My Friend Matt and Hena The Whore Read online

  The drum beat gets sharper higher quicker, faster higher faster faster so it don’t sound like a drum beat at all.

  ‘Guns.’ I hear a voice.

  ‘Helicopter…’

  ‘Take cover…’

  ‘Hide…’

  ‘Bullets…’

  I hear screams I hear names I hear shouts I hear cries I hear names I hear guns I hear bullets I hear myself.

  I am crying.

  I hope Matt don’t see me crying.

  I look towards him but can’t see him. All I see is streaks of fire in the sky. Sharp spitting fires, nothing like the gentle torches of the Spirit of Light.

  Suddenly all is darkness and silence. Silence except for the buzz buzzing which also starts to grow gentler and softer, like Matt’s lullaby, and then fades out altogether.

  My eyes are living and my ears are living and my arms and legs are living and I am sitting up straight right as sunshine. But my brain is sure feeling poorly. It’s not top of the world at its best, but at this time it is right down at the bottom.

  I see things and I hear things but I don’t understand half of it.

  Some people carrying flame poles are moving around looking for friends or relatives.

  Someone shouts, ‘Put those bloody fires out. They’ll only bloody come back and finish the rest of us.’ But nobody takes notice.

  People are thrown all over the place like so much litter. Some are lying stark still some are moving in jerky movements. Some are sitting down shaking some trying to get up some doing nothing at all. Some are silent some talking to others or to themselves some crying. Some have bullet wounds some are cut by metal some burnt by falling flame poles.

  Two men sitting in front of me are having a quiet argument like they are by their food fire.

  ‘So it’s started. Really started. I always knew it would.’

  ‘Probably wouldn’t have if some damn fool hadn’t blown up a whole hutful of their guns and ammo the other night.’

  ‘They’d have started anyway. They were just building up supplies and hiring more killers.’

  ‘It’s their revenge for some smart asshole being too clever for anybody’s good.’

  ‘It was coming, no matter what you say. At least some of their murder weapons are gone. I say all praise to the one who did it.’

  ‘It’s we who have to pay with our lives and homes…’

  My hand feels wet. I look at it. It is red with blood. I just look at it. There is no pain. It is not my blood. It is the blood of Jon who lies next to me with her flesh a mess. Next to her Donna is lying very still, with no wound that I can see. Kofi is sitting between them, quietly, saying nothing, doing nothing. I wish he wouldn’t just sit there, but he just sits there, quietly; saying nothing, doing nothing, seeing nothing.

  Matt, Golam, Hena and me carry the bodies of Jon and Donna and bring them back to the tent. Kofi follows us like he’s walking in his sleep. When we remove Jon’s blouse to clean her and make her look nice for the Spirits to take her away we see that she has no breasts like a woman. We wonder but we say nothing. We also wonder how Donna died as there is not a mark on his body; but again we say nothing.

  Kofi suddenly starts explaining, more as if he is talking to himself than to us.

  ‘They were brothers, twins. Always thought and spoke alike. Did everything together. Got paid good money at circuses and freak shows. Not much, but enough for food and a bit left over.

  ‘One day they were both getting ready for a show. For a change they decided to dress up as women. As it happened the man organising the show got talking to Don. Donna he called himself later, just for the fun of it. When it was time for their act only Jon was ready to come as a woman. The show went down really well. People didn’t think too much of twin brothers talking alike, but they were very surprised to see a man midget and his wife midget – that’s what they pretended to be – thinking and talking together. It worked so well they kept the same act ever since.

  ‘I guess the Spirits did come to the Dance tonight. The twin Spirits of Death. Death that parts and Death that unites.’

  Part II

  GOLAM’S COW

  (two years later)

  One

  The Missionary’s Balls and Aunt Tima

  Two years have gone by since our trip to Gonta to see the Spirit Dance.

  We’ve had many worries on our minds all this while.

  One of the big new ones is how to find out if white men have three balls.

