by Shani Mootoo
It did not last long, though. Once the car and roadway were no longer visible he tensed and moved one deliberate step at a time. By himself, without someone to watch his back, he had the sense that anything could fall out of the trees onto him, or that he could be pounced on from behind. He tiptoed, even though the falling rain drowned the sound of his presence.
He hadn’t gone out or used the rifle in the rain before, and wasn’t sure how he and it would fare. And, he remembered, snakes got washed out in this kind of weather. In spite of the tall heavy rubber boots he wore, he felt that he could be bitten and die right there. In the forest. Alone. Like a man. Devika and the girls would live the rest of their lives wondering what on earth had made him leave his office and go into the forest by himself. His heart raced.
He walked a hundred or so yards into the forest. Suddenly, he stood still. He could hear something. Fear caused a thundering pulsing in his head. He did his best to listen beyond the sound of his own fear. He watched with the painful acuity of one whose life depended on it. Soon he could hear a steady, fast-paced panting. A whimper. He bent down and looked through the binoculars that hung around his neck. Rain covered the lenses and the forest was an undecipherable mess of fractured shades of green. Again, there was that sound, a wince or a whimper. He looked with his eyes, the water globbing on his eyelashes almost blinding him. About ten yards or so away, he could just see something that seemed out of place. A honey-coloured shape, huddled in the stalks of a stand of baliser. He couldn’t see its face, but judging from the shape, the heaving body, and the paler hanging folds of skin knobbed with rows of teats, he knew it must be a dog that had been recently nursing. Rabies came to mind. He watched for a while, until the dog ducked its head under and out from the heavy dripping fronds of the baliser. He aimed the rifle. In its hooded target lines, he could see the dog’s face. Its eyes were soft, its face soft — almost timid. The dog shivered. He lowered the rifle and looked around. The dog seemed to be alone. No pups, no sign of a person nearby or a squatter’s lean-to or shed. He lifted the barrel again, and let the scope’s target lines roam the face of the dog. He let it run down the dog’s body. Its neck. Its visible hind leg. He lifted it toward the chest. There. Between its ribcage. He steadied himself and cocked the rifle.
Suddenly, above the patter of rain falling he heard what could be nothing other than the clearing of a man’s throat. He was so startled that he made a fast turn, slipped on the slimy floor of rotting leaves, and fell over. He quickly righted himself and looked about. About the same distance away as the dog, but off to its side now, the glow of a cigarette revealed a man whose face was obscured by a straw hat with a brim wide enough to permit him to smoke in the rain. The man was stooped in the root system of a balata tree.
It horrified Valmiki to think he had not seen that glow. The man remained on his haunches, as still as if he were a bird asleep on one leg. But the lit cigarette gave away the fact that he was watching, and his well-timed throat-clearing said that he disapproved, and intended to interrupt whatever it was that Valmiki had been contemplating. Valmiki wondered if the man was alone. If he hadn’t seen this man, he wondered, what else was he missing? The man did not look like someone Valmiki had met in the village while travelling there with Saul, and made no sign of rising, or wanting to talk, or even to quarrel. Valmiki, still hunkered on the ground, was terrified that the man might also carry a gun. His temples throbbed. He suffered an acute shame, like a schoolboy caught in the act of doing something wrong. He had the real, albeit fleeting thought, of turning the gun on himself, if only to handle his self-inflicted humiliation. The barrel of the rifle would have been much too long to accomplish even this, and he imagined himself further mortified by yet another incompetence.
Hastily, he stumbled backwards, keeping an eye on where the man stood, wary that a bullet from the gun the man might carry might be racing in a crippling hurry toward his spine. Finally, he turned and ran forward, arriving back at his car his only desire now. He sweated, and was drenched in a way that no rainfall could have matched.
