The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q

by Sharon Maas

  In fact, the only people Rika really felt appreciated her were children: not only the orphans at St Ann’s, but her various young cousins. She often helped Granny care for them; she read to the older ones and took them for walks to the Sea Wall, and she cuddled the babies. Babies did not judge you. They did not care if you were not beautiful, or not Top of the Class, or if you would grow up to be a Failure. They felt who you really were. They tuned into your heart, and all you had to do was give them your attention.

  Dogs were like that, too. The family dog was Rabbit, about a year older than Rika herself, so they had grown up together. Rabbit, like most dogs in the country, was a mongrel: an affectionate, gentle creature, who wasn’t much use as a guard dog. Rika would bring Rabbit into the house and into her room, cuddle her, talk to her of all the things nobody else wanted to hear. In a way, Rabbit was her very best friend.

  * * *

  Granny agreed to take the children over to meet their maternal grandparents, and so, the following Saturday, after a flurry of telephone calls and much grumbling from Ol’ Meanie, the four of them traipsed over in Granny’s wake.

  The house in Waterloo Street was big by Georgetown standards, though not nearly as big as the Quint house. It was also well-proportioned and agreeably balanced, unlike their own house, and freshly painted, gleaming white, again unlike their own. Like most Georgetown houses of the area it stood on a huge plot, with a flower garden at the front and a backyard like a small estate at the back, with fruit trees and a vegetable patch. Unlike the Quint backyard, which had always been allowed to run wild, a gardener only coming in occasionally to rid it of the worst excesses, this one seemed well tended.

  ‘This is where your mother grew up,’ Granny said, as she let them in the garden gate. That was so strange. They knew nothing of Ol’ Meanie’s own childhood. And they had forgotten to ask, as children do.

  The house had an enclosed staircase to the first floor, and next to the front door, a wooden bench. An East Indian youth in a Queen’s College uniform sat on it, reading a book. He glanced up as they gathered at the door and Granny Winnie rang the bell, and when he met her eye Rika smiled, to show him that she, too, liked reading. He returned the smile, then turned back to his book.

  The door opened and they entered. ‘Hello, Basmati, how are you?’ Granny said to the plump woman who stood aside to let them pass.

  ‘Fine, mistress, fine! How you doin’? How Mistress Dorothea?’

  ‘We’re all very well, thank you. Is that your son out there? Quite a young man now!’

  Basmati frowned, and peeped out the door. When she saw the schoolboy she rushed out, crying, ‘Rajan! Is what you doin’, reading again! I thought I told you to sweep the yard?’

  Basmati popped her head back in the door. ‘Just go on up, Master and Mistress waiting for you in the drawing-room. I coming up in a minute. This boy too hard-ears.’

  Basmati was every bit as good as Ol’ Meanie at long-drawn-out reprimands; the drone of her nagging followed them all the way up the stairs. Rika felt a warm closeness with Rajan. She well understood the draw of a book over the mundane tasks of daily life.

  * * *

  They made their way to the drawing room, led by Granny. Master and Mistress were indeed waiting, Master reclined on a Morris chair that had seen better days, and Mistress sat stiff-backed on an equally stiff-backed wooden chair. Rika couldn’t help staring. Her grandparents!

  She’d had no idea what they would look like, (apart, of course, from the crazed image of Mad Lady she had created) and so was most surprised to find that her grandfather was white – though tanned in the tough, leathery way in which white people grew dark in the tropics – and her grandmother was black, her mahogany-coloured skin hanging like a tired old wrinkled hide on the bones of her face. She seemed so much older than Granny, though of the same generation.

  What would it be like, meeting her grandparents for the first time? Rika had lain awake half the night painting her own scenario. They would both come rushing forward, weeping with emotion, and gather all four grandchildren in their arms, and everyone would talk at once, and cry at once. After all, they had wanted this meeting, and she knew for a fact that her grandmother watched her secretly. So of course that’s how it would be.

