The Ventriloquist's Tale

by Pauline Melville

  Rosa waited and when she thought he was asleep, tiptoed through the eaved space, which was separated by half-partitions on each side so that it was possible to walk the full length without opening any doors. Her bed was at the far end where the roof was lower. The windows had been closed there and it felt more violently stuffy.

  She went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth and undressed, feeling as if she had got away with something. Then she lay down under the sheet and was on the point of drifting into sleep when she became aware of his figure standing hesitantly in the shadows of the adjoining space. He was waiting, one hand tentatively on the eaves, foot half raised, toe on the ground. She shut her eyes and did nothing. She never heard him come to the bedside or undress.

  Under the Eaves

  These were the words spoken that night, under the low eaves where all the hot air from the day seemed to have gathered. It doesn’t matter who said what or in what order:

  May I lie down with you?

  Yes.

  May I suck your breasts?

  Yes.

  You’re like a bird. Your body is like a dancer’s.

  You’re so warm. You’re so warm.

  You’re strong.

  You’re a baby.

  Suck me a little.

  I want to make love to you.

  You’re hot, girl.

  I’ve been lusting after you since I first saw you.

  When I do that your nipples stand upright.

  Give me your tongue.

  My spirit is flying away from my body.

  You’re naive. You’re shaking.

  You’re paying more attention to that mosquito than you are to me.

  You’re beautiful.

  Do you want me to go slower?

  Put your legs against the eaves.

  I want to keep making love to you. I want to hurt you.

  Let me kiss you.

  Oh I can feel that.

  It’s not fair.

  It’s not fair.

  We shouldn’t be doing this.

  You don’t give a shit, do you?

  I love it. Coming’s not important.

  And then laughter and deep, gurgling giggles.

  Are you married?

  I’m on my own.

  How many women have you got?

  You’d like to be the only one, wouldn’t you?

  Don’t hit me there.

  Come, let me pull you further down in the bed.

  Better shut the door.

  Anyone could come up.

  I don’t know which door to shut.

  The one at the top of the stairs. I’ll do it.

  Soft footsteps treading across the warm floor.

  Come back into bed.

  No. I want some sleep.

  I want to ravish you. I want part of your spirit.

  What is that scar on your arm?

  Someone tried to rob me of my watch.

  You’re a wonderful lover.

  I’m a homosexual.

  You can be what you want.

  You’re not listening. You’re not listening.

  I want some affection.

  You’re beautiful.

  Keep doing that.

  Hold me. Hold on to me.

  You’re a superb lover.

  Don’t patronise me.

  I want to fuck you.

  What do you think you are doing?

  Making love to you.

  Slower. Go slower.

  No.

  Your legs are like silk.

  I can feel you contracting. It feels like you’re holding me.

  Can you tell lies?

  When necessary.

  You’re shy. You’re vulgar.

  Come on top of me.

  I’m lazy. I told you I was lazy.

  You come on top of me.

  You smell so sweet.

  You taste salty.

  That’s sweat.

  Let me kiss you.

  There’s a cockroach. Quick. Quick. It’s gone under the mattress.

  Do you want me to kill it?

  Yes.

  Give me your sandal.

  Let’s sleep.

  Let me put my leg over your thigh. I once saw my father like that with my mother.

  The house in whose attic the two lovers slept was like an enormous sea-going vessel. It was constructed entirely of wood and painted white. Like a ship, it creaked and groaned. On all four storeys, the Demerara shutters stretched out like unfurled wooden wings. And as if in reminder of a seafaring past, the windowsills of the upper floors were lined with bottles that had been salvaged from the muddy waters of the Demerara estuary: bottles with tall necks, ginger-coloured bottles, stout black bottles, green glass flagons, bottles tinged with sea green that were used on the prison ships from Africa and bottles that, despite being tiny, weighed heavily in the hand.

