Black Juice Read online

  They pushed him up onto the wooden place; they thrust him to his knees there. And someone else had arrived. His close-suit, entirely blue-black, was like a slice of starless night. It covered his face, and stank. Peeple always move too quickly, but this happened in the taking of a single breath. No sooner had we seen him than the blue-black man was making the light flash from the blade, into all parts of the crowd. We were a row of confusions, locked in our mass, as self-less as boulders of the plain.

  Then our little ragged one, our Pippit, lifted his head. His hair like dirty ribbons fell back from his face, and he saw us through his staring tear-filled eyes, and knew us.

  His knowledge clanked closed upon us like the most welcome leg-iron. His mouth moved on the beloved sound of his command. All of us—in a vast sudden relief at having someone to obey, after our weeks of being chivvied by frightened peeple with sticks, after our days of wandering in the wilderness—all of us lowered our haunches and hoisted our heads and forelegs, to stand giant, to show our true height.

  The peeple cleared around us like dust from a sharp blow of breath. Pippit commanded again, and I spoke back as he told me, as did my sisters and our mother our queen. The peeple ran farther away. We spoke with our entire hearts and our full bulk, and every arch and column shook with the noise.

  Pippit’s voice singled out Booroondoon. The rest of us stood giant, proclaiming our hugeness, trumpeting our obedience and our love.

  Their eyes were all in a row, says Booroondoon now, like children peeping over our garden wall, the men’s who held him. The blade-man, he saw me coming; he knew what Pippit was commanding. It happened all so fast—he lifted his sword—he leaped, he was upon Pippit!—and what could I do?

  Nothing but what you did, we reassure her—although, when we saw her fling that blue-black rag out among the peeple, we knew it was a terrible thing she had been driven to.

  And then I could just push the others away. Them I did not injure, those ones, did I? They stepped back quietly; they had no swords, you see, and they had seen what I did to the first—so in hurting one I saved at least two—

  Also, you had him—

  ‘I have him!’ she rumbled to us, and Pippit called us in his bird-voice, even as she swung him onto her head. We moved towards our accustomed order. But seeing Pippit so small and unprotected at our head, and knowing the peeple wished him dead, I pushed forward to precede Booroondoon, as I would have for no other reason, and others came up to shelter him from peeple who might leap up from the sides. Out of the square we went, while the peeple foamed and cried and parted to let us through, and fell back farther as we left the paved part of the town, as we left the housed part, until there were only a few wide-eyed rubbish-pickers’ tinies by the road to watch us pass, with our prize on our head, our live, sweet Pippit, chattering and laughing and greeting us by our bird-names over and over.

  WHICH IS HOW WE COME TO BE HERE, on this long walk away from all we know. Since we left the road and the land began undulating, ‘Our Pippit may be leading us to the Forest Hills of legend,’ Hloorobn says eagerly.

  Booroondoon in her sadder moments says, ‘He may indeed be leading us into death, for I have never been this way before.’

  ‘And you have been near everywhere there is to be, our queen,’ says Gooroloom, ‘from the log-camp mountains, to the ports, to the road-making settlements all up and down.’

  Says Booroondoon, ‘Yet I know nothing of this place, not its rocks or its creatures, nor how Pippit chooses the way among ten hundred sandhills all the same.’

  ‘Who knows? Who minds?’ says Hloorobn happily.

  ‘None of us, that’s sure,’ says Gooroloom.

  And none of us does. For each evening our sweet Pippit brings us to water and good browsing, and each morning we wake to a spray of his hot little voice, to the blessing of his kisses and his touch as he walks among us. And he lifts us without spike and leads us without wrath. Singing, always singing, he moves us onward, into each brightening day.

  house of the many

  DOT WAS VERY YOUNG. He was in the Bard’s house, asking about things, watching his manners.

  ‘This?’ said the Bard, taking it down from his shelf. ‘This is the House of the Three, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Bard Jo.’ Dot sat himself to listen.

  The Bard sat, too, placing the worn brown box on the mat between them.

  ‘Can you tell me the names of the Three, boy?’

  ‘Anneh, Robbreh and Viljastramaratan.’

