The View from Mount Dog (20 page)

‘It’s true,’ said the father. Through the doorway into the kitchen the early sunlight fell on a cameo inside. On the table stood his two youngest daughters, five and seven, each holding a leg and a wing apiece while his wife began sawing away at the neck of the chicken through a bald patch she had plucked. Since the knife was blunt she twisted the bird’s head back until there was a U-bend in the neck at which point the blade sliced easily in. Blood began pulsing into the enamel bowl she held, as rich in the light as melted rubies, until it became a dribble, then a drip. What might have been a final crow (it had the right rhythm) produced a froth of pink bubbles at the gash. The little girls began shaking the legs energetically, still pinioning the wings at the joints to prevent the spasmic flapping. When they thought there was no blood left to shake down they dropped the bird on the table and picked up the next with squeaks of excited pleasure.

‘You could try sharpening the knife,’ Jhonny called in to his wife.

‘True.’

One of his children handed out the killed bird to Jhonny, who dipped its head experimentally into the wok of boiling water. Its wings moved convulsively, the tip of one of them catching the surface and spattering both men with scalding drops.

‘Ow!’ they cried and laughed. ‘Dead now,’ Jhonny added as he let the rest of the chicken sink into the water for a moment before pulling it out and setting to with the plucking. The feathers came out very easily by the handful.

‘I know I’m right, Siyo,’ he persisted, but now in a quiet, resigned sort of voice. ‘You think I say terrible things, but I
don’t. I’m just describing things which are terrible. You see the difference?’

‘Not really. But, then, I’ve still got a hangover.’ Siyo’s slight attempt at humour fell like the sodden feathers beneath his friend’s hands.

‘I say that Boyet won’t come back. Oh, today he might; he probably will. Why else send a telegram? They’re expensive. But how often has he come home in the last three years? Three times? Four times? How many other sons away at college have you ever heard of doing that? Arentin’s boy, Nomer, for example. Comes home every vacation for weeks and always once every semester. Goes fishing with his old friends, mends his father’s nets, makes crab traps.
Reads
a lot in between, but of course he has to. What I mean is, he acts normally. When he comes back he does the same things he always did, the things any of us do.’ He laid the stiff bird on the ground, its naked waxy flesh dotted with tiny beads of yellow oil leached out by the boiling water and now flared by the sun into fragments of topaz. A child came running out of the house, scooped up the bird and dumped a still-flapping body in its place.

‘Perhaps Boyet’s bored doing that.’

‘Bored.’ Jhonny looked carefully at his friend before plunging the fresh chicken entirely into the wok with a decisive thrust. Again the wings went, but this time only weakly, sending wavelets over the rim and hissing into the embers. ‘
Bored
. Well, I’m so sorry we can’t entertain him to his new standards. I agree if you’re used to television and refrigerators and … and’ – Jhonny struggled to imagine some exotic luxury – ‘electric typewriting machines and films and night-clubs and hospitality girls, then, yes, I agree, it’s not the same thing living in a wooden house with earth floors and kerosene-lamps made out of peanut-butter jars.’

‘
Jhonny!
’ Siyo slapped the ground on which he was squatting. He was actually as much upset by his friend’s implied lack of respect for education in general as he was by his unfatherly bitterness. Some things were beyond questioning. ‘That’s enough. You’re just working yourself into one of your moods because Boyet’s a bit late. Poor boy, the ferry probably broke. What sort of a welcome will he get when he does arrive?’

‘Not a bad one,’ said his father. ‘Quite a blow-out, in fact.’

‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’

‘I know something else, Siyo old friend. He despises
us. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘He does, you know.’ Jhonny’s voice had taken on a faint surprise as if he were listening to his own mouth talk and hearing it say things he hadn’t quite thought of yet. ‘Me. Rubie. You, too. All of us. Not hate, of course. But to despise people is even worse. It’s all those books…. You remember the few times he’s condescended to return home to see if his family were still more or less alive? You remember his conversation – if you can call it that? Lecturing us about phil … phil … philoposopy or something and what was that other thing? About money?’

‘Macroeconomic theory,’ said Siyo, whose memory was notoriously excellent when he was drunk even though as in this case his understanding was nil.

