“Everybody love cool breeze,” Aloysius muttered.
“I notice too that a rich man is usually a fat one. I never in my life see a thin rich man.”
“Everybody love deir belly.”
“What you bring dis rass woman here for, eh, sah?” the tree scolded Aloysius for the hundredth time. “She just come chat a bunch of foolishness in me ears. Why you have to bring dis rass woman in de bushland to come trouble me peace o’ mind?”
“She not troubling you.”
“Vhat? Vhat he say about me now?”
“Nothing. Him don’t say nothing.”
Already there were bitter feelings between the woman and the tree.
“He said something about me. I’ll shut him up.”
The woman pulled off her pants and panties, squatted down to open her legs, and pissed on the tree.
The tree screeched.
“Bumbo hole! It tickle! No piss ’pon me root! Dat tickle!”
She pissed like a horse: A jet of water spurted from between her legs and trickled in slow fingers over the roots of the tree.
“Lawd, Inga!” Aloysius begged. “Him don’t like dat!”
To add insult to injury, she shook the pum-pum cruelly at the tree’s trunk, then shone it like a flashlight in Aloysius’s face. The hood rose immediately.
“No grind in front o’ me! Blood! No grind in front o’ me!” the tree bellowed.
But it was too late. She waddled toward Aloysius, the pants coiled around her ankles scraping dust off the ground.
“Bumbo!” the tree screeched.
Only two days now the woman had been in the bushland but already there was not a minute’s peace.
“I’m going to tell you how human nature go. You want to hear how it go?” Busha was asking his guests in the drawing room.
Three men were in the room, each clutching a rum glass and feeling content with life, and not a one particularly interested in Busha’s view of human nature. A breeze wafted through the windows thrown open to catch the night air, bringing into the room the hums and wails of insects in the bushland darkness.
One of the men was Parson Mordecai, a bowler on the cricket side who delivered the cricket ball with subtle bounces that mystified batsmen. Ambitious and determined to make bishop before he turned fifty, the parson was renowned throughout the parish for his fiery sermons against rum and pum-pum. One Sunday he would blast rum from the pulpit with hellfire and brimstone; the next, he would lambast pum-pum. Sometimes he would do a double-header and bawl out against both of them. He called rum and pum-pum the Devil’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee. If Tweedledum don’t get you, he would roar from the pulpit at the subdued men in his congregation, Tweedledee would.
During these sermons the suffering possessors of Tweedledee would sit silent and scolding beside their men, occasionally casting them tight-lipped glares and nodding in grim agreement with the parson: Too much damn Tweedledee, their sour faces said—that’s all worthless Jamaican men wanted.
The rum juice was sitting sweet inside his belly like a banked fire, and the parson was feeling wonderful about himself and the world. He did not give a whit about the Busha’s views of human nature. Besides, the Busha had the same views on human nature to express at every meeting, and the parson had already heard them.
Another of the men was a Doctor Fox, treasurer of the cricket team and its opening batsman. Five years from now he had been settled in the parish of St. Ann.
Nicknamed Dr. Head Or Toe by the village men, this doctor loved to examine a pum-pum more than puss love to torment mouse. It had gotten so bad that none of the village men would allow their women to go to him unless it involved a wound either to the head or the toe—parts so indubitably distant from what a woman carried between her legs that even this rude doctor could not use scrapes and bruises to those extremities as an excuse for poking around in her private parts.
He too was not interested in Busha’s opinions on human nature. He sipped his rum and stared morosely out the window, where darkness banked thick against a bougainvillea bush, and wished Busha would shut up about human nature.
The third man sat in a chair in the far corner, his head hidden in the shadows. He was Inspector Williams of the village constabulary, the wicket keep of the cricket side. In the dim light of the room his belly folded over his belt and bulged out under his shirt like a smooth roll of kneaded dough.
The inspector was wondering where Busha’s wife was, for he was rather fond of the poor woman. Her batty was as big and firm as the hump on a camel, and obviously the Busha was not doing the job properly. The inspector could tell. He had only to look at a woman’s face to tell whether or not she was being properly ploughed. Busha’s wife clearly was underplanted. Her husband was too much taken up during the daytime hours with stupidness such as butchering cows and cultivating guinea grass, while right under his nose the field that most badly needed ploughing languished beside him on the bed at night worrying if there was life after death.
