And the Ass Saw the Angel

by Nick Cave

  That day, if mah memory serves me well, mah scalp was a battlefield of tuft and bloody clump, of scab and gash. Later, in mah room, ah dabbed at the six or so crusts that dotted mah skull with a ball of cotton wool soaked in the essence of lavender. Mah skull stung as the scab grew soft and lifted from the slitted scissor wounds. Those fucken scissors! That fucken bitch! Ah could hear mah mother cackling with glee up at the shack at the freakish mess she had made. Rage throbbed through mah brains, humiliation burned mah ears.

  If it were not for the fact that ah shine victorious over the whole lot of them here in mah dying time, then humiliation and rage would, ah have no doubt, consume me still. As it stands, mah countenance has been soured only marginally by the memory, and certainly her massive personage would shrink to that of a gnat if she were here, now, in these grander, greater days.

  Mah butchered scalp was fragrant with Cosey’s waters. Lavender. Rose. Musk.

  Ah kept the sorry clumps of hair that littered the shack floor in with mah other clippings – finger and toe nails, dead skin, teeth, eyelashes, scabs, that sort of thing.

  Kept beneath mah bed ah had twenty-two shoeboxes full of mah things. Ah visited Cosey Mo’s box without restraint. Each time ah took a drop or two of the waters. Heaven scented these growing years.

  Yes, but up on Hooper’s Hill…

  Up on Hooper’s Hill ah scoured the ground for traces of her – some blood, maybe, or her body print still held in the mud. But whatever secrets belonged to this hill the cryptic rain had erased from its memory, or else the hill simply wasn’t telling – or so it seemed.

  Disappointed and not looking forward to mah slippery descent ah made to leave, pitching the empty pickling jar ah had brought along in case of a lucky find down the hill.

  It was then ah discovered two curious parallel furrows about three feet apart, each rain-filled stripe about two inches wide and twice as deep – evil, mean-looking furrows they were, and ah followed them to a place where the terra gumbo had been all churned up.

  There, floating in a large pool of muddy water, ah found the harlot’s hair.

  The flaxen locks shone like a reef of pure gold as ah fished them from the dingy rain-pocked puddle, and as ah did this ah couldn’t help but be struck by the uncanny duality of the incident – the coincident shearing of our crowning glory. And as ah stood there with the rain pissing down on mah ravaged scalp ah experienced an overwhelming sensation of incomparable shame – her shame – and for a moment in time the signals of mah heart and those of the harlot crossed paths, and ah knew that at that very moment, wherever she might be, Cosey Mo was experiencing a hell fully different to what she had known before – mah hell, just as ah was living hers.

  The lock of hair which ah carefully wrapped in a handkerchief was the link. Yes, it was. The lock was the link. Yes, it was.

  As ah slipped and lunged and skidded and rolled homeward, mah mind turned each word – the lock was the key. The lock was the key. The lock was the key. The lock was –

  XVI

  At around eleven o’clock that Sunday evening, the rusty red pickup belonging to the brothers Holfe could be seen approaching the valley.

  Now, as they passed through its northern entrance, the pitch firmament issued what seemed at this late hour to be a torrent of gushing oil, pissing down upon the windshield and coiling about the windscreen wipers like asps, black and alive.

  ‘It isn’t stopped, brother,’ said Philo.

  Carl shook his head and flicked the lights on to full beam. Pressing his face right up to the windshield, so that his body curved in a hunch over the wheel, he squinted into the rain. ‘No, it isn’t.’ Then a little farther down Maine, he added, ‘Brother Philo, I think that if there is one thing clear in this whole valley, then it is… that it isn’t… stopped.’

  To be sure, the heavy drizzle of early afternoon had swelled to a fully drenching deluge. Nothing had stopped. Nor in the days to come did it stop, nor quell, or even temper. Not a single ray of sunlight broke the black and brawling firmament. God, it would seem, was blind to their acts of contrition. Their despair was allconsuming. There was nothing left to do but remain in the valley and suffer, or pack up and leave for more sunny climes and so live in guilt and shame for ever.

