Don Pedro sang this song :
Every story is a world, and every song is a story. Worlds belong to no-one, although they take temporary residence upon our tongues and fingers, spoken, chanted and accompanied. It is right that the messenger should be paid, in love, in kind or, as is the way with you, in money. But messengers are not gods, even when they are in the service of gods. Messengers are women and men, and they should eat, sleep, fuck and fight with women and men. They should drink with them, from the same bottle, and lift the food to their mouths from the same plates.
Lay out your bottles, and let them be filled. It will cost you more than the water that you fetch from the river. It can cost you much more, however much you pay for it.
A world in each bottle. Lift the bottle to your lips and taste the world.
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Katrina stepped around Don Pedro's frail form, and faced across the fallen logs and the overturned cauldron. Behind her, Don Pedro's lips moved, and it may have been that the song that issued from her mouth was his :
The song I sing has no price. Let those who believe that there is a market that sets worth upon a song hear my voice as it shreds their heart and tears into their bellies. Let those who believe that a song can be counted with beans upon a wire feel my song take them by their necks and shake them.
When my song is over, then I am no longer the singer. You will pay me, not for the song, for the song is priceless, but because I came, and because I stayed, and because I am here.
When my song is done, you will throw pennies in my cup, and you will be ashamed, and I will be ashamed, and we will smile at each other because we are ashamed.
Because the music has no price.
And now my song is ended.
The echoes of Katrina's voice faded, and she looked over to where the archangel stood, his wings folded, his tail wrapped around his body. He took the arrow-head tip in his left hand, cupped his right hand over it, and then, his hand a blur, send the projectile through the air to dig into the mud between Don Pedro and Katrina. He laughed a short, cascading burst of amusement, and then began his song, in a voice which charmed and pained us in equal measures. 68 rose from the mud and positioned himself at the angel's feet, a sheaf of papers in his hand. As the Devil sang, 68 displayed the papers, one by one, and we read what was printed upon each of them, before he crumpled it with a swift gesture and tossed it to the ground :
You come into the world with two things
You come into the world with a blessing
You come into the world with a curse
You come into the world with a belly
You come into the world with a soul
With your teeth and your tongue, you fill your belly
With your teeth and your tongue, you sing your soul
You have my word, as long as you sing, your belly will be filled
You have my word, as long as your belly is full, you will sing
You will sing for your belly, and you will eat for your song
And that is the curse and that is the blessing
and when his song was ended, the archangel opened his wings and leapt into the sky.
and when he opened his wings, the sun was obscured
and under cover of the darkness, Don Pedro knelt, picked up the arrow head, and placed it in his pocket.
The painted cat padded her way upward through the last stunted trees. Overhead, eagles filled the sky, but she paid them no attention. Small creatures fled at the sound of her passage, but she had eaten a sufficiency lower down the slope, leaving a bloodied and dismembered carcase at the foot of a tree, its hooves overhanging the void.
Suddenly she paused, her ears pricking. She looked back to see huge wings beating against the sun. She cringed as the diabolical shaped passed over her, casting her in shadow. Once it had gone, she turned to face the way she had come, squinting into the light. In a deep grumbling roar, she sang her song :
Don Pedro, I have carried your words within me
Don Pedro, I have promised to carry your words
Don Pedro, the danger of death is upon me
Don Pedro, I shall not flinch
He lied to you, Don Pedro
The curse is not the song
Neither is the song the blessing
The curse and the blessing is death, Don Pedro
Each death is the end of a world
Each world that ends strikes the last chord of the song
Don Pedro, some songs fade when their singer dies
Don Pedro, some songs find other singers
Sing of Death, Don Pedro, and of the Life within it.
Sing of Life, Don Pedro, and the Death within it.
And let my song be an epithalamium
For each and every guest.
