KAMARANG…The white woman visits in dreams

May 06, 2019 News

---

 

By Michael Jordan

Someone was shaking him. He awoke, to see a woman with a pale face and long, loose hair smiling down on him. For a moment, he wondered what this strange woman was doing in his bed. Then the memory of his crazy night came back to him.
He sat up. How long had he spent here? He realised that he hadn’t removed his watch. The luminous hands said two-fifteen. Sunday, and here he was, lying in this brothel, with day-clean creeping up on him…his father had said something about church today…
“You going now,” she said.
The sound of her voice, the scent of her, brought back a surge of memories, and he thought of just lying there, maybe just for another hour…He kissed her, then, reluctantly, sat at the edge of the bed. He peered in the darkness, saw his trousers and jersey, slung on the chair. The girl rose, touched a switch near the door. He got a flash of the small, strange tattoo on her left thigh; something that looked like a scorpion with wings. Another surge of lust hit him as he watched her nakedness. She smiled as she caught him watching her.
He stood, surprised as a sudden bout of dizziness struck him. He blinked, and the dizziness subsided. He went over to the chair and retrieved his clothing. He dressed, flinching as he pulled on his underwear, now conscious of the soreness of his uncircumcised penis. He pulled on his jeans, feeling the afro-comb in one of the side pockets, now remembering that he had walked with it in anticipation of his tryst with Ann. He put on his jersey, combed his hair quickly in front of the mirror. He put on his Hush-puppies, then looked up to see the girl standing near him.
He felt a sudden wave of depression at the thought of leaving. He pulled the girl to him, hugging her tight, inhaling her scent. Her arms encircled him, and he caressed her back, pausing as his fingers encountered a small depression just above her left hip.
(A scar?)
She flinched away from his fingers. “I will follow you downstairs,” she said. She shifted out of his arms and headed to the bed. He watched her retrieve her clothes from the bed-rail, puzzled by the sharpness in her voice, the sudden shift in mood. But when she came over to him, fully dressed, she was smiling, the sudden, strange moodiness apparently gone. She caressed his face, then opened the door, and he followed her back down the long, uneven stairs.
She lingered at the bottom to give him a long, sweet kiss. “I will see you soon,” she said. She stared after him as he made his way back down the corridor.
The hall was empty now, the barman nowhere in sight. He half-wondered if he had dreamt it all, because when he looked back up the corridor, the girl was gone, too.
THE tiredness hit him as he turned into Lombard Street. His eyes burned; his legs felt heavy. Had he, a seventeen-year-old boy, just left the bed of a beautiful prostitute, who had demanded nothing from him? The feeling that he had dreamt it all returned. He felt the urge to turn back to see if the Ritz, and the girl, really did exist.
You crazy, dread. Of course, she was real. The scent of her was still on him. The memory of her harsh breathing was still in his head.
As he passed the Pakarima Guest House near the end of Lombard Street, he saw a tall, square-shouldered man coming towards him. As they neared each other, the man fumbled in his shirt pocket and took out a cigarette. He stopped, patted his pockets, sucked his teeth, then stared at Michael.
“You got matches, friend?”
“Nah,” Michael said, and continued on his way, his thoughts only on sleep.
And so he failed to see the man turn to stare at him; sniffing the air, brow furrowed in what seemed like surprise and consternation.
The man, a pork-knocker named Vibert Sealey, stood for a moment longer, his unlit cigarette dangling and forgotten in his mouth. He sniffed the air again. Nothing now. But he could have sworn that he had smelt perfume. But not just any perfume. Her perfume. He had smelt it when he had passed the boy. He shook his head, trying to push away the sudden rush of dread, mixed, as always, with a stirring in his old loins.
Nerves, Vibert Sealey…just nerves!
He continued south down Lombard Street, then headed into Harel Street. Now the smell came to him again. He stopped. Yes, there it was…he had always had a keen nose. He looked around. He was standing near The Ritz Guest House. It was his old watering hole, before Josephine and his fight with Johnny Perreira. Now he recalled that someone had told him that The Ritz had reopened. Hadn’t the person also said something about it being a brothel now?
The windows were shut, the building in darkness, but now he suddenly sensed hostile eyes on him. He stared up at the building. Stared up both sides of the street. Nothing.
So why was his skin crawling?
“The hell with it,” he muttered. “The hell with it.”
Then he hurried east down Harel Street, walking as fast as he could from those unseen eyes, and from that smell, that maddening smell…