‘That’s it. My God, how he bored
us.
We all sat there for hour after hour being lectured. He wouldn’t let Laki sing his songs and he wouldn’t allow the children to sleep…. How could you possibly remember what it was called?’ he asked his friend with sudden admiration. ‘You were wonderful; you saved the day.’

‘Did I?’ asked Siyo, pleased.

‘You know you did; enough people told you next morning. You just sat in the corner drinking rum in complete silence for an hour or two before suddenly toppling over like a dead ox, out cold, and letting off this gigantic fart. God, how we all laughed. Boyet didn’t, though; not a bit. He was sitting there with a sort of disdainful smile as if to say “Yes. That’s the peasantry for you.” He never did have much sense of humour, the little bugger, especially about himself, but I don’t know how anybody could have kept a straight face. There he was, droning on about books, books, books, and everybody’s in a doze or wanting to pee and suddenly there’s dear old Siyo, flat on his face with a great
Prrrrrrrt
!’

Both men were now laughing reminiscently and it was the
moment
juste
for the absent Boyet suddenly to arrive. But he didn’t, and they went on scalding and plucking, each giving private guffaws as the memory struck them afresh.

He didn’t arrive and he didn’t arrive and by eleven-thirty so many other people had turned up and so many of those were already slightly tipsy it was obvious that in some undeclared way the proceedings had started without the guest of honour. After a certain point in his own hesitancy had been reached
Jhonny himself began drinking with the other men, sitting at a small table outside while the women kept them supplied with bowls of snacks. By then Tiger had been transmogrified with all sorts of culinary skill into roast Tiger, boiled Tiger, Tiger stew and Tiger done in coconut milk, very rich and creamy. Tiger’s intestines had been cooked and glazed and were now served on slivers of bamboo to the drinkers. Everyone complimented Jhonny on his late puppy. ‘Good dog,’ they observed. ‘Good dog.’

Jhonny’s mood had changed once more. He beamed with pleasure, he became expansive, he became drunk. As if by some general agreement Boyet was not mentioned, so that when he came his arrival would bring all the pleasure of a genuine surprise. Inside the house the women stirred pots, tippled and made lewd jokes. Outside the house the men made lewd jokes, tippled and just plain stirred. Now and again a wife or a grandmother would come out and sit with them and the gossiping would merrily take a turn for the worse. In between and all around ran the children. Laki arrived bringing his battered bamboo guitar; Sanso wandered off looking for a wild lime-bush for leaves with which to accompany him; Kedo brought his banjo made of a turtle-shell covered with dogskin. The palm beer which had arrived fresh in thick bamboo containers still sweet and mild became stronger and more acrid. On the table was a large Nescafé jar of it fermenting rapidly, the currents set up by bacterial action bringing to the surface dead palm-flowers and insects before carrying them back down to the bottom in a continuous seethe.

The songs started, all the old favourites. People joined in or talked over them or fell into light stupor, eating mechanically and tossing inedible fragments to scavenging pigs and chickens and to the dogs who happily crunched away on the bones of their recent playmate. Groups went into the house in relays to eat because there was no table big enough to hold everybody at a single sitting. Huge heaps of rice were consumed and still more came. At two o’clock Jhonny got to his feet and stretched his tough old arms.

‘Feeling good,’ he said. Clearly it was a sign, for several people looked up at the swaying paterfamilias.

‘Go on,’ Siyo urged him. ‘Do you good.’

‘Yes, go on, go on,’ the chorus was taken up. ‘Do it now or you’ll be too drunk.’ ‘It’s ages since you last did it.’
‘Bet you can’t.’ ‘Too old.’

‘Bugger off, the lot of you,’ said Jhonny good-naturedly and crossed to the nearest palm-tree, a venerable sixty-foot giant which must have been well over half a century old and thus nearing the end of its productive life. Chairs were pushed back and children gathered round the bulbous roots. Without more ado Jhonny did a handstand against the base of the tree, turned round so that his nose appeared to be sniffing the bark and, gripping with the sides of his horny feet, began to climb upside down.

