that catch the ear of them Fates who can’t bear no hubris. Oh, how they cackle and crow, and maybe this were when they begin to hatch their plot to teach that callow mooncalf a lesson. We will show him the many places of the Earth they cry as their snaky hair twists and hisses, we will put him aboard a cruel sailing ship and send him across the widest oceans to a land of burny sand and misshaped animals, we will give him Fovo and Mincemeat and three fellow buffoons, then like a cat that play with a mouse we will let him run off from our claws a brief time before scooping him up for a long torture.
‘Bloodworth,’ come Flonker’s cry above my hole. ‘It’s time for yer relief.’
‘That remind me,’ I say when I stand above ground again. ‘I know a dirty story about relief and I tell it to yer if yer sit with me under a bush for a while.’
‘How dirty?’
‘Dirty as they come.’
Fatty do appear very keen to hear it but he also worry about Slangam.
‘Come into the wood,’ I say. ‘It’s dry and soft on the ground and no one can see us.’
He look uncertain. ‘Only to the edge. Jes to where the trees hide us.’
I take him by the hand and it’s as easy to lead him as a toddling baby. Long as his belly is full, Gargantua wud do anything for a story. His pendulous ears swaller them down like a whalefish swaller seals. He go in a trance into the woods. He plop down on some mosses where I point to and settle himself with expectancy.
‘Once upon a time …’ I begin.
‘Oh!’ he interrupt in disgust. ‘Jes a fairytale.’
‘It aint no fairytale. In fact, it’s one of them stories that’s true in all particulars. It happen in France. In Paris. In a place called Saltpeter.’
‘Oh, yer mean Salpêtrière. The hospital for female lunaticks.’
‘Yer heared of it?’
‘Every man that were brung up well has heared of it.’
‘Well, I never heared of it before I went to Paris.’
‘Point proved,’ say he.
I push down a desire to slap him. ‘This hospital were the home of women with hystericks …’
‘It still is.’
‘Yer tell a story like this, don’t yer? Like it were once upon a time and all long ago?’
‘Alright, calm down.’
‘I learned that hystericks is when the womb of the woman go wandering all over the body. In its wanderings, it cause all manner of obstructions, and the obstructions is what lead to the sickness.’
‘Yair, but the question is, why do it go awandering?’
‘Because it aint getting no sex.’
‘Ah,’ say he in delight. ‘We’re coming to the dirty part.’
‘We are. But there’s a bit more suspense yet.’
Now I stop while Fatty look at me with shiny eagerness. The suspense is jes something to give me a longer break in the wood. The sun now trickle through and it give me a lot of pleasure how it make lights and darks. In the darks the moss is deep green velvet and in the lights it’s lime and bejewelled with water drops. A rivulet shine and tinkle between the velvet and the jewels.
‘Now,’ I continue, ‘them hystericks gotta have their treatments. Some of their treatments is belladonna and some of it is Chinkee opium.’
‘Oh, that do sound most satisfactory.’
‘I heared the opium were. But the belladonna spill yer bowels out.’
Fatty show a mounting excitement. ‘Go on, go on. What were the dirty part?’
‘Well, how do the opium and belladonna stop the womb awandering and looking for sex?’
‘I dunno. How do they?’
‘They don’t! There have to be a physickal treatment. There have to be a massage of the pelvis.’
Fatty’s face fall. ‘Yer do know what a pelvis is, don’t yer Bloodworth? A lady might not talk of it, but it aint a dirty part. Not dirty enough for me anyhow.’
‘Not dirty enough to keep me out of the hole till dinner?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What wud be?’
‘Get on with it or I throw yer back right now.’
‘Till dinner,’ say I stubborn.
‘Dinner then. And it better be worth it.’
‘Well, them pelvis massages the women get from their mad doctors is jes a …’
‘Why yer stop?’
‘I dunno the word. It mean when yer say a clean, misleading word for a dirty one.’
‘Eupheme.’
‘Is that it? Well, pelvis were a yufeem for a very nasty part. The physician really massage their cunny.’
‘Never!’
‘Yair, true. They massage their cunny to relieve the congestion and keep the womb happy. It aint relieved till it have a hysterickal peroxisim.’
Fatty can’t contain his self and fall all over the moss laughing.
‘Well, that were worth it,’ he say when he again is sitting upright and wiping the tears from his eyes. ‘First because it make a real di
rty picture in my mind to see the mad doctor doing that treatment. And second because methinks yer have no notion what a paroxysm is.’
