by Shani Mootoo
The promenade is a remarkably wide thoroughfare that shoots off the intersection in a relatively straight line toward the east, and is flanked on either side by churches — first, on one side, the Anglican Church with its modern bell tower; then the fire station; followed by the Town Hall, a long, three-storey building that houses the offices of aldermen and the local offices of the Ministry of Health (the main offices are in the capital of the country). There are some other government buildings in the colonial style, but these are not open to the public, and no one knows what really goes on inside them. Past these are St. Patrick’s Catholic Church and a colonial-style house that is the administrative home of the diocese, a home for the local officiating priest, and the Catholic Church library, and past this, a building that houses several government licence-granting offices: hunting, fisheries, vehicles, vending, births, deaths, marriages. Here, just after the Woolworth Store, the promenade ends. Traffic follows this course in one direction. An island as wide as a three-lane city street divides the flow.
Beginning on the hospital end again, on the other side now, are more buildings that harken back to the town’s colonial past. On the corner, there is a row of lawyers’ offices. Clerks and clients mill about the narrow doorways of the two-room offices built in the late 1800s, structures that are falling apart — their filigree woodwork broken and dangling in places — and are not being modernized. Yes, there is still no running water, and the lawyers and their modest staff are obliged to walk to the updated law courts to use the public facilities there. Farther along is the police station. The scene before you, of three prisoners handcuffed together, being led barefoot along the scorching asphalt by eight police officers carrying guns, is not uncommon. These men have likely just been arrested and are being taken to the short-term cells next door. Pedestrians, hecklers, and concerned citizens alike, among them relatives of the prisoners or of their victims, line the street and watch the spectacle with a mix of awe and fear. Past the short-term gaol is the police barracks, followed by the law courts building (with public toilet facilities), more lawyers’ offices, and then, stretching for a good distance, the lands of the Sisters of The Immaculate Conception, which includes one of the town’s major secondary girls’ schools, and finally the Convent of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. The convent itself shares a wall, but only that, with an Indian movie theatre. The movie theatre is at the end of the promenade, directly opposite the town’s public library.
The promenade itself is a pedestrian-only island. Its asphalt paving is brilliant orange, carpeted with newly fallen flowers from the trees planted along its length. Walking in the shade of the trees, on this hushing carpet of bright colour, one encounters first a raised, roofed bandstand, with ample room around it for an audience. A railing runs around the platform, which is accessed by a wide staircase that faces the Town Hall opposite. A police officer stands on the platform of the bandstand. He wields a baton in one hand. The baton is aimed at a body prostrate, and in deep sleep, on the ground. The young officer, a thin man of African origin, seems unsure of what to do. The person on the ground is clearly homeless, but there is a “no trespassing” sign on the railing of the stairway. The policeman walks around the body, and his gait, if you were to force a reading on it, seems to say, “Let the man sleep, na. But, then again, this is the only work I might get. Also, if anyone is looking on, getting the man to move might look as if I were doing my job well. On the other hand, if I wake the man up, who knows what might happen. If he is mad, it might cause a bigger problem than there is now. If he is just sleeping and I awaken him, where is he to go?” The policeman turns his back to the man and walks, baton still gripped, to the railing. He leans on it and looks out toward the busy intersection.