  The Bard nodded, and Dot glowed inside. ‘Anneh, she’s the one who wears the pants. She chops all the wood, she hoes the fields, picks the greens and cooks, and leads the animals around. We don’t know how she fits all that into her days, but she does, and all the time she’s humming and thrumming.’

  Dot saw the women bent to the vegetable fields, saw his mother’s hands, fine and strong and always busy.

  ‘Robbreh, he’s a typical man,’ said the Bard. ‘He wears the comfortable robes, and he spends all his time in the tea-tent talking wisdom with the Bard. He’s happy with very little, as everyone should be. His voice is like a heartbeat. It’s so low, it’s hard to hear, but it’s there all the time.’ He raised his gaze from the House of the Three to Dot’s face, and nodded reassuringly.

  ‘And Viljastramaratan?’ said Dot politely.

  The Bard rolled his eyes and made a bitter laugh in his throat. ‘Viljastramaratan? That one’s a mystery child. Viljastramaratan is not boy and is not girl, or is boy and girl together. Very high, like a mosquito, and distracting like that, and unrestful. Viljastramaratan is always bothering the other two to come and dance. They never do, of course; they just go about their ways and ignore him. So Viljastramaratan weaves song-stuff around them, crazier and crazier, finishing every time in a giggling heap. And when that’s quieted, we can hear Anneh and Robbreh again, steady in their song.’

  Dot had already heard the Three singing, of course, in snatches of breeze as he lay, sleepless nights, under the starry eye of his house’s smoke-hole. But he would not meet them properly until he got to his middlehood, and was allowed to stay up later in the tea-tent. Till then, he was only to hear them accidentally: Anneh thrumming, Robbreh pulsing, Viljastramaratan in wild play around them.

  The House of the Three was brown and fragile, like those dead people the wind sometimes uncovered, whose flesh when touched would turn to fine dust, blowing off the browned bones.

  ‘They only come out in autumn and spring, those Three,’ said the Bard, ‘when the air is damp and right for them. In the dry cold or the dry heat, they’re scared to dance and sing.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Dot. ‘They would break their own House.’

  ‘It takes Bard Jo and his gentle hands to coax them,’ said the Bard. His dark eyes were two points of safety; all sense came from them. ‘Only the Bard knows their House, and the corners where they like to hide. And the keys.’ Bard Jo’s white beard was trimmed short to show his strong chin; he touched one, then the other, of the box’s two yellow teeth with fingers kept neat by a wife.

  DOT DIDN’T KNOW HIS FATHER MORRI, but he must have been a little taller, a little darker, than anyone else Dot knew. Dot’s mother, Bonneh, had taken a vow at Morri’s death, and would not offer the Bard any more children than the ones she brought with her, Dot and his sister Ardent. How Dot’s mother had attached herself to the Bard’s people, no one Dot knew could tell him, but she stayed by being everywhere, by doing everything, tending the plants and animals all through the daylight, working up thread and cloth deep into every night.

  ‘EVERYBODY TELLS OF WHEN THEY FIRST MET THE BARD,’ said Dot to his mother.

  She went on grinding grain. Flicked a glance at him. ‘Oh, you want my story?’

  ‘Well, people ask me.’

  She ground a little more. ‘It’s not a story. I came out here and found him after Morri died. I wasn’t part of the big move away, right at the beginning. I came later, when my life had readie
d me for existence in the Bard’s ways.’

  Dot waited for more. ‘Go on.’

  She glanced up. ‘Go on what?’

  ‘They all say more than that. Like what happened when their mums first saw him.’

  Her eyes smiled. ‘How many of these kids has the Bard as their father?’

  ‘Not all,’ defended Dot.

  ‘’Cause it’s a love story for those ones. Mine is just a deal I did, like a merchant. Not a matter of the heart. It was a way to keep you and Ardent alive, in peace.’

  ‘Did you pay?’ said Dot, feeling sinful. He wasn’t supposed to be curious about money—none of the Bard’s people were.

  ‘I paid all we had, and all Morri had, and all Morri’s brother Temba had, who died in the same skirmish.’

  ‘Was that a lot?’ whispered Dot, feeling a little sick.

  Bonneh went back to grinding, one eyebrow raised. ‘I suppose,’ she said carelessly. He knew she was hoping he would let it lie, but when she next looked up he was still there waiting.

