There was a noise like rain coming down from the hills, like a river flowing over rocks, pelting down. The noise was like gargling drains in the wet season. But this was not rain in the hills.
The sky was a tight blue drum.
Vincent could see people coming down from Indian Valley, the place they called Fyzabad.
They had reached the lower huts on their descent. Here as well, everybody seemed to be out at the same time, and marching with the same intent. From out of the other valley, beneath Cabresse Hill, more patients were emerging out of the crowded huts; one room barrack rooms, housing at least twenty patients each. This had to change; the discussion with Singh and Jonah on Old Year’s Night was going through Vincent’s mind.
Young boys dragged each other along on pieces of rusty galvanise. Some pulled the aged and infirm in box carts. Their grating on the dirt tracks added to the great noise of their arrival at the meeting place under the large, shady almond tree outside the stores, where people were protecting themselves from the hot sun.
Already the boys and girls were hanging out on the verandahs in front of the children’s wards, mimicking the marching cries of their elders, ‘Justice and Bread!’ Their singing soared in their high, shrill, children’s voices.
A group of fellas called out to Vincent as they passed him. ‘You with us, Docta?’
‘Look, the Docta boy,’ some of the girls called out who had met Theo in school.
Patients from the hills who had not seen Theo before asked, ‘Is your son, Docta?’ He drew close to Vincent, away from the outstretched claw hands trying to touch him on his arm, take his hand.
When they arrived at the almond tree they saw Singh, standing on a box. ‘We demanding Justice and Bread, brothers and sisters,’ he proclaimed.
It seemed that nearly all two hundred patients were shouting, ‘Give us justice and bread.’
Others shouted, ‘Give us fair wages.’
Vincent, with Theo holding his hand tightly, could see that Jonah was on a box as well. What was going on? Why had they not told him about this? Questions boiled up in him.
Singh and Jonah were both leading this grand meeting. But Vincent could see that it was Jonah who was the real leader of this crowd, towering above everyone else.
Singh lit the fires with his persistent and unrelenting argument. He had the contacts with the young fellas who had rallied everyone this morning. He had the detail. Jonah had the vision.
It was then that Vincent saw and heard Ti-Jean hanging over the banister of the boys’ verandah and crying out, ‘Docta, Docta, you see Jonah! You see Jonah!’
Behind Ti-Jean were the small community of nursing sisters as if they were standing for a formal photograph, or before a firing squad. They were unrecognisable from each other. Sister Thérèse was lost in the anonymity of her community.
Then, like the sound of Hosay, a Muslim group had started up the beating of the tassa drums. Suddenly, the place was electrified as people picked up anything that they could find. They beat anything: wood on galvanise, stones on dustbin covers, old pans filled with gravel. They made an orchestra out of the refuse and decay strewn around the yard. They made a music of protest, a symphony of demand.
Vincent did not know where to stand, where to take up his position. This crowd on the move was like wildfire in the cane fields, like bush fire in the hills, this dry season. ‘Theo, stay close to me. Eat this bread and cheese.’
Suddenly, a hot wind swirled through the yard tearing into the roofs, almost ripping them off. The sea pounded the shore. ‘This is a sign,’ an old woman standing by Vincent keened. ‘Docta,’ she pulled on Vincent’s sleeve, from where she was crouching, brought low by one of her amputated legs.
Vincent stooped down to her height. ‘This is something, yes,’ he agreed. A few had parasols, protecting them from the relentless sun. The hot wind tugged at the fragile frills. The drumming and the chanting came from the crowd collecting under the almond tree. Theo held onto Vincent.
This whole scheme of Singh’s had jumped ahead without Vincent realising. His head was buried in his research, his responsibility for Theo and, he had to admit, with Sister Thérèse. But now, he had to talk to Singh and Jonah. How could they be encouraging this without consulting him?
The wind was tearing into the crown of the coconut palms. It was twisting them and then letting them go in a furious flurry. The wind ripped the palms to tatters.