Beyond the bandstand is a paved area. A bronze box, like an overturned orange crate, is anchored in the centre of this area, known as speaker’s corner. A tall thin man, of Indian origin but with pale yellowish skin, circles the box. He walks with his head bent, as if looking at the reddish clay tiles of the area, his hands clasped behind his back. He is balding. And he appears to be talking to himself. He is not like the other people who make Harris Promenade their home, but he is often found here. He travels by taxi from his house in a nearby town to spend the day walking around the speaker’s box. He arrives at the square at 8:30 a.m. sharp, and leaves by taxi again at three in the afternoon — the hours of the school at which he once taught. He had been a bright young English literature teacher who wrote what some people called poetry — two of his acquaintances who also wrote what looked like poetry called his writing this — and, indeed, a foreign magazine had published some lines of his writing, and paid him, too. The editor of the magazine had contacted him later and requested more of these poems, and had suggested he think about submitting a manuscript for publication. He put his mind to the task of producing such a thing and the other teachers at his school ridiculed him, his family teased him, and his students lost respect for him. They joked behind his back that he was a mamsy-pamsy writer of flowery lines. He wrote and wrote and wrote, never satisfied with what he had written, and the editor of the foreign magazine eventually changed, and no one from that magazine was ever in touch with him again. He remained unpublished thereafter, and the staff and students of his school, and his own family, who had worried about their welfare had he decided to turn writing poems into a career, were pleased about this. The man, however, left his job to polish lines such as “River, oh river rise, and quell the fields of bellies emptied.” His family gasped, snickered, and then left him. But that was more than twenty years ago. No one in the square remembers his name, but he looks up and then quickly turns away if he is called “Sir,” which is how his students once addressed him.
Just before moving onward, you will be hit with a strong, sweet whiff of garlic, scallions, and ginger as they are sautéed, a street away, in peanut and sesame oil. You will smell, but you won’t see, The Victory Hotel, which houses The Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant, the best hotel and the best restaurant this side of the oil refinery. The hotel is mostly used by visitors to the island, but it is known to be available on occasion to certain businessmen and professionals who are willing to pay the daily double-room rate for the privacy of their illicit pleasures. The Golden Dragon is where the aldermen, the mayor, and lawyers take their lunch, and where some of the doctors take theirs too. On occasion you will find Dr. Krishnu there. He usually requests one of several private dining suites at the back of the restaurant. He will, of course, not be alone, but the staff is discreet.
Despite the distraction of the aroma from The Golden Dragon, know that there is street food higher up, exceptional and unusual food, near the gates of the girls’ school. You will want to sample that, to buy it from the vendor there, so have courage and steer the promenade tour onward.
Behind speaker’s corner is a large, shallow, round pool, with a fountain at its centre, a bronze mess of scaly fish entwined and with open mouths that once spouted water. But the fountain has not worked in years and its pool is empty of water. The ceramic blue-tile floor is covered in a carpet of freshly fallen orange petals. There are benches around the fountain, and these are occupied by court-hearing attendees, office clerks, and idlers. Nut vendors walk up and down the promenade, cream-coloured canvas bags slung from their shoulders. Their outstretched hands show off small brown-paper packages of unshelled peanuts. It is nearly the town’s official lunchtime, and the air is fragrant with the scent of foods from vendors’ outdoor cooking and from the jeeps parked near the promenade’s far end, out of which hot dogs and hamburgers are already being barbecued and sold. The scent of food rising up from all corners of the city is a blessing.
Huddled at the base of tall stately trees are people who have staked claim on these meagre spots and will ward off anyone who trespasses with shrieks, curses, and lunges, armed with frail fists and fearsome body odours. Even the police leave them alone. If you look closely, you will see sleeping figures in the densest section
s of shrubbery planted by the town’s gardeners. Past the fountain is a towering bronze pedestal, on top of which is a disproportionately smaller, pigeon-blessed statue of Mahatma Gandhi, dhoti-clad and stepping briskly forward. He seems about to step off his base and into the air. Behind the Gandhi statue, in the centre of the tree-shaded promenade, is the biggest statue of all, a full and highly detailed bronze of Queen Victoria in ample skirt, every fold rendered, sporting crown and sceptre, also streaked in dried-white pigeon droppings. Fading into the distance are more water features, none of which function, and more statues of past governors, past mayors, and business benefactors.
