The skinned goat glistened like a newborn infant. It swung in the breeze as the young man worked, whistling his tuneless song between his teeth. He laid out the skin on the ground, turning the side pasted with thick blood toward the sun.
So the young man worked on the goat, sawing off its head and placing it on a rock where it stared with grim fixity at the surrounding grasslands and hills like the statue of an eminent dwarf; so he hacked and chopped, extracting roasts and ribs and loins from the carcass, which he arranged in a neat pile in the enamel basin. And when he was done, he placed the head of the goat—its eyes wide open—on top of the rubble of bone and meat.
“He is an artist,” Inga breathed.
“Him a butcher,” Aloysius muttered. “Vhat artist?”
She scaled the wall and headed down the slope toward the young man and the dead goat.
“You don’t even know butcher from artist,” Aloysius carped, following after her with a mounting sense of foreboding.
Inga aimed the camera at the dead goat, stalking around it like a hunter, taking pictures at every angle. Aloysius shrank back and would not meet the piercing stare of the decapitated head mounted on the ruins of bone and flesh.
“You know vhat you are,” Inga said breathlessly to the young man, her eyes shining with discovery. “You are a sculptor. An artist.”
The young man beamed.
“I do not tell a joke,” she said. “This is a Picasso. This is how a goat looks to an artist.”
“Come here, man,” the goat head said to Aloysius.
Aloysius shrank behind a bush.
“Vhat is your name?” Inga asked the young man. “Mine is Inga.”
“Me name Service,” the young man grunted.
“Service? Is that your given name?”
“Dat’s me first name. Me modder name Johnson.”
“I vill call this picture, ‘Hieroglyphic Goat,’” Inga said, taking another shot of the pile of bone and flesh in the basin. “This one vill vin a prize.”
“What dat she call me?” the goat head asked Aloysius.
“Bumbo,” Aloysius whispered, shielding his eyes.
“This is the first time in my life I have truly seen a goat,” Inga gushed. “It is a vork of art.”
“Oh de!” a voice bellowed from the top of a nearby hill. “What madman and white woman doing ’pon me land?”
They turned and saw a portly cultivator who had hired the young man to butcher the goat trundling down the hillside determinedly toward them.
So now there were three of them in the bush, and it did not matter that Aloysius wept and the tree shrieked that it could not stand to have two men grinding one woman right under its nose or that even the nearby bushes scolded the lewdness of this living arrangement, still there were now three of them in the bush: Aloysius, the German woman, and this butcher named Service.
Service showed up at the camp because Inga had invited him and had even drawn him a map showing where she and Aloysius lived in the bush; and when he came two nights later he brought with him a chunk of meat he’d stolen from his latest butchering job and sat around the fire while Aloysius baked the meat with wild pepper and thyme in a hole dug in the ground and filled with charcoal.
Occasionally Service would lift his head and peer wonderingly through the flickering glare of the fire from Aloysius to the white woman. But most of the time he listened and nodded and watched Inga with a hungry look.
Aloysius cooked the meat in sullen silence. After a few minutes of aimless talking, Inga stood up and signalled with her eyes for Service to follow her. He stood up, touched the knife in his belt, flicked a wary glance at Aloysius, then disappeared with her into the dark mouth of the night.
Aloysius collapsed against the flame heart tree.
“She giving ’way me pum-pum,” he sobbed faintly to the tree.
“Giving it ’way like grieving eye drop water,” the tree grunted.
“Why she do dis to me, eh? What me do her?”
“Who can understand woman? Never mind, Aloysius. If me had pum-pum, me would save it all for you.”
“Thank you,” Aloysius mumbled.
“Me would put it inna shoe box and take it out only when you want a piece.”
“Thank you.”
“Me would hire blue stripe constable fe guard it from hood.”
“All right.”
“Me would put it inna refrigerator like you supposed to do wid dead fish.”
“All right. All right.”
“Me would put one bad dog in me drawers and tie him up next to me pum-pum bush to bite any hood that try sneak a grind.”