  But it wasn’t. They simply sat there, stiff and silent, not a flicker of feeling on their faces. Rika stopped in her tracks, not knowing what to do. Only Marion knew; Marion, in whom there was not a selfish bone. Marion, who had no subterfuge, who wore no mask. It was Marion who rushed forward, first to her grandmother, with a cry like the mewing of a cat, and threw her arms around the woman. Slow, stiff arms rose to embrace her, and now the ice had been broken the man began to push against the armrests of his chair in the vain effort to stand up, and so Marion rushed to him too and, her arms around his thin frail body, pulled him to his feet.

  ‘Grandad! Grandad!’ she cried, ‘I’m so happy to meet you! I’m Marion, and look, this is Rika, and Norbert and Neville!’

  Rika couldn’t move. She was overcome with a sudden shyness; she wished then she could be more like Marion, outgoing and warm and wearing her heart on her sleeve, but she wasn’t and never would be. It was only when she saw a tear trickling down the old man’s face that she, too, took a hesitant step forward; Marion let go of him and passed him to Rika, who gingerly took him in her arms. The old man mumbled something in her ear and then, to her horror, she felt him trembling, and a moment later she was holding a violently sobbing man in her arms. Over his shoulder she flung a desperate look at Granny, who, with all the expertise of a woman who knew the human heart and how it works, sorted them all out, sat them all down around the coffee table, summoned Basmati to serve them drinks and snacks, and led the way into the obligatory getting-to-know-you conversation, small-talk which covered every subject under the sun except Ol’ Meanie.

  The woman in the Tower, Rika discovered, was not in the least bit mad. She was just a sad, bitter little old lady hungry for something she, Rika, could give. She promised herself to visit as often as she could.

  * * *

  When they left the house it was growing dark and the light was on downstairs. The boy named Rajan was still reading, or rather, reading again, having presumably swept the yard. Rika lingered as the others walked towards the gate. She was not usually the type to speak first, and never started conversations. But there was something about this boy and his absorption in the book …

  ‘What are you reading?’ she asked. He held up the book so she could read the title herself.

  The Book of Mirdad, she read. It was a slim book, rather tattered. It gave off a sweet, pungent smell which reminded her of the Hindu stalls outside Stabroek Market, decorated with kitschy prints of gods with elephant heads and four arms, sticks of incense giving off long winding tendrils of fragrance.

  ‘What’s it about?’ she asked. The boy looked at her with dark, soulful eyes; eyes which seemed to scour the last depths of her soul. At first he did not answer; he took his time. Finally he spoke.

  ‘It’s about how to find God,’ he said.

  Rika sat down next to him. ‘Really! Is that possible?’

  The boy smiled. ‘If you know where to look, then maybe, yes,’ he said.

  ‘But I’m not sure if I even believe in God. My mother doesn’t. I’m not even baptised. But Granny does and I go to St Rose’s, so it’s all a bit mixed up. I used to want to be a nun but I changed my mind, and I’ve been having doubts, thinking about the whole thing, God and everything. I mean, what’s it all about? What’s the point of everything? Why are we here anyway? Mummy’s an atheist and I’ve been wondering if I should become one too. What church do you go to?’

  She was amazed at herself. Where did these words come from? How come she was speaking at all, and to a stranger; she, who was so tongue-tied her brain would freeze over when obliged to converse?

  ‘We’re Hindu.’

  More words came, involuntarily.

  ‘Oh! There are a few
Hindu girls in my class. Mummy says the fact that there are so many religions is proof that they’re all man-made myths.’

  Rajan only chuckled.

  ‘She says the notion of a man up in the sky and heaven and hell and so on is just made-up.’

  Rah smiled, and nodded. ‘Oh, I agree about that – the man in the sky and all that. I don’t believe in him either.’

  ‘What do you believe, then? Hindus have lots of gods, don’t they? I’ve seen all the pictures of them at the market.’

  ‘Hindus don’t all believe the same thing,’ said Rajan, ‘the one thing we all agree on is that there are many paths to God, and they are all valid, and they all lead back to the same source, like all rivers flow to the ocean.’

