Pao

by Kerry Young

  I just sit and stare at her standing there in front of me. Hampton tell her is OK, she done the right thing. He tell her to go wait down by the gate and he will come directly and drive her home. Then him sorta lean over me, and really look at me like him worried ’bout something.

  And then him say to me, ‘You alright?’

  But I no answer.

  So him say, ‘I think it best she come tell yu. I reckon yu would want to know. And I think it better if it come from her.’ Him wait a bit and then say, ‘I going drive her home now if that alright with you.’

  ‘Yes, is alright.’ And just as him step away I reach out and grab his arm and say, ‘Thank you, Hampton.’ And then I shout out to Ethyl as she opening the gate to leave, ‘Thank you, Ethyl.’

  According to Sun Tzu, Mencius say, ‘ The appropriate season is not as important as the advantages of the ground; these are not as important as harmonious human relations .’

  The next day I take a shower and shave and get dressed and go ’round to see Michael. The housekeeper don’t want to let me in but Michael hear my voice from the next room and shout to her that it OK, she can let me by. When I come into his study he ask the housekeeper, Miss Crawford he call her, to go put on some coffee, and he invite me to sit down in a armchair by the open window. This here is the first time I see him since I grab him up in the cathedral that day. Michael look like he lose some weight, and he look tired.

  ‘I have been meaning to call you.’ This is what him say as he sitting down in the armchair next to me.

  The window reach down to the ground so when you sit down you can see the garden right there in front of you, and you can catch a nice breeze to take the edge off the afternoon heat.

  ‘That day I grab you up in the cathedral I could see you was suffering. And now I come here and see you like this it seem like you still the same way. So maybe the confession thing switch ’round now and is you that need to tell me what you got on your mind.’

  Michael look at me and I can see he got all sort of things going ’round in his head. Is like he can’t even think where to begin there is so much he got to tell. But what strike me is it seem like he been waiting and wanting and wishing for me to come over here and ask him ’bout what happened and what he had to do with it.

  Right then the door open and Miss Crawford come in with a tray with the coffee and cups and such. She put it on a side table and Michael thank her. When she gone Michael get up and pour the coffee. The rich, heavy smell of the Blue Mountain fill up the room.

  When he hand me the cup him say, ‘The week before it happened Fay asked me if she could visit with the children on the Sunday when they came to Mass, and I said no.’

  Then he sit down next to me with the cup of coffee he pour for himself.

  ‘I told her that if she wanted to visit with the children she would have to make arrangements with you. She became quite distraught over this. It took some time for her to calm down and compose herself. And then she asked me if I would at least allow her to talk to Karl on the telephone.’

  Michael stop. I think he get startled at how I suddenly just right then put all my attention on him. It give out a kind of electric shock. So the two of us just sit there and wait for it to pass.

  ‘I don’t know why I agreed to it, but I said yes. So on the Sunday before that was what happened. She spoke with him on the phone. Right here in this room because I told Desmond that Karl had to come with me to collect some new missals.’ Then him stop. And then him start again. ‘I waited outside. I did not eavesdrop on their conversation, but when Karl came out he looked anxious and I asked him if he was OK. He said he was alright so we walked together back to the cathedral to meet up with Mui and Desmond and I thought nothing more of it. Not until after it happened. Because although I knew Fay was planning to go to England I never dreamed that she would take the children with her. I just never even conceived of it.’

  ‘Yu knew she was going?’

  ‘Yes, and I realise that I was an accomplice. Especially in relation to the children. I helped when I should have been trying to do something to stop it.’

  ‘When I find you in the cathedral that day, and when I look at you, it don’t seem to me now that you could have been crucifying yourself like that over a telephone call.’ And then I thought maybe I shouldn’t have said a word like crucify .

  Michael look outta the window and right then it start to rain. That three-thirty Jamaican rain that flood the place in ten minutes and then ten minutes after that you can’t tell it happen except for the fresh smell and the few drops of water still dripping off the banana leaf.

  ‘She wanted me to go with her.’

  ‘She wanted you to go with her? She wanted you to go with her to England?’ When I see the flash of panic on Michael’s face I suddenly remember where I was so I lower my voice to a whisper and I say, ‘She wanted you to go with her to England?’ And him nod. ‘So what kinda thing is that? You take your priest with you when you kidnap your children and run four thousand miles away?’

  Michael run his hand through him hair and then cover him mouth like there is something he don’t want to say. He sit there like that with his hand over him mouth for a good while.

  Then he say, ‘Sin occurs in thought as well as in deed.’

  It shock me. I dunno why because it what I been thinking all along anyway. Maybe I didn’t expect him to admit it to me just like that.

  ‘You mean in thought and deed?’

  ‘No, Pao, just thought.’

  And I think well that about right, because if Michael had anything to do with Mui I reckon Fay would have been more interested in the child. But then I think to myself, Michael torturing himself like this just for thinking ’bout it? So I reckon maybe it was more than thought. It was somewhere beyond thought, even if it was short of deed.

  I say to him, ‘Did you want to go with her?’

