Night Calypso

by Lawrence Scott

  “Brother Theo rang the house bell for Matins, and then went out into the yard to ring the big bells. So he was up earlier than the rest of the community. I had arranged that my room be on the same corridor as his. Not next to him. That room was spare. It was used as a storeroom. But I had grown so used to my care of the boy that even in sleep I seemed to be vigilant. I woke usually about the time that he should wake, so I would hear him on his way down to the cloister with the hand bell. He would start at the other end of the cloister, and make his way back to where my room was.

  “I thought it strange that I had not heard the bell that morning. For all his tortured life, when it came to his duties, he performed them very well, with punctuality and with great credit. Father Angel’s Exhibition Class boy, he would say to me. Sadly, of course, it did not happen. I have not got to the bottom of that as yet. I expect it to be made visible, as a consequence of the more serious happenings. Father Superior’s words, his notes, are so brief.

  “I am not complaining, but at times I am so in the dark. Father Superior, suspecting that I thought this on one occasion, when he routinely asked about Brother Theo, said that I had to work with faith. At times we should perhaps assist faith with some reason. I dare not even think that.

  “I needed all my faith on this particular morning, given what I found when I got out of bed and went down to the cloister, wondering why the bell had not yet been rung, worried that the community would be late for Matins, and consequently all the hours would be thrown into confusion.

  “The boy was lying on the ground, if not fully unconscious, at least dazed, very dazed, seeming to be asleep. It took me a while to rouse him. I coaxed him with some assistance from water at the fountain near where he had fallen, it seemed. I checked from bruises and cuts. I attended to the abrasions on his hands and knees. There was a cut on his forehead.

  “I don’t know what made me look back and up, but I seemed to do so instinctively. There was all the evidence of bed clothes and pyjamas on the roof beneath the window of his cell, which was above this part of the cloister. I then discovered some shingles which had been displaced and fallen into the cloister. Also, the galvanise parapet was broken.

  “How to attend to the boy and repair this damage before the community got up? I had to seek the assistance of someone, and that was when I took Brother Stephen into my confidence about this matter, only treating it as an isolated instance, not something that indicated anything. I think I said something stupid, like he must be a sleepwalker. Brother Stephen seemed to accept this, and was quickly repairing the damage to the roof, and dragging the bedclothes through the window. Then he had to rush to ring the bell to get the community up, while I attended to Brother Theo, taking him to the infirmary where I didn’t imagine there would be any danger of being discovered at that hour of the morning.

  “Once in the infirmary, Brother Stephen was miraculously able to give me a hand to lift the boy, who thank God was slight. I pleaded with him. Brother Theo, Brother Theo. What have you done? What has been done to you? I could not get him to talk. I checked his limbs. Mercifully, they seemed to be in order, though I don’t know, given what I imagined had happened, that he had jumped from the window or slid on the parapet. But what was he doing out there?

  “But, you see, flying. He insists that he tried to fly from the window. One can understand the desire for flight. I am seeing now that this boy is here by force, against his will, if he knows what his will is. He expresses his will in such childlike forms. To be reunited with his friends Popo and Jai and the girl, Chantal, to take his Mama from the yard. Again, I would like to be able to see these conditions which the boy describes. He has admirable sentiments for his parish priest, Father Angel, and his housekeeper Mrs Goveia. But what really is the will of someone in his present state?

  “Some arrangement has been made with the Marineaux family. I don’t at the moment have the facts, but I must get to the bottom of the question if I am to be of real assistance to this boy. Having to carry the personal responsibilities for these deliberations, I find this very burdensome. But I feeI this would be betraying the boy to something worse, if I was to simply tell all that has been going on.

  “This idea of flight has to be one of his fanciful stories. What did he say? That over the Tortuga hills people used to fly. Apparently he is alluding to some ancient custom going back to the dark days of slavery when it is said that African people had the power, the science, to fly back to Africa, to escape the terrible conditions of their enslavement.

