But tell me, what first brought you to Amanga?
What drives you to work in this world of want and hunger?”
And Teri said, “Well, life at home was tame…
…although dear mother died, we never lacked…
…I’ve always felt the love of Jesus shine
upon my life and felt it was a shame
not to give Our Saviour some love back.
The church was always there to support my dad.
He’s raised five children up in Jesu’s name,
so helping out in the orphanage makes me glad.
But what’s your reason Ben? I don’t understand
why you’re working there…you seem to blame
Christians for the problems of this land...?”
Ben spooned out some lentils. “It’s not true
to say I’m not a Christian anymore.
But what I want to use my gap-year for
is work out what I really want to do…
…I’d thought I’d follow my dad into ordination,
but I wonder if we’ve got the total truth:
Abrahamic faiths...Christians, Muslims, Jews...
...appeared at a time when tribes were becoming nations
and cities became the seats of religious power.
Older beliefs revolved around what grew
but we lost respect for the seasons, the fauna and flowers…
…that’s why the world’s messed up...we’ve lost our karma…
…upset the balance...Have you tried this stew?
It’s really fruity...I think it’s made with bananas.”
Teri took a taste and said, “That’s nice.
It’s wholesome and it’s hot, and what a plateful!
Rosemary feeds me well, so it sounds ungrateful
but now and then it’s good to have some spice.
But Ben, you’re causing me real consternation
saying that our link to nature’s lost.
Wherever I look I see the love of Christ,
of God the Father, stamped on his creation.
Everything of beauty, I believe,
was present in the earthly paradise
our Father gave to Adam and to Eve.
And Ben said, “That has yet to be resolved...”
filling up her plate with saffron rice,
“...there’s many think that beauty just evolved.”
And as he spoke, the wall beside him produced
the strangest sound: a gentle cooing voice.
A flap with a hinge and catch was source of the noise
so Ben flipped it open, and doing this he loosed
a snow white dove, the maker of the calls,
which hopped on his hand and sat there poised and spruce.
Ben was calm. “The Jinjus must’ve induced
these birds to sleep in air vents in the walls,”
Teri beamed, “I so love birds...they’re sweet!”
She reached to tickle the white bird’s neck, seduced,
and stroked its breast, which caused their hands to meet.
Then acting like a creature with one mind
they raised it up and popped it back in its roost.
The spellbound couple’s hands remained entwined.
In the Cathedral, Imti Mentoo’s touched
recalling that scene and the romance that blossomed from it.
He yearns for such love. The more he broods upon it
the more he craves real flesh. He’s moved so much
with amorousness, he’s forced to fly in haste
to his Palace of Love: a stinking basement where six
young girls repose prepared to realize such
demands as constitute a client’s taste.
His favourite’s a twelve-year-old. She’s lank
and almost fills her five-foot wooden hutch
sprawled on a bed of rags, her features blank.
He loves to watch her nude - survey her vestigial
little breasts - but no-one’s getting fucked
right now so he resumes his candle-lit vigil.
He sinks into a morbid reverie:
If I can make volcanos vomit fire,
occasion storms...why must I bear this fear
that there might be no other gods than me?
Though hordes of my adherents place the purest
fruits of the field in my shrines, two dozen may
believe there are no other gods than me
...so why can’t I talk to my fellows? Foreign tourists
treat us like a circus but they mock
no other god as viciously as me.
I’ll glory in their torment when I knock
their world to bits, those silly smiles unfolding,
learning there’s no greater God than me.
He hugs the weighty tool of fate he’s holding...
Several weeks elapsed. He next found Ben
inside the city’s historic Market Hall.
Imti Mentoo saw him at a stall,
sat on a milk-crate, Teri beside him again.
The couple were picking at plates of rice and beans
with plastic forks while shoppers surged around,
chatting with the attitude of friends.
Teri sported tee-shirt and denim jeans
which dampened not at all the deity’s lust.
His image, glazed in a wall-tile, stared at length
sizing up the contours of her bust.
“He says it’s beans, but I’m sure it tastes of chicken,”
the girl had barely finished saying when
she found a piece of bone and looked quite sickened.
“Perhaps,” said Ben, “it’s not the shrewdest time
to adopt a purely vegetarian diet
when we’re set to travel round the island.
I’d do it myself you know, but I’m
not sure exactly what we’d get to eat…
…Jinju restaurants are pretty hard to find
outside the city.” He squeezed a slice of lime
over his plate. “Amanga is great for meat,
but the forest they clear for cattle is regretful.
So let’s go veggie New Year, after we’ve climbed
the central range...alright? We’ll look for quetzals!”
