The Worlds Within Her

by Neil Bissoondath

  I listened, I agreed, I helped her move on. I believed, you see, that the right one would come along in his own good time. That the virtues would remain virtues and Penny would find happiness.

  Then one day, it happened.

  She and I were walking in the yard after lunch, watching the clouds build up on the horizon, when she suddenly blurted out that she had met a man.

  23

  EVEN IN THE great heat of early afternoon, the rocks are cool to the touch, the white veins as if embossed on the grey stone.

  They sit beside each other, Cyril facing the sea, Yasmin facing the coast along which they have driven. The boulders closer to the water, she sees, are cracked and worn, littered with pebbles torn from themselves.

  Cyril says, “He probably caused you a lot o’ tears over the years, eh?”

  Yasmin fills her mouth with a bite of the roti. In this way she is better able to treat his question as rhetorical. The truth, she knows, would hurt him: She has no memory of ever having cried for, or because of, her father.

  “Well, never mind,” Cyril continues. “Ram never worried much about causing anybody tears. He had a ferocious temper when he was young, you know. Is only when he got old enough to realize his tantrums weren’t impressing anybody that he learn how to control it — and to turn it to his advantage. He din’t lose his temper too often when he grew up, but it was there and he let it explode when he thought it would help. Kind o’ like a volcano with a control button, nuh.”

  Behind him, a young man steps gingerly across the rocks to the edge, where he sits, legs dangling above the gently-lapping water.

  Cyril says, “The roti not too hot?”

  Yasmin shakes her head. “Told you.”

  The young man she estimates to be in his early twenties. He is tall and thin, and views the world through a continuous squint. The tail of his shirt is untucked, the long sleeves rolled past the elbow; the hem of his trousers is slightly flared, and he is barefoot. He sits there on the boulder as if in contemplation, bony shoulders hunched towards the sea.

  “Although, knowing Ram the way I did,” Cyril continues, “I pretty sure things would’ve been different with you.”

  Yasmin resists the temptation to ask why this should have been so. She knows Cyril’s message is of intention; it is meant to be comforting — but intention projected into a future that never came to be is to her futile, a feather too loosely anchored to provide lift. She no longer allows herself to dream of the shape her daughter’s life might have acquired.

  “I remember once he used you to weed out a sycophant. Now, he din’t mind sycophants, but the mindless ones he couldn’ stomach. He knew this fella’d just had a baby, so he showed you to him and said, ‘You ever see a prettier baby than this one? I bet even yours not as pretty.’ And the fella said, ‘I have to admit, Mr. Ramessar, your baby prettier than mine.’ That was the end o’ him.”

  “Glad to know I was useful,” Yasmin says, tearing an end of the wax paper back from the bread.

  “With you he’d’ve been different,” Cyril repeats.

  Yasmin sees that Cyril has not taken his story beyond its details — to him it is just a tale to tell, one of her father’s quirks — and a sadness comes to her.

  But Cyril does not notice. “You were his daughter,” he says. “His ‘daughts.’ The apple of his eye. I can’t say he spent hours playing with you, he din’t have time for that kind o’ thing. But he gave you a special attention. If you were around, he always knew where you were and what you were doing. Even if he had a meeting —”

  “I distracted him?” And even though she does not intend it to be so, the question emerges with a bitter edge.

  The young man behind Cyril reaches absent-mindedly for a pebble, tosses it into the sea. Then another and another. He is, Yasmin thinks, like a man fondling worry beads, the action automatic, divorced from his consciousness.

  “Yes. In a good way. We used to have a swing hanging from a mango tree. One day, you were out there with Amie, I think, swinging away —”

  White on blue up and down spinning around and around and around faster and faster

  White on blue glimpses of green white on blue up and down faster and faster white white white

  “— and somehow you slip off the seat —”

  Hold on tight!

  Faster and faster green white blue

  Don’t let go! Don’t —

  “— and practically flew through the air —”

  A cascade of green brown blue white

  Umpg!

  Green. And brown. And white on blue

  “— and landed hard on your head. I think it almost knock you out.”

  And darkness crowding in at the edges

  A gathering up in hands

  The shadow of a face against the blue

  “Man, Ram was out there in a flash making sure you were all right. I never seen him so scared. He start shouting at Amie as if … I mean, I was afraid he was going to hit her.”

  “Hit her?” But her attention is divided, engaged still in wrapping the context newly revealed around images that have drifted forever in her mind.

  “In a manner o’ speaking. He wasn’ that type o’ fella. Truth is, Ram wasn’ easy on the people he loved, but you wouldn’ believe how far he was ready to go for them.”

  24

  HIS NAME WAS Zebulon Crooks and he was what used to be known as a preacher-man. He travelled around the island holding rowdy revival meetings in a canvas tent he erected on local sports fields. In the remoter areas, entire villages would flock to him. He was known to offer a good show. A heady sermon, rousing music and quantities of his special holy water — tap water, it was rumoured, leavened with cheap whisky — to quench the thirst.

