Penguin Books
And the Ass Saw the Angel
Nick Cave was born in Australia in 1957 and achieved early recognition as a founding member of the rock group The Birthday Party. In 1983 he formed The Bad Seeds, who soon after released the first of their eleven albums to date, From Her to Eternity. After some years in London Cave moved to Berlin in 1984, and his first book, King Ink, was published in 1988, the same year as The Bad Seeds appeared in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire and scored the controversial prison film Ghosts of the Civil Dead, whose screenplay Cave helped to write. In 1996 Murder Ballads was released - featuring a hugely popular collaboration with Kylie Minogue - and King Ink II was published; in the same year, The Bad Seeds scored John Hillcoat’s film To Have and to Hold. The Boatman’s Call, hailed by many as Cave’s masterpiece, was released in 1998.
And the Ass Saw the Angel has been recognized as one of the most extraordinary fictional d6buts of recent years and has been translated into seventeen languages. Penguin also publish Nick Cave’s Complete Lyrics.
Nick Cave
And the Ass Saw the Angel
Penguin Books
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Black Spring Press Ltd 1989
Published in Penguin Books 1990
13
Copyright © Nick Cave, 1989
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in hich it is published and without a similar condition including this ondition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN:978-0-14-193532-4
For Anita
23 And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field: and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into the way.
24 But the angel of the Lord stood in a path of the vineyards, a way being on this side, and a wall on that side.
25 And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she thrust herself unto the wall, and crushed Balaam’s foot against the walclass="underline" and he smote her again.
26 And the angel of the Lord went further, and stood in a narrow place, where was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left.
27 And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she fell down under Balaam: and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff.
28 And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam,
What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?
29 And Balaam said unto the ass, Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee.
30 And the ass said unto Balaam, Am I not thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee?
And he said, Nay.
31 Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and he bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face.
Numbers, 22
PROLOGUE
Three greasy brother crows wheel, beak to heel, cutting a circle into the bruised and troubled sky, making fast, dark rings through the thicksome bloats of smoke.
For so long the lid of the valley was clear and blue but now, by God, it roars. From where ah lie the clouds look prehistorical, belching forth great faceless beasts that curl ’n’ die, like that, above.
And the crows – they still wing, still wheel, only closer now – closer now – closer now to me.
These sly corbies are birds of death. They’ve shadowed me all mah life. It’s only now that ah can reel them in. With mah eyes.
Ah think ah could almost remember how to sleep on this soft, warm circle of mud, for mah rhythms differ. They do.
Sucked by the gums of this toothless grave, ah go – into this fen, this pit, though ah fear to get mah kill-hand wet. In truth and as ah speak, the two crows have staked out mah eyes – like a couple of bad pennies they wheel and wait, while the rolling smoke curls and dies above, and ah see that it turns darker now and ah am but one full quarter gone – unner – or nearly and gaining.
There below! O little valley!
Two shattered knees of land rise and open to make a crease between. Down the bitten inner flank we go, where trees laden with thick vines grow upon the trembling slopes. Some hang out into the valley at dangerous angles, their worried roots rising from the hillside soil as they suffer the creeping burden that trusses and binds and weighs like the world across their limbs. This knitted creeper, these trees, all strung one to one and chained to the ground by vine.
Travelling the length of the valley, south to north, as the crow flies, we follow its main road as it weaves its way along the flat of the valley’s belly. From up here it could be a ribbon, as we pass over the first of many hundreds of acres of smouldering cane.
Tonight is the first night of the seasonal ‘burn-off’, an occasion of great importance and high festivity for Ukulore Valley, when the townsfolk all take to the tall fields to watch the wall of fire sweep the cane of its useless foliage, its ‘trash’. Yet this night sees all strangely quiet here on the out-fields: wet sacks and snake-beaters carelessly abandoned, sparks and grey ash borne silently through the air on a low wind.
The sugar refinery sprawls out by the east flank, a mile from the town. We can hear the steady chugging of its engines. Trolleys – some empty, some part loaded – sit forgotten on the tracks.
Wing on and past, over the town itself, where the rusty corrugated roofs grow denser and we can see the playground and the Courthouse and Memorial Square.
Down there, in the centre of the Square, erected at the very heart of the valley, the marble sepulchre containing the relics of the prophet crumbles and splits beneath the slogging of three down-borne mallets.
A group of black-clad mourners, mostly women, watch on as the monument is destroyed. See how they wail and gnash their teeth! And see the great marble angel, its face carved in saintly composure, one arm held high, a gilded sickle in its fist; will they bring that down as well?
And on, through the commotion, through the town’s stormy heart, where women mourn as at a wake, bullying their grief with breasts bruised black and knuckles bleeding. Watch how they fan the streets with their wild, black gestures, twisting the sack-cloth of their robes with pleading seizures and dark spasms.