Teri gazed adoringly in his eyes.
“I guess you’re right…although it feels a crime
to keep on eating flesh, it might be wise.”
“Is Rosemary cool about us going travelling?”
“I hope!” she said, “I’ve served for half a year
and next week she’s got three new volunteers
coming from home…I think she would be scrabbling
to find us all jobs. I’ll be your road-buddy if you
can get me back late December…the Christmas happening
in Amanga City’s a big parade that’s dazzling.
...Oh Ben! I so want to hike in the forests with you…
…see a Resplendent Quetzal...and condors too.
There’s a lookout in the mountains...it might be dizzying
...I’m scared of heights…but I hear they’re easy to view,
and I so love birds...the number one target for me
is the Zeelung Marshes to watch the waterbirds dabbling.
What about you Ben? What do you want to see?”
“Zeelung is a priority for me too.
When I was studying Amangan at University
I knew a guy, a lecturer in zoology
called Doug McIver…a naturalist through and through
who landed a grant to do some research there,
trapping and ringing migrant birds that flow
past in their millions. The day before he flew
off to Amanga he promised me fair and square
he’d show me around if I ever came to visit…
…there’s ibi
s’, flamingos, sunbirds, potoos…
…things I’ve only seen as stuffed exhibits
mounted in glass cases in museums.
He talked with such passion about the birdlife, I knew
if ever I came to this island I’d have to see him.
The problem is, I want to cover it all:
tigers and gibbons; quetzals, condors, vultures…
…but also I’m curious about the ancient cultures:
the Temple of Graal; the pyramid and mud-brick walls
of Noor-Ban-Wei,” Ben sighed, his look quite solemn.
“I feel like this country was etched upon my soul
before I was born...d’you know?...this market hall…”
he gestured up at blue-tiled arches and columns,
“…was commissioned by one of my family years ago?
I want to make waves but I’ve not yet heard the call.
What’s my role in the world? I just don’t know.”
“I’m sure you’ll make a mark Ben, you’re so bright!
A natural leader. You’re so on the ball!”
And Imti Mentoo thought, Too right, too right!
A little boy was going from table to table.
The racket of raucous hawkers of meat and veg
was drowning out his pleadings as he begged
for trivial coins. He walked barefoot. His sable
skin was stretched across angles of his skull.
Ben coughed up. “I know it isn’t noble
to splash my wealth about but I’m not able
to resist a hungry child with eyes so dull...
…we shouldn’t give money to children...it makes things worse...
…they work for gangmasters...sometimes they’re made disabled
to stir the donors’ pity. That’s perverse...
…but look at me - mother a charity chief,
father a bishop - these are things that enable
me to aspire while others are born to be thieves.”
They cleaned their plates and both got up to leave.
The god in the wall tile registered Ben announcing,
“This poverty and hopelessness around me...
...it makes me despair of ambition to relieve
the country’s suffering...can we dispel the dark
that blights these lives? Show them they are loved?”
They exited under a stuccoed archway - interleaved
bananas and grapes. The god heard the girl remark,
“If I can get one foundering soul unstuck,
I’ve made a difference, that’s what I believe.”
He peered from a street-side shrine and saw them dumbstruck:
pigeons, kites and parrots filled the sky
wheeling round and round like autumn leaves
and both stood spellbound, wonder in their eyes.
White.
Nothing.
The god was huffing.
He cussed the bank of fog, the blanked out shite.
When he’d learnt their plan to go off touring
he’d made a plan himself, which was to sit
and wait for their arrival at the site
where tourists go to see the condors soaring.
He knows the place quite well: his statue stands
beside the coach-stop where foreigners alight,
and all around’s encamped a doughty band
of mountain women selling knitted shawls.
They make a clothes-hook of his stiff upright
which Imti Mentoo doesn’t mind at all.
But otherwise the god is not besotted
with that canyon. He’s heard too many times
the same old tour-guide spiel: the reason why
Amangan skies are sparsely vulture-dotted:
the drugs they give to cows have stopped them breeding.
Leaning on the parapet, slow-witted
tourists “ooh”ed and “arr”ed while he “so-what?”ed,
recalling long-gone clouds of scavengers feeding
off a bounteous gibbet’s laden boughs,but since these days dissenters aren’t garrotted
he couldn’t see the point of condors now,
nor why these visitors flock and make a fuss.
The days dragged by until at last he spotted
Ben and Teri getting off a bus.
“That’s a relief!” he heard the young lady saying,
staggering slightly. “That bus was so unsteady
and all those hairpin turns...they’ve made me giddy.
