Eden Burning (23 page)

Francis decided that he was straightforward. “I understand what you’re driving at. Estate owners leaving a tract out of cultivation so they won’t have to pay taxes on it. That’s a regulation which surely needs to be changed. No, I will cultivate and plant wherever the cane has gone wild, which it has done for what looks like generations. It should be a matter of conscience, when the need for food is so great.”

“You astonish me, Mr. Luther.”

There was a silence. Then Francis said, “On the way here just now I stopped some people to ask directions. They spoke no English, which surprised me.”

“They speak patois in these places. A mixture of Carib and African words added to French.”

“Yet the island has been out of French hands for a hundred and fifty years!”

“Longer. But these villages are removed from the world. Many of my children speak patois at home and are hearing English for the first time in my classroom.”

“British English?” Francis asked with a smile.

“Well, I was educated by Englishmen in Covetown and after that I was at Cambridge, so I suppose a bit of the accent has worn off on me.”

“You were born here on St. Felice, then.”

“No, oddly enough, I was born in France. I was brought here when I was not yet two years old.”

A French father? Francis wondered. Yes, probably. God knew what passions, heartaches, and shame had combined to produce this refined, this obviously sensitive human being! But then, that was probably true of us all in one way or another.

“My mother was born on the island,” he said, “but she left it. And I came back to it. I sometimes wonder why. A wish to escape something else? The pull of history? I’m a
type, Mr. Courzon, the kind of man who becomes an antiquarian, who putters about restoring old houses. I’m in love with the past, with roots. I’ve even made a start at writing the story of St. Felice, of all the people who came here and what brought them.”

Courzon nodded. “If it’s history you’re looking for, we have it. Your own Morne Bleue—how the French and English fought over that mountain! Four times it changed hands in some of the bloodiest battles of the eighteenth century. There were the remains of a fort on the flank when I was a little boy, but that’s gone now. People took the stone and bricks for use. The French built with stone—did you know?—and the British with brick.”

“I didn’t know.”

Courzon stopped abruptly. “Sorry. I just overheard myself talking like a schoolmaster.”

“Well, you are one, aren’t you?”

At that moment the front door, forced open by the wind, slammed violently against the wall. Courzon got up and closed it firmly.

Francis was anxious. “Is this by any chance a hurricane? I haven’t been here long enough to see one.”

“You’ll know one when you do, don’t worry. When I was fourteen we had one that wrecked St. Felice. Our windows were smashed, a tree stove in the roof, and the floor was three inches deep in water. The island’s entire cocoa crop was lost that year.”

“A perilous dependence on weather,” Francis said, shaking his head. “My uncle, Lionel Tarbox, tells me floods and droughts have come close to wiping him out a dozen times.”

The other man said nothing to that, and in sudden comprehension, Francis flushed. “Of course, I know it is much harder for the poor,” he said.

He looked around at the schoolroom with its shabby desks and meager shelf of worn-out books. There was a little blackboard on an easel and that was all.

“Yet you came back, too,” he said, thinking aloud.

“Pardon?”

“I meant, it’s a hard life here and yet you came back to it. You could, I suppose, have stayed in England.”

“You mentioned conscience a while ago. I had to come home. Most of the children on this island stop their schooling after five years. Most adults are functionally illiterate.”

“So now you are doing something about it.”

Courzon looked out to where the rain had begun perceptibly to slacken. “Sometimes, lately, I have had my doubts. What sense does it make to teach Browning to children like these? ‘Oh, to be in England now that April’s there—’” His voice mocked the wholesome words.

Yet mockery, Francis thought, his interest growing, mockery would not be this man’s typical mode or mood. His was a fundamental simplicity.

“I try to give them as much as they can absorb of their own history, the African and the West Indian. That at least has relevance to their lives.”

Strange that he did not hesitate to speak this way to Francis, certainly he would not do it with—well, with Lionel, for instance, or with anyone else Francis knew.

“Are you thinking of politics, then?”

“I’m not sure. I’m not a man of action, that’s my trouble. I am really not. But I have a friend, Nicholas Mebane, who has come back from England, too, and is starting a new party. He’s working on programs to be ready when independence comes, and he wants me to work with him. So I’m thinking about it. Only thinking.”

“I’ve heard mention of Nicholas Mebane. There was something in the paper, wasn’t there? And it seems to me that a priest was talking about him the night I first came here.”

“That must have been Father Baker.”

“Perhaps. I don’t usually remember names, and it was a while ago, but for some reason that one stuck in my head. The priest said he was brilliant, if I recall correctly.”

“That’s true, he is. He’s a thinker and an orator. The two don’t always go