The crowd under the almond tree were attentive to the speeches. Singh was talking to small groups now, going around from one to the other. They were mostly men, but there were some women. They were a mixed group of negro and Indian. Vincent could see that Jonah was also working the crowd.
He joined them and was greeted warmly. He was their doctor. He was the one who could help them. He would cure them. This would not cure them, Vincent thought. Their hope overwhelmed him. He could see that they knew that there was something that Singh was telling them. He could tell from the talk, that they wanted him to join them in their demands.
‘You can see what we saying, eh, Docta?’ they chorused.
‘I know what you saying.’
‘So, you with us, Docta?’
‘I with you, of course, I with you,’ Vincent said easily, moving further into the crowd, careful to pull Theo along into a clearing within. Then he felt scared by what he had just said, so easily, shaking hands, touching heads. ‘I with you.’
He lost Theo for a moment. Then the boy grabbed his hand again.
‘The Docta with us,’ Anetta Pleasant shouted to those around her, as Vincent made his way through the crowd.
He noticed that a small dais from the schoolroom had been set up near the trunk of the almond tree. Some of the women were hanging ragged bits of red cloth to the low branches. A table with three chairs had been placed on the small dais. Above it, hanging between the branches, was a banner. The words bled the red of sorrel. BREAD and JUSTICE, it proclaimed. Singh mounted the dais. ‘Comrades!’
He had gone beyond what they had talked about on Old Year’s Night. Vincent felt he had to see him before the meeting got out of control. He had to protect his patients. It would be so easy to rouse them. And he had wanted to take up Singh’s suggestion to leave Theo with him at his pharmacy. How could he do that now?
Vincent was struck by the use of the titles, Brother and Comrade. He remembered the meeting in London recruiting for the Civil War in Spain. He felt worried for his patients.
Voices from the crowd joined in with, ‘Speakers on the stage.’ Jonah clambered aboard. He towered over Singh.
‘Well, I think we can start comrades, friends, brothers and sisters,’ Singh continued.
Someone at the front near the dais shouted out, ‘And what about the Docta?’ It was then Singh and Jonah seemed to notice Vincent for the first time.
‘The dais not too big, you know, boy,’ Singh quickly rejoined.
Vincent heard the doubt in Singh’s voice. He saw him look at Jonah and raise his eyebrows in apprehension. But he also saw Jonah smile with encouragement at the suggestion. He knew that Singh wanted him as the doctor to be on his side, as he had repeatedly said. But he also knew that Singh had suspicions about him, because of his French Creole background.
Then a couple of fellas started to clap, and others picked it up with the chant of, ‘Docta, Docta, Docta.’ Singh looked uneasy. Jonah beamed. Vincent dismissed the idea at first, but was then pushed from behind and moved towards the dais. He tugged Theo along.
In the end, he went with the movement. By now, almost all the adult patients had collected. He turned as he left the edge of the crowd and looked across the yard to where he glimpsed the nuns on the verandah of the children’s ward. He looked for the face of Sister Thérèse. He needed to see her face. Once under the almond tree, he lost sight of her, her frozen apprehension.
He took his seat. Singh, Jonah and himself were crammed on the small stage. Theo was standing at the front just beneath him, next to Christia
na. Singh began his speech.
‘Tell them Singh. You hit the nail on the head, boy. We asking to be recognised as human,’ Mr Lalbeharry shouted from the crowd.
The crowd began getting worked up and shouting, ‘Human, human, human.’ Singh looked relieved that he had managed to carry the crowd. Vincent began to look uneasy. Jonah beamed his approval. Some of the people had shifted, coming in closer, and Vincent caught another glimpse of Sister Thérèse on the verandah. He could not see her face plainly, but something in the gesture, the way she moved, assured him that he had recognised her. He had to tell her the news about Czechoslovakia. How was she going to be included, he wondered. How would the nuns be included in this struggle?