Much as I hate to admit it, what he say is the truth.
‘It mean a orgasm,’ Fatty say, breaking into his fat laugh again.
True to his word, Fatty leave me in the wood till dinnertime. He have to go off otherwise someone wud come looking for him, but he leave me sitting on the moss in the peacefulness. No doubt he turn the dirty picture over and over in his mind and find the mirth again, but that picture bring me nothing but sadness.
How do it happen that my sweetness try to run away to a convent, the one place sex have no right to enter, and find instead that her womb done its own mad run inside her body and caused blockages that make her fall down dead? Or she wud of been dead without her benefactor. Then, instead of escaping sex, she have to undergo that unnatural treatment. Why do it always turn out that when we think we’re running away we’re actually running to?
All this way of thinking agitate me for quite a while. Then it come to me there’s plenty of time, a vast ocean, to fret about such things when I’m back in my hole, I’m wasting all the time I been gave to enjoy myself. This give me a fright. How do I enjoy myself in a wood jes with moss and sunlight? It’s one thing to notice and get some pleasure from noticing, it’s another thing for it to be the whole of yer enjoyment. Better if I jes go for a walk.
I never before walk about in a Incognita wood. Yair, we go once to clear out the demons, but we were all together and we dint go far. Also we contrive to walk mostly in a straight line. Now it’s a kind of creep I do, creeping crooked over mounds and under branches. I’m a hunchback creeping along, but also a free man, not a scapegoat that’s been loaded with the sins of man to carry off. In and in I go, and it give me a lot of fun to think I get lost and them others have to fan out through the wood they most fear and search for me.
Course our island aint big and soon I hear the crashing noise of the ocean. The wood here go close to the edge of the cliffs, and as I creep not jes sunlight come in but every now and then a view of the sea. It’s the most lovely sight. But I come out at a overhang where loose rocks fall down into the hissing water below and I have to scuttle backwards quick. I turn and run-creep back through the wood. It don’t take long to get to the mound where Fatty leave me.
I sit on the mossy mound and a weather change come howling in. A bully wind drag in bruiser clouds. They hover low and start to spit upon me. First it’s jes wet, then it turn freezed hard.
Lucky for me Flonker come rushing back to the wood and take me to the hole.
‘It aint any drier in there,’ he say, ‘nor warmer neither. But Slangam’s called a meeting in the hut and I’m worried he’ll jaw on till dark.’
‘Well, don’t yer play them sly games. Bargain for mercy!’
‘Mercy? Yer jes don’t seem to understand what’s at stake.’
‘There aint nothing at stake. Jes four fools trying to get atop each other.’
‘Well, if I play the cards right, you and me is on the top. Aint that the best way?’
‘The best way? So you get to choose how we live? So we jes eat and don’t work? Or if Toper sulk, we don’t even eat? What we gonna do all day?’
Flonker glare. ‘Eating aint the only thing I got a interest in. Now get in the hole and let me sort everything out.’
It grow dark. The cold turn fearsome. My sack soon get wet through with sleet and I have to vanish into memories to keep the shivering off.
I go again to visit my former love at Saltpeter, for it grieve me that love so disfigure her. I say if she don’t want to come with me, why don’t she go to that convent? The treatment at Saltpeter jes seem like a perversion and a poison. She scorn me with a laugh that freeze my heart and the heart that once loved her. She say she can tell me a thing or two about French convents that give me a big shock. She say them girls that want to be nuns, or jes generally are mad religious, is jes as crazy as anyone in the asylum. She ask if I ever hear of the convulshinits of Saint Maydard? Of course not, I answer, wherever do I find the need for such knowing? She say I find it right in front of me.
Now she tell of these mad bitches, the convulshinits. She say a priest die of starving himself. The mad bitches go to his grave in Paris and eat the dirt. Then they start to throw themselves about like whores in a trance. They touch their selves and pretend to copulate. Soon the few turn into the hundreds, nearly a thousand.
‘No!’
‘Yes! Jes imagine, a thousand trancy virgins dancing around and showing their selves from under their petticoats.’
I do imagine it, but probably my mind stick on the wrong part of the picture.
‘It turn into a competition. Who can abase their selves the lowest. They stab their bellies with knives and force men to beat them with iron bars.’
‘Never!’
‘It’s true. One man beat a girl so hard the iron bar go right through her guts to her backbone. Yet still she cry, harder, harder!’
