Swinging his tail briskly, the puppy came, pa.s.sing his neat pink tongue over his black lips, still oily from the food. Hari held out his bitten hand. The puppy licked it clean of blood. Then Hari drove his shoe up against the puppy"s belly. He kicked again, but the puppy had run whining out of the kitchen door, and Hari lost his balance and fell. Tears came to his eyes. His hands burned at those points where the puppy"s teeth had sunk, and he could still feel the puppy"s saliva on his hand, binding the skin.
He got up and went out of the kitchen. The puppy stood by the gate, watching him. Hari bent down, as though to pick up a stone. The puppy made no move. Hari picked up a pebble and flung it at the puppy. It was a clumsy throw and the pebble rose high. The puppy ran to catch it, missed, stopped and stared, his tail swinging, his ears erect, his mouth open. Had threw another pebble. This one kept low and struck the puppy hard. The puppy whined and ran into the front garden. Hari followed. The puppy ran around the side of the house and hid among the anthurium lilies. Hari aimed one stone after another, and suddenly he had a sense of direction. Again and again he hit the puppy, who whined and ran until he was cornered below the narrow trellis with the Bleeding Heart vine. There he stood still, his eyes restless, his tail between his legs. From time to time he licked his lips. This action infuriated Hari. Blindly he threw stone after stone and the puppy ran from tangle to tangle of Bleeding Heart. Once he tried to rush past Hari, but the way was too narrow and Hari too quick. Hari caught him a drumming kick and he ran back to the corner, watching, faintly whining.
In a choked voice Hari said, "Come."
The puppy raised its ears.
Hari smiled and tried to whistle.
Hesitantly, his legs bent, his back curved, the puppy came. Hari stroked his head until the puppy stood erect. Then he held the muzzle with both his hands and squeezed it hard. The puppy yelped and pulled away.
"Hari!" He heard his mother"s voice. "Your father is nearly ready."
He had had no lunch.
"I have no appet.i.te," Hari said. They were words his father often used.
She asked about the broken bowl and the food scattered about the yard.
"We were playing," Hari said.
She saw his hand. "Those animals don"t know their own strength," she said.
It was his resolve to get the puppy to allow himself to be stroked while eating. Every refusal had to be punished, by beating and stoning, imprisonment in the cupboard below the stairs or imprisonment behind the closed windows of the car, when that was available. Sometimes Hari took the puppy"s plate, led the puppy to the lavatory, emptied the plate into the toilet bowl and pulled the flush. Sometimes he threw the food into the yard; then he punished the puppy for eating off the ground. Soon he extended his judgment to all the puppy"s actions, punishing those he thought unfriendly, disobedient or ungrateful. If the puppy didn"t come to the gate when the car horn sounded, he was to be punished; if he didn"t come when called, he was to be punished. Hari kept a careful check of the punishments he had to inflict because he could punish only when his parents were away or occupied, and he was therefore always behindhand. He feared that the puppy might run away again; so he tied him at nights. And when his parents were about, Hari was enraged, as enraged as he had been by that licking of the oily lips, to see the puppy behaving as though unaware of the punishments to come: lying at his father"s feet, yawning, curling himself into comfortable positions, or wagging his tail to greet Hari"s mother. Sometimes, then, Hari stooped to pick up an imaginary stone, and the puppy ran out of the room. But there were also days when punishments were forgotten, for Hari knew that he controlled the puppy"s power and made it an extension of his own, not only by his punishments but also by the complementary hold of affection.
Then came the triumph. The puppy, now almost a dog, attacked Hari one day and had to be pulled back by Hari"s parents. "You can never trust those dogs," Hari"s mother said, and the dog was permanently chained. For days, whenever he could get the chance, Hari beat the dog. One evening, when his parents were out, he beat the dog until it ceased to whine. Then, knowing he was alone, and wishing to test his strength and fear, he unchained the dog. The dog didn"t attack, didn"t growl. It ran to hide among the anthurium lilies. And after that it allowed itself to be stroked while it ate.