  Like a ship too, the house contained galleries and passageways, verandahs, decks and stairways. There were so many different levels and rooms that visitors lost their way. A guest had once opened a door and come across a whole family, whom he had never seen before but who lived there, sitting at breakfast.

  It was a galleon that had come to ground, beached in a city amongst a host of other craft – Georgetown being a city built almost entirely of wood – the houses were like large schooners, sailing ships, brigs, tiny skiffs, ramshackle craft, junks and sloops. It was as if all the houses in Georgetown, from the most palatial to the tiniest of shacks, had once, in the process of evolution, been a flotilla of sea-vessels which the sea had tossed on shore. It was an armada turned city, a wooden fleet on land.

  While the two of them drifted in and out of sleep, turning under the single, damp sheet, sometimes at the same time and sometimes separately, the morning sun began to brighten the attic and the household staff gradually assembled for the day’s work.

  From below, the strident sound of Anita the cook singing ‘How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds’ floated up to the attic windows. She sang in a high, reedy voice that always remained pitched within soaring distance of hysteria and her tone of voice held a sullen threat, as if defying God to treat her badly.

  In the kitchen, she wiped the steam from her shining black face and took the aluminium pan of boiled milk for the dogs off the stove. She wiped the surface of the table and laid out the cow-heel, pork, salt beef, cloves, spices and thyme. Then she went to fetch the casreep and the red maiwiri peppers.

  Through the window, she spotted Cuthbert ambling through the gate. Cuthbert was a mechanic who had jumped ship and come to work in the timber yard of the Lodge with Mr Crane.

  ‘When you goin’ back to sea?’ she called out.

  ‘This place like fly-paper. People stick to it,’ he called back.

  Anita let out a long, high-pitched laugh.

  ‘Yes. This is a story-house,’ and she continued singing: ‘“In a believer’s ear.’”

  Mr Aristotle Crane, the chief carpenter, strolled in, as he did every morning of his life, even on Sundays. At seventy-five, he had slackened his pace a little and spent a considerable amount of time sitting on a stack of lumber, his long legs stretched out in front of him.

  No one could remember a time when Mr Crane was not working on the house and work on the house was never finished. He was a lean man with one protruding tooth, who understood everything about wood: the stresses and strains each variety of wood could bear; which woods were best able to withstand the salt carried by the sea-winds; which conditions helped wood to breathe and stretch; which methods of seasoning strengthened the timber. Even his face was grainy and the colour of mahogany.

  As a young man he had attended night classes at Queen’s and technical school. One good teacher taught him the rudiments. His father and grandfather had taught him the rest. He could make half-doors, sash windows, Demerara shutters and jalousies. He could move the kitchen from the top of the house to the bottom and back again. He understood how to design lattices, windows and partitions that would c
atch the slightest breeze or gust of the Trade Winds and so the house always remained cool.

  Mr Crane had only one fear – that one day he would come to work and the house would no longer be there. When he became ill and his doctor advised him to go for treatment and possibly retire in the United States, he solemnly recited this hymn in response:

  Our fathers’ sepulchres are here

  And here our kindred dwell

  Our children too

  How can we love another land so well

  Together with the other workmen, Cuthbert, Boops, Henri and Boso, Mr Crane formed what was known as the Parliament of the Lodge. At around four o’clock in the afternoon, they met in the shed at the back of the yard where Mr Crane stored his lumber. Here, Henri the cabinet-maker who claimed French, Amerindian, Bajan and Spanish blood, worked assiduously to fashion handsome guitars and small boxes inlaid with precious woods. As Henri worked, Mr Crane assisted everybody by pouring out the rum as he polished a table or cupboard he was making. Boops was usually dispatched to fetch ice and fresh limes. They were joined by Cuthbert and Boso and sometimes by the occasional passer-by who knew, by some secret means, that Parliament was in session.

