by Sharon Maas
‘Granny! Granny! Welcome home!’ she cried, as she ran to the taxi. This must be the notoriously lazy Evelyn who had sent the taxi instead of driving up to meet us: Aunt Marion’s daughter, Gran’s granddaughter, Mum’s niece, my first cousin, though several years older than me. She flung open the taxi door, bent down, and hugged Gran. She was at least three times Gran’s size, and I thought she’d smother the poor thing. Gran let out a little yelp that sounded like ‘help’ but could just as well have been ‘hello’.
By this time I was round the car and standing next to them, and so it was my turn to be folded into that voluminous embrace. As Evelyn, a virtual stranger to me, closed me in her arms with another whoop of delight I found my initial distaste, and the inclination to push her away, shift away in favour of a kind of shy pleasure. This kind of familial affection was totally foreign to me, but it seemed to have a disarming power; there was something so warm, so genuine, and so innocent about it I couldn’t help but be touched. I smiled back at Evelyn.
‘You gon’ to love Guyana!’ she said to me, still holding me. ‘I so happy you came! Families belong together! I gon’ to show you around Georgetown as soon as I can!’
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
INKY
Evelyn showed me a bed and I fell onto it and didn’t awake until – well, I had no idea. The room was dark, the wooden shutters closed, but the louvres were open and through the slots slashes of bright sunlight fell into the room, leaving a striped pattern on the wooden floorboards. I remembered. In the foggy minutes before I fell asleep, Evelyn had unfurled a mosquito net from above and tucked it into the sides of the bed; now, it had been untucked and was curled into a bulky knot hanging above my head. My watch was no help; it said 4.23 but that was English time and I wasn’t sure of the time difference. Four hours? Five? Six?
I rolled to the edge of the bed to grab my handbag from the bedside table. Still groggy with sleep, I fumbled in it until my fingers found the flat metal of my mobile phone. I had a missed call, from Sal. My heart leaped. Ignoring the expense I immediately tried to call back but there was no reception. It must have arrived in the seconds before I switched off the phone at Gatwick.
I needed a pee. I stumbled to my feet and headed for the door; I vaguely remembered the bathroom was on the other side of the hallway. Sunlight streamed into the white tiled room from an open window, and a fresh breeze against my skin made me realise how hot and clammy I was from the journey and from sleep. I peeled off the T-shirt I’d slept in and stepped into the shower. A delicious cascade of cool water sloshed away the skin of sloth and dried sweat and fatigue clinging to my body. I washed my hair with the remains of a bottle of shampoo, rinsed away the foam, and dried myself with a huge fluffy towel. Wrapped in the towel, I returned to my room.
Behind the open sash window was the slanting top-hung shutter known here as a Demerara window. I pushed it open with its pole. A panorama of green treetops and red roofs and blue sky dotted with two or three small, fleecy clouds greeted me. The pert call of a bird: kiss-kiss-kiskadee over and over again, gave an unexpected lift to my heart, a clean, joyful refrain that filled me with hope. It was a kiskadee, I later learned: a little yellow bird calling, according to the French, ‘Qu’est qu’il dit?’ The call filled me with delight – I felt a sense of home unlike any I had had before.
And, I realised now, I was hungry, and surely that was coffee in the air?
I turned away from the window, got dressed, and went downstairs. Seated around the dining table were several women, a few children, and a man.
Evelyn sprang to her feet as I walked into the dining room, a corner of the huge open-plan ground floor. She rushed over to me with a cry of joy, took my hand and led me over to the one empty chair. Only after I’d taken a seat did the identity of my table companions register.
‘Hello Inky!’ Mum said breezily. ‘Slept well?’
‘You not going to say hello, Inky?’ said a familiar alto voice. I looked up.
‘Marion!’ I cried, jumping to my feet and running to her chair to hug her. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Last minute decision,’ Marion said. ‘I’ve been fighting the urge to come back ever since I heard you all were coming. Yesterday I gave in and jumped on a plane. I arrived a couple of hours ago. I haven’t even gone to my room yet – see?’
