‘Strike, strike.’ Some of the fellas began to shout. The language of the Labour riots on Sancta Trinidad in the recent past, led by Butler, Rienzi and Cipriani in their different ways, had not been lost on the patients of El Caracol. Those events had inspired them then. Now they saw their own black man, Indian and French Creole up on the stage giving them a vision of how things might change for them.
‘Burn the place down,’ some the other fellas shouted.
Vincent ignored the shouts for strike and fire and spoke directly to Christian. ‘Christian, I tell you, I’m going to do all that is possible to make things better. Let us try. Let us come back to you after we have spoken to Mother Superior. Then, you can judge.’
Vincent spoke these last words with his head held high, so that his voice could carry beyond the shade of the almond tree, as far as the verandah where the Mother Superior was standing with her nuns. So, now, everyone would know where everyone stood.
The crowd applauded and shouted warmly. But, after Singh and Jonah’s rousing speeches, things had subsided with Vincent’s carefully chosen words. Vincent noticed that Singh looked as if he wanted some more fire in his words.
But Jonah patted him on the shoulder with, ‘Wise words, Doc.’ Vincent was glad for the warm approval from Jonah. Singh avoided him and lost himself in the crowd.
Then he realised that Theo was no longer where he had been at the front under the stage. He could not see him anywhere in the crowd.
Sister Thérèse was on her own on the verandah. He walked towards her. Before he reached the verandah, she had disappeared into the children’s ward.
He did not know where to turn. Why had she moved away? He wanted her to help him search for Theo. He stood for a moment looking at the crowd get into a march, the cries of, ‘Burn, Burn, Burn’ alternating with the chant, ‘Strike, strike.’
The police were manhandling some of the more exuberant, young, able-bodied fellas.
Singh and then Jonah took up positions at the head of the crowd. Vincent wondered if he should join them. Where were they going? Where was there to go? He had to find Theo. He was sure the rhetoric would simmer down. He decided that this was a demonstration of force to gear up the people, but then everyone would return to their usual tasks. Then he and Singh could meet up with Mother Superior. He turned to go inside to look for Sister Thérèse. Maybe Theo had gone to the school.
He found her in the pharmacy. She was alone. He shut the door quietly behind him. She continued with her work. He stood at the door. She turned. ‘Doctor?’
‘Good morning, Sister.’
‘Non, non, not a good morning.’ She looked weary and worried.
‘Have you seen Theo?
‘No. It’s a worrying morning.’
‘Yes, yes, it is as I…’
‘I understand. But is this the way?’ She was earnest.
‘Who knows?’
‘You were on the stage with Singh and Jonah. I saw you.’
‘You saw me? Yes, I was asked by the patients, to join them on the platform.’
‘Patients? I don’t see patients when I see them like that.’
‘Yes, mine and yours. They’re our patients,’ Vincent insisted.
‘You’re their doctor, not a politician. Look at them. What can they do? When they are like this they frighten me.’
‘They have an illness. But they have rights. They’ve entitlements, even more so because of their disadvantages. We must not forget that.’
They both stood and stared out of the window at the sea, as if there was an answer there.
The noise was coming from the yard in bursts. The marching and demonstration had not ceased as Vincent had expected. In fact, the chanting had got louder. ‘Burn, Burn, Burn,’ was accompanied by the drums, the percussion created out of the debris of the yard. Sister Thérèse turned towards the noise.
Vincent tried to change the subject by getting onto their work. ‘What are the results of your investigations? What’ve you seen below that microscope of yours?’ He tried to lighten things.
‘I think it’s as you’ve been suspecting. The paralysis is caused by damage to the nerves. This accounts for the anaesthesia. Why they forget their pain.’ She was impassioned.
‘It does not register,’ he added. He needed to find Theo.
‘So we can conclude our observations as to why they keep opening their wounds without knowing, or, why they can hurt themselves, and each other,’ she continued.
