‘What happen to the old man?’ I ask.
‘What old man?’ Fatty ask with a frown.
‘The dead wife’s father that sit sipping Madeira eggnog by the fireside.’
Fatty look vexed. ‘I dunno what story yer blunder into, Worthless, yer must be trying to rile me up. There aint no old man and no dead wife, there’s jes that musty old smuggler who relieve himself into a dockside whore on Saturdays, there’s jes a old prick sharp as a tack that vanish when the customs officers come round and find yers truly in a shed stacked with contraband.’
‘What’s a contraband?’
Fatty sigh.
‘Is it that Art yer always yakking of? Is it that what make yer a Artist?’
‘See, that’s how yer always show yer don’t understand nothing.’
‘Well, I weren’t brung up like you, with silverware and versifying.’
Fatty frown deep, cross and uncross his legs, which now he can do because they lost a lot of their chubbiness and he say in a miasma of gloom, ‘Well, really, what good do it do me? Even if I know how to hold a fork the right way, here I am living a utterly forkless life.’
‘Yair, forkless, plateless, cupless, fuckless.’
‘We aint fuckless,’ he say from his miasma of gloom. ‘We all well and truly fucked.’
We think on that truth for a while and the weather do a fast change. It don’t surprise me no more. There were a bit of bleak sun, then a blast, now the clouds start rolling over us. A wind whip the sea and sting our faces, it sting right through the thick hair that grow all over us. Fatty stand up and offer his hand to help me. That give me a surprise, but maybe his confession make more softer his feeling for his fellow man, maybe it open his eyes that he aint so high and mighty.
‘Why yer don’t hang as a smuggler?’ I ask as we quickleg home.
‘Ha, I used some men of influence and Mr Blindsight dangled in my stead. But still I get sent to Norfolk for cheating the customs. Lucky for me it only come down to a small amount.’
‘What, do they find a single bottle and say yer dint pay the true price of all them tears?’
‘Yair,’ says he, ‘that about sums it up.’
The autumn come on. There aint no reds or golds, no pretty withering leafs that inspire poetry, jes a fearsome marble cold that come down upon us and a mean sun that slash like a blade. Above the penguins I do the last of my fixings. Sure, winter wud be the best time to sew, there aint much to do in the hut, but Slangam monitor every skin, how much get used, how much wasted, he watch and abuse every stitch, it make me all fingers and thumbs.
‘What yer jes sit here for?’ It’s Slangam standing behind me and it give me a shock. He never before take the time to wander about and find what I do.
‘Jes looking.’
‘At what?’ He now come up beside me and I see him squinting like he have to do a strange thing with his eyes to see anything.
‘Jes birds and fish and things like that.’
‘Food, yer mean?’ He know I don’t mean food, but he have to reduce every creature to its uses. It’s the way he assure himself they aint jes a waste of being borned.
‘God take the time to make them, so who are we to say they ortn’t to be here?’
‘Did I say that? I dint say that.’
‘Yer called them food. Yair, they’re food for them seals and whalefish, what turn into food for us. But they also got their own lives.’
‘Own lives! How do a dumb beast have its own life?’
‘Yer gonna die yerself. Do that make yer life not yer own?’
‘I aint gonna be et.’
‘Yer hope. I heared the southern oceans is full of cannibals.’
It’s a dumb argument and it irritate me. Only a small number of the penguins get took, the rest carry on with their lives. It aint jes about eat and being et, it’s about real estate and their childs and dances, and who knows, when a penguin fish stand still and alone on the shore looking at the sky, maybe he do some dim philosophy.
Slangam already tell us the story of his wife, so for sure he dint come here to confess. Maybe he come to see if I do my work, that I aint found a fish-tail maiden to do the sewing for me. And for sure he dint come to see the view or chew the fat, it’s a mystery why he come and stand here after all these years.
‘Is there some work yer planning on this side?’ I ask perlite.
‘No.’
