Pynter Bender

by Jacob Ross

  ‘Awright,’ he said.

  ‘He phoned earlier from somewhere. He says that y’all are family?’

  ‘I’z his uncle.’

  She smiled. ‘You say it as if you own him. You come for this fella by yourself?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  He pushed himself off the wall and turned to the line of pictures hung in a straight line around the room. The only house he’d ever been to with photographs on the wall was his father’s. Old Hope kept their images of family in their heads, passed them on with words. There was a pattern in the way the photographs were lined up, they told a story. The first was of a woman standing with a man beside her. They were Europeans – hatted, gloved and dressed in white – so faded he could barely make out their features. As he moved along the wall, faces became fuller, the tips of noses shorter and more curved. The women’s hair darker and more curled.

  He paused at the farthest corner and looked back at the young woman.

  She’d pulled her lower lip in between her teeth and was chewing on it slowly.

  He strode across the room and unhooked the picture of the woman at the farthest corner of the room so that he could study it more closely.

  ‘A picture missing – not so?’ He said.

  ‘You do this often?’ she said.

  ‘Do what?’ he said.

  ‘Walk into people’s homes and meddle with their property?’ She came towards him with a hand stretched out before her. She pulled the picture from him, replaced it on the wall, turned and twitched her nose. ‘Go have a wash – you stink.’

  ‘That is the way you talk to a pusson who arrives at your house as a guest? You think I have to be here. That what you think? I wouldn like yuh people either,’ he said. ‘Too stiff, too proper. Too glum. You look a lot like yuh granny, though.’ He pointed at the photo of a couple sitting together on easy chairs with clasped hands, their hair brushed back in waves. ‘They your mother-an’-father-in-Canada; not so? An’ Missa Hugo?’

  The young woman had gone very still. Pynter lifted his chin at the last picture of two small children on the wall. ‘Yuh brother tall like me. Lighter-skin dan you. Different eyes he got. Grey o’ green o’ something, a lil bit like mine.’

  ‘What make you say that?’

  ‘It there,’ he said, and turned away from her.

  ‘You know this by, er, by just …’

  She made a small step towards him, then checked herself.

  ‘It there.’ He nodded at the wall.

  She strolled over to the picture of her brother and herself. She passed a hand across it as if she’d just discovered it. ‘You could tell the colour of Hugo’s eyes even if it’s – this is in black’n white?’

  ‘Yeh. Sorry.’

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘You sound upset; I say sorry!’

  ‘I’m not upset. And don’t keep saying sorry, sorry, sorry like …’

  Some time later he stood in a pair of her father’s trousers which were too large at the waist and a blue shirt which, apart from the tiny spot of ink on the left pocket, was new. It was because of the ink, Tinelle told him, while gathering his discarded clothing with the end of a broomstick, that Hugo no longer wore it.

  ‘What time, miss?’

  ‘Don’t call me “miss”.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Past nine, just past.’

  ‘Missa Hugo?’

  ‘Give him another hour. Egg’s ready!’

  She got up and walked to the kitchen. She brought the food back on a little tray and placed it on the table next to him. He was lying on his side on the floor, looking at her through half-shut lids. Her face made him think of Ceylon mangoes – a smooth, thin-skinned amber-yellow. Her hips flared like a larger woman’s. She was about to turn towards Hugo’s door when she froze, realising perhaps that he’d been watching her all along.

  He rolled over on his back. ‘You don’ think I’ll make it,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ she said.

  He shrugged and turned his gaze up at the rafters. ‘I not so sure, either.’

  She didn’t seem to hear him. She was measuring all of him with her eyes. ‘You, you really look like Paso. Difference is, I don’ think I like you.’

  He lifted his back off the floor and reached for the plate. He pushed the fork aside, lifted the tongue of fried plantain above his mouth and dropped it in. ‘I not sure I like you either,’ he said. ‘I hate people who don’ like a pusson for no reason and don’t have the decency to hide it. But when you got upset I say to meself, “She upset, she awright. People who get upset is awright people.”’

