“. jumble. ” someone had said. the first words Limekiller clearly heard on awakening. And someone else had said, rather more quickly than the regular tempo of their speech and conversation, “No tahk aboet eet!” So they didn’t talk about it; whatever “it” was.
There was a long, quiet, dreamy moment, during which Jack almost dropped off to sleep again, but didn’t, and almost moved to place himself, spoon-fashion, against Bathsheba’s back. but didn’t. And after that long, quiet, dreamy moment, broken only by the sounds of the mule-carts down below, passing from the Post Office to Corn Meal Wharf where the green-tagged mail sacks would be laden aboard the Egret packet-boat, clup clup, creakcreak, rattle, clup, one of the young women renewed the conversation.
Limekiller, knowing her voice, knew that she would be already dressed for the day by now, in a tight frock which showed bosom and belly and buttocks. She said, “I nevah tehk no mahn fah money, no not me. Eef I like heem I go weet heem, eef he want geeve me money, sometime I let heem geeve. But I nevah tehk no fuhking mahn fah money, no not me. I hyear gyel say, Why you no tehk ah mahn fah fifteen dollah ah night? Suppose I tehk ah mahn fah fifteen dollah ah night ahn right away he mehk me ah beh-bee? What good fifteen dollah? What good fifteen dollah fah wahn night? No, gyel. Eef I no like ah mahn. I no tehk heem. ”
A long moment passed. In the bar beside the yard, men’s voices grew loud, and women hooted with laughter. They were beginning earlv in the bar beside the vard.
But on the second floor verandah: not yet.
“Henrietta, she gweyn to surgeon, surgeon he give she lee peels, so no hahve pickney, no hahve behby. You hear?"
They heard. They had plenty to say, having heard. Limekiller wondered why Bathsheba would neither go nor let him go to surgeon nor pharmacist for little pills or any other contraceptives; he had suggested; she had refused; the subject closed. But the subject of Henrietta was, on the second floor verandah, not yet closed.
Henrietta, she hahve wahn abortion when she strain she-self. - “Abortion,” here, in the old sense of miscarriage. Henrietta, she hahve wahn pickney die young ahn bory in Baby Heaven (the Infants’ Burying-ground), wahn she do away with (“abortion” in the modem, or North American, sense), ahn t’ree living child she hahve, bock home, by Bullet Creek. “Henrietta, she says E-nough." (Jack was inclined to feel that Henrietta had a point. But —)
But Minerva, she of the tight frock, was not so inclined. “I ahm ah Cot-o-leek, ahn dat ees ah seen," she said, emphatically.
Another woman (Ernestine? Ernestine.) declared that she was not a Catholic although had been baptize one; nevertheless neither did she hold with taking little pills not to have baby. “It is ahgainst Nature,” she said. “If you make mellow, you suppose make child,” she said. “God want it so. Nah true?”
“Fah true, fah true, Ernestine!”
“I say, leff it to Nature. God want it so.”
“Fah true. - Here come Jeremy.”
Jeremy, the limber, light young man (“clear,” in the local language) who acted as assistant manager and courier to, in, and around about the Hotel Pelican, came up the stairs with the five bottles of Fanta, dancing to the music of the jukebox in the bar. “No fahget leff me de pints, now: mind," he cautioned them. The deposits on the bottles (and in British Hidalgo, all bottles were “pints” regardless of measure) were his commission. Jeremy, not that it mattered, had a long chin.
And, somehow, from hearing (and, thus, seeing) this every-day peaceful vista (can one hear a vista?), Jack’s mind and eyes oh so softly and without transition slipped along the Northern highway and its few but striking signs: Bless God Farm. Grine Meat for Sale. Trespasser Will Be Prosecuted. Banns Read In This Church. Cashew Wine for Sale. Trespassers Will be Persecuted. Colonial Immigration Ordinance, 1955 and Subsequently Amended (Section 4) This entitles JOHN LUTWIDGE LIMEKILLER holder of Canadian Passport No. 684,660 issued at Toronto on 7th Feb. 196 — to enter British Hidalgo and to remain therein subject to his/her
they could have asked JLL to have dropped his drawers at the border and so decided if it was his or her, but no
compliance with the provisions of subsection (6) of section 4 of the Colonial Immigration Ordinance, 1955 as Provided that Thou shalt not practice cozenage or guile nor deal with the Devil
Limekiller knew that he had fallen off back asleep; and, on hearing the words:
“. jungle…" knew that he had awakened again, and that, to prove that the whole imagery had come full circle and that time wras timeless, he would at once and once again hear the words, “No tahk aboet eel!” — and he did.
And next he heard, “Some of dese womans, dey using dev bodies, you does know what I means?” and, well, if one didn’t know what she meant, here, here at the Hotel Pelican, second biggest house of assignation (in effect: whorehouse: but not exclusively, though) in King Town, where in the hell would one know? — But one of the familiar voices swept this aside with another question: “Why Minerva no want we tahk aboet jungle?” — only, only, he being more awake this time than asleep, it sounded more as though the word were jumble… if one washed to be more precisely phonetic (and what in the hell was all this bullshit about phonetics when he was lying well-spent, half asleep, in a whorehouse?): “… jumble…“
. and one voice: “Becahse she fright. — What? You no fright from jungle?" Ans.: “ Whatt?. In King Toewn? No, gyel, me no fright here.”
His total reply to all this was the simple, Eh?
He must have said it out loud. “Eh?”
Because at this, Bathsheba awakened, rolled over, applied her hand to That One Talent Which Is Death To Hide, and, as it wasn’t really hidden at the moment, anyw ay. John Lutwidge Limekiller instantly forgot all about any goddam conversation elsewhere, no matter how near, whatsoever.
On whatsoever subject.
Usually such intervals were, anyway, after the second time, followed by Togetherness in the form of a shower, follow'ed by a long interval of patient impatience or impatient patience on his own part, the whilst she applied various unguents and lotions and sprays and as he was disallowed. perhaps by some colonial Ordinance to him unknowe. from all the secrets of usually. ointment of rosewater, for all he knew to the contrary; after which they slowly- made their way, via the Pelican Bar — the one beside the yard — to any of two or three restaurants: not this time, kid, however.
Not being invariably at his keenest and sharpest at such moments, he did but repeat the all-purpose, „Eh?“
To which the lovely Bathsheba replied, “Because I say, is ‘Eh.’ I have some things to do, I have to see my auntie, and my other auntie, and my sister, the one who lives with,” he had given up either trying to figure out why, when she wished to, she could and would slip from Baytalk into Standard (if slightly, and beautifully, accented) English, or the numerifications of her enormous family: “So please, Jack, let me have $20, and I will meet you dowmstairs at the stroke of ten.”
He let her have $20.