The inspector stirred and wondered where the suffering woman was at this very moment. No doubt she was someplace in a dark back room peering out at the stars and wishing she was a firefly.
The men were gathered in Busha’s drawing room to select a cricket side for the upcoming match against Walker’s Wood. The last match had been an ignominious defeat for Moneague and revenge was on the committee’s mind. But then the business about the lunatic Aloysius had come up, and the fact that a white woman—obviously a nasty and insensible foreigner— was living in the bushland with him was mentioned, to which every man present had delivered a strong opinion.
The parson was of a mind that Tweedledee had struck again—this time a helpless madman was in its virile grip. He speculated about the heinousness of foreigners in general who came to innocent islands such as Jamaica and spread moral turpitude all over the land, like, he said—lapsing regrettably into pulpit phraseology—cow dung. Not even a Jamaican madman was safe from these wicked women, the parson sighed, and God knew that if a madman who lived like a harmless hermit in the bush wasn’t safe from the clutches of a foreign temptress, then no man, not even a pope, was safe.
It reminded him, the parson opined, of Aeschylus’s view of human life: “Count no man safe this side of the grave.”
The doctor thought the parson’s opinion was a damn load of foolishness and more or less said so. The inspector agreed that enough was enough, and the parson should save his rubbish for Sunday congregations. Even Busha guffawed at the parson’s words.
The thing about it all, said Busha, was that the foreign woman was probably overcome when she saw the size of Aloysius’s hood. The man had a hood on him as big as any bull. In fact, Busha was convinced that big hood and Socialism were responsible for driving Aloysius mad. When you thought about it, the poor lunatic was walking around with two pounds of hood dangling between his legs, pulling him down. Add to this the torment of Socialism, speculated Busha, as practiced in the last eight years by the previous government, and it was more than enough to drive any man mad.
“Don’t you remember the time Aloysius went mad in the village and tear off all him clothes?” Busha asked. “It was during the budget debates, when the damn Prime Minister chat for eight hours nonstop. When Miss Lindsay the postmistress saw the size of his hood, she passed out in a dead faint right on de counter. Don’t you remember that time?”
It was a little like a man walking around with a two-pound fish dangling off his crotch, Busha said. Think about it! Busha marvelled to the parson. Imagine if you had a two-pound snapper swinging like a cast-iron bell clapper off your crotch. (Busha had lately caught a two-pound yellow tail snapper off the coast of Ocho Rios and he appreciated that two pounds was a good weight.)
The parson didn’t like the implication that a lowly madman in the bush had a bigger hood than a university educated parson, but at the same time he didn’t want to come right out and defend the size of his own member.
“Some men have a two-pound
snapper between them leg, Busha,” the parson muttered ominously. “Other men have three-pound parrot fish.”
“And odder men have four-ounce guppy,” the inspector chuckled with a nasty belly-laugh.
The doctor was privately wishing that the woman would develop some kind of disease and come to him for treatment. To tell the truth, he wouldn’t mind treating a white pum-pum for a change. It just got to be a bore handling black and brown and Chiny and Indian pum-pum day in and day out. Not that he objected to native pum-pum as the staple of his practice, but Lawd God man, every workman in the world craved a little variety in his daily labor.
What depressed the doctor was the unjust state of affairs in the island where a homeless lunatic was getting to grind white pum-pum every night while he, a licensed medical practitioner, had never examined one in real life. True, a white pum-pum was the same as a black one and the doctor knew that by heart: but it was only depressing textbook knowledge. The fact is that never in his born days had he ever seen a live white pum-pum. For that matter, not even a dead one.
He had been trained at the University of the West Indies, where even the cadavers had been black or brown because they were cheap and plentiful. You just didn’t have that many white people living in Jamaica. And when a white woman did die, even one that was old and shrivelled up, her people were the quickest on the island to bury her in the deepest imaginable hole or tomb her up behind tons of solid concrete.
