Theo looked up, and announced the word:
ARCHI-PE-LA-GO. Syllabic way is the best way.
Vincent laughed. He was enjoying the telling of this story. He marvelled how the boy spoke in the accent of the GI.
HE SEE QUESTIONS all over my face, but he stop worrying about whether I have a tongue or not, and he just telling me everything. But he wondering what I doing there, and he ask whether I is from the hospital. But then he say, he could see I not from the hospital. He see the track I come out from, so he say that I come from the Doctor house. He seem to know the island and everybody who living on it. I leave him with his stories.
Long before Columbus, he say. I can’t imagine it. But he say, Listen to the sea, and I go imagine it. He say, a bone might not look like a bone, because it become a fossil and look like a stone. The danger is that the tractors go make graves of these bones and we go lose the story of that time.
As he talking, I listen to the sea. I only seeing all these bodies bulldoze into big big graves. I see bones, thin thin flesh hanging from the hip bones and off the shoulders. Bodies rolling over and over in the waves, the bulldozer heaping the red dirt over the bodies, and the parrots screaming.
The GI saying that the French sisters call them les perruches. They speaking a language that is the language of the Caribs, the Aruacs and the Tainos.
Theo clutched a small, heart-shaped, biscuit-coloured, earthen piece of pottery. He offered it to Vincent. He took it from him and turned it in his fingers. He ran his fingers over the grain of the earthenware, assessing its authenticity. He had known of the midden, but had not explored there. The Americans had disturbed the site. He returned the heart-shaped piece of a vase to Theo.
AND THEN JESSE give me this chewing gum. He say, all the kids chew gum back home. Back home is South Carolina. And he start right there on a story of his Mama and Papa, only his Papa gone north and his Mama not see him for a long time, and he Jesse don’t remember him for real. He’s a man on a porch with a banjo on his knee, who gone Louisiana. He is a man with a song in his throat.
As we climb back from the shore, Jesse start to tell a story of the history of his people, which he say is the history of my people, except that, then he laugh, and rub his hands through my hair, and say I am a sandy kid. I must’ve get mixed up with some white people.
I watch him, and I slit my eyes, so.
I shrug him off. Because if he see my Mama, her skin like mahogany. If he see the beauty of it. If he see her skin that can go black as ebony. He laugh. He teasing me. That is part of our history. He prepare now to go on that path, but is a path I know well, from Mama and Mama’s grandmother, my great-grandmammy, Ma Dellacourt. He say they have black people like me in South Carolina, and he going to tell me about that.
Vincent watched Theo. He longed to hear the small voice of the boy, the boy who shouted out on the jetty when he caught his red fish. How much longer could this go on, this language of astonishment?
WHEN WE REACH the top again, they already fix the artillery guns. We face the ocean, camouflage by the trees. I hear the other GI talking about the German U-Boats. They say these guns go take them out of the water. And if these don’t get them, then the magnetic loop below the sea, between El Caracol and the island of Huevos will catch them, by setting off a signal if they touch the cable.
I keep my ears prick and listen.
I see the island of Huevos between the trees, the other side of the Boca de Navios. Plenty ship passing through the channel.
But then, is what I going to tell you when I start.
They say they get this far to the edge of the rocks. Then they leap right out into the blue air above the tumult of the waves and the expanse of the ocean. This is where they get to when they running. All the people jump from the high rocks. They take off like birds in flight. They rather die than get capture by the Spaniards. That is why the place call Sauteurs. The place of the leap. They rather die than give themselves to the Spaniards.
As Jesse talk, l see them flying and then tumbling out of the sky. They was the colour of the parrots. Green, blue and yellow. And is their voices that you hear in the air.
When we climb the hill, we hear the shells on the shore and the tumult of the ocean. I thought it was shells and bones, and the vases and cups breaking with the force of the waves. And that other thing return, the bulldozers heaping the bodies one upon the other, dump into big big graves.