The high school attached to the convent has just recessed for lunch. The electronic wrought-iron gate grates and rumbles as it slides open, and the girls, rowdy and excited, spill out. They head for the doubles vendor, whose daily intake revolves around this very moment. When they cross the boundary line of the gate that separates the world of commodities and desires from that, supposedly, of learning and restraint, the girls seem, one by one, to take a vertiginous step, to misstep, falter, and land a little off to the side, or illogically, too far forward. If you were to videotape their exit/entrance, and play back the moment in slow motion, you would discover the cause of that odd blip in the girls’ appearance and gait: you would see their hands grabbing the waistbands of their skirts, and smart flicks of the wrist to turn the waistband under, once, twice, sometimes even three times, in order to shorten the skirts to well above the knees, a movement studied and practised until it is executed so swiftly that a casually watching eye sees a jump-cut in life. The collars of the girls’ white shirts are normally pinned tight at the neck with a brooch, but by the time the girls reach the food vendor, house badges have been whipped off and necks exposed.
All morning the vendor has been preparing for this lunch-time crush by frying on the spot batches of split-pea flour patties, and heating up a large vat of curried channa she carted from her home. Buzzing around the vendor already are sixth-form students from the boys’ college three streets away. They have come for the girls first, and the doubles as a kind of side order. And now the girls have arrived. Vashti Krishnu is here. Her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Krishnu, who consider themselves to be of high-calibre Indian ancestry, prefer not to know that their two daughters buy and eat street food. They know it is fashionable. The food section of the daily paper often praises the inventiveness and culturally hybrid taste of Trinidadian street food — the doubles, aloo pies, tamarind balls, pone, sugar cake — hailing it to be among the tastiest in the world. But still Dr. and Mrs. Krishnu can’t bring themselves to eat food prepared by people whose sanitary habits are unknown, food served in the germ-filled and fly-infested outdoors. Pria Castano, whose father’s law office is at the top of the promenade, is here, too. And so is Felicia Clark, whose mother works as a clerk in the police station. Lloyd Gobin is also here. His mother teaches at the convent and his father is the manager of the furniture and rug store in the town centre. Being a more open-minded kind of Indian, Lloyd’s father would see nothing wrong with his son being here but would not contradict his wife’s judgment.
Prefects from the girls’ school have been stationed to make sure the girls do not stray. The rendezvous between students from the two schools, orchestrated to look like little more than coincidental line-ups of boys and girls who happen to find themselves elbow to elbow, lasts no more than ten minutes, that being too long even so for buying this quickly prepared street food, which the girls must take back behind the gates to consume. Boys and girls take care not to be caught chatting or directly facing each other or acting as if these meetings have been planned. But those ten minutes will be the stuff that keeps them from hearing anything that goes on in class that afternoon, and the stuff, too, of that evening’s, that night’s, confused and excited longings.
The vendor’s helper — a girl, perhaps the vendor’s daughter — takes care not to look into the eyes of the students, many of whom are older than she is.
Vashti Krishnu knows better than to stand out here too long or to get caught chatting with the boys, so she orders her doubles — the vendor pulls a yellow chickpea-flour flap from a pile in a tea towel, readies a little square of greaseproof brown paper in the palm of the other hand, places the bara flat on top of that, then slaps its centre with a tamarind paste, and in the cup she has made with the back of the paste’s spoon she slaps on top a heaping tablespoon of curried channa and then pulls another flap over that, and folds the lot in two, and with a twist and flick of the paper’s ends she has created one order in less than fifteen seconds — and Vashti pays the daughter and heads back to the gate. She is about to cross the street that separates the promenade from the school when a bedraggled woman who had been hidden in some shrubs nearby hobbles with surprising speed toward her. Vashti hears her name. She spins around, and when she sees the woman her heart thunders. The woman appears to be old and haggard, but Vashti knows she is only a handful of years older than she is. The woman is, in fact, the exact age of Viveka, Vashti’s sister. The woman is thin, with the depleted meagreness of the alcoholic. Her long black hair is oily and clumped. She wears what was once a white shirt, a school shirt from not too long ago, but it is yellowed and soiled, and the trousers she wears, men’s trousers, are covered in dirt, dust, urine. They are several sizes too big for her, held high above her waist with a belt and, as if that were not enough, a length of heavy rope. She is barefoot.
