Cereus Blooms at Night

by Shani Mootoo

Chandin went everywhere with his new family. When they travelled to other towns and held church meetings under tents, he sat on the stage among the other Wetlander missionaries and was often the centre of attention. He was introduced as the Reverend’s son, and his story, already well known to every labourer, was expounded as a tangible benefit of conversion.

  Being the adopted son of the Reverend and Mrs. Ernest Thoroughly, Christian missionaries from the Shivering Northern Wetlands, did have its benefits, the greatest of which, in Chandin’s mind, came to be the daily presence of Lavinia Thoroughly, his newly acquired sister.

  Chandin’s favourite time of day was after the evening meal when the family gathered in the living room for an hour of relaxation. At other times he was unsure of his place in this new household. He often felt conspicuously lost. But evenings, sitting quietly in the living room with his new family, he had a very definite place. The Reverend had a chair that he alone sat in, as did Mrs. Thoroughly, and Lavinia invariably lay on her back or stomach on the very same portion of rug, or sat on a footstool near her mother. Chandin found that a straight-back upholstered chair had come to be marked as his. Although it was only a physical place, the chair became an antidote to the chaos of his uprootedness.

  He was mesmerized by the chandelier that hung low in the middle of the room. While he should have been studying he would spend long moments staring at the leaf-shaped glass pendants that kicked off flickers of blue, red and violet light. He wondered how many of the people in the cane field barracks had ever seen such a fine thing. He wished he could show them not only that item, but also the fine cabinets, carved chairs and side tables and lamps with fancy shades. At first he wanted the labourers to see it all because everything was new and exciting. Then he desperately wanted them to see the inside of the Reverend’s house so they could embrace not just the Reverend’s faith but his taste. In his innocence he felt that his people’s lack of these things was a result of apathy and a poverty of ambition. He thought of his parents’ mud house and the things there, the peerahs they used for sitting on, the rough planks of wood used as shelves, the cattiyas instead of mattresses on high wood frames, the enamel wares, the paltry pitch-oil lamps, and most saddening of all, the latrine with that particular odour that etches itself on one’s brain. He felt immense distaste for his background and the people in it. Gazing awestruck at the chandelier, he would daily renew his promise to be the first brown-skinned person in Lantanacamara to own one just like it.

  The living room had two large windows through which scented breezes from undulating fields of sugar cane sailed in from the valleys below. While the Reverend and his wife cooled themselves in the benevolent breeze, chatting one minute, silent the next, absorbed in reading or in writing in their journals, Chandin observed his new family and listened to their conversations, the kind that families have only among themselves. At those times, he felt most thoroughly assured of a place, more significant even than a chair, in this new family.

  When he first went to live in the Reverend’s house, Lavinia was a quiet, unremarkable child, a little younger than he, who begged not to be noticed. As far as Chandin’s classmates were concerned, her only noteworthiness was in her fair skin, her white hair and the fact she was the principal’s daughter. Those attributes, however, were more than enough to win her admirers. The boys would perform antics and heroics in her presence in the hope that she would glance their way, but she appeared self-absorbed and blind, which only made them try harder.

  There was only one other girl in the school but the boys were not as concerned with her. She came from the same barracks as Chandin. Her parents had made a more convincing conversion than his, taking name changes for every person in the family. She had been given the name Sarah by Mrs. Thoroughly. Sarah was the only person in the school whom Lavinia was close to. The only thing that pleased Chandin about the friendship was that it indicated Lavinia was not prejudiced against people like himself. A friendship with Sarah, to Chandin’s mind, would encourage her to become comfortable with the Indians, and so with him. Chandin would regard Sarah jealously and wonder what attributes she had that he lacked. He wished Lavinia would talk and laugh with him the way she did with the small, dark girl from the barracks. On days that Chandin and Lavinia were encouraged to invite one friend each from the school to spend the day, Lavinia uniformly invited Sarah, while Chandin, ashamed of the boys’ barracks ways, invited no one.

