“‘Suppose they catch you and lock you up?’ I ask he, and he only walkin’ up and down, shaking he head as if he really don’t know what to do. ‘I have to go to the bush and lay low . . . lay low,’ that is all he could say, and he walkin’ up and down, up and down. I had to take one of my heart pills, my heart begin beating so hard too. ‘Didi . . . you could lend me a couple dollars till next month, please God . . . I go pay you back, so help me God.’ That is the exact exact words he say. Well, you know I so frighten, every noise I hear I think that is the police comin’ to lock him up, and then it gettin’ to be five o’clock, I say to myself, if you father come here and catch him, he will hand him over to the police . . . you know what kind of man your father is, I don’t have to tell you . . . brother or no brother, if he really done gone and kill a man, you father will hand him over. Well anyway, to make a long story short, I have a few shillings save up from my market expenses and I give him five dollars. ‘Listen, boy,’ I say to him, ‘if you really in trouble I feel glad that you come to one of the family instead you go to a perfect stranger.’”
She stopped to catch her breath, and I could sense all the old anger and the old fright of the moment rekindling in her veins. “Hm,” she said, and as before I waited while she sat there in front of me, her pot spoon down at her side, her eyes staring blankly into space. “Well, is he a murderer now . . . ? In the old days he used to be just a pleasant jail-bird.” She snapped out of her reverie. “That worthless rogue ain’t kill nobody . . . he just did want to get a few dollars, and is me of all people that he choose to play this trick ’pon.”
I felt that I would explode if I did not burst out in laughter, but I knew that I had to contain myself if she was going to help me to find Uncle Zoltan, and I could not help feeling the irony, the paradox of her emotions. Perhaps if Uncle Zoltan had killed a man she would feel better, at least her pride would not have been injured even if the family name was ruined. But as before, I thought to myself better not confront her with this thought.
“Anyway,” she sighed, “blood thicker than water and I will feel bad if you have to go ’way without seein’ your family on your father’s side.” My mother had thirteen brothers and three sisters. My father had only one brother, Uncle Zoltan, and as long as she could put Uncle Zoltan in that category of being on my father’s side of the family, she was relieved. I could tell from the tone of her voice that a great change had come over her. “I made a few inquiries for you and I find out that he drivin’ a lorry these days bringing fruits and ground provisions to the market from the bush . . . Don’t ask me where he livin’ because since that day he ’fraid to show he face in this house.”
Did he finally persuade his father-in-law to get him that lorry? Did he really kill that man in the old days? Did he really get into trouble that day when he came to mother? From the way she told it, it seemed impossible to fake all that tense fear and anxiety unless he had really done something terrible.
The next morning I went to the Central Market. My mother had sent me to one of the vendors with whom Uncle Zoltan traded and I learnt he was due in from the bush that morning. I tried to find out from the man in the market any number of things about Uncle Zoltan, but I learnt nothing. “Your uncle is a funny kind of man . . . I don’t have to tell you that. If anybody ask him any kind of question, he tell them to mind their own business, and you know what kind of Bad-John he is, so you leave him alone . . . Look, look . . . look, he comin’ now.”
I turned and saw the burly stocky man with his arms flung out to the sides like a gorilla, his beard and his hair of the same length. As he got closer I could see that the shoes he wore were made of old automobile tires and his trousers were three-quarter length, frayed at the bottom. And I could tell that he must have recognised me; he gave a little jump to one side and his head tipped forward as though he could not believe his own eyes. He threw his arms around me and then, with his powerful hands still on my shoulders, stood back at arms’ length to get a better look at me.
“Boy, you don’t know how you gettin’ to look more like your father every day.” He was being very vain, but subtly so; he too was the image of my father when he was shaved and dressed up, and I could tell that he was very proud of that. And turning me around and around so that he could examine my chest and shoulders, the shape of my head from behind, he said to the vendor, “This is my own blood, you know, my own flesh and blood, man!” The vendor only nodded as though this were a rare occasion when he saw my Uncle Zoltan reacting to anything as a human being.
“Listen, boy,” he said to the vendor, “the lorry outside on George Street . . . better get a couple of your idlers to unload . . . I have to spend this time with my nephew who I ain’t see for years.” And then turning to me, “Come on, man, let we go and fire one in the rum shop.” We were headed for the old Britannia Bar which I remembered well, and as we moved through the streets Uncle Zoltan’s arms, still thrown out, would bang into people, but he moved along unconcerned. I knew that if anyone got banged by his elbows and wanted to take him up on it, he would be quite ready to put them in their place. A few people looked around as they got struck by his arms, but that was all. When we got to the Britannia with its sawdust and its smells of ancient kegs of rum, the bar attender left a little clique he was gossiping with and came rushing over to Uncle Zoltan. “I want you to meet my nephew, man . . . just come down from USA,” and he ordered a nip of rum without taking his eyes off me.
“So how are things up there . . . plenty motor cars . . . plenty people?”
“Yes,” I said, “it’s a big country . . .”
