From Saint Damian’s came the sound of bamboo bussing. ‘Young fellas having a good time,’ Singh relished the cannon shots echoing across Chac Chac Bay.
They all wondered if time could stay so sweet.
Across the gulf, the ships in the harbour off Porta España blew their hooters and sirens, announcing the New Year of 1939. They could hear the oil tankers as far down south as Pointe-à-Pierre. Vincent called for a toast. He, Jonah and Singh drank in the New Year, Jonah sprinkling a libation of rum on the ground for the ancestral spirits, before filling their glasses. ‘You have to remember those who gone before.’
Singh called out, ‘Theo, come boy, come and have a nip for the New Year.’ The boy sat unmoving at the end of the jetty. He did not know Singh like he knew Jonah.
Vincent rested his hand on Singh’s arm, restraining his invitation to the boy. ‘He’ll come in his own time.’
‘Is the rum, Doctor,’ Singh explained.
The men drank and talked, while the boy stayed out till well past midnight, watching the flares from the fireworks in the Porta España harbour.
Let the boy have his freedom, Vincent thought. He wished for new things for him in this new year. He had not as yet opened his present. Remembering his own childhood, Vincent was playing daddy. He wished the boy had opened it, to find the new fishing rod. But he had left it, from a week ago, at the bottom of his bed, still wrapped in the red crepe paper.
Across the bay, the convent lights were on for midnight-mass. Sister Thérèse was again in Vincent’s thoughts, her hand on his, his on hers.
‘Things looking peaceful and happy tonight, eh! But it not going to stay so, for long,’ Singh said. The light was the colour of the rum they were drinking.
‘I feel so too.’ Jonah joined in, pouring himself another drink and striding out onto the verandah. His shadow filled the walls as he moved, a kind of colossus, overwhelming and enveloping them in his open arms, as he spoke and declaimed, ‘I feel so too! I feel so too! It not going to stay so. It can’t stay so, when the things that going on, going on.’
Vincent listened to the two men, who had been at Saint Damian’s longer than himself and had a closer feel for the patients, when they were not being respectful to Docta.
The three men were a map and a history of these islands. But, they could not be described just by their ancestry. They were who they were in themselves. Despite all the sympathy for his patients, his socialism, his membership of the Fabian Society when he was a student, Vincent wondered at times how Jonah, and particularly Singh, who had already voiced his distrust, viewed him. How did they see these colonial divisions, these histories of skin? He wondered whether they thought he belonged here. His family went back to 1840 on the island.
On returning from university, he had not re-entered the world of the cocoa hills, the houses with the turret rooms, among the tall teak and the immortelle. He had not been down to the Union Club, on Porta España’s Plaza de La Marina, with the sons of the white, linen-suited planters, standing on the balcony above the square, looking down onto the promenade, eyeing up the young mulatto girls strolling down Almond Walk under their parasols.
He was not going to the Country Club, the old de Boissiere estate house, Elyseé, a heaven in the imaginations of its founders, on Saturday nights to drink and dance, or play tennis in the afternoons. No, he had not dropped in at Casuals and Tranquillity, or the Sainte Claire Club, on the Maraval, for the fêtes and balls.
‘How you going to meet a nice young girl, darling?’ his mother would ask with prayers in her eyes, with rosary beads entangling her fingers, with novenas in her thoughts, and whispered ejaculations to Saint Jude, or whoever was the patron saint of pure love and marriage for hopeless cases. ‘You know is better to come home and find one of our own girls from one of the good families, than come home with an English girl, not knowing what kind of people she has come from,’ was how his mother had put it in letters received by him in London.
When he visited her, on his days off now from his work at Saint Damian’s, she invariably had some suggestion, some Chantal or Nicole, some little Corsican butterfly, who had just disembarked from a ship of the French Line and fluttered ashore, back from finishing school in France; some countess even, from the Parisian cousins; some de Noirmont, some de Pompignon, some d’Origny, some Boisluisant, some Lahens.
His mother had a list. Increasingly, he did not go to Porta España, or up to the house at Versailles, on his days off, to have lunch, to meet aunts who smelt of vertivert and held his chin in their arthritic fingers, as if he were a boy of twelve, and been naughty for staying away so long. ‘Vincent, le petit garçon.’