Then, Jesse say, we never know what the future go bring. He say he have another story to tell me, that will change my way of looking at history. He tell me that I must come again to that place where the midden is, and he go give me more chewing gum.
Theo was sweating, and lay back, exhausted with his visions and stories, told in tongues.
Then there was a sound like thunder which was quite close. It was not long before Albacores and Barracudas were in the air over El Caracol. Vincent parted the blackout curtains a crack. Chac Chac Bay heaved in the darkness, and broke on the beach and under the jetty. But through the bedroom door, and coming through the windows at the back from Theo’s room, and along the corridor, were the flares Vincent had not seen before. Then, there was another kind of thunder which must have been the guns that Theo talked about, trained on the ocean.
They were there, just behind the house, in the backyard.
The Governor Haul ’e Arse
Theo had added gardening to his chores. The last of the sorrel bushes had been cut down and piled high like a pyre. He had been up before dawn. More than ever, Vincent was aware of creaking floorboards as the boy never stopped moving about the house.
‘Theo take a rest, please,’ Vincent called out.
His reclusiveness, since deciding that he was not returning to Singh’s science lessons, was converted into hyperactivity.
Vincent smelt the pitch oil, and then the crackling fire, as soon as he came out onto the landing from his room. It was a golden rule that Theo should not play with fire. His only use of matches was to be in the kitchen, and even that made Vincent nervous. Something he had picked up from one of Father Dominic’s letters a while ago alerted him to this. He had not learnt, even by now, to trust the boy in this regard. He called out from where he stood at the window. ‘Theo, you have that fire under control, boy?’
At first, Theo did not hear him, and then he looked up and smiled, chucking more sorrel bushes into the blaze. Vincent called again, but Theo waved, cutting him short with, ‘Under control, Doc,’ giving a mock salute.
Spending too much time with his GI friends, Vincent thought. He had begun to notice this way Theo had of calling him, ‘Doc,’ like Jonah did, while he chewed his chewing gum. He allowed the familiarity, taking it as a sign of Theo’s change and growth. After all, he allowed Ti-Jean as much rope as he liked to take, to the marked disapproval of some. But he did not want any rudeness from the young boy developing.
He was still worried at times about the arrangement he had made with Father Dominic who seemed to have forgotten about the boy altogether. The friar never answered his letters anymore and did not come to visit; always some excuse sent by the chaplain. He was obviously pleased to have got a load off his shoulders. A short letter had, in fact, come a few weeks back, making light of all of Vincent’s queries, concluding with Father Dominic’s flattery. ‘You’re a miracle worker, doctor,’ as if that made everything fine, shifting the load.
With each stab of his fork, Theo sang, ‘The Governor say no mas, the Governor haul ‘e arse.’
Vincent smiled. Just what he himself was feeling this morning, the day that the Governor’s secretary was paying a visit to Saint Damian’s with the Archbishop. Mother Superior did not want either himself, Singh or Jonah there. She wanted the visit to pass peacefully.
‘With dignity, Doctor Metivier,’ were her words. They had been asked to keep away.
Vincent was enjoying Theo’s resistance and rebellion. It was because of his spending more and more time with Jonah, and the fishermen. This meant th
at he was in touch with the talk in town, singing one of Tiger’s calypsos:
‘But ah going to plant provision and fix my affairs
And let the white people fight for ten thousand years.’
Now it seemed that Theo had taken inspiration from this spirit of resistance with his gardening. He must have overheard Jonah and Singh talking about the programme for the restoration of the vegetable gardens at Saint Damian’s, one of the few ways for the patients to supplement their menial allowances. ‘I joining the revolution. We go feed we selves,’ he proclaimed.
Vincent recognised the calypso tune from the meeting. Tiger’s calypso was becoming an anthem of the movement. It expressed how people were feeling about the war, and especially about how little had been done to restore things at Saint Damian’s since the hurricane. As they watched the generous supplies being off-loaded for the American base at Perruquier Bay, where some of the more able-bodied patients were getting light casual labour, they sang Tiger’s couplets with pride and iron:
‘But ah want a piece o’ land at Mount Hololo
So I could plant me dasheen, figs and ochro.’