‘Yer not planning to club penguins?’
‘Why wud I? Who wud want a penguin skin?’
‘A penguin?’
He don’t even smile.
‘I seen them others come over here. What they coming for? What yer saying to them?’
‘They jes coming for a rest.’
‘They can rest in the hut.’
‘This here’s a different kind of rest.’
‘The plotting kind.’
‘There aint no plotting. What kind of plotting cud there be?’
He hesitate. Seem he aint took the time to imagine.
‘Yer think there’s plotting because the three of yer plot against me?’
‘That aint it.’
‘What is it?’
‘They dint use to find anything of interest over here. Now they do. Must of been something yer been saying to them. Lots of puffy nonsense that cloud their heads.’
‘Is their heads more cloudy than usual? Don’t Toper still whine about ingredients and Fatty guard his spuds?’
‘They aint so keen on their other work. Skinning seals and the like.’
‘Maybe they see the folly of working their selfs to death for a ship that never come. What use is all them skins when there aint a sure market? They got better use covering a seal.’
‘The ship will come,’ insist he.
‘And all them skins sink it to the bottom of the ocean! How many years worth is stacked in our stores? I tell yer, jes like the flab old Flonker once have, too much stacking aint a benefit, it jes pull yer down.’
Slangam fold his arms across his chest and glare at the sea. ‘See, I jes knowed yer tell them shit like that.’
‘I dint ever. Can’t they work it out for their selfs?’
He shift his feet around and seem vexed in the extreme.
‘Why yer need to do yer stitching over here anyway?’ he burst out. Seem he search and search for a new crime.
I don’t answer. What cud I say? I don’t like to listen to yers more’n I have to, I don’t like the same old topics going round and round, and round again jes for luck, and round again jes because yer made a rut of yer thinking, and around a few more times because yer self is in a prison of yer own making. Yer all jes like them speechifiers in The Gazetteer that bang on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about the same old topics and call it news.
Slangam stand a while longer, then disappear sudden as he come. I feel a discomfit and wriggle about, he do so unseat me in my place of calm. A sea breeze that once smell of ordinary life now carry the odour of sweat.
As the autumn wane, something bad happen. I start to feel I sit on the cliff too long. I dint think that were possible in the beginning when Slangam were always chasing me for wood, and really, it aint possible in the summer when the evenings is long and light. But after the penguins done their loving and raised their childs, when the chill come down and the twilight come earlier and earlier, my thoughts get the long autumn shadders upon them. In my loneliness it seem the beasts don’t have nothing for me but strange ways and bestial habits, I gotta return to the company of my own kind.
For a short time there’s pleasure in it. The fire roar and Toper make a tolerable sauce for the seal fat. The brew he make don’t cut our throats out, it make us merry and not truculent, and the topic that start the braying and boasting aint one that provoke a outright brawl. For once yer can see how it were meant to of been when God say we orta love each other.
It don’t last long.
Truth is, we’re all as different as them strang
e Australia beasts, the kangaroo and the little pig with spikes and the beaver that lay eggs. We’re meant to overcome our differences, not jes without a inborn love for overcoming but with a inborn lust for the exact opposite. It do vex me I were commanded to love my fellow man when he were created so unlovable. Toper say it aint a test if it’s too easy, I say it aint a test if it’s fucken impossible.
This morning I wake up and the toad mood is upon me. What brung it down, I don’t know. Hello Toad, say I, what brung yer here? But Toad don’t answer, don’t ever answer. I go out to fetch the sticks, and it aint a grey, loury day that wud of explained Toad, indeed it’s quite fine and the wind’s not strong. There were a potata vodka frolic last night, but I moderate myself and don’t drink to puking like them other reprobates. Neither do I fall upon and wolf down the charred bird heads that Toper offer, they were put to soak and forgot about for a week and come out wearing a pale green slime. I dint touch them and foul my stomick like them others done. And when the arguing start, I go to the hut and have a good sleep.