Hari"s birthday came again. He was given a Brownie 6-20 camera and wasted film on absurd subjects until his father suggested that a photograph should be taken of Hari and the dog. The dog didn"t stand still; eventually they put its collar on and Hari held on to that and smiled for the camera.
Hari"s father was busy that Friday and couldn"t drive Hari home. Hari stayed at school for the meeting of the Stamp Club and took a taxi home. His father"s car was in the drive. He called for the dog. It didn"t come. Another punishment. His parents were in the small dining-room next to the kitchen; they sat down to tea. On the dining table Hari saw the yellow folder with the negatives and the prints. They had not come out well. The dog looked strained and awkward, not facing the camera; and Hari thought he himself looked very fat. He felt his parents" eyes on him as he went through the photographs. He turned over one photograph. On the back of it he saw, in his father"s handwriting: In memory of Rex. Below that was the date.
"It was an accident," his mother said, putting her arms around him. "He ran out just as your father was driving in. It was an accident."
Tears filled Hari"s eyes. Sobbing, he stamped up the stairs.
"Mind, son," his mother called, and Hari heard her say to his father, "Go after him. His heart. His heart."
1960.
10 THE BAKER"S STORY LOOK AT ME. Black as the Ace of Spades, and ugly to match. n.o.body looking at me would believe they looking at one of the richest men in this city of Port-of-Spain. Sometimes I find it hard to believe it myself, you know, especially when I go out on some of the holidays that I start taking the wife and children to these days, and I catch sight of the obzocky black face in one of those fancy mirrors that expensive hotels have all over the place, as if to spite people like me.
Now everybody particularly black people forever asking me how this thing start, and I does always tell them I make my dough from dough. Ha! You like that one? But how it start? Well, you hearing me talk, and I don"t have to tell you I didn"t have no education. In Grenada, where I come from and that is one thing these Trinidad black people don"t forgive a man for being: a black Grenadian in Grenada I was one often children, I believe everything kind of mix up out there and I don"t even know who was the feller who hit my mother. I believe he hit a lot of women in all the other parishes of that island, too, because whenever I go back to Grenada for one of those holidays I tell you about, people always telling me that I remind them of this one and that one, and they always mistaking me for a shop a.s.sistant whenever I in a shop. (If this thing go on, one day I going to sell somebody something, just for spite.) And even in Trinidad, whenever I run into another Grenadian, the same thing does happen.
Well, I don"t know what happen in Grenada, but mammy bring me alone over to Trinidad when she was still young. I don"t know what she do with the others, but perhaps they wasn"t even she own. Anyway, she get a work with some white people in St Ann"s. They give she a uniform; they give she three meals a day; and they give she a few dollars a month besides. Somehow she get another man, a real Trinidad "rangoutang, and somehow, I don"t know how, she get somebody else to look after me while she was living with this man, for the money and the food she was getting was scarcely enough to support this low-minded Trinidad rango she take up with.
It used to have a Chinee shop not far from this new aunty I was living with, and one day, when the old girl couldn"t find the cash no how to buy a bread is a h.e.l.l of a thing, come to think of it now, that it have people in this island who can"t lay their hands on enough of the ready to buy a bread well, when she couldn"t buy this bread she send me over to this Chinee shop to ask for trust. The Chinee woman eh, but how these Chinee people does make children! was big like anything, and I believe I catch she at a good moment, because she say nothing doing, no trust, but if I want a little work that was different, because she want somebody to take some bread she bake for some Indian people. But how she could trust me with the bread? This was a question. And then I pull out my crucifix from under my dirty merino that was more holes than cloth and I tell she to keep it until I come back with the money for the bake bread. I don"t know what sort of religion these Chinee people have, but that woman look impressed like anything. But she was smart, though. She keep the crucifix and she send me off with the bread, which was wrap up in a big old chale-au-pain, just two or three floursack sew together. I collect the money, bring it back, and she give me back the crucifix with a few cents and a bread.
And that was how this thing really begin. I always tell black people that was G.o.d give me my start in life, and don"t mind these Trinidadians who does always tell you that Grenadians always praying. Is a true thing, though, because whenever I in any little business difficulty even these days I get down bam! straight on my two knees and I start praying like h.e.l.l, boy.