  ‘Well, my peach … on one side there was the money, and Morri’s … associates, bothering for it all the time. On the other side? Some distance, safety, my two babies, and being left alone. You know I hardly saw your babyhood, with the maids? You remember?’

  Dot shook his head. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been able to find her anywhere, and watch her hands in their work.

  ‘My father was a merchant, wasn’t he? Did you learn from him to make deals?’

  ‘My whole family were merchants and dealers. Like the Bard says, we were the core of the world’s troubles.’ She flashed him another smile. ‘We fuelled all the evil.’

  ‘But you repudiated that,’ said Dot, also bringing out some Bard-speak, but earnestly.

  ‘Well, I put it aside, let’s say. I was very bitter, after what happened to Morri.’ She pointed with her chin. ‘Move your sister now. That sunlight is starting to bother her.’

  Dot went to the other end of Ardent and pulled the cloth she lay on until her face was in shadow again. That word skirmish—for a long time Dot had thought it was some kind of party, with cakes and other immoral things.

  His friend Winsome tried not to laugh the day he mentioned that. ‘No, it’s a war thing,’ she said. ‘Like a tiny bit of war. Just a quick guns-going-off and then everyone runs away. Except, of course, the ones that gets killed.’

  ‘But guns go off at parties.’ Dot was momentarily confused; he’d had the cakes-and-colours picture in his mind for so long. ‘People shoot them in the air. I thought maybe the thing bounced off a ceiling or a wall and hit him. The bullet.’

  Winsome shook her head. She had the kindest look on her face. ‘Out on a road somewhere, it would have been,’ she said. ‘The truck goes past, and the men with the guns fire from behind a rock, or a building or something.’

  Dot had looked down through the Free-Stones game they’d been playing, making over his memory with this new information.

  ‘Something like that,’ said Winsome. She was anxious for him.

  He gave a sage, Bard-like nod. ‘It’s your throw,’ he said, to move them both on from their embarrassment.

  DOT’S SISTER, ARDENT, had got spoiled somehow, and never grew properly. She was even darker than Dot and Bonneh, and she was all elbows and knees. She was like a folding chair that was stuck halfway between open and closed. She could move her right arm a little; if you put things in that hand, she would appear to play with them. Her left elbow poked straight out in front; that hand was a claw at her right ear. Her eyes looked outward in different directions, and sometimes only one, sometimes neither, was able to fix on things.

  Ardent could lie on her left side only, or be carried around in a bag. Bonneh carried her on her back most of the time while she worked during the daylight, or put her under a shade tree nearby. Ardent had to hear voices all the time; her mother’s was best, but Dot’s would do at a pinch. If you were going to be quiet, you had to let Ardent know you were still there, lean against her or put your hand on her pointed foot, or she would start to jerk and stress.

  ‘MY MOTHER SINGS ANNEH,’ said Dot, as the Bard got up and lifted the House back to its shelf. ‘A lot of the mothers do.’

  ‘And the fathers sing Robbreh,’ said the Bard with satisfaction.

  ‘Sometimes the mothers go as low as that, too,’ said Dot. ‘Or they beat an empty gathering-barrel, which makes something like that sound.’

  The Bard frowned down at him.

  ‘It’s a better sound,’ explained Dot, ‘the two voices together.’

  The Bard thought for a moment. ‘That’s true, Dot. For the one cannot live without the other.’

  Dot was very young at this time; he couldn’t imagine his mother not living, entirely capably, should everyone else except himself and Ardent be taken away by storm or disease or war. But you didn’t argue with the Bard.

  ‘No one sings Viljastramaratan, though,’ said Dot.

  ‘Pah,’ said the Bard, swishing his robes and sitting down again. ‘Who would want to? Who would need to? The song of Viljastramaratan is around us all the time, in the racket of the birds and the goats’ complaining and all the carryings-on of the children as they play their childish games, or fall and hurt themselves. This song gives men the headache, and must be kept well away. The children, they will learn, when they reach their middlehood, to still their voices to Anneh’s or Robbreh’s song; as for the goats and the birds, and the myriad other voices of the world, we can do nothing more to calm those than hum Anneh, and throb Robbreh, loud enough to cover them.’

