Black Juice (8 page)

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.

D
OT DIDN’T KNOW HIS FATHER
M
ORRI
, 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.

‘E
VERYBODY TELLS OF WHEN THEY FIRST MET THE
B
ARD
,’ 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 readied 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.

D
OT’S SISTER
, A
RDENT
, 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.

‘M
Y MOTHER SINGS
A
NNEH
,’ 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.’

T
HE 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.

‘Y
OU NEVER SPEAK TO THE
B
ARD 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.’

T
HERE 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.

After too long—‘He is killing him!’ Winsome whispered—Bard Jo threw the boy out of the house onto his stripes. Mothers came running and took him quickly to his own house, but still there remained on Dot’s memory—on the memories of all those kids so that they could never talk about it—the back of that boy, furrowed and weeping like a scored peach from shoulders to thighs, beige dirt patching the slime of it, and the piece—whether dirt or boy they didn’t know—that fell from him as the mothers gathered him up.

That boy had always been strange and not talked much, but after that day no one heard a sound out of him. He hardly came out of his house, and even when his back had healed over, he moved all bent and carefully as if the cuts were still fresh.

Dot stayed a favourite of Bard Jo’s. He didn’t know why. He feared it was some kind of terrible trick the Bard was planning, to calm and please everyone until the time came for Dot’s beating, so that the beating would be a more shocking
and frightening thing. Dot could see no reason why he should be favoured above Winsome, whose mother worked so hard and whose father spread the Bard’s wisdom every time he opened his mouth. Or above Fanty and Toad and all those cousins, who were like a lot of little Bards running around.

‘W
HAT ABOUT WHEN YOU FIRST SAW MY DAD
, then? Was that special?’

‘No.’ Bonneh laughed. ‘We were children and I hated him. He was one of those Simpsim boys. They were noisy and thought too much of themselves. I hated the lot of them.’

‘So how did you get round to marrying one of them?’

‘Well, I looked at Morri again, didn’t I? With new eyes.’

‘And your heart turned over?’

‘No, no. I just knew. Our parents were bringing us together, and I knew that it would work all right. He had ears, you see.’

Dot laughed. ‘As no one else did?’

‘He knew how to use them. He was a very careful man—until all that warring nonsense caught him up. You can hear too much, you know. You can think yourself able to do more about things than you really can.’