  And then, in the dying heat of the afternoon, leisurely and considered debates took place, slow as molasses going up a hill, punctuated by thoughtful pauses that could last as long as ten minutes, during which Leonard the parrot would sometimes offer his contribution from deep in the branches of the mango tree which shaded the hut. In slow time, mellowed by rum, the shed redolent with the aroma of cedar and greenheart wood, up to their ankles in wood-shavings, this prestigious and dignified assembly of parliamentarians discussed the entire range of life’s topics, from the ridiculous antics of government, to the efficacy of Pif-paf insect repellent and even to the nature of the supernatural, several of whose ambassadors had lately taken to calling on Mr Crane.

  It was that most venerable of institutions, a parliament uncorrupted by power.

  At roughly the same time that Parliament was in session in the afternoon, the judiciary kicked their shoes off and held court upstairs in the cool of the drawing-room. The judiciary consisted of Anita the cook; Indira her assistant; Mrs Hassett the manageress, whose mind was like a bird’s nest hedged in with such tiny economies that it barely saw the light of day, and who attended only when she could be tempted from the scraps of paper on which she scribbled her tangled sums. The last two members of the judiciary were Eileen who came to clean and Clara the petite black girl who washed and ironed clothes.

  In the customary manner of any court, they sat to pass judgement. They passed judgement on everybody from film stars to politicians, on the sporadic guests who turned up, on other members of the workforce and on each other’s husbands and boyfriends. And when any one member of the judiciary happened herself to be absent, naturally the others passed judgement on her too. Once judgement was passed, there was little chance of appeal.

  Holding the office of Lord Chamberlain and keeper of the keys to the Lodge was Mr Roy. Two years earlier he had had a stroke which caused one side of his face to sing a different song from the other. That, combined with advanced age, meant that his progress through the house was slow. Forgetfulness made him repeat many of the journeys through the Lodge because he had left some object or other behind. You could hear his slow tread come to a halt and after a pause you could hear him retracing his steps.

  His years as one of the clerks in the ornate, blue-turreted city hall had left their imprint. There was no tea-bag or spoonful of powdered milk that could not be accounted for by Mr Roy. The kitchen was kept locked after the staff had gone home. But his work was cut out to control the contents of the fridge and the cupboards. Stocks disappeared mysteriously in the night. It was as though phantoms passed through and inhaled the food. It vanished. Sometimes, he came into the kitchen during the day to find strange children, sitting spooning bowlfuls of rice into their stomachs. The half-eaten remains of a cucumber and avocado salad that he had checked in the late afternoon had gone by evening. A jug full of plum juice in the fridge was three-quarters empty by the time he descended the stairs to check again. His endless tours of the house always revealed objects either missing or misplaced.

  ‘The coffee has migrated,’ he could be heard muttering as he made his rounds of inspection. However many cupboards he locked, ghostly hands seemed able to remove the contents.

  On the morning that Chofy and Rosa lay sleeping at the top of the house, Mr Roy slowly made his rounds, taking especial care to check the stores because some American guests from Hawk Oil company were flying in from the States that day.

  It was mid-morning. Trying to avoid being seen by any of the staff, Chofy McKinnon made his way down from the top of the house as though he were walking on air.

  Dizzy with happiness, he left the Lodge and picked his way over stagnant drainage trenches and patches of dry grass, stepping carefully between the piles of dust-covered stones being used to repair pot-holes in the road. Then, the recollection of what had just happened overwhelmed him to such an extent that he stood still for a moment on the roadside.

  He had decided he must visit Auntie Wifreda. She would be wondering what had happened to him. But first, he could not resist going to sit for a while in the Botanic Gardens to run over again and again in his mind what had been happening in his life since the beginning of the week.

  He found a bench in the gardens near to where the abandoned statue of Queen Victoria stood in undergrowth that had run wild. He watched the egrets perch on Queen Victoria’s white marble shoulders, then he shut his eyes and settled into a blissful daydream repeating continually the events of the last few days. He felt that his whole life had been transformed. Endless possibilities opened up before him. He would go to live in Europe. Or perhaps Rosa would come to live with him here. He would build a house for her. Marietta would understand. Bla-Bla could come and visit.

