Rani died in the week following the abortive hurricane, quietly and without fuss during the night. ‘Cardiac seizure,’ the doctor pronounced. ‘If you had brought her to me for a regular check-up, this need never have happened.’ Egbert Ramsaran did not take kindly to this rebuke. ‘Next you going to be saying I murder she,’ he replied heatedly. ‘Nothing of the sort,’ the doctor said calmly, ‘all I said was that it need not have happened if she was having regular check-ups.’ The use of the forbidden word enraged him. ‘I know what you mean by check-ups,’ he said. ‘You just want people to come to you and waste they money. But I not going to make you rich.’ ‘I didn’t come here to be insulted by you, Mr Ramsaran,’ the doctor replied. ‘But make no mistake. Your turn will come.’ He departed, bristling with injured feeling.
The brown coffin lay in the house for one day. Singh arrived on the morning of the funeral. He did not stay long, behaving as if he had come merely to verify the truth of what he had heard and identify the body. Going up to the coffin, he took from his pocket an envelope and shook out into his palm some Trinidad one-cent stamps. Standing over the coffin, he tore them into bits and stuffed them back into the envelope. Such was his farewell to the woman who had frequently invoked the blessings of God on his behalf.
‘What’s that Singh was tearing up?’ Egbert Ramsaran asked his son.
‘Stamps.’
Egbert Ramsaran was puzzled. ‘Stamps? But why would Singh want to be tearing up stamps for?’
Wilbert did not break the tacit agreement he had had with his mother. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Egbert Ramsaran shrugged and dropped the subject. In the afternoon, a curious rather than grief-stricken procession followed the coffin to the hole that had been dug for it in the Victoria cemetery. Egbert Ramsaran, who had an eye for the niceties, resurrected the photograph taken on their wedding day and had it framed in gold-painted wood. It was hung in her bedroom. ‘She couldn’t have asked for any more,’ Basdai remarked bitterly. ‘She always had a liking for gold.’
Nevertheless, Rani’s death was a tremendous loss to Basdai. She showered extravagant condolences on Egbert Ramsaran. He received them for the most part in silence and with a preoccupied air; lost, so it appeared, in remote speculations. It was a not unwelcome change from the abuse he normally directed against her and this distant cordiality added to her distress. Rani’s inopportune death was conclusive proof – if conclusive proof were needed – of her inherent unreliability and worthlessness.
‘You mustn’t harass yourself,’ Basdai advised her son-in-law – although he showed no signs of doing so. ‘I going to work out something. I not going to leave you stranded. Don’t think I ungrateful for everything you try to do for that worthless daughter of mine.’
Her concern amused him. ‘What you going to do for me?’ he asked. ‘Which of your family you want to marry me off to this time?’
Basdai looked solemn when he said this. What the ‘something’ was remained a secret.
There was a subtle – at first almost imperceptible – change of mood and temper in Egbert Ramsaran following Rani’s death. The distant cordiality with which he had treated Basdai was extended to the clients as a whole; and the air of being lost in remote speculations persisted. He became marginally more open and communicative. His odd gaiety surprised and somewhat disturbed Wilbert. The tiny hints of uncharacteristic indulgence he had begun to exhibit towards others was a reflection of the indulgence he had begun to exhibit towards himself. More than a burden had been lifted from him by her death. A lifetime’s iron restraint was weakening. Egbert Ramsaran was losing the desire to cling to the rope he had spun across the abyss. He was running out of energy. He was tired. Freed of one burden, there arose the gnawing temptation to be freed of all burdens. Fortunately for him, he did not realize this.
He would neglect his exercises. Wilbert reminded him.
‘Is only one day,’ he said evasively. ‘One day is neither here nor there.
‘You never used to miss a day before.’
Egbert Ramsaran looked at his son. ‘Whether I miss a day, a week or a month is none of your business. I not as young as I used to be. You should take that into consideration.’
‘You not feeling too well?’