Well, so this thing went on, until it was a regular afternoon work for me to deliver people bread. The bakery uses to bake ordinary bread hops and pan and machine which they uses to sell to the poorer cla.s.ses. And how those Chinee people uses to work! This woman, with she big-big belly, clothes all dirty, sweating in front of the oven, making all this bread and making all this money, and I don"t know what they doing with it, because all the time they living poor-poor in the back room, with only a bed, some hammocks for the young ones, and a few boxes. I couldn"t talk to the husband at all. He didn"t know a word of English and all the writing he uses to write uses to be in Chinee. He was a thin nashy feller, with those funny flapping khaki short pants and white merino that Chinee people always wear. He uses to work like a b.i.t.c.h, too. We Grenadians understand hard work, so that is why I suppose I uses to get on so well with these Chinee people, and that is why these lazy black Trinidadians so jealous of we. But was a funny thing. They uses to live so dirty. But the children, man, uses to leave that ramshackle old back room as clean as new bread, and they always had this neatness, always with their little pencil-case and their little rubbers and rulers and blotters, and they never losing anything. They leaving in the morning in one nice little line and in the afternoon they coming back in this same little line, still cool and clean, as though nothing at all touch them all day. Is something they could teach black people children.
But as I was saying this bakery uses to bake ordinary bread for the poorer cla.s.ses. For the richer cla.s.ses they uses to bake, too. But what they would do would be to collect the dough from those people house, bake it, and send it back as bread, hot and sweet. I uses to fetch and deliver for this cla.s.s of customer. They never let me serve in the shop; it was as though they couldn"t trust me selling across the counter and collecting money in that rush. Always it had this rush. You know black people: even if it only have one man in the shop he always getting on as if it have one h.e.l.l of a crowd.
Well, one day when I deliver some bread in this chale-au-pain to a family, there was a woman, a neighbour, who start saying how nice it is to get bread which you knead with your own hands and not mix up with all sort of people sweat. And this give me the idea. A oven is a oven. It have to go on, whether it baking one bread or two. So I tell this woman, was a Potogee woman, that I would take she dough and bring it back bake for she, and that it would cost she next to nothing. I say this in a sort of way that she wouldn"t know whether I was going to give the money to the Chinee people, or whether it was going to cost she next to nothing because it would be I who was going to take the money. But she give me a look which tell me right away that she wanted me to take the money. So matter fix. So. Back in the chale-au-pain the next few days I take some dough, hanging it in the carrier of the bakery bicycle. I take it inside, as though I just didn"t bother to wrap up the chale-au-pain, and the next thing is that this dough mix up with the other dough, and see me kneading and baking, as though all is one. The thing is, when you go in for a thing like that, to go in brave-brave. It have some people who make so much fuss when they doing one little thing that they bound to get catch. So, and I was surprise like h.e.l.l, mind you. I get this stuff push in the oven, and is this said Chinee man, always with this sad and sorrowful Chinee face, who pulling it out of the oven with the long-handle shovel, looking at it, and pushing it back in.
And when I take the bread back, with some other bread, I collect the money cool-cool. The thing with a thing like this is that once you start is d.a.m.n hard to stop. You start calculating this way and that way. And I have a calculating mind. I forever sitting down and working out how much say .50 a day every day for seven days, and every week for a year, coming to. And so this thing get to be a big thing with me. I wouldn"t recommend this to any and everybody who want to go into business. But is what I mean when I tell people that I make my dough by dough.
The Chinee woman wasn"t too well now. And the old man was getting on a little funny in a Chinee way. You know how those Chinee fellers does gamble. You drive past Marine Square in the early hours of the Sabbath and is two to one if you don"t see some of those Chinee fellers sitting down outside the Treasury, as though they want to be near money, and gambling like h.e.l.l. Well, the old man was gambling and the old girl was sick, and I was pretty well the only person looking after the bakery. I work d.a.m.n hard for them, I could tell you. I even pick up two or three words of Chinee, and some of those rude black people start calling me Black Chinee, because at this time I was beginning to dress in short khaki pants and merino like a Chinee and I was drinking that tea Chinee people drinking all day long and I was walking and not saying much like a Chinee. And, now, don"t believe what these black people say about Chinee and prejudice, eh. They have nothing at all against black people, provided they is hardworking and grateful.
