Salmonella Men on Planet Porno (Vintage Contemporaries) (8 page)

I followed the bearded man as he proceeded to the coffin, which was covered with a white cloth. After lighting some incense, I returned to my space on the floor.

“Come on, girls! The guest is waiting for a drink!” the red-faced man called in a sonorous voice.

The noise was enough to wake a girl of about seventeen or eighteen who was sleeping with a group of children in a corner of the room. Sitting up abruptly, she rubbed her eyes and looked at me with a dazed expression. Her face was white and perfectly beautiful.

“We are but rustic folk, we haven’t much to offer,” said a middle-aged woman who closely resembled the girl. She placed a dish full of cooked wild vegetables in front of me, and poured me some liquor from a small earthen bottle.

“Thank you,” I said, taking a sip. The liquor was thick and dry, and tasted exceedingly good.

“By the way, who was it that passed away?” I asked the middle-aged woman.

“My uncle it was.”

“Your uncle? Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

People in this village seemed to live long. Besides the Village Elder, there were four other men and about seven women who must have been well over eighty. The men all had thick beards and large round eyes, and the women must all have been beauties in their time.

The men started talking amongst themselves. The return of the bearded man seemed to have brought a new buzz to the proceedings. Even the sleeping children were starting to sit up. The
beautiful girl who’d been sleeping with them was now serving food and drink, together with the other women. Everyone called her Luna. There were three other girls of around her age, and they were all pretty. But none of them could match Luna’s beauty.

The red-faced man seemed especially partial to drink, and kept coming over to pour me another. When I returned the compliment by filling his cup, he would drink it down in one and proffer his cup again.

“What’s up? Do you not like drinking?” he asked.

“No, it’s not that. This liquor really is delicious.”

“Yes! It’s a local brew called ‘Morning Monkey’.”

An hour passed, and then another. The gathering grew more raucous by the minute. By now, I’d been given about three earthen bottles of “Morning Monkey” and was beginning to feel quite drunk.

“Come on, drink up!” said the red-faced man as he came to pour me another cupful.

“Sorry, I’m feeling a bit woozy,” I said. “If I have a drop more, I’ll be under the table. And then I won’t be able to continue my journey. Could I possibly have a glass of water?” I asked.

The red-faced man looked around him. “Oy! The guest would like a cold drink!”

“I’ll get it!”

Luna, who happened to be nearby, hopped down onto the earthen floor, stepped over the cable-car rails and crossed to the kitchen area. There, she opened a huge refrigerator and took out a bottle of Coca-Cola, which she brought over to me.

“Will you leave this village when you get married?” I asked her after taking a swig.

Luna looked at me blankly, with no sign of embarrassment. “Why, yes. Most of the women here marry men from Boar’s Wood or Deer’s Wood. Sometimes the husbands come to live here, and sometimes people from Bear’s Wood even marry each other.”

Someone called her, so she left me and started serving liquor again. The other women were all dressed in rustic garments. Only Luna was wearing jeans and a sweater.

As the night wore on, the women found themselves with less to do, and started taking turns snoozing with the children in the corner. Two young girls slept with their feet facing me. Each time they turned in their sleep, I was presented with the sight of their milky white thighs. I hardly knew where to look.

The men started clapping a beat.

“Come on, then! Who’s ready to sing?” called the Village Elder, beaming.

“Who’s ready to dance?” said the bearded man.

“All right then, I am!” The red-faced man got up and moved to the centre of the floor.

Everyone started laughing. He was obviously very popular.

The red-faced man glanced over at me. “Well, seeing that we have a guest, let us now sing the Song of Bear’s Wood!” he said loudly.

With that, the whole place erupted. Luna and the others knelt down on the wooden floor, clutched their trays to their stomachs and laughed aloud.
This must be a funny song
, I thought. I started clapping my hands in time with the others.

The red-faced man now started to dance a very curious sort of dance. As he did, he sang in a clear, penetrating voice:

The men and women were rolling across the floor with laughter. Even the girls and children sleeping in the corner had woken up.

The red-faced man returned to his seat amid tumultuous applause. Now everyone started clapping hands in time.

“Who’s next?”

“Let us have more!”

It seemed they would continue the Song of Bear’s Wood.

The bearded man moved to the centre of the room.

“Yea! It’s me now!”

That alone was enough to set off eddies of laughter.

The bearded man started to dance in a way that differed just slightly from the red-faced man’s effort. In a rich, deep voice he sang:

Well, this was so funny that even I was gripping my belly. The men, and even the women, were bent double with laughter, tears streaming down their cheeks. The children were upturned on the floor, feet shaking uncontrollably in the air. Not only was the song out of tune and utterly nonsensical, but the dance was so completely absurd as to be from another world. Whoever sang or danced it, guffaws of laughter would surely ensue.

With the opening “
Nanjoray Kumanocky
!,” the dancer would arch his upper body to the right, as if to depict a great mountain. Then, with “
Kanjoray Eenocky
!,” he would depict a mountain to the left. Then he would hop to the right and adopt a pose, then hop to the left and adopt the same pose in reverse. Finally, he would lift one leg, screw up his face, and hop along like a chicken.

“Who’s next? Who’s next?”

At last the laughter died down, and the clapping started again. They all seemed to be in some kind of frenzy. I began to feel carried along with it myself.

A lightly built, affable old man moved to the centre of the room. He resembled the Village Elder, though not such an imposing figure.

Everyone burst into laughter again. The women and children shrieked with merriment as they clapped to the rhythm. The old man must have been particularly popular with them. Baring his gnarled old arms and legs, he danced with great skill and sang in a husky voice:

Some laughed so much they were gasping for breath, clutching their chests. Others were in convulsions, still others had collapsed on the floor. The din was so loud that the house seemed ready to burst. I had tears of mirth in my eyes, and my head was starting to feel numb.