“Hush up! Me heart broke. You make it worse.”
“Don’t me tell you not to bring dat rass woman inna de bush?” the tree said spitefully. “Don’t me tell you so? Don’t me beg you fe leave rass woman where you find her?”
“Every man make mistake.”
“Mistake, you bumbo! You bring de rass woman here in de bush where we used to live peaceful. You grind her right before me eye. You make her wee-wee ’pon me root and bite me trunk. Den you talk ’bout mistake because she give ’way de pum-pum to butcher man.”
Aloysius could only sit by the fire, peer into the darkness where they had disappeared, and lick his wounded pride like a beaten dog.
But this first grind went badly. The butcher hurried the business and finished too soon, and Inga got vexed and boxed him on the ear. He flew into a rage and reached for his knife, which she wrestled away from him and flung into the dark grassland.
The two of them returned to the fire scowling and snarling at each other.
“Why you lick me for?” Service screamed indignantly.
“Because you go too fast!” Inga hissed.
“You thump up me side! You broke me rib!”
He peeled up his shirt and fingered an ugly welt against his rib cage.
“Look what dis damn white woman do to me side, sah,” Service whined to Aloysius in a voice suddenly thick with petulance and fear. “She thump up me side when me not looking.”
“Is all right.” Aloysius bent and squinted carefully at the welt. “Me’ll wee-wee ’pon it for you and it’ll get better.”
“Wee-wee? You mad rass, you! Wee-wee ’pon who? Who you goin’ wee-wee on?”
“Me just trying fe help you!”
“Help me by wee-weeing on me? You think me is a chamber pot?”
“Next time you pull a knife on me,” Inga growled, “this is vhat I do to you.”
She hammered a scruffy bush with the violent and athletic kick of a Chinaman in a kung fu movie.
“Extreme Unction!” the bush howled. “Call de priest! Me need Extreme Unction!”
“Inga!” Aloysius cried. “De bush no trouble you! Him is a Catholic bush!”
“Extreme Unction!” the bush bawled. “Me need last rites! Almighty God, me soul goin’ a purgatory! ‘Someday! Someday!’ Dat how de clock tick in purgatory! ‘Someday! Someday!’ Now me goin’ dere just like de nun dem warn me!”
“Hush up!” Aloysius snapped.
“Who you telling hush up?” Service snarled.
“No you, man!” Aloysius said hastily. “Me mean de bush.”
“Me shouldna listen to de nun dem!” the bush howled.
Inga sat down and spat at the fire. Her mouth-water made a sizzling sound as it bounced off a hot rock. Service slunk into the night.
She opened up her book and began to write about her experiences of the evening. Aloysius sat down limply beside her and broke into a sorrowful sobbing.
“You give ’way me pum-pum,” he sobbed.
“Vhat?”
He was convulsed with tears. He could not help himself.
“You give ’way me pum-pum! You give it ’way right under me nose! Right before me eye, you give ’way me pum-pum.”
“One man is not sufficient for me. I am a voman vith a large sexual appetite. I need two men, three men. I tell you that already.”
; “You break me heart. Vhy you must break me heart so?”
He was sobbing hysterically. Inga put down her book and looked searchingly at him.
“Look,” she said impatiently, “you are wrong. I did not give it away as you said. It is still here. I show you.”
She got up and wriggled out of her pants and stood before him naked from the waist down.
“See?”
Aloysius looked up and shrieked.
“It gone!” he wailed. “The butcher thief it! No more pum-pum!”
“Idiot! It is not gone. Here. Touch me here!”
He did and gave off a ravenous howl.
“All dat left is a smooth and round spot like bald-head parson! No more pum-pum! Pum-pum gone forever!”
He was so hysterical that Inga wrestled him to the ground and pinned him there while he wriggled and shrieked incoherently. She slapped him hard across the face and shook him like a child.
“Listen to me, you fool! Jealousy has made you blind. Look at me! Look!”
Sniffing and blinking through his tears, Aloysius looked.