  Poe, the self-appointed Messiah, became almost overnight the living embodiment of a township’s private shame, a manifestation of their wretchedness and the focus of insuperable hatred. He refrained from entering the township itself again.

  The church on Glory Flats grew ever more derelict – eventually leaning, as the months drew on, a little askew on its stilts, attended by no one except an increasingly drunken Abie Poe. His black apparel, ragged and soiled, his harried face bitten by deep crevices of shadow and his eyes lost in the dark pools of their orbits, the deranged preacher would skulk around the chambers of the church, muttering half-remembered prayers, sometimes climbing into the pulpit to deliver lunatic sermons to the ever-faithful – the rats, the toads and the rain. The roof leaked. Windows got broken. Never rung, the vespers bell rusted in its frame. The once refulgent interior grew squalid and foul.

  Thus another year passed. And the rain pissed down.

  XVII

  A wind whistled through the valley and blew on through the town. Ah sat in the rain, by the petrol station, listening to the Texaco billboard knock above the pumps on the count of three each time the wind hit it – the first always the loudest, the last you could barely hear. ‘Knock!! Knock! knock.’ ‘Knock!! Knock! knock.’

  The string of red and white canvas flags tied on to the cornerpost of Noah’s Barber Shop would flutter and flap, flutter and flap with each new gust. Just as the last knock of the billboard sounded, the little canvas flags, hanging limply, would perk up as the same bluster of wind hit the barber shop, and all red and white they would gaily flutter and flap, flutter and flap, until the gust passed onward down Maine, and then they hung silent again, awaiting the billboard’s next signal.

  If the wind did not whistle then nor would the billboard knock, and if the billboard did not knock, up there above the pumps, then the canvas flags would hang, limply strung, never to flap, never to flag and never to flutter.

  And if the wind did not come waltzing through the valley on this wet and windy summer night of 1943, then the township of Ukulore Valley would in windless silence be – bar the fremitus of the rain, of course, its incessant racket like the endless clamour of the blood, long since gone unnoticed by the ear.

  And if the wind did not waltz, then not a flap, knock or whistle, not a single pump or rustle would break the solemn silence of those wind-worried things.

  Did ah tell you how we did not hear the rain anymore?

  Not a soul could ah see in town, for not a one could be found – not a solitary one nor a strolling pair. It was customary for the Ukulite elders to walk in pairs – in pairs that is – though many often strolled alone, as is the custom of the aged all around the world – that is to say all around the world, strolling for the old is quite the custom – paired or alone, till the ends of their hearts, or their legs, or their days – alone or in pairs and into their graves.

  But not here in town – not a strolling, whistling, waltzing soul – not in a house, up a hall, on a stair – not along Maine nor in Motherwells nor in Memorial Square.

  And thusways ah allowed mah mind to ruminate on this rainy day, so much so that ah almost did not register a thin, hunched figure hobble past, dressed from head to toe in a filthy dun-coloured blanket. This enigma walked as if its shoes were filled with sharp stones. From the coarse cloth in which it was clad a deep cowl had been fashioned, and as it hobbled down Maine the stranger looked to me like a rogue leper right off the pages of Leviticus and ah imagined the quick raw flesh hidden in the folds of the sopping sackcloth.

  With the veils of grey rain obscuring mah pursuit – both sound and vision-wise – ah found ah could tail the shambling wretch at close range. Occasionally the mysterious figure would buckle at
the waist as if gripped by a nagging colic, then hitch the ragged blanket at the shoulders, cough thinly and continue the painful trek down the centre of Maine.

  Leaving the road at the gardens, the figure paused beneath a wrought iron arch – the main gateway into Memorial Gardens. Framed in a romping embranglement of iron filigree, crimson roses and rusting cherubs, the hooded blanket remained unmoving. A yellow bulb throbbed and crackled overhead. Ah stood about ten feet away, the pluvial curtain mah only form of concealment.