  He stopped speaking then, suddenly. Maybe he wanted her to go, was waiting to get back to his book – she knew the feeling. But she couldn’t let him. It was extraordinary; the fact that she had started this conversation, even though she was known to be shy; and that she had continued it, and told him so much about her family, and asked so many questions. But the words and the questions seemed to gush from her; she couldn’t stop them.

  ‘That’s very – cryptic,’ she said. She had never used the word ‘cryptic’ before. It was a new word; she’d read it somewhere that week and looked it up in the dictionary. She’d been looking for a chance to use it, though normally she’d use these new words in writing, not in speech. But trying to get words out of Rajan was like pulling up a tree by its roots. There was something cautious, reticent about him, which made her all the more curious.

  ‘Mummy says nobody can prove the existence of God and so He doesn’t exist. She says she only believes things that science can prove.’

  This time, Rajan laughed out loud.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Well, look, Rika: if there is a God, a final intelligence and power behind all this …’ he waved his arms is if to enclose the world, ‘don’t you think he would have invented science itself? So how could science prove the intelligence that is antecedent to it?’

  Antecedent. She would have to look that word up, but for now she could guess its meaning.

  ‘You mean – before science? The source of science?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll make it simple. For instance: an all-powerful creator God would have had to invent the laws of science, so that this universe actually functions. He’d have to figure out all the complications of the human body, and create flesh and blood, hair and nails and everything. He’d have to figure out how to make a couple of planets, and toss them up into a vast sky, and have them rotating and spinning. He’d have to dig the ocean beds and fill them with water. And so on. I mean, what is our human intelligence and power compared to that?’

  Rika laughed. ‘I guess, a bit like an ant compared to a human, right?’

  ‘Exactly! More like an amoeba in relation to a human. Imagine an amoeba trying to figure out the existence of humans! Trying to prove that humans exist! I mean, I’m sure amoeba have their own intelligence, and are smart in their own way, but I think understanding humans would be beyond their reach. So if there is a Power behind all this, a higher intelligence we call God, humans trying to prove its existence is just like amoeba trying to prove the existence of humans.’

  ‘And if there isn’t such a Power? No God?’

  ‘Well, if there isn’t, then all this …’ again he spread his arms wide, ‘all this is just a fluke. It all happened by accident.’

  Rika shuddered; a sense of awe ran through her, an icy chill down her spine, yet the next question was already rising to her lips.

  ‘So, what then? Let’s say, there is a God, and he isn’t a man in the sky, then what and where is he? If we can’t prove his existence – where should we look for him? Does that book tell you?’ She pointed to the book he still held, a finger between the pages acting as bookmark. She was interrupting his reading – almost a crime, if you loved reading. But she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘He’s right here in our hearts: the living consciousness in all of nature; humans, animals, plants.’ The answer came without hesitation. ‘He is the self of our self, the core of our being, the substratum of our consciousness.’

  ‘Substratum?’ Another new word.

  ‘The foundation. The bedrock. The source.’

  ‘Oh. And that book…’ she pointed to it again, ‘…tells us how to find him? I mean, you said yourself we can’t figure him out.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Through love. Love with a capital L.’

  ‘Oh.’ It was as if she was suddenly struck dumb. No more questions came. Then,

  ‘Can I borrow it, when you’ve finished?’

  ‘Well …’ He hesitated. ‘Well, you can borrow it now. I’ve read it before. I’m reading it again but I can lend it to you if you really want. But it’s a bit hard to understand.’

  He handed her the book, and she took it with delight, and smiled at him. ‘But I’ll have to hide it from Mummy. She’d say it’s all nonsense.’

  ‘You have to find your own way,’ Rajan said. ‘We all have to. It’s good to question things and dig deep for answers. It’s good to question and keep questioning.’

  ‘I will,’ said Rika, and hugged the book to her as if it were precious. She should leave, now, but still felt rooted to the spot, curious about this boy.

  ‘Are you here a lot?’

  ‘I live here,’ said Rajan, and pointed to a room at the back of the Bottom House. ‘That’s my room. My mother lives upstairs and looks after the old people and does all their cleaning and cooking. I look after the garden – after school, of course.’

