Foreign Soil

by Maxine Beneba Clarke

  “Wait a likkle minute,” Nathanial call te Clarise, gesturin’ te de collage ov photographs. “Tell mi, wat dis? Wat on eart goin’ on?” De Gleaner most time gat one photo on de front, but yere Nathanial lookin’ at photo after photo, all-a de damn smilin’ smug cricket team. “Cricket takin’ up alla de front page. Wat goin’ on?” Nathanial lif de newspaper close up te im eye. Look like de printin’ press done struggle wid de photo display. De ink all bled out inte gray, smudgin’ in de page margin.

  “It de cricketers,” Clarise reply. “Seem dem gettin’ a likkle famous ovah dere.”

  “Fool woman. Course it de cricketers. Mi can si dat wid mi own eye,” Nathanial snap. De woman well aware im still have trouble makin’ out all de words, but dat nyah mean im sof in de head. “Where dem playin’ at, Clarise? Dat wat mi askin’.” Nathanial bang impatient on de front page-a de paper wid im outstretch index fingah.

  “Owstrayleah.”

  “Where?” Nathanial search im wife face. “Where on eart is dat?”

  “Bottom ov de world, dem say. British rule, apparently. Big, big islan. Dem seh de whole Caribbean can fit inside one tiny likkle piece ov de country. Islan so big it also a continent.” Clarise walk ovah te de bookshelf, reach up an get de globe frum de top shelf, spin de ting aroun an hand it te Nathanial. Her fingah restin’ on a big mass ov land down de bottom. Nathanial cyant believe de size-a de place. Country bigger dan J is fe Jamaica an E is fe Inglan all roll up together.

  “A,” im seh te Clarise, “is nat gwan be jus fe ackee anymore,” an im bury im head in de paper as Clarise wander off wid de clothin’ basket, shakin’ her head.

  “Oww . . . Owstrayleah,” im repeat slowly.

  A is fe Owstrayleah.

  Nathanial crouch back down te study de newspaper. Long beach is stretch out behind de cricket team, waves breakin’ gainst de juttin’ rocks, like dem could easy-easy swallow up de roof ov de two-story buildin’ Nathanial now sittin’ in. It nyah look like de same sea dat Nathanial pass every day. Look rough, an wild, an capable ov anytin. Look excitin’, dat sea, an like it a different body ov water altogether. Nathanial survey de faces ov de cricketers. Look like dem in paradise, dem so delirious-happy.

  “Wat country dis, dat offah such reception te black West Indian man. Treat us like we kings!” im whisper ’citedly te imself.

  In one frame, captain Wesley Hall throwin’ im head back, dress all smartly up in im cricket whites an barin’ im matchin’ ivory teeth. In unudda, Frank Worrell solemnly shakin’ hand wid a gray-hair man in fancy suit. Nex shot de whole cricket team lyin’ back on towel on de beach, swimsuits so tight aroun dem genital region dat de photograph could belong in a dirty magazine.

  Somehow, some way, fe some strong-strong reason, Nathanial feel discontent coursin’ an careenin’ aroun im veins.

  E is fe envy.

  Im close im eye fe moment an im tink im can hear dat blue-black thrashin’ ocean breakin’ gainst de coastline. Im sure im can hear de people ov Owstrayleah cheerin’ im on an smilin’. Nathanial peek out frum im fantasy te close-examine de photo once more.

  “Well mi nevah. Big islan. Big, big islan.”

  Few mont ago, wen de South African cricket team tour Inglan, some-a de British, dem protest frum de sideline. Nathanial nyah catch dem grievance in full, but it about dat dreadful partheid business. De protesters dem so angry-loud dem even disturb de broadcast on Clarise wireless. But in dis country, dis Owstrayleah, look like dem happy-friendly an nat givin’ an owl-hoot wat color skin ye gat wen ye turn up, like dem gat nat a care in de world bout trivialities like dat.

  “Dem bin playin’ dere few days now. Whole country done fall in love wid dem. Introduce dem te prime minister an all manner-a important folk. Like dem national hero or sometin.” De empty washin’ basket a-perch on Clarise hip.

  “Dat so?” Nathanial cyant tear im eye frum de newspaper page.