Don Pedro walked over to the cauldron and righted it. Under his command, we filled the cauldron, while Katrina stared fixedly towards the mountain range far across the canopy of trees. Once the container was filled, Don Pedro handed round a pack of cigarettes, and we began smoking, blowing the smoke across the lip of the cauldron, rasing turgid waves upon the surface. Don Pedro began to keen, and as he did so, the water cleared, and we could see in it, as if it were a reflection, the outline of a bridge, two figures clinging to the structure as if amazed. Deep in the waters was a small green head. As we watched, the head began to bulge and expand, froggy eyes staring at us half-closed above a swelling throat. From the grinning mouth surged forth a song :
Hey, listen! I'm the big one!
I'm the big one, you can see!
Hey, look! I'm the big one!
Let loose your hands and drop on me!
I can bounce you, I can hold you!
I can turn your life around!
I can do the boogie, baby
Just let go and live the sound.
Hey, listen! I'm the big one!
I'm the only one you need!
Hit the space and call my name!
Do it! do it! Now!
Don Pedro stepped back, and the vision receded. Blinking, we turned our gaze to each other. 68 was no longer with us.
We will stop a moment and attempt to draw up some kind of score-card or to draw a rough world-map upon which to place the players, assess the state of play, and pick out the augers. Given the shifting nature of the game and the variety of hands which distribute and move the pieces on the board, this attempt may be seen as either a good-hearted offer of illumination or a clumsy and unwarranted golpe letterario, intended to seize the story-line away from other, perhaps more-deserving interventors.
The present narrator may be conceived of as having mused over these questions, and was at first tempted to do no more than lightly touch upon such pieces as he or she had been instrumental in placing upon the board. Don Pedro, the anaconda, the jaguar, perhaps even the frog might be claimed as falling under the narrator's purview.
However, even the briefest consideration was sufficient to give the lie to such a manoeuvre. Don Pedro, for example, can trace a pedigree that, at the very least, would, if the concept of literary ownership had any legs at all, place him under the control of a myriad of anthropologists, sociologists, historians, idle tale-tellers and rich and successful novelists, all of whom might be tempted to sue for damages if they suspected that the narrator had any wealth worth suing for.
As for the cat - well, that painted denizen of the jungle has had so illustrious a literary career as to daunt the most barefaced literary thief. That the narrator has cared to tread upon ground hallowed by Blake, Kipling, Borges or Cabrera Infante - not to mention an army o hasty cartographers - must be seen as an indication of either culpable innocence or the utmost stupidity.
The frog, of course, is something else again. The underhanded allusion to an esteemed member of these boards will not have been lost upon our readers. Whether such cavalier usage can be justified or not, it has to be admitted that the narrator here walks a slender and fragile tightrope between art and transgression. She or he may attempt to talk herself out of it, gerrymandering the circumscription with some jerky talk about how creation and crud will always go hand in hand, but the sturdy reader will reject such malarky.
So the narrator will, in the next post in the series, continue to pick up whatever crumbs there are to be gathered, from whatever table hosts a nourishing dish. Other players may wish to defend their pieces, or simply ignore what is being done to them behind their backs. Out here in cyberland, it matters not a jot.
The cat is making its way up into the mountains, leaving the forest, its natural habitat, far below. In doing so, it is moving from the realm of magic - the grubby bodily practicalities of which are, in South America as in much of the world, associated with the enclosed and steamy air of the forest, and the muddy banks of slothful rivers - to the realm of spirit, from the modesty of Indio shaman to the wide-winged arrogance of Lucifer, offering a vast and visible world to heaven's prince.
The reader will recall that the lowland shaman of ambition is able to lodge his soul in the earthly form of the painted cat. The narrator has planted numerous textual titbits which may suggest that this particular and specific jaguar carries within its catty brain the dark spirit of Don Pedro, along with the echo of the scrap of paper that he had prodded out of the sunken bottle.
While one would be well-advised to hang on to this suggestion, it can also be revealed at this point that Banduras, appearing in the narrative at virtually the same time as the cat, may have a more than accidental connection to the feline. Could it be that the fish with which he entertains so close a companionship is none other than a Parachromis managuensis or Jaguar cichlid, an adventurous fellow who has made his way from the Atlantic waters of South America to the waters of Florida, much as the cat herself has ranged as far North as Arizona.