  Ah searched for an exposed hand, a peeping toe, a slice of face caught in the humming light – proof that a being of flesh and blood existed within – but ah found none. And the more ah considered the enigma before me, the more ah thought how like a phantom or enshrouded wraith the figure seemed to be.

  Ah was reminded of an illustration ah had torn from a book ah had found buried unner some mutilated girlie magazines on the junkpile out back of the shack. It was called Go Ask The Angel or O The Ass On That Angel or some such smut. Anyway if it had ever had any pictures then they had all been torn out – all except one, on the very first page.

  It showed a little girl, feverish and wasted and terribly sick, lying in her little bed. All around her were bunches of red and yellow and pink flowers, and standing at the end of the bed was a macabre figure – dressed in a long, hooded robe and looking all the more ghastly because of its gaping, faceless hood and empty sleeves, one of which was raised and pointed at the little hollow-eyed sickling. Along the bottom of the picture it read thus:

  ‘… and it being time, Death called Angel home, saying slowly and resonantly, “Angel… Angel… Angel…”’

  Ah had cut the picture from the book and put it in a large paper envelope labelled ‘Pics. Cut-outs. Signs. Omens.’

  Examining the figure huddled in the gateway to the square ah was left aghast at its similarity to the picture of Death. Ah was. A formicating horror spread across mah person and mah mind jabbered doggerel, chilling and terror-riven.

  Then the grim phantom stepped slowly into the square – at least, ah guess that’s what happened – ah mean, well – what ah mean is that ah mahself had been temporarily arrested by the increasingly swollen tides of terror, and, well, ah don’t know exactly, but ah lost some minutes to deadtime – have ah told you about deadtime? Yes? No? Well ah did lose some time to mah other sel… shit, forget it – suddenly ah took control of mah consciousness again, alerted by the smashing of glass, and ah found mahself crouching behind the drinking fountain with Death, the wraith in the dirty blanket, still in mah sight.

  And, well – Hell’s pale agent – that is, Death, the king of terrors – yes, that frightful, formless, faceless phantom, Death – yes, Death – why, Death had entered the circle of yellow light that flooded the sepulchre and the monument – but not only that – Death, Life’s hooded hangman and time’s earnest executioner – yes, pale, pale Death had grown two flesh-and-blood, skin-and-bone hands. And what is more, those two mortal hands nursed a curious bundle the shape and size of a large loaf of bread. Wrapped around the bundle was the dry but rotting robe of the Prophet, Jonas Ukulore. Ah could see from where ah squatted that the glass display case of the sepulchre that housed the crown, sceptre and robe worn by the Prophet had been broken into – ah remembered the sound of breaking glass which awoke me – and, having compared the size of the hole in the glass to that of the rocks that lined the side of the sepulchre, it was clear to me that whoever or whatever it was that busied itself so openly in that circle of spilled light was no cat burglar or professional thief – no – nor was it Death – o no sir – o madam ah say no – it weren’t the Grim Ripper – it sure weren’t Death.

  Ah watched this fraud – this wretch masquerading as the final Enigma, its face still hidden in the shelter of the hood – place the bundle on the second step of the monument. And with hands now free of their burden, the impostor began to execrate the heavens. And ah noticed that one hand seemed to be bent out of shape, deformed. Ah could not help but wonder what freakish deformities could be concealed within the hood and the sackcloth, to allow so readily the display of such a hideous appendage.

  And suddenly the hill of sackcloth and the two mismatched hands were joined by a voice – and it was a boy’s voice – and it was a boy’s voice – a terrible screeching soprano.

  And though ah could not make out a single word of his tirade, muffled as it was by the drumming rain, ah could tell by the furious pace of its delivery and the mad raking gestures of his hands that this boy was something of a kindred spirit – a fellow outcast, a brother in pain. And – well, you can imagine the excitement that ah experienced at having found someone to share the strafes and stripes of public rebuke – a companion to cling to through the long dark night and through the longer, darker day – someone ah could plough mah lonely furrow beside – a companion through the laughter and the tears – in short, a friend – and ah awaited an opportunity to present mahself without him becoming scared and taking flight.

