Voltaire had an endless store of jokes that derided the pretense of the various communities on the island. Himself a Creole with unmistakable African features, he poked fun at the Creoles’ living beyond their means and mimicking the lifestyle of the whites; immediately after, he would regale us with stories ridiculing the Indians’ reluctance to spend the slightest cent; and he did not spare the whites for their delusions that they were still French. At a time when political correctness was unknown, he entertained everyone with his colorful, sometimes bombastic portrayal of ethnic stereotypes.
That day, however, I found his stories boring. Trite. Cheap.
“You fucking Malabar,” Voltaire said. “You come here to talk, and now you show me a face that looks like an asshole.”
He had addressed me with the derogatory word for Indians. I shouted back “Mazambique,” the pejorative word for Creoles, but couldn’t complete my sentence. I was ashamed and shocked at the word I had used.
Voltaire left his sewing table.
“Something the matter, Vishnu? All the years I’ve known you, you’ve been so controlled, so cool.”
I avoided his eyes and turned my head towards the half-finished jackets hanging on mannequins.
“Let me go next door and get you something to drink. It will calm you down.”
Life was proving more complicated than I’d ever envisioned; my hopes were being dashed to pieces. Memories of my mental breakdown after the conclave came back, more vivid, and I was afraid I would suffer a relapse.
When Voltaire returned with a cup of tea, I told him about the meetings with the Honorables Thakoor, Mohamed, and Legrand, and about the ministerial fish.
“Things have a way of working themselves out,” he said.
I wondered if Voltaire, in the workplace for more than five years, had acquired a kind of wisdom not available to those of us immersed in books. Tailoring had brought him into contact with people from various walks of life.
He added that Minister Mohamed’s strong letter of recommendation would surely carry weight. “They have to please Muslim politicians; Muslims make up the swing vote.”
I was barely out the door when he asked, “Why don’t you try Gérard the longanis?”
“A longanis? You believe in sorcery?”
“Gérard is not illiterate and beggarly like the others, and he doesn’t smell of salted fish. You must meet him. He carries his stuff in a leather satchel, not a two-rupee vacoas basket. He’s traveled overseas, to the sacred forests of Madagascar to study with a famous ombiasi.”
Voltaire put his hands on my shoulders and lowered his voice. “To thank me for an outfit I made for him, he invited me to a midnight séance at the Ville Noire cemetery. His style and words were grandiose. As soon as he pushed open the iron gate, he reached into his satchel. Out came a spice jar whose contents he sprinkled on the soil. ‘Cloves to repel the forces of the enemy,’ Gérard said. He squeezed some lemons. The waves howled at the full moon as he hurled the spent lemons towards the seashore. When we reached the Crucifix, he took out a framed picture of Saint George slaying the dragon, which he placed at the foot. He knelt, lit a candle on each side of Saint George—one red, one white—and prayed in some kind of Latin. He then walked towards a gravestone capped by a cross. He garlanded the cross with a rosary and string of flowers and chanted, ‘Grand Shetani of Makonde, we invoke you tonight and beg you to accept this most humble offering from Mr. Richard Sooklall.’ He plunged his hand in the satchel again and took out two bottles. He circled the tomb, pouring down liquid. ‘On this ground hallowed by the blood of the goat, I implore you, Invulnerable Lord of the Orient and the Occident, to punish the illicit lover of Mr. Sooklall’s wife. Great Archangel, make his tongue blister, his private parts limp, and, O Supreme Spirit, infect his brains with maggots.’ With arms outstretched like a soaring bat, he continued: ‘As the imam, bishop, and swami of Mosavy and Fanafody Gasy, I remain eternally bound to you.’ ”
“The watchman slept through all this?”
Voltaire raised his voice back to its usual volume. “Vishnu, imagine, just imagine, the power of Saint George, Satan, and the Spirit of the Sacred Forests combined! Would the watchman dare challenge that?”
“And I bet your Catholic heart kept its regular beat all night?”
“To fortify myself, I drank a few pegs of rum before I left home. Under the stars, the angels and cherubs on the richer tombs looked serene. I expected the smell of corpses and dug earth. Instead, the flowers left by the bereaved released their fragrance. It was so peaceful.”
* * *
—
When I reached home, Fringant and Kalipa were at the street corner near our house, seated on two stones, their usual place in the late afternoon. I remembered clearly how, four years earlier, in front of our gate, they had confronted each other with harpoons over their support of rival politicians, and how, two Christmases back, Papa had given them a roof repair job to help them ride over a difficult period when rough seas prevented them from fishing. Since then, they had taken a liking to me and regularly asked me about “your progress in life.”
“We heard you were at the bazaar today shopping for rare fish with the agent,” Fringant said. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” I said and opened the gate.
“Remember the days we were agents part-time? We know how the system works,” Fringant said.
Kalipa got up, walked over to me, and puffed out his chest. “If some politician is messing with you, let us know. We’ll show up at his place with our harpoon and settle the matter.”