After a priest in the family, he was the next best thing, a doctor. If not the consecrated fingers to bring Christ down upon their altars, at least a physician, to keep them in good health, to do some good for these people. They were always referred to in that way, these people, separate, and ultimately unsaveable, kind of diseased.
The look in his aunts’ eyes, when he talked about Saint Damian’s, was of thoughts that one day he would be canonised, become Saint Damian himself. ‘Don’t know how you do it, Vincent,’ they would say. ‘But, darling boy, for how long? Surely soon, you’ll want a practice of your own?’
They leapt ahead. His whole life was planned out on the verandah before lunch. ‘Come, come now darling have some nice callaloo and crab.’
‘We can work together, Doc.’ Jonah drew Vincent from his reverie. ‘Singh, what you say, boy?’ Jonah was the optimist.
‘I say it depend on we working together. That’s where the hope of the people rest. But…’
‘But, what Singh? What you mean, but?’ Jonah interrupted.
‘Wait nuh, man, let me talk. I know where I stand.’
‘What? Like you don’t know where we stand?’
‘Who is we, Jonah?’ Singh came back.
‘We, you and me and the doctor. Doc, what you say?’
Vincent winked at Jonah. Still there was tension between him and Singh.
‘Jonah, you and me come out of a village.’ Singh continued. ‘I see you. I definitely see you. And you, you see an Indian boy. You know me? I think so. But the doctor here?’
‘Singh?’ Vincent questioned Singh’s tone.
‘Let me finish, Doctor Metivier.’
Vincent sipped his rum and walked to the edge of the verandah and stared at Theo at the end of the jetty. What would the new year bring for the boy?
He turned back to listen to Singh. The rum was going to their heads. But, Singh was right.
There had been one or two Indian fellas and negro boys, like his pardner Jean la Borde from Arima, who boarded across the road from the college, before Vincent went away. Unlike Bernard, his brother, he had close friends among them. But, in the afternoons after school, they went their different ways home, into different kinds of homes. He saw the houses on the side of roads, down in a gully, perched on a hillock, when he passed in his father’s car. They lived in barrack rooms on the estate board houses, which were skeletons of their hoped-for selves, ribs of wood through which he caught glimpses of interiors, shadows of the people of the house, with the light leaking through at night from the kerosene lamps. They were half-finished houses, for lives which, he now began to feel, were half-lived lives. But who was he to say? They might be full lives, lived against all odds! Maybe he had lived half a life.
These men had emerged from these houses. Their journey to their ideas had started there. They had responded to a politics forged in the fire of poverty and history. They had been nurtured in that university of hunger, as Singh liked to lecture. They had gone on the hunger marches out of the cane fields and oilfields, from South to North.
Now, in this work here, there was an acceptance of him, because he was a doctor. He had something crucial to offer. But he could not do his job without them. An unconscious alliance of sorts was being formed. Though they were also suspicious, particularly Singh. Doctor Escalier had been the v
illain in the past. They did not automatically trust a doctor.
So, as the rum worked, the talk got better between the three men.
‘Singh, how you get into this business boy?’ Vincent was more relaxed. Singh, normally reticent in conversation, saving his words for the platform under the almond tree, got up and walked out to the edge of the verandah.
‘How you mean, Doctor?’ He spoke with his back to the two other men, looking into the darkness and the flicker of the flambeau next to Theo fishing on the jetty.
They listened to the sea breathing.
‘Well, I know very little about you,’ Vincent answered.
Singh turned back, looked at Jonah and Vincent and laughed. ‘You want to hear story? Jonah is the one with the stories. He have big history and thing from his grandfather and grandmother, who was a big Shango woman in Moruga. His father was a stick fighter in the gayelle. That was his arena.’
‘Don’t worry with he, Doc. He have story. Singh know well the story that driving him. Tell him the story, nah, man. The white man need to hear this story.’ Jonah laughed and winked at Singh, and then looked at Vincent, with his smile.
The rum was working. It was Old Year’s night. Vincent, again, noticed the hunched back of Theo on the jetty, intent upon his fishing. The flambeau bowed in the breeze.