  Matt says they have. Matt says that’s why they rule the world on account three balls give you more power than two. He says it’s a known fact.

  At first we think he’s joking and having us on, as he sometimes does. Like the day he said, all serious, ‘If you wanna learn to fly you oughta take a prickly lizard up your bum.’

  Now that’s an easy one. Anybody’d fly up in the air if a prickly lizard went up their bum. It’s only natural.

  But sometimes he comes up with truly tricky ones that leave you wondering. Like this thing about white men and three balls. It don’t sound natural to me.

  But he has this picture with him. No one knows how he got it and he’s not saying. Of course it’s an old picture and has been through the hands of thousands of people thousands of times so it’s all smudgy and cracked and not very clear. But it’s the picture of a naked man. A naked white man, of that there’s no mistaking. You can see him standing, slightly bent forward, all pink – smudgy pink – and naked. There is another white man behind him, more straight. You can hardly see his body but you can see his face quite clear. It’s the clearest part of the picture on account no one looks at it much, but I do. He has his arms round the shoulders of the man in front and a truly happy grin on his mouth. He’s looking up a little, chin forward, eyes half closed half open – seeing and not seeing. Like his mind is on higher things.

  The man in front has his rude part all swollen and red and hard. Hanging below are his balls, as you’d expect and nothing unnatural in that. Only next to the pair is what looks for all the world like an extra ball.

  ‘Maybe he’s a freak,’ says Golam.

  Like those people in the circus, I think. I think but I don’t say it. We don’t like talking about that.

  ‘Yes, maybe he is,’ I say. ‘Maybe they took his rude picture to show him off.’

  ‘And maybe he don’t like to be shown off,’ Golam goes, ‘that’s why they have this other man holding him down.’

  But Matt says, ‘Then why is white men kings? There’s got to be something extra. Stands to reason.’

  ‘How’d you know white men is kings?’ says Golam.

  We all look at him, pleased for we are thinking the same.

  ‘Why everybody knows that!’ goes Matt, throwing his hands up in the air. ‘Surely,’ he adds looking at each of us in turn.

  We can’t fault that. We’re still not sure though. Leastwise not about the extra ball.

  The trouble is how to find out, one way or the other. The only white man in the village is the missionary bloke. He’s been here for seven months helping with the school, and has saved Matt’s soul. He has this jeep and travels to many villages but stays in our village on account there are more trees in our village and better fields and more food. Of course Gonta and towns to the west of us are even better off, but they have their own missionary bloke, only he is black like the rest of us. Not white like our own special one.

  Now we can’t very well go to this missionary bloke of ours and say, ‘Sir, may we have a look at your balls, Sir?’

  Especially as he don’t like being called Sir.

  He wants us to call him Tom which is his name. But my Dada says you shouldn’t call older people by their names on account it is disrespectful, so I get truly confused. But no matter, Sir or Tom, I can’t go and ask to see his balls.

  Matt says you don’t have to ask to really ‘see’ them. Just ask to tell you if he has two or three. ‘He is not going to lie, is he?’ asks Matt. ‘After all
, he is a man of God.’

  But I’m not sure he can’t tell a lie just because he happens to be a missionary bloke. Anyone can lie, especially over something as important and personal as this. Besides, Grandma Toughtits don’t believe what he says!

  What’s more I can’t very well ask him that either. ‘Sir, Tom, have you got three balls? You don’t have to show me them, just say yes or no and I’ll believe you.’

  I can’t do that, and although Matt says there is no harm in it he won’t do it himself.

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ I say. ‘You’ve had your soul saved by him and your name changed and your head drowned in water. You know him best.’ Sounds fair to me.

  He says he don’t doubt it, so there’s no cause for him to ask. We doubt it so we should ask. This sounds fair as well so it makes it worse for us to argue.