“It no gone?” he whimpered.
“Of course not. Vhere can it go?”
“But when me just look little while ago, all me see was one bald spot.”
“The light is bad. Here, touch me.”
“Me can’t see it, either,” the tree cried. “Make me touch it, too.”
“Make me get up,” Aloysius said, sniffling.
She released him.
He stood up and shook his head vigorously as though he were trying to rouse himself from drowsiness.
“You bring vater to me eye, Inga. Vhen me live here alone vith just me and de tree, de only time vater ever come to me eye is vhen me lonely. Now you stay here vith me and cause me grief and bring vater to me eye.”
“If I tell you one time I tell you a hundred time not to bring dat woman inna de bush,” the tree scolded.
A twig popped like a bone in the night. They turned and saw Service lurking on the edge of the glow from the fire.
“You didn’t have to lick me so hard, man,” he mumbled with a downcast look.
Still naked from the waist down, Inga looked from the one black man to the other.
She stood up: A hundred red tongues of fire licked at the whiteness of her thick body unsheathed in its nakedness from the waist down. The eyes of the two black men darted like moths around the pum-pum.
She settled on her haunches and began to do long division in the dirt—the arithmetic problem that in the exercise books of children always takes on the shape of a mouse. The answer unravelled into the familiar tail that got smaller and smaller until it trickled down to a remainder.
“Let me make one thing clear,” she said, standing up. “I am the boss. You understand? Otherwise this cannot be. You understand?”
“Vhy must one person be boss, Inga?” Aloysius asked, preparing barrister arguments.
“Because only one person has the pum-pum,” she said.
The butcher nodded solemnly and sat before the fire. “Pum-pum rule,” he intoned.
Aloysius stabbed at the dirt with his toe. “Pum-pum hold portfolio over dis jurisdiction," he muttered.
"From Socialism to Capitalism to Pum-pumism," a bush screeched. "Lawd Jesus God, what now on de head of poor Jamaica?"
Chapter Fifteen
Under the rule of pum-pum there were civic improvements made in the plot of pastureland in the bush: A house was built. It was a house such as poor men have made in Jamaica since the malarial beginnings of the Fallen Empire. Its walls were made of wattled sticks, sealed with river mud, and stank like the dried hide of an old animal. It had a sloping roof of plywood covered with galvanized zinc sheets and a dirt floor overlaid with sheets of cardboard.
On the day the house was finished Inga took numerous pictures of it and made endless drawings and notes. It was her idea to build the house. She had given Aloysius and Service the money to buy the few materials needed and told them where she wanted it raised under the sheltering overhang of the flame heart tree.
By the time the rainy season began the three of them were living in the house in these the days when rain roared on the roof and the nights when the pasture blew with the chill of an ocean breeze.
“Dey build chicken coop house,” Busha reported to his meeting of the cricket club. “Now dere’s three of dem in it.”
“Three of dem?” the parson asked incredulously.
“Three of dem,” Busha said. “Two man and dat woman.”
The parson looked at the doctor, who looked at the inspector, who looked at Busha, who shook his head with foreboding.
The four of them silently brooded on the algebra of two men with one woman.
“Dis is a case for hellfire if ever dere was one,” mumbled the parson.
“Damn foolishness,” the doctor snapped.
“Where Sarah?” the inspector asked wistfully. “Butchering more chicken?”
“She have a running stomach,” Busha chuckled. “Morning, noon, and night she sit on the toilet. Just like she find a new throne.”
During the month that followed it rained nearly every afternoon, with the sound of knuckles pounding on the zinc roof of the small house. Then the skies cleared and a crisp evening breeze rose up off the mountains and the land glimmered in the sunset and gave off the fresh smell of the infant earth.
At night the darkness blew gently into the valley on a cool breeze. In the mornings a thick fog steeped the green loveliness of the land in a hushed pool of whiteness.
“This is the way the vorld used to be,” Inga declared one morning as she stepped out of the small house and sniffed at the fog. “It reminds me of the days vhen I vas a cow.”