  In town, however, his appeal was less impressive. There were other entertainments, you see — rum shops, cinemas — and this forced him to go out into the streets in search of an audience. That was how Penny met him. She was in town to do some shopping and, hurrying along to catch a taxi back home, she suddenly found her way blocked by this tall, handsome man holding a leaflet out to her. She took it, and he engaged her in conversation all the way to the taxi stand.

  By the time she told me about Zebulon that sultry afternoon, they had seen each other twice, each time taking tea at a café in town. Penny was clearly quite taken with him and, from her account, he with her.

  Attractive? The word does him no justice, my dear, none at all.

  Zebulon was a striking man, with eyes that seemed afire one moment, gentle the next, and lips that gave the impression of a constant struggle to restrain a smile. For a man selling God, there was something unmistakably devilish about him. Add to this his great and unfeigned charm, and it was no wonder that Penny was infatuated with him.

  Penny’s problem was what to do next —

  No, no, his beliefs were hardly an impediment. Remember that my husband’s family had adopted Christianity, and that religion was for us mostly a flag of convenience. Zebulon’s fervour and its peculiar manifestation might have been somewhat — shall we say, embarrassing? — but, still, he was not unsuccessful at what he did and, as Penny pointed out, his religious act bore some resemblance to my husband’s political one.

  No, my dear, the problem was far more intractable than that. The problem, you see — as I knew immediately it would be, as Penny knew — was Zebulon’s race. Neither his charm nor his looks nor his success could save him from being black.

  A war council of family and hangers-on was called. Penny and I were not invited. I was not surprised. Penny, furious, stamped off and locked herself in her bedroom.

  After some time, my husband emerged and asked to speak to Penny alone.

  Penny, beside me on the sofa, reached for my hand and grasped it tight.

  My husband sat on the other side and took her free hand. And he spoke in a voice, and said things that made me immensely proud of him, all the while detesting him for the position he was putting his sister in.
What he said was: Penny — or he may have said My dear Penny, I don’t remember — you know that I am not fond of our African compatriots, and I will not insult you by pretending that I am not personally aggrieved by the feelings you have developed for this man. But let me make one thing clear: My feelings are immaterial. If you decide, on reflection, that you wish to marry this Zebulon Crooks, I will throw you the biggest, fanciest, splashiest wedding this island has ever seen. And I would extend a hand of welcome — and he squeezed her palm with such vigour she winced — a hand of welcome to your husband as I would to any other brother-in-law. I would wish you both all the happiness of this world. Then he paused, shutting his eyes as if from an excess of emotion. But, Penny, he continued, there is something else for you to consider. Understand as you go rightfully after your happiness that your marriage to this man would effectively end any hope I have of political success. You know my constituency, Penny, you know the loyalties on which my support is based. Your marriage to a black man would make me a laughingstock.

  That night, without seeking counsel, not even mine, Penny decided that she would no longer see Zebulon Crooks. She quietly announced the news the following morning at breakfast. She was composed and clear-eyed — she had slept well — and ended by saying that her decision was final and she did not wish to speak of it ever again, nor to defend, justify or explain it. Her gaze elicited a silent promise from each of us.

  I kept that promise, even though I firmly believe to this day that Zebulon Crooks would have made Penny a warm and caring husband. I believe — perhaps I wish to believe — that he was Penny’s one true chance for happiness.

  The tragedy is that Penny, too, believed this and has lived her life in consequence.

  25

  YASMIN’S EYES FOLLOW the arc of the young man’s pebbles as they tumble through the air in a slow spin.

  Cyril says, “We don’ get too many tourists up here in this part o’ the island. They go to the other beaches, down south, nuh. That means we have to groom those beaches. But we don’ need to do that here, we not trying to impress anybody. Besides, all this heat and humidity don’t exactly encourage movement, if you see what I mean. Why bother picking up the garbage when there just going to be more of it next Sunday?

  “You know, Yasmin, it have people who trying to take all those things my generation saw as vices and turn them into virtues. We don’ speak the Queen’s English here — but is the Queen’s English we use when we write. Except now, it have people who want us to write the way we speak. Is not broken English, they say. Is our English, we must take pride. Just like it have other people who say, all this garbage remain here not because of laziness but because a kind of indolence is part o’ the island lifestyle.

  “Now, you and I know that indolence is just a nice word for laziness, but we trying hard not to be too judgmental down here, at least not with ourselves. We go with the flow, we roll with the punches.

  “But Ram wasn’ like that. He believed in doing things, not just pretending. That was the problem, you see. In the years leading up to independence — a happy, optimistic time — he thought everything was possible for us. Even when he said, Let’s do X, and people did Y, he didn’t want to give up.

  “But everything change when he came back from England. That first evening, he said to me, I was a damn fool, Cyril. And before you could blink twice, he reinvent himself. He became less talkative, but sharper, brisker, more calculating. Nobody ever knew what he was thinking. So he became more difficult and lonelier, too. Sometimes he would just humiliate people for no reason — something he’d never’ve done before. He had a sense of shame, you see. But that sense became simple knowledge, so that he was able to overcome it. He forced it not to be a burden.