Mother Superior was one thing, but the other sisters who worked day and night, giving their labour and sacrifice, had to be part of what it means to be human, part of this struggle. Even Mother Superior must be human too! Jonah would understand that, and when he could talk to Singh more privately, he would see that they had to carry everyone, to carry the best in people, to get what they wanted for their patients.
As Singh continued to outline the main demands for a minimum wage, better living conditions, improved working conditions, more effective distribution of drugs and other remedies, Vincent wanted to stop the big speech to the people as a crowd, and get Singh to look into the faces of the individuals at his feet. He preferred the Singh on the jetty talking on Old Year’s Night, someone who was becoming his friend.
Vincent noticed Beatrice at the back of the crowd. He waved. At first, she did not seem to see him. Then she smiled and waved. He now understood why she had not turned up this morning. Some of the women had rosaries entwined around their fingers and stumps. Beatrice joined in these prayers.
Singh was winding up, trying to be heard over the screams of the parrots. ‘Keep up your spirits. Comrades, we’ll meet here tomorrow at the same time. I’ll have seen the Mother Superior. By then, myself and Doctor Metivier will have talked to her.’ He sat down, wiping his brow with his handkerchief. He looked relieved. He turned towards Vincent.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Vincent blurted out. ‘Why whip up all this anger, this rage?’
‘I born angry. I born in a rage.’ Singh stared Vincent down. His discipline had snapped for a moment. Then they both controlled themselves up on the stage. Vincent looked down and smiled reassuringly at Theo.
Jonah stood up tall and broad. The crowd shouted and clapped. Vincent watched the stumps and clawed hands beating against each other. ‘Brothers and sisters. Brethren.’ He spoke now like a priest. ‘Let us join together. Let me teach you this, if you don’t know the words.’
Then Vincent noticed three of the policemen that were resident on the island standing at the edge of the crowd, looking in, surveying the meeting. Two were new officers, and one had been stationed on the island for many years.
Jonah continued, ‘I will not cease from mental strain, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand till we have built Jerusalem in Empire’s broad, fair and pleasant lands. Brothers and sisters!’
It was like a litany in the church, with the congregation repeating Jonah’s words. A hot wind took hold of the branches of the almond tree and the red banner with its words, Bread and Justice.
‘O Lord, Our God, arise, scatter our enemies, and make them fall. Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks. On thee our hope we fix.’ Vincent listened to the familiar words that Uriah Butler had used over and over again at meetings. Butler had come back from the First War, as did Cipriani with an education in liberty. He had seen the British working people fighting for their rights and he wanted the same for his people. He did not see why they should be second class citizens here on this island colony. Jonah relished the words and repeated them once again. The crowd were fired. He was not giving them facts like Singh. He was giving them passion, a vision. ‘I will have built Jerusalem in Empire’s broad, fair and pleasant land.’ He declaimed the poetry out beyond the almond tree.
While Singh’s voice was a shrill whistle, a flute, Jonah’s was a bass drum. He was speaking not only to the crowd below the almond tree, but also to the sisters on the verandahs, to Mother Superior locked in her office refusing to come out, but hearing each and every word that was spoken at the meeting. Jonah was speaking to be heard in Porta España, to be heard by the Governor, to be heard across the ocean in the very British parliament itself. He was speaking to the world.
He was Moses, as Vincent watched him, his head almost touching the branches of the almond tree. But he was also Jonah, hungry for conversion, but doubting his efforts. And for this, he had had to endure three days and three nights in the body of the whale. Vincent watched the dilemma in the boatman, between the Moses who wanted to lead his people into the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey, and Jonah who doubted he could have an effect on the people of Niniveh. He had grown fond of this man who brought him across the bay each morning.
The strong winds had freshened the stale, pervasive smell of the Chaulmoogra Oil and the smell of rotting flesh. There was a feeling of resurrection in the air, of the coming Easter in the breeze, after this Lenten heat and fast. Jonah was indeed the son of a Shango woman from down in Moruga.
Those orange lilies which burst straight out of the parched earth in the dry season, sprouting in clumps in the yard, seemed now, as the hot sun caught their petals, brought forth by the words of Jonah. The place could suddenly seem miraculous: yellow pouis and flaming immortelle in the hills.