One time the Busha’s wife had come to the doctor for treatment of an ear infection and when he’d told her to disrobe she asked him to his face if he was mad. The woman didn’t understand that infections spread: Many a female disease started in the ear then headed straight for the pum-pum. A germ was no fool. The doctor had even attempted a feeble joke about it to Mrs. Busha. “Ear today, pum-pum tomorrow,” he’d cracked and very nearly been boxed for his wit.
For his part, the doctor said, he was certain the woman must have some venereal disease, which she would no doubt spread all over Jamaica. Don’t think, he warned, that because the foreign woman was sleeping with a madman that the infection wouldn’t spread. Next thing you knew, a parson would get it, then a government minister, and before you knew it, a foreign diplomat.
The parson got vexed at the implication that the disease would automatically spread from a madman to a man of the cloth. A row nearly started but for Busha’s wife, who walked into the room and settled heavily on the couch.
“Tired of looking up at cloud and stars, eh, Sarah?” the inspector inquired with a sympathetic smirk.
“Looking at cloud?” she snapped. “Who looking at cloud? I was killing a chicken.”
“Killing chicken?” the inspector guffawed. “Why you killing de poor chicken? De chicken trouble you?”
In his rum-clouded reasoning, the inspector was quite certain that she had just been torturing some hapless rooster in a back room—for symbolic reasons entirely lost on her stupid husband.
“De damn garden boy didn’t kill the chicken we suppose to stew tomorrow. So I had to kill it meself. Dat’s the way life in Jamaica go, don’t you know? If you want to do anything, you have to do it yourself. It don’t matter if you have three or four people working for you. It don’t matter if you told de damn garden boy to kill the chicken from two days ago. If it was up to him, the chicken would live long enough to draw a government pension.”
The men chuckled. The inspector’s eyes burned with admiration. Sarah was sitting on a soft couch, and his eyes could appreciate the way her bountiful batty spread out and settled on top of the cushion in a neat, elliptical puddle. And right next to that wonderful batty, squinting cycloptically through the dim electric light that filtered through gabardine dress and cotton panties, was squeezed the tormented underploughed field.
“You want me to shoot him tomorrow?” Busha asked drunkenly.
When Busha got drunk he was willing to shoot anyone with whom his wife professed annoyance.
“Don’t talk no foolishness in me ear, Hubert. You is in another world.”
Busha denied that he was in another world. Just to demonstrate his physical presence, he lurched forward and planted a wet kiss on her brow, which she flicked off with an impatient palm.
“We were talking about dat madman who live in de bush,” the inspector explained to Mrs. Busha. “He have a foreign woman living dere wid him now. What you think of dat, eh?”
Mrs. Busha didn’t think much of it. She thought the madman ought to be immediately arrested and the woman deported. As far as she could see, for a madman who lived like an animal in the bush to suddenly find himself shacked up with a tourist woman only encouraged other men to go mad.
“Dat’s why we must practice belly therapy at Bellevue!” the Busha explained to his wife, swaying giddily in the drawing room. “Dey used to feed de lunatics in Bellevue very good food! Some madman used to go dere just to get fat! But we changed dat when I was on de review board. I said to de doctor one day—an American named Dr. Brown. Anyway, one day he come and tell me that such-and-such a patient have Oedipus Complex. I said to him, What kind o’ complex him have? Him say, Oedipus: Him want to sleep with him modder. I said to dis doctor, listen me here, I said, don’t tell me ’bout ole negar in Jamaica want to do something to him modder and dat’s why him in de madhouse! Is when him can’t get to do it to him modder dat him go mad, not when him want do it! I say to him, when old negar want pum-pum—”
“Lawd, Hubert!” Sarah chided.
“Sorry, me love. This is man talk. I say to him, when ole negar want pum-pum, de first piece him can grab him grab! And it don’t matter if it have foot to walk or if it fly or creep or live in hole in de ground, so long as it have pum-pum . . .”
The men laughed.
Busha expanded like a bellows and weaved in and out of a shadow thrown by an overstuffed chair.