  Over the course of a couple of years, Lavinia, confounding even her parents, sprang into an unusually tall and handsome young woman. Her sullenness turned into an attractive independence. At the mission school, interest in Lavinia, which for a while had waned, was renewed. The boys became even more absorbed by her presence. They competed against her remarkable strengths on the playing field and her brilliance in the classroom, both of which, coming from a girl, stunned them and made them more attracted than before.

  Chandin watched the other boys’ brash, competitive ways. A rash of jealousy darkened his days and made his nights sweaty and fitful. Dizziness would drench him whenever he saw her. He spoke with her less and less as his words seemed to jumble in her presence, and he would momentarily lose his ability to make such a simple decision as whether or not he was thirsty. For a while he stopped looking at her, fearing that the flame he could feel burning brightly in his cheeks and the odd and unspeakable sensation filling his trousers and the pleading in his eyes were all too visible. His feelings were all the more unbearable because he knew that he dare not express them.

  When Lavinia failed to notice him, his passion did not wane but was transformed. Embers of adoration and desire smoldered but what sprang up were flames of anger and self-loathing. He began to hate his looks, the colour of his skin, the texture of his hair, his accent, the barracks, his real parents and at times even the Reverend and his god. It began to matter to him that he and Lavinia were not in fact siblings.

  At school the flames of self-loathing were fanned. Lavinia remained uninterested in any of the boys despite their willingness to perform miracles for her, so the boys decided that a girl like her would fall in love only with a boy like herself. They would then jokingly mimic the Reverend’s gait and gestures. In the privacy of his bedroom Chandin watched himself in the long mirror on the door of the armoire, and saw what he most feared: a short and darkly brown Indian-Lantanacamaran boy with blue-black hair. Without question, he resembled the other boys in his class and from the barracks in the fields.

  He would change, he decided once and for all, what he had the power to change. Chandin took note of the Reverend’s rigid, austere posture, so unlike his own father’s propensity to bend or twist or fold his body whichever way the dictates of comfort tipped him. He practised sitting upright, with his back unswayed and his legs planted firmly on the ground or crossed severely at the knees. Other times he diligently studied and imitated the Reverend’s pensive stroking of his chin or tapping of his fingers against a book. When he walked, even though he had, by the age of fourteen, reached his full height and was quite short, he made strides as wide as the towering Reverend’s, and he clasped his hands, similarly, in a little entwined knot behind his back. His usual thoughtfulness turned weighty. He now brooded with an air of romantic sullenness. He stroked his chin habitually and revelled in the tragic knowledge that his love-sickness could bleed so freely within him and yet be invisible, or so he thought, to the family with whom he lived and to his schoolmates.

  It came, then, as a surprise when Reverend Thoroughly burst into Chandin’s room one evening to invite him to the rectory, an invitation that seemed more like an order. The rectory was hardly a five-minute walk away. The Reverend placed the palm of his hand on the back of Chandin’s fleshy neck and held it gently but firmly, as if ushering Chandin along. His hand was hot and its weight reassuring, intensifying an intimacy between them that Chandin welcomed. In the bond of that moment he considered confiding in Reverend Thoroughly his feelings toward Lavinia. He w
ould, he decided, take more time to consider his words, to avoid any ineloquence, and then within the week he would seek the Reverend’s counsel.

  Inside the rectory Reverend Thoroughly sat at his desk and began leafing through a ledger. Chandin stood about idly, as he imagined a son might stand and wait for his father. He went to the bookshelf and fingered the spines of a few volumes, feeling the little gullies the letters made. His mind strayed back to the living room. He walked over to the window and pressed his face against the glass, cupping his hands to block out the light’s reflection. He stared in the direction of fields that had long ago been sucked up into the dark night. He thought only of Lavinia and wished he was back in the living room with her and her mother. She had been lying on the woven straw rug reading. He wished he was brave enough to move onto the rug with her and ask what held her attention. After all, he reasoned, even though they were not really siblings, they were supposed to treat each other as such, and a sibling should be allowed to do that. At the same time he knew that once on the rug next to her he would shake like a mango leaf in a hurricane. As he pulled his face away from the window, he could see in its reflection that Reverend Thoroughly had swung his chair around to face him.

