The Onion Eaters (7 page)

A nightime murmuring and mumbling on towards dawn. Comes sweeping across the earth making winter bird choruses and chasing out to sea. Puts light on the waves. Pushes fish down in the deep. Where their teeth might miss each other in the dark. And after all these obtuse
thursday
goings on, would that I sleep. Buried under Rose’s snores.

Clementine rolling his head back and forth under Rose’s hair. Till a great moist nose peeked through followed by the tongue and paws of Elmer. Who wanted to join the fun. Pushing his monstrous head between the two of us. Just as one is tasting the tip top joys again way up inside Rose. As she sleeps and now wakes roaring. And growling just like Elmer.

‘Ah God it’s the dog on us. Is he vicious. Get him away from me altogether.’

‘Out Elmer. Naughty dog. He’s only playing.’

‘He took a nip out of me.’

‘I’m sorry. Down Elmer. He’s just lonely.’

‘Woof woof.’

‘He doesn’t understand what I’m telling him.’

‘Well fuck off you monster understand that from me.’

‘Please don’t speak like that to my dog.’

‘Would you have him savage me defenceless in the
condition
we’re in.’

‘You could easily hurt his feelings.’

‘While he takes it into his head to make a horse dover of one of me appendages.’

Rose is somewhat savoury under the oxsters. Inciting
Elmer
who according to a mouldering dog reference book in the library can distinguish more smells than you could
shake a mamba at. He only wants to know what sniffs. Between the strong muscles in Rose’s thighs. Which grip me with pincers of knob ended knees. What on earth am I going to do with one unearthly wind ready to break. Right from the bowels of my conscience. So awkward after one remonstrates over incivility to a canine. To then unleash a stench closeted with layers of dank linen and wool, not to mention an inch thick emblazoned motheaten counterpane. Under which the two of us are unavoidably heavily
breathing.
Do please, everybody, get ready. As I ease it out. With no tune. Don masks. Sneak gas attack. Blame it on Elmer. I know for a fact he’s laid one or two. Fuming up pungent. Merrily riding down here. In the compartment of the train.

‘What’s that for the sacrifice of the saints.’

‘What.’

‘Is there a dead rat.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘It’s in the bed it is.’

‘Where.’

‘Gassing me.’

‘It’s Elmer.’

‘Get him away the dirty thing.’

‘Elmer. Out. Down. Naughty.’

‘That dog hasn’t a trace of a bit of manners on him.’