“I hear that everything work by machine up there . . . You could go into a restaurant and put your money in hole and food come out?”
“Yes,” I said, “there are places like that, and . . .” I had the feeling that he was getting tense and anxious about something and he simply wanted to get these preliminaries out of the way.
“Listen, boy . . . you make any money up there?” he finally asked, facing me squarely. I hardly knew what to say. I had a few hundred, and the exchange was about two-to-one so I felt rich and expansive. I nodded grandly. He suddenly changed his tone of voice; it was now tuned down to a whisper. The bar attender had placed our drinks on the counter and disappeared. Uncle Zoltan turned his head slowly and suspiciously around as if to make sure that he was out of earshot, and he must have caught my eyes and the curiosity in them, then he changed his tone again and became loud. He raised his glass filled with the amber rum, and not exactly proposing a toast to both of us but more a toast to the tall glass of rum which he had poured himself, he pronounced wildly, “Here’s to those that wish us well . . . may the rest of them be damned in hell.” I hardly had my glass to my lips when Uncle Zoltan poured the powerful rum down his gullet and wiped his mouth with the back of his hands. His body gave a quick little shiver as though his organism was jolted by the sudden impact of a crude blow, and then he smiled broadly and clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Picture of your father, boy . . . you is the picture of your father . . . it make me happy to see that you don’t look like the other side of the family.”
I suddenly thought all over again how strange life was. My father, who was older than Uncle Zoltan, treated him with a kind of firm, strict, clipped tone—it was often one of admonition—and for the first time in my life I realised that if Uncle Zoltan feared no one or respected no one else in this world, not even God, he was afraid of my father. He was always docile and fawning whenever he spoke to my father, or rather when my father spoke to him, because it was always a stern kind of lecturing to Uncle Zoltan—how he should mend his ways, how my father had heard through the grapevine what a low type he was, how little ambition he had, etc. etc. . . . And Uncle Zoltan, in his own way and in his own world, treated all the people he came in contact with with the same kind of harsh clipped words of condemnation for which they all respected him. I was a little surprised to find that he was reacting to me in pretty much the same way
that he reacted to my father, and I wondered if he sensed this. He had poured a second shot as tall as the first, but now he was savouring it. He sipped this one slowly and he began to get all furtive and cagey; each time he had a sip of rum he looked over his shoulder to make sure that he was not being watched or followed or overheard. He also developed a sudden twitch of the arm with each sip of rum as though he were warding off a sudden blow; his eyes would twitch and again he would turn his head around ever so slowly. I thought that any moment now he would come right out and ask me whether anyone was listening to us or staring at us, but he didn’t, he only became more and more agitated.
“Listen, man . . .” he finally said, “I am in a jam!”
“What kind of jam?” I asked.
He took another sip of rum and clenched his teeth together. The bar attender came strolling along to see if there was anything we needed and Uncle Zoltan again changed his tone. He slapped me on the shoulder, grasped me by the shoulder and literally rocked me back and forth.
“So, man . . . what you doin’ up there in the USA?” And not being able to answer his question as quickly as he was ready with another, he went on again. “Listen, man . . . I want you to carry a message for me when you go back to the USA. It have a fellar who write a book called She. I want you to tell him that I read it and is the biggest book I ever read . . . You think that you could carry this message for me?”
I nodded half-heartedly. I had the impression that the book was written by an Englishman and that he was no longer alive, nor had he ever lived in the States, and I also wondered just where and how one would go about finding such a person. Uncle Zoltan made it sound as though any place in the world was after all not too different from Trinidad and all one had to do was ask around. Just as I had found him, surely I could get word from the grapevine of anyone’s whereabouts.
“I’ll tell him,” I said. I thought that the rum was going to my head too. The heat was unbearable; I had become spoilt by a temperate climate, air-conditioned movies where you could escape the worst of the summer, and at least the water in the taps of the most wretched tenements in New York was cold if you needed a drink. Everything died fast in the tropics, not just human bodies, but plants and insects and woodlice and mosquitoes. They all had their glorious colourful fling for a day, but the heat never let up and the water in the tap never cooled off and the frenzy of life was like a wound-up toy; it flirted, flitted and paraded in its glorious colours and then it died fast, and whether it was the weather or the rum, I thought about how simple it would be to go to the New York Public Library, look up something like a writers directory, find the man who wrote She, call him up on the phone and say, “Look . . . I’ve just come back from Trinidad and I ran into this uncle of mine who leads one of the most isolated and curious kind of lives, and he has read your book and he wanted me simply to get in touch with you and tell you what a wonderful book you’ve written and how much it has done for his life.”
But as soon as the bar attender looked at our drinks and was sure that we did not need anything else and wandered away, Uncle Zoltan changed his tone again. He was once more furtive and suspicious as though every word he had to say was to be in total secrecy. He took a sip of rum, gargled it about in his mouth, and clamped his eyes shut as he swallowed hard. “You come at the right time, man . . . it look as if my guardian angel send you.” Just as he had scrutinised me in the market, I now looked carefully at him; he seemed a little bit older, his teeth were blacker than I had remembered and he had a small bump on his forehead just below the hair line, no doubt from butting someone with his head. I remembered how he fought—hands, feet, head—all came into play automatically. I could never understand how he managed to keep that finely shaped nose of his after the innumerable brawls he had been in.
