The Lunatic

by Anthony C. Winkler

  The next morning all the village knew: From the postmistress down to the teacher and the dressmaker—everybody had found out that the cultivator and his woman were fastened. The two of them were the laughing stock of the town as they were loaded into the back of a stake-body truck and driven to the hospital.

  There the brown nurses and doctors jeered at them.

  “I don’t know why negar fasten so,” one of the brown doctors told them. “Negar fasten more dan dog. Every week dem bring another negar dat fasten. You people take dis thing for a joke! You think I don’t have nothing better to do wid me time dan unfasten grinding negar, eh?”

  Then three of the nurses and attendants gripped the woman by the arms and around the waist, and another three took hold of the man. Both sides drew a breath and began to play tug-of-war with them.

  The brown doctor stood between the two teams, yelling, “Pull, you rass! Pull! Pull!”

  “Bumbo, boy,” one of the men panted. “Dis hood cement.”

  Eventually, after much yelling and screaming, there was a loud pop and the teams sprawled backwards on the floor.

  “Rass,” the cultivator wailed, “me hood pop off! Piece of me hood pop off.”

  “Bumbo!” the woman screeched. “Me pum-pum plug!”

  “Shut up you mouth!” the doctor scolded. “You don’t see pop yet. You don’t know what name plug yet. You soon see pop and plug.”

  “Pop and plug,” said the flame heart tree, when Aloysius had paused in telling the story. “One good thing ’bout bee grind. Bee don’t pop and plug nothing.”

  “De man pop, de woman plug. One brown man tell me it was in de Star,” Aloysius moaned. “Dat’s what I try to tell dis mad woman. One day we goin’ fasten. All she want is hood, hood, hood.”

  This was the vexing worry presently between them.

  Grinding was all the German woman wanted to do: grind morning, noon, and night in new spots. Old spot would not do anymore. If they had already had a grind under a tamarind tree, then they had to find another kind of tree to grind under the next time. If yesterday they caught a grind on an embankment, the next time they had to do it in a hollow or a gully. Once on a hillside, never again on a hillside. Always a new spot. Sometimes they had to walk miles into the bush just so they could find one.

  “Why spot must be new?” Aloysius complained after an exhausting trek into the bush looking for a special new spot.

  “I vant to do it everyplace in Jamaica on my holiday. I vant to do it in a gully.”

  “Sand will get inna me batty.”

  “Also, I vant to do it under a stop sign.”

  “Dat is out of order. You can’t grind under stop sign in Jamaica. Dat’s why de sign say stop. It means everything must stop. Even grinding.”

  “One night ve can find a stop sign and do it there. Vhat’s the harm?”

  “Me modder don’t raise me to grind under stop sign! Dat is slackness!”

  “Ve can do it also in a river.”

  “Make shrimp bite me hood?”

  “And in the sea.”

  “Too much bumbo barracuda.”

  “Then ve can climb a tree, too. That vould be a new experience.”

  “Only monkey grind inna tree.”

  The German was demented about this grinding every time in a new place. So every day they walked to find a new spot, a place that suited her fancy, and then she gave him the pum-pum in that new place.

  The woman did not understand that too much pum-pum can kill a man.

  There was this man, for instance, a cabinetmaker from the district of Look-Behind in St. Elizabeth, an elder in his church, a faithful son who cared for his old mother and took old-fashioned pride in his workmanship: Pum-pum killed him stone dead.

  He married a slack half-Chinese girl from Westmoreland who insisted on giving him pum-pum every livelong day of his life. The cabinetmaker would come home after a hard day in the shop and the woman would give him the pum-pum. Sometimes he would beg her to stop, saying, “Lawd, me love! No bodder wid pum-pum tonight. Me too weak.”

  But she would laugh wickedly and reply, “Little pum-pum never hurt nobody.”

  Nothing the cabinetmaker did or said made a difference: Every night of his life the woman gave him a dose of pum-pum. One evening he hid in the church to get away from her, but she tracked him down and dosed him with pum-pum right there in the pews.