‘Fit as a fiddle!’ He laughed uneasily. ‘Anyway, what is all this? Since when I have to explain what I doing to you? Since when you turning into a slave-driver, eh?’
Compared to what they had been, his audiences with the clients on Saturday and Sunday mornings were – relatively – mild affairs. To the women who broke down and wailed, he said: ‘Go outside and do your crying. You giving me a headache with all that bawling and screaming.’ If he aimed the pistols at their heads, it was clearer than it had ever been that the threat was not meant to be taken seriously. Externally, little had altered: a stranger might not have noted anything out of the ordinary; and have interpreted literally the threat implied with the gun aimed at his head. However, the clients were no strangers; they were skilled and avid students of the behaviour of their tormentor. Some intangible, unforeseen alchemy had been at work corroding the soul of Egbert Ramsaran and the clients had sniffed it out. The harsh school of necessity and fear had trained them to detect the minutest shifts in behaviour and attitude of their subject and their noses had seized on the scent immediately. A fissure had been created which they could attack. Thus, despite the fact that the same wooden chair was brought from the kitchen; despite the fact that they were confronted by the same glistening head; despite the fact that there was the same piping invective, the clients were no longer frightened out of their wits. They were still frightened – but not out of their wits. That, from their point of view, was progress. When the gun was directed at their heads, they cowered to a lesser degree; and did not retreat with their former haste towards the door. The props remained: the difference was that they were recognized by the clients for what they were: mere props. Their eyes and ears and noses had informed them with unerring accuracy of a shift of which Egbert Ramsaran himself was not aware.
There were other signs of a faltering strength of will. He was anxious to justify and rationalize what he had done in the past. In a sense, he had always done this: Egbert Ramsaran liked to hold himself up as a shining example. But whereas the philosophy of life described in his boastful moods had been instinctive, springing from the depths of his own personality and experience, it now seemed that that instinct was dying. He was shoring himself up with shadows of vanishing glories. The smouldering fire, which had impressed and appalled Vishnu Bholai, was being slowly damped down and extinguished and his words were like ashes. And perhaps, in an unconscious effort to fan the flames of the dying fire, ashen words flowed compulsively from his lips. His descriptions of himself and his exploits were tinged with an unperceived (unperceived, that is, by Egbert Ramsaran) nostalgia which increased Wilbert’s uneasiness about his father. He could not accommodate himself to the change and it was lasting too long to be dismissed as simply another example of his capriciousness. The reduction in scale was unacceptable to the designated heir of the Ramsaran Transport Company. He had grown accustomed to the cut-out cardboard figure of the man of iron will and these glimpses of ordinary human frailty upset him.
2
Basdai was an extraordinarily thin and spare woman with arms and legs like knotted sticks. Her narrow, bony face was lined and wrinkled to an astonishing degree and her cheeks had caved in on her nearly toothless mouth. Being one of those people who consider the mere accumulation of years as in itself worthy of admiration and devotion, she was proud of her appearance: it was only her bright and alert eyes which hinted at something other than decrepitude.
She smoked cigarettes stooping in a corner of the hut, refusing to sit on either chair or bench, though there were several of these scattered about. Burying the cigarette inside her cupped palms, she inhaled with a hissing, sucking wheeze. The cigarettes made her cough terribly, especially at night when she lay on her pallet gasping f
or breath. There was another luxury which she did not scruple to indulge on the slightest pretext: her taste for cheap white rum. She asserted strenuously it was ‘good’ for her cough and used to send her grandchildren to the local rumshop, the Palace of Heavenly Delights, to buy her ‘nips’. ‘Remember,’ Basdai warned, ‘if Farouk ask you what I want it for say is for my medicine. Medicine for my cough – you understand that? And don’t let him cheat you. You should get so much (marking off the amount on her index finger) for six cents.’