Theo’s bonfire had flared up, and the last of the bushes became the crimson colour of the sorrel flowers.
‘Watch that fire don’t reach the house, Theo.’ The boy saluted smartly. He was a shimmer behind the haze of the fire.
The digging continued, fuelled by calypso. ‘The Governor say no mas, the governor haul ‘e arse.’ He was obviously enjoying the rudeness and zest in the couplets with each stab of his fork.
Vincent echoed him under his breath as he passed. ‘The governor haul ’e arse.’ They were not being allowed to be there to put their demands today of all days. He was sure that they were heading for another flare-up soon.
‘And now them Yankees adding to the trouble,’ Jonah had said at the close of the meeting yesterday, where they had reluctantly agreed with Mother Superior’s demand to remain absent. He had flung down his words as a threat.
Vincent was anxious about not seeing Thérèse. She had not been at the hospital yesterday. They had been managing to work with decorum. But, for how much longer?
A wild fantasy made him want to see her emerge from the bush, cross the dry, beaten, red dirt path to the house. She had not ever entered the house. He saw her with the crimson of the flowers which were burning, held in the folds of her white habit. Then she was part of the flames, dissolving, part of the ash which rose with the sea breeze.
Their fingers had almost touched the other day, standing next to each other at the door of Mother Superior’s office, listening to the lunchtime news from the BBC, telling them that the allied bombing of France had begun with an RAF raid on the Renault works at Bellancourt. They had had to say it all with their eyes.
While the sisters thought of their beloved France and their families, Thérèse of her father, Vincent had wondered about Bernard. His mother had not had any news for a while. Could he have been part of that raid? Standing so close to each other with their own anxiety, it felt reckless to Vincent to want to touch Thérèse in public.
Like with the new barbed wire fences around the leprosarium, they had erected their own boundaries. But they were temptations, like the trespassing signs were for the patients, even the children, who were all the time being caught entering parts of the island they had never dreamt of venturing into before. The prosecution signs were a red cloth to a bull.
Theo had gone quiet. He had finished working out at the back. When Vincent went into the house to fetch a book in the study, he noticed him escaping behind a door into the kitchen, out to the water tank. He moved rapidly and quietly, barefoot, in just his khaki pants, no shirt. There was the sound of water running into a bucket, then the sweeping of a broom on the pitch pine floor. Vincent too was restless on his enforced day off.
‘Theo, what’s going on out there?’ His frustration with himself and the boy mounted.
There was no reply, and then suddenly, Theo was back with bucket and mop. ‘I doing my chores, Mister, go and take a rest on the verandah, nuh.’
‘Mister? Who you calling Mister? I’m no Mister.’ Vincent was horrified at being called Mister.
Theo was already away, looking over his shoulder with a glance that said it all. This was a game, but taken seriously. ‘Is you day off, take a rest. You don’t know how to do that.’
The boy was right, he did not know what to do with himself this morning. He should be at Saint Damian’s. This was a mad agreement. He would just have to be patient. Let Theo have his way.
There was the smell of wax polish. The surfaces of the sideboard and dining room table were as luminous as mirrors. There was the sound of scrubbing. When he turned to look into the house from the verandah, Theo was on his knees, and the pitch pine floors were coming up a beautiful, silky white, as he scrubbed with blue soap, his scrubbing brushes dipped into a bucket with bicarbonate of soda. It clanged as he pushed it along in front of him. The water slopped and splashed, as he slapped the floor cloth down. The boy worked, pushing himself along on his knees, wiping the floorboards dry with another large cloth, tucked into the top of his khaki pants.
Vincent’s patience did not last. ‘Theo, you don’t have to be doing all of this housework.’
Theo looked up and smiled. ‘Tell me, who go do it, then, Mister?’ The voice was from one of his nocturnal tales, which unnerved Vincent. It was the parody of a servant’s voice. He could take this sort of thing at night, but not in the light of day. ‘Tell, me nuh, cheups.’ He sucked his teeth.