  ‘The food’s not running away,’ she said.

  Pynter licked his fingers. ‘S’matter o’ fact, me, I find you kinda awright, in a pretty sort of way.’

  ‘Who’s your family?’ She’d turned her head down, trying to hide the smile.

  ‘The Benders,’ he said.

  ‘Never heard of them.’

  Pynter placed the empty plate on the table and stretched himself out on the cushions that smelled of her. ‘I didn either,’ he said. ‘Not until my mother make me. Thanks for de food, Miss Tinelle.’

  Hugo was as he’d told Tinelle – a thinner, paler version of his father. He had the largest, most carefully groomed Afro hairstyle Pynter had ever seen.

  ‘Tin-Tin said you’re Paso’s …?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Sorry, didn’t introduce myself. Kwame.’ Hugo fluttered a wrist at him.

  ‘Kwa …?’

  ‘…me. Kwame – that’s me. Means Saturday. African for Saturday. My slave name is Hugo.’

  Pynter took the extended hand. ‘I’z Pynter. And I’z a Bender since I born.’

  Tinelle’s eyes were darting between her brother’s face and his.

  He would be off next year, Hugo said, to study law. He was more or less working towards it. ‘Tell Paso I’m disappointed he didn’t turn up with you.’

  Pynter soon got tired of the banter and grunted to everything that Hugo-Kwame-or-whatever-his-name-was said. These two were far removed from his world, especially this Hugo of the supple hands and fluttering eyelashes who talked too fast and too much.

  ‘Paso come here often?’ he said.

  ‘Used to, but these two started quarrelling.’ Pynter caught the quick sideways flash of eyes between them.

  ‘Look, you’re here to get your friend. You need to talk it through with Hugo, at least rehearse it in your mind.’

  ‘I done rehearse already.’

  ‘You don’t need me then.’ Hugo turned towards his door. ‘Got some reading to do. Fanon. I just love Fanon. If you’ll excuse me.’

  ‘Get to know him and you’ll like him,’ Tinelle said.

  ‘Don’ matter. You know the Barracks?’

  ‘Like this house,’ she said. ‘Used to play up there when I was a child.’

  ‘You could tell me the best way in?’

  ‘Don’t have a best way in.’

  ‘Tell me what you know.’

  ‘I’ll do better. I’ll walk you past there later.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Around five. That’s,’ she stared at her watch again, ‘two hours before the curfew starts. You kin see most of it from the road.’

  ‘You say it don’t have no way in?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I said there is no best way in.’

  She pulled the curtains open. The light gushed in and made rainbows of the row of bottles. Pynter wondered what Paso might have told her about him.

  ‘I’m not like that, you know,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be honest, when they told me you were coming, I said you wouldn’t make it, and definitely not on your own. Made more sense for you to come here first during the day and avoid the inconvenience of the curfew altogether. Would’ve saved you all that trouble and made a better impression, certainly on me.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ll show you a couple of ways to get up there.’ She turned to
face him. Their eyes met and held. Hers were very wide. He thought of the older women in the photographs above their heads. ‘It is possible for you not to come back.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Who’s the “they” who told you I was coming?’

  ‘Whoever they are,’ she said. ‘You really don’ know what this is about, do you? Paso asked me to find some way to stop you. I never heard him so distressed. He was sure that you would come here first. I told him it was too late. He shouldn’t’ve passed the word on to the others, who have a lot more weight than him. They want us to make sure you do it.’ Now she seemed distracted. ‘In this … this night of terror, people need some light. Good news. Real news – everybody’s dying for that right now. You go up there, you bring that fella back. S’like walking up to Victor and spitting in his face. It’s like telling him we can go inside his bedroom anytime we want and watch him while he sleeps. That’s why …’

  ‘And if I don’t come back?’ he said.

  She lifted her head at him. He thought she looked afraid. ‘We’ll lose Paso,’ she said. ‘We’ll lose him for good.’