  ‘Don’t say “balls, Sir”, say “testicles, Tom”,’ goes Matt, then stops as if to think and goes again, ‘On the other hand “balls” is friendly like and so is “Tom”, while “Sir” and “testicles” are both proper; so perhaps it should be “testicles, Sir” or “balls, Tom”.’

  But I won’t say any of it. Neither will Golam. Nor any of our other friends. Hena might for she’s not afraid of anything or anyone. But we can’t ask her to ask, being ‘a delicate issue, strictly among us men’, as Matt says, going all posh.

  This makes us all the more determined to find out.

  We make a promise by our little tree on our little hill that we’ll know before the season changes.

  In the meantime there are other worries.

  My Dada is more worried about the rains. So is Golam. He don’t have a Dada so he has to do his worrying for him.

  Water in the river don’t move fast any more and water in the water-holes is going down.

  We’re lucky being in a sort of a flat valley which helps to store water. Also we’re near the woods which helps some more. But everybody looks worried. Even Hena’s Dada don’t tell his stupid jokes to everyone all the time like he used to.

  The stories we hear of other villages are not good stories.

  *

  But we hear good news as well.

  My cousin Joti’s coming from the big city to see his Mam, and the rest of the village. He’s coming to see his Mam for she’s not feeling well. She is really but she wrote him saying she isn’t so he will come to see her. He’s been home only once in the last four years and that was before our walk to Gonta for the Spirit Dance.

  He ran away from home to go to Bader when he was thirteen. He was a big good-looking lad, like most in our family. He was also plucky and much too sharp, not like most in our family. Life in our little village was never for him. There’s no future here, he’d always say: always restless; always wanting this or that; always falling out with folk – his own or other people’s; always getting into trouble. He’d hear stories about the big city from the travelling people who’d pass through our village with their animals looking for water and food and grass and rest. They don’t come around much any more. Anyway, one evening in late autumn when leaves were dying and the travelling people were pulling out their tents and moving west to the big city for their winter supplies, Joti goes and hides in one of their donkey packs. That’s the last we see of him.

  One year and seven months later we get this huge box from Bader brought to our house by the head of the village himself. The Master closes the school so that everybody can come to our house to see what’s in it and who it’s from. The Master uses the special school scissors – which he normally guards with his life on account they were a special gift to the school from the Government along with ten packets of paper and one dozen pencils and one dozen biro pens – to cut open the flaps of the big box.

  In it are shawls for Uncle Jam and Aunt Tima, Joti’s Mam and Dada. And shoes and coloured beads for the neck and arms and the ears and best of all chocolate.

  That is the first time I ever have chocolate.

  Also in the box are beautiful scarves for the entire village and hundreds of other things I don’t remember any more. Strangest of all was this hat for Grandma Toughtits. It was in a special box of its own within the big box and we kept it to the last not daring to open it in case there was some magic in it which might escape if we did. This hat, made of some pink cloth we’ve never seen before, is covered with flowers which look and even smell real but are not.

  Grandma Toughtits (who’d kill me if she knew I called her Grandma Toughtits – her true name is Grandma Pearl) keeps this hat on the wall next to her bath oils which she uses on her body when she dances for the Spirits. She never wears the hat as she says it is much too good for her old head, but she’d rather part with her life than give it to anyone who’d be only too happy to put it on, like my Mam for one.

  Also in the big box is a letter from Joti saying how well he is doing working in a big hotel. He don’t say doing what but no one stops to think, at least not long enough to ask. There ain’t no one to ask anyway.

  What truly leaves us with our mouths open and nothing to say are these photos of Joti.

  Lovely shiny photos in full colour.

  Joti is in a black white man’s suit by a piano – it says ‘piano’ on the back of the photo.

  Joti in a white man’s suit sitting in a grand chair covered with leather and buttons.

  Joti in a vest and shorts outside this house I don’t believe is real, by this car I don’t believe is real.

  Five months later comes Joti himself. I don’t believe he is real. He is dressed up grander than his photos.