She gestured to a corner of the drawing room, to a cluster of luggage.
‘I gotta go!’ said Gran, speaking for the first time. ‘T’ings to do.’ She was speaking Creolese again. She pushed her wheelchair away from the table and rolled off, disappearing into the hallway. The rooms here were huge; plenty of room for a wheelchair, plenty of turning circles. Evelyn and Marion were chattering away, telling me of all the plans they had to show me around.
‘May I interrupt to introduce myself – David, Evelyn’s husband,’ said the one man at the table. I had hardly glanced at him until now, as he half rose to offer me his hand from across the table.
I took his hand. We smiled at each other; he was a good-looking man of some kind of obscure racial mixture; brown skin, tight black curly hair, a pleasant white-toothed grin. He waved in the general direction of the children.
‘And these are Alison and Nicholas!’ I smiled down at the two of them, shook their hands.
‘Ally,’ and ‘Nick,’ they said simultaneously, correcting their father. With that, breakfast conversation turned to the general chit-chat of family reunions after long separations.
After breakfast Mum said to me,
‘Would you like me to show you the house, Inky?’ and of course I said yes. And so she took me around, up and down stairs.
I noticed she omitted the Annex.
* * *
‘And this,’ Mum said, ‘is my very favourite place in the whole house. Follow me.’
She began to climb a narrow spiral staircase, which lead into a dome of light. It was a round, window-lined room, with wooden floorboards and a peaked roof. The view was spectacular; a canopy of green from the trees, interspersed with red and silver roofs. In the distance, the Atlantic sparkled silver and grey up to the horizon. The sky was in touching distance. A kiskadee chirruped. It was breathtaking.
‘The Cupola!’ Mum announced. ‘I used to spend hours up here, writing in my diary, writing short stories, dreaming of goodness knows what. I loved this place.’
She bent down, fiddled a bit with a floorboard, lifted it up, and laughed. She lifted what seemed like a bug-eaten ancient child’s exercise book aloft.
‘The novels I used to write!’
She replaced the book with a chuckle and stood up. She closed her eyes and turned in a slow circle, arms spread wide, as if recalling the past. When she stopped rotating she was facing inland, away from the sea. She opened her eyes, and the light fled from her face. She was staring at a house half-hidden in the foliage; there seemed to be a cleft among the trees between our house and that one, giving us an open view.
Mum gazed at the house, almost as if she were in a trance. And then she took a deep, audible breath.
‘Inky, this is it. I need to be alone for a while. I’m going into the Annex. It’s time.’
She turned away and walked back down the stairs. At the bottom, she turned into the corridor that led to the Annex, a room separate from the house but joined to it by a sort of covered bridge.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
RIKA
Rajan was alive!
Rika threw herself onto her bed, just as she had so many years ago, and wept, just as she had so many years ago. But now she wept for joy, relief and gratitude.
If only she had known! If only she had not been such a coward, if only she had stayed: she would have spared herself so much heartache, so much pain! It would have been she who had gone with Rajan to America, she who would have held his hand through all the medical procedures. Well, Basmati too, of course, but she would have been there, at his side, helping him through.
But.
Had she not run awa
y she would not have travelled South America. She would not have gone to India, stayed in that wonderful Ashram, learned all the things she had, turned her life around. She would not have married Eddy, not have had Inky.
She went to the window, and looked down. She saw it all, just as it had been that night; Rajan, the spike through his head, the blood. She saw it in her mind’s eye, without fear, without horror. Within her there was only calm.
She laughed to herself. What a fool, what a bloody fool she had been! Rajan had been alive, all the time, and she had conjured up some spirit-Rajan, some placebo Rajan; an imaginary voice, an imaginary anchor.
