The Ventriloquist's Tale

by Pauline Melville

  ‘But you said you were partly raised by a priest,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes. Well, that was after my Uncle Danny attacked me one time. He was living with us and drinking heavily. He nearly killed me. I would never forget it. I was about twelve and I had just learned a story from one of the vaqueiros. We were all sitting round the table. I was excited and I was telling it to Auntie Wifreda, jumping up and down with all the gestures and so on. Uncle Danny was slouched at the table, surly as usual, gulping down bowls of parakari, the birthmark on his head standing out red – always a danger sign. The story I was telling was about a couple with one son. Shall I tell it to you?’

  Rosa gave Chofy a sympathetic nuzzle of encouragement. Chofy was wide awake.

  ‘I remember every word of it. There was a couple with a son. The wife was very cruel. The child cried and she beat him and dumped him in a pineapple field. A female bush-cow, that’s a tapir, heard the child and moved over to see what it was. Moved by the child’s crying, she took him home. In the forest, the child grew up under her loving care. When he was fully grown, they began to live together as man and wife. Several years passed happily and then one day she became pregnant.

  ‘The man went hunting in the forest. Chasing a deer one night, he accidentally stumbled on the village where he was born. The people told him all about himself and how he had been left to die by his cruel mother. He felt very comfortable in the village and stayed on there to join the men in their fieldwork. As they sat eating their meal, the hunters began to talk about a certain bush-cow they had been seeing around the place. They decided to go hunting for it the next day.

  ‘The man felt sad that his wife would be killed but he could not save her. He did not want the men to know she was his wife. So as not to arouse suspicion, he went with them on the hunting expedition. He even asked to be the watchman by the river where he would be the first to shoot at her. When the hunters found her, they chased after her. She could smell her husband and ran towards him. He shot an arrow which pierced her neck and she fell to the ground and died, the child still in her womb.

  ‘The husband rushed forward, cut out a full human baby boy from her belly. He took the child home to care for him, but after only four days, the child turned into a poisonous plant. He made use of the plant for fishing. That’s how we came to learn how to poison fish.

  ‘That was the story, exactly as I told it. Something in it must have upset Uncle Danny because the next thing I knew, he had me by the throat and was dragging me to the window. He was pushing me backwards through the window, holding me down over the sill and throttling me, accusing me of lying and stealing and all sorts of things. Auntie Wifreda threw hot coffee on him to stop him. Well, Uncle Danny was a big man. He stood there, his chest heaving with these dry sobs. We were all terribly embarrassed. I was crying too. In the end, he staggered outside, still very drunk, picked up a spade leaning against the wall and smashed one of the outhouses to pieces.

  ‘After that Auntie Wifreda took me over to the priest’s house and I stayed there for a while. He was very good to me, even sent me to school in Georgetown for a year.’

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t know any mythology.’

  ‘Oh I know plenty stories like that.’

  Rosa’s eyes were closing. He poked her in the ribs:

  ‘I think I’m talking to myself here,’ said Chofy, pretending to be offended and squeezing her till she responded with a fit of sleepy giggles. His own eyes were closing but he kept himself awake, not wanting to lose a minute of her lying next to him. He felt he was cradling something precious that would never be given to him again. He ran his hand down the curve of her hip.

  ‘What sort of stories does Evelyn Waugh write?’ Chofy asked suddenly.

  ‘Not stories like that,’ mumbled Rosa, turning in his arms. ‘But there’s room for all sorts of stories. How did you come by your name – Chofoye? It’s a lovely name.’

  In deference to Rosa’s clear-headed rationalism, Chofy suppressed his own superstitious fear. He had been brought up either not to reveal his name or not to explain its meaning. He had felt uncomfortable even when he first told her.

  ‘I told you. It’s a Wai-Wai name meaning “rapids” or “fast-flowing waters”. If you say it out loud, you can hear it makes the sound of water exploding over rocks. Uncle Danny suggested it when I was born and my father liked it.’