  But at that very moment, the light in Doc Morrow’s surgery window lit up, followed by the porch light spilling on to the street.

  The stranger, having ceased his ranting, leaned back against the monument, thoroughly drained. And it was only when the doctor emerged from his surgery and stood on the edge of the porch, probing the rain with a flashlight, that the boy in the dun-coloured blanket began to limp painfully down the steps. As one crabbed claw pulled back the hood and he cast a furtive glance in the direction of the doctor, a strip of tell-tale light betrayed a woefully disfigured countenance.

  It took me a full minute before ah could put a name to that savaged face.

  ‘That ain’t no goddamn boy!’ ah thought, as ah watched the figure move away. ‘That ain’t no goddamn little boy!’

  Doc Morrow crossed the street and entered the park, so ah was forced to remain crouched behind the water fountain, while… while… while Death left by the side-entrance.

  Dressed in a big blue rubber mac and matching hat, the doctor walked toward the monument, picking up his pace a little more with each approaching step. He was running by the time he reached it.

  Stooping, he scooped up the bundle wrapped in the Prophet’s robe that had been dumped on the steps. Then, hunching over the bundle, he urgently retraced his steps back to the surgery.

  By the time ah stumbled on to Maine, it was pitch black and pissing down, and though ah searched the northern end of Maine ah could not find her again…

  Ah returned to the shack alone, where ah passed the night in restless pursuit of her memory – of when her face was more beautiful than anything ah had ever seen.

  And ah cursed mahself for having lost her.

  And ah cursed mahself for having lost her again.

  XVIII

  Euchrid sat in the cold cloisters of solitude, eyes screwed shut. Cut adrift in a plethora of sensation, he surrendered wholly and completely to the murk of his chosen sanctum: The Swampland.

  He heard the shrinking corset of kudzu bruise the mighty main-stem of the cedar tree. He listened and heard the tree’s ancient limbs groan as it surrendered to the killing woven vine. He heard, too, the harping song of the tarantula, crouched in a corner, plucking each dew-dipped string of his web. Nor did the crackle of leaves in a stump’s hollow heart go unnoticed. Or the bones and beaks of dead birds. The mad scrabble of a trapped wing. Eggs opening. Nests burning. A tumbling clump of fur. A dislodged feather. A squall. A trickle. A shrill.

  He listened now to the sound of his own body in bondage, his spine and costal crumbling, his tested plexus straining, his innards’ hissance and the business of his skin and bones all moaning, all collared, all grounded upon the grim pin of existence.

  Then he asked for his angel and henceforth an effluence of ultramarine light spilled across every log and knoll, each stump and knot and knurl, the blue luminary swamping the nook and the crack, the crack and the burrow, every dark and squalid hollow, each and every bog or mire or wallow, from that w
hich is deep to that which is shallow; Euchrid’s world, all echo and rhyme, all touched by shivers of hyacinth light.

  The angel, now at his fingers’ trembling tips, hovered on coral pinions, and her pinking robe of slippery silk billowed with upfanned air. Her dark tresses tumbled down her breasts, swollen now and heaving to his touch. Her lips just slightly parted as she came bending forward to plant a dizzying kiss upon his mouth, and to fill his hands with her warm breasts – fondled and gripped through the spasms and curds of love.

  Euchrid put his face into the empty cups of his hands, and rolled on his side to face the wall, plunging deeper and deeper still into the bathos of the spent.

  A blustered branch scratched at his window. Euchrid sighed and fell asleep.

  XIX

  That night ah found little sleep. Torrid bloodings, spontaneous emissions, deaths-heads sweated into mah bedding…

  Ah rose early to find Pa hitching Mule and setting off down the mudded track to Maine, head bent low, swiping the folds of rain with his stick. Mule shuddered and twitched neurotically, as numb to the old man’s rod as it was to the rain. Ah was consumed by an urge to follow – drawn on, you might say – and, unnercover of the grey rain, ah did so.