Rajan, an angel! A saint, up in heaven! What nonsense! Those voices she had heard, thinking they came from him! They came from her! They were the voices of her own strength, her own true self, her own guiding spirit! She had been listening to herself! Everything she had sought in that fake Rajan, had been right here, inside her! What a travesty! Yet, maybe, it had been necessary. Maybe she had needed that spirit-Rajan, a familiar image, a face, a form, to cling to, to keep her steady? But what did it matter. Here she was, and all was well. No fear, no horror, no Beast.
Everything was right, just the way it was. Everything had fallen into place. And Rajan was alive!
She turned away from the window and returned to the dining room.
‘When can we go and see Rajan?’ she said.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
INKY
Marion, Gran, and I were sitting in the gallery drinking coffee and chatting when Mum returned. Ever since she had found out about Rajan’s survival something about her was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was as if some hidden darkness had vanished from her spirit, and I suppose that’s exactly what had happened. The shadow of Rajan’s supposed death had left her. But now, as she returned from the Annex, she was different again. This time, it was not that something had left her. She had gained something: a sense of complete peace emanated from her. Peace, and a highly contagious exultation.
‘When can we go and see Rajan?’ she said.
‘Don’t you want to rest for a day?’ Evelyn asked. ‘Settle in? Get rid of your jet lag?’
‘No,’ said Mum. ‘I want to go today. Inky can stay if she wants to. I’m going.’
‘I’m coming too!’ I cried. What jet lag? I was energized as never before, longing for movement and adventure and discovery.
We had already learned that Rajan no longer lived in the old house in Waterloo Street; that had been rented out for several years. Rajan and Basmati had gone up to the County of Essequibo after his return from the USA, and were living on his grandparents’ farm on the Pomeroon River. So it was there we had to go, Mum, Marion, and I.
Of course I would go to the Essequibo!
* * *
It was a long trip, and I discovered on the way just how Guyana got its name: the word ‘Guiana’ means Land of Many Waters, as apt a name as could be.
First we had to drive back up the East Bank of the Demerara River, the way we had travelled last night from the airport. As Georgetown straggled out, the car turned to the right and we found ourselves at the dock of a floating bridge, a pontoon bridge, as Marion explained, across the river. On the other side we drove for about an hour, up to a small town called Parika on the next big river, bigger even than the Demerara: the Essequibo.
At Parika’s wharf we climbed down some rickety stairs and into a small boat that slowly filled with other passengers; we were handed life jackets and a moment later we were speeding across the river, the boat almost upended as it tore across the water. It took a long while, as the Essequibo is twenty kilometres across at its mouth, and by the time we reached Supenaam on the far bank we were all soaked through, but laughing.
Then it was into another car, and a drive along the coast to Charity; up a little further, and we had arrived at Rajan’s home.
* * *
The farm was a place of exceeding beauty, on the east bank of the Pomeroon River. We stepped from the taxi into a wide-open space covered with white sand and dotted with flowering bushes, hibiscus and oleander. At the centre was a large wooden two-story house, surrounded by banana trees. To the left, at the edge of the sandy area, was the rainforest, and before us, stretching off beyond the cleared space, coconut trees, tall palms reaching out into the distance. To the right was the river.
Beyond the main house was a cottage, painted a fresh cobalt blue with mango-yellow shutters and door, and mango-yellow railings on the wraparound veranda. Unlike the main house, which was on high stilts as tradition demanded, the cottage was built just a little above ground level. A short flight of stairs as well as a ramp led up to the veranda. A concrete path led up to the cottage.
‘Rajan’s brother lives in the big house with his family,’ explained Marion, ‘and Basmati. Rajan has a personal carer who looks after him, an Amerindian from a nearby village. He’s in the best hands he could possibly be.’
As we walked past the big house a couple of half-naked children ran out to greet us, laughing and grabbing hold of our hands. A woman’s voice called them back; I looked up to see her, in the window, smiling and waving to us and reprimanding the children to leave us alone. We continued on to the cottage.