Through the narrow window slit slants a sliver of
moonlight
Tree branches scratching the walls. Clouds tumble by. A big boom of sea. A tremble of walls. The fraught fart fading. Brewed up as it must have been from the gravy. And further fermented by old cheese and ancient port. The three master minds when they get a moment free from making their snake pit in my house could concoct a pill to purify blasts. That freshly out of the pink expand. And turn a faceless blue in their beauty. The very latest. Just pop it down the throat. For your fragances. Of fern, lilac or heather. Matched pills for perfume. For evening wear. At one of their operas. Whole audience could come primed with lily of the valley. Making the authenticity of such a smell unforgettable. Rising triumphantly in crescendo
from the best bottoms. A unified blast as the curtain comes down. And the clapping hands fan it up to the rafters. One curtain call after another. Could be taken by Rose. Who is growling again. Gyrating and plunging down on me. Way up her as I am. Between the curious intermissions we’ve been having. Like at the Saturday morning movies I used to see. Discontinued till next week with the hero’s head on the railway track. And I rushed back with my nickels to see if he would get squashed. As did the noses my father punched. Long after he married a wife who kept coming out of their bedroom wrapped in her kimono telling me to get back down stairs. My father so frequent in rage. Saw him sock a man up against a big grain silo and then put his hand around his throat until the man’s face turned blue just like Mrs L K L. Once a month at least he blew up charging through the house breaking everything in sight. Hissing and steaming. Then banging his fist which went through whatever it landed on. I began to like it better than the movies. Watching through some discreet aperture. Dust
rising
from chairs. Windows shattering. Lamp shades crushed. That latter was my favourite. And if he could find me I was always good for absorbing a few punches. Sending me aloft across the room. Screaming child murder. But I grew to be able to scoot down the cellar stairs and squeeze out a
window
which was too small for him to fit through. And once when he stood in the basement glaring I emptied a pail of water all over him. Into which I had peed before. The chase went up and down cherry trees, over garage roofs and in and out of his three cars. Till he cornered me in a
bathroom
in the house. And just as he was breaking down the door, the police came charging in. He knew them by name, Hal, Bob, Dick and gave them beer in the kitchen until they couldn’t stand up. All telling me one by one to behave myself and obey my father. Whose next wife thank God liked me and baked apple pies whenever I wanted them. Which was every day. With a bottle of cream. Followed by spoonfuls of cod liver oil. My palate enjoyed variation. I was a thin but healthy little devil. This new mother was nice. And I was hoping my father wouldn’t get another.
Servants, all of whom had been frightened away came back to work for us. To get a stifled laugh one Sunday dinner when my father’s rage weakened chair collapsed beneath him and he got showered with a bowl of boiled potatoes. Which Rose might have preferred to the long gone to seed spud she snapped at in her eager hunger. Needed to feed her frenzied energy she uses to grind it right off me. Hold her steady by the great white rear globes. Smooth as
mushrooms.
Heaving with the remarkable neoarciform described by Erconwald. On her webbed feet she cruised right in to borrow a toiletry. Now she’s calling me Joseph. Might be walking in her sleep. Teeth in my neck. Sinking in. One has that terrible feeling there are eyes in the ceiling. Clarence peeking between the stone vaulting. And
yesterday
one moment as I turned to go back in a hallway which headed far beyond my curiosity, I thought I saw someone skip into a room. Any door you might open now could be a snakepit. Auntie would have a fit. Even if she is arthritic in the legs. When I graduated from high school she was the only one who came. And when I stood under banners on the gymnasium steps with the wind blowing through my hair, great aunt clapped for me long after everyone else stopped. Till a man said shush and she took her parasol and clonked him one. On childhood Sundays she took me in her big car, telling Peter the chauffeur through a
microphone
which way to turn. To reach my mother’s tomb round a lot of curving cemetery roads. Under a great stone canopy she stood. As a big white piece of chiselled marble in long flowing robes. My aunt said my mother was the most beautiful woman in the midwest. That fine fine profile. And you my boy are going to make something of yourself. Take no nonsense from inferiors and less from superiors and count on being surrounded by crass stupidity for most of your life. And I knew she wanted to add, instead of
beating
the shit out of innocent pedestrians, motorists and
bystanders
like your father. Rose groans. Long and nearly agonized. Flapping around like a fish. On the end of this pole.

‘Ah Joseph, Joseph what is it you’ve got up in me.’

Do I speak. When I’m not Joseph. Best to wait for
recognition.
And meanwhile plan tomorrow’s events. Lick the place into shape. Before some more of it falls on me. Rose digging in her fingernails. She’ll be drawing blood. A little pain drives out the doom. Which after high school, college expulsion, naval training and sales careers, finally closed in on me. My slow suitable decline sent me on a stretcher from auntie’s gabled house in the shady street. And for the first time I saw her quiver. Just as the moon faced
grandfather
clock clanged three over her white head. And I passed by supine attempting the merest contorted grin. I was all she had left. And she was all I had. In the form of a very small weekly allowance. She sent me fresh fruit each day to the hospital. Tightwad as she was she kept me in a ward. In a wing the other side of the grey pebbled roof top where my mother died. Windows looked out over a canal. Two a.m. was the greatest stillness. When we all lay. wondering who was next to go. Wheeled out under a sheet. Before dawn came and gave us another day. Stare up now at the ceiling beaded with moisture. This castle like a vine entwining. Rose is off me and taking a rest. I’m in an awful state of worry. What if she’s afflicted with something not nice and catching. Which could send me down again only weeks after I’ve got up.

Elmer asleep. Big shadowy head curled around on his paws. New fiercer winds are lashing cannon ball raindrops. Rose on her back, hands behind her head and elbows sticking in the air, whistling. Elmer wakes, his ears cocking in all directions.

‘I needed that. I fancy you.’

‘My name’s not Joseph.’

‘Ah God that’s a scream. When I’m like that I can’t get the name Joseph out of me head.’

‘You know someone called Joseph.’