As the jaguar quits the last wind-bent trees and makes her way towards the peaks, there perhaps to commune with Beelzebub himself, perhaps she carries with her not only the otherworldly trace of Don Pedro, but also the watery google-eyes of old google-eye hisself.
Don Pedro inspected the group of mud-spattered, bite-blotched,shivering escapees and licked his thumb. If this happened as often as it had been over the last few months, he would have to put in for a raise from the Tourist Board. This bunch were pretty far-gone, babbling about angels with cloven hooves, slave-labour and other similar fancies, doubtless induced by a heavy seance of ayahuesca. Well, if they were seeking enlightenment, they didn't seem to have found what they were looking for. He'd have to clean them up, feed them, and put them on a boat back down the river, and all of that took time he could be using for ... other things.
He glanced over at Katrina, who shrugged, ducked into the shack, and came back out with what looked like a pool cue. She hung the cauldron over one end, and a well-wrapped waterproof bundle over the other and then hooked it over her shoulders and set off across the log-strewn desolation, moving at a steady lope away from the jungle. Don Pedro beckoned to the Yankees and followed after her, the befuddled holidaymakers straggling in his wake.
From half way up a tall tree, one of the next to feel the axe, Banduras watched them go, noting the clouds of smoke towards which they were making a bee-line. then he cast his eyes back into the jungle, tracing out the bank of the river which curved out into the cleared area a little further off, and flowed down towards the cooking fires of the village that Don Pedro and Katrina were shepherding their stumbling flock towards. Banduras grinned to himself, drew from the trunk to which he was clinging a long bone-handled sliver of steel, and scuttled back down to the forest floor. Slipping the knife into his belt, he headed back to the river.
Meanwhile ...
The Anaconda, having swallowed down Kathy, Klaire, and the frog, has been craftily transformed into a sunken boat, a spacecraft, or a home-recording studio by a rogue narrator, and then disappeared. Such transformations are of little concern to the serpent, who has been around since the Creation and knows a trick or two. Ingurgitating a couple of sinful females, vanishing, and then spewing them back out again is pretty mundane stuff, seen from a snake's perspective - just ask the Wawilak sisters (although you'll have to catch them between blood and stone).
K and K protested lustily at the accusation of sinfulness, while the frog belched merrily. The anaconda shrugged, a movement which propelled it from off Manhattan into the mid-Atlantic. Man, if you want those girls back, you'll have to do better than that.
Dust? A headstone!!! (Bradley) Don Pedro a circle comes, changing at Embankment to reach the Promised Land. Whirrrrr! A winged giant overprods, blowing a stinking gale from distended cheeks. The ladies' little boat, a rubber coracle, bobbles and burbles as they clutch each other moaning.
The Anaconda dives.
Don Pedro squatted on the rough boards, smoking cigarettes, an activity which he persued energetically and with concentration. From time to time he lifted the bottle at his heels and swallowed down some of the liquid. Sweat began to trickle down his forehead and drip from the tip of his nose onto his lip, cigarette or tongue as the case might be. A dragon emerged from the boards, and he nodded at it, his eyes bulging. The dragon spoke briefly, but the man paid it no attention, squinting at the glow at the tip of his cigarette. The lizard crawled through him, and a perceptive observer would have seen him flinch minutely.
Don Pedro felt pressure on his eyeballs. An odour of cat's urine rose from the boards, and he nodded to himself. He felt the jaguar's mind slip into his, the old sensation, terrible and soothing. He looked out over the jungle, over the ocean, following the invisible trace of the archangel's passage, to where it dipped over the little rubber coracle. He groped for the serpent, but it was gone. The frog's soft croak nibbled at his ear. "The headstone. You're forgetting the headstone." Don Pedro shook his head and reached for the bottle.