SECOND VISIT TO THE RITZ, FIRST
DREAMS OF THE WHITE WOMAN
There was no sign of the girl when he entered the Ritz two days later. He made a show of going over to the punch-box, while checking in the corner where they had sat. She wasn’t there, either. Again, part of him wondered if she really existed. Some of the women he had seen on Saturday were there, and he thought he recognized some of the men. The barman gave him a nod of recognition as he ordered a beer.
Michael hesitated, then said. “Uh…Lucille around?”
The barman looked at him for a moment. “I think she in she room,” he said.
Was she alone? He thought of asking the barman’s permission to go to the girl’s room, but the man had turned away to serve someone else.
Disappointed, he shifted away from the bar and stood bracing the step-rail as he had done on Saturday, while glancing down the corridor occasionally in the hope of seeing her. He found himself talking to a tall, fair-complexioned youth who bummed a beer from him.
He half-listened as the boy, who appeared to be a few years older than Michael, explained that he was a stevedore at the Kingston Wharf, and that he came up here often and knew most of the women. As if to prove his point, he signalled to the tall woman with the short afro, who had come to the bar. He made a show of holding her hand and whispering in her ear.
“Most of them up here easy,” he said after the woman had returned to her seat. “They like high-colour chaps like me and you. Come up hay a couple times and yuh gun see what ah mean.”
He was wondering if the women included Lucille, when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and there she was, suddenly half-way down the corridor and heading to the hall. She was wearing some sort of colourful, split-skirt thing, along with leather sandals. He felt his heart thumping as she came nearer, a half-smile playing around her lips. Besides him, the stevedore sucked his teeth and muttered something. Again, he sensed that perceptible lull in laughter and conversation as the girl entered the hallway and came straight to him.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi…” She smelled so good. He could sense the stevedore staring at them, but the sight of the girl, up close, brought back a flood of memories that blotted out everything else. She gave his hand a brief, intimate squeeze, then went to the bar. He watched her order a beer and cider, turn to give him that smile of secret amusement, then head to the hidden corner where they had sat before.
Besides him, the stevedore expelled his breath. “I ain’t know that you know she.”
“Yeah,” ah know she…” Let him figure what that meant.
“Everybody up here want that thing, but she only making styles, like she too good fuh the men up here.” He lowered his voice. “They say she hustle on ships…” He nodded knowingly. “Ah wouldn’t doubt it. With them looks, she would make good money.”
Michael felt something contract in his stomach…tried to push the emotion away. What else had he expected? What else did he think she was? Why this feeling of jealousy? And why was he angry? She was nothing to him. He’d already decided that this was the last time.. But should he even go to her? Shouldn’t he just leave?
But when he slid into the bench next to her and put his hand on her thighs, all he could think of was going to her room. This time, they stayed less than a minute at the table before he was following her down the corridor, even as he thought is this real, is this really happening, why me, why me. This time, they undressed near the door. For an instant, the odd thought hit him that he had done this before, in another place, but then she clasped him and all thoughts fled…
When she finally woke him around three a.m., he told her that he would have to be away for two weeks. As he spoke, still lying in bed, he felt an ache of loneliness that surprised him.
She was silent for a moment, then she said: “I will wait for you.”
But would she? Could she? The images of her with strange seamen came to him, along with the young stevedore’s words: They say she hustle on ships…
“Lucille…”
Her name, whispered with shameless despair, popped out before he could stop himself.
The girl was watching him now. He felt his face grow hot with shame.
The girl stroked his face. “What is the matter Mi-kal?”
The note of concern in that lilting voice sent an ache through him. He yearned to tell the girl of his (jealousy?) —concerns, but he checked himself with the thought that he was behaving like an ass.
“Nothing,” he said. His voice was light, controlled. “Just wondering…”
“Wondering…what?” The gentleness was still there, but he sensed another emotion now; a certain watchfulness.
“Just wondering…” He searched for a way to find out more about the girl without appearing to be an inquisitive, jealous fool. “Just wondering how long you up here.”
“Not long—why?”
Again, that guarded, watchful tone, and he wondered if he had violated some unwritten prostitute-customer code. Why not just tell her how he felt? But how could he, when he himself didn’t know?
Suddenly she smiled; that smile that hinted at some secret knowledge. She stroked his face again.