  Sometimes after he’d had a hard day at the shop she gave him nothing but pum-pum for his supper.

  “What is dis on me poor head, Lawd Jesus?” the poor man moaned to the Almighty. “Morning, noon, and night nothing but pum-pum. Pum-pum here, pum-pum dere, pum-pum everywhere. Pum-pum more plentiful dan fish in de sea, dan mango in season. Pum-pum fall ’pon me head like heavy rain. What is dis tribulation on poor, poor me, oh Lawd?”

  The next day the cabinetmaker dropped dead in his shop as he worked to repair a mahogany whatnot.

  “Dis man overdose wid pum-pum,” the District Medical Officer said, examining the body. “Look how him head swell, him belly pop out, him toe shrivel up like chicken foot. Only one thing cause dat: pum-pum overdose.”

  When Aloysius told the German woman that story and twenty others like it she would only laugh—everything was a big joke. He could swear that he’d heard that story from a man who used to know the cabinetmaker, who had attended the funeral, but it made no difference. Everything was a joke to her. No matter how serious he tried to be, she would only laugh and write down his words in her book.

  One night of rain and lightning and thunder she took him to a rum bar and got him drunk. She bought him one white rum after another, and when he was thoroughly drunk, she suggested that they go to her hotel.

  So they went. Aloysius warned her that if the manager saw them going into the hotel room together, he would make a fuss. The woman insisted. It was her room, she said, she paid rent for it every day. She could take anybody in her room that she wanted to. Even a donkey.

  Why would she want to take a donkey into her room? What would she do to the poor beast?

  She didn’t want to take a donkey into the room, but she could take one if she wanted to, and that was the point she was making. She had paid for the room and it was her right to have guests in it if she wanted to.

  But why would she want a donkey for a guest?

  “I don’t vant a fucking donkey in my room!” the woman bellowed in his ear over a clap of thunder. “You drive me crazy vith stupid questions. Shut up and let’s go.”

  The thunder rumbled so loud that he could feel the sound trickling up from the pavement and through his shin bones.

  They huddled under the awning of a shop. Lightning lit up the darkened town showing gutters churning with brown water, a mangy dog cringing under the overhanging roof of a bank, trees bent over in the moaning wind.

  They dashed from shop to shop catching a quick shelter from the rain under the awnings and then racing again across the flooded streets.

  Soon they were at the hotel. She ran through the back door and they made their way, dripping wet, up the dark back stairway, leaving a trail of water behind them in the dim hallway.

  Then they were inside the room, and he was so frightened of it that he did not want to go in but stood just inside the door. He had seen rooms like this in magazines and at the pictures, but he’d never seen a room like this before with his own eyes.

  It was a wonderful, rich room as silent and strong as a cave, but in a high place like a bird nest. Inside this room he could not hear the roar of the rain. Lightning could not harm it, and the thunder rumbled harmlessly in the background of the dark night like a faraway passing train. If he didn’t look out of the window, he would not have known that rain was falling, so wonderful, strong, and silent was this room.

  The rum had confused his brain, and now the rich room made him feel bewildered and afraid.

  He leaned against the wall and put his head in his hands and the woman asked him what was wrong, and he told her that the ru
m and room had confused his brain. She wondered how a room could confuse his brain, but when he tried to explain it to her, his head started to spin, so he leaned against the wall to catch his breath.

  The German said she had an idea and wondered if he’d let her try a new thing tonight.

  What was the new thing?

  She wanted to tie him up in the bed and get a grind that way. The new thing: grinding a tied up Jamaican madman on a bed during a storm. Perhaps no woman in the world had ever done such a thing before. For when you thought about it, was it likely that ever before in the history of womankind, a German woman had tied up a Jamaican black madman on a bed in an American hotel and fucked him senseless right there and then during a storm?

  Tie up? Why must the man be tied up? Assuming, for the sake of argument, that there was a madman in the room right now, why can’t German woman give such a person a grind untied on the bed?