‘Yes. This should encourage us to work on the orthopaedic aspects. Not dermatology. That’s secondary, in this case. The real problem is beneath the skin,’ he argued.
‘We must continue work on the hands,’ she said intensely.
‘We need to do an autopsy. We need more than the cultures.’
The noise outside could not be ignored. Vincent and Sister Thérèse went to the window which gave onto the yard where the demonstrators’ chants were coming from. Suddenly, there were screams, screams that signalled danger.
‘Theo! You know I’ve lost Theo. I must go and see where he is. Come and help me,’ Vincent pleaded.
They were stunned by the sunlight as they came out into the yard from the pharmacy. There was still a crowd under the almond tree, Singh and Jonah might be in there, but Vincent could not see them anywhere.
They noticed another part of the crowd who were circling an even smaller group, from where the chant of ‘Burn, Burn, Burn,’ sounded, infectious in its repetition. Even the children, the small children hanging over the bannisters of their verandah, were chanting the rhythmic, ‘Burn, Burn, Burn.’ Something else was going on here.
‘Come with me.’ Vincent took hold of Sister Thérèse’s hand. ‘Fire. We can’t have fire, otherwise we’re going to have multiple injuries in no time at all.’
It was then that the first whiff of gasoline came on the breeze from where the smaller crowd was gathered between the stores and the Anglican church. People started screaming and scattering to reveal the group performing a ritual with fire.
Two of the policemen were trying to disperse the crowd. Their presence was enraging them more.
Vincent and Sister Thérèse were terrified, seeing not only some of the able bodied patients, but some of the more infirm, screaming and scattering as they threw the fuel over their shoulders. Gasoline flames flayed out of the cans they carried. The fuel had fallen on their shoulders and their backs, catching fire. They were unaware. They could not feel the pain.
Sister Thérèse and Vincent ran towards the flame-throwers, trying to beat the fire down with palm branches which they tore from nearby trees.
This was when Vincent saw Theo. He was standing, staring at a flaming crumpled heap, which was revealed as the dancing crowd scattered. What was it?
Some other children were screaming the chant, ‘Burn, Burn, Burn!’ Then they ran off with flaming cans of gasoline. Vincent hoped that Ti-Jean was not among them. He could not see him anywhere. He ran towards Theo, who was still standing, transfixed.
The small band of warders were trying to control the crowd. Vincent could hear the crowd even more clearly.
‘Burn him! Burn him! Burn him!’ The fire throwers shouted, circling throwing their tins of gasoline from a distance now. At one point Vincent lost sight of Theo in the flames. He noticed the girl, Christiana, standing near him.
Vincent then caught a difference in the chant. Sister Thérèse joined him, running towards Theo. He ordered people as he ran to bring water. He was surprised that his voice still carried some authority. Where were Jonah and Singh?
‘Theo, what are you doing standing here staring? Don’t you see what’s happening?’ Vincent grabbed hold of the boy, lifting him over the flames.
The body of a man lay on the ground very badly burnt.
When Vincent knelt next to him, beating down the last flames, he realised that he was already dead. He had suffocated from the smoke and the gasoline fumes. His clothes had gone up quickly in the flames. The body was
burnt all over.
Theo stood and stared. He seemed unable to react.
The body was charred. What had happened here?
Singh and Jonah were nowhere to be found. In a remnant of clothing, Vincent noticed a piece of a police uniform. One of the three policeman had been burnt to death.
Vincent and Sister Thérèse were now alone in the yard with Theo. She held the boy who now clung to her skirts, burying his head in her lap. Christiana had run off.
The community of nuns had come out onto the verandah of the hospital. Jonah and Singh emerged from the crowd under the almond tree. The dead body still lay where it had been doused with gasoline. Vincent shouted at Singh. ‘Look at what you’ve done. Watch your words!’
Everyone was standing around the edges of the yard silently looking at what had happened. Vincent and Sister Thérèse stood together with the stunned Theo.
