And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave
Have ah told you about the hellish fright of Deadtime? Do you know about the Bloodings? The Chills? Mere fragments of rushing life retained… like handfuls of wind. Time gone haywire. Night and day, the following and the followed, pitch their shining sky-globes from horizon to horizon. Sun serves, moon returns, searing time’s cope with their mad flight, back and forth, to and fro, dark and light, like a hypnotist’s watch swinging in the fob of heaven -O yes, like the pendular action of a naked bulb, hung and set aswing in an empty room. An hour! A day! Gone! Snuck past! Escaped unsullied, unsalvageable, never to be lived. All in the blinking of an eye. Deadtime! Deadtime! Where do you go?! Who uses you, if not me?! The killers and the killed. Murdering of mah lifetime – mah living-time. The agony-rack of mah day’s passing and the slow method of its crank and shaft, the endless chatter of cogs ticking away the minutes, the bonecrack count and seconds of raw pain – the insufferable stretch of Time. Time lived. But what of all the deadtime, all the days unaccounted for? Where do they go?
Euchrid lay sprawled across a heap of strangled bedding. Unmoving in the moon-glow, he wore a singlet stained with rings of dark, leaked sweat and patches of gravy-coloured blood. His denims were stiff with grime and gore. His bed, a heap of sacks thrown in a pile on the floor, could barely be distinguished from the garbage and rubble and animal filth that surrounded it. Lit by both moon and lamp, the squalor seemed alive under the pale but stuttering light. The recumbent Euchrid appeared bereft of life. Crucified upon his rotting heap, his stick-thin arms were flung outways and peppered with many smarting punctures that blinked like bee-stings against his waxen flesh. The exposed skin on his arms, shoulders and belly gave him the appearance of a flagellator who had been recently engaged in a bout of self-correction. Hanks of greasy hair stuck to his sweat-streaked face. Flies fed on the crusted corners of his open mouth and danced about his wide liquid eyes, which were the only sign of life about this pale, listless creature; they shivered, shifting from left to right, up and down as if many things were present to Euchrid in the grainy yellowed nothingness. Fearful things, for they were pinned, those pupils, pinned and wild.
A variety of boxes lined the walls: tea-chests mostly, with chicken-wire fronts or thin steel bars; converted fruit-crates, barrels and buckets; tin drums; cardboard boxes of all sizes; milk-crates and wire cases. Cages, they were, cells and coops and hutches and kennels and aviaries and incubators and observation chambers. One could see the quick eyes of a feral cat flash trapped light for an instant, or a bared canine fang, the sudden shift of scaled skin, a crow’s greasy wing, the twinkling beads of a rat pack kept caged in wire and tin.
The room had an eerie absence of sound, as if spellbound. There could be heard only the shifting of straw, the creaking of undersized confines, the wind whistling through cavities in the wall. The tea-chest kennels each held captive a wild dog, most unable to stand in their crates. They lay like drought cows, unmoving, awaiting death. Others had been so grievously mutilated by the traps that to stand was no longer an option. So mostly the dogs just lay in the warm slimy straw, drunk on the liquor and water mix in which their oats or wheat grain floated, brown bandages hanging loose from their splints and stumps and clearly septic wounds.
Awaking from its stupor, a roan bitch inched forward on its two front stumps and butted the wire hatch of its kennel with the flat of its low-sloping brow. A doped snarl rose from deep within its throat, and baring sulphur-coloured gums it bit at the wire, rocking its box and rousing a dozen other beasts to petition their Lord and Master. The Kingdom resounded with the anguished protests of its subjects, but the King made no motion to appease the rabble, allowing the hiss and snarl and bark and screech and howl to grow and grow until the whole shack vibrated with the protests of the beasts. It was only then that the King deemed it appropriate to stand. He rose, slow and pained, like a ghost, and threw the filthy naval jacket across his shoulders. He paced a slow, thoughtful circle around the room, as if to address each miserable beast personally, though he looked not at the cages but at the ground-filth through which he waded. He circled and circled and he seemed to be the focus of a thousand beaded eyes that closed or glazed or crossed, each according to its nature, as their King circumnavigated the room one final time. He drew to a halt and considered his surrounds. The animals, soothed, now slept. He sighed deeply. Then Euchrid, bending at the knees and wincing with pain, lay down again upon his back, arms outstretched on his sack heap – not to sleep, but to gaze, as before, into the porous, jaundiced darkness that engulfed him.
Ah had the entire Kingdom to run. Single-handedly. Ah had no advisers or counsellors, no brain-trust, no syndicates or professional consultants, no mentor, no nestor, not even a fucken scullery maid. Ah mean, there wasn’t a flunkey to flog in the whole of Doghead, but you know – believe it or not – ah managed. Ah managed. Yes, despite the fact that it was the King who had to don the camouflage and creep into the outer world when stocks ran low, ah managed.
And even though it was the King who had to prepare the food and feed his loyal subjects, ah got by. Yes. Ah got by. And though ah had a lot of plotting and planning to do, not to mention being self-appointed look-out, policeman, executioner, judge and jury, tutor to mah beasts, caretaker, maintenance man, trapper and trainer, nurse and nanny, head-shrinker and saw-bone to the wounded, ah coped. Ah did. Yes. Through sheer power of will, ah managed.