The nuns’ Compline chants came across the silent waters of the bay. Their sombre night prayers were accompanied by the antiphons of the waves. The face of Sister Thérèse, cocooned in white, was there in Vincent’s mind.
‘This island is full of stories.’ Vincent lit a cigarette. ‘Now is a night for ghost stories.’
‘Not them kind of story Doc, not them kind of story, not the story about the nun who make baby with a fisherman and then drown she self. They say they does see she walking on the jetty at La Chapelle Bay, crying for she baby. Not them kind of story. Is not ghost, Doc. Is spirits. Yes, is spirits, oui. Hmm! Take another drink, Doc.’ Jonah handed the rum bottle to Vincent. ‘Tell him, Singh. Tell him the story of how your grandfather reach all the way here into them barrack room. Right up so, in Golconda on the way to Barackpore. How he reach there. How you come out of there. Tell him that story.’
‘The doctor know them kind of thing already, Jonah. What you talking about tonight? Like the rum really get inside your head tonight, boy. You want me to tell this story, so that you could tell them story about Africa.’
‘I go tell my story when I ready. Is your turn. Talk, man. I don’t need you to tell the doctor anything, so I could talk about Africa. When you look out across the Atlantic ocean, you not meeting any land till you reach Africa. You know that, you know that, man.’ Jonah knocked back his nip of rum. ‘Africa!’
Vincent turned to Singh. ‘In one way, I know the story Singh, but in another way, I know nothing.’ Vincent looked at Singh intently as he said this. Then he winked at Jonah.
‘You never wonder about the people in the barrack room on your father estate?’
‘Of course I have. But. You know…’
‘But what? You watch from the outside. You sit at at your table and you hear man beating woman. You hear baby cry. You hear someone get chop with a cutlass. Man beat he wife, he chop she and she bawl. You hear that? You is a child. Them is noise, noise you can’t properly understand, but it terrify you. It terrify you, what you hear coming out of the one room barrack room in the gully below the white bungalow, with the palms swaying with its plumes. Royal palms! Hmm! Royal palms! I watch that dream from inside the barrack room. I watch you. I watch all you good.’
‘You hear the story, Doc. Now he telling story. Take a next another rum, nuh, Singh? It go sweeten you mouth.’
‘Doctor, don’t worry with Jonah, nuh. Tell your story Jonah.’
‘Man, you only now start. You not even start.’ Jonah laughed.
‘I want to hear it as you tell it Singh. Take a smoke,’ Vincent encouraged.
Singh smiled. The rising anger and mockery slipped from his tone now. ‘It start in Calcutta. It end in Golconda. See how they call the place, making an India of Chinitat. It cross the kalapani.’
‘Chinintat, kalapani?’ Jonah echoed and beamed. ‘You hear words boss! That is words, pappy! Is how he does mix them medicine.’
‘Is so the ancestors first pronounce Trinidad. They cross the Black Water, the passage from Calcutta. Right so,’ Singh pointed to the Boca Grande, ‘We would’ve see she, the Fatel Rozack, coming through the Boca Grande, in the early morning.’ Then Singh pointed across the bay into the gulf. ‘Nelson Island, where them Jews in quarantine now, is there self, they drop the first load from Calcutta. Disinfect, delouse, this lot for Reform, that one for Retrench, another lot for Harmony Hall, hear the name. That one for this sugar estate, this one for the other, and so on. Right on these little islands, these things happen.’
‘You hear music, Doc. Hear that with a tassa drum coming out of Caroni. All of we have a calypso to sing. Indian have a calypso to sing.’
‘Jonah, you mamaguying me, boy. You making joke of me,’ Singh complained.
‘Come, Singh, tell your story, don’t bother with Jonah.’ Vincent was getting into the spirit of the men. Of course, they were all fuelled by the spirit of the bottle.
Jonah walked off the verandah down to the jetty and stood behind Theo, watching him fish. He knelt next to the boy and leant over and gave a little tug to the line. Singh and Vincent watched from the edge of the verandah. Jonah called up to them, ‘Red fish biting, red fish biting good.’
