by Shani Mootoo
* * *
It is dark. Even though there is wire mesh in the window of his room, mosquitoes have found their way in and hover about his body. It is still too hot, much too much to put on a shirt, and so he uses his arms to brush away the buzzing creatures as they near his head. The number of cicadas chirping has increased. Dance music from a distant source floats in and out of his hearing. Harry rises. The people who were chatting outside his window have left. The city beyond is in darkness. He wonders, had he not made that call to Rose, the one Piyari took, rather had he waited for her to call him would any of this have happened?
NO BODY
Harry refuses to be put on hold a minute longer. He makes the call, and to his relief, it is Cassie who answers. To offer condolences seems untimely. Cassie sounds exhausted and, to his dismay, distanced.
“What is most unsettling is not having a body to confirm that she is gone. I know my mother had thoughts of leaving my father and moving to Canada. According to him, they quarreled about you. What’s going on, Harry?”
He can’t help himself: “My God! This is ridiculous. I hadn’t spoken with your mother in almost two months.”
Cassie unfazed, continues, “When I arrived here and telephoned you back in B.C., I did have the impression you were truly clueless about her whereabouts. But when you agreed to fly here to Guanagaspar, I just kept hoping; I was hoping you would know where she might be. It’s a nightmare, there being no body.”
He hears Cassie’s grief, and the accusation in her voice. He knows it is unwarranted, and yet he feels oddly guilty. After a silence in which it becomes clear that Cassie is crying, he is not surprised when she says in a breaking voice, “The funeral is tomorrow, Harry. I know you have traveled all this way, but it’s best if you don’t come.”
TROPICAL SEA
Piyari attends the funeral service. She travels to Marion by taxi so that Heroman is free to take Harry wherever he might need to go. He asks to be taken to the coast. It is there, where Rose went missing, that he will spend the morning.
The road ascends gradually into forested hills. The air, cooler than in the town, is redolent with the sweet and sour of the tropical forest’s constant cycle of decomposition and rebirth.
Here and there, sudden clearings of well-tended lawn punctuate the miles of jungle through which the road to the ocean cuts. In the center of each clearing squats a modest, unpainted wood house. Curtains billow in the open windows and doorways. How many people, presumed missing, might be seeking all manner of refuge in places like these, he wonders. As Heroman drives slowly along the dangerously winding and narrow road, Harry peers into the houses, but not a soul seems to be about.
Heroman points to the sky ahead. A flock of green parrots flaps from one range of forest to another.
As they descend, the verdant lushness recedes. Stretches of dead man’s fingers, devil’s claw, and cockscomb hug the roadside. Guanaga and cuticut grow high, and pigeon peas are in bloom. Lush bamboo outlines the meandering passage of a river. Every now and then a single towering coconut tree punctuates the landscape. Soon the soil on either side of the road changes entirely from moist black dirt to drier coarse sand out of which lofty coconuts soar. Between their lanky trunks, Harry spots in the distance the powerful breaking waves of the foamy Caribbean Sea. A chill washes over him. As they head toward the seafront roadway, the air turns salty and oily. In no time, he hears the rhythmic crack of the ocean’s waves.
Harry asks to be taken to the area where the Bihars have their beach house.
“Oh God, man, I had a feeling you was going to ask me this. What you want to go there for?”
Harry insists on being dropped off, not at the house directly but in its vicinity.
“You know you shouldn’t go there. Why you want to go and torture yourself so for? Suppose now she wash up and is you and me who will find she?”
Nevertheless, Heroman drives to an undeveloped lot not far from the Bihars’ house. Harry is firm that he needs to be alone and asks Heroman to meet him back in an hour.
He walks uncertainly through the thicket of crocuses, fallen branches, and nuts out onto the open beach. He observes the taut silkiness in the belly of a cresting wave, wondering why some bodies, once snatched by the sea, are thrown back out, and why some are never returned.