Welcome to Mumbai, crime capital of the Eastern hemisphere! Here, capitalism is red in tooth, claw and dancing shoes. We have the poorest poor, the richest rich, and the most vicious of back-street bruisers, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian or whatever it takes to rip your heart out with a length of Sheffield steel. Rainbow snakes we wrench apart with our teeth, large cats cower from our hob-nailed sandals, and we eat frogs raw after swiping their heads off with one swift stroke*. Those South-American mystic hoodoo fiddlers are - we can say this with little fear of contradiction - a bunch of pussies
*This bit, at least as authentic. The rest pretty much so also - see Misha Glenny's MacMafia.
Manish Water (Jamaica)
Kill a goat, using your preferred method of slaughter. If you are vegetarian, or have ethical qualms, or if the sight of blood makes you queasy, do not kill a goat.
Decapitate the goat. If you have not killed a goat, invoke a phantasmatic goat's head, without the blood. Otherwise, use a steel nail. Wash the head. Take a cauldron. Put the goat's head in the cauldron to boil, adding salt, pepper, five cloves of garlic (crushed) and one Scotch Bonnet Pepper. Keep on a medium flame until tender. Add two or three peeled potatoes, and a couple of handfuls of those yellow beans that your local pakistani grocer keeps in plastic bags on the bottom shelf, and you've always wondered what to do with them. Throw in a plantain also. Simmer.
Watch one of your daughter's recordings of Friends, dubbed in French. when your mind has numbed down to the state of a parboiled chicken, return to the pot and throw in a yam. Allow to simmer until the yam is soft.
Serve
For those who feel peckish, the real recipe is here
Don Pedro stumbled back into the room, took a fresh bottle out of the canvas bag on the floor, squatted and took another cigarette. His body was stretched with pain, his stomach a miserable ball of watery fire. The dragon was back, features changed, goat-footed. Don Pedro straightened his shoulders. "Christian," he stuttered. His tongue filled his mouth. The dragon's voice echoed in his chest ... it is nothing ... the form is for our guests ... His shape shifted, and Don Pedro saw the lizard he knew.
It was true. It was nothing. He recalled the American who had followed him around for months, taking notes, asking him questions, babbling excitedly about syncresis, cultural melding, diffusion and other nonsense that Pedro had declined to submit to. It didn't matter; you always saw what you expected to see. Don Pedro saw what he expected to see. He thought of the man in the town who had shown him a hat on a stick. Don Pedro, a return compliment, showed him his fan.
Banduras had run off again. He usually did. Don Pedro smiled, and thought of all the money Banduras had given him over the years. But he always ran away, just when things got interesting.
Outside, the Yanquis were dreaming their horrid dreams of Indian sacrifice and Satan. Don Pedro looked them over every time he needed to go outside; they twitched and wriggled as if they were roped and suspended. From time to time, one of them would scream. He had warned them, but they were of the kind who were too stupid to be scared.
Don Pedro took another mouthful of the liquid. "Where is the headstone?" he asked. The lizard's voice buzzed in his head again ... the city of lights ... the father on his throne ... two champions ... a man of courage and a man of mind ...
Don Pedro walked out past the fitfully sleeping madmen, past the few huts, and down to the river. He climbed into the boat and gave a low call. As he waited for the other to arrive, he counted the notes in his wallet. It was going to be a long trip.
Banduras had seen them die, had watched their bodies heave and crumple as the beast drew his shining claw across their throats. Stricken with grief and fear, he crawled along the bank, his eyes too full of tears to see where he was going; his fingers made contact with the smooth contours of an abandoned bottle. He grasped it, and hugged it to his cheek, still sobbing. The nauseous odour caught at his throat, and for an instant he was transported back to one or another of the many times that Don Pedro had taunted him with his fear of the soul vine, the purge. The Don seemed not to understand that he, Banduras, participated in each one of the other's drug-induced journeys, that he saw the horrors, underwent the terrors, almost as vividly as the Don himself. Banduras believed that the cord that had linked him to his mother at birth was a length of the sacred liana. He had always refused to taste it.
Wiping the tears from his lashes, he put the bottle to his lips and drank.
TimMason bows to SelfRisinMojo. SelfRisinMojo returns the bow. Applause.