This was Vincent’s awe. He culled from the remnants of his Roman Catholic liturgy the sense of the sacramentality in things. Things represented some other reality. It seemed so now, at this heightened moment, with the up-turned, hopeful faces of the congregation. It did seem like a church under the spreading almond tree. Vincent let it happen. He did not resist it with his reason, not altogether, at least, not emotionally.
While the policemen watched Jonah rousing the crowd, they also knew that this was Jonah the boatman who they blagged with on the jetty, Jonah, their pardner who they played cards with. Now, he was speaking as the leader of the people. They were taught to take note of that on behalf of the Colonial Constabulary.
‘Brothers in arms. Brother Singh give you the facts of the case. Is left to me to say one thing. Is not a question of dermatology. You know what I talking about. Is no big word for big word sake that I get up here to speak to you today. You know what I talking about. Is not the disease of the skin. Is the disease of the mind that I worry about. Is a matter of philosophy, is the politics of the matter. Tell me, if it was a bunch of white people down here, practically in Venezuela, you think they would treat us so? No brothers and sisters! Is because of the dermatology business, but is also because of the colour of this skin. I going to let the doctor talk to you about these things, because he is a white man. But you know he is your doctor who has your best interests at heart. We are citizens, brothers and sisters of the Empire. We demand the right of citizens of this Empire. We might be at the farthest reaches, on the periphery, as they tell us. We deserve the same treatment as if we at the centre, in London town. We must organise ourselves. Those of you who work in the laundry and kitchen, in the gardens, growing food for the benefit of all of we, going to have to down tools until they listen to us about the matters that Brother Singh speak to us about.’
Everyone cheered this suggestion with, ‘Strike.’
‘Brothers and sisters. I go introduce your docta to you. Docta Metivier.’ Vincent had been carried along by the rhetoric. Swept along, his anger with Singh was subdued.
The nuns were still on the verandah having a grandstand view of the proceedings.
Vincent waited for the cheering to die down. He smiled at Theo whose eyes were as big as saucers. He had been looking onto the crowd for almost an hour now. Vincent was so accustomed to dealing with his patients individually, that looking at all of them in a crowd, right there in front of him, was shocking. While he had grown accustomed t
o their individual ailments, no matter how advanced the illness in some, he did not always see them as a whole, as a community of sick. He was shocked now to look at them. Now he saw the stumps and the claw hands, the shortened fingers and the lion faces, the collapsed noses, joints jutting at awkward angles, faces disfigured with nodules. They were close to him on the stage, so he could see all these details as they hung onto crutches and each other, a ravaged group of people, decimated by an illness which instilled fear in others. Vincent rose to his feet.
‘Friends, I speak to you as your doctor. I speak to you as one who wants the best for your health and happiness. That means I want the best for you physically, but also, psychologically; for your peace of mind, for the comfort of your hearts. I don’t want you to be afraid. I don’t want you to be sad. You need to keep your spirits up to fight this disease in its many guises. You know that I have spoken to you about that. You must have confidence in yourself to live with your illness. You must not be allowed to live in isolation from each other, in your exclusion, in the prejudice which, centuries old, have made you do.’
The crowd listened quietly. They were accustomed to being soothed by the doctor and his words. Vincent looked across to where the nuns were on the verandah, including Mother Superior now. They were listening more intently than ever, because they would be most concerned as to where Vincent would place himself in the discussion.
‘Friends, we must look together at what is the best understanding of your disease, what it tells us about infection, contagion. We all want to be responsible about that, as you know. You know that’s what I tell you about everyday. Look after your habits of cleaning, personal hygiene. I know you do your best. We must help with that. These things touch on all that Singh and Jonah have been saying. Together we’re going to sort these things out.’ He wanted to display a united front despite his difference with Singh.
‘You talking positive, Doctor. But what if it don’t happen?’ This was young Christian la Borde.
Night Calypso Page 11