At the water’s edge, he ambles toward a house he ascertains from Piyari’s story to be the Bihars’ beach house. The glare coming off the water and the scorched sand is merciless. He becomes uncomfortable, the hair on his body rising and stiffening. A policeman leans against the front wall of the house. Harry remains close to the water, but the man sees Harry looking in his direction and greets him with a nod. Harry returns the gesture and continues walking straight ahead, scanning not the beach or the water but the dark mass of foliage growing beneath the endless thicket of coconut trees. A rustling in the bushes behind him frightens him. He spins around, expectant, the pulse at his temples pounding. It is only a wild and skinny beach dog emerging to pick at scavenger birds’ leftover fish parts.
A quick glance toward the house again, and there is the hammock of Piyari’s story, still hanging between two coconut trees, the sliding doors to the house, the mound of coconuts, the louvered windows.
His head has become hot. Perspiration runs down his temples. He has brought no drinking water with him, and there is no tap in sight. The other holiday houses are closed up, no caretakers to be seen. Still, he cannot, dares not, approach that house to ask for anything. He removes his shoes and socks and tucks his belongings behind a fallen tree trunk. He rolls the hems of his trousers to midcalf and enters the water. The salt water he splashes against his face and on his head calms him instantly. Beyond the breakers, the water seems serene, almost as still as the water in front of his house in Elderberry Bay.
Rose swimming in the icy waters in front of his house there comes to mind. He recalls watching her, pleased that she was so clearly enjoying herself, and then turning away briefly, only to look back and find that she had disappeared. Then he saw her, a speck walking up the beach toward him. She had seen the small child clinging to an inflatable tire, so she swam down the coast and pulled the girl to shore. She had told Harry then that most drownings occur because of panic. Even in a riptide, she instructed him, a person shouldn’t panic. “Stay calm and go with the current. Let it take you where it will,” she had informed him, “and if you can just ride it, you will end up in still waters, perhaps a distance away.” He wonders where along the coast her body might have drifted. He studies the faint curving coastline toward the north, then turns to regard the southernmost peninsula. Couldn’t she have followed her own counsel, let it take her where it would?
He scoops and splashes more water on the top of his head, pats the back of his neck with it. A wave has broken close and is rushing forward. He is suddenly in water up to his knees. He looks behind him. The water has crept all the way up and stopped just before the tree trunk behind which his clothes are stashed. For several long seconds, there is no beach. Just as swiftly, the water retreats and, in rejoining the ocean, tumbles impatiently over new waves already pulsing toward shore. The sand under his feet slides away, and he sinks in deeper. Unsteadily he treads backward until he is in water so shallow that it only swirls about his feet. Silver mud skippers leap over the rippling water, and sea cockroaches nose their bodies vertically into the sand. He squints at the hazy northerly coast again. He turns and faces the peninsula. Around that crooked finger of land is the south coast of the island, uncultivated land, mosquito- and sand-fly-ridden beaches and coves that are accessible from land only by brush-cutting high razor grass and then ascending steep cliffs. There are no major towns down there, only a string of fishing villages. This Harry knows, for Raleigh is one of these villages. So many years later, those villages still remain distanced from the main towns. To get to them from here by car, one must travel all the way back to Marion, then carry on from there on the circuitous Link Road and over the Muldoon Bridg
e. It is not an area of the country that would likely have changed too much over the years. A body deposited along the south coast by a sea current has a good chance of being caught there and lost forever. He puts his hand in the pocket of his trousers and clutches the chain. He recalls Piyari’s words: “Day before she had went in the sea wearing it, so why, I want to know, that morning she remove it?”
The words repeat, mantra-like, in his head. As if whacked on his back with a thick plank of wood he stiffens: what if Rose counted on the chain landing in his hands? He shades his eyes from the glare and squints hard in the direction of the south peninsula. It is a good distance away. Perhaps as far away as Howe Sound’s far shore is from his house in Elderberry Bay. She told him, during idle conversation, that if she had to, she could swim that distance. Forced to, she would know how to pace herself.