But life is a funny thing. Now when it look that I all set, that everything going fine and dandy, a whole set of things happen that start me bawling. First, the Chinee lady catch a pleurisy and dead. Was a h.e.l.l of a thing, but what else you expect when she was always bending down in front of that fire and then getting wet and going out in the dew and everything, and then always making these children too besides. I was sorry like h.e.l.l, and a little frighten. Because I wasn"t too sure how I was going to manage alone with the old man. All the time I work with him he never speak one word straight to me, but he always talking to me through his wife.
And now, look at my crosses. As soon as the woman dead, the Chinee man like he get mad. He didn"t cry or anything like that, but he start gambling like a b.i.t.c.h, and the upshot was that one day, perhaps about a month after the old lady dead, the man tell his children to pack up and start leaving, because he gamble and lose the shop to another Chinee feller. I didn"t know where I was standing, and n.o.body telling me nothing. They only packing. I don"t know, I suppose they begin to feel that I was just part of the shop, and the old man not even saying that he sorry he lose me. And, you know, as soon as I drop to my knees and start praying, I see it was really G.o.d who right from the start put that idea of the dough in my head, because without that I would have been nowhere at all. Because the new feller who take over the shop say he don"t want me. He was going to close the bakery and set up a regular grocery, and he didn"t want me serving there because the grocery customers wouldn"t like black people serving them. So look at me. Twenty-three years old and no work. No nothing. Only I have this Chinee-ness and I know how to bake bread and I have this extra bit of cash I save up over the years.
I slip out of the old khaki short pants and merino and I cruise around the town a little, looking for work. But n.o.body want bakers. I had about $700.00, and I see that this cruising around would do but it wouldn"t pay, because the money was going fast. Now look at this. You know, it never cross my mind in those days that I could open a shop of my own. Is how it is with black people. They get so use to working for other people that they get to believe that because they black they can"t do nothing else but work for other people. And I must tell you that when I start praying and G.o.d tell me to go out and open a shop for myself I feel that perhaps G.o.d did mistake or that I hadn"t hear Him good. Because G.o.d only saying to me, "Youngman, take your money and open a bakery. You could bake good bread." He didn"t say to open a parlour, which a few black fellers do, selling rock cakes and mauby and other soft drinks. No, He say open a bakery. Look at my crosses.
I had a lot of trouble borrowing the extra few hundred dollars, but I eventually get a Indian feller to lend me. And this is what I always tell young fellers. That getting credit ain"t no trouble at all if you know exactly what you want to do. I didn"t go round telling people to lend me money because I want to build house or buy lorry. I just did want to bake bread. Well, to cut a long story short, I buy a break-down old place near Arouca, and I spend most of what I had trying to fix the place up. Nothing extravagant, you understand, because Arouca is Arouca and you don"t want to frighten off the country-bookies with anything too sharp. Too besides, I didn"t have the cash. I just put in a few second-hand gla.s.s cases and things like that. I write up my name on a board, and look, I in business.
Now the funny thing happen. In Laventille the people couldn"t have enough of the bread I was baking and in the last few months was me was doing the baking. But now trouble. I baking better bread than the people of Arouca ever see, and I can"t get one single feller to come in like man through my rickety old front door and buy a penny hops bread. You hear all this talk about quality being its own advertis.e.m.e.nt? Don"t believe it, boy. Is quality plus something else. And I didn"t have this something else. I begin to wonder what the h.e.l.l it could be. I say is because I new in Arouca that this thing happening. But no. I new, I get stale, and the people not flocking in their hundreds to the old shop. Day after day I baking two or three quarts good and all this just remaining and going dry and stale, and the only bread I selling is to the man from the government farm, buying stale cakes and bread for the cows or pigs or whatever they have up there. And was good bread. So I get down on the old knees and I pray as though I want to wear them out. And still I getting the same answer: "Youngman" was always the way I uses to get call in these prayers "Youngman, you just bake bread."