WHEN VALMIKI FINALLY REACHED HIS CAR, HE SPUN IT AROUND AND got out of there — not caring about the bumpy road — out of the village, out onto the main road, and made his way back into San Fernando faster than was legal or safe. All the way he shook his head, as if trying to dispel the act and the knowledge that he might have, that he could have, that he almost pulled the trigger on a sitting, nursing, shivering dog. He didn’t know which was worse, to have been so close to doing this or to have been caught in the act. He had also to find a plausible, acceptable reason for running out of his office in the middle of the day without telling his staff, and with a room full of waiting patients.
Back in town, he went to The Victory Hotel first, where the staff knew him well. They were not surprised to see him on a workday — but to find him drenched, his clothing mud-splattered, his shoes caked, him looking like a fugitive and without a woman? They gave him a room, no questions asked, expecting that a woman was bound to arrive looking for him. However, in record time, the staff noted, he had changed — not into his usual work attire but into the clothing that was kept in the trunk of his car: khaki slacks and a white golf jersey — and was out of there. He was a handsome man, the staff, both the men and the women, agreed, and so gentle, they said, adding: no wonder all those women he comes with here like him so much.
Valmiki arrived at an excuse that involved him making a stop at Maraj and Son Jewellers. Under the guidance of the owner, Sunil Maraj, he would buy Devika, Viveka, and Vashti a piece of jewellery each. The explanation would be partially true: having just seen a patient who had the effect on him of making him think of his family, he was overcome with appreciation for each one of them, and wished to express this, so he had left the office early in search of the perfect gifts. He would buy them the best there was, and perhaps they would ask no more questions. The bonus, he thought, would be that Devika might be placated, at least for a short while, and Viveka, through some heaven-sent generosity, might settle down and behave herself.
Viveka wasn’t home when he returned. He handed Devika and Vashti the presents. They were surprised, speechless, and made a gaggle of sounds that were lost on him. His mind was on something else: his relief that he hadn’t had time to pull the trigger.
Viveka
EARLIER THAT SAME DAY, VIVEKA WALKED DOWN THE HILL FROM Luminada Heights and from there took a local taxi to the stand just outside of the San Fernando General Hospital. The umbrella she sheltered under did nothing to keep her feet dry. The legs of her jeans were damp and clung to her thighs, and her feet were wet and splotched with debris from the street. She stood in a huddle with several other people under the ample awning of the taxi stand. A doctor who knew her as Valmiki’s daughter drove through the gates of the hospital, spotted her, and pulled up his car. He drew down the window and greeted her. She knew he was bound to be wondering what she was doing waiting in the rain, outside of the gates of the hospital, for a taxi, but wouldn’t come right out and ask. She saved him the trouble with a harmless lie: “I am doing a project that involves public transportation.” The look on the doctor’s face brightened. After that she positioned herself a little behind another waiting passenger and made sure to duck down whenever a face she knew from her family’s world of friends passed by.
The wall behind her stank of urine, the odour like a vapour leached by the rain. The woman at Viveka’s side held a handkerchief to her nose. There didn’t seem to be any judgment in this; she just held the kerchief there as if it were the most natural thing to do. Viveka thought of doing the same, but felt that if she did she would certainly appear to be aloof and disdainful. The woman turned to her and said, “I don’t know why they don’t do something about the beggars sleeping under here, na. Is like every wall in this place is a public toilet.” Viveka smiled but remained quiet. From the way other passengers and passersby looked at her, some of them taking in her entire frame in a slow examination, she knew she seeme
d out of place at the taxi stand. She wondered which was easier — enduring all of this or just mustering up enough courage to sit behind the wheel herself and drive. Since getting her licence more than a year before, she had driven only a handful of times, and never unaccompanied by her mother or her father. Given the way people drove their cars —“as if they owned the streets,” people would say, and regardless of rules — and given the number of accidents and deaths caused by careless driving, she had no desire and even less courage to drive.
