Read Online The Bell-Boy by James Hamilton-Paterson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: James Hamilton-Paterson
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solar system might pucker and pass to this dark earth. On it Jason fixed his lethargic eye and navigated in a trance.
The air of Malomba was saturated with odours. Fragrances of fruit rotting in the Wednesday Market mingled with those of a thousand balsam oaks, orchid sapodillas, belfry palms. From the clustered violet bells of these last trees tolled heavy notes of scent, rolling out of merchants’ gardens and temple grounds. To Jason, reeling with perfumes, there was one single smell behind all the others which in a few short days had become for him that of Malomba itself. He had no idea what it was.
He entered Chinatown. In stenching alleys behind the restaurants dogs were fighting over the lunchtime crop of puppy bones and fish heads. Gradually he became aware of a voice calling him, together with a hollow grinding noise. Looking down he found himself addressed by the torso of a boy mounted on castors. Of much the same age, this young fellow had a pair of muscular arms and hands wrapped in filthy cloths with which he rowed himself along. To each corner of his wood pallet were nailed steel bearings, worn ball-races discarded by mechanical workshops. In stopping he had slewed himself with a burst of sparks and blocked the path so Jason somehow lacked the energy to walk round him. Then in a high voice the boy-torso began to sing.
Thought flew out of Jason’s head, his feet would not stir. He watched the white, glittering teeth, the two grubby lumps of hand held out towards him, was fixed by the eyeswhich never left his face. The song climbed the hot walls of the alley and floated towards the pigeons slicing the blue air overhead. There was in it none of the shocking nakedness which singing on a street ordinarily had when upraised against the din of traffic, the indifference of passers-by. On the contrary, the boy’s voice blotted out all background noise so that he became cocooned in its sweetness.
How hot it was! It seemed there was nothing but this immense heat and the singing, interdependent in some way. Sima. The knot of mongrels foraging and brawling at the alley’s end were balletic in their movements. Sima. Not a sound came from them, only their feet raised whirlpools of dust, their fangs gleamed mutely. Sima sima sima.
Jason found the singing had stopped and the boy was addressing him.
‘Sima? ’ The wrapped hands were still extended and now he saw they held several small brown lumps.
‘I don’t speak … I don’t know …’ he stumbled and suddenly his feet were free and he could walk away. A last sima behind him and then silence in which he heard only his own footsteps. At the mouth of the alley he looked back and the boy-torso had not moved. Then with an abrupt thrust of his knuckles he spun on his trolley with a screech of steel and rowed away at a great pace, dusty thatch of hair flapping, the sound of his wheels fading into the snarling of dogs.
Laki had been alternately dozing and plotting beneath the vine’s shade on the very edge of the roof. Fresh bread, fumigations and repairs were a good start, but minor services needed to become favours, obligation turn into intimacy. How did one insinuate oneself into the closed circle of a family’s affections? It was precisely this delicate insertion he had been pondering when suddenly he caught sight of the son down below in the street. Thoughtfully he watched the boy enter the hotel alone.
And so it was that a few minutes later when Jason openedthe door of Room 41 he found the bell-boy standing on the bedside table tearing handfuls of beard from the ceiling.
‘Make repair,’ Laki greeted him succinctly. But Jason threw himself on to his bed with the exhaustion of one embarking on a long illness. ‘You okay? Where missus and miss?’
‘Botanical Gardens. I’m thirsty.’ He reached for an empty glass on the floor at his bedside and going to the tap turned it on. It sighed.
‘No water now, five o’clock coming back. But not for drinking.
The air of Malomba was saturated with odours. Fragrances of fruit rotting in the Wednesday Market mingled with those of a thousand balsam oaks, orchid sapodillas, belfry palms. From the clustered violet bells of these last trees tolled heavy notes of scent, rolling out of merchants’ gardens and temple grounds. To Jason, reeling with perfumes, there was one single smell behind all the others which in a few short days had become for him that of Malomba itself. He had no idea what it was.
He entered Chinatown. In stenching alleys behind the restaurants dogs were fighting over the lunchtime crop of puppy bones and fish heads. Gradually he became aware of a voice calling him, together with a hollow grinding noise. Looking down he found himself addressed by the torso of a boy mounted on castors. Of much the same age, this young fellow had a pair of muscular arms and hands wrapped in filthy cloths with which he rowed himself along. To each corner of his wood pallet were nailed steel bearings, worn ball-races discarded by mechanical workshops. In stopping he had slewed himself with a burst of sparks and blocked the path so Jason somehow lacked the energy to walk round him. Then in a high voice the boy-torso began to sing.
Thought flew out of Jason’s head, his feet would not stir. He watched the white, glittering teeth, the two grubby lumps of hand held out towards him, was fixed by the eyeswhich never left his face. The song climbed the hot walls of the alley and floated towards the pigeons slicing the blue air overhead. There was in it none of the shocking nakedness which singing on a street ordinarily had when upraised against the din of traffic, the indifference of passers-by. On the contrary, the boy’s voice blotted out all background noise so that he became cocooned in its sweetness.
How hot it was! It seemed there was nothing but this immense heat and the singing, interdependent in some way. Sima. The knot of mongrels foraging and brawling at the alley’s end were balletic in their movements. Sima. Not a sound came from them, only their feet raised whirlpools of dust, their fangs gleamed mutely. Sima sima sima.
Jason found the singing had stopped and the boy was addressing him.
‘Sima? ’ The wrapped hands were still extended and now he saw they held several small brown lumps.
‘I don’t speak … I don’t know …’ he stumbled and suddenly his feet were free and he could walk away. A last sima behind him and then silence in which he heard only his own footsteps. At the mouth of the alley he looked back and the boy-torso had not moved. Then with an abrupt thrust of his knuckles he spun on his trolley with a screech of steel and rowed away at a great pace, dusty thatch of hair flapping, the sound of his wheels fading into the snarling of dogs.
Laki had been alternately dozing and plotting beneath the vine’s shade on the very edge of the roof. Fresh bread, fumigations and repairs were a good start, but minor services needed to become favours, obligation turn into intimacy. How did one insinuate oneself into the closed circle of a family’s affections? It was precisely this delicate insertion he had been pondering when suddenly he caught sight of the son down below in the street. Thoughtfully he watched the boy enter the hotel alone.
And so it was that a few minutes later when Jason openedthe door of Room 41 he found the bell-boy standing on the bedside table tearing handfuls of beard from the ceiling.
‘Make repair,’ Laki greeted him succinctly. But Jason threw himself on to his bed with the exhaustion of one embarking on a long illness. ‘You okay? Where missus and miss?’
‘Botanical Gardens. I’m thirsty.’ He reached for an empty glass on the floor at his bedside and going to the tap turned it on. It sighed.
‘No water now, five o’clock coming back. But not for drinking.
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