‘Well, it dint fucken improve you,’ Slangam snarl.
Toper distract us by taking up the position of a Japon sage. He sit cross legged and make his eyes thin. He blow air in a funny way. He do put a lot of parody in it and we all get a laugh.
‘Don’t yer legs get sore?’ ask I.
‘Course. But yer jes have to sit through it. Every time I go to stand up, Mr Japon push me down again. Yer get in a lot of pain and very bored. All you can do is let yer mind drift. It surprise yer where it drift to.’
‘How yer get wisdom like that?’ Gargantua sneer.
‘It wud drive me mad,’ Slangam say. ‘Sitting around like that. All I’d think of is the work that weren’t being done.’
‘So where do yer mind drift to when yer sat like a Japon sage?’ I ask.
Toper stir a leaf sauce and frown.
‘Why yer go like that?’
‘When I heared what Mr Japon thought, it weren’t right.’
‘What weren’t right?’
‘I said to him, is my thinking suppose to drift to God? And he say no. Not that we done any talking, mind, I don’t speak no Chinee and he don’t speak no English.’
‘Mr Japon speak Chinee?’
‘Yair. They all the same over there.’
It interest me to learn they all speak the same, but still I don’t know how Toper and Mr Japon manage to converse.
‘We draw pictures,’ Toper explain. ‘Like little houses with upturned roofs on. And like bamboo with some wings beside it. That mean house and tree. Them Japon birds live in the bamboo groves.’
‘How yer know it don’t mean roof and bird?’
Toper get impatient with me. ‘I jes know, alright? Yer get a feel for it. So I draw a picture of a English man doing the Japon sitting, and I draw another big white man in the sky above him, and I connect them with wiggles and arrows and Mr Japon cross him out.’
‘Oh.’
‘Then he draw something I dint understand. Every day he draw nearly the same picture. It’s of a Chinkee man – he jes do thin eyes instead of big round ones – doing the sitting, and all around him is a kind of wind and it flow through him.’
‘Yair,’ laugh I, ‘man’s a wind bag. Actually, maybe it were shit. That’d be more right.’
‘I keep putting in the big white man in the sky and he cross him out and jes smile his big fat smile.’
‘He were fat?’
‘No. Under his big dress he were thin as a stick of bamboo. Jes his smile were fat.’
‘Well, whether it were wind or it were shit, what were the idea?’
Toper lean in. I lean in too. Maybe he think God can’t hear us. ‘Yer know how the priests say prayers jes float through the air? I mean, yer don’t need to write a letter or nothing like that …’
‘Yair, course.’
‘Well, their god jes float through the air.’
‘Yer mean like a ghost?’
‘Yair, like that. But it don’t have no shape.’
‘How yer know it’s a god then?’
‘Well, that’s the point. It aint exactly. It’s more of a movement. He keeped drawing me a river, he keeped pointing to the water, he keeped making the water leap into the air and whirl around.’
‘A water god,’ nod I.
Toper shake his head. ‘No. When I draw a big white man or a big Chinkee man made out of water, he cross him out.’
Well, that give me some food for my thinking. Even when the real food come, a Incognita bird done up on a leaf sauce, I hardly taste it. It seem to me them two gods is like the two sides of our island. On one side, the one Slangam favour, there’s jes work under a stern and unforgiving eye, and on the other, where I sneak off to, a bright wind, a wind lit by sun, seem to flow. And it flow through me while I watch the penguins. They exert their strange little selfs enough to catch food, it’s true, but they sure spend a lot of time squabbling and hugging and dancing and also jes flitting through the air into the sea, much higher than they need to, they jes enjoy the fun. Whatever flow into me flow into them too, even if they aint got no soul to collect it.
4
Do my abuse finally pierce that thick hide Fatty wear? Do he wonder what I discover on the edge of my cliff above the penguin ground? Or in his cunning, do he plan to extend his malice out to where I escape to? When he first join me where I sit with my fixings, I aint got no idea. He jes come and sit on the lip of the cliff and he do it with such ease and grace that I’m startled to realise he aint such a fat man no more. Maybe someone say, well what do yer expect on a island? But Norfolk jail weren’t generous with the feedings and Flonker were there a long time. Also, since the time when Toper fall in love with cooking and decide it’s the way he earn some respect, I can’t say we ever go hungry or even a bit peckish. Course we don’t have them delights that a sailor have, all that rum and sugar, them raisins and sago, and really Toper’s cooking is jes many ways with meat and fat. Sure we have a few potatas here and there, not many, a few summer berries and some fern roots, also seaweed and eggs, but the staple is meat and fat done many clever ways.