A small band of children, led by Ti-Jean, entered the yard with their own music made with tin cans, old galvanise, thumping bamboo on the ground, like in a tamboo bamboo band. They had their own calypso. Ti-Jean on his crutches, came to the centre of the yard singing. His young boy’s voice was shrill on the air. He was like a young calypsonian.
‘Everybody rejoicing,
How they burned Charlie King,
Everybody was glad,
Nobody was sad.
When they beat him
And they burn him in Fyzabad.’
Everyone stood still, dazed and shocked, looking at the young boy on his crutches, performing his macabre dance, followed by his small band of other children, beating their biscuit tins, chanting ‘And they beat him and burn him in Fyzabad.’
Very slowly, Ti-Jean’s calypso became hypnotic. From the large ragged circle around the yard, the tune was picked up. Words of protest were uttered. There was a tinkle of sound which then died out. One by one the patients began to drift away. In the end the reality of what had happened took the heart out of the protest. There was the sound of box carts and galvanise grating on the gravel paths.
Two male ward assistants came over to where Vincent and Sister Thérèse stood with Theo, next to the corpse. They removed the body of the policeman, Michael Johnson, on a stretcher.
‘What has happened here?’ Vincent asked, not sure to whom he was addressing the question. Singh and Jonah had walked away. Who would have the answer?
By afternoon, the routine of Saint Damian’s had regained its normality. The event had kept a lot of patients away from the hospital. Some of the regulars discussed the matter under the almond tree.
‘Boy, you wouldn’t think people could do thing so again,’ Mr Lalbeharry reflected, remembering the burning of Corporal Charles King in 1937, in Fyzabad on Sancta Trinidad during the Butler Riots.
But most of the patients stayed in their huts with their own thoughts and their silence. There seemed to be a desire for time to be turned back to before all of this had happened, yet there was a knowledge that things would never be the same again. The two remaining policemen began to make investigations. They made it clear that there would have to be an inquest.
El Caracol
1939-1941
Rites of Passage
Singh and Jonah stood by the door of the nurses’ common room, listening to the crackling news together. The voice of Mr Chamberlain announced that England and the British Empire were at war with Germany. New Zealand, Australia and France were also at war. Two days before, Theo had run out onto the verandah at the Doctor’s house with the news, ‘Germany invade Poland!’ The impending war had loosened his tongue.
Vincent, Mother Superior and the nursing sisters stood in the common room. He looked across the room at Sister Thérèse. They caught each one looking at the other. Their eyes held all they wanted to say. They had not yet found words for these feelings, nor the opportunity to express them. He saw the terror on her face. Her fear and imaginings were becoming reality.
Later that afternoon, Vincent watched the island steamer depart. There was now ice and new provisions. The water boat also, at last, arrived. It filled the tanks and was now leaving. The daily routines of the day unfolded in their usual way. Vincent and Jonah followed behind the fishing boats as they left Perruquier Bay. Their elegiac calypso, beaten with their bottle and spoon, came across the water: Chamberlain say he only want peace
Please hold your hands. It is time to cease. The words of Beginner’s calypso faded as the fishermen entered the gulf. Chamberlain tell them to realise, these are the days we are civilised. Vincent smiled at the irony.
The island steamer had also brought the late mail. A letter from Vincent’s mother told him that Bernard, his brother, had been called up. He was stationed near Steyning in Sussex. He would be flying with the RAF. The English place name, in his mother’s hand, opened up the scorched Sussex downs, one hot summer above the town, which he had visited as a student on vacation. He and an English girl had found different histories: standing stones, an Iron Age fort. In the distance, they had looked out on the haze and the sea of the South Coast; the English Channel, France. Now, Vincent saw his brother’s helmeted head in the cockpit of a Spitfire. He heard the hum of a Messerschmit.