  “Every idea I have is a bad idea,” she raged. “Vhat is wrong with you? Vhat’s bad about a harmless idea like dis?”

  He didn’t like the part about tie up, dat’s all. That was the only part he didn’t like.

  But the rum and the room and the woman ganged up on him, and before he had sense enough to say no and run, the woman had talked him over to the bed and laid him out spread-eagled on the sheets and tied him up, hands and feet, on its four bed corners.

  At first he thought it was a joke to be so tied up, but after she had finished with the tying and he tried to move his arms and wriggle the rope off his feet, he realized that she well knew how to tie up a man, for no matter how he squirmed or twisted there was no escaping.

  She went into the bathroom and left him bound to the bed, and he tried to pass it off as a good laugh by remarking in a loud voice that she definitely had a wonderful way of tying up a man on a bed so that no matter how hard he struggled he couldn’t get away, but now that she’d proven that a woman could tie up a man like a chicken, he would like her please to release him because he didn’t want to be tied up anymore. He didn’t realize how loud he was talking until he heard his own voice.

  The woman came slowly out of the bathroom. She walked into the room not like a woman in ordinary life, but like one in the pictures.

  She took off her clothes deliberately, a wicked look in her eye.

  “Me don’t like dis tie-up business, Inga,” he whined as she approached the bed. “Make me untie before we do de rudeness.”

  She chuckled.

  Then it all became clear: the reason why she had tied him up, why she walked into the room so funny.

  He remembered a horrible movie he had seen only months ago at the Roxy. There was a white woman in it who walked funny and had sharp teeth. She took a white man who sold Bibles door-to-door for a living into her room and tied him up on her bed. He wriggled and bawled for mercy. But she had no mercy. She just tilted back his head and sucked blood out of his neck until only a limp sheet of skin was left of him.

  It hit Aloysius like blinding revelation hits a Pentecostal.

  “BUMBO!” he shrieked. “HELP! MURDER! NECKSUCK!”

  “Vhat are you doing!” she hissed, rushing over to the bed.

  “MURDER TO RASS!” he bellowed, hurling himself up and down on the bed so hard that, even tied up hand and foot, he still caused the springs to pound against the wall.

  The woman was on him like a flash. She straddled his struggling form and practically spat in his eye, “Shut up!” which so terrified him that he screamed even louder.

  She grabbed a pillow and tried to smother his screams under it. With a ferocious heave, he flung her off the bed and redoubled his shrieking.

  She sprang back on top of him, pushed the pillow over his head, and pressed down on it with her elbows.

  There was a furious knocking on the door. The woman rushed into the bathroom just before the brown-skin night manager opened the door and walked into the room.

  Aloysius sobbed his story as the manager struggled to untie him.

  “She tie me up on de bed, sah, and was going suck me neck. Just like de woman in Vampire Woman do to de Bible salesman at de Roxy. She was going suck me neck, sah, when you walk in.”

  “I can’t untie dese damn knots,” the manager snapped.

  “Ve are lovers,” the German said haughtily, clutching a bathrobe around her, “that is all there is to it! Ve vere going to make love before you crashed in here.”

  “You and dis man is lovers? Dis is a madman! How you can love a madman?” the manager asked with astonishment.

  “Is lie, sah!” Aloysius blubbered. “Is me neck she was goin’ suck, sah. Next morning de maid find nothing but a body husk on de bed. All blood suck out.”

  “He’s lying. Here, get out of my way and I’ll untie him,” the German said.

  “BUMBO! NO MAKE HER KILL ME, SAH!” Aloysius bawled, while the woman fumbled with the ropes.

  “Hush up you mouth. She not goin’ trouble you.”

  A maid peeped around the open door from the hallway.

  “What happen, Missah Jones?” she asked timidly.

  “Dis white woman here tie up madman on de bed.”

  “To suck blood outta me neck,” Aloysius sobbed.