  During those nights, Chofy told her everything he could remember about his life. Sometimes he spoke lying on his back with one arm round her. Sometimes he levered himself on to his elbow and talked while he felt her soft breath tickle his cheek like a duck feather.

  The only thing he did not tell her was that he was married with a child of his own. He excised Marietta and Bla-Bla out of the story, hoping against hope that something would turn up to resolve the impossible. He did not think of the future and felt no guilt, just a terror that Rosa would find out and that everything would be finished between them.

  He ran his finger over her upturned profile. The outline reminded him of something.

  ‘Do you know how they cut keys?’ he said, looking at her from the side. ‘They run the key through a machine that cuts it out the opposite way – backwards.’

  Rosa looked on her map for the road that contained the private residence of the Canadian High Commissioner. There were now two reasons for her increasing determination to visit the Rupununi. Despite Auntie Wifreda’s discouraging noises, she was convinced that visiting the Rupununi would help her research and now her deepening involvement with Chofy had aroused a curiosity and she longed to see where he came from. She could not understand his reluctance to help her. He always seemed to find some excuse to prevent them from going there together which made her more committed than ever to finding a way of getting there somehow.

  ‘I can’t leave my job,’ he said.

  ‘I want to see where you come from,’ she pleaded, to no avail.

  It was in pursuit of this aim that Rosa climbed out of a cab and walked up the drive of the Canadian High Commission in Georgetown. William Bevan, the Canadian High Commissioner, frequently flew to the Rupununi by private plane for a sporting weekend’s duck or deer-hunting. She had met his wife briefly at a cultural event and befriended her. It was an outside chance but she hoped to be able to accompany Monica Bevan’s husband on one of his trips.

  Monica Bevan invited Rosa into the front room of their official residence which was unpleasantly chilled from the cross-ventilated air-conditioning. She was a nervous beaver of a woman with neatly set grey hair, beset by fears of illness.

  ‘I always boil any water for twenty minutes and never drink the milk. I’m near a nervous breakdown. Living here wears you down. The stress. It’s counted as a hardship posting, you know.’ She fidgeted with a soapstone Inuit carving she had brought with her from Canada and continued bleating with self-pity. Rosa listened patiently to the litany of complaints.

  ‘You can’t get anything done. Nothing works. The fax and the telex don’t work. There are satellite phones but the government hasn’t paid the cable charges. Poor Bill has had to go off early this morning to deal with some scam concerning forged visas.’

  In the doorway, the new East Indian houseboy hovered, never knowing when to interrupt and serve the coffee, the tray balanced precariously on his forearm. Mrs Bevan did not notice him dancing backwards and forwards across the threshold of the room.

  ‘There are a hundred and fifty people a day queuing outside the High Commission and now they’re asking us to provide shelter for them. They come to Canada. They have no skills. They live on welfare in better conditions than they’ve ever known in their lives. They get free education – the schools here have no pencils or equipment. Come outside and see the pool,’ she said – suddenly aware that she might be depressing her visitor.

  They went towards the automatic sliding doors that led on to the garden and the kidney-shaped blue swimming pool. The houseboy backed out and returned to the kitchen without
serving the coffee.

  ‘I was wondering if I might be able to fly into the Rupununi when your husband next goes in,’ ventured Rosa tentatively.

  ‘Of course, my dear. Come to dinner with us on Friday and you can fix it up with him. We are entertaining the American Ambassador and his wife and a few others.’

  ‘Thank you. May I bring a partner?’ Rosa asked shyly.

  ‘Certainly.’ She looked round in exasperation. ‘You see – I ask the staff for coffee and they completely ignore me.’ She showed Rosa to the door, shaking her head in disbelief.

