Cereus Blooms at Night

by Shani Mootoo

  Chandin’s relationship with Reverend and Mrs. Thoroughly slowly changed. His body began to accede to its inherited nature. A faint echo of his father’s curvature developed, all the more evident as he shed Wetlandish fashion and fell into dressing like an overseer. He gradually extricated himself from the Thoroughly family, a move the Thoroughlys did not comment on but seemed to respect and perhaps even welcome. In public, though, they displayed more warmth for Chandin, his wife and two children, Pohpoh and Asha, than they did for the other Indian converts, all of whom they treated as their children.

  When Chandin was not at the rectory studying or translating a sermon, or at Reverend Thoroughly’s house discussing church business, he could be found in his own home, which he bought with a loan from the seminary. Years before he had dreamed of a stone and mortar house with special rooms for this and that—a library, a pantry, a guest room—like the Thoroughlys’, but Chandin bought land cheaply in an underdeveloped section of Paradise called Hill Side, and hired two men to clear all but one tree from its stand of mudras. Using the hardy wood, he contracted them to build a two-storey house typical of modest dwellings in the area. The house stood atop mudra stilts. On the top floor was a drawing room, an ample kitchen and two bedrooms, the smaller shared by the two children and the larger by the adults. Porches ran on the front and back sides of the upper storey, each with a stairway leading to the ground. Between the bedrooms was a doorway leading down an enclosed stairway, the only access to a storage space that occupied a quarter of the downstairs, commonly known as the sewing room, whether or not it was used as such. The other three-quarters was open air. At home Chandin, who took no interest in the house itself, was invariably to be found lying on his side in the hammock, rocking on the back porch, reading until the sun went down and blackness fell.

  The families of other, younger clergymen, who were rapidly spreading across the country, took regular excursions—day-long retreats, they called them—to the seaside or parks in the city for communion with God’s nature. Chandin’s family seldom made such trips. Their main outing was to the church on Sunday mornings. Chandin had lost any verve he had in the days when the chance of seeing Lavinia was his sole motivation for living.

  Then one day without warning, even to her parents, she returned. Everything changed overnight. Chandin had not seen her, merely heard of her arrival, yet he clearly brightened. His children were surprised and pleased when he pointed out butterflies and flowering weeds, and purple and mandarin in the sunset sky. His colleagues noticed that he was now quick to enjoy others’ wit and humour.

  Still, he was shy to visit the Thoroughlys’ house. Sarah returned home one afternoon to say that she had gone to pay her respects to Lavinia and that Lavinia was to visit them within the week. Chandin was like an excited child. He returned home the next day with a modest chandelier, and paid a man to install it in the drawing room. He paid another to put two coats of whitewash on his weathered mudra house. He bought a small imported rug for the living room. Out came his white shirts and trousers. He had Sarah bleach, starch and press them. He bought himself an expensive straw hat with a narrow velvet band, imported from the Shivering Northern Wetlands and purported by the retailer to be the season’s top Wetlandish fashion statement. He began to dress impeccably, to speak with the accent and strut with the airs of the Wetlanders he once again seemed to so admire.

  Chandin woke unusually early the day Lavinia was expected. He complained a little to Sarah about feeling unfit and lethargic, and decided to take a walk up Hill Side. He returned after the children had awakened, just as Sarah finished preparing breakfast. He was in great spirits. He complimented his wife on the meal and, after eating, he cleared off the table and, to Sarah’s surprise, passed the broom across the drawing room and kitchen floors. He then swept the front and back porches and stairs. Inside he arranged and straightened and rearranged the furniture. He went out on the front porch and re-entered the house, imagining what a visitor would see on first entering. He stood on the porch again, and looked in and admired his chandelier.

  Lunch time passed and Lavinia had not arrived. Trying not to show his nervousness that she might not come, Chandin lay in the hammock on the back porch and rocked. He thought about his wife and felt strangely distant from her, unrelated to her, as if a thick veil had dropped between them. His children’s skin seemed suddenly too dark and their manner of talking crude. He wanted to remove himself from his wife and his children but knew it was impossible.