  One question led to another and Rika discovered that he was in his final year at Queen’s College and hoped to win the British Guiana Scholarship and go to England and study medicine.

  ‘Really! So you’re good at school? I’m terrible, except in English. And French. And Latin. But only maths counts really and I’m terrible at that. You can’t get a good job without maths. That’s what everyone says. A job in a bank, I mean.’

  Her face crumpled. ‘That’s the main reason my mother hates me. I’m so bad at school, so dreamy, and I’m terrible at maths.’

  ‘I can help you, if you like,’ said Rajan. ‘It’s my best subject.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  RIKA: THE SIXTIES

  And so, at last, Rika had a friend.

  He might be a boy, but he was not like at all other boys; more like a girl, in that she didn’t need to be pretty for him or wiggle her hips; but then, not like a girl, as she didn’t have to pretend to be interested in fashion and catching a boy. Rajan shared her great interest in Philosophy. Rajan understood about wondering what it was all about, and he didn’t find it boring to discuss vital matters such as Who am I? and Where do Thoughts come from? And What is Happiness? In fact, she and Rajan could talk for hours on such subjects and never grow bored, and Rajan had some interesting views and explanations.

  Most practically, Rajan was good at maths, and helped her with her schoolwork, which improved drastically as a result so that Mummy ceased complaining, and lost the title of Ol’ Meanie. Almost every afternoon after school, every Saturday and Sunday, every free moment she could wrest from life – except for Wednesdays at St Ann’s Orphanage – Rika spent with Rajan. She soon discovered the short cut through the alley – a gap in the palings at the back of the yard, and a corresponding gap in her grandparents’ fence - and escaped as often as she could. The hours alone in the Cupola gradually diminished to zero. A best friend, at last; one who knew her inside out. Knew her soul, which was what she’d always yearned for.

  * * *

  Over the next few years, many dramatic changes took place. Both grandfathers died. Rika moved into her paternal grandfather’s room in the Annex, and inherited from her maternal grandfather, along with each of her siblings, a bank book with what seemed to her a fortune in savings, to be administered by Granny until she turned eighteen. The re
st of Grandpa’s inheritance would come to all four children on Grandma van Dam’s death. The latter, meanwhile, withered into a mental decay which kept the grandchildren at bay; visits became more and more seldom and finally dropped off altogether. Only Marion cared enough to keep calling, and then only once a month.

  * * *

  But it was the country itself that had gone through the greatest upheavals, and Mummy had played her role throughout. British Guiana’s struggle for independence was already legendary. The PPP, led by the Indian Cheddi Jagan and the African Forbes Burnham won the 1953 elections in a landslide. Dorothea, though young, became the Minister of Women’s Progress, a new and startling position. Cheddi Jagan began to implement the long-promised social reforms, which would eventually lead to Independence. But his reforms were too radical for Britain: in October 1953, the democratically elected Government of British Guiana was removed from power by the British Government. Claiming that there was a danger of Marxist infiltration; Britain suspended the constitution and sent in the troops to ‘restore the peace’.

  ‘What peace?’ Dorothea Quint had railed, quite publicly. ‘We are already at peace!’

  But it was too late. The Ministers of the Government – of which Dorothea was one – as well as the House of Assembly, were dismissed by the British Governor, who proceeded to appoint an interim Government, with Forbes Burnham, Cheddi’s one time coalition-partner and soon-to-be arch enemy, at the helm. Many leading members of the PPP – including Dorothea – were detained without trial. (‘Mummy was in jail!’ Dorothea’s children boasted) and, under a state of emergency declared by the Governor, civil rights were suspended. But the PPP rallied itself, and won the 1957 elections, and again the 1961 elections.

  That was too much for Britain. Following the orders of the US Government, the British colonial rulers changed the electoral system from first-past-the-post to proportional representation, and ordered elections for 1964 – reneging on a previous agreement to grant independence before any further elections. Under the new election rules the PNC won in a coalition with the United Force; Forbes Burnham became Premier of British Guiana.