The clapping started again.

“Who’s next, who’s next?!”

“Let us do the whole hog!”

“All do it in turns, all in turns!”

The driver of the train danced out from his place in the corner to the centre of the wooden-floored room. The mere sight of that was so comical that the women were already laughing hysterically. He was obviously an accomplished buffoon. As I reeled with laughter, a thought flitted dimly across the back of my mind. If this funny man were to dance the same dance as the others, I might just die laughing, or failing that, go stark raving mad.

The train driver started to dance, singing in a crazy high-pitched voice:

I was pole-axed, laughing so much I could hardly breathe. Some of the women just couldn’t bear it any longer. They ran across the wooden floor, jumped down to the earthen floor, crossed to the hearthplace and crouched down there for comfort. Next, the young man sitting next to the driver was urged out
by the clapping, and moved to the centre with a sheepish look. It really seemed that everyone would have to sing and dance in turn. As I clapped time with the others, I wondered if I would have to join in as well. Because if that were the case, I would be next in line. The young man started to dance, singing in a woeful voice:

By now, they’d repeated the song so many times that even I knew more or less how it went. As long as you started with “
Nanjoray Kumanocky! Kanjoray Eenocky!
,” you could change the second part as you felt fit.

The young man returned to his seat, accompanied by a thunderous ovation. Now they all started clapping the beat again, and smiled over at me. I hesitated for a moment. Perhaps it would seem a bit impertinent of me, a stranger, to sing and dance in front of these people. But they were evidently expecting just that. And besides, I’d been so generously wined and dined. It would have been rude not to dance for them.

As I dithered, the Village Elder, still clapping to the beat, suggested: “Well. P’raps our dance is a bit too hard for the guest.”

That got me up on my feet. “No, no. I’ll do the dance!” I said.

Everyone applauded. “The guest will do the dance!” they exclaimed.

“Good old guest, good old guest!”

Luna and the other women now came closer, and watched with looks of expectation.

This dance was funny, whoever danced it. So the same should be true for me. First, I moved to the middle of the room. Then, after swaying two or three times in rhythm with the clapping, I started to sing the song and dance the dance.

I finished the song, I finished the dance. Laughing aloud at my own foolishness, I waited for the plaudits. And then I noticed.

Not a single person was laughing.

All of them – the Village Elder and the other seniors, the bearded man, the women – they’d all stopped clapping, and now cast their heads down with uneasy looks. The red-faced man and the train driver, visibly paler now, examined the bottoms of their liquor cups and scratched their heads in embarrassment. Even Luna, standing there on the earthen floor, looked down awkwardly at her feet.

I knew I shouldn’t have done it
, I thought as I flopped down onto the floor. I, a stranger, had danced the dance badly and ruined the wake.

With trepidation, I turned to the Village Elder to apologize. “I really am very sorry,” I said. “I, a stranger, have danced your dance badly and ruined your wake.”

“No, no. That’s not the problem.” The Village Elder lifted his face and looked at me with pity, shaking his head. “You sang and danced most well. Almost too well, in fact, for an outsider.”

“Oh?” I said. Maybe I was wrong to dance too well! “In that case, why did no one laugh as they did before?”

“The words you sang were not good.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “The words? But all I did was sing nonsense, like everyone else!”

“That’s true,” the Village Elder replied. “The others all sang nonsense because they were trying not to sing the real words. But you, intending to sing nonsense, accidentally sang the real words.”

“The real words?!” I said, aghast. “You mean, what I sang was the real Song of Bear’s Wood? That Bockay Bo-bo-bo-bo-bo?”

The very sound drew gasps and moans from the villagers as they squirmed in their seats.

“Why?” I asked the Village Elder as if to cross-examine him. “What is wrong with singing the real words?”

The Village Elder started to explain. “The Song of Bear’s Wood, it’s taboo. We’re forbidden to sing it. It’s been passed down since olden days here in Bear’s Wood, but we’re not allowed to sing it out loud in front of folk. For if we sing it out loud, something terrible will surely happen to this country of ours.”

“Oh?” I said with mounting incredulity. “You mean this whole country we’re living in?”

“That’s right.”

Superstitious nonsense! I just wanted to laugh it off. They’d all ganged up to make a fool of me. But as I looked around again, it didn’t seem like a joke at all. They all wore genuinely gloomy expressions and looked quite crestfallen.

I felt a shudder. Then I turned again to the Village Elder. “Please don’t make fun of me!” I begged. “I’m quite superstitious, you know, for my age!”

“There’s nothing superstitious about it,” said the Village Elder, looking at me sternly for the first time. “Whenever someone from this hamlet accidentally sings the song, something terrible happens to this country of ours. So we take special care to tell everyone, adults and children, not to sing it. But every now and then, some parent, through lack of care or attention, lets a child sing it, for whatever reason. And every time that happens, some awful disaster or misfortune afflicts this country. Well, until now, it’s only been children, so the punishment has not been too bad. It’s never been so bad that the whole country has gone to ruin. But tonight, a fine young man like yourself has come, and has sung the song, so loudly, so well. The punishment will surely be severe.”

“I just didn’t know.” An involuntary cry of anguish issued from my throat. “All I did was sing nonsense. I didn’t know what it meant! Will there be punishment even for that?”

“There will,” the Village Elder replied with horrible certainty.

I buried my head in my hands. “Why did you let me do the dance?” I cried. “If the song is so taboo and dangerous, why did everyone urge me to sing it? You’re all responsible too, you know!
And anyway, why did you start singing the Song of Bear’s Wood in the middle of a wake?! Didn’t you think someone might just sing the real words by mistake?”