  Lavinia arrived around tea time. She seemed genuinely happy to see Chandin. She showed him the presents she had brought for his children, and though he appreciated the gesture, it unsettled him: she seemed too willing to acknowledge his married state. He took two kitchen chairs out on the front porch and invited her to sit with him, while he had Sarah make a pot of tea. When Lavinia motioned to help, he quickly said, “She has learned to make a good pot. Let her do it and you come sit with me. Tell me everything that has happened since we last saw each other.” He put his arm on her shoulder to guide her to the porch. He patted her shoulder in large, visible gestures, hoping to come across as brotherly.

  When Pohpoh and Asha, playing out in the backyard, realized that the much anticipated Aunt Lavinia had arrived, they pelted up the back stairs. Hearing their excited entrance, Lavinia rushed toward them and, in the midst of the commotion, tea ended up being served in the kitchen, much to Chandin’s disappointment. When Lavinia gave them the presents—books of Wetlandish nursery rhymes and folk tales—they asked her to read aloud right there and then, and a bond instantly formed.

  Lavinia was so taken with the children that Chandin, unable to chat quietly alone with her, felt she had once again dismissed him. He watched peevishly from the back verandah as she was willingly led on a tour of the yard by the eager children. Sarah ambled alongside, grinning at their excitement. By the time the visit ended, Chandin could already feel the familiar sting of Lavinia’s unattainability.

  Much to his relief, Lavinia and Sarah rekindled their friendship, and Lavinia visited often. The hours between visits tended to be filled with tension in the Ramchandin household. Asha or Pohpoh, unable to stand the waiting, would sometimes ask for Lavinia to come along on excursions to the beach or river. Pohpoh noticed on these occasions that both her parents would relax. Soon Chandin became bolder, initiating outings he knew well would be of interest to the adventurous Lavinia. She never turned an offer down. When Sarah began to extend her own invitations, Chandin became sullen.

  “She and I knew each other long before I married you. I wanted to marry her before I really knew you. I am not in the least comfortable that she and you are so close,” Pohpoh heard her father shout one night.

  “But you and she grow up like sister and brother. You couldn’t marry she.”

  “This is utterly ridiculous. You know very well that she is not my sister. And another thing, is this how you speak with Lavinia?”

  “What you mean?”

  “Why don’t you speak as you were taught in school? It is appalling that the educated wife of a man like myself refuses to exercise her knowledge. It just doesn’t look good. What on earth would Lavinia herself think?”

  “If you still so concerned with she, why didn’t you wait until she returned from abroad to marry? You and I married now, boy. Ask her if she still interested in you. Ask her. Besides she never correcting how I speak. Is only you who always correcting me.”

  On Saturdays, when Chandin spent the day with Reverend Thoroughly going over school and church business, Lavinia would head over in her buggy to the Ramchandin house. Sometimes she arrived with her long golden hair in knots and tangles whipped up in the windy ride, her basket filled with candies and sweet-smelling potpourris from her grandmothers in the Shivering Northern Wetlands. Other times she came with her hair piled in an untidy clump on top of her head, strands dangling in her smiling face, carrying the gramophone she had brought from the Wet
lands. She would play the little disks all day, and the children would dance and prance and laugh until they were sputtering with glee in the drawing room.

  Lavinia loved the freedom and wildness in Sarah’s garden, so unlike her mother’s well-ordered, colour-coordinated beds. She brought clippings and whole plants ripped from Mrs. Thoroughly’s garden, the fresh, rich dirt still under her fingernails. She brought flame ixoras for Sarah, and one memorable day she arrived with cactus plants, one each for Pohpoh and Asha. Cereus, she called them, pronounced like the bright, fuzzy star, a climbing succulent whose leaves and trunk were ragged and unsightly until they bloomed.

  “Only once a year,” she said. “The flowers will offer their exquisite elegance for one short, precious night.” She took them out into the yard and made a production of choosing the best planting spot. In the roots of one of the cacti was entwined a large, bulbous periwinkle snail in a gold and buff shell. Pohpoh insisted she must have the shell for an ornament. Aunt Lavinia held her back from prying the live snail from its shell, urging her to wait until it died and shed its housing naturally.