  “So, yes, this was his explanation, that he had tried to fly from his window, out over the cloister to reach the sky. He had been testing the breeze with his sheets, to see if they would billow like sails. What state of mind was he in, that he could throw himself from a window, jump from the parapet over the cloister? Thankfully, it is not very high.”

  Between the fear of fire, and the possibility that Theo would want to fly again, Vincent could not sleep that night. He saw the friar’s words in a new light. He would have to make new arrangements. He would not be able to let the boy out of his sight. He would have to take him to the hospital at all times. Singh, Jonah, Madeleine would have to keep an eye on him. He could not have the boy killing himself or burning down the place.

  Vincent dozed. Then he woke, waking Madeleine. They sat and listened, as they saw and heard Theo at the window of their room.

  THEN, HE THERE. Right at the window this time, a string of stars is his halter, the milky way his bridle. Orion is his stirrup. He is there at the window. And the horse speak to me.

  Come, ride, ride with me, for you know you have ridden me in the past. You know you stole me for your canter over the cocoa hills. Come, lay your cheek on mine. Come and rest on my eyelids. Come, lie the length of your boy’s body along my long neck. Come, press your knees into my flanks. Leave your moons there, leave your tattoos for me to carry them to glory. Crouch and hide in the dark, as I take you through the darkness which hangs with the purple cocoa pods. High is the sound of the rivers running over the blue stones, which is a chorus of bell frogs, a choir of crickets, a net of fireflies, to our hiding spot that no one know about, where they can’t hear me neighing with the joy of you on my back. Can’t hear you cry.

  Theo was now kneeling at the bedside and speaking into Vincent’s ear in urgent whispers, his horse music, as he might speak through the grille of a confessional.

  Madeleine moved from the bed and sat in the rocker near the window. She needed air.

  FATHER SUPERIOR leave no key this time. I don’t have a key. He calling for the key to be let in. He say is under my pillow. He say is by the wash stand. He say is wrap in a towel. Look under the mattress. He say don’t play those tricks. We have enough of tricks.

  Then I see the chestnut horse. I holding the cold key. I have it in my mouth, as I curl on the bed waiting for the horse to come clop clop through the window. Waiting for the door, clackityclack.

  I wait for him. I know the smell of the eau de Cologne. I know the feel of khaki. I know the switch. I know the echo of the boot on the corridor. I know the scrape of the boot outside. I know these things before they happen.

  I anticipate and then I experience. I experience twice. I am in a double terror, because I know my terror and my torture. And in this quiet place of God, I do not know how no one hears what goes on in the next room. I don’t know how they don’t hear till I call and then it is too late. Even when I sing Frère Jacques, dormez-vous.

  Vincent woke with a jolt. He had nodded off. ‘What’s too late, Theo? Theo, you must tell me now, tell me all. I’m here. I’m hearing. Call out, Theo. Call out. Call out to me. I’m listening.’

  ‘He says it’s too late when no one comes when he calls.’ Madeleine leant over towards the bed.

  But Theo was all whispers. He could hardly talk.

  BONE STICK in my throat. Fish bone in my gullet.

  ‘Bread Theo, eat some bread. I’ll get you some bread, some water to dislodge the bone in you
r throat. Wait Theo, wait there.’

  Vincent jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to the kitchen. He returned with bread and a glass of water.

  Theo was no longer kneeling at the bedside like a child at the confessional when Vincent returned with the bread and the glass of water. He was standing with his back to the door, as if he were looking out of the window, but the window still had its blackout curtains drawn. He was looking into that darkness. When Vincent’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he could then see Theo turn and kneel.

  He spoke in the same urgent whispers.

  I READY.

  Then Vincent and Madeleine heard from his stifled throat the words:

  DIE, DIE DIE.

  When there was no immediate response from Vincent, Theo’s tone of voice changed. His demeanour was transformed into an authoritative one.

  GET YOUR SWITCH. Do your work. Bois, bois. Give it to me.

  He turned and offered his naked bottom. He bent over and invited Vincent to beat him with a switch.

  ‘I can’t stay and see this.’ Madeleine fled from the room. She hesitated on the landing, and then sat at the top of the stairs outside the room, part listening, part not wanting to hear.