Maybe it were the arguing that brung out Toad? It’s very beautiful here, now I see it with Incognita eyes, but the ugliness and enstrangeing that exist among us men spoil everything. Still, Toad don’t grow really big and poisonous till I stretch us four out to the whole wide world and feel ugliness and enstrangeing everywhere. It wud be tolerable if man did not care, but every heart bleed for joining and affection.
Toad, apostrophise I, life is a long discipline. Everyone start full of high hopes and high demands and high reach, and long and slow get teached to ask for jes a little. Even when yer ready to take that little, it get snatched away. It soon seem the only way to win at this sad game is to want less than’s on offer, to be one step behind the snatching. I been trying to accept the little that were gave me, this island, jes a speck in the great wash of a fierce ocean, three hairy felons and no wife or childs, penguin company and no human tavern. Fuck me, I even learn to love the ocean that snare me. But the ugliness and enstrangeing of men do me in. It must be a punishment, that’s the only way to explain it, and because the punishment involve every man, Toad, I do conclude I’m in Hell.
Aint that a surprise to yer, Toad? I been teasing Toper for years, aint this Heaven, aint this Hell, it were all jes a tease in front of the fire or on the edge of the cliff, jes ideas to play with when the seal bladder ball get a puncture. But now I do conclude man’s so afraid of going to Hell he don’t understand he’s already there. He already died and were judged and sent down. God fashion for us a Hell that aint as restricted as men’s imagining – why, He go at it with a zeal he aint felt since he made the Earth and stars, He make it beautiful to break the hearts of men. Beauty is the wheel. On the wheel of beauty man get showed how far short of requirements he fall.
But Toad, say I, as I stagger back beneath my load of sticks, for all that we live in Hell, seems no one want to leave. Imagine! Desperate for kindness and affection, our fellow man hate us and we hate him, still we wud rather stay here than get our wings. What kind of cunning and cleverness achieve such a marvel?
I stop in my tracks, my sticks flinged down all around.
‘What yer sticks doing all over the ground? I want my dinner,’ Flonker roar.
I jerk my head up and see him on the edge of our camp.
‘What take yer so long? I were coming to look for yer.’
I don’t answer. A great weariness come over me as I bend down to pick up the scattered wood. Flonker don’t help, he jes watch, even though he already say how hungry he is. He jes watch and don’t help while his belly groan.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with yer these days,’ he grumble. ‘Yer used to come back from yer walks blooming.’
I don’t answer.
‘Why aint yer talking? Once I wud of said you were jes plain ornery. But these days …’
I wait to hear what he pronounce.
He consider me long and ask, ‘Do yer suffer from poor digestion, crudity, wind, much spittle, hard belly, thick blood, much waking, heaviness, sour and sharp belchings and palpitations of the heart?’
‘What? No, I do not.’
‘That’s the symptoms of melancholy.’
‘It aint in my body.’
‘Sure it is. Yer jes the type. The physiognomers say very particular features show natural melancholy.’
‘What features?’
‘Red face, hirsuteness, broad veins and much hair on the brows. That’s you.’
‘That’s all of us!’
‘But yer must also have a dry brain.’
‘Must I?’ In alarm I hold my hand up to my head.
Fatty nod solemn.
‘How do I wet it?’ I ask aghast.
‘Not with waters. Standing waters, thick and ill coloured, such as come forth from pools and moats, where hemp hath been steeped or slimy fishes live, are most putrefied and full of mites …’
‘What? Spare me yer stupid poems!’
He don’t.
He carry on in a rising tone, ‘They cause foul distemperatures in the body and mind of man, are unfit to make drink of, to dress meat with, or to be used about men inwardly or outwardly.’
I stare at him. He turn into a raving madman.
Now he roar with laughter and pat me on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, our mad doctors aint as ignorant as Burton.’
‘Burton who?’