Another woman a few years older than me, a baby on her hips, came hurrying down the stairs of the big house. She was an Amerindian, her long black hair falling in a silky sheet over her shoulders. She trotted up to us, smiling.
‘Come with me!’ she said, and led the way to the cottage. We walked up the stairs to the veranda.
‘He usually sits at the back,’ said the woman, whose name, we learned, was Rosa, and she led the way around.
Mum’s arms were folded over her chest and her face was a mask, unreadable. She seemed to have withdrawn into herself, like a turtle; her elation gone, to be replaced by trepidation. She said nothing as we followed Rosa around the corner of the cottage. Here, the veranda expanded, forming a little open-air room.
Three people were in the room. An Amerindian man sat on the floor cleaning a fish. A thin grey-haired man sat in an armchair, and a plump, much older, white-haired Indian woman sat next to him, leaning into him, an open book in her hand. She closed it, and a glance at the cover told me it was a book about birds.
The man looked up when we approached.
I had never seen a face like his. Was he a child or a man, or both? Indeed, all the beauty and purity and total guilelessness of childhood seemed to shine through the outer veneer of middle age. He was beautiful. No other word for it. His face shone with that subtle beauty that shines from within rather than from the symmetry of external features. For, while his features were indeed well balanced, they were marred by an ugly scar, a puckering of flesh on his right temple. And yet the overall impression was beauty, and that beauty turned to perfection when his eyes fell on Mum, and that shine turned to radiance, as if the form that enclosed him was but an effigy, and the real life lay beyond.
He spoke, or tried to speak, but those emerging sounds spoiled the first impression of perfect beauty, for they were guttural, ugly sounds, grunts rather than words. He held out both arms to her.
Mum simply cried out something indistinct, and fell to her knees before him. He leaned forward, she leaned up, and their arms encircled each other and pulled each other close. Mum buried her face in his neck, and she sobbed, great, heaving sobs that shook her body from top to bottom.
I wanted to cry too. Marion wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, and turned away, as if it was all too much for her.
When they drew apart I saw the man’s face again, and his eyes were the only dry ones in the room, his smile the only one. Everyone else looked miserable. Especially Mum, when at last she turned around. Holding the man’s hand in both her own, she murmured:
‘Rajan, oh Rajan. All these years … I thought you were dead … I’m sorry. So sorry.’ she buried her face in his shoulder, drew back, and said again: ‘I thought you were dead, Rajan, I though
t you were gone: Oh I wish, I wish – I’d have come back long ago. I’m so sorry.’
She looked now at the old woman.
‘Basmati? You! You could have written me, said something. Why didn’t anyone say?’
That last word, say, was a cry of despair, an accusation aimed at all of us, at God, at the entire universe; a wail of utter desolation.
‘Now, Rika, don’t start blaming Basmati! It’s all your fault for not reading Gran’s letter! How could we know you hadn’t read it? When you didn’t reply we thought you couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear the thought of him being – you know. Like this.’
She gestured towards Rajan, and Mum just hugged him again, and he hugged her back.
Marion continued. ‘You were married, with a young child. We assumed you had decided to put Rajan, the accident, behind you. Not forgive Gran, as we had all hoped you would.’
Mum looked down. ‘I know. It was my fault from running away in the first place. That was so … cowardly.’
‘Cowardly! I can’t imagine making my way alone through South America! At sixteen! And then to India!’ said Marion. She reached out to stroke Rika’s back. ‘You’re not a coward … that was terribly brave, in a different way.’
‘It was pure flight, Marion. It wasn’t bravery at all. I ran away.’
‘Why didn’t you stay, to check if Rajan was alive?’ I asked. Mum glared at me.
‘Inky! I was sixteen! Of course I assumed he was dead! He had a pole sticking out of his bloody head!’
‘But, Mum, there was a doctor in the house! You could have …’