The waiting people chatted easily among themselves, even the ones who were clearly strangers at the stand, about the environment, the rain, the heat, the price of tomatoes, the morning’s newspaper headlines. Viveka felt unable to engage with them, and while the others watched her, no one but that woman had addressed her directly. Viveka looked across at the promenade to see if she might catch a glimpse of Merle Bedi. Cars passed between where she stood and the promenade, and she willed her vision to leap over the traffic, to zip through the rainfall all the way across the road, into and under bushes. She saw no one resembling her old high school friend and happily entertained the thought that Merle Bedi might have been taken back into her parents’ home.
The combination of rain and heat intensified the pollution caused by exhaust from the jam of cars. The hospital’s incinerators spewed their noxious gases into the sodden air. The nearer smells of urine, unwashed bodies, and too highly perfumed ones produced a dizzying cocktail that finally got the better of her. She was about to act as if she had just remembered something and quickly head inside the gates to one of the wards to which her father sometimes sent his patients and where she knew several of the nurses. She would call her father and tell him that the taxies were running late, and ask if he could, after all, send the chauffeur for her. Just then, the taxi that went from San Fernando to the stand in Curepe, near enough to the university, arrived.
Thank heaven for air-conditioning in the maxi-taxi in which she travelled. The low-lying land on either side of the road just outside of the city bobbed in a stew-like concoction of rain and the debris its flood waters had dredged.
As the taxi arrived in the central part of the island, the rain ceased, and the sun came out in a sudden burst for the first time in about ten days. The distant tree tops instantly glistened. The vehicle inched forward through a jam of traffic that stretched the length of the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway, the island’s north-south corridor.
Viveka stroked the case that held her cd player and a new cd she had won in a late-night radio contest. The contest had been held almost six weeks before, but she had only days ago received the prize in the mail. The night of the contest the Krishnu house had been in darkness, Vashti asleep in her room, and Viveka’s parents in theirs some hours ago. Viveka was unable to sleep, as usual, and had her cd player tuned to Radio Antilles. She was plugged into it with earphones. The host had offered a cd of rock’s greatest hits to anyone who could identify the last five songs that had been played, in order. Contestants had to mail in their answers by a certain date. She had never entered contests before, but in one of her usual impetuous moves she decided to enter and was shocked to hear her name, and her region in Trinidad, called on the air in the middle of another night ten days later. She had listened to the cd only once before today, and was more thrilled at having won it — won anything — than with the music itself. Now she wanted to listen to it again, to give it a second chance, but she did not want to offend her fellow passengers by shutting out their congenial chatter.
The four rows of passengers — twelve in all, resigned to their cramped seats in what was essentially a mini-van — and the driver were used to travel delays. When they first saw the queue of traffic up ahead, before the car had slowed to a crawl, one of the passengers had sucked her teeth and whispered, “Man, if it ent one thing, is another.” The driver, by way of apologizing, but not accepting any fault for this delay, offered, “Years I driving, and every time it rain is the same thing. The swamp lands does flood and it does overflow onto the road. And nobody would do anything. They could make a levee or fix the drainage. And when the same road dry, if you see how it mash up because of all this flood. You could believe this island have a lake that bubbling pitch day and night?”
The woman just behind the driver sighed audibly. She was an Indian woman with skin the blue-brown colour of sapodilla seeds. She wore her oiled black hair tightly pinned into a bun at the back. She wore, too, a scent reminiscent of oleander that was so strong it was as if a vial of it had spilled in the vehicle and spoiled in the heat. She said, “Is only skylark in this place. The people who could fix this road don’t have to use it. They only fixing-fixing the airport. And who you see using the airport? Not me. Only in Trinidad, yes!” At the back a man raised his voice. “Fire the whole lot of them. Tout bagaille. Bring in fresh blood. This country good only for government officials and white people. Is they who does get everything, and people like we? Nothing, nothing, nothing.” Then, “But you know, don’t make a mistake about this: it don’t matter the colour of the skin of government — white, black, Indian — all of them, once they get in, would be the same damn thing.” An older black man with grey hair and a hoarse British-accented voice commiserated, “It’s all about power. Power corrupts. No one embarks with bad intentions, but it is the nature of power. Power corrupts, I tell you. What are you going to change anything for, then? You must, of course, know the saying: better to stay with an evil that you know rather than a devil that will surprise you.” There was a moment of silence after this man’s interjection. Viveka wondered if the people in the car had been caught out by his accent or his inflected sagaciousness. Then the rumblings in the car piped up again, with the Indian woman offering, “Well, at least the rain holding up. I glad for the sun, too bad. The roads go dry out by this evening, God willing. But all you, look how this island small, na. Look over to the Central Range. The sun shining here, and over there you could see the rain falling hard-hard still.”