‘Robert were his name. He were the man that compose the Anatomy of Melancholy. From which I jes quote.’
‘Why do yer learn by heart all this drivel, anatomies and poetries and the like?’ I ask furious.
‘I learn it for when I need it.’
I throw the regathered pile down by the fire and stalk off. But as I stride I see here and there the pools of standing waters we drink from. Once I see them as pure, glittering in the bright brief sun, but are they even now festering and ensliming the fishes? And how do Fatty know our own mad doctors know more’n Mr Burton Robert, do passing time alone change stupidness into cleverness?
I find a place to sit, under a thin tree near the hole they once put me in. The earth still wear a scar from their excavations. I sit and sit and look and look, and look and sit, and it seem the hole swaller me up again.
‘What yer sitting here on yer own for?’ In a startle I look up and see Fatty standing above me, hands on hips.
‘Why yer follering me around?’
‘Because melancholy’s the cause of madness.’
‘My melancholy’s the same as it ever were, it don’t progress. And anyway, it aint always a bad thing, not always. Sometimes it jes seem like a sad violin play itself inside me, it saw up and down a minor key and give me a pang that’s bittersweet.’
‘No, no,’ Fatty say, shaking his big shaggy head, ‘yer can’t jes accept it like that. If it aint the waters, it cud be your evacuations.’
‘My what?’
‘Yer shitting, man. According to Burton, costiveness and the keeping in of our ordinary excrements …’
‘Speak plain!’
‘Stopped up, man. Are yer stopped up?’
‘On this diet? It pass through so quick I’m lucky I aint a skeleton.’
He regard me solemn. ‘I have to talk to the others,’ he say at length.
‘What? No yer don’t.’
‘A sad violin inside yer? That’s the madness coming at a gallop.’
‘I think the violin come to tell me a man can have too much of the bright light,’ I explain careful. ‘It say the more gloomy shadders have their whispers too. What they whisper of is things past or missing or broke, the unlastingness of everything …’
‘Whispers?’ Fatty roar. ‘Behold the madness!’
He rush off to alert the other felons. Before I know it, I’m called to a counsel. Each man have his own theory about what bring on melancholy and how long before it turn to outright lunacy. Slangam rave on, using strange words he must of heared from some sawbones or pus drainer, and Fatty spout another piece of Burton, he
’s like a big whalefish that come up to the surface and spout salt water.
‘Yer all wrong,’ Toper declare. ‘It’s Venus omitted that cause the trouble.’
‘Venus omitted?’ chorus we.
Toper blush.
‘Fuck,’ splutter Fatty, ‘even if it stop the lunacy, who’s he gonna have Venus with? Are yer volunteering? Or do yer think he orta fornicate with my kelp girl?’
Once Fatty sticked our wore-out sealskin ball on a sharped pole, he put a sealskin wrap round the lower portion and some dry kelp trailing for hair. Then he done a drunken waltz with his pole girl. We were all entranced. There weren’t no music of course but Toper begin a sad Irish shanty and I take up a stick to beat in time on the trypot. It go on till Slangam find his true self again, the one that grow more and more enraged the longer he enjoy himself.
Now come a long hiatus. That’s another word Fatty teach me. For a long time I were mixed up and think it were a hole in the wall of my stomick. Then I say, which is my own opinion, ‘Yer don’t have to worry about me. My melancholy don’t ever turn into frank madness, I learn to control it.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Fatty reply disapproving.
‘Yair, I once meet a man in a tavern …’
‘What man?’
‘His name don’t add anything to the story.’
‘What story?’
So now I tell them. It’s a true story.
There were once a man that jump off London Bridge, actually many men jump off London Bridge, and some are pushed and some fall, but this were a man I know well and all them others weren’t. He have a shop on the bridge as many do, and he live above his business with his wife and children. He hang out his shingle very cheerful every morning and the customers flock to his door. Then one day he get up and everything has went wrong in the night.
Bright Side of my Condition ePub Page 17