Pappa! This was a thing. Interest on the loan piling up every month. Some months I borrow from aunty and anybody else who kind enough to listen just to pay off the interest. And things get so low that I uses to have to go out and pretend to people that I was working for another man bakery and that I was going to bake their dough cheap-cheap. And in Arouca cheap mean cheap. And the little cash I picking up in this disgraceful way was just about enough to keep the wolf from the door, I tell you.
Jeezan. Look at confusion. The old place in Arouca so d.a.m.n out of the way was why I did buy it, too, thinking that they didn"t have no bakery there and that they would be glad of the good Grenadian-baked the place so out of the way n.o.body would want to buy it. It ain"t even insure or anything, so it can"t get in a little fire accident or anything not that I went in for that sort of thing. And every time I go down on my knees, the answer coming straight back at me: "Youngman, you just bake bread."
Well, for the sake of the Lord I baking one or two quarts regular every day, though I begin to feel that the Lord want to break me, and I begin to feel too that this was His punishment for what I uses to do to the Chinee people in their bakery. I was beginning to feel bad and real ignorant. I uses to stay away from the bakery after baking those quarts for the Lord nothing to lock up, nothing to thief and, when any of the Laventille boys drop in on the way to Manzanilla and Balandra and those other beaches on the Sabbath, I uses to tell them, making a joke out of it, that I was "loafing". They uses to laugh like h.e.l.l, too. It have nothing in the whole world so funny as to see a man you know flat out on his a.r.s.e and catching good h.e.l.l.
The Indian feller was getting anxious about his cash, and you couldn"t blame him, either, because some months now he not even seeing his interest. And this begin to get me down, too. I remember how all the man did ask me when I went to him for money was: "You sure you want to bake bread? You feel you have a hand for baking bread?" And yes-yes, I tell him, and just like that he sh.e.l.l out the cash. And now he was getting anxious. So one day, after baking those loaves for the Lord, I take a Arima Bus Service bus to Port-of-Spain to see this feller. I was feeling brave enough on the way. But as soon as I see the old sea and get a whiff of South Quay and the bus touch the Railway Station terminus my belly start going pweh-pweh. I decide to roam about the city for a little.
Was a hot morning, pet.i.t-careme weather, and in those days a coconut uses still to cost .04. Well, it had this coconut cart in the old square and I stop by it. It was a d.a.m.n funny thing to see. The seller was a black feller. And you wouldn"t know how funny this was, unless you know that every coconut seller in the island is Indian. They have this way of handling a cutla.s.s that black people don"t have. Coconut in left hand; with right hand bam, bam, bam with cutla.s.s, and coconut cut open, ready to drink. I ain"t never see a coconut seller chop his hand. And here was this black feller doing this bam-bam business on a coconut with a cutla.s.s. It was as funny as seeing a black man wearing dhoti and turban. The sweetest part of the whole business was that this black feller was, forgetting looks, just like an Indian. He was talking Hindustani to a lot of Indian fellers, who was giving him jokes like h.e.l.l, but he wasn"t minding. It does happen like that sometimes with black fellers who live a lot with Indians in the country. They putting away curry, talking Indian, and behaving just like Indians. Well, I take a coconut from this black man and then went on to see the feller about the money.
He was more sad than vex when I tell him, and if I was in his shoes I woulda be sad, too. Is a h.e.l.l of a thing when you see your money gone and you ain"t getting the sweet little kisses from the interest every month. Anyway, he say he would give me three more months" grace, but that if I didn"t start sh.e.l.ling out at the agreed rate he would have to foreclose. "You put me in a h.e.l.l of a position," he say. "Look at me. You think I want a shop in Arouca?"