‘It mean something to me what I hear my father and my grandfather say. The way they tell we coming. The way we tell our arrival.’ Singh drew on his cigarette, inhaled deeply, and then blew the smoke slowly into the air.
‘Sure. I understand that.’ Vincent leaned towards him, lighting another cigarette.
‘Yes, I believe you.’ Singh softened with his own story. ‘You and me here. But our people…’
‘Our people?’
‘White people, East Indian people.’
‘Yes?’
‘We looking at each other. We just looking at each other.’
‘History delivered us here. The British Empire put us here together.’ Vincent was deeply involved.
‘Yes, Jonah people and my people, and we meet your people here. The first ones, they done kill out. You does only hear them in the language the parrots speaking,’ Singh laughed.
‘That’s true,’ Vincent agreed.
‘But, I mean it don’t have to stay so. Take you and me. Why you here, Doctor? Why I here?’
‘Medicine.’
‘Come. We don’t have to practice our respective skills here. You know that.’
‘Leprosy. The challenge, the interest,’ Vincent added.
‘Yes, of course. But I watch you. Is more.’
‘My patients,’ Vincent asserted.
‘People. They part of something bigger than themselves. They’re at the extremity of their own people. Shunned by their own.’
Vincent watched Singh. He saw him in a new light. He began to understand the man.
‘So, you and I here Old Year’s Night talking. An Indian and a French Creole. You not over there and I over here. We here.’ Singh reached out and put his hand on Vincent’s arm. ‘And Jonah, the black man. He not over there. He here. We three. That have to make a difference to the people, than if we apart, if we continue watching each other from afar.’
Vincent was following intently, pulling on his cigarette.
‘It make a difference for us, but above all it go make a difference for people. If, when we speak, we speak for all people. For the humanity of all people.’
Jonah had climbed the steps from the jetty. ‘That boy can fish, oui! Red fish, biting yes. How he coming on, that boy? He talking yet, Doc?’
‘He catching fish? No, not yet. He talks and then he doesn’t talk.’
‘Catching, for so! He already have three red snapper and some carite. We talking, he fishing.’ Jonah walked over to
the table with the drinks. ‘Like you need to bring a next bottle, Doc.’
‘You know Doctor, the story Jonah want me to tell you is our history. You have yours, and sure as hell Jonah have his. He go get into that. Them is good stories and we go have to keep on telling them because that is how we reach here. But now, you and me on this jetty, right now, and Jonah there. Our patients with their big big needs, and we have to ask ourselves what we going to do about that. Is not we, is them.’
‘You tell him the story yet, Singh?’
Singh did not pay attention to Jonah.
‘Now that Escalier gone, we have a chance. I see you pressing the Mother Superior.’ Singh was looking intently at Vincent.
‘I’m doing what I can.’
‘Sure.’ Singh lit another cigarette, slipping his fingers into Vincent’s pack on the arm of the Morris chair. He was intense, his white cotton shirt tight on his arms. His thin moustache and a wisp of a beard made him look older than he was, a young man of twenty-five. An earnest man. Vincent now saw his sensitivity, as he had before noticed his fastidiousness. ‘I determine we go see this thing turn out good. But there might be some hard things too.’
‘But Mother Superior catch between what she must see as the devil and the deep blue sea.’
‘Who’s the devil, Doc?’ Jonah laughed.
‘Well, let’s take the devil to be the Colonial Office,’ Vincent argued.
‘We is the deep blue sea, then? That okay with me,’ Jonah boasted.
‘You see, on the medical side, these Chaulmoogra Oil injections have to stop. They not doing any good. Not in the long run, anyway. They have more side effects than people want to admit.’ Singh lectured the two men now.
‘I agree,’ said Vincent. ‘You know the position.’
‘The position is, that they don’t want to spend money on the new Sulfa drugs which they could import.’
‘Escalier love to give people them injection, three hundred a week, yes. Poor people,’ Jonah threw in.
Singh continued, ‘There’s the business of accommodation. Men must be able to visit the women, have relationships. Married men must be able to live with their wives. We’ll have to work out what we do with the children. There are different theories about this infection thing, you know. Different theories about contagion.’
Night Calypso Page 9