  Rainstorm

  Two days later, the air grew dark and a deluge fell on the city. Rosa sat on her bed. She had realised only lately that she was falling in love, vaguely recollecting the sensation from years before. It had dawned on her with gradual delight. Oberon juice, she called it, smiling to herself. I’ve been sprinkled with Oberon juice. She folded her clothes into piles of clean and dirty in a daze of thoughtful astonishment. Would her daughter mind? Probably not. Her ex-husband now lived in Amsterdam. He had remarried. What sort of future could she have with Chofy? Unimaginable. But she began to plan one all the same, wondering if she could find a job at the University of Guyana.

  As she got up to put her research papers on the table, spiky rain began to lance at angles through the jalousie slats wetting the reddish wooden floor and making it shine. She went over to look out and then shut the windows. As she switched on the light, pipefuls of water began to gurgle out over the zinc roof that protected the verandah. Indira, the assistant cook, came up the stairs bearing an avocado salad and some rice and peas which she placed on the dressing-table.

  ‘The rain does not want you to go to university today,’ she announced sombrely, before disappearing down the stairs again.

  Rosa and Chofy had arranged to go to the university to hear Wormoal’s lecture on Amerindian mythology. They had argued about it. Chofy did not want to go. He suspected her motives for wanting to go. He was plainly jealous of Wormoal. She explained that she did not even like the anthropologist but that she had promised to give him some support in his lecture. Besides, his paper was intriguing and included material about Wapisiana Indians, even if he did seem to be a bit of a fascist in some of his views.

  ‘You should be interested,’ she told a sulking Chofy. Finally, Chofy agreed to accompany her rather than risk her meeting up with Wormoal on her own.

  Later in the afternoon when the rain stopped, Rosa walked from Brickdam over to the library. Glittering necklaces of water circled the corner cafés and rum shops as she threaded her way round the gleaming puddles that filled gaping holes in the road.

  By the time Chofy hurried out of the building, the rain was sheeting down once more. He tried to protect his head with his hands. Rosa was drenched, her clothes clinging to her. They ran for the mini-bus.

  When they reached the university, the rain had reduced to a steady drizzle and a mist still hung in the air. The shoddily built university had a deserted feel to it. A lone cow cropped the campus grass. Instead of the revolutionary slogans that usually deck a university campus, the graffiti on the wall pleaded: ‘TEXTS NOW’, ‘SANITATION NOW’, ‘WHERE ARE THE FACILITIES???’.

  Inside the faculty, water dripped through the ceilings and hallways. They climbed the open stairs. Rosa skidded and nearly fell on the wet plank floor. The seminar room where the lecture was to be held was empty. There were no chairs. Rainwater dripped on to the desks. This was Chofy’s first ever visit to the university. It depressed him. He felt uncomfortable and out of place there.

  ‘Greetings. You braved the storm.’ Carmella de Pereira, Chofy’s boss who had organised the lecture together with the university librarian, bustled in. Noticing the way they stood close together, she shot a curious, slightly disapproving look in their direction.

  ‘Mr Wormoal not here yet, I see,’ she said and breezed out again. Two black students and one East Indian girl ambled in, wiped down the desks and sat on them. Gradually, they were joined by some others.

  Wormoal finally arrived shaking an umbrella, rain dripping down his glasses which he took off to wipe, making his eyes look vulnerable, like creatures when a stone is lifted from over them.

  He saw Rosa and Chofy and came over to them. Rosa introduced Chofy.

  ‘Ah. I’ve been wanting to meet you.’ He blinked. ‘The Wapisiana with the Wai-Wai name. It means “explosion of waters”, doesn’t it?’ He touched Chofy lightly on the arm. The touch reminded Chofy of the light fingering of the pickpockets in Stabroek market. He nodded warily. Wormoal put his glasses on again and peered at Chofy.

  ‘Very good to meet you. You know I spent time with the south savannah Indians. The McKinnons are a well-known family. I met several of them. Now which one are you?’

  Chofy tensed, dreading that Wormoal would know about Marietta. He wished he had obeyed the feeling of foreboding about Wormoal that had warned him against coming.

  ‘Freddie’s son. Sand Creek,’ He mumbled.

  Wormoal glanced at his watch.