  He comes in this car. But the car is not grand. In fact it is somewhat falling apart. Joti says he can’t bring a fancy car on our dust roads on account it’d be killed off by the bumps and the rocks. So he brings one that’s sort of dead already and we all agree and praise him for his wisdom.

  That’s two years ago.

  We hear nothing from him after that except a short letter on the back of a picture which is the picture of a house which could be the palace of the king of paradise.

  Aunt Tima then starts writing to him saying she is poorly but he takes no notice. He don’t believe her, I’m sure. Neither would I, for Aunt Tima don’t like truth much and everyone in the village knows that so it’s not surprising her son does.

  Then she makes his Dada write saying to him she’s dying. Now Uncle Jam don’t normally lie but he does on account he too is lonely for his son. Also he feels he isn’t really lying for in a sense Aunt Tima is dying, same as everyone else. No one lives for ever and ever, nor will Aunt Tima – though there are those who think so – so it is truly not a lie.

  It works, for Joti writes back he is coming this twenty-seventh day of the seventh month.

  Today is that day.

  Uncle Jam and Aunt Tima have still not sorted out between them whether to tell Joti the truth when he gets there or not. The truth about Aunt Tima not being quite ready for death. The rest of the village will go along with what they say only they can’t make up their minds what to say. Or rather they have made up their minds what to say but their minds are different to one another and so of no use to either.

  Uncle Jam, as you might’ve guessed already, wants to tell the truth. But Aunt Tima says: first, it’ll hurt him to know that we’ve lied to him; and second, he’ll go away and not come ever again, leastwise not for a long time. This way, if he believes his Mam to be dying, he may decide to stay back, or at least keep more in touch if he goes. Uncle Jam is pleased with this last thought but he says it’s not fair to Joti to keep him back if he’s doing so well for himself in the big city, nor is it fair to keep him worried if he does go regardless. As to not hurting him, he can’t see how it can be right to tell him a lie because it’s wrong to have told him a lie. If it was hurtful lying to him once, it’ll be more hurtful lying to him again, he says. But Aunt Tima says that was all for a good reason and so is this.

  The rest of the village listens to this and waits for them to decide so it c
an think of the right words to back them up when the time comes.

  In the end, as you might’ve guessed again, Aunt Tima wins.

  I don’t think Joti will be fooled for longer than a breath, being sharper than a shrew’s tongue, but Matt says you can’t tell. Matt says Joti loves his Mam, like every man does – some women too – and love, being stronger than the mind, wins.

  I say, ‘I’ll take a bet Joti don’t believe his Mam. That’ll prove you wrong.’

  ‘If Uncle Jam truly says Aunt Tima is dying and Joti don’t believe it, it won’t prove me wrong,’ Matt says back to me, ‘it’ll only prove he’s in the power of something stronger than love.’

  That’s an easy way out, I think.

  ‘And what,’ I ask in my cleverest voice, ‘is stronger than love?’

  ‘Lack of love,’ says Matt.

  I give up.

  *

  The day comes and the day goes, but no Joti.

  We line up by the big sand and stone road into the village, first altogether, then in small groups. But no Joti.

  The sun sets and hopes fade. We feel Aunt Tima is really going to die she’s so upset. Uncle Jam is worse though he don’t let on so much.

  Grandma Toughtits rubs oil over her body, wraps her clean shawl about her head, bows to the Spirits and starts dancing.

  She dances out of the house, into the front yard and then dances her way to the village centre. She raises her long eyes and her long arms and her long hands with their long fingers up to the skies as her tall thin body moves with and against the gently rising winds.

  The big bright moon shines on her happily, making her look young and beautiful instead of old and beautiful. I get a bit worried, but the look in her eyes is still old and gentle and wise. I quickly say my thank you to the Spirits for not making her truly young again.

  Her feet make the sand restless. The winds make the sand restless. The sand moves and moans not knowing what to do or where to go.