  Then Vincent came close and touched Theo’s back saying, ‘Theo, Theo, come, drink some water, eat this bread.’ Theo leapt up from his bending-over position and knelt in front of Vincent. He knelt with his mouth open like a child, waiting for the priest to place the host on his tongue at Holy Communion. He began to undo Vincent’s pyjamas, to grab at his penis.

  SUCK. I SUCK. I suck the cold key. You open the door. You come in. Take me. Clackityclack. Gallop with me through the air. Ride me through the night.

  He was off again on poetry. On fantasy.

  He turned and bent over, offering his bottom to Vincent with his small hands stretching his buttocks apart and opening his anus.

  USE THE KEY, OPEN THE DOOR.

  Out of a pocket of the khaki pants on the floor, he took out a large iron key.

  THIS IS THE COLD KEY. I keep it for Mister to open the door.

  He began to force it into his anus, pushing the cold iron hard into his soft skin. Vincent took hold of his hand.

  ‘Theo, Theo. Give me the key.’

  YES, YES, YOU. You open the door.

  ‘Yes, Theo, you give it to me. I hear what you say. I see what you do. It’s all acknowledged now. It won’t ever happen again. You are safe with me.’ He spoke deliberately. He put the key on the bedside table.

  He knelt on the floor. ‘Theo, Theo. There’s no need for this. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this anymore. There’s no Mister, no horse, no key, no gallop through the air. There’s you Theo, and me, Doctor Metivier, Vincent, your friend. This is not what I want you to do. I want you to eat this bread, drink this water. I want you to go to bed and sleep, peacefully.’

  But it was not that easy.

  NO HORSE, no chestnut horse, no clackityclack, no suck the key, no bois, bois. Take.

  He turned in Vincent’s arms offering his back for him to beat him. His familiar scar began to tell its full story that night in the darkness with the boy and the doctor kneeling on the ground.

  Vincent knew that he might have to take part in the drama, or give some sense of taking part in a drama, without exactly doing so. To deny the boy this act, was to deny him the opportunity to come out of it, to stop it. It was his way of telling something that he had not been able to tell fully, to get anyone to believe, to see fully.

  This was obviously what Father Dominic could not go through with, the boy in his nakedness offering the friar to beat him, to have the boy want to perform fellatio, to let him gallop around the room. If he had told the Father Superior, there would have been no alternative but exorcism. Had they tried that? This had to be the devil himself. That would have been their logical conclusion. There was a demon in him. Vincent knew how the friar felt. He himself had not told anyone about the dressing up, the excrement, the painting of the room. He had wanted to tell Madeleine, but she had her own demons. Demons? Whose language was that? Anyway, she had had to leave the room.

  For Vincent it was a trauma, an illness, a sickness. He had to discover the fine line between the acts the boy wanted performed, and the semblance of them which Vincent felt he had to use.

  While he was trying to think things through as quickly as possible, deciding what to do, Theo continued to offer him the choice of beating him or allowing him to perform fellatio. Previous dramas had not required Vincent to participate. He had simply been asked to observe, or participate in ways that would not have been harmful, would not perpetuate the trauma, compound its damage.

  Vincent picked up a stick which he then noticed that Theo had brought into the room. Another of the contents of the brown grip?

  GUAVA, from Pepper Hill. Mister send me to pick it myself. Sweet guava.

  Then Theo turned and ran out of the room and down the stairs. Vincent heard the door beneath the stairs bang shut. When he got down stairs himself, he saw himself standing outside the cupboard under the stairs with a stick in his hand. Inside he heard the whimper of the boy.

  PLEASE, PLEASE. Mister, don’t lash me.

  Vincent did not have the language for the reply. After some moments of silence, the boy provided the missing dialogue in the drama, with the appropriate voices.

  COCO, you come here immediately.

  Then he heard again the whimpering of the boy.

  PLEASE, PLEASE, don’t lash me.

  Then in another voice, the voice of a man, Vincent heard:

  COCO, you little coco, you little bastard. Come out here right now.