But to think that ah spent all of mah time tucked away inside the confines of mah Kingdom, immersed in domestic duties, would be a great mistake. O no. Many times – countless times – ah trudged the east and west-side slopes, setting traps or bagging catches or walking about the foothills, climbing the trees that grew on each side of the valley, or just sitting. Sitting up in those trees and thinking. Listening to the brag and bully of some of mah mind-preachers. And there were the night-stalks and the day-raids on the houses around the outer periphery – just to steal a couple of tins of peaches from the pantry or maybe a can of spirit oil from the shed. There were the storage sheds on Hooper’s Hill and three big toolsheds over by the refinery, full of the most incredible things. The most incredible things. Ah think ah made innumerable visits to these, ah can’t rightly remember. But to be truthful, most of the time ah spent outside the fortress ah just lay low and watched other people live.
And her. Ah watched her a lot.
The foundling the townsfolk took to be their own. The child that the Ukulites have all but canonized. The one, they say, who soothed the wrath of Heaven. The girl-child who brought with her the sun. God’s gift to the penitent. The miracle. Beth.
Ah watched Beth a lot. But did ah tell you about how other times ah would go stealing?
Was Beth delivered to the Ukulites merely as a sign of the end of their castigation? Or was there a greater purpose behind Beth’s presence in the valley? As the child grew older, there were many women amongst the Ukulites who were wont to suggest another reason for Beth’s existence, a purpose with great and far-reaching implications.
Ah would creep down into the valley, a hessian sack over mah shoulder.
As Beth’s well-being was the most important factor in the Ukulites’ lives, and as the tending of the little girl was women’s work, Sardus watched his child drift further and further from his sphere of influence. In fact, the entire Ukulite sect, whether they realized it or not, was fast becoming an out and out gynaecocracy, controlled by a gaggle of superstitious, gossip-guttling crones, spinsters and widows. They even went as far as to hold clandestine meets, in the early afternoons, to discuss the question of Beth. Then, later, to discuss the question of the preparation of Beth.
Ah would pick through their pantries – a tin of corned beef here, a half a cheese there, fresh eggs somewhere else. Sometimes ah stole from bedrooms – just little things, not money, just little things like a photograph of who ah was burglarizing or nail scissors or a knitting needle, you know. And ah would try to get their pets if ah could – but this is hard work and takes a little time.
It was not long before the crones decided that Beth herself should attend one or two of their meetings, for there were things she should know, things she should learn. Scared sick, Beth swore on a Bible never to tell Sardus of the meetings.
But most of all ah liked to watch her.
On one particular afternoon ah spied on a meeting of women. It was late spring, ah think, and hot as all fuck. Beth was there.
Ah squatted in a geranium patch beneath the living-room window. It was open an inch or two. Beth sat in a chair of black leather, away from the circle of nutant, nattering heads. She had slipped down in the chair, her hips jutting up and her young nut-coloured legs pushed forward so as to allow the breeze from the window to pass across their damp and downy brightness. Her thin arms dangled carelessly either side of the chair. She had her eyes closed and her head turned to one side feigning aleep, but she was listening. O, she was listening.
On squeaking rubber soles a small, compact woman in a white uniform – not from Ukulore Valley, that was clear – marched up the path without even seeing me. So starched and pursy was her gait that she looked neither left nor right but straight ahead. Judging by the red cross on the front of her white cardboard hat, and the pale grey cape across her shoulders, ah figured her to be some high-ranking canoness or Madam Superior of a neighbouring sect, brought in for advice. Trotting up the steps to the front door she dealt a short, sharp rap upon the frosted glass panel. The door opened immediately and a voice from inside enquired ‘Nurse Dethridge?’ ‘Were you expecting someone else?’ replied Nurse Dethridge, as rudely and without further ado she pushed inside, greeting the ladies en masse with a brisk nod.
Beth opened her eyes and her body tensed at the sight of the nurse. She pulled the hem of her smock down over her knees and continued to stare at the stranger.
Mrs Eldridge spoke from her worn-out wheelchair, in a manner that said, to me at least, ‘This crippled witch has talked to many such nurses. She will not be intimidated. She knows from experience the exact matter-of-factness that she needs to employ. She has known many, many such nurses.’
Mrs Eldridge said, ‘You’re to take a look at Beth. See if she is still intact. She is. There can be no mistake there. Then we want a full medical testimony, signed by yourself, certifying explicitly that Beth was in full possession of her virginity at the time of your examination.’
Nurse Dethridge was already pulling on a pair of thin rubber gloves. No one had acknowledged the presence of Beth as far as ah could see. ‘We shall see,’ said the nurse, and Widow Roth, upon whose home this gathering of hags had converged, piped up, ‘You can use this room,’ making an unnecessary gesture toward a doorway which the nurse was already shepherding the child through. You could see it in her eyes – the crying getting ready to flow, getting ready to go. The rubber hand of the nurse pulled the door closed behind her.