  Michael think a long time and then him say, ‘Some part of me did. Some part of me wanted to go. Some part of me wanted something with her. But the greater part of me knows that my calling is here.’

  I look at him and right then I just get up and I raise Michael up outta the chair and I hug him. I hug him close because he was the only man on this earth who understand how I feel, the only man who understand what we lose. Not just because we lose Fay. But because we both lose the children as well.

  When I get to Gloria’s she open the door and she put her arms ’round me. I let myself lean into her, and right then it feel like the first time my body come to rest since the whole thing happen. So I just stand there and she carry on hold me while she say to me, ‘I wonder how long it was going to be before you come.’

  I want to tell Gloria everything ’bout what happen, and how Fay do it and ’bout the constables and the taxi driver and what it feel like with the children gone, but I not sure it fair on her. Not sure if it fair for her to have to listen to it when she got all her own feelings ’bout Fay and Mui and Xiuquan, and Esther. So I don’t say nothing, I just follow her inside.

  She go into the kitchen and start boil the kettle.

  ‘You not got no Appleton?’

  ‘From what Finley tell me you already had plenty enough of that. I fixing us some nice Lipton’s.’

  Esther come into the kitchen and look at me. And for the first time it seem like maybe she feel something different from sour to see me standing there. And then she say, ‘I’m sorry to hear about what happen,’ and she go to the back door and step out into the yard.

  Gloria put the tea bags in the pot and she pass the little strings through the handle, and then she pour in the boiling water. After she settle us down with the cup and saucer and everything she take my hand and say to me, ‘It like old times, eh?’

  And I say, ‘Yes, except twenty years done pass us by.’

  ‘I know you tell Clifton you want him to go murder everybody, but who you talk to, Pao? Who you talk to ’bout how you feel inside?’

  ‘I don’t talk to nobo
dy. Who you think I going talk to?’

  ‘Me. You can talk to me.’

  ‘What, me talk to you ’bout Fay? I thought that was your one condition?’

  ‘That a long time ago.’

  I look at her and I realise she really mean it.

  ‘Since the children gone it like somebody reach in my chest and pull out my heart, and I just walking ’round like a dead man. I don’t want to do nothing. I don’t even want to get outta bed in the morning. I don’t want to shower or shave or dress myself. I don’t want to go to work. I don’t want to talk to nobody. All I want to do is see the bottom of a glass.

  ‘And as for Fay, I know she never cared for me none, but what I realise today, just this afternoon, is that all the time I spend with Michael give me a feeling like I connected to her. Like being with him give me a way of being part of something that Fay care about, because I really wanted something between us to work. There was so many times I feel like maybe we could have had something good and then some calamity happen like when she go to Matthews Lane, or when she find out ’bout you or the thing with Samuels or when Kenneth get killed. So many times I think we was going step through a new door together but what happen instead was she go through the door on her own and slam it in my face. Just like what happen on the veranda that night up Lady Musgrave Road.

  ‘I really wanted us to be a family, yu know. And now she gone and the children gone, what might have been is never going to be.’

  And then I throw myself in Gloria’s arms and I cry.

  26

  Sincerity

  When I open my eyes I realise Matthews Lane completely silent. I still hear the dogs barking but that is way out there somewhere. Not here in the yard. The thing that I can’t hear is life. I can’t hear life going on. I can’t hear Ma beating the batter or Tilly picking the saltfish and throwing the skin and bones in the pail, or Hampton sweeping the yard, or Zhang rustling the pages he turning on the Chinese newspaper.

  So I get up and pull on some pants and step into the yard to see what going on. I stand on the step of my room and I look ’round. Ma got the bowl in the crook of her arm and the wooden spoon in her hand beating the batter for the saltfish fritters. And I see Tilly there at the sink washing off the saltfish she already soak and boil and drain off the salt water and now she picking off the fish and throwing the skin and bone into the pail. And I look up the yard and Hampton got a yard broom working his way down from the duck pond. And Zhang is sitting there with his rocking chair in the shade reading the paper. And there is not a sound from any one of them.

  It so quiet I start wonder if I done lose my hearing. Is only the barking dogs telling me I not got no need to fret ’bout what all that Appleton do to me.

  And then I look ’round again and I think it not so much that the place quiet. What wrong with Matthews Lane is that the place empty. The place done lose its energy. Maybe some would say it lose its chi because everybody was going about their business just the same as they always do except there was no substance to it. It was like they a bunch of duppies just waving their arms about but there was nothing there. No intention. Just their empty movement.

  Then little by little as the days go by I start notice how Ma grumbling to herself that there is no little hands to help chop a few vegetables, or a little voice that showing interest in how you season the duck or pickle the cabbage. No one eager to wash the rice, or help set up the mah-jongg table, or greet your friends with a warm welcome and a hot bowl of tea, or light a extra incense stick at temple, or just sit with you and pick the bean sprouts, or help cut a few threads on your mending. Now you have to do everything on your own.