  She told him about Paso, how quickly he could make an impression on a group of strangers. It only took him a few days to pull a group of youths together, organise them, leave them with a leader and direction. Then he would move on. No one could motivate people as quickly as Paso. They called him Breeze. Did he know that? Paso travelled everywhere. And for all the years he’d been doing this, Victor and his people did not know what Paso looked like. But when they passed through a village they knew he had been there. They saw it in the gazes of the children. In the storm of stones that met them. Often enough, Paso was what stood between Sylus and many a quick confession. Which was why they wanted him so badly.

  ‘That’s all he worth to y’all?’

  ‘No,’ she said, nudging a thumb at Hugo’s door.

  Pynter thought how Paso’s words had changed over time. ‘Problems’ became ‘protests’, then finally ‘The Struggle’. ‘Hope-for-Change’ turned to ‘Fight-for-Change’. Now it was ‘The Cause’. ‘Get-togethers’ were ‘cells’ now. We goin to take the island, he had said, as naturally as if he had been announcing the coming of the rains.

  Pynter listened to the soft rumble of the sea against the metal hulls of cargo ships in the harbour below. A hot wind shifted the curtains and deposited the smell of diesel in the room. ‘S’big,’ he said, staring at the young woman. ‘All of it.’

  Tinelle walked across the room and took up one of the coloured bottles. She held it up to the light, shook her head and put it back. She dropped a record on the spindle of the player and music filled the room. She returned to the bottle and poured herself a drink. The glass glinted in her hand like jewellery. Tinelle seemed transfixed by something she saw in the dancing amber of the liquid. Her stillness was like nothing he’d seen before. The window light was foaming down the nylon curtains and dripping along the front of her dress.

  She remembered he was there and threw a glance at him. ‘Brahms,’ she said. ‘To hell with Moz and Beet. Brahm’s my fella anytime.’

  She sipped at her drink and parted the curtains to lean out of the window. ‘Paso suggested something else,’ she said. ‘I told him it depends.’ She talked with her back to him. ‘It starts small, a little hurt, an insult, the place and the way you’re born. Some need you didn’t know you had. Add that to all the other hurts and needs of everybody else, read the books that say the things you want to hear. Make your circumstances fit. It becomes ideology.’

  She tossed her head and chuckled at the drink.

  ‘Makes me wonder what the little hurt was that started Karl Marx off. For me it was Selima. We went to the same school together. We laughed about the same things, fought over the same fellas, got drunk at the same parties. She was the first to get arrested for a Black Power salute in front of the police station. Her father refused to pay the fine to get her out. It wasn’t a simple thing for him. She brought disgrace on her respectable family. They kept her there for two weeks until I raised the money. Something happened in her head in there. She never told me. I think I know what it was.’

  She went to sit on the cushions and lifted a finger at the pictures.

  ‘Yes, there should be a picture there. I put it up but it disappeared. We never talked about it. They never forgave me for not having eyes and skin like Hugo. Like it was my fault. Dad even asked my mother if I was his child. After me they stopped. They weren’t taking any more chances. The burden of progeny – that’s what I call it.’

  The music died. She looked up as if the silence had alerted her to something.

  ‘Why am I saying all these things! I …’

  ‘You awright,’ he said. ‘I – I like your inside, what my auntie call yuh candle. By dat, I s’pose, she mean your soul.’

  She looked up at him suspiciously. ‘I wasn’t asking for no compliment.’

  ‘I wasn’ giving you none.’

  People were already making a dash for home before the curfew fell. The waves of thunder that rose up from cars and minibuses added an extra urgency to the decaying day.

  As soon as they reached the road, Tinelle hooked an arm around his. ‘You’re my fella,’ she instructed. ‘We taking a stroll.’

  She named the roads as they passed them, explaining where each one would take him. Her directions always led him back to her house. She told him she would show him seven ways to get back there. By the time she finished, he’d counted twelve, including a narrow culvert that would take him straight down to the harbour. This, she told him, was the real San Andrews: the webwork of drains, hidden steps and alleyways that could take a person anywhere without being noticed by the thundering world above.