  THE MEN WENT AWAY TO TOWN EVERY NOW AND THEN, when they had to fetch certain things such as medicines, or firewood, or for some relative’s funeral. Winsome had heard stories from her dad, about the little plastic house they stayed in, about the coffee-palace where they saw television, which was a box full of alarming music, and moon-faced people kissing each other, and sometimes the soccer. They took two days about it and came back tired and silent, the Bard always very angry until he had swum in his river, and all his children and wives had embraced him.

  ‘YOU NEVER SPEAK TO THE BARD YOURSELF,’ said Dot.

  ‘Don’t you worry.’ Bonneh was oiling Ardent, who otherwise grew dusty-looking, and twitched and moaned. ‘The Bard has plenty of people to talk to him.’ She paused to rub the oil in between Ardent’s clamped toes. ‘He doesn’t need my wisdom.’

  ‘And he never talks to you. Except when you’re in a bunch and he’s talking to everyone, telling them how much to put aside for market or something. He never says anything straight to you, does he?’

  ‘What would he say, boy?’ She smiled and swung into longer strokes up Ardent’s calves.

  ‘Like he talks to Winsome’s mum. Just about children, and work. Then maybe other people would talk to you, too.’

  ‘Darling-darling,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I had enough of talking, with your father and our families. Nowadays I haven’t the patience for people; I work and I watch. I keep this house quiet, for Ardent, and for you to come back to when you want peace. For talk, you can always go to Winsome’s house, or Toad’s, and soon you’ll be middling and visit the tea-tent, too.’

  ‘I’m not worried about me,’ said Dot. ‘It’s you. If the Bard would only act differently—be more friendly.’

  ‘Kids been taunting you about this?’

  ‘No. I’ve just seen it myself.’

  ‘Hmm. You want to watch those sharp eyes; you might hurt yourself on them.’

  THERE WAS A BOY who must never have slept, and whose ears must have been especially strong to know the Three so well before his middlehood. Down at the river with the water to hide his voice he would hum Anneh, and b’dum Robbreh, on and on as he built jeeps and rocket-ships out of the mud. Then one day, when spring was on the way and they were all excited for the coming plenty, this boy threw back his head and sang … nobody knew who, but if Viljastramaratan had had four sisters and five brothers, dancing
together, they might have brought these sounds out. Up shot his voice, as if by accident, wandering among the clouds and jumping from water-point to water-point across the river. Viljastramaratan’s baby-coughs and wheezes interrupted the slippery song and gave the boy breath to pour out more.

  Dot and all the kids at first laughed. Then as this boy went on, the sounds fountaining out of his mouth so surely, they fell silent. World upon world opened at their ears, worlds of lawless noise and play.

  The boy’s mother came running, shouting. She knocked him into the mud, waking him up from his singing. They looked at each other, both seeming very frightened. The door of Bard Jo’s house moved aside, and the circle of his beard was like a white eye in the shadow. He came out of the house; the way he walked, all the kids shrank together.

  The mother stood at her son’s muddy head. ‘He should not make such a noise,’ she said to Bard Jo. ‘I’ll make sure he’s well beaten.’ She made herself sound angry to cover up fear.

  Bard Jo looked from one to the other, his face all gathered in except the jutting beard. ‘I will beat him myself.’

  ‘I won’t sing again!’ cried the boy. ‘Forgive me, Bard Jo!’

  ‘He didn’t know what he was doing!’ wept the mother. By now she had one of the boy’s arms and Bard Jo the other, and the boy was like some grotesque stick doll pulled back and forth over the mud, and muddying the Bard’s white dress with his kicking. Dot didn’t even know what to be afraid of, but he was sick with it, still as a ghost. Winsome gripped his arm hard.

  Bard Jo won the tug of war, being truly angry, while the mother was merely afraid. He got the boy, and the mother stood on the bank, her legs caked to the trouser-rolls in mud, her hands muddying her cheeks as she watched her boy dragged away. He screamed as he went; he quite lost himself, as does a much younger child. He was taken into Bard Jo’s house and beaten there, and Dot and the kids sat in the mud and listened to the terrible wordless sounds of Bard Jo’s rage, and of the beating, and of the boy. The boy’s mother bent and swayed, holding her head, grinding her eyes.