  “Dem callin’ dis cricket season de Calypso Summer, affer de team. An cause it always summer dere, in dat country.” Clarise a-whistle de Linstead Market tune as she wander back out inte de lounge.

  Clarise retire te bed early. Light trickle sofly frum de room. De full, fat moon castin’ an eerie brightness ovah Kingston. Nathanial Robinson, who nevah in im life bin all dat keen on de cricket, labor one sentence at a time tru de sport section ov de paper.

  * * *

  De Saturday mornin’ sun shine hot tru de bedroom window an onte Nathanial face. Smell-a oat porridge an cinnamon drift in frum de kitchen. Empty space in de bed nex te de man, where Clarise already gat up. Nathanial adjust im sleep shorts, roll ovah, sit up, swing im legs ovah side-a de bed.

  De Gleaner’s fole up careful on de table nex te Nathanial side-a de bed. De still-smilin’ faces ov de cricketers follow im as im rise an walk ovah te de window.

  Frum up yere, im gat a prime view ov central Kingston. Dat gotta be bout de only advantage ov dis tiny-small city partment im an Clarise have share de past three years. Sunlight pierce tru de dirt-streak window. Nathanial ease de window open, one hand shieldin’ im eye. Im gaze ovah de roof ov de town hall, pas Jamaica Bank an down on te de balcony ov de post office buildin’.

  Weekend Kingston already alive an fierce-breathin’. Market an shop doors swing to an fro as de city people lazy-bustle about dem business. Motorcars drive erratic aroun de wide street: showin’-off drivers pullin’ up sharp te chat outta dem windows wen dem pass familiar face.

  It a usual Saturday mornin’. Nuttin’ odd or outta place. De city below fidgetin’ no more an no less dan usual. But dis mornin’, somehow, someway, fe some reason, wen Nathanial Robinson gaze ovah de city im grow te love so-so dear, Kingston feel insignificant small.

  R. R is fe restlessness.

  The Stilt Fishermen of Kathaluwa

  THE OCEAN hums like a snoring monster, as if at any moment the great olive-green bulk of it could awaken in a thrash of claw and snarl, ready to protect its treasure. Asanka stares out at its rippling scales, tries to ascertain how much time they have before the beast stirs for breakfast.

  In the eerie predawn darkness, all thirty or so of the men seem to be holding their breath. Asanka looks slowly to his left, then to his right. They’re standing, the group of them, in a huddle on the deck, thin brown legs poking out of black or blue shorts, narrow shoulders coat-hangered beneath thin cotton T-shirts.

  “Do not wear white,” the two men had said when they’d gathered the passengers together three days ago for the first leg of the journey, made them search through their travel bags. They’ve left those bags behind now, in the back of the truck. Asanka wonders what will happen to his things, realizes now how clearly white would have been seen in the night: beamed across the coastline to government boats, or fishermen desperate or jaded enough to have their eyes fixed on a reward.

  Asanka thinks they’re somewhere near Galle. Perhaps in some small fishing bay just far enough around the corner from the port to be hidden but not overly suspicious. In a small, still group like this, silent and watchful, backs arrow-straight, their dark shirts casting only the faintest of silhouettes against the charcoal sky, it feels as if they are soldiers on guard. Asanka wonders how many of the other men, all Tamils like him, have been here before, have peered with their makeshift battalions through the dim light, waiting on a town or a city or a people to finally fall asleep—waiting for the blue-black darkness that makes the bloodshed seem less real.

  “Bloodshed when night falls is just a bad dream at sunrise,” Asanka’s commander used to say, inspecting up and down the double-line of soldiers in the morning, slowly pacing the aisle of blood-soaked uniforms.

  The two boatmen, whom Asanka’s begun referring to in his head as Mustache and Ponytail, start dividing the group. Asanka and the two other boys are ushered quickly over to the front of the boat with the smaller men, bare feet quietly pattering on the slimy wooden deck. The man with the mustache pulls at the door of the fish hold, swings it back on its hinges, nods at them to get inside. The me
n crowd around, looking down into the small compartment. Asanka doesn’t like small spaces, can’t stomach close bodies anymore.