It was a famous trick. Many youngsters proud of their strength had tried, but only Jhonny could do it: forty-year-old Jhonny, apparently burned up with endless work and drink and cigarettes, turned out – upside down at least – to be nothing of the sort. And now the strain on his immense arms could be seen; gasps of effort floated down to the onlookers as the inside edges of his soles groped for the staggered slots long ago cut into the trunk to aid the regular ascent of more conventional climbers. The backs of his polished legs bulged and writhed. A forgotten box of matches fell out of the pocket of his shorts and bounced off the head of a child. Everyone laughed and, seeing that Jhonny had nearly reached the crown, began encouraging him: ‘Only a metre and a half, Jhon-boy; go on, lad, you’re there.’ For everybody knew the extreme effort, how the agony in the back and arms was only half over for him: the descent was just as bad with arms quaking with fatigue, the head-first fall of sixty feet down the curving trunk ever more likely. His wife turned away. She hated his doing it while at the same time feeling a pride which made her eyes prickle, especially when a bit drunk as she now was. There was nobody else who could do it. People had heard of only one other man able to do it and he had lived ten miles away and died twenty years ago. She risked a quick glance. Her husband was halfway down now, and she knew that once more he was going to finish safely, drink or no drink, forty years old or not.

When Jhonny’s hands reached the roots the waiting onlookers gave a great cheer and lifted him bodily off the trunk, turning him up the right way. His eyes were closed, his face was black, his legs were gone, so they carried him to the house and laid him in the shade and stood over him until he had stopped panting and opened his eyes.

‘
Ahh
,’ he sighed, half-lost for faintness. ‘That calls for a drink.’

This was the sign for another great cheer and a general rush to offer glasses, bottles, containers of drink. Jhonny seized the Nescafé jar and gulped down its contents, dead bees and all.

‘Unbelievable.’ ‘The man’s ageless.’ ‘It’s not quite human.’

The pride, the affection, the
solidarity
engendered by Jhonny’s feat, which had brought alcoholic tears to the eyes of many more than his wife, if the truth be told, had so concentrated their attention that the presence of a bystander had gone unnoticed. Standing somewhat apart in brilliant white trousers and holding an attaché case, he was watching with cool gaze.

‘Father up to his monkey tricks again,’ he said. An awful silence fell.

‘Ah,’ said Jhonny again, sitting up now and wiping his mouth on his stained T-shirt. ‘Boyet. Good of you to come, son.’

‘I fear too late to catch the whole of your performance,’ said Boyet. ‘I’m sorry about that. The stupid boat broke down, can you believe it?’ He looked round at the faces he’d known since infancy, at Laki with his guitar and Kedo with his turtle-banjo and the whole familiar, endlessly repeating pattern of relentless parochialism. ‘I had to stand in the sun on deck for two whole hours while those idiots did their usual trick of trying to repair a prehistoric engine with hammers and string. Bodging; absolutely typical. It really is high time people in this country got their act together. Anyway, I’m sorry to be late,’ he said again, as if to offset any gracelessness his rufflement might have caused. ‘Now I am here I can see I’d better change.’

He went into the house, keeping his shoes on, his mother following him with the gleaming attaché case.

‘“Monkey-tricks”,’ Siyo heard Jhonny mutter.

‘Joke only,’ he told his friend earnestly, but the phrase undermined everything. Nobody else was paying any attention, however, being busy with expressing pleasure at the son of the house’s sudden return and the confirmatory power of his father’s prowess.

‘Happy birthday!’ they shouted towards the house. ‘Drink, Jhonny; relax now. Everything’s OK. You’ve earned it.’

Kedo began strumming on the banjo, someone took up a song, and Sanso held his leaf edge-on to his bottom lip and began a piercing, wavering accompaniment. The high, doleful whistle cut through the din with its reassuring familiarity, reminding everyone of countless evenings’ home-made conviviality in countless huts dotted among the coconut-groves, the
sound so perfectly redolent of palm beer turned sour with its own vinegar, with raising and killing, with the sharpness of tears falling impotently on thin and wiry forearms grasping a variety of crude everyday implements. People began to be very drunk indeed, Jhonny most of all, swallowing great draughts of anything he could lay his hands on with a kind of single-minded recklessness. The morning’s sunlight had given way to cloud; a light rain fell, driving everybody into the house, cramming it so full that they were jammed thigh to thigh on the bamboo floor, their sandals in a great jumbled heap down below in the mud at the foot of the steps. Boyet was off in one of the cubicles; his voice could be heard rising above the woven partition, protesting to his mother and sisters. It went on and on.