  “Killing snails amounts to courting bad luck, sweetheart,” she said, narrowing her eyes and shaking her head. “But let me tell you a little secret. Protect a living snail and when it dies, it doesn’t forget. Snails, like most things in nature, have long memories. A snail’s soul, which is invisible, mind you, will come back after it has died, looking for its old home. It will have grown bigger and stronger, and will hover around its old stomping grounds, guarding and protecting you in return—as long as you protected it first! Just wait until you find some naturally emptied shells, honey. And this is what you do: display them nicely so they can be spotted by the floating souls of the snails that once occupied them. You press them into the earth—around a bed of plants or just make pretty patterns—and you, my sweet Pohpoh, and your Mama and Asha, and everyone whom you love will be ensured the fullest protection of the benevolent forces in the universe.”

  Aunt Lavinia winked at her. Pohpoh giggled at the whole idea and at Lavinia’s telling. Sarah smiled and shook her head, for she too enjoyed the many tales that Lavinia seemed able to spin in an instant.

  “Just you wait,” Aunt Lavinia, enjoying the encouragement, continued, “just be patient. You will have your collection. But I’ll tell you another thing: recently emptied snail shells can have the most unpleasant, most nauseating smell—especially a bunch of them. You must make sure to boil all empty shells before you can keep them as ornaments. Boil them in plenty of water, for a long time, until the water has almost evaporated from the pot. And another thing: salt, lots of salt in the water is a must…”

  During the week Sarah and Lavinia would make trips in the buggy to other towns or the market. Pohpoh and Asha enjoyed these outings. They stopped to play on the swings in El Dorado Park and for things to eat, and Aunt Lavinia was sure to shower them with pendants and charms for their hair. Lavinia commanded the buggy herself. Unknown to Chandin, she taught Sarah to handle it too, but Sarah knew better than to be seen taking the reins until she was past their village and deep into the cane fields, out of sight of the other villagers. Chandin admired things in Lavinia that he would have been ashamed to have his wife do. In the fields between towns Sarah would drive until Aunt Lavinia shouted out to stop. Aunt Lavinia would stand on the seat of the buggy or hop off onto the unpaved country trails, uncaring that the ground underfoot might be muddy or treacherous, and she would pull out her Eastman Brownie camera and click away. Before they reached the town again, Lavinia would once again take the reins.

  Aunt Lavinia continued to visit but the Saturday trips to town and market gradually came to an end. It seemed to the children that their Mama and Aunt Lavinia were wanting to conduct all their visits indoors, or only as far outdoors as the backyard. There used to be a photograph of Mama leaning back against the kitchen sink, facing the camera. Perhaps it was only the photograph that caused Pohpoh to later imagine that Aunt Lavinia had also stood there with Mama, because she had an indelible impression of them both leaning on the narrow sink basin, their sides pressed tightly together. The image stayed in Pohpoh’s mind, fortified with a memory of Mama trying to send her and Asha out to play, and of Pohpoh feeling something was being concealed. She had a vague memory of leaving the kitchen, noisily descending the back stairs, and then surprising them by returning quietly for candy. She crept upstairs and stood outside the kitchen listening. It frustrated her that Mama and Aunt Lavinia seldom spoke any more except in soft, abbreviated sentences. They seemed to communicate more with their eyes, and with long looks.

  Pohpoh’s heart leapt when she saw the tips of Aunt Lavinia’s fingers grasping Mama’s waist. She understood something in that instant but save for a flash of an image of her father’s face in her mind, she had no words to describe what she suddenly realized was their secret. She looked again. She tried not to let her eyes rest too long on Aunt Lavinia’s fingers. Aunt Lavinia removed her hand and walked over to Pohpoh. Pohpoh stood frozen, sensing she had been caught and fearing the consequences. Aunt Lavinia squatted in front of her and took Pohpoh’s face in her hands. Pohpoh inhaled lavender and remembered the little packages of potpourri.

  Lavinia spoke gently to her. “Pohpoh, your mama is my very best friend. You have a very special mama. And you and Asha are very, very special. You’re the best little children I have ever known. I wish you were my own children. I love the three of you very much.” Pohpoh was unable to respond. But from that day on, she spent Aunt Lavinia’s visits listening anxiously for her father. Whenever Mama and Aunt Lavinia did not seem to hear him return she would bound noisily up the stairs or barge in on them. At first Aunt Lavinia did not leave until Chandin returned home and she had spent some token minutes with him. But when Chandin started complaining to Sarah that Lavinia was losing interest in him even as her brother, she began leaving before he was due.