I told my father about the brothers’ offer.
“We don’t do things this way,” he said.
I didn’t mention Voltaire’s séance.
* * *
—
For the second meeting with Minister Thakoor, my father decided that the stakes were high enough for him to take another day’s leave. Papa had never taken leave before, though he had often complained of illness.
With his suit, tie, and felt hat, going through security at the Hotel du Gouvernement was not difficult.
In his office that late afternoon, Honorable Thakoor had a hard countenance. This was difficult for me to comprehend.
Papa began. “You remember, Monsieur le Ministre, in 1952 we and Honorable Mohamed were working at Ferney Primary School. He has asked me to give you this letter of recommendation.”
The minister grabbed it with his tiny hand, looked at the envelope, marked for official business, and with a matching tiny voice said, “This letter is not worth a nail.”
Without opening the envelope, he tore it to shreds.
Though of North Indian ancestry, my father had the swarthy complexion of a South Indian, unlike most of the Bhushan clan. That armed him with an advantage in tense social situations: one could never see him blush. As Honorable Thakoor threw the bits of paper into the wastepaper basket, I looked at Papa. His ears and face had turned reddish! His otherwise calm demeanor made it difficult for me to figure out his feelings: was it disappointment with the crass behavior of an ex-colleague, or anger?
“Surely you can do something for us, Monsieur le Ministre. Your ministry has jurisdiction over scholarship awards.”
“These days, if you do something for someone, you get pilloried for it. The decision has been taken.”
He turned to me.
“You better go to the ministry and fill in the paperwork for Madagascar. It is not so bad.”
Papa put his hat back on, did not say good-bye, and went home.
I walked to the ministry, determined to put up one more fight. I remembered a teacher at my secondary school quoting some professor—something along the lines of “We sometimes blame politicians for decisions and actions that entrenched civil servants take.” With these words in my ears, I knocked on the door of
the second in command, Kamban Pillay, and barged in.
As a senior functionary, Pillay was part of the emerging middle class of Indian origin. No mere clerk, he was clearly conscious of the status that a degree from the London School of Economics conferred on him. He rose from his chair with the solemnity of a pope about to deliver a statement ex cathedra.
Somehow he knew why I was in his office. Before I could open my mouth, he called the third in command, Yash Bissoon, and, pointing at me as if he’d just thrown the remnants of his lunch to a stray cur, said to Bissoon, “He’s not satisfied with Madagascar. Oliver Twist asking for more!”
They shared a hearty laugh.
Bissoon patted me on the shoulder. “You should consider yourself lucky you’re getting this scholarship.”
“Why didn’t you study there? Why didn’t you send Miss Sharmila there?”
I could not believe I had blurted this out, yet I was glad I did. Miss Sharmila was the minister’s niece Papa had alluded to during his first meeting with Minister Thakoor.
“You’ll get a good job when you graduate. In this country, we give equal weight to degrees, regardless of the universities that confer them,” Pillay said.
Bissoon handed me the Madagascar papers.
When I walked out, Cousin Shankar was standing at the gate. I suggested we stroll along the harbor and Albion Docks. People were spilling out of offices, grabbing the evening newspapers from the tobacco kiosks, and rushing to catch their buses home. The harbor looked different from the day I had my first scholarship interview. The majestic Ferdinand de Lesseps was gone, and drab Japanese fishing trawlers dominated the horizon.
I persuaded Shankar to join me for dinner and drinks at the A-1 Restaurant Bar. The A-1 was a notch above the harbor bars patronized by foreign sailors; it hosted no hookers and witnessed no brawls. It attracted young men who had just joined the lower-middle echelon of the workforce, older bus and taxi drivers, and a smattering of secondary school students whose parents were liberal with pocket money. The background music reflected its broad clientele: Enrico Macias and Edith Piaf, the Beatles and Elvis, Hindi film songs and the local séga. Though its Chinese meefoon noodle enjoyed some renown, I went there on Fridays for its boeuf aux petits pois. My paycheck during the preceding few months empowered me to defy the Hindu dietary taboo against beef.
Dusk stretched into evening. We talked and talked, ate and ate. We kept ordering pegs of rum. My recollection of what was said is foggy, though we must have spent some time on my ongoing Kafkaesque travails. Suddenly, looking around, we realized we were the only patrons left. I asked for one last peg. The Chinese waiter, worn out, implored us to leave. It was ten.
We looked for a taxi at Victoria Station. The last bus had already left. Empty of its noisy and energetic trains, which had been sold and dispatched to apartheid South Africa a few years earlier, the grayish-black stone building had a ghostly, melancholy charm in the moonlight. It reminded me of Uncle Ram, the railway stationmaster, and his prediction about my studying in England. He had disappeared, and so had his world.
In the taxi, Shankar confided that Papa was worried and had sent him to Port Louis to check if I was okay. When I got home, I slumped into the tottering rattan chair on the veranda. The sea breeze caressed my face and slowly woke me up from the alcohol-induced torpor.