Ten minutes later, rubber gloves gone and white gloves on, her buttocks clenched beneath her tight, bright uniform, Nurse Dethridge marched out of the front door and down the cobbled path, her shoes squeaking as she retreated off to a death in the west somewhere. Off to a death in the west somewhere. Off to a death in the west somewhere.
Ah saw all this from a crouch, bloom height, through a bank of pinking geraniums and bobbing bees. The heady, pollinated air was bitter to taste.
Inside, Mrs Eldridge held the medical certificate in her arthritic claws like a sea-bird with a scrap of beach trash. The black-clad sorority converged upon her, squinting and craning through spectacles, silent but for the odd expulsion of kept breath, the knowing coos and clucks and occasional whispered word of compliance. Then ah heard a pithy ‘A-men’ and the squeal of hard rubber tyres on the wood floor as the cripple paired the huddled group and wheeled herself toward the examination room. The gaggle obediently followed, saying flatly ‘A-men’ in response.
Beth already stood in the doorway. Her face was raw and stung with tears. She stared at the floor, then raised her head and looked to the women, a question riding the contours of her face. But she found no voice to express it. The women all nodded and smiled, grotesque in their cognition.
In the starker months, ah found mahself enthroned in mah shack, watching mah subjects in silence, or on guard duty in mah turret – but come springtime, ah found the… itch to leave the Kingdom too persistent to ignore, and the sport of night-stalking would take precedence over mah many other roles as ruler. As spring became summer, and mah insomnia drove me beyond the bounds of mah jurisdiction, it is possible that ah was wont to neglect some of mah kingly responsibilities, preferring the thrills down in the valley below. Perhaps mah Kingdom suffered a little from mah negligence — ah don’t know. It is hard to gauge. Ah tried to feed mah subjects as often as ah remembered and most stayed alive – just looking a little crazier by the day. Ah mean, you should have seen the frenzy of gore if ah decided to reward one of the dogs with a piece of live meat! In a matter of seconds both kennel and dog would be strewn with blood and steaming bone, the bulk of the squeaking vermin indiscriminately gobbled up, skull and all. The bloody face of the carnivore, never satisfied, would tear at the wire frontage of the cage screaming for more.
Sometimes ah would wait in mah turret, the telescope directed at her house, dark and sleeping, below. Ah would wait for her signal. And sure enough, around the midnight hour, the lamp at her window would be turned up and its sticky yellow light would spill across the porch. It was then that ah would go down.
After ah saw a pattern emerge in her midnight vigils, ah would often find mahself staked out amongst the myriad shadows of Memorial Square – crouched in lidless agitation, mah heart bailing blood to a fury of palpitations as if driven by some ramping slave-drum that threatened to alert the sleeping township of mah forbidden emprise. Owl hoots, lunar moonings, cricket shrill, shadow scuttle and the crackle of bat radar – such were the meagre comforters left untended by the shut of day.
It took me some time before ah could summon the courage actually to stand at her window, but step by step, night by night, ah ventured closer. Eventually ah was able to creep bootless on to her porch and, hidden in the shadows of hedgerow or pressed against the weatherboard wall, ah would lurk by her window, prick-eared for the creak of bedsprings and the rustle of starched bedding prelusive to the flimmering lamplight. A block of sticky light would blink upon the porch and it was then that ah would peer in. She would be sitting in her white nightdress, legs slung over the edge of the bed in the quiet abandon, so reminiscent of her mother, that was inherent in her every action. Her head inclined as if in prayer, her back to the window. Always she kept her body turned away from the window. The room swelled with yolky light.
And there she would sit and there ah would stand, saying nothing, but locked, both of us, in a cocoon of expectant, anticipatory silence. She would sometimes release a weary sigh or stifle a yawn – and me, ah would be engaged in terrible battle with mah whining breaths and bloodbeats, mah braided arm sliced by the lamplight as ah stood there by the window, half in the light, half out.
It occurs to me now how similar was the thrill ah experienced in watching this child on her nightly vigils to that experienced over a decade ago, when ah would press mah face up to a certain window of a certain pink caravan parked up on Hooper’s Hill, and watch the sweet and salacious rituals of harlotry in progress. How similar, yet how very different. Yet how very vital to His greater plan were they both.
And time passed. Mine in the watching. Hers in the waiting.
And then something strange happened. Something truly strange. Listen. One night a ring of white light flashed upon the wall above Beth’s head and it seemed to hover there like a halo. Beth gasped when she saw it and seemed to become transfixed by its saltatory fulgence. Ah craned to take a better view of this mantic manifestation – this margarite conjuration – this uninvited third party. Ah loomed closer, and in that moment the light seemed
Ah stiffed outright. Ah suffered a full-on fucking blooding like ah had never known. Ah considered running. Hiding. Exploding. A trickle of blood ran from mah nose, splatting on the porch boards between mah feet. A tide of blood surged in mah face – mah head – and ah felt as though mah skull would split in half such was the pressure. Ah saw everything through a crimson film. New veins erupted beneath the skin. Mah brains ached horribly. Mah whistle-wheeze rose an octave and across town ah thought ah heard a dog bark. But she did not stir – not Beth – she did not turn around. Instead she spoke, her strange words chiming softly.