  “Chandin! I am talking to you!” Reverend Thoroughly had never called him so sharply before.

  “Oh, sorry sir. I was…I was just…”

  The Reverend softened. Lowering his voice he asked, “What were you thinking about?”

  “Nothing really. Everything. Nothing.” Chandin half-smiled, again considering taking the Reverend into his confidence.

  The Reverend remained serious. “I will speak as plainly as I might, Chandin. If I sound harsh, please forgive me. I have found from experience that to deal with delicate matters too delicately serves only to prolong and unnecessarily muddle discussion.”

  Chandin’s dark brown ears immediately flushed scarlet. He had never heard the Reverend speak so formally or firmly, except at the pulpit when in prayer. Chandin felt his chest shrink and his breathing become shallow. He crossed his legs against an urgent need to run off and find relief in one of Mrs. Thoroughly’s flower beds. He wondered if he were about to get a lecture about his school studies. Had he disappointed the Reverend and his wife? For a long moment Chandin had the uncomfortable feeling he was about to be informed that he was to be sent back, a failure, to the cane fields, to live forever in the midst of his parents’ shame and disappointment.

  “Sir?” The word he intended to say with dignity came out in a gravelly whisper. He stared with discomfort at the concrete floor.

  “Your brooding has not been unnoticed. Besides being as unpleasant as those sour cherries of which you boys seem so fond, or as a thunderstorm at a garden party, brooding will never charm a young lady.”

  Chandin’s eyes flicked up to look at the Reverend. His face burned. So his interests had not been invisible. Believing he heard an ounce of advice in the Reverend’s comments, he broke into a nervous grin. The Reverend stood up and walked to the bookshelf. With his back to Chandin, he continued.

  “Chandin, how long have you been sharing our home with us, with my wife and I?” Instinctively Chandin felt that what was about to come was not a smiling matter, but the muscles in his face twitched and his grin, a grin of embarrassment, grew wider.

  The Reverend spun around on the heel of his shining shoes and looked directly at him.

  “You are having a good time, are you? Answer me! How long, Chandin? Three years. Hasn’t it been three years, son?”

  Chandin tried in vain to wipe the painful grin from his face. He looked at the floor and nodded.

  “Do we not feel like a family to you?” There was disappointment in the Reverend’s voice.

  Tears collected in Chandin’s eyes. His smile had become rigid and aching.

  “I have, in good faith, taken on the role of your father. Mrs. Thoroughly has done a good job of being a mother to you, hasn’t she?”

  Chandin nodded, unable to give sound to his answers.

  “If I have performed as your father and my wife as your mother, what is the relationship of my daughter to you?”

  Chandin’s heart leapt up in fear. The room seemed to spin. He prayed that no tear would fall and embarrass him. Finally the smile dissipated.

  “I think you understand me well. Your attentions have not been unnoticed by my wife and me.”

  He paused as though waiting for a response. When none came he shook his head in exasperation and continued.

  “Look here. You are to be a brother to Lavinia and nothing more. A brother. She is your sister and you her brother. A brother protects and helps and supports and comforts his sister. There is no harm in loving your sister. Or your mother or your father. But that love must remain pure, as pure as God’s love is for his children.”

  The Reverend walked to his desk and slammed the polished mahogany top with his fist. “You cannot, you must not have desire for your sister Lavinia. That is surely against God’s will. Do you understand? Do you understand me, Chandin! Otherwise, otherwise…” The Reverend, seemingly spent, sat down in his chair. His tone softened as though he were enormously tired. “It is past your bedtime. I will stay here and pray to our Father in heaven. I suggest you go to your room and do the same. Go on, now. Please tell Mrs. Thoroughly not to worry, that I will stay here for a while longer.”