  The first time he tried to run from the Tigers, Asanka and his little friend Dinesh, they locked both of them in a potato chest. They made them crouch right next to each other, arms folded across their chests, knees squashed into their chins. Then the Tigers had nailed the lid shut, and the footsteps and laughing voices had slowly moved away. Thinking about it now, Asanka wants to throw up. He can remember the cramping pain, the darkness, the heat, the vibrations of his friend’s chest as he heaved air in and out, wheezing and calling for his mother. Asanka knew he hadn’t seen her in over a year. After a few hours, Dinesh had peed his pants. It had pooled warm around Asanka’s ankles, soaked into his shorts.

  One by one the other two boys and the small men hoist themselves into the fish hold, curling into crouched positions next to each other, until only Asanka is left, staring into the square metal cupboard. Mustache looks at Asanka, prods him with the wooden handle of his fish knife. Asanka shakes his head, takes a step away, starts to cry. The tears feel strange welling in his eyes—foreign. They tickle as they run slowly down his cheek. Asanka reaches up and rubs them away, black dirt from his fingers smearing across his face.

  The man looks toward the back of the boat, calls sharply to his friend, who is quietly settling the other men cross-legged on the floor of the small cabin. Mustache gestures with his fishing knife. The other man, tall and thin with curly black hair pulled back into a ponytail, makes his way over.

  “Get in,” Ponytail says.

  Asanka avoids looking at them, shakes his head no, closes his eyes, and braces himself for the blow. If they shout at him, they will wake the ocean for sure, wake the snoring beast. Tears are falling, but Asanka doesn’t feel fear in the way that he used to. His stomach doesn’t turn itself inside out anymore at the sight of raw flesh, at the naked butchered bodies of nearly still girl-women lying ripped on the roadside. His lost fingers ache, though, when he’s afraid, the stumps pulsing like a heartbeat. He rubs at his hand, moves his gaze out to sea. The waves are breaking flat and even. It’s as if he could walk off the boat right now, climb across them like giant steps until he reaches the flatness beyond, as if he could just walk across the water and away from Sri Lanka.

  Asanka wants to leave, more than anything. His father and mother must have sold almost everything they own to get him here. For a boy traveling alone, the men had asked for double. He could not go back to Dehiwala, not even to see them after so long away. The government soldiers are watching the house, waiting for him. Asanka does not know what he’ll tell his father if the men put him off the boat, doesn’t know how he will carry the shame. All because of the stupid fish hold.

  “Get in!” Ponytail says, louder now, scanning the beach behind them as he speaks.

  One of the men seated on the cabin floor rises slowly to his feet, ducks out of the doorway. He’s a small man, only a palm width taller than Asanka, though he moves like his bones have seen sturdier days.

  “Please. Leave him. He’s just a boy. I am almost as small as he is.” He hoists himself quickly into the fish hold before Ponytail or Mustache can protest, points to Asanka and gestures toward the group of men sitting on the cabin floor.

  Asanka pads over and lowers himself onto the cold floor, ignoring the annoyed glares of the other men. Ponytail and Mustache move away from the fish hold. They stand in the center of the boat, their heads bowed, talking in whispers. Snatches of the hurried discussion escape from their huddle: “. . . not good . . . leave both of them . . .”

  There’s a break in the argument, a moment of silence. The sea blows through it, cool and salty, smelling of fish guts, damp wood, and seaweed. Asanka runs a finger along the bumps in the deck, imagines the boat post-catch, the entire deck writhing silver and shimmery as a hundred netted herring thrash and wriggle, gasping for air.

  Fishing was the first time Asanka ever saw death close up. When he was a very small boy, he used to holiday at his grandparents’ place in Gampaha. His poppo would take him night fishing on a secret stretch of the Kelani River. On their first trip ever, when their small haul of fish was upturned onto the deck, five-year-old Asanka had stared with wide eyes as the terrified squirming creatures grew limp with defeat. He’d grimaced as his poppo slid his knife along each of the fish bellies, scraping their red-jelly insides over the side of the boat. Each plop of their guts into the deep blue below had made him feel like vomiting.

  Mustache walks over to the open fish hold, scans the group of men for Asanka’s rescuer. Holding the sheathed blade of the knife, he swings the long handle at the man’s face. Crack. Asanka’s new friend clutches at his forehead. A thin trickle of blood dribbles slowly through his fingers.

  “If the boy is old enough to get on this boat, he is old enough to behave like a man.” Mustache swings the door to the fish hold shut.