‘Oh my.’
‘That man begin to think his muscles wasted away in the night so he take the iron bar to a stone wall and give it a good thwack. He knock a hole clean through it.’
‘Mad bitches alright.’
‘Mad bitches all. Jes don’t tell me they’re madder here.’
I think on this awhile and then because she seem more agreeable ask the question I been chewing on. ‘I never understand why yer try to run to a French convent anyway. Why dint yer jes stay with yer Mama?’
It seem she search my face for something. But what do she look for? ‘Did yer go to see her?’
‘Yair, I did.’
She squirm.
‘What?’
‘What do Mama tell yer?’
‘She tell me yer escape in the night in men’s clothings.’
‘Yair, that were my big mistake. Sure I get on a ship, but a girl dressing like a man turn out illegal here.’
I start to laugh in scorn.
‘Why yer laugh like that? Do yer know the laws of France? No, yer do not. What I say happen to be the truth.’
Now her earlier explanation come back to me. ‘So yer weren’t picked up off the street in a faint by a benefactor? How else do yer know a girl in men’s clothings were illegal?’
She blush.
‘It sound more like a court send yer to the madhouse.’
She look away.
‘Yer call the court a benefactor?’
She don’t answer. Soon she begin to search my face again. ‘Do Mama show yer anything?’
‘Only the door.’
After that short talk she say she must go inside, she have work to do.
I come back from France alone and ahead of me is a life I weren’t expecting. I weren’t expecting a life without her but that’s what stretch before me. It seem very long and sad. It seem flat as a ocean that have the swell took from it. And in my mind there’s a fork – one way go a man resigned to this dullness, who drag his feet and bend his head and take the suffering on the back of his bare neck, but the other way go a man who take life as a frolic, as too stupid to bend under.
I think to myself, if it’s frolic yer want, why don’t yer go out to the country estates and find a summer job relieving them of their assets? Course I know the richest asset of them estates is the land that’s underneath them, but even a excellent thief like me can’t whip land from beneath a castle. So their silver teapots and gold cruets and Arabic rugs jes have to do. Sometimes in a life a man need to confront his limits. But all the time I’m working them estates over, a thought drum louder and louder in the back of my head, what do Mary fear her Mama show me?
Out of boredness in my hole, I pretend to be a monk from the Orient. It aint easy because Fatty dint tell me exactly how to do it. I’m sure he don’t even know. Do he listen to his brother when he come back from his sailings, do he listen to a long tale about monks and strange disciplines when he have a ham bone in one hand and a Venice
fanny in the other? I don’t think so. Then how shud I get happy down here? Fatty say to efface myself, that were the only clue he give, so that’s what I try. It turn out pretty hard to rub yerself out when yer only got yerself to do it with. Indeed, it do seem something of a joke. How do I know when I done it?
The only good thing about trying to efface myself turn out to be how much time it use up. When yer in a hole, time’s yer enemy so it’s a bonus to slay some. In no time at all Slangam bring me my dinner and help me out for a excrement. He don’t talk, jes make gruff sounds like he’s now a upright and trustworthy turnkey in charge of the dumb cell. It sure make me laugh how quick someone change their stripe when they appoint their selves in charge. He forget how much he suffer in the hole and jes wish holes on all his fellow man.
After relieving myself I get put back in the hole with a shove. Soon my effacing again turn into remembering. Remembering do have a lot of the self in it, true, but it don’t have so much of the present. In that way it turn out as good a user of time as monkishness.
I returned to London. There were many more big houses to rob but I tire of the country. I tire of the mud, I tire of them cows’ accusing faces. I find work in a alehouse. I work and drink and drink and work, but Mary’s look keep coming back to me and soon I go back to the village to see her Mama. Course I have to visit with my own family first. I must sit through a very long meal that start with the slaughter of a lamb and end with my own Mama weeping at my long absence.
Are the village eyes upon me when finally I walk down the narrow street to make my visit? I don’t know or care. The callow youth that come to find his love, come to find it waiting for him like a faithful dog, no longer exist. He grow into a man that change from all the water that flowed under the bridge. But the widow who open the door don’t change at all. Maybe no water flow where she live. She let me in and set me by the fire. She go to her cauldron and ladle out some soup. She sit down opposite me and wait.
I clear my throat and ask, ‘What do Mary hide from me?’
Bright Side of my Condition ePub Page 13