In the beginning Flonker were the most fussy. Even though he spend years in Norfolk and months upon a sailing ship, he retain his Persian appetite, or perhaps it’s Venetian I don’t know, anyway he abhor the seal blubber and declare he aint gonna eat anything so foul. Slangam jes ignore him and slice into his flesh and blubber repast, swilling it all down with water as if he et pork and wine. He wipe his mouth on his sleeve and stand up and say if it’s good enough for them Eskimos, it’s good enough for him. Then off he stride to work till darkness fall, and I do imagine he grow in heighth and strength and straightness too, I swear he’s as perpendicular as a mast pole. Meanwhile Flonker grow whiny and sick, he ooze on the ground like a slug, and his skin come out in a gravel and flaming itchy spots. This last until one day a huge storm come and it’s too wild to club for food and all we have left in the pot is a lump of blubber most cleverly disguised.
‘Do have some of my seal in Incognita sauce,’ Toper say cunning, and Flonker grab it and swaller it down without poking or examination. Everyone laugh when he learn he et a big piece of blubber but for once he take it on the chin. He fall asleep in front of the fire and in the morning he get up without a whine or a ooze and say he feel much better. From then on he take his blubber like a physick and declare if only he’d knowed it were so good for him he wud of et it in Persia.
But now he come and sit with me and his flesh don’t even wobble, all the blubber do seem to have done him good. Maybe the blubber on a seal can’t replace the fat of a man, it made such a different way.
‘There aint nothing to see,’ say he looking down. ‘What yer waiting here for?’
‘Something to see come soon enough.’
‘Meanwhile yer jes stare about.’
‘Yair.’ I laugh. ‘What else can I do? We aint here for long.’
‘We been here for years.’
‘I mean on the Earth.’
Flonker look down grim to the empty rocks. ‘Staring aint what I had in mind for my life.’
‘Me neither. But I dint have a island in mind or a jail or a love that take herself off to a French convent. Nothing I once have in mind come to be. Not one fucken thing. It seem to me there aint much point in having any kind of thing in mind.’
‘Well, aint that the pants pissing philosophy of the bone idle,’ exclaim he.
‘Aint everything done here? The clothings and shelter and comestibles? What, yer think I shud swim Fovo Strait or take myself off to the icebergs in a sealskin coracle?’
Now Flonker laugh.
‘And what I have in mind at the end of my swim is a beautiful land of ferns and waterfalls, and what I have in mind at the end of my sailing is palaces of ice, but what I probably get is jes ice bears and cannibals. I tell yer, to have anything in mind for yer life is jes a vanity.’
Fatty don’t reply.
I know my speechifying aint enough to make him give up the i
dea of the Big Plan, the Successful Story that trounce every circumstance. Slangam, Toper, Flonker, all of them want to tell stories of their selves, and the stories always have a happy ending, otherwise they don’t see no point in anything. They all hope to sit in fancy salons and tell the story of the island. Slangam’s audience will pay and Toper’s will tell him he’s a virtuous man and Flonker’s will say how clever he is, and only then, with gold on his palm or Heaven in his sights or special and delicate rewards heaped at his feet, will any one of them think the island were anything but a curse. They aint got no use for jes living.
After the first time, Flonker come quite often to the cliff where I do my stitchings. I wud say too often, but he tell me the story of his catching and transport, and for a while it do have a certain interest in it. He put it to me, why do a man go to Persia? Before I even answer, he say a man go there to trade Arty Facts.
‘How do he do that? Jes write them down and sell the scraps of paper? Who’d buy them?’
‘What yer talking about, Worthless? Artefacts is objects. Tasteful ones the rich can use to decorate their portico or orangery.’
‘I seen them things. Tasteful aint the word.’
‘What do a pilgarlic like you know about taste? They pay a lot of money for a thing no one else got.’