What if she had put an inordinate amount of faith in Piyari? What if she had hoped that he would return to the island, and that Piyari would reveal to him all that was necessary? And that he would calculate what no one else likely would? Such thinking, he quickly admonishes himself, is foolish dreaming. If she took such a chance, she would have had more faith in him than he has in himself. A bigger wave prepares to break even closer to the shore. Running toward his clothing, he chides himself; such ideas are the dementia of denial. He slips a hand in his pocket again, grasping the chain tightly. Wasn’t it too strange a coincidence that she had removed it from around her neck on the very day she disappeared though? He whips up his bundle and races through the trees in search of Heroman.
WHIPLASH
In the Central plains a good many miles away from Marion, Heroman does not drive under the speed limit, yet Harry is irritable, certain that at the current pace, it will be late evening before they arrive back in Marion. At a bend in the road, Heroman swerves to avoid a man foolishly riding a bicycle in their lane, coming toward them. A turquoise-colored box is strapped above the front wheel of the bicycle. FISH is crudely painted in bright red on the front of the box. Harry spins around to look at the man as they pass. Heroman wants to know when, other than this trip to the island, was the last time Harry traveled this route. Harry squeezes his eyes shut, whiplashed by the past: the fish seller on the bicycle calling up the fact that his father, the drowned Seudath St. George, had taken his mother—or had he rescued her, kidnapped her, assisted her in leaving?—away from her family whom she never saw again. He is sure that if he were to utter a single word, he would vomit, his nausea caused by his unbearable impatience with the long ride back to his hotel, by the throbbing hope and improbability of a string of what-ifs, by the narrow winding road, the constant swerving to avoid potholes, bicyclists, pedestrians, and stray dogs or the bloated, putrid carcasses of animals lying on their back.
Shem’s words, relayed to him by Piyari, echo in Harry’s mind, not in her voice or diction, but in Shem’s, as if Harry had heard them pronounced himself: “What the ass is this? You have the servant taking message for you? … You forget who have the police and the law on his side … That yard boy—no place is far enough for him to hide … Hear me good: I will not let you or him destroy my family name.”
The threat implied is of concern. Harry thinks of his house and yard in Elderberry Bay. Of Howe Sound, the thick, cool gray mist that hangs at this time of year. The logging road to Carol Lake. Even in this present heat, the glacier there looms brightly in his mind. He thinks of his truck with all his gardening tools. Of the yards he has designed and of clients who held summer garden parties so that they could show off his work and introduce him around. He was indispensable to them. He pictures Anil, Partap, and the Once a Taxi Driver Wine Tasting fellows. In his mind he sees the winding mountainside road from Elderberry Bay to Squamish, a landscape that is no longer far enough away.
And Kay. Had no call come that early New Year’s morning from Cassie, and none again from Rose, what would have transpired between them? They might well have entered into a comfortable companionship. Some form of quiet passion might have developed in him for her. Perhaps a passion akin to the one he felt for Rose.
He knows that he will not return to Elderberry Bay, and succumbs to the pull of the old riptide.
At the end of that interminable drive, Harry, without revealing more than he must, informs Heroman that he will end the rest of his time on the island among friends.
“You still have friends here? You didn’t mention them before. I had of planned to drive you into Gloria for the evening. The capital come a real worldly place, yes. It have skyscrapers, buildings six stories tall, you know. And it have two nice shopping malls. They would be closed now, but they light up pretty in the night. And if you see how nice people does dress up in town. Guanagasparian women come nice-nice, too.”
Surprised to receive no sign of interest from Harry in touring the city, Heroman insists, “The capital come a first-class place, man. A lot of eating places, too. Not just Chinese food, but it have places you could sit down, and waitress that come and serve you hamburgers and milk shakes and that kind of thing. You don’t want to drink a coconut or take a oyster cocktail from the vendors in town? I ready to take you and show you the town now-now. It will take your mind off things.”
Harry can no longer hide his impatience. “I am not here for much longer. There are people I must look up. Family friends. Please tell your sister thanks for everything. You were both very good to me. I will write from Canada.”
