Will Self - The Butt

Prentice wore very new, very stiff blue jeans, cut narrow in the style favoured by the country’s cattlemen. On his feet were steel-toed, elastic-sided boots, on his back a khaki bush shirt. The whole authentic outfit was rounded off by a wide-brimmed hat with a neatly rolled fly net attached to its brim, which Prentice carried in his free hand. The gear pegged Prentice as a wannabe adventurer, determined to strike out for the lawless wastes of the interior — or at least to give that impression. Tom instantly despised him, for Prentice’s face belied any such resolve.

It was, like his damp hand, thin yet fleshy. The eyes were equally unresolved: pinkish lids, reddish lashes and wet pupils like those of an embryo. When he spoke — with his irritating, braying accent — his plump yet bloodless lips rolled back from his gums. Either the man had a bad shaving rash, or he’d picked up a fungal infection in one of Vance’s rank shower stalls, for his weak jaw and turkey neck were lumpy and corrupted. All in all, Tom couldn’t recall ever meeting a more distasteful individual.

Prentice’s handshake was predictably furtive: one finger bent back and caught in Tom’s palm, as if he were an accidental Mason. When Tom let go, the hand fell limply back to Prentice’s side.

Swai-Phillips observed this meeting with ill-concealed mirth. ‘Dr Livingstone,’ he quipped, ‘this is Mr Stanley. Stanley, this is the celebrated Dr Livingstone. I hope you’ll be very happy together!’ Then he turned his attention to the tranced-out makkata and spat a long stream of clipped consonants and palate clicks in his direction.

Tom wasn’t surprised that the lawyer spoke one of the native languages; never the less the vehement sound of the tongue struck him anew. The desert peoples didn’t use the same parts of their mouths to speak as Anglos; or, rather, they hardly used their mouths at all. Teeth, palate and larynx conspired together to produce this percussive noise.

The makkata came out of his reverie at once, ejected the chaw of engwegge into his palm, tucked it into his breechclout and, gathering his stick limbs under him, rose. His wide black eyes were limpid but showed no sign of intoxication. He pointed at Tom and Prentice while rapping away still more emphatically than Swai-Phillips.

The lawyer grinned. ‘He says that he’ll do the ceremonial test right away — you first, Brodzinski.’

Tom quailed; he was a skinny boy once more, being pushed towards the vaulting horse by a sadistic phys. ed. instructor. He wished he could deflect the makkata’s steady gaze.

‘What about Prentice, here? I mean — no offence, Prentice — but what the hell is he doing here? Is he a client of yours, Jethro? I think I have a right to know.’

‘Rights!’ Swai-Phillips guffawed. ‘Rights, rights, rights — it’s always your bloody rights with you people. Property rights, personal rights, human rights, animal-bloody-rights. Brodzinski, I’m your lawyer, for pity’s sake, and let me tellya, this has absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s bloody rights at all, yeah. This is a very simple, very quick ritual procedure. This man has come thousands of clicks to perform it. He’s an extremely important man, and, strange as it may seem to you, yeah, he’s actually in a bloody hurry. So, if it’s all the same to you’ — Swai-Phillips paused, the better to impress on Tom that this was not negotiable — ‘I think my advice, as your lawyer, is that you do exactly what he wants, which is for you to drop your strides — now . Please.’

Swai-Phillips took Prentice by the arm, and they went down the hill towards the jungle wall. Even as he was unbuckling his belt and letting his pants slide down, Tom was wondering if such feeble compliance was still because of nicotine withdrawal. He had no idea what the makkata was going to do to him. The awful thought occurred to Tom, as he stood half naked in the glaring sun, that it was a show, put on for the lawyer’s perverse enjoyment. That he was bent on humiliating Tom, simply because he could. Maybe Prentice was really a crony of Swai-Phillips, brought along to witness this shaming.

The makkata closed in on Tom and knelt. He was clickety-clacking with his slack dry purse lips. Tom — although he couldn’t conceive of anything less likely — admonished himself not to become aroused. Yet this thought itself was arousing: he felt the familiar prickle on the backs of his thighs, his scrotum tightened. The makkata’s breath was now on the front of his shorts, and Tom could smell it despite the vegetal rot of the jungle. It was a spicy smell, mixed with the ferrous dust of the desert.

Tom let his head fall back on his sweaty neck. Heavy storm clouds were piled up above, their spongy masses saturated with rain-in-waiting. His fellow tourists — and the native Anglos when they’d had a drink — hymned the beauties of this mighty land. Yet, now that he was left behind here, Tom thought he might be looking at it with the more realistic eyes of the natives, seeing the scarred hillsides of the coastal ranges, smelling the faecal decay of the mangrove swamps. Certainly, there was nothing picturesque in the parts of the interior he had driven through with his family: the salt pans that flaked like eczema, the warty termite mounds, the endless charcoal strokes of the eucalyptus trees on the wrinkled vellum of the grasslands. Even here, on the coast, Tom sensed this alien landscape to his rear, an apprehension of a door ajar in reality itself, through which might be glanced seething horrors.

The makkata, grasping the flesh of Tom’s inner thigh firmly between his thumb and forefinger, said ‘I’ll protect you’ in accentless English. Tom felt a searing stab, jerked his head forward and, appalled, watched as the sorceror slowly withdrew the blade of a steel knife.

Blood coursed from Tom’s thigh. He felt dizzy, staggered and, hobbled by his pants, almost fell. Then Swai-Phillips was supporting him.

‘Be a man,’ the lawyer said. ‘It’s nothing, a flesh wound.’

He gave Tom a wad of Kleenex, which he clamped to his thigh. While Tom rearranged his clothing, the lawyer squatted down by the makkata, who was examining the patch of bloodstained earth, already lucent with feeding flies. The makkata stirred this into red mud with his knife blade while clicking an incantation.

‘B-but, he speaks perfect English,’ Tom said irrelevantly. He moved a few shaky paces off. Prentice was still fifty yards away, his kinked back resolutely turned.

Swai-Phillips came over. ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you up to the house. My cousin’ll bandage that scratch, and I can tellya, mate, you’ll enjoy that, yeah.’

As Tom was led away, he asked, ‘What about Prentice?’

‘Prentice?’ For a moment the lawyer was confused — then he barked, ‘Oh, him! Right! It’s his turn now, isn’t it? Silly bastard’s got the same problem as you, needs a makkata to judge whether he’s astande.’

The lawyer half dragged Tom up the hill, then began marching him across the open ground. Tom shook himself free. ‘And am I?’ he spat. ‘Am I astande? Because if I’m not, I’m gonna sue you and that fucking witch doctor, you better believe it, man.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ The lawyer swept off his sunglasses, and his good eye twinkled. He was enjoying himself. ‘No worries, mate, you’re good.’

Through the living jalousie of the jungle, Swai-Phillips’s house came into view. Given its size, Tom was astonished that he hadn’t spotted it from the top of the hill. It was three storeys high, with a wide veranda at least a hundred feet long. The entire structure — including the covered walkways that connected the main house to a number of outbuildings — was riveted together out of corrugated iron. Great slabs of this material, streaked with rust, had been bent and bashed into copings, windowsills, pillars, roofs, chimneys and balustrades. There was even a corrugated-iron pool.