He still looked over his shoulder from time to time to make sure that no one was listening, and his arm jerked in the same short spasms as if he was instinctively warding off blows from an unseen opponent. He must have noticed my concern and he pointed to the bump on his head. “You know how I get this?” he asked, but it was more of a statement than a question; he simply nodded as though there was some tacit understanding between us, a secret which we both knew, and although he did not explain, it was to be part of an even deeper and darker secret which came moments later. He grabbed me by the shoulder and drew me close to him so that he could almost whisper in my ear. “Listen, man . . . I need a few dollars.”
I reached for my billfold, and he craned his neck again to make sure no one was watching, then he peered at the bills as I opened it up. “About how much do you need . . . what kind of jam are you in?”
“Man . . .” he shook his head with such pathos and regret, “this is just between you and me . . . I hope that you don’t mention a word to the family . . . you know how they like to worry about things.” I nodded, waiting with the open billfold in my hand to hear how much he thought he needed, but he simply said, “I leave it up to you . . . Whatever you can spare.” He must have seen the question on my face. I didn’t know what kind of jam he was in or how much I should give him. He finally drew me close to him and grated out in tense whispers, “I kill a man . . .” He stood me at arms’ length to examine the shock on my face. “I kill a man and police after me. I have to go to the bush and lay low . . . lay low!”
After I gave him a five, and watched him leave the Britannia Bar, he turned once to say, “Just between you and me . . . Remember, not a word to the family.”
And I waved out to him as he disappeared in the crowds of the market shoppers.
Town of Tears
by Elizabeth Nunez
Laventille
(Originally published in 2000)
Laventille, home of the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, town of tears. Laventville, the poet once called it: To go downhill / from here was to ascend. He would not be wrong. Yet to go uphill was also to ascend, to reach such splendor it blinded the eye. For there, at the top, the sun gilded the roofs of the shrine and the tiny blue and white chapel next to it and made the blue of the blue sky bluer and the white of the white clouds whiter. And if one looked up, as always one was compelled to do, one followed the dazzling arc of the sky to a sea shimmering gold and silver on clear days, gray and still magnificent when it rained.
One saw this from the top of Laventille, though one knew there was more: after the grassy green savannah for horse racing and polo, and men in flannel trousers playing cricket, and after the gardens for ladies strolling arm in arm along pathways lined with lilies and orchids, and after the white picket–fenced bandstand for brass-buttoned police serenading young lovers, and after the governor’s white house and the other mansions (the archbishop’s castle, the cathedrals, the prime minister’s quarters, the sprawling villas of the merchants), after those palatial homes of the rich, and the more modest, yet assertive houses of the middle class, there would come the others—the cement hovels of the poor—staggering up the hill like drunks stumbling over choked gutters, stray dogs and half-naked children. Five to a room, the poet said. Looking back, the hot, corrugated iron sea.
There, on the Sunday before Zuela and Rosa were to make their pilgrimages to Our Lady, on the very day a fisherman found himself the center of attention in Otahiti, the body of another woman was discovered. Black, poor, and therefore of no consequence, her disappearance had not made news in The Guardian, where no one expected it would, but neither did it make news in the streets nor in the rum shops, nor in the backyards where gossip was rife. Shame and envy had silenced tongues (they said two brothers had loved her and she had had them both)—silenced tongues, that is, until two pigs vomited on a dirt road in Laventille, two spike-haired black pigs caked with dried mud, fattening themselves on the remains of something that had once been alive and breathing—a carcass chopped into tiny bits and mingled with the food in their troughs, with the remains of dasheen, cassava, yam and rotting potatoes.
A young girl identified her first, pointing to an eyeball g
leaming between the pink chunks of undigested food. “Melda. Is Melda self.”
“No body, no crime,” Boysie was heard to have said months before. No body, no murder. No murder, no execution.
His henchmen laughed in the judge’s face when they released Boysie from Death Row.
Then someone spotted the chewed-off finger of a woman. Weeks later, a man no longer able to contain his grief claimed the ring she wore. “Melda. Is Melda self. I self give her that ring.” Not the brothers.
That same week, two hearts still moist with blood were found on top of the garbage dump in the La Basse. The vultures froze in midair and then dove like bombers. In the days that followed, ten more women caught the spirit and set up shop in that town of tears. People poured out of the valley on the feast day of Our Lady—Rosa and Zuela, too—for two women said they saw Our Lady come down in a circle of bright light over the shrine of Fatima near the little chapel on the top of the Laventille hill. Our Lady here to protect them! And the priest did not dispute that, nor did he chase away the hundreds who followed to light votive candles and put coins down the slit in the tiny box he had ingeniously placed at the feet of Our Lady.
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