‘How they know the ugly thing is tasteful then?’
‘What?’
‘If no one else got it. Who pronounce on it?’
‘Look, yer want to hear my story or yer wanna keep splitting hairs with a axe?’
I gesture to let him go on.
‘These things weren’t yer ugly copies done in cheap metal or crumbling stone. These were bearded bulls and winged lions from Persepolis.’
‘I see.’
‘And lots of special things from the grave of them fifty thousand soldiers.’
Flonker keep on talking about things I aint ever heared of and I keep on watching a penguin domestic.
‘So what go wrong with yer Arty Fact business?’
‘Well, them Mussulmen think I’m a spy.’
‘Not a thief?’
‘I weren’t thieving, alright? I were paying with good artefact coin.’
Fatty start to froth about spying. How he weren’t doing that at all but the Mussulmen were very suspicious about Christians. I don’t waste my breath saying he aint no Christian. He say he see a beautiful maiden at the well in a village. She let her veil slip a bit when she think she were alone and she load up her pitcher. Never do he see such beauty. He foller her home. But she go into a courtyard with a high wall and to see her he wud have to knock on the front door. He don’t want to do that. All her brothers wud answer the door and before he can say let me fuck yer sister, he wud find himself betrothed or dead. So he go to the market and haggle himself a veil, the plan being to look like a woman and go into the courtyard direct.
‘That’s about the stupidest thing I ever heared!’
‘I were utterly smitten.’
‘Yair, smitten or greedy were always the cause of the worst stupidness.’
‘You wud of been too. If yer seen her.’
‘No, I wud not.’
‘Yer wud.’
‘I aint the kind of man that get smite by a prison.’
‘A quinny aint a prison.’
‘It’s a prison in a veil.’
‘Well then, our quinny’s a prison in a petticoat.’
‘That’s right. It’s all the same.’
‘Jesus, are yer a man that can go without, or do yer have a predilection?’
Out come one of them words that might insult me were I to have any idea what it mean. ‘Why don’t yer jes carry on with yer horny tale?’
Flonker grin and settle himself. Then he say he get his veil and have a clean shave and practise a high pitch voice. He say he take a basket of lovely ruby pommygranit and knock on the courtyard door. Out come a crone. She weren’t what he were expecting. He done his high pitch fruitselling voice but can’t tell the effect because of her veil. What hide him also hide her. Before he can show off his best pommygranit, the crone start to scream. She scream and shout in the language of them Persian Arabs and out boil all the burly brothers looking to slit throats.
Flonker take off running and he hurl his veil as he go. But when the burly brothers see it were a man underneath it, a man that surely desire to plunder the hymens of their unwed sisters, out come the scimitars. Other men, enraged for other reasons, join the chase, all waving their weapons and looking like a pirate swarm through them dusty lanes.
‘Jes hang on a minute,’ I interrupt. ‘If yer were so smitten, why dint yer jes marry her?’
‘Marry a girl I aint even talked to?’
‘So yer thought she speak English, did yer?’
Flonker don’t answer.
‘Or maybe she speak the language of love? I learned a lot about that. Generally it mean a girl keep her gob shut and her legs open.’
I expect he push me down into the penguin shit but he actually smile wry. Then he say they catch him and lock him in a wine cellar. He were so sure they soon kill him he think there were nothing for it but to get blind drunk on their fine shiraz. He open a wine barrel and drink and drink and drink. But when his captors arrive with a official sporting a moustache like a scrubbing brush, he were amazed to hear the accusation were espionage, not rape and pillage. He stand up to argue but fall down intoxicatedly on the flagstones. He aint a spy, see? say the burly brothers. He is a spy, insist the official, he’s a spy under the cover of drunkenness.
‘Did yer learn Persian? How did yer understand them Arabs?’
‘I dint. But I weren’t too drunk to see the charge change between when the brothers catch me and when the official turn up. The official send the brothers away and he haul me off to meet with Judgement. But then come a big surprise. He don’t stick me in a jail and throw away the key, he take me into his home, and on his fine carpets feed me with great opulence.’
‘I never et one of those things.’
‘Don’t be a fucken idiot.’
‘Pommygranits, opulences – how do yer expect me to know about them Arab fruits?’