TimMason bows to amclark2. amclark2 returns the bow. Applause.
amclark2 and SelfRisinMojo bow to each other. Furious applause.
electricty appears backstage. TimMason, SelfRisinMojo, and amclark2 turn to him and applaud. Whistles from the crowd.
electricity, TimMason, SelfRisinMojo and amclark2 join hands and turn towards the front of the stage. Applause. Whistles. All four bow. Raise each others' hands and salute the audience, who react with enthusiasm.
Curtain drops. Applause.
Don Pedro appears stage left and winks at the audience. Holds hands aloft and waits for silence. He announces a pause for refreshments. Banduras, a large fish, several people caked in mud, and a frog enter, bearing glasses full of a murky liquid which they offer to the audience. An anaconda appears and fixes each of the audience in turn with a long stare. All lift their glasses and drain them. The servers melt away, Don Pedro among them. Audience members sink into their seats, sprawl out and, with vacant stares, watch as the curtain gently lifts again.
The S.S. Anaconda, a dusty, rusty old broiling fowl of a boat, butts her way out of Mumbai harbour. What cargo there might be down in the hold is unknown to the stevedores who loaded her, unknown to customs officers, who prudently gave but a cursory glance, unknown to most of the sailors, who know which side up their nans should be, and who also know that the captain has their names and addresses registered in her on-shore log, the one that's kept in the secret safe, and the code to which she only shares with a slight enigmatic figure whom she calls 'Don', and whom everyone else calls El Hombre.
The captain, a tall, broad-shouldered woman with long, wild hair of Caledonian red, her face that of a queenly descendant of Chuchulain, pale white with bronze freckles, and with pale blue-green eyes that will see you or not, as she pleases, stands on the bridge, smoking a cheroot, and from time to time conversing with her first mate, Doghouse O'Reilly, a plump Hindu with deep brown eyes and a splendid mustache.
Night falls, and soon enough a faint light can be made out, low on the water. The captain nods at O'Reilly, and then tells him that she needs the boxes from hold A. He steps down from the bridge, summons a couple of men, and makes his way below decks. The party reappear with several large, heavy boxes, which they lay beside the gunwales.
The Anaconda draws close to a high-speed inflatable, a Zodiac. Looking down from above, the crew will see a small man with an inordinately large head, bulging eyes and a large, grinning mouth. He waves at them, and croaks 'Ahoy there!". The captain acknowledges him, and then makes a gesture to the crew, who swing the boxes out on a filet and lower them to the waiting Zodiac. The man opens one of the boxes at random, and peers inside. He stands again, and nods at the captain. Then he reaches a hand in his pocket and calls out 'I've got something for you!'
By the time the object is free of his jacket, both the captain and O'Reilly have guns in their hands. A giggle issues from the grinning mouth, incongruous against the star-pitched sky. The captain motions to one of the sailors, who throws down a painter, and slips down it. He takes the object and examines it, before calling back: "It's a bottle. There's a piece of crumpled paper in it."
"Bring it up," the captain calls.
The Zodiac streams back towards Mumbai, lower in the water now. The captain sits in her cabin and puzzles out the message on the crumpled sheet of paper.
(Written to Spotify's Bill Frisell catalogue)
With one last blast of foetid wind, the archangel receded into the clouds, leaving the women cowering in the bottom of their frail craft, retching and mewling helplessly. Through the nausea, Katie heard what sounded like the sound of an outboard motor, and when she felt herself able to raise her head saw a boat approaching with two men aboard. One of them saw her, and after a brief conversation with his companion, slung her a rope. Trembling, she managed to thread it through the rubber ring that protuded from the coracle's side and tie it fast. The younger of the two men fiddled about with the motor for several minutes. The older man made a sign to him, and he stopped, to gaze into the sky. far above them, an albatross circled on wide wings. The boat began to move forward, tugging the coracle after it.
"Where are you taking us?"
"What did he say?"
"Pair lashes? What's that? Pair lashes?"
(Frisell still going)
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