  Zhang solemn as well. Like he dragging them wooden slippers up the concrete path rather than lift up his feet. All the news in the paper is bad news. Everybody he read about and everybody he know and everybody he talk to is dishonourable and cantankerous. There not one good thing in the whole of Zhang’s world. Not like when you have somebody take some interest in history, and the revolution and what is honourable and noble, and wants to know what is the right thing to do in different circumstances, and is a good student of tai chi, who practise hard and ask sensible questions, and who is getting better every day at reading the Chinese newspaper, and who want to understand that there is a connection between the plight and destiny of poor men and women everywhere in the world.

  Hampton huffing and puffing with every clunk of them weights on the bench press. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. With the sweat pouring outta him in the midday sun. It almost like Hampton want to kill himself with exercise. Well what you going do when you not got nobody to play shove ha’penny, or go fishing off the wharf with a hook, line and sinker, or go swimming over Lime Cay, or to bring you two piece of wood that need nail together, or they got string and paper and they want to make a kite, or you need to go get some old truck tyre to take to the beach, or you got to make a cart with wheels that turn. What you going to do if there is no one to ask you ’bout what you and your friends used to get up to when you boys, and what you know ’bout Uncle Xiuquan, and what her papa like when he young? What you going to do apart from pile the next few pounds on the barbell?

  The thing I can’t understand is how come I no notice when all of this was going on. Mui so busy with everybody in the house, while I was driving from here to there with chickens and cigarettes and paying the child no mind. I try hard to think what it was I do with her because I wasn’t making no cart or kite or singing the praises of Sun Yat-sen or Mao Zedong, or picking the root off the bean sprouts. Truth is all I was doing was reading the newspaper and smoking a cigar. I was sitting down in my room or in the little sun trap just outside, outta sight of all of this with the faint sound of it coming to me on a breeze drifting down the yard. And the only thing that I do that seem important to me was to haul the children ’round Chinatown thinking that this was going to be their inheritance like it was mine. And all that happen from that was Xiuquan go get himself arrested and bring me face to face with them two good-for-nothing constables.

  I say to Zhang, ‘What is it you think the children get from me? I mean it seem like everybody got something they do with them except me. They cooking and talking and playing and what not. What you think I do with them?’

  ‘You teach them tai chi.’

  ‘I start teach them. But every time they got a question is you they running to. Is you they want show off to how well they practise. Well, Mui anyway. Xiuquan don’t seem like him that interested. What Xiuquan interested in, yu think?’

  Zhang pour more tea and he look ’round the empty yard because Ma at temple and Hampton out doing his chores.

  ‘Life not so easy for Xiuquan. Mui she spend much time Matthews Lane. Xiuquan he spend much time Lady Musgrave Road. Mui she learn ask question. Xiuquan he learn stay quiet. Mui she ask question in own head and tell you what on her mind. Xiuquan he got question in head but he not telling you nothing. Or maybe he tell people up Lady Musgrave Road. I don’t know.’

  ‘What question she ask you?’

  ‘Like she say, “In 1865 Paul Bogle and his comrades marched up to the courthouse in Morant Bay to protest about the injustice and abuses suffered by the people. He did not shoot his neighbour. He went to the authorities to air the many grievances of which the peasants of the parish complained. Why don’t the people today go to the authorities with their grievances?” And I say to her, maybe because they do not believe that the authorities are going to listen to them. And she say, “The authorities didn’t listen to Paul Bogle. They hanged him. That is why we struggled so hard for self-government and the right to government of the people, by the people, for the people. So how come a hundred years later the people still can’t get their grievances heard?” ’

  ‘But where she get all of this from?’

  ‘You. She get from listen to you. “Killing your neighbour not going solve unemployment and poverty. Foreign investors taking all the profit. The masa don’t even have to beat the slave any
more in Jamaica.” This is you. Mui listen good and then she make up her own mind. The night you and Fay fight, Xiuquan confused but Mui know exactly where she want to be, and it with you.’

  27

  Courage

  Sun Tzu say, ‘ If a general is not courageous he will be unable to conquer doubts or to create great plans .’

  I sit there on the veranda and I look at Miss Cicely and she just say to me, ‘The children were silent when they were here. Maybe Mui played some game with the maids, but Karl sat silent and read his comic book under the mango tree, or comforted his mother who was often distraught.’

  ‘And what about when Father Kealey come to visit?’

  ‘That was strictly a private matter between him and Fay. The children did not seem to be a part of that although it was obvious that Mui thought a great deal of him, and he in turn was very fond of her.’

  ‘But what about Xiuquan?’

  ‘Like I said, Karl read his comic book and watched television.’ And then she start look around like she already done finish with the conversation. She already done tell me everything and she can’t think what else there may be to say. She even get up and walk over to the edge of the veranda to go check what Edmond busy doing ’round the side of the house. Then Ethyl bring some cool lemonade and pour it out, and Miss Cicely sit down and take a sip and say to me, ‘The thing that interests me, Philip, is why you are so concerned about how the children spent their time here. And why now? It didn’t seem to me that you were concerned previously.’

  I dunno what to say to her. Miss Cicely don’t think that children is a proper subject for men to be interested in. She tell me that a long time ago when I ask her ’bout marrying Fay. Or maybe it was more like Henry Wong didn’t think it was a concern for men. So I decide to just tell her the truth.