KAMARANG

Day Five

He dreamed he was in di-di country.
He couldn’t remember how he had gotten there, how he had strayed to this dead-silent place of forest and mountain.
Lost. No sound. Bilious sunlight. One huge, bat-winged bird circling overhead like a silent plane.
He walked on, his shotgun, which had suddenly become a withered branch, to the ready. He was on a rocky expanse of land, and now he heard the faint roar of running water. He looked over to the west, and saw the woman.
She stood below a small waterfall, her back to him. She was naked; her hair black and loose and long to her wide, fleshy hips. She as singing the strangest song he had ever heard, in a fluting, bird-like voice; no words that he knew; a sweet, lost, happy, sad enchanting sound as the water cascaded down on her head.
He did not want to go to her in her nakedness, but he needed to find his way out of this enchanted place. Without moving, it seemed, he was near to her, clearing his throat in embarrassment. He was about to speak to her when she turned, and he saw her long, yellow catlike face, aught between a snarl and laughter, and it only then that he saw that her feet were turned the wrong way.
He shrank away from her and hurried down the trail that had suddenly appeared on the landscape; shoulder-tall grass at the sides. And a little further on he saw a troolie hut, and there was a woman hanging out blankets while her daughter stood by a large bubbling fireside pot.
They were both clothed, both good, ordinary forest people, he thought, waiting for a father to come home from hunting. They would give him a meal and guide him back home.
And he was about to speak when the girl dipped her claw into the bubbling pot, and removed the head of the man they had killed. She cracked the skull open against the side of the pot, then expertly hauled out the brain. It came out with a sharp ploop! came out without tearing…she had done this a thousand times…
(“soft and sweet like snot” she fluted to herself)
And she turned and smiled sideways at him, and he looked at the mother and saw that the clothes-clips were finger-bones, and what he had thought to be blankets were strips of skin from the man they were cooking. And her feet were yellow-nailed and turned the wrong way.
He hurried away from their laughter back down the grass-flanked trail, and round a bend in the trail he saw the di-di’s basket.
It was not empty. Something scrabbled around inside. Perez. His shotgun lay broken in two nearby, the shells scattered on the ground.
Old Perez peered out at him through the basket, his eyes red from fear and weeping; a desperate, embarrassed smile on his creased face.
“Help me, Vibert,” he said. “Help me. The magic word…”
It was on the tip of his tongue, the magic word that would free his friend, but the word died on his lips as he heard the sharp thump of footsteps. He forgot about his friend and scrabbled off into the dark of the jungle, wriggled himself into the hollow trunk of a fallen silk-cotton tree. A shower of dust and wood-ants rained down on him.
He tried to still his breathing and the beating of his heart, while the thump of twisted feet came closer; the di-di sniffing the air, trying to sniff him out, while he lay hiding in the log with wood-ants and dust down his back.
He saw the cannibal now. He was lifting wild-boar, its stomach gone, the torn skin flapping foggily. He came closer now, lifting not a wild boar but Perez’s great-grandson; lifting not Perez’s son but Leon, his face grey, his eyes lolling at appeal at Sealey, who was hiding in the log and trying to still his breathing and the beating of his heart.
The di-di lifted Leon with one blood-smeared hand, while with the other he poked into the boy’s stomach, pulling out his entrails, sucking it slowly into his lips. Leon gave a thin shriek of agony.
Sealey stared at the boy from his hiding place. Get away! He shouted silently at Leon. Get away!
“Tired, Mr. Sealey,” Leon said sadly. “Tired…”
Sealey’s eyes fluttered open. He felt a moment of panic as the images of the enchanted forest still floated before him. then he heard the familiar creak of his hammock cord rubbing against its post; saw the familiar yellow-glow of the flambeau.
He was in the logie. Just a nightmare…
“Tired,” someone whimpered next to him.
He started, almost tumbling from his hammock.
“Uhhh…tired…”
The sound was coming from Leon’s hammock.
Sealey groped for the flashlight on the crate next to his hammock. He trained the beam on the boy.
Leon lay on his back, tossing in his sleep. He raised a hand to his face as if brushing away something.
“Uhhhh..”, he whimpered. “Tired…”
His breathing quickened. He began to heave upwards in his hammock. Sealey sat rooted to the spot, torn between fascination and an urgency to wake the boy before he fell.
But before he could the boy emitted a long, shuddering sigh, slumped in his hammock and lapsed into silence…
He awoke wit a sense of unease, the shadows from his dream lingering like a bad hangover.