But, against these big events, far away, it was the inquest into the murder of the policeman, Michael Johnson, who all now called ‘Charlie King’, which had dominated life on El Caracol over the last six months. The tension between Vincent and Singh over the criminal investigation often erupted into the open. ‘Criminal? Who is criminal? Is a kind of war here, you know,’ Singh argued. ‘This too is a war, if they go keep people so.’ His position was becoming more extreme. He openly accused Vincent of trying to frame him for incitement with his evidence to the inquest.
It had taken the police and the authorities three months to gather their evidence, and the inquest itself, held in Porta España, had taken the other three months. It had involved transporting to Sancta Trinidad a selection of patients who were prepared to give evidence. The newspapers had concentrated on the pathos of children being involved. Their evidence was held in camera at the Casa Rosada. Vincent and Jonah went with the patients, and Vincent was present during the in camera sessions. This inflamed Singh.
Some of the patients still carried scars of burns they had not felt. The anaesthetic of their condition represented a kind of amnesia. The scars told of something which they had not suffered; could not remember. They all wanted to forget the incident, but it hung over them, brought back by the questioning, representing the fact that, despite all that was learnt from suffering, or not, all were capable of inflicting it. The communality of the act made it difficult to ascribe individual guilt, or guilt to any particular group. Less, of course, all were guilty. Too many of the patients, both children and adults, maintained their silence, claiming that they had not seen anything.
From the talk under the almond tree, Vincent, Jonah and Singh knew, like everyone else, the prime movers, those who had flung the flaying kerosene.
While Father Meyer maintained the secrecy of the confessional for those who were Catholic, it was hoped that he had at least advised the young ones to confess themselves.
Nothing which would hold up as evidence at the inquest came forward. It rested on intention. What had been the intention of those who had fed the fire, dousing the body of the fallen policeman? What had they realised when they were doing so? Vincent could never bring himself to question Ti-Jean. He did not want the boy to lie to him, nor did he want the truth, and have to live with it.
The suspected action of the children, the presumed innocent, the holy innocents, which had caught the imagination of the newspapers, was in the end what prevented further investigation into Mr Krishna Singh, Mr Jonah Leroy and Doctor Vincent Metivier, and the part they might have played in the incitement to violence. It prevented the unearthing of all the evidence there might be, and the bringing of charges. Nevertheless, the judge concluded with a degree of censure for the three men and their political activity, as it was described.
<
br /> Ironically, despite the tension and accusations during the inquest, Singh and Vincent were brought closer by the common censure. Singh felt vindicated. Vincent, linked now publically with Singh and Jonah, though privately outraged, felt he had achieved an equality. Singh could not now accuse him of privilege, and he now saw Singh’s view differently. At no point did the inquest censure the authorities for the state of poverty and deprivation which it maintained by its policies. This omission from the verdict was a turning point for Vincent.
It seemed to Vincent at this moment, these thoughts running through his mind, this afternoon, in the pirogue with Jonah, that the war was not a part of this world. The truth of these events on El Caracol was greater. That bundle on the ground, the pieces of police uniform he had fingered in the embers of the fire, were amore staggering fact of what human beings could do to each other, than the war in which his brother was now involved.
The verdict of accidental death had come through yesterday.
‘So, what you think about the verdict, Doc?’ Jonah broke the silence.
‘What you think, Jonah?’ Vincent could see that his friend was eager to have some word about the matter before they parted this evening.
‘Well. Is what I tell Singh. Is not they didn’t have the evidence, but we wouldn’t give it to them.’
‘I think you might be right, Jonah.’
‘What that make you feel, Doc?’
‘It makes me very uneasy, but…’
‘What I say, Doc, is that you can’t divorce what happen from this place, from what happening to people. You can’t divorce that from what happen to the corporal. Look at this place.’ Jonah was pointing at the empty sea, but he really meant the leprosarium and its poverty.
‘A kind of rough justice?’ Vincent asked.
He could not get out of his mind the picture of Ti-Jean with his macabre calypso leading the small band of children into the arena of the yard. He saw Theo staring. Christiana watching.
Night Calypso Page 12