I was feeling a little better when I leave the feller, and who I should see when I leave but Percy. Percy was an old rango who uses to go to the Laventille elementary school with me. I never know a boy get so much cut-a.r.s.e as Percy. But he grow up real hard and ignorant with it, and now he wearing fancy clothes like a saga boy, and talking about various business offers. I believe he was selling insurance is a thing that nearly every idler doing in Trinidad, and, mark my words, the day coming when you going to see those fellers trying to sell insurance to one another. Anyway, Percy getting on real flash, and he say he want to stand me a lunch for old times" sake. He makes a few of the usual ignorant Trinidadian jokes about Grenadians, and we went up to the Angostura Bar. I did never go there before, and wasn"t the sort of place you would expect a rango like Percy to be welcome. But we went up there and Percy start throwing his weight around with the waiters, and, mind you, they wasn"t even a quarter as black as Percy. Is a wonder they didn"t abuse him, especially with all those fair people around. After the drinks Percy say, "Where you want to have this lunch?"
Me, I don"t know a thing about the city restaurants, and when Percy talk about food all I was expecting was rice and peas or a roti off a Indian stall or a mauby and rock cake in some parlour. And is a d.a.m.n hard thing to have people, even people as ignorant as Percy, showing off on you, especially when you carrying two nails in your pocket to make the jingling noise. So I tell Percy we could go to a parlour or a bar. But he say, "No, no. When I treat my friends, I don"t like black people meddling with my food."
And was only then that the thing hit me. I suppose that what Trinidadians say about the stupidness of Grenadians have a little truth, though you have to live in a place for a long time before you get to know it really well. Then the thing hit me, man.
When black people in Trinidad go to a restaurant they don"t like to see black people meddling with their food. And then I see that though Trinidad have every race and every colour, every race have to do special things. But look, man. If you want to buy a s...o...b..ll, who you buying it from? You wouldn"t buy it from a Indian or a Chinee or a Potogee. You would buy it from a black man. And I myself, when I was getting my place in Arouca fix up, I didn"t employ Indian carpenters or masons. If a Indian in Trinidad decide to go into the carpentering business the man would starve. Who ever see a Indian carpenter? I suppose the only place in the world where they have Indian carpenters and Indian masons is India. Is a d.a.m.n funny thing. One of these days I must make a trip to that country, to just see this thing. And as we walking I see the names of bakers; Coelho, Pantin, Stauble. Potogee or Swiss, or something, and then all those other Chinee places. And, look at the laundries. If a black man open a laundry, you would take your clothes to it? I wouldn"t take my clothes there. Well, I walking to this restaurant, but I jumping for joy. And then all sorts of things fit into place. You remember that the Chinee people didn"t let me serve bread across the counter? I uses to think it was because they didn"t trust me with the rush. But it wasn"t that. It was that, if they did let me serve, they would have had no rush at all. You ever see anybody buying their bread off a black man?
I ask Percy why he didn"t like black people meddling with his food in public places. The question throw him a little. He stop and think and say, "It don"t look nice."
Well, you could guess the rest of the story. Before I went back to Arouca that day I made contact with a yellow boy call Macnab. This boy was half black and half Chinee, and, though he had a little brown colour and the hair a little curly, he could pa.s.s for one of those Cantonese. They a little darker than the other Chinee people, I believe. Macnab I find beating a steel pan in somebody yard they was practising for Carnival and I suppose the only reason that Macnab was willing to come all the way to Arouca was because he was short of the cash to buy his costume for the Carnival band.
But he went up with me. I put him in front of the shop, give him a merino and a pair of khaki short pants, and tell him to talk as Chinee as he could, if he wanted to get that Carnival bonus. I stay in the back room, and I start baking bread. I even give Macnab a old Chinee paper, not to read, because Macnab could scarcely read English, but just to leave lying around, to make it look good. And I get hold of one of those big Chinee calendars with Chinee women and flowers and waterfalls and hang it up on the wall. And when this was all ready, I went down on my knees and thank G.o.d. And still the old message coming, but friendly and happy now: "Youngman, you just bake bread."
And, you know, that solve another problem. I was worrying to h.e.l.l about the name I should give the place. New Shanghai, Canton, Hongkong, Nanking, Yang-tse-Kiang. But when the old message came over I know right away what the name should be. I scrub off the old name no need to tell you what that was and I get a proper sign painter to copy a few letters from the Chinee newspaper. Below that, in big letters, I make him write: YUNG MAN.