“Him say to me, de man need therapy. I say, you want to know what de best kind o’ therapy is for Jamaica: belly therapy. You gone stark raving mad? Good: You don’t get nothing to eat but belly wash and bread back. You stop you ranting and raving? Good: Now you get a piece o’ chicken batty and a johnnycake. You start acting like a decent human being? Good: Now you get flour dumpling, chicken wing, and gravy. You tell me you want to work for a living? Good: Now you get all de ackee and saltfish you can eat, all de rice and peas and plantain you belly can hold.”
“Busha,” the inspector chortled, “you should open a clinic in St. Ann.”
“Him say to me dat I don’t understand mental illness. I answer, but common sense tell me dat dere is no such thing as a hungry madman! When a man hungry, de belly bring back sanity. Is when de belly is full dat de mind have de time to go mad. Dat is why you have more madman in the United States dan on any odder country on de face o’ de earth. Because de whole population over dere have a full belly!”
“Anyway,” the doctor said, after the laughter had died down, “we still need Aloysius on de team.”
Mrs. Busha hissed with contempt.
“Why you team can’t win without a madman on it?”
“Aloysius is a good spin bowler,” the doctor said.
“Plus, you know, me dear,” Busha added, “dere is nothing dat bring fear to a batsman heart quicker dan facing a mad bowler.”
“Den what you should do, den,” Mrs. Busha said disgustedly, “is go to Bellevue and draw eleven madman out for your side. Better yet, go to Parliament and get all de ministers to come bowl for you. For dem all mad. Den you bound to win. I going to me bed, Hubert. Goodnight all.”
“Goodnight, Sarah,” the inspector said, wetting his lips as she sauntered out of the room. “Remember, now. Despair is not de answer.”
Mrs. Busha kissed her teeth at this cryptic comment and went into the kitchen to fix herself a cup of bedside cocoa and—in the inspector’s opinion—take another vengeful and symbolic swat at the corpse of the dead rooster.
“Another round, gentlemen?” Busha asked, waving the rum bottle.
&n
bsp; “Certainly, sah, certainly,” the inspector seconded.
“Boy, dere is no way we must lose de match dis year,” the doctor commented, holding out his own empty glass.
“One for de road,” said the parson, standing up and stretching, filling the room with the sound of cracking middle-aged bone.
The meeting lasted late into the night. Four bottles of rum perished at its hands. A little strategy was discussed mixed in with a great deal of ribald gossip. But when it was over and the men stumbled into the dark night of the countryside, Busha had been charged the dual mission of finding out if Aloysius would consent to bowl for the village in the next cricket match, along with whatever else he could about the foreign woman now living in the bush with the lunatic.
Chapter Thirteen
Worries followed between Aloysius and Inga, one after another. Arguments, rows, quarrels over foolishness. Every night, pum-pum. Every morning, observations. Every afternoon, a walk in the bush. Every night, more observations. More rows. More pum-pum.
Observations: Inga constantly made observations about life in the bush. She wrote observations down in her book. She read them out to Aloysius and insisted that he agree with them. And when he did not, a bitter row ensued.
Listen to one of their arguments. She wrote down in her book that she understood now what had made the rich man callous and unfeeling about others worse off than himself: Hiding his doo-doo in plumbing pipes had made him a vain and uncaring wretch.
But in the bush there was no place to hide your doo-doo. It was there every morning where you had deposited it the day before, an incubator of swarming flies. The prosperous banker, on his way to work in his Mercedes, did not have to drive past his own pyramid of doo-doo perched on the curb. He did not perceive that this product of his most necessary bodily function was used by nature as a nursery for maggots. The same insight was lost on the movie starlet whose picture was in a magazine every week. If she was ruler of the world, Inga declared, she would pass a law that would force everyone to exhibit his doodoo on his doorstep every day with a label attached identifying the name and address of its maker. Workers could go and see what their employer’s bowels had introduced into the world today. The silent worshipper of a beautiful woman on a bus could follow her to her doorstep and cure his romantic feelings by prodding at her most recent pile with a stick. Men would not be so cocksure or women so vain. Pretence would be reduced throughout the world because doo-doo would tell the true story about everyone. That’s why the rich man hid doo-doo in pipes. He did not want the whole story to come out.
The Lunatic Page 9