Tip Marugg
The Roar of Morning
ONE
I live on a core of sedimentary and igneous rock surrounded by coral reefs, part of the arc of islands that encloses the Caribbean basin; on clear afternoons I can see the outline of the mountains on the northern coast of South America. I’m not as young as I was, and on occasion I give myself over to that solitary gratification which the good friars back in school used to call self-abuse — a practice that, as I knew even then, flies in the face of all that is right and sane.
It’s about an hour and a half past midnight. I sit on the paved terrace in front of my house and watch the low hills opposite me descend in serried ranks towards the coast. During the day they are grey, but, now, through the magical effect of night, they are shrouded in a mysterious bronze-green veil. Attached to the façade of virtually every house scattered across the nearby slopes is a bare neon tube, and from this distance they look like giant straw-coloured glowworms gnawing at the walls with gently undulating movements. When there is a moon, you can make out the wrecked cars strewn around the houses like so many fossils, not decaying, but eternally waiting. My loyal bitch Fonda lies at my feet and now and then licks my toes slowly and obsequiously through my open slippers. In my garden, six yards or so to the right of where I’m sitting, there’s an old indju tree, a giant bowed by the wind. At irregular intervals it lets out a rasping moan, very like the dull, subdued growl that occasionally issues from the throats of old men. There is an unsightly kink in the trunk and the bark is covered in thick brown veins, formed by the sticky sap secreted by the tree. A worn-out veteran who knows he has grown too old and hasn’t bothered to clean up after his last ejaculation.
An ugly neon tube shines from the front of my house too. To my left on the terrace there is a small tumbler of whisky with a splash of lukewarm water — my fifth — and to my right the umpteenth bottle of ice-cold Dutch beer. For me they make the ideal combination, with an invigorating effect that I unfortunately discovered only late in life. Lager makes me languid and gloomy, whisky makes me aggressive and gloomy. By alternating these Scottish and Dutch derivatives of barley I often achieve the effect I look for in drink: of creating myself anew.
Every self-respecting citizen must have a front garden. That’s the custom around here. Even though the houses might be surrounded by the carcasses of discarded refrigerators, washing machines and cars, which serve both as status symbols and as breeding grounds for the dengue mosquito, the garden must be kept clean and tidy; any weeds must be destroyed immediately. As with certain other things, I have gone my own way. My cluttered, overgrown plot may compare unfavourably with the immaculate gardens elsewhere in the neighbourhood and probably invites critical comments, but I never hear them because I have hardly any contact with other people. I’m not a plant lover exactly, but I do enjoy the feeling of security that the tall bushes around my house afford me. My garden looks rather wild at the moment, as the rainy season has only just ended. Maybe I shall have to do something about it after all. It’s amazing how every year a different plant takes over. How these new species get into my garden is a mystery. The oddity currently is a thorny shrub that has grey-green leaves shaped like half-moons, but with the two extremities forked like a snake’s tongue; the stems are adorned with gleaming red fruits the size of a pea. Such a beautiful plant can only be poisonous. The emaciated goats that occasionally manage to sneak in here leave it untouched. Which may be why it’s running riot. The four trees against the fence on the left look particularly majestic, I think. Like soldiers on parade, they stand in a dead-straight line; they have no lower branches and rise a good twenty feet straight into the air, their thin trunks at once elegant and gross, like the gangling legs of a young goat, as frail and tough as all life.
People who know me, and those who don’t, accuse me, not without a touch of envy, of being a recluse who doesn’t give a damn about anyone else; they say I have removed myself from all contact with the outside world in this sparsely populated western part of the island, not even allowing a telephone in my hermitage. In fact, my house is on a fairly busy main road, although there are no cars passing at this hour. If I step on it, in twenty minutes I can be in town, where I visit the supermarket frequently, the bookshop occasionally and the barber two or three times a year. And my lair can’t be that hard to find, because I get more visitors than I would like.
This afternoon Eugenio dropped by. With his extravagant beard, parted in the middle from lower lip down to Adam’s apple, clothes that flap around him because they are several sizes too large and a straw hat with an enormous brim that almost conceals his diminutive figure, he is not an appealing sight and most people avoid him, although they know he’s harmless. For about fifteen years he taught the third class at the primary school in the village and organised sports for the children after lessons. It all started one Monday morning when he appeared at school with a stubbly growth of beard, and thereafter he never shaved again. In the space of a few weeks he lost an alarming amount of weight. When he began to keep his big hat on even in class, ceased to talk to his fellow teachers and started giving sex instruction instead of the usual language and math lessons, the headmaster had to act. Eugenio spent three months at the psychiatric clinic in town. Since his discharge, he has been either on sick leave or suspended on full pay; at any rate, he collects his teacher’s salary without fail each month. He now lives with a black woman who is twenty years his junior and has an exceptionally fine figure.
Sometimes he shouts obscenities at the packed tourist buses that drive past, and he likes to talk about the dreadful disasters that the astrologers wish upon mankind; as he does so, a fearsome look comes into his eyes, as if he were keen to start scourging himself. But in general he is very friendly. He talks about Abraham Lincoln as if he were still alive, and insists that we all have a double who will breathe his last at the same moment we do. He likes artificial flowers, because although they lose their lustre, they never in fact fade; and now and then he mutters something about hidden drawers full of secret documents.
The secret documents are actually in his boots. He wears calf-length boots that are too big for him, stuffed with pages torn out of books and folded very small. Most of the cuttings contain grandiose pronouncements by people like Churchill, Ortega y Gasset, Gandhi and Fidel Castro, but there is also, for example, a short dissertation on how to prepare a herbal remedy for syphilis, a list of proverbs mentioning cows or dogs, a colour photograph of a half-naked Marilyn Monroe, and the recipe for a hot sauce made of curry, garlic, sweet peppers and onions.
Though he may be a little unbalanced, Eugenio sometimes says things that make you think. “The inhabitants of this island are all scared stiff of walking in the rain. But the fools don’t know that it’s not the rain but the sun that they should be protecting themselves against.” Or, “That was an odd sermon the red-haired priest gave. As if he was addressing the rebellious descendants of the ancient Batavians and was unaware that his congregation in fact consisted mainly of the descendants of Angolan slaves.” About a fortnight ago I spent the whole afternoon drinking on the terrace with this oddball. He started talking about Nostradamus, and when I didn’t react he switched to the Revelation of St. John the Apostle. My suggestion that the two of them should get together and swap prophecies shut him up completely and we went on drinking in silence, which is the best way to drink anyway. Then, when dirty streaks of grey and pink appeared in the western sky and it began to get dark, he handed me his empty beer bottle and said, “One more beer. Then I must be off.” As I went to take the bottle from him, he did not let go immediately. He hunched up his body so that he practically disappeared beneath his hat, and as we both clung to the green bottle he muttered, “You’re playing a dangerous game. You sleep all day and stay awake all night. That’s unnatural and asking for trouble. You can’t protect yourself from perdition solely with drink. If you must be alone, you should at least fill your nights with daydreams.”