I ambled inside and saw that poor Shankar had some explaining to do. “Couldn’t you stop him from drinking so much?” I heard Mama say.
“He’s too skinny for that,” I said. “He forgot to swallow his Wate-On fattening beverage.”
I sat on the chair facing Papa and said, “I can’t believe you and those other suckers gave your hard-earned money to this motherfucker Thakoor to finance his law studies!”
I didn’t wait for his response; swear words were forbidden in the house. And I rarely used them even with my friends.
I stood up and nearly knocked down the TV in the room, the one luxury item Papa had bought, so we could watch the news. As my mother and Shankar tried to steady me, I raged, “Honorable Bara Thakoor…small man…small brain…small dick.”
I broke free and hobbled to the veranda.
I raised my head to the sky just in time to catch shooting stars disappear into the horizon.
“Bara Thakoor, impotent son of a bitch,” I shouted.
I waited for more shooting stars. They were gone. Restless, I went back inside. Mama had her perpetual worried look, and Papa quickly, surreptitiously closed and put away a book he held in his hands. Shankar had a smirk, and this drove me mad. I stepped to a window and yanked the draperies from the curtain rod, tearing off the eyelets. I went to the second window and ripped off the curtains with even greater rage. When I turned to the third window, Mama was standing in front of it.
She wasn’t there to berate me or to protect her last remaining curtain. Her face was soft, and I broke down in tears.
I bent down and sat at Mama’s feet. I was a spent force.
“Ma, I’m sorry. Forgive me. You remember what I told you last week, don’t you?”
She caressed my head.
“I told you how refined your taste was; you choose the most exquisite curtains. And now I’ve ruined them.”
I continued.
“Smile, Ma. You have beautiful, well-shaped white teeth. That’s the best thing I’ve got from you. That’s what the girls tell me. Look.”
I flashed my teeth.
Papa broke his silence. “It’s been a rough day, Vishnu. You need to rest.”
“I’m staying right here. No sleep tonight.”
“Shankar, give me a hand,” he said, and they both raised me up from the floor. “They can’t put you down, son. You’re worth much more than they ever will be.”
I shook my head as they brought me to my bed.
“Adversities are temporary, Vishnu. You have it in you to overcome.”
At breakfast the next day, my father said nothing about my drunkenness.
Papa rarely solicited my, or even Mama’s, opinions. When, on his return from work, he asked “What do we do next?” I just showed him the Madagascar papers.
“I sell my sugarcane to Kissoon Singh, the broker. We’ll go see him. He claims to be close to the prime minister.”
“Your crop is minuscule. Why should he care?”
“It’s not only me. Twenty years ago, I persuaded all your uncles and aunts to sell to him. He knows we can sell directly to the white man’s sugar estate or use another broker.”
Papa’s words were a gentle reminder: he was head of the clan.
Two days later, Papa took leave from work once again. We were in the prime minister’s office, waiting for the Father of the Nation.
His chief of staff walked in. After my father thanked him for arranging the meeting, he handed him the newspaper listing the French scholarship awards. “My son’s case is simple and straightforward…”
The chief of staff cut him short.
“We had to juggle the prime minister’s schedule. He can’t see you. We are in the midst of organizing National Prayer Day, which comes soon. We are familiar with your case, and we’ll get back to you.”
The meeting had lasted barely three minutes.
The chief of staff ushered us back into the plush antechamber, where a saffron-robed swami, a Catholic monsignor in black cassock, and an imam in immaculate white were admiring the model of the Legislative Assembly, then under construction. Papa recognized the Hindu priest and made the expected reverential bow. “Namasté, Swamiji.”
The chief of staff quickly whisked the ecclesiastics into the prime minister’s office.
Papa hugged me.
“How could I be so gullible? I believed in meritocracy. I should have canvassed these carnivores much earlier. From the day your exams results came out.”
When he relax
ed his embrace, I realized that during the previous two weeks I had spent more time with him than any time before. Here was a man everyone knew as bookish and reserved. Now I saw someone who stood his ground in the corridors of power. But he also had a look of disgust and bitterness that I had never seen.
On the bus, Papa dozed off. I watched the face and body of a man who had been dealt two heavy blows within six months: he lost a court case in which he invested so much time and energy, and now the hopes he had pinned on me had evaporated. He was a man fighting for my future.
All avenues were now exhausted. I sat weighing my prospects. I told myself the program in Madagascar would be a breeze—I’d make the top grades there without too much effort, and use these to win a scholarship to a prestigious American university. I ran my fingers through my hair. I felt it had turned gray.
The bus was packed with secondary school kids doing their usual thing: egging on the driver to race against another bus full of students from a rival school. Like most younger bus drivers, he obliged.
XVI.
Tamby at the Rex Cinema
1969
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And “Thou shalt not” writ over the door;
Silent Winds, Dry Seas Page 16