The rum was kept in a bottle which had formerly contained cough mixture and Basdai always referred straightfacedly to her ‘cough-mixture’. These sessions of hers were strictly private and she emerged from them still coughing but more garrulous and bright-eyed than ever. ‘Ma been soothing she chest again’ became an established saying. Gradually, the amount Basdai spent on her cough-mixture crept up from six to eight to ten cents; and eventually, she added a new instruction. ‘Tell Farouk I is a little short of cash at the moment and I go pay him at the end of the week.’ The debt accumulated. But Farouk – some felt a shade too obligingly – never hurried her.
The immediate effect of Rani’s death on Basdai was to push up her consumption of her cough-mixture from ten cents’ worth to twelve cents’ worth; the amount, in fact, represented by the length of her index finger. Her daughter’s death had assumed in her mind the proportions of a catastrophe: the prospect of losing her connection – however tenuous it had been – with Egbert Ramsaran was too terrible for her to contemplate. She had derived nothing from it to date and now it appeared more unlikely that she ever would. It was one of the principles round which she had organized her life and it was inconceivable that she should discard it. Therefore, her response to the situation was as automatic as a reflex action: the vacancy in the Ramsaran household had to be filled somehow and filled quickly before it was too late. She cast around desperately for a possible substitute to replace the prematurely worn-out part.
Happily, Basdai was one of the most acute students of Egbert Ramsaran and she had instantly sniffed out the subtly altered atmosphere. She did not know quite what construction to put on it and returned home from the funeral in an extremely thoughtful frame of mind. Could she have been mistaken? To guard against error, she went again to the house in Victoria. And again. No. She was not mistaken. Basdai returned to the Settlement from their third visit to Victoria, her imagination teeming with plots. It was obvious that a mere substitute for Rani was not what was required. Something more was needed; a new departure.
But what. Basdai secluded herself and pondered over glass after glass of white rum. She smiled. The thought had occurred to her that Rani’s death might not be the calamitous misfortune she had assumed it to be at first glance. She inched her way step by step, gradually refining and honing down her crude assessment until she arrived at the triumphant conclusion that her daughter’s death was a blessing in disguise, opening new spheres of influence to her. An irritating obstacle had been removed. Had Rani been other than a liability? An unadorned animal-cunning guided Basdai through this maze of speculation. She was enthralled by her cleverness. It was like a game played for no end beyond the pleasure and satisfaction it afforded. She studied the bottle of cough-mixture in front of her. The solution was clear, writ large across the heavens and she was thankful she had been able to diagnose the symptoms so accurately. With the hunter’s skill and intuition, she had divined the weakness of her quarry and was ready to bait the trap. None but Sushila would do. The only problem was to secure her cooperation.
For reasons unspecified, Sushila had been left in the care of Basdai when still a young girl. It was generally assumed that she was a distant relation, but the connection – if there was one – had never been satisfactorily explained and remained wrapped in obscurity. Sushila had combined considerable beauty with independence of spirit. It was an inflammable mixture, transforming the charming, self-centred child into the wayward, reckless young woman who, by the time she was sixteen had twice fled from the constraints of the Settlement to taste the freedom that lay beyond its borders. Abuse and beatings did not deter her. Sushila, sustained by her beauty and the dividends it brought her, persisted in her contrariness. She duly scandalized everyone by becoming pregnant. The man responsible was never caught. Suspicion settled on Farouk, bachelor at large and proprietor of the Settlement’s sole house of entertainment, the Palace of Heavenly Delights (he was a humourist).