  Now that they had reached the road beneath the Barracks, she tossed her head and waved back at the soldiers in the passing jeeps. She was smiling at the men and instructing him at the same time about the buildings he should look out for: a yellow church, a reservoir with its tall graveyard of rusting pipes, the culvert that ran along it and a filthy drain that snaked between two rows of houses.

  She tightened her arm around his slightly when they reached a white concrete road at the entrance of which a couple of men sat with rifles across their laps. Their eyes skimmed his face, paused on hers, travelled down her legs. The men said something to each other, looked up and grinned at her.

  They turned a corner. Tinelle lifted her chin at a small overhang of rocks above the road. ‘Up there,’ she said. ‘Turn right at the top and go along the line of trees. S’right in front of you.’

  Then she turned to face him suddenly. He noticed a trickle of sweat running down her jawline. ‘This is not a storybook, Pynter. This is real, y’understand? Things can happm t’you up there. Bad things.’ She tossed her head. ‘Come, I wan’ to go home.’

  On the way back, Tinelle held his hands much as a parent would a child, and when they were home she dropped herself onto the cushions.

  ‘You been lyin to me,’ he said. He walked over to the cushions and lowered himself in front of her. ‘S’not your brother, Hugo, who run things round here. Is you.’

  She shook her head. ‘S’not so.’

  ‘Why you lying fo’ me?’.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ she said.

  ‘What not like that?’

  She told him there was Hugo, but also many others he would never get to meet. They had ignored her sometimes and made mistakes. Serious ones. Now they did nothing without asking her what she thought. ‘Some things become a problem, Pynter, if you put a name to them. Y’understand?’

  He told her that he did.

  ‘Paso said some things about you. I didn’t believe him. Now …’ She shook her head as if to clear it. ‘Your eyes.’ She sighed. ‘I can’t decide …’

  He took her hand. The lines in her palm came together in a wild, fluid convergence – almost as if someone had scrawled a big brown M there and forgotten to wipe it off. Patty told him once that all a person was and w
ill ever be was written in the turnings of those lines.

  ‘Pynter Bender,’ she said, ‘I never meet nobody like you.’

  ‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘I – I want to be wiv you.’

  She pushed herself up from the cushions. ‘You hungry? Hugo’s a good cook.’ She stood above him for a while, staring down at his face. ‘I look at you and the word that comes to mind is clenched. What’s pushing you, Pynter? Because one thing I know for sure now, this is not only about your friend.’

  ‘Don’ know how to answer dat,’ he said, and closed his eyes.

  They woke him close to midnight. A candle was burning in a saucer on the glass table.

  ‘My clothes,’ he said.

  Tinelle got up, but Hugo had already rushed into the kitchen and retrieved them.

  Pynter stripped himself before them, and in that moment of tense uncaring he barely noticed Hugo’s awkwardness and Tinelle’s open appraisal of his nakedness.

  ‘You miss a button,’ Tinelle said. She unbuttoned his shirt and started all over again.

  ‘Anything I can do, Pynter?’ Hugo was holding out a small flashlight. Pynter shook his head. Hugo closed his hand around it. ‘Nice, er, nice knowing you, man.’

  ‘Same fuh me,’ Pynter said.

  Tinelle stepped out into the yard with him. He noticed for the first time that she’d changed her clothes.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘I – I can help you.’

  ‘No.’ His vehemence surprised him. He saw her wince and felt a sudden prick of contrition.

  ‘Pynter, I know I shouldn’t be saying this, but I – I don’t want you to go. That – that’s how I feel.’

  ‘You just say you wan’ to come wiv me.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘I don’ unnerstan.’

  ‘Didn expect you to.’

  He turned to go. She called his name. Something warm and easy settled in the space between them.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  He took the stone steps that led down to the sea and then found the drain that would take him to the reservoir and followed that. His shirt was sticking to his skin by the time he crossed the road they’d walked on earlier. Paso was right, it was like daylight up there, with floodlights blasting down from iron poles high above the buildings.