  ‘But perhaps we could talk afterwards – please excuse me for the moment, I have to sort out my lecture.’

  He turned away to unpack his notes and write some headings on the blackboard. Rosa and Chofy found two dryish chairs and sat down. The piece of chalk Wormoal held slid across the wet surface of the blackboard as he tried to write the words ‘Eclipse-a Rational Analysis of Myth’. Water leaked from the ceiling directly above his head. Chofy watched the words disintegrate. Wormoal shook his head in annoyance. He tried again and the chalk skidded off the board. By now, rain was penetrating at other points of the ceiling. A student, used to the situation, slipped out and returned with two buckets. No sooner had he done this than the plaster burst overhead and a waterfall descended into the room.

  Carmella de Pereira burst through the door at the same time.

  ‘I’m sorry, everybody.’ She laughed gamely. ‘We shall have to cancel. The whole department is flooding. I advise you to take off your shoes and make your way out. There is a torrent outside. Come with me, Mr Wormoal. I will take you for tea with Mr Smiley, the librarian, where it is DRY.’ Her tinkling laugh echoed as she swept him off down corridors awash with flood water.

  ‘I told you it would be a waste of time,’ said Chofy, moodily, but relieved all the same that he would not have to speak to Wormoal.

  ‘Well, he was talking about Wapisiana Indians and their mythology. I thought you would be interested.’

  ‘We could have been in bed,’ said Chofy.

  After leaving the university, Chofy went to check on Auntie Wifreda and found no change in her condition. He walked back to the Lodge. The deluge had passed. It was a beautiful evening. The air was clear and the sky streaked with green and pink. Ragged wisps of grey cloud hung noticeably low over the red roofs of Georgetown.

  He crept up the stairs to surprise Rosa. As he passed the veranda of the floor below the attic, he saw the American executives from Hawk Oil relaxing in easy chairs, drinking beer and gazing out over the city as if it belonged to them. Wormoal had come back and was drinking with them. To Chofy’s concern, he heard his name mentioned.

  Wormoal was saying in the confident tone of an expert: ‘Chofoye is a Wai-Wai name, you see, meaning “explosion of waters”.’

  One of the Americans replied: ‘Well, we’re leaving tomorrow morning and we sure need to know the Amerindian word for explosion where we’re going.’ There was laughter. ‘What did you say it was … Chofoye?’ The American went on to explain about the seismic surveys for oil that they were conducting in the Rupununi.

  ‘We explode dynamite every few hundred yards at or near the ground surface. The sound waves are recorded on geophones and show us potential oil or gas-trapping structures underground.’ The American pulled down his sock to rub at a mosquito bite.

  It disturbed Chofy to hear his name discussed by strangers. He slipped past, making sure that Wormoal did not catch sight of him.

  Rosa was
curled up barefoot on the sofa, wearing a pale-pink crêpe dress that exposed her neck and her breasts. She was busy scribbling messages on postcards.

  ‘I forgot to tell you.’ She stretched her legs and smiled up at him as he came in. ‘We’ve been invited to dinner at the Canadian High Commission.

  Chofy stopped in his tracks.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t be going. I hate that sort of thing. I didn’t even like going to the university. I don’ have the right clothes. I feel out of place. I don’ know what to say to those people.’

  ‘Oh come with me,’ Rosa pleaded. ‘I don’t much like those people either, but it might help me get to the Rupununi.’

  ‘Why are you always so keen to go there?’ He slumped into a chair, scowling, knowing that if she visited the Rupununi she would be bound to discover about Marietta and Bla-Bla. She opened her eyes wide and looked at him with concern.

  ‘No. I can’t bear it. I don’ like those sort of snooty-head people.’ He made a stand at stubbornness.

  ‘Please.’ She bit her lip and looked anxiously at him.

  He felt himself melting at her plea. It was difficult to refuse her anything. Besides, he suddenly remembered his uncle Danny telling him: ‘To refuse an invitation to the feast is to declare war.’ He hesitated.