  Half an hour later, a screech of brakes made him open his eyes. Rohit Persaud, his landlord, pulled up to a halt beside him on his bicycle. He stood tipsily, one foot on the pedal, his sweaty chest shining in the opening of his black shirt.

  Chofy greeted him.

  ‘How things, man?’

  Rohit shook his head in disappointment and frustration.

  ‘Still the same. Red flag up. Rain. No play. She threw me out. She does dress in flimsy-flimsy nightie to get me excited and then it’s no go. She jealous bad. I goin’ kill myself.’

  Chofy grinned.

  ‘What you goin’ do? Shoot yourself?’

  ‘No. When it rainin’, I goin’ put my head in one of the pot-holes in D’Urban Street and drown myself.’

  Rohit raised his arms and started to sing calypso in a maudlin voice:

  ‘Oh my commanding wife,

  She want to control my life.

  I goin’ get sweet-up, boy. Come lewwe drink nuh?’

  Chofy excused himself as he got up.

  ‘I have to go find my aunt. She’s sick.’

  Rohit levered himself back on to his bike and wobbled off in the direction of one of the rum shops in Robb Street.

  The St Francis of Assisi home, where Auntie Wifreda lay, occupied a patch of ground in Thomas Street. It was a city within a city, a city of the old, known as the City of Crones, consisting of a collection of one-room shacks run as a charity by the Catholic Church.

  As he came through the gate, not even the sight of the dismal shacks could dispel Chofy’s happiness. From the window of the first hut, the Matron turned her head lethargically and nodded at him as he pushed open the gates. Still in her nightgown, her puffy face saffron yellow, she fanned herself slowly and explained that she was sick with an enlarged heart.

  There were two rows of these single wooden rooms standing opposite each other. As the place had grown, other ramshackle wooden dwellings had sprung up here and there, all looking topsy-turvy and intoxicated, tacked together with criss-cross planks and with tiny, footworn rabbit paths between them.
Each shack rested on stilts with four or five steps leading up to the door. Outside every one stood a little shed for cooking, covered by a single sheet of zinc. Where the ground was marshy, planks had been laid over the maze of stinking alleyways that separated the houses.

  Women came to their windows to see who was passing. One or two asked for money. Some busied themselves washing or sweeping dust from the sun-bleached shacks out through the doors into mid-air. Some stood and stared. To his right, one ancient shrivelled woman lifted up her orange skirt and evacuated her bowels in a ditch at the side of her home.

  Auntie Wifreda’s room was at the far end of the row. From the top of the cooking shed outside, her green parrot hopped noisily along the tin roof and gave a bronchitic chuckle as Chofy approached.

  Chofy ran up the steps and opened the door.

  Auntie Wifreda lay sprawled in a blue nightdress on the bed, a patch over her right eye, which had already undergone surgery. On the left side of the room stood a yellow plastic bucket and several pans.

  She opened her good eye.

  ‘You bring me tobacco, Chofy?’

  ‘No, Auntie.’

  ‘My head is paining me. Please to fetch me some black tobacco.’

  Chofy cursed himself for forgetting. He would have to walk all the way home. Black Rupununi tobacco was almost impossible to find in Georgetown.

  ‘I’ll go and get some. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Sore.’

  ‘Auntie Wifreda.’ Chofy could not wait to ask. ‘Do you remember someone called Evelyn Waugh coming to the Rupununi a long time ago?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to bring a friend of mine to meet you. She wants to know if you remember a Mr Evelyn Waugh coming to the savannahs.’

  Auntie Wifreda groaned.

  ‘I don’ want to meet anyone. Tell them to go away. Yes, I remember him. A pushed-up face and little pebble eyes. He said mass with us outdoors.’

  ‘You don’t have to feel shy. She just wants to ask you some questions.’