Vincent’s ears jangled with the bracelets of Indian women scrubbing the floors at Versailles. His mother’s floors had always been scrubbed by the women from the barracks. He heard their voices in Theo’s voice, the voices of Calcutta.
He noticed that Theo was not coming to the front of the house when he was in the hammock on the verandah. He kept to the back of the house. He was playing the well-observed game. Then, when he looked up, he noticed through the side window, that there were clothes, Vincent’s white cotton shirts and his khaki pants, drying on the line. The laundry was also being done.
Vincent dozed in his hammock. He was aware of Theo creeping around him. Once, when he opened his eyes, he saw him escaping from the living room with a sheaf of old newspapers and copies of the London Illustrated News that Father Meyer had dropped off on his last visit. ‘Keep you busy and out of trouble.’ He wondered what he had meant at the time. He felt that he was referring to himself and Thérèse. What did he know?
A glass of iced lime juice had been left on a side table near to his hammock. Theo had been observing his naps. ‘Thank you, Theo, just the thing for this heat,’ he called out. But the boy had already scuttled upstairs with his armful of news. He could guess the outcome, more cuttings for the bedroom wall. He had not entered the room since first discovering the complex historical collage. He could smell the flour and water paste. He could hear the snipping of scissors. He dozed and woke again into one of Theo’s tunes.
‘Time so hard you cannot deny that even salt fish and rice I can hardly buy’.
The macabre game of servant and mister concealed Theo’s glee in having Vincent to himself all day.
The midday Angelus from the convent jolted Vincent into the bright glare of noon.
Theo was standing behind him. Vincent knew that he was waiting for the midday news. The boy was obsessed with news. His room was testament to that. ‘You switch it on. Come on, let’s see what Mr Hitler is up to, where the Allies have advanced.’
The radio crackled with the tones of the BBC newsreader. Theo pursed his lips to imitate the plummy voice. He stood listening intently. Then he sped upstairs to his room. Each name, each raid, fuelled his own advancing armies.
As he returned to the verandah he shouted, ‘Doc, look!’ He pointed out into the bay. The destroyer, US Barney, with a corvette, US Surprise, were passing one in front of the other, outside Chac Chac Bay. They gleamed in the hot sun, metallic on the c
rinkling sea. Their engines droned. Their Stars and Stripes fluttered furiously.
‘It’s the convoy preparing to leave.’
Theo quickly got out his notebook and added the ships’ names to his log, singing all the while like a true blue calypsonian. ‘Before the war I was living nice, hot potato with me bacon, stew pork and rice.’
‘You better enter the calypso competition this year, boy,’ Vincent joked.
Theo smiled. He was himself again. For a while, at least.
‘Ei! What boat is that?’ Theo pointed.
Vincent looked up. Entering the bay was a coastguard launch. Vincent raised his binoculars. It was what he thought. It carried the Governor’s ensign. The visit was about to begin. He knew he should be there. What was Mother Superior up to? They should never have agreed to her demand. He was the doctor of the leprosarium. He felt like leaving the house immediately and going to Saint Damian’s along the back track.
Not long after, they heard the salvos of the welcoming gun salute. State and church had arrived. The parrots screamed. There was the sound of a bugle, the rattle of a drum on the wind.
Vincent could hear Theo in the kitchen. ‘Toast bread with butter and jam, seven eggs in the morning with a junk o’ham’.
‘You wanting lunch now, Mister.’ That servant’s voice again as he entered the kitchen.
‘Theo!’ Vincent was more impatient than ever.
Then the boy was playing another role. He was chewing gum.
‘You seeing that GI friend of yours again? You must bring him to the house.’ Vincent had not heard of Jesse since the tale of the midden. He was aware that he was using material from the tales as a matter for daytime conversation. He did not usually refer to events which had come up in the night-time stories.
Night Calypso Page 23