  Asanka stares at Mustache’s face as he bolts the door. Something in the man’s expression, in his bowed shoulders, reminds Asanka of the way he felt after the potato chest, after his finger was taken, of the way he became when his heart had hardened and he’d finally stopped trying to run.

  Ponytail moves toward Asanka and the other men crouched in the cabin. He unfolds a large sheet of dirty canvas, shakes it out, lays it over their heads. “We need to look like just a few fishermen,” he says, in a nervous voice that makes Asanka feel anxious as well.

  There is a tiny hole in the canvas, right near Asanka’s cheek. As they navigate their way out of the bay, he sees three figures outlined against the early-morning gray: thin, deformed giants swaying above the shallows. The boat draws closer, closer still to them. Asanka gasps softly, then immediately covers his mouth with his hand.

  Three bare-chested men are sitting perched above the water on long poles, clutching to them lizardlike with one hand. They crouch there, several meters above the water, balanced on thin cross-branches, looking as if they’re suspended in midair. They stare into the water, each of them moving around a thin fishing rod with their free hand. The plastic bags tied halfway down their stilts are sagging with the weight of their catch.

  In one slow movement they turn to look at the boat, smiling at Asanka right through the hole in the canvas. The fishermen nod their heads, as if to wish safe passage. In the darkness beneath the canvas, Asanka can’t tell if any of the other passengers have seen them. Asanka had thought they were extinct, the stilt fishermen of Kathaluwa. He learned about them back at school. There were photographs of them in his geography book, perched atop their fishing stilts, the salt-sprayed sinew of their shiny brown muscles set against a flat blue backdrop. The stilt fishermen of Kathaluwa. Asanka squeezes his eyes shut. Opens them again. The fishermen have disappeared. The glints and shadows of the ocean must be playing tricks on him.

  * * *

  Loretta wakes with Sam’s breath on her cheek. Before she even opens her eyes, the stale smell of last night’s Jack Daniel’s annoys her. Client drinks, he’d finally texted her at a quarter to eight, after she and her mother had been waiting at the restaurant for forty-five minutes. Her mum hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even moved a muscle in her face. She’d been cautious about criticizing Sam ever since she and Loretta had words about it several months back. She hadn’t needed to last night, though—Loretta had instantly felt the anger creeping into her own face, flushing the freckled white of her cheeks as pink as marshmallow.

  When Loretta opens her eyes, Sam’s face is twenty centimeters from hers, his cheek smushed into the pillow as if his nonna’s gripping it between thumb and forefinger, pinching a hello. This close up, Loretta can see the pores on Sam’s nose, the sparse line of black hairs joining one eyebrow to the other, the dark dots of morning stubble peppering his square jaw. His crow’s-feet are deepening. Sam’s looking even better as they push toward their midthirties. Somehow this annoys Loretta rather than pleasing her.

  Loretta rolls slowly over to che
ck the time on her alarm clock. Ten past seven. She watches the second hand tick around once, twice, thinks momentarily of switching off the alarm. Saturday morning’s the only time Sam ever sleeps in. Fuck him, though. He was so toasted when he arrived home last night that she heard him drop his keys on the doorstep three times before he managed to open the front door. She stares again at the thin black clock hand as it ticks a circle one, two, three more times. Eeep. Eeep. Eeep. Eeep. Loretta hates the sound the alarm clock makes. It’s like the warning beep of a reversing truck. A threat. You had better come and face your day. She buries her head in the pillow and groans softly, pretending to have just woken up. She leaves the beeping just long enough to wake Sam, then stretches out and hits the snooze button.

  Sam stirs behind her, lifts himself up on his elbow. “Did you just hit snooze?”

  “I’ve got to get out to the center, and I’m still tired.” She giggles guiltily.

  “Bullshit.” He jabs his finger into her back. “You just want to punish me for getting sloshed last night.”

  Loretta giggles again, tries to divert the conversation. “Why do they even have snooze buttons? Isn’t waking up at a set time the whole point of an alarm clock?”

  “I thought we were talking about you being pissed off at me,” Sam says, laughing. “And anyway, don’t be lazy. I’m already up.” He spoons his body into Loretta’s back. The stiffness beneath his boxer shorts digs conspicuously into her left thigh.

  “Very fucking funny.” She wriggles out of his grasp.