  “Tie up madman?” the maid asked, coming cautiously into the room. “Oh, is no Aloysius dat! Aloysius, what happen to you?”

  “De woman want suck me neck! She tie me up on de bed like chicken. Me bawl when me see what she want do! Thank God dat Missah Manager come in and save me, odderwise is nothing but husk left fe you find inna morning.”

  The German finished untying the knots and Aloysius sprang off the bed.

  “Thank you, sah! Thank you very much!”

  “I want both o’ you outta me hotel right now!” the manager snapped.

  “Vhy you tell him this lie?”

  “You tie me up and frighten me!” Aloysius mumbled with shame. “Why you must tie me up for? Why everything must always be new?”

  “I don’t know which one of you is de madder one. But me want both of you outta dis place tonight! Melba, go call de Special Constable downstairs.”

  The maid left the room.

  “Lawd, sah, beg you,” Aloysius whined. “No call policeman on me, sah. Me not giving no trouble, sah.”

  “What a damn nerve, eh?” the manager fumed. “A foreign woman come to Jamaica and tie up a local madman on a bed in dis hotel on my shift! You like to tie up madman? Why you don’t go to de madhouse in Kingston? Dey got whole heap o’ madman dere you can tie up! Why you must come tie one up in my hotel? Damn out of order!”

  “Get out of my room so I can pack my suitcase,” the German said frostily.

  “If you never tie me up, me wouldn’t say nothing,” Aloysius muttered. “Me think is me neck you want suck.”

  “Out of dis hotel in five minutes or I goin’ get de Special Constable to carry you rass to jail!” the manager raged, slamming the door as he left.

  While the woman packed her suitcase Aloysius followed her around the rich room apologizing and trying to explain.

  The two of them were standing in front of the hotel five minutes later.

  The storm had rumbled out to sea. In its wake it had left a clammy, hazy night. A damp breeze brushed their faces. Dark, wet streets shone under the streetlights.

  “Vell,” the German chuckled, “after this, there is only one thing for me to do.”

  “What dat?”

  “Go and stay in the bush vith you.”

  And that was how this foreign woman ended up living in the bushland of St. Ann, a parish having more parson than mongoose but only one rich man: Busha McIntosh.

  BOOK II

  Chapter Twelve

  From afar on a dark night the house of Busha McIntosh looked like a ship at sea. Fluorescent lights the color of watery milk streamed through its open windows. Its generator made odd thumping noises so one would almost think the house was driven through the darkness by a powerful engine. When Busha entertained guests, as he did toni
ght, the sounds of their laughter drifted deep into the night.

  Come daylight, Busha’s house did not cry out for a second look. One saw no conspicuous richness in it; one saw only a scruffy driveway cut into the hillside that tethered the house to the land like a leash on an expensive dog.

  But if you were a poor man walking past Busha’s house at night you could not help but see the glow of light it cast over the darkened grounds and wonder: You could not help but look up at this wonderful house and dream about living with your loved ones on such a mountaintop.

  From the foot of the tree where she now stayed with Aloysius, Inga could also see the house shining on the hill.

  “Who is that man that lives in that house,” she wondered on her second night.

  “Dat Busha McIntosh house,” Aloysius said. “Busha own all dis land. Dis is government land we living on, but Busha own all de odder land around us.”

  “Vhy one man owns all this?”

  “Why tree can’t walk? Why tree must stand in one spot and give bee grind all day?” the tree mimicked the woman.

  The tree had taken an instant and jealous dislike to her.

  “Busha own dis land as long as me live. From me is a little boy, Busha own all dis land,” Aloysius explained.

  “A fat man, I suppose?”

  Aloysius chuckled.

  “Busha have a good belly on him.”

  “A fat pig,” Inga grunted. “All this land he owns. And there he lives on top of a hill in a big house.”

  “Busha born wid silver spoon in him mouth.”

  “I notice two things about rich people. No matter where I go, I notice these two things. First, they always build their houses on hills. I never see a rich man house on bottom land. Always high up, like a bird.”