BAKER.
I never show my face in the front of the shop again. And I tell you, without boasting, that I bake d.a.m.n good bread. And the people of Arouca ain"t that foolish. They know a good thing. And soon I was making so much money that I was able to open a branch in Arima and then another in Port-of-Spain self. Was hard in the beginning to get real Chinee people to work for a black man. But money have it own way of talking, and when today you pa.s.s any of the Yung Man establishments all you seeing behind the counter is Chinee. Some of them ain"t even know they working for a black man. My wife handling that side of the business, and the wife is Chinee. She come from down Cedros way. So look at me now, in Port-of-Spain, giving Stauble and Pantin and Coelho a run for their money. As I say, I only going in the shops from the back. But every Monday morning I walking brave brave to Marine Square and going in the bank, from the front.
1962.
11 A FLAG ON THE ISLAND.
A Fantasy for a Small Screen
I.
IT WAS AN ISLAND around which I had been circling for some years. My duties often took me that way and I could have called there any time. But in my imagination the island had ceased to be accessible; and I wanted it to remain so. A la.s.situde always fell upon me whenever working from the name made concrete and ordinary on say an airport board I sought to re-create a visit. So easy then to get into a car, to qualify a name with trees, houses, people, their quaint advertis.e.m.e.nts and puzzling journeys. So easy to destroy more than a name. All landscapes are in the end only in the imagination; to be faced with the reality is to start again.
And now the island was upon me. It was not on our itinerary. But out there, among the tourist isles to the north, there was the big annual event of the hurricanes; and it was news of one of these hurricanes, called Irene, that was making us put in. The island, we were told in the ship"s bulletin, was reasonably safe. There had been a hurricane here, and a mild one, only once, in the 1920s; and scientists at that time had said, in the way scientists have, that the island was safe for another hundred years. You wouldn"t have thought so, though, from the excitement in the announcements from the local radio station, which our transistors had begun to pick up as we came slowly into the harbour through the narrow channel, still and clear and dangerous, between tall green-thatched rocky islets.
Channel and islets which I had never hoped or wished to see again. Still there. And I had been so calm throughout the journey northwards. Abstemiousness, even self-mortification, had settled on me almost as soon as I had gone aboard; and had given me a deep content. I had been eating little and drinking not at all. I fancied that I was shrinking from day to day, and this daily a.s.sessment had been pleasing. When I sat I tried to make myself as small as possible; and it had been a pleasure to me then to put on my spectacles and to attempt to read, to be the ascetic who yet knew the greater pleasure of his own shrinking flesh. To be the ascetic, to be mild and gentle and soft-spoken, withdrawn and ineffectual; to have created for oneself that little clearing in the jungle of the mind; and constantly to rea.s.sure oneself that the clearing still existed.
Now as we moved into the harbour I could feel the jungle press in again. I was jumpy, irritated, unsatisfied, suddenly incomplete. Still, I made an effort. I decided not to go ash.o.r.e with the others. We were to stay on the island until the hurricane had blown itself out. The shipping company had arranged trips and excursions.
"What"s the name of this place? They always give you the name of the place in airports. Harbours try to keep you guessing. I wonder why?"
"Philosopher!"
Husband and wife, playing as a team.
Already we were news. On the transistors there came a new announcement, breathless like the others: "Here is an appeal from the Ministry of Public Order and Education. Five hundred tourists will be on our island for the next few days. The Ministry urges that these tourists be treated with our customary courtesy and kindness."
"The natives are excited," a tourist said to me.
"Yes," I said, "I think there is a good chance they will eat us. We look pretty appetizing."
Red dust hung in a cloud above the bauxite loading station, disfiguring the city and the hills. The tourists gazed, lining the rails in bermuda shorts, bright cotton shirts and straw hats. They looked vulnerable.
"Here is an appeal from the Ministry of Public Order and Education...."