Viveka looked toward the Central Range. It was where her father and his friends hunted. What a weird man he was, she thought, killing things for sport. He was sort of brave, she supposed, going into the forest as he did. She had met his friend Saul, and of all her parents’ friends she was most drawn to him. Well, he wasn’t her mother’s friend. Why her father didn’t bring him around to the house she couldn’t understand. She could only put it down to the facts of Saul’s race and class. Saul seemed so unassuming, so unlike most of the men in their more regular social circles. Her father really was weird. Brave on one hand, a coward on the other.
THE SOUND OF THE OTHER PASSENGERS’ CHATTER LULLED VIVEKA. She felt no draw to contribute, but still a thrill to be in this closed-in space, privy to ideas and ways of speaking and being that were not part of her family’s everyday. She slipped the cd player between her thighs, rectitude washing over her, intent on being part of the travel experience. This feeling drew the morning’s quarrel with her parents to her mind, and without realizing it, she soon left the passengers behind with their chatter. That morning, after storming out of her parents’ room, she had gone into Vashti’s and plunked herself down on the bed as Vashti dressed for school. Vashti tried to placate her. “Last night Mom and Dad said that playing volleyball would just make you rougher than you already are.” At this, Viveka was on the verge of bursting with anger again, but she knew that if she controlled herself Vashti would tell her more. She feigned calmness and said, “Rougher?”
“Well, face it, Vik, you’re not like other girls. You walk so fast, and you don’t stay still, and you don’t dress up or wear makeup. You don’t even talk about boys. Are you still friends with that boy, Elliot?”
“Yes, and Elliot is just a friend. Why is it that every time a girl has a boy friend, I mean a friend who just happens to be a boy, everyone gets so excited or concerned? You haven’t said anything about him to Mom and Dad, have you?”
“No. You told me not to.”
“So you think
I am rough, too?”
“Well, not really. A little, I suppose. It’s just that you wear the same ‘uniform’ day in and day out.”
Vashti was sounding like their mother, but Viveka still needed to hear more, so she held the volatile responses accumulating in her head.
“When we have to go to a party or to dinner,” continued Vashti, “it’s always a major harassment because you only have one dress that you will wear and it’s not even dressy. Everyone else enjoys deciding what to wear, what will match with what, but you end up sulking and . . .”
Viveka listened. It was good, in one way, to know what they all thought. For the length of a sigh she wished she were more like Vashti. Then she answered, “They will see. I will be successful regardless of what I wear or look like. I will be strong, not flabby like Mom ...”
“Mom is not flabby,” an indignant Vashti flashed back.
“Well, she is not strong — I mean independent — either.”
“Mom said playing sports will make you muscular.”
“What did Dad say?”
“He agreed with her.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. I was just listening. Nobody ever asks my opinion.”
“Well, I am asking for it.”
This made Vashti smile. “Okay, Vik, just stand in front of the mirror.”
“So?”
“So, look at the way you stand.”
“I’m looking. What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“Well, look at how you push out your chest, and how your arms stick out from your side.”
“What! Well, so what? This is how I am.” That boxiness, as she thought of it, had served her well in her physical training classes in high school.
“But you look like one of those body builders in those weird competitions on tv. We females don’t stick our arms out so much. And walk with our chests so high in the air. Drop your chest a little.”