Vashti wants to pretend she can’t see who has called her. She wants to pick up her pace and hurry across the street and back through the gates. And as much as she wants to do these things, she also wants to go to this woman, stand with her and ask if she can do anything for her. But she does not want her friends, anyone on the promenade, even people who are strangers, to see that she knows this woman about whom rumours have spread far and wide. People have driven their cars here on a Sunday to see if they could spot this woman. She is said to give her body to men, right here on the promenade, behind statues at night and in the bushes in the day, in exchange for a cigarette or money to buy a flask of rum. It is much discussed. Vashti hears the talk, and in this moment, as she lets her eyes meet the woman’s, it is as if she, too, is saying these things: “But if she is doing this sort of thing, what they say about her can’t be true then. It can’t be so that she is a buller. If is woman she like, how come she doing it with man? Well, maybe is not a bad thing, then. That might cure her. And from such a family, too. It is killing her parents. No wonder they put she out the house.”
But Vashti knows this woman. Merle Bedi. She used to come home to visit Vashti’s sister, Viveka, and Vashti and Viveka would sit in the living room and listen to this woman play Beethoven on the piano. And Debussy. “Clair de lune.” Their favourite. And when she played, she forgot the world around her. It was as if some unearthly understanding of the meaning of every note she played arched through her body, filled her lungs, and weakened her. Watching her made you breathless. Her fingertips touched each key, and the keys gave themselves up to her, as if they too had been waiting for her. Vashti and Viveka knew that Merle would be a great pianist one day. That is what Merle had wanted. But her parents insisted that the piano came too easily to her, and for that reason it should be her passion, not her job. They insisted that, since she did well also in the sciences, she was to study medicine. If only, Vashti finds her self wishing now, if only the other students, and the people staring as she walks slowly toward Merle, could know how brilliant and talented she is, and that playing the piano is her calling. Or was.
“Vashti, can you spare some money?” Merle asks.
Vashti is taken aback. She thinks Merle might have asked how she is. She instinctively holds out her brown-paper package of doubles. “No, but you can have this.”
Now that she has stopped and faced Merle, she wants to ask her something, to say something more, but her mind goes suddenly blank. Merle does not reach for the doubles but says, “You don’t have any money? I need some
money.”
Vashti says, “I don’t have more on me,” in such a soft, scared voice that Merle does not hear and comes closer.
“Vashti, listen, can you carry a message for me? Take a message from me to Miss Seukeran, please.”
Vashti steps back in horror.
“Wait, Vashti, wait. Do this for me, please. I need you to tell Miss Seukeran something for me.”
Vashti shakes her head emphatically and hurries across the street, tears welling in her eyes. At the gate, before going through, she turns, but Merle has already disappeared.
The convent, oddly, shares a wall with the cinema next door and if you listen just now, you will hear the lunchtime programming begin. The cinema’s walls are not soundproof, and in every direction the soundtrack of movie trailers can be heard above traffic sounds, and the laughter and chatter of students, vendors, and passersby.
Across the road, a half-minute walk down the promenade, is the last of the official and once-grand buildings along this strip. This point is known as Library Corner. It is here that the promenade’s glory peters out. It ends at a ragged intersection whose many converging streets and lack of traffic lights, and whose apparent system of blind trust, mirrors its more glorious front end. On either side of you now are private commercial structures that were built not to impress or to contribute culturally to the community in which they exist, but with materials and design meant purely to maximize the money-making potential of every square inch. A narrow roadway lined with dilapidated buildings leads to a public park that includes a football field, a running and cycling track, and several netball, volleyball, and basketball courts. Bleachers encircle the park. Behind them is the foot of the San Fernando Hill, a once-magnificent natural promontory and wildlife paradise in the heart of the town, a forest of bamboo, silk cotton, poui, and flamboyant, a bird watchers’ haven, a reptile sanctuary, a nature lover’s refuge, disfigured now with treeless trails that ensnare it, tractors and trucks crawling up and down its raw bruised sides, moving whole cubic acres of its yellow and white bedrock daily, its most perfect beauty pulverized for a most singular profit.