“A cow? What you talking about?” Aloysius was scratching himself all over as he did every morning.
“In another life I vas a cow.”
“How you know dat?”
“I vas a very good milker, too. The man who owned me always told me that.”
“How much milk you give?” Aloysius asked.
Yawning loudly, Service shambled out of the house.
“You build the fire,” Inga told him.
“Me build it yesterday.”
“Build it again,” she said. “Aloysius, you go draw the vater.”
“Why always me drawing de vater?”
“Because I say that is vhat you must do. Now do it vhile I take a valk.”
She wandered off into the thick fog and disappeared into the cloying whiteness.
“How you know you vas a cow?” Aloysius called after her.
“What you talking about, you mad brute?” Service grunted.
“She say she used to be a cow.”
“Me making new rule,” Service growled, stooping down to arrange the wood for the fire. “No more butter bun for me. You go second from now on. You take butter bun.”
“Dat is not my decision,” Aloysius said with dignity.
“Well, me make de decision now. New rule. No more butter bun for me. Learn dat now. Madman don’t know de difference between butter bun and dry bun. A-hoa.”
“You don’t hold authority over dat business,” Aloysius said boldly.
“Hold you rass!” Service faced him threateningly. “Who you talking to?”
Inga materialized out of the fog.
“Aloysius,” she said impatiently, “go for vater.”
“How much milk you give? I vas vaiting to hear de answer.”
She screwed up her face and looked intently at the ground.
“Me make new rule,” Service scowled. “Him not goin’ tell you ’bout it so me goin’ tell you meself. No more butter bun for dis man. You hear me? No more butter bun!”
“Vhat you talking about?” she snapped.
“Why me must go second last night? Why me get de butter bun? Why me no go first?”
“You don’t like it, you get out of here. Now shut up, I’m thinking.”
“But why me go second three
time in a row? Dat not fair.”
“Thirty gallons. One morning I gave thirty gallons of milk.”
Aloysius whistled appreciatively.
“Thirty gallon! Dat a whole heap o’ milk.”
“Three time in a row me get butter bun. Fair is fair, man. Three time in a row. What kind of business is dis? One man get butter bun three times in a row.”
“The farmer say to me, ‘I vish I had a hundred cows like you. I vould be a rich man.’ You know vhat I say to him?”
“Vhat?”
“Mooo!”
Aloysius and Inga laughed loudly like schoolchildren.
She stopped laughing and gave the stooping Service a quick kick in the bottom.
“Dat’s what me get in dis place,” he muttered sullenly. “Butter bun and batty kick. Dat’s all me good for.”
“Look, you idiot!” She cuffed him hard on the side of the head. “Better butter bun than no bun at all.”
“True,” Aloysius agreed quickly. “Me remember days around here when me didn’t even have—”
“Hush you rass mouth!” Service hissed at him. “Me don’t want to hear nothing from you!”
“Vill you go and draw the vater!” Inga snapped, her mood turning ugly.
“Me going! Me going!” Aloysius protested.
He hoisted the kerosene can on top of his head and set off whistling into the fog.
* * *
Every day Service left early in the morning to seek butchering jobs. He returned late in the evenings when the shadows of the trees were lean and bony fingers clawing at the grasslands. Sometimes he brought with him a piece of meat or pork and sometimes a live chicken. He would cut off its head with a sharp whack of the machete and sit and watch the headless chicken flutter blindly across the yard, blood pumping out of the neck stump. He liked to kneel and peer at the severed head lying in the dirt, the beak sucking vainly for air, the upright eye lidding over with a thick cream.
Aloysius could not bear to witness this useless suffering and would quickly leave. He would hurry away into the bushland and sit down under a naseberry tree and caulk up his ears with his fingers so as not to listen to the thunk of the machete as it bit into neck bone.
“Another chicken kill, eh?” the naseberry tree remarked one evening.
“Him love death too much,” Aloysius grumbled.
The Lunatic Page 11