He pretended to be under the weather when Ovid Kingston, eyes red from drinking, came around hollering for him. Bap Reggie and Jerry Mentore gladly joined the young miner. Surprisingly, the boy stayed too.
Usually, he hardly remembered his dreams; but somehow, he couldn’t shake off this one…the feeling that it had all really happened. It had all been so damn vivid…the feel of the rocks under his feet… the golden texture of the woman’s skin…even now, her strange, wordless song echoed in his head.
Perez’s death. He couldn’t get rid of the shame he felt at how he’d deserted his old friend. He felt a strong, foolish urge to go over the river to see if the old man was alright.
And what had made everything weirder was awakening and hearing that whisper in the dark near him…
He glanced across at the boy. Leon was sitting up in his hammock and staring at the roof. Come to think of it, the boy, too, seemed out of sorts.
“You alright ?”
The boy gave a short, embarrassed laugh. “Not really. Had this freaky dream last night.”
“I know. You was groaning in yuh sleep.”
That embarrassed laugh again. “I dream I was lying in my hammock and this old woman—this really ugly old woman—was dancing in front of me. She was some sort of ghost or something. She wasn’t making a sound. I know that I was dreaming; and in this dream, I could hear my mother telling me to wake up, because this woman wanted to kill me. But I couldn’t wake up.” He twisted his mouth in disgust. “And then, she come up to my bed—and—and start to—”
“Make love to you?”
Again that grimace. “It was—like real. I could feel her fingers on me. Cold. Clammy.” The boy was silent for awhile, lost in the memory of his dream. Then he shrugged, swung himself out of the hammock, removed a jersey from a hanger. He slipped it on, pushed his feet into a pair of track-shoes. “Going for a lil walk, Mr. Sealey.”
He took a long time checking himself in the mirror before he left…
Sealey stared around the logie for a few more minutes, then dressed and went outside. He walked aimlessly, trying to shake off the memories of the dream, walking past the Jaguar’s Den, just wanting to be alone. And that was how he bumped into Golden Bishop.
He was heading towards Kamarang Point when he saw the Bishop standing by the government rest-house; his gold arm-bands glinting in the sunshine, his shirt unbuttoned to display his array of gold chains. He held a half-full bottle of whiskey.
Sealey stifled a curse. The Bishop was the last person he wanted to see. Too late. The man had spotted him. As he came closer, Sealey noticed that, for once, the Bishop wasn’t his usual dapper self. The white shirt was rumpled. There were sweat-stains under his armpits.
Bishop raised the liquor bottle in a sort of greeting as Sealey passed.
“Hey, how you doing, brother?” he asked in his annoyingly false American accent.
Sealey mumbled something. He was about to walk on but the Bishop put a hand on his shoulder.
Sealey turned. Golden Bishop was staring at him. The grin was still there, but there was a hint of appeal in his eyes.
“Something bothering you?” he asked before he could stop himself.
The Bishop ran his hand through his hair.
“Know you a long time, bush-man. Respect you a lot.” He paused as if hesitant to continue, then said: “Ah need to know…who is that girl that ah hear one of yuh men sleeping with.”
Sealey felt his earlier unease returning.
“Why you want to know that?”
“That bitch know me. Know me good. But I swear to God I never see she in my life.”
He scratched his unshaven chin. “You was at the Jaguar Den the first night when she come to the landing?”
Sealey nodded.
“Uh—yuh see what happen when I went over to her?”
Sealey nodded again. “What that whore tell you, Bishop?”
The Bishop glanced around him. he licked his lips, then whispered: ‘I know ’bout Razor Blade’. She say it in Carib. How she know I could talk Carib?”
He took a quick, nervous sip at the whiskey bottle, then wiped his mouth.
In Sealey’s opinion , the rumours that the Bishop had killed the prostitute Razor Blade—maybe shot her—made some sense. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask.
Instead he said: “But Bishop, all of this happen donkey years back. I don’t see why you fretting about what this girl tell you,”
The Bishop took another nervous sip, then looked at his directly for the first time. “I telling you this because I feel that I should warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
”About that girl. Keep that young chap away from she. Something not right about she. Where she come from? What she doing here?”
“Maybe she thief somebody money and sporting it out.”
The Bishop shook his head insistently. “She got a bad aura. I strange. That night, when she turn me down, afterwards I feel like—glad.”
He paused, then leaned forward and touched Sealey on the arm. “You believe in dream. bush-man?”