I still feel like the ground beneath me’s swaying.”
Ben was green. He leant on the cliff-top barrier
listening to the river far below him.
“We’ll not see a dicky-bird while this fog is laying
thick like this. The shuttle-bus people-carriers
that villagers use have even worse suspension
than what we came on, but there’s no point delaying…
...we’ll have to take what comes...another adventure
by chickenbus...we’ve four hours’ journey ahead
to Zeelung and we don’t know where we’re staying.
I hope there’s some cheap hostel with spare beds.”
They had to wait a while and passed their time
browsing through the piles of knitted shawls
and hand-carved sandalwood nick-nacks sold from stalls
by ladies dressed like dames in pantomime.
Imti Mentoo felt a proud sensation
when Ben picked up a figurine of him,
dusted off a film of roadside grime
and eyed the workmanship with admiration.
“I hope you’re not gonna buy that...it’s uncouth,
and if you let Rosemary see it I’m
not gonna be around...she’ll hit the roof!”
“Ohh!...the more I think of how Rosemary would
consider it the century’s greatest crime,
the stronger my conviction that I should!”
And saying that, Ben dug into a pocket
and struck a deal. She scowled with folded arms.
“Don’t be like that...it’s just a fertility charm.
Some women even wear them in a locket.
I wish I’d kept the first one that I bought.”
The god then heard the tale of how his prophet
had saved the charm from Alec’s attempt to mock it.
“...a good friend but he doesn’t spare much thought.”
Teri wasn’t swayed. “It isn’t just
...y’know...that thing...” she blushed and mouthed mutely ‘cock’, “...it’s
how it looks at you...that leer of lust.
Gods should have some dignity and grace,
not vampire teeth and ears like Mr. Spock. It
turns my stomach just to see his face!”
Her words made Imti Mentoo quite incensed.
The bus that came at last was ‘standing only’.
He pondered, while they fought to get their loads in,
on how his righteous wrath should be dispensed.
The eyes of the statue sheathed in knitted shawls
could see inside the bus. The pair were ensconced
sardined in the aisle, rucksacks against
their legs. The sandalwood carving overheard all
the hubbub of the locals. The stacked up roof-rack
wobbled away from the look-out, and he commenced
to plot revenge in the darkness of Ben’s backpack.
He brooded deep, but his deliberations
on how the insult might be recompensed
were interrupted by an exclamation:
“Oh Ben! Look at that bus! Aren’t they delightful!”
And then Ben’s voice: “The Missions in these mountains
run scho
ols for indigenous tribes. Without a doubt it’s
the only way these kids would get their rightful
education.” But when it passed the lookout
the sight made Imti Mentoo less delighted
- to him the scene of innocent joy was frightful -a school-bus full of waving kids that stood out
yellow against a rocky escarpment. Although
his dick is in his brain, the god’s insightful,
and Teri’s acclaim just made his anger grow.
He felt a plan of cruel malevolence stir
inside the turgid organ. Then the spiteful
little god knew how to punish her.
How culpable was the driver? He should have slowed
at every deadly corner - eased round gently
instead of hurling the bus at each one, mentally.
And how much answerability was owed
the owner who failed to keep the brakes from rust?
The service mechanic who didn’t check the tread
on tyres as thin as skin on a dying toad?
How boisterous were the children on the bus!
How they howled - not with fear, but levity -
heedless as they were that goats can goad
a hanging hillside into the grip of gravity!
How keenly honed the chisel that carves reality!
How sharp the shards of stone across the road,
each one edged with murderous potentiality!
In forty mountain shacks he watched the pain
engulf the eyes of forty haggard mothers
whose families comprised their only treasures,
waiting for a child’s return in vain,
and Imti Mentoo did not give a wank.
The fog that cloaked the canyon top had gone
and condors climbed the airstream once again,
circling on an updraft till they banked
away from the viewpoint. For a while they wheeled
above a corner of the road, then deigned
to join some caracaras in their meal.
The statue perched above the precipice
was thinking in the thing that serves for brains,
Just wait till the impudent cow gets word of this...
When she heard the news, the god was listening.
A friend reported the tragedy in Zeelung Marshes
at a restaurant overlooking a waste of dead grasses,
a single distant pool of water glistening.
The man wore a canvas hat. Over beers
he’d mentioned the bus crash while they’d sat discussing
birds they’d seen from the bus along the twisting
mountain roads they’d travelled getting here.
Ben was dismayed, “Such calamities fuel
the part of me that questions God existing,”
and Teri yelped, “No god could be so cruel!”