Still unwilling to so easily release this foreign charge who has seeds of scandal sprouting about him, Heroman offers to fetch Harry wherever he is on the day of his return flight and to drive him to the airport. Harry is firm that friends will look after him from then on.
Once he is sure that Heroman has driven off and is nowhere to be seen, Harry checks out of the hotel and walks with his suitcase and shoulder bag to a taxi stand several streets away from the hotel. There he catches a Link Road taxi and travels, along with other passengers, in the long rush-hour traffic.
PAYING RESPECTS
Muldoon Bridge, ablaze in the golden light of the evening sun, has been widened and is now a four-lane asphalt-paved highway. The river—it, too, shimmering gold, seems narrower than he recalls, and tamer. A log that had been wedged in its center since the days of traveling in Mr. Walter’s car, and which trapped debris that washed in from the sea and debris headed down the river toward the sea, is, to his pleasure and at the same time horror, still there. The mangrove, kept under control by the municipality, has been cut back well away from the roadway. Harry is curious about the flooding of the road in high tide, wonders if the new raised bridge and the new walled-off roadway have alleviated this problem; wanting to avoid attention, he does not inquire.
The area where he dispersed his mother’s ashes has been altered, too. Where once were bamboo and rozay forests through which one had, in the past, to brush-cut one’s way is now a parking lot. Beyond the parking is an area of kept lawn on which several people sit, watching the dying sun set. He had intended that as the taxi passed, he would pay his respects to his mother’s memory, but he is caught off-guard by this recreation area with picnic tables and fire pits and seated people. The taxi speeds past before he has the chance to look out to the water’s horizon and invoke his mother’s name.
He gets out of the taxi at a junction well before Timbano Trace. He waits in the twilight on the roadside, as if expecting someone. Then, when no one is in sight, he slips away, down the dark and narrow path.
He is in too much of a hurry to take the time to try and identify the small plot of land he and his mother lived in. In any case the steps, which might have revealed the spot, must have—along with the much-crazed man who once lived in its shadow—finally succumbed.
He recognizes Tante Eugenie’s large and bent frame as she spreads wet clothing on the tops of the jasmine bushes at the side of the house. From his approach, he scrutinizes the clothing as best as he can in the low light to see if he might recognize any of it. She turns and sees him.
Although she has thrown her hands in the air, ready to embrace him, he notices that she is, oddly, frowning. She limps hurriedly toward him, her mouth set tight. He is about to speak, but she snaps a finger to her lips. “Shhh,” she cautions urgently.
Energy instinctively drains from his body. He wants quick confirmation to the question “Is she here?” but, afraid of any and all answers, he has lost his breath. He glances side to side, peering hard into the dark surroundings. Reaching him, Tante Eugenie throws her arms around him, tightening her grip to still his tremble. As if someone might be eavesdropping, she whispers, “Why it take you so long to come? We waiting and waiting for you. Come. You alone?”
She grips his hand hard and pulls him purposefully around, past the house down to the beach. She points. Sitting on the sand, leaning against a log that only somewhat conceals her, is the familiar body. He cups Tante Eugenie’s face in his hands and kisses her on her tobacco-blackened lips. Coarse hairs on her upper lip prick his face.
She sees him just as he is upon her, and she smiles broadly. “Oh Lord, Harry. I knew you would figure it out.” He is exhausted, bent by the faith she has in him. Anger that she has caused such grief with the staging of her drowning grips him, even as he is overwhelmingly relieved, grateful that she is alive. He wants to shove her hard, and at the same time to hold and never let her go. He presses her hand to his mouth, and when she feels the wetness of tears on her hand, she cradles him in her arms. “We don’t have too much time, Harry. Everything ready. We were only waiting.” Then she laughs and adds, “Well, we were waiting, but more than that, we were hoping.” She begins to stand up. He holds her back. “Your face was on the front page of yesterday’s paper. It is probably in today’s paper, too. Everyone in this country knows you. You are on people’s minds right now.”