The question caught him off guard, stunning him into momentarily silence. “Why you ask?” he said at last.
“Since I come on the landing, I getting some really crazy dreams. A long-hair woman without face calling me to the water-side. Something chasing me through the jungle. And last night–” He paused to stare intently at Sealey. “This is between you and me, bush-man.”
Sealey nodded.
“I dream razor-Blade last night. I could see she plain, like if it was real. But at the same time, she wasn’t really razor Blade. She was—that girl. She was calling me out into the night to kill me. And I was that young boy in your camp…”

“Anybody see Leon?”
Bap Reggie and Jerry Mentore glanced up from their table. Bap Reggie waved Sealey away impatiently. “Wha wrong wid you, Vibert Sealey? You come on the landing to enjoy yuhself or to baby-sit?” he sucked his teeth. “Were else Leon gun deh but with he girlfriend?”
Mentore grabbed Sealey’s arm drunkenly and drew him to the table. “Hear, man, siddown and stop fretting about that young chap. Leon can take care of heself.”
“I got an urgent message from Georgetown fuh he,” Sealey lied.
Shirleen had been leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed. Now she opened them and said:
“He was here ’bout an hour ago. Then he just get up and leave.” She waved her lighted cigarette southward. “He went in that direction.”
Sealey nodded his thanks. He headed southwards in the direction of the houses where the prostitutes stayed, driven by an illogical fear for Leon that the Bishop and his own dream had planted in his head.
Miss Coreen’s house, where the girl was staying was the last building before you reached the jungle and the river; a two-storey building with flaking white paint. The house was set some distance away from the others It was usually a noisy place, with prostitutes drinking, cooking or cussing in the yard. But today, silence enveloped the house. The coals from an old fire were scattered on the ground. He hesitated, suddenly struck by the folly of his mission. Here he was, on the verge of intruding on a young man and his girlfriend. And for what reason? Because of a premonition? How was he going to explain his presence? He suddenly realized that his mouth was dry, his palms were sweaty, and with a shock he realized that part of him was excited at the thought of seeing the girl again, seeing her up close, in daylight; hearing her voice. Would she be in there? Was this real, or a continuation f his strange dream?
He shook off his thoughts and walked up t the door. Like the other houses where the girls stayed, this one had a rough bottom flat. He knew there would be four rooms inside, a latrine at the back.
The two plywood windows were shut. But despite the silence, the padlock was not on the door. That meant that someone was bolted inside.
He took a deep breath and rapped. The sound of his knuckles echoed hollowly in the house.
He rapped again. Harder this time. He cleared his throat. “Leon?”
Silence.
This is foolishness, he thought, and was turning away when the door opened.
A sweat-drenched face peered out at him. Red-rimmed eyes half-hidden by a mass of tangled hair. For a second—through some trick of light—the face seemed haggard, wrinkled, so unlike the face he’d expected to see that he thought he had come to the wrong house. Then, behind the tangled face, he saw the familiar high cheekbones, the wide, haughty mouth. The musky odour he’d come to know so well assailed him, and he felt a rush of lust such as he had not experienced since boyhood.
She flicked the hair away from her face. The slanted, red-rimmed eyes stared into his; questioning, with a trace of hostility, and yet, strangely blank, the way Shirleen’s looked when she was on a ganja high.
He heard himself mutter an apology. “Uh—I looking for Leon. He inside?”
A long pause, while she stared at him. Then, just as he thought that she would not answer, she said: “Yes.”
“Uh…can you call him for me?”
”Leon…the sing-song voice was slurred. “Leon is…”
She broke off suddenly, baring her teeth as if in pain. She shifted forward slightly. He caught a flash of breast and thigh. Now her body was pressed against the inner wall near the door. “Leon is…is…” She shifted again, and with a shock he realised that she was caressing herself against the doorway. “He…”
…a flash of breast and thigh…
“…is…”
“…is resting.”
Now the bloodshot eyes were blank, unseeing. She shifted further into the doorway. He felt a roaring heat in his brain. He thought he heard his own inhaled breath as he saw the soft contour of her hip…her thighs…
Her thighs…
He felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. For a second her exquisite thighs had parted slightly,
exposing her nakedness fully to him. but he had seen something else, too; something with pin-prick eyes; something scaly, something that clung to her thigh.
But he wasn’t sure what he had seen, for now the girl’s bloodshot eyes had lost their blankness, and she was staring with naked hostility. Then, in a flash, she had covered her thighs and slipped back into the shadows of the house…

(to be continued)