Fatty shake his head and say that after the food the man bring in a interpreter. That were when he first hear the charge were spying.
‘Why dint yer tell the story that way then? Yer got it all mixed up.’
‘Jes shut yer piehole while I tell what transpire.’
I do shut it.
‘Well, the interpreter tell me that his master hear I’m a buyer and seller of artefacts. The master has fell on some hard times due to a large excess of daughters. He say he wud like to sell me one, but alas, they’re all ugly as sin, they all have inherited his moustaches. He don’t know how it can happen, he always make his wives turn over into the pillows so they can’t see his brush when copulating. In spite of this, jes as soon as each darling come of marriageable age, a black shadder spawn on her upper lip and start to grow. Soon he have to call in the barber.’
‘Now yer jes making shit up.’
Flonker shake his head solemn. ‘The interpreter next tell me the master wud like to sell some of his treasures. What treasure yer got? ask I. The interpreter say the master has many lovely glass tear bottles with long necks. I ask him what a tear bottle is. He tell me it’s a bottle for catching and storing the tears when yer lose yer loved ones. When it’s full or yer grief is stopped, yer can pour them all away. The master show me one. It’s cobalt blue with a swan neck and it have an opening like one of them unfurling trumpet lilies. It don’t have no decoration, jes a pattern of some fine twisted ribbing and it look very rare.’
‘And it sure look like the very thing to be pronounced upon? Very tasteful till too many customers in England got one?’
‘Yair, but what do I care about that? It only take one person to create a rush, and after that each of them buyers is driven by a desire so strong it blind them. They don’t see every other man rush after the same unique object. I buy
everything the master own and some very fancy carpets as well. It were that level of excess that cause my downfall.’
‘Weren’t it an excess to have winged lions from Percypolis?’
‘No, I jes bring one at a time and always for a buyer I arranged beforehand. He always take it straight from the dock.’
‘Why yer take so much then?’
‘The master were a cunning bastard. When I try to set a limit, he whine about his moustachioed daughters and how they ruin him. He have to give a big dowry to any man that consent to marry one. When I say it aint a problem of my own, he tell his servant to bring a quill. He’s gonna write down that I were a spy and send it to the Peacock Rulers.’
‘The who?’
‘They’re the kings. Really they jes a powerful family. One family go and wrestle the rulership off another and they all go rampaging about the countryside killing and maiming, jes do whatever they want and call it Govermint.’
‘Oh.’
Fatty say he have to take all them tear bottles and carpets on a ship to England and he need a warehouse when he dock. He find himself a bit short of cash after he pay his customs because such a large sum were needed for the shiraz he now love. So he go in with a stranger that have a warehouse. This building turn out to be at the end of a maze of alleys that grow more and more narrow and darker as they twist through rat swarms and fish heads and hunchbacks. The warehouse were a splintery heap that sag and creak, it have a black hole for a door, it have a deep gloom inside that look like evil made visible. The man he go in with stand in the gloom and crack his knuckles and flick a lock of long white hair back over his bald pate. He have that affliction where he can’t look up, his neck can’t straighten, it keep his head hanging low and his eyes on the ground. That were a good thing, Fatty say, for if he look up everyone can see he only have eyeballs and no colour parts to his eyes.
Well, I don’t believe that. A man with no colour parts to his eyes – aint he a blind man? I’m sure he wud be a blind man. Can a blind man take a lease on a warehouse? How do he make his mark, how do he see the paper he scratch it upon, or do he own the building outright, and if he do, where do a blind man get his money, is he a thief? Don’t I know a man need eyes for thieving, well a defrauder then, but who do the blind man defraud, it wudn’t jes be anybody because he have a handicap, so probably his family. Or maybe his wife’s family, that aint so evil, many a fine gentleman do that, but how do the blind man meet a wife? And what now has he done with her, is she buried under the rotten floorboards of his house, and how do he milk his father-in-law before he kill the wife, do he take it little by little or the whole lot at once, do he leave the senile old man to beg alms on the highway? What if a bandit find him and take the rags he stand up in? Do the old fool freeze to death in the snow, or do a angel guide him to a manorhouse where he toast his toes by a fire as a comely maid serve him eggnog made of Madeira?
Bright Side of my Condition ePub Page 16