  “He could’ve wash his hands o’ the whole thing and just walked away, you know. Your life would’ve been very different. But he couldn’ do that, wasn’ even tempted. He was too hurt, too bitter. And for somebody like Ram, vengeance was the best antidote. His dream, my dear Yasmin, became his weapon.

  “There were darker days personally, but politically, I knew that a kind of curtain had come down. Not even Ram believed any more. And so enemies began to multiply.”

  Yasmin feels lost in the profusion of possibilities, feels dazzled by the consequences of choices made and not made. She raises her face to the warm breeze riffling the surface of the water, to the sunshine sparking electricity from its immensity of ridges.

  Cyril asks if she is thirsty, and offers a soft drink. He gets to his feet, dusts the seat of his pants and totters off across the boulders back to the parlour.

  The young man tosses another pebble.

  Yasmin leans forward, following the pebble through the air. She sees it land on the water with no splash; sees it go under with no ripple.

  The young man, sensing her movement, turns towards her, his face — fine-feature, skin tightened on the skull — remaining mask-like.

  She smiles, and when his mask remains indifferent she sees that, beneath the hooded lids, his eyes are dense, his pupils milky. The smile freezes on her lips — and a shudder arrests itself only at the sound of Cyril calling to her, asking whether she wants a strawberry soft drink or banana.

  26

  SHE SAT FOR a long time, watching the silhouette of Jim’s profile against the shadows.

  In the months since the company’s review, the empty lot on the edge of the city, destined to be filled by a design other than his, had come to haunt him. She sensed that with his urgency depleted, he would be left with only dread.

  Finally, she said, “Where are you, Jim?”

  His profile twitched in irritation. “I’m right here.” He slapped the arm of the chair, as if the mere physicality of the act would underscore his reply, lend it sufficiency. Anubis, curled at his feet, looked up, looked around: eyes glowing malevolent in the dark.

  “Yes. But I’ve been sitting here alone. Where were you?”

  His face shifted towards her, but she sensed he was looking with unseeing eyes: unwilling — or perhaps unable, she could not tell — to emerge from a world to which he afforded her no access. A world, she suspected, in which a great deal more had been shattered than a dream of steel and glass and fields of light.

  She said, “Are you searching for the light, Jim?”

  “No. No. That arrogance is gone. I’m just looking for a way to carry on, I guess.”

  “But you’re working. You are carrying on.”

  He leaned forward in the chair, a burdened silhouette. “You don’t understand, Yas —”

  “How can I? You sit there all wrapped up in yourself, saying nothing.”

  He remained a while in silence before beginning, tentatively, to speak. He spoke, then, of the long years of long days, the labour of countless evenings, of having endured the effort comforted by a sense of decades yet to come. But he felt now that he had lived the greater part of his life, that the decades had diminished, that the chance to create the building of his dreams had come and gone, and he was left with nothing beyond warehouses and strip malls to fill the years to come.

  “It’s like when I found out what the payroll department was. Only it’s not my dad, this time it’s me. Maybe that’s all I’m suited for. Payroll, not the locomotive.”

  “If you really believe that, Jim, then hurry up and get used to it.”

  “Get used to it? I’m not talking about a few more grey hairs here, Yas —”

  “You think I don’t know that? I am on your side, you know. So you don’t drive the locomotive. So what? You do good work, everybody knows that. Perseverance is an underrated quality, Jim. I wouldn’t be here now if my mom hadn’t persevered after my dad died. And as for your dad —”

  “What about him?”

  “Maybe he wanted to be a train engineer, you ever thought of that? But he got a good, boring job and he stuck with it because he had to. There’s something admirable in that, isn’t there?”

  After a moment he said, “You don’t believe
that for a moment.”

  “And you don’t want to. Isn’t that what it all comes down to, Jim? What we want to believe?”

  He said nothing for a long while, the silence deepening between them.

  Finally he straightened up, the chair sighing. “This belief of yours in redemption, Yas. Are you being optimistic? Or just delusional?”

  She stiffened. “I fell in love with you, I married you. So which of your two words should I pick?”

  27

  CYRIL, STEERING WITH his left hand, says, “Do you still believe in Santa Claus?” His right elbow is propped on the sill of his open window, hand gripping his soft drink — a clear yellow liquid, crystalline and pretty in the sunshine.

  “Santa Claus?” Her soft drink, which is sweet, red, and as reminiscent of strawberry as grape juice is of wine, has left her mouth sticky, her thirst unslaked. She holds the bottle, half-filled and warm, on her lap.

  “Ram and Shakti’s first big fight, believe it or not. You must’ve been two or three. She wanted to teach you about Santa Claus. Magic. The mystery in life. He was dead set against it. He thought that Santa was bad for the morale. Taught things like getting something for nothing and encouraged chil’ren to believe in fairy tales. Besides, Hindus don’ believe in Christmas —”

  “She won, eh?”

  “Natch. After all, even we had Santa Claus — Father Christmas, nuh — when we were growing up. One orange, one apple and a box o’ soda biscuits. Ram couldn’ say much when I remind him o’ that.”