“Mi-kal, when the time is right, you will know all about me.” She began to stroke his chest, and he thought he heard her add: “And you will know about you…”
That night was the beginning of the bad dreams. He was tired, in a way that he couldn’t recall ever being. He caught a taxi by the Stabroek Market, mumbled his destination, and slept until the driver woke him at the Aubrey Barker Street bridge that led to his home.
He’d gone straight to bed without bothering to change, or put down the mosquito net that would keep off the feasting swarms that came from the cane fields behind neighbouring South Ruimveldt. He knew that he would not be getting up to work out or study.
Then the dreams had begun.
The first one was downright strange and almost funny. He was at the top flat of the Ministry, and some sort of party was in progress. There were streamers hung across the room, and a straggly string of fairy lights. There was a strange mix of people he knew. There was Changlee, the Transport Officer; there was Cheryl, Willo’s secretary; Smithy and Braff were skanking near the stereo to Third World’s Tribal War; there was Jakes, a clerk, wearing a jersey with the words Disco music is my heartbeat, under a picture of Donna Summer.
The stevedore from the Ritz was leering at a prostitute and saying, now and again to Michael: “They like high-colour men, dread; they like high-colour men baadd.”
And sitting, stark naked on Willo’s table, was The Lady.
She was a thin, white-skinned, white haired woman of about sixty…seventy…a hundred…he couldn’t quite tell. Even her lips were white; the skin on them peeling as if she was recovering from some illness. She was smiling at him in a way that he didn’t want to interpret.
One of those thin hands was between her thighs, which were clasped modestly together. He awoke, sucked his teeth, turned over on his stomach and slept again—and he was running down Sheriff Street, in the vicinity of the seawalls. This was his favourite street for jogging. But he wasn’t jogging now. Something was chasing him. He knew that it was some sort of man-thing-cannibal that ate the entrails of children. He knew, without looking, that the thing behind him was squatty and had a large, ugly mouth, and was wearing some loincloth-thing, and its feet were turned backwards. It ran easily, even as it balanced a huge wicker basket that snapped open and shut, because it was alive and part of the creature chasing him.
He ran with open mouth to inhale more oxygen. He tried to lengthen his strides, but his legs felt hung on wrong. He knew that the thing was closing in. He thought of running into one of the yards along Sheriff Street, but he knew that the thing would catch him before anyone could open their doors for him.
Suddenly, a few yards ahead, he saw a narrow corner to his right. Somehow, he knew that it led to Grandmother Hazel’s home, even though she lived across the river in Bartica. Grandmother Hazel knew about these things, and she would help him, even though she was dead, and upset at him, and he could hear her fretting, far away, that he shouldn’t have gone through the door.
Desperately, he pumped his arms, and in his haste, he overshot the corner. He turned. The thing was closer now. Whimpering, he stumbled back to the corner. But now he was on a grassy track that was flanked by moko-moko trees and bamboos. He could hear Grandmother Hazel, saying somewhere, “No Mikey-boy, no, not here! It tricked you! Hide quickly!”
He saw a small gap in the trees. It was wide enough for him. He dived in.
A cry stuck in his throat as he found himself sinking into thick, undulating swamp. He tried to grab at the bank, but the swamp-mud clung to him, dragging him down and covering him waist-deep. He cried out as something wriggled on his right arm. He looked down at his hands and screamed silently. Hundreds of black leeches clung to his skin. Desperately, he plucked at them, but his fingers slid off the wriggly, blood-fat things, which now bit into his hands, his neck, his face, his suddenly naked body—
He awoke, trembling. His clothes were sticky with sweat. He felt a familiar prickling at his left arm.
Gasping, he slapped at his arm. He felt something pulp beneath his fingers. A pungent odour stung his nostrils. He sprang to his feet, groped for the light-switch near his head. His heart pounded as he stared in disbelief at the things that crawled sluggishly on his sheet…
Bed-bugs…?
Bed Bugs?
Bed Bugs!
Where the hell had they come from? Had he somehow brought them in from the old hotel? What would his mother say if she saw them? Then he was killing them, crushing them between the sheets to avoid smearing his fingers.
Afterwards, he lay in bed, remembering the dreams, and thinking of the bed-bugs, the worrisome bedbugs, and remembering what his long-dead great grandmother had once told him about bed-bugs and other strange insects suddenly appearing in clean homes…
(Taken from the supernatural novel Kamarang by Michael Jordan. Book design by Harold Bascom.) .
Limited copies of Kamarang are on sale at Austin’s Book Services. The author can also be contacted for autographed copies on +592 645 2447 or by email: [email protected])

---

---