  Chandin did not immediately return to the house. He stayed outside holding his stomach, which had turned into a hard knot. It cramped unbearably and he was unable to stop an onslaught of hot tears. His world seemed suddenly to have shrunk. He looked up at the stars and mumbled to himself. “Imbecile! Why do I have to grin and smile whenever I am embarrassed. Imbecile! Grinning like an imbecile. She is not my sister. Why couldn’t I say that instead of grinning? She is not my sister. It’s not really wrong, is it? It can’t be.”

  It was some time before he noticed the fireflies flickering in the pitch-black night. One would glow for a few seconds, then shut out and disappear. Soon somewhere nearby a tiny light would burn again. His eyes still stinging from crying, he began to try to trace an insect’s flight by its flickering light. Absorbed in this manner an idea dawned on him, which he took as a response to his question. His love for Lavinia would never die. He would hide it away so well that no one would be able to trace it. Only he, in the privacy of his room after he had turned out the light, would know his love still glowed. And when the time was right he would take it out and it would burn as brightly as the cane fields afire, by which time Lavinia would be older and would declare her interest in him.

  So, in the years that followed, even past the time that he graduated from high school and moved into quarters at the seminary some miles away, the Reverend and his wife remained pleased that Chandin had responded to that night’s talk with remarkable maturity and earnestness.

  * * *

  —

  Chandin Ramchandin was the only person of Indian descent at the seminary. He was, in fact, the only non-white person there. He and seventeen other men lived together in the institution’s dormitories. The others had all come from the Shivering Northern Wetlands to study theology and get first-hand experience in a tropical climate among non-Christians. Most of the young men planned to remain in Lantanacamara, while some had intentions of joining the church’s other missions in India and Africa.

  Chandin seemed to be well liked by the taller, fair, heavily accented men, but he wondered constantly whether it was because he was the Reverend’s adopted son and Lavinia’s brother, or because he was of the race that it was their mission to Christianize. He scrutinized every aspect of these men. Most were his age yet seemed so much more worldly. He copied their manners and dressed like them in the white shirts and trousers the Wetlanders considered the height of tropical fashion. He would turn their accented phrases over and over in his mind until he was brave enough to air them: “I’d be very much obliged, Cha
ndin, my good fellow…” “…upon your honour!” “…how infinitely superior…”

  Often they all congregated in the Thoroughlys’ garden for tea or croquet, and Chandin watched them flutter around Lavinia. She flirted back good-naturedly but if she paid special attention to anyone, it was to him. He might have been honoured yet he knew all too well that it was their supposed sibling relationship that brought her to him with giggles and little whispered confidences about this or that seminarian. Pray as he might, nothing indicated that she might ever be drawn to him or expect one day to share his life. He feared that without some firm action on his part, someone else with more aplomb would step in and steal her away. He had proven himself in school and in the seminary. They were now both adults. And furthermore, they were not siblings, he shouted in the silent space of his own head. He decided he would speak with Lavinia at the first opportunity.

  The opportunity came quite unexpectedly. A cricket match for the seminarians had been arranged by the Thoroughlys and two missionary families from other parts of the island. It was to be a fun-filled day to celebrate the end of the dry season, which coincided with the coming holidays. Lavinia, who had just graduated from high school, was there, as was Sarah. Sarah was the only other non-Wetlander besides Chandin. Each man, dressed in brilliant cricket whites, seemed to be batting, bowling and fielding for the two young women.

  Chandin batted long and hard. After each stroke he would adjust his V-neck sweater and glance proudly toward Lavinia. At the start of his batting she cheered him on, calling out, “Bravo! Bravo!” Her public acknowledgement all but dizzied him. When the game broke for lunch, Chandin was still not out. Reverend Thoroughly, holding a plate of cheese sandwiches, called him aside.

  “Chandin, what splendid batsmanship, my boy! Inspired, simply inspired!”

  Chandin, sweating in the heat yet still wearing his cricket sweater, blushed and mumbled thank-you. He was aware of being spoken to by the Reverend as though he were a third person standing off to the side observing the two of them.