‘No. I just say the name. It does for everybody. You know I like it here. It’s a bit damp. But roomy. I got an itch first time I set eyes on you. You’ve funny brown peepers with spots in them. What’s for breakfast.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think it’s morning yet.’

‘I could eat a horse. Would you mind if I went down
below
and fixed up some bacon and eggs.’

‘I don’t know if there are any.’

‘Sure there’s pucks of food. I saw that Percival and a giant, blind as a bat unloading enough food out of a cart to feed an army. You’re wealthy.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me. I’m just glad of a bite to eat now and again. Only that the Baron never finishes his food I’d be starving.’

‘Who’s the Baron.’

‘Sure he was sitting across from you tonight down there in the dining room. Like the rest of us he’s inhabitating a dungeon back in town. For the moment he’s on combat pay with Erconwald. Hardly ever speaks but is a maniac for music. He came down my basement one night when I was rehearsing an aria and stood there at the wall beating his head on it, tears and then blood streaming down his face. Poor man was banished by his family in one of them foreign countries. They send him money once a month to stay away. When it arrives doesn’t he have a horse cab call and creep out to it in his pyjamas to be taken to the pawn where he redeems his wardrobe, with the likes of a
morning
suit, silk shirts and whatever else grand continental gentlemen put on their backs. And he’s to be seen for the next week immaculate with hotel porters running after him with tips for the races, lounging as he is in a suite with his long cigarette holder in his mouth sipping champagne as if he had not a bother in the world. When the money’s gone, he gets the horse cab back to the pawn, climbs into his pyjamas again and waits till the next cheque from his family. He’s delirious with joy here in the castle, just like home it is to him.’

‘You think he might stay.’

‘Stay, you just try to get him out. Sure I met him in the hall trembling and tearful, a sure sign he couldn’t be
happier.
Erconwald says he is an overflowing spring of
compassion.
Will you have a rasher and an egg if I fetch them up.’

‘Yes please.’

‘Right you are.’

Rose throws me a smile in the moonlit shadows. Her breasts aflood on her chest. Great black bush of hair
sprouting
from her belly. Sit here with my shot gun and pop the pheasants as they break from cover. She pirouettes. And goes into high c. Elmer leaping to his feet and tottering with the sudden effort. As Rose’s voice dins the ears.

‘EEEEEEEEEEEEEE. I’m feeling great. Stand up now on the bed and let me see a sight of you.’

‘I’d rather not.’

‘Come on haven’t you a sight of me.’

‘I’m shy.’

‘Come on give us a flash of it.’

‘Really I don’t think so.’

‘I love the sight of them standing out like a stallion, pointing straight at you as if you were accused of wanting to be killed by it. You’re a retiring sort of gent then.’

‘A little.’

‘So I’ll be off.’

‘You’re coming back.’

‘Well now that’s a thought. I’ll not come back unless you stand up there and give me an exhibition.’

‘I’m sorry but I won’t be threatened.’

‘Who’s threatening. Have you ever seen a black man’s. I hear tell they’d choke you with them. And a yellow man’s is no bigger than a snail out of its shell.’

‘I’m not really acquainted with either.’

‘Well I’m off.’

‘Goodbye.’

‘So long.’

Rose wrapping up in her kimono. Tying a knot around the waist. Twisting her neck in a circle. And throwing back her hair. She goes. Now stops. In the antechamber. Could just reach there over the bed and clang down would come the iron door. Just as she was walking out. I’d be had up for murder. Which might be quite legal around here. Or God forbid decapitate her toes and tits. Which my resident scientists would painstakingly suture back on. And raise her combat pay.

‘I’ll come back. I’ve been without an old fashioned horn up me for over three months.’

‘What about the scientists.’

‘What about them, I wouldn’t let one of them near me with their things. Sure they want to be coming at you with calorimeters, gyroscopes and with a bunch of tubes. It’s vexing enough being examined by them that I don’t have to let them up me. It wouldn’t half fill a book the goings on back there in town testing out the distillate. With the three of them sitting there in a row on a bench one hand pulling away possessed and in the other holding stop watches. Didn’t they have an innocent little girl out of a convent as an assistant measuring the amount that jumped out into test tubes. The three disgusting pagans. I’m off for to get the eggs and bacon. Will you have a fried tomato as well.’