I imagined the appeal going to the barbershops, rumshops, cafes and back-yards of the ramshackle town I had known.
The radio played a commercial for a type of shirt; an organ moaned and some deaths were announced; there was a commercial for a washing powder; then the time was tremendously announced and there were details of weather and temperature.
A woman said, "They get worked up about the time and the weather here too."
Her husband, his bitterness scarcely disguised by the gaiety of his tourist costume, said, "Why the h.e.l.l shouldn"t they?"
They were not playing as a team.
I went down to my cabin. On the way I ran into the happier team, already dressed as for a carnival.
"You"re not going ash.o.r.e?" asked the male.
"No. I think I will just stay here and read."
And in my self-imposed isolation, I did try to read. I put on my spectacles and tried to savour my shrinking, mortified flesh. But it was no use; the jungle pressed; confusion and threat were already being converted into that internal excitement which is in itself fulfilment, and exhaustion.
Here on this Moore-McCormack liner everything was Moore-McCormack. In my white cabin the name called to me from every corner, from every article, from towels, from toilet paper, from writing paper, from table cloth, from pillow-cases, from bed sheets, from blankets, from cups and menus. So that the name appeared to have gone deep, to have penetrated, like the radiation we have been told to fear, the skin of all those exposed to it, to have shaped itself in living red corpuscles within bodies.
Moore-McCormack, Moore-McCormack. Man had become G.o.d. Impossible in this cabin to escape; yet I knew that once we were out of the ship the name would lose its power. So that my decision was almost made for me. I would go ash.o.r.e; I would spend the night ash.o.r.e. My mood was on me; I let it settle; I let it take possession of me. Then I saw that I too, putting away briefcase, papers, letters, pa.s.sport, was capable of my own feeble a.s.sertions. I too had tried to give myself labels, and none of my labels could convince me that I belonged to myself.
This is part of my mood; it heightens my anxiety; I feel the whole world is being washed away and that I am being washed away with it. I feel my time is short. The child, testing his courage, steps into the swiftly moving stream, and though the water does not go above his ankles, in an instant the safe solid earth vanishes, and he is aware only of the terror of sky and trees and the force at his feet. Split seconds of lucidity add to his terror. So, we can use the same toothpaste for years and end by not seeing the colour of the tube; but set us among strange labels, set us in disturbance, in an unfamiliar landscape; and every un-regarded article we possess becomes isolated and speaks of our peculiar dependence.
"You are going to spend the night ash.o.r.e?"
The question came from a small intelligent-looking man with a round, kind face. He had been as withdrawn from the life of the ship as myself, and I had always seen him in the company of a big grey-suited man whose face I had never been able to commit to memory. I had heard rumours that he was very rich, but I had paid no attention; as I had paid no attention to the other rumour that we had a Russian spy on board as a prisoner.
"Yes, I am going to be brave."
"Oh, I am glad," he said, "we are going to have lots of fun together."
"Thanks for asking me."
"When I say fun, I don"t mean what you mean."
"I don"t know what you mean either."
He did not stop smiling. "I imagine that you are going ash.o.r.e for pleasure."
"Well, I suppose that you could call it that."
"I am glad we put in here." His expression became that of a man burdened by duty. "You see I have a little business to do here." He spoke gravely, but his excitement was clear. "Do you know the island?"
"I used to know it very well."
"Well, I am so glad we have met. You are just the sort of person I want to meet. You could be of great help to me."
"I can simplify matters for you by giving you a list of places you must on no account go to."
He looked pained. "I am really here on business."
"You can do good business here. I used to."
Pleasure? I was already exhausted. My stomach felt tight; and all the unexpended energy of days, of weeks, seemed to have turned sour. Already the craving for sh.e.l.lfish and seafood was on me. I could almost feel its sick stale taste in my mouth, and I knew that for all that had happened in the past, I would eat no complete meal for some time ahead, and that while my mood lasted the pleasures I looked for would quickly turn to a distressing-satisfying endurance test, would end by being pain.
I had been the coldest of tourists, unexcited by the unexpected holiday. Now, as we landed, I was among the most eager.