It was natural that suspicion should settle on Farouk. The village had long harboured resentment against him. They disliked the niggardly quantities of rum he doled out over the counter in his cramped, smelly establishment; they disliked him because he himself ostentatiously never drank – at least not in public; they disliked him because he excluded a shabby, good-humoured prosperity; they disliked him because he was the only Muslim in a predominantly Hindu village; they disliked him because there was no alternative to the Palace of Heavenly Delights for miles around; they disliked him because he had the reputation of being an unscrupulous womanizer – they observed the way he eyed the young girls when they went with their buckets to fetch water from the standpipe. ‘Is a scandal for a big man like that to be getting on so,’ it was said. These were the concrete grievances, but there were others less concrete and possibly even more damning as a result. Farouk was a genuinely puzzling case to his neighbours: an enigma. He had not been born in the Settlement. Claiming to have lived many years in Port-of-Spain and to know the city as well as he knew the palm of his hand (‘if not better’), Farouk had transported with him the superior habits of a man of the world. He endeavoured to dress with a certain style and panache and tended to use words and turns of phrase which no one but himself could understand. To the Settlement, it was a subject of wonder and speculation that, of all the possible places open to him, he should have chosen to come among them. It was taken for granted that no one in his right mind would voluntarily do such a thing. The Settlement was the sort of place where you had the misfortune to be born or to which you had the even greater misfortune to come as an unsuspecting bride. It was definitely not the sort of place to which you came voluntarily. Therefore, from the very beginning, Farouk’s presence had been highly suspicious. ‘He have murder on he conscience,’ they said.
Farouk steadfastly disclaimed all responsibility for Sushila’s pregnancy and Sushila herself obstinately refused to throw any light on the matter. However, the fury and indignation aroused by the affair was not so easily quelled and in a burst of spontaneous anger an attempt was made to set fire to the Palace of Heavenly Delights, but the blaze was quickly put out and the damage was minimal. Farouk laughed the incident off. ‘I have insurance,’ he said, ‘so I’ll be only too glad if somebody burn me down one day. The money will come in very handy. But if I was to go from here, what you think will happen? You think it have other people crazy enough like me to come to a place behind God back and start up a rumshop? I could set up in Port-of-Spain or San Fernando any day, you know.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘I doing you people a favour. After what happen I have a good mind to up and go.’ But he never did; and there was no further attempt at insurrection.
Sanctions could not persuade Sushila to divulge the name of the child’s father and Basdai drew the appropriate conclusion. ‘I wouldn’t be surprise if Sushila sheself don’t know who the father is,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past she. That girl was born with wickedness inside of she.’ It was an opinion shared by the rest of the Settlement. Consequently, the child’s ancestry was no less wrapped in obscurity than the mother’s.
If as a result of what happened, Basdai expected Sushila to have learned a ‘lesson’ and to be suitably contrite and submissive, she must have been profoundly disappointed. Sushila exhibited no remorse whatever, shamelessly flaunting herself and boldly continuing to associate with Farouk. Her journeys to the standpipe to collect water were not walks: they were leisurely parades. She gloried in her notoriety and evidently relished the stir she had
created. Pregnancy, far from being a ‘lesson’, had been her emancipation: she was a full-fledged woman after it. Basdai might still abuse her but she could not beat or strike her any more. Abuse meant nothing to Sushila; and if anyone struck her she was prepared to repay the compliment in kind.
Despite Sita (the name she had bestowed on her child), there were men willing and ready to marry her; to make, as they said, a respectable woman of her. Sushila was not ready, even in the face of Basdai’s dire threatenings to murder both her and Sita, to be made a respectable woman. ‘Is not my respectability they want,’ she laughed, ‘is something else.’ ‘Think of Sita,’ she was urged by the more rational spirits, ‘what the future going to be like for her? Think of what it would mean to Sita if she have nobody she could call father.’ The argument did not impress Sushila. ‘I manage well enough without anybody to call father,’ she answered. ‘What make Sita so special?’
When Sita was old enough to walk, Sushila disappeared from the Settlement, abandoning her daughter to the mercies of Basdai. Where and how she lived was a mystery. Now people claimed to have seen her in Port-of-Spain, now in San Fernando. And, although she had no visible means of support, the invisible ones were clearly ample and she appeared to prosper. As Egbert Ramsaran had done before her, she returned to the Settlement at unpredictable intervals, always looking cheerful, healthy and unrepentant and bringing gifts with her: toys and dresses for Sita and half-bottles of white rum for Basdai – who made a great show of reluctance before accepting what was brought her.
The Chip-Chip Gatherers Page 9