  Chandin passed the school holidays travelling throughout the island with Reverend Thoroughly, dressed in white shirt, trousers and hat—like the minister—and spreading the Gospel and converting field labourers to Christianity. Aunt Lavinia and Sarah spent most of those days in the sewing room downstairs. They no longer tried to conceal their closeness from Pohpoh and Asha. The girls now woke early, anxious to see Aunt Lavinia, who still played games with them, chased them around the yard, and braided flowers, seeds and feathers into their hair. She made them garlands that tinkled with the shells of dead snails that she boiled first to dull the fetidness. After a night’s rain, when the clay soil was well watered, Aunt Lavinia would gather a mound of the slippery earth, carry it to a bench next to the sewing room and teach them to mould baskets the size of her palm, and fill the baskets with clay eggs.

  Even with her back to them, Pohpoh was aware of Aunt Lavinia and Mama down by the mudra tree whispering and giggling to each other, or Aunt Lavinia and Mama down in the sewing room, Aunt Lavinia and Mama sitting on the sofa bed down there, Mama leaning into Aunt Lavinia’s arms, or Aunt Lavinia braiding Mama’s hair or standing behind Mama with her hands wrapped protectively around Mama’s waist. Pohpoh turned her head away when she saw them facing each other once, and she felt them come together and hug. She imagined them kissing. She imagined Papa finding them kissing.

  One day during the holidays Papa hired a hansom and driver to take the family and Aunt Lavinia to the beach. Aunt Lavinia and Mama sat on one side of the carriage and Papa, Pohpoh and Asha sat on the opposite side. Pohpoh detected an unusual hardness in Papa’s face and she lurched across, placing herself between Mama and Lavinia. She leaned against Aunt Lavinia, took her hands into her own and occupied them in one game after another. Asha slept sprawled on the vacated seat. Mama looked in silence at the fields and houses scattered in the countryside. As the moments ticked by Pohpoh was conscious of her father staring at her mother as if he were seeing her for the first time.

  Mama and Aunt Lavinia did not go into the water. They wa
lked the beach while Papa sat in the surf with Pohpoh clinging to his back, trying unsuccessfully to distract him. Asha sat on his outstretched knees. His body washed from side to side with the push and pull of each wave, yet he seemed always to keep Mama and Aunt Lavinia in sight. His children jabbered incessantly, but he seemed to hardly hear what they were saying.

  After the children’s swim, Aunt Lavinia took out her camera. She took a picture of Mama and Papa and then several of Pohpoh with Mama, Asha with Mama, Mama alone, Mama with both children. Pohpoh asked to be allowed to take one of Mama, Papa and Aunt Lavinia together by the water’s edge. Papa got an idea from Pohpoh, grabbed the camera with playful force from Lavinia and told Pohpoh and Asha to stand aside. He watched through the lens. In the midst of their laughter and frivolity, he did not fail to see Lavinia place herself behind Mama, and he saw Mama press herself against Lavinia. Through the lens he watched carefully and saw Lavinia’s hands rest tenderly on Mama’s waist. He saw it all only because, that day, he intended to. And Pohpoh watched him as he did.

  On the ride home, no one spoke. Even though the salt water, slapping waves, tangy sea breeze and play had made Pohpoh sleepy, she forced herself to stay awake for the entire trip. Had it not been for the wheels of the buggy crunching the stone and dried earth beneath, and the horses’ hooves clopping along steadily, the speechlessness would have been unbearably loud.

  That night, after the lights were put out, Pohpoh lay in her bed staring at the pomerac tree outside her open window. She listened hard but all that came from her parents’ room were quiet, indistinguishable exchanges. Abruptly, there was silence.

  Next morning she awakened with a start, angry at herself for having fallen asleep. She was terrified that she might have missed the outcome of her father’s discovery, but he had already headed out to the school house. The only sign that something might have transpired was that Mama blinked her eyes rapidly until Aunt Lavinia arrived. She sent the children out of the house, and they too spoke in clipped, hushed voices. Pohpoh feigned sullenness so that Asha would prefer not to play with her, then she sat on the back stairs, pretending to scratch at the wood with a fingernail while straining her ears. Aunt Lavinia as usual spoke far more audibly than Mama. Pohpoh was unable to catch the full conversation but the snippets that floated down were enough for her to understand.