  O PLEASE, PLEASE Mister, don’t lash me.

  RIGHT NOW this minute. Or you know what I’ll have do to you. I’ll come right in there, and you know, it will be worse, much worse.

  Vincent looked at himself, a full grown man with a stick in his hand standing outside the door with the boy pleading to be spared.

  Suddenly, a small moment, secreted somewhere deep in his past. almost forgotten, flashed through his mind. He is eight years old, must be just after his father came back from the war. He hears his voice, Bend over, take down your pants.

  He sees himself jumping over the thorns in the pasture. Ti-Marie closes her leaves as he touches her, as he goes to pick a tamarind switch. He hears his mother’s voice, Wait till your father comes home. He hears his father again, The best of six, bend over. He feels the stinging tamarind switch on his naked bottom. He does not cry. He does not make a sound. He knows there will be more, like last time. Do not cry. It angered his father more if he cried. It was almost a call to be beaten more. He had to learn not to cry.

  Vincent stood with the switch in his hand and cried for himself. He cried for himself and Theo. The house went dead quiet. Theo had stopped his pleading.

  Madeleine sat on the stairs and listened. There was a wind in the trees, a cool breeze came through the kitchen door. They heard the dead almond leaves scuttling like crabs on the steps. They heard the sea lap on the jetty.

  Vincent was grateful for the peace. He sat on the floor by the door and waited to see what might happen next. He must have dozed off, water was splashing on the jetty. He went to the window of the drawing room, made a crack in the blackout curtain. A huge American destroyer was turning in the middle of the bay. The wake washed the boards of the jetty, splashed against the black rocks under the kitchen.

  Vincent stared out and went back into the house with the vision and power of the destroyer.

  In his mind a Spitfire was hurtling into a line of poplar trees. Floating down was a white parachute like a white moon, descending slowly to earth. Landing on green grass. It landed, dragging the parachuter along the ground. There was the sound of barking dogs. He heard his voice in the dark say, ‘Bernard.’

  Vincent heard the door of the under-the-stairs cupboard open and bang shut.

  He returned to the stairs. Theo was standing against the door, na
ked, facing him. As Vincent approached, he knelt. Vincent knelt in front of him. There they were, the boy and the doctor, facing each other, kneeling in the darkness of the war’s blackout.

  ‘Ride-a-cock-horse.’

  ‘Theo.’

  ‘Coco.’

  ‘Theo.’

  ‘Coco, Cocorito.’

  ‘Theo, that’s not your name. That’s Mister’s name for you.’

  ‘Yes, is he name for me.’ Vincent noticed that for a moment they were having a conversation about the boy’s state of mind. Then he was off again with a story, leaping naked onto the arms of the couch in the drawing room.

  PRINCE come in the yard with Mister on his back. Mister riding out of the cocoa. Like he just appear from nowhere. Crisp white shirt and pressed khaki pants and cork hat. Tall brown shiny boots in the silver stirrups. Stirrups to dig Prince. And Mister holding Prince by the reins. Mister, coming out of the cocoa, not down the gravel road from the big house, but back track.

  Who he think he could fool?

  Prince have a white star in the middle of his brown forehead. He was chestnut, Chantal say. A brown I don’t know. Red brown like your Mama skin, she say. Like mine, even when it in the sun long. Long days dry season gravel trace when there is no leaves for shade.

  Mister tilt the brim of his cork hat where there is a band stain with the sweat from his brow. He see my escape into the bush now.

  I hear his voice, the cry of a bird coaxing me. Coco, Coco, Cocorito, coming along with the clop clop clop of Prince.

  But as I come out into the trace where I think I lose him, he is there, dismount from his chestnut horse. He is there, tall in khaki. And the trace narrow with the cocoa thick on either side. And the trace is long behind him and long behind me. The trace is a black canal. Cocoa picker deep in the cocoa, so we alone. I hear the water in the river running over the pebble, pulling at the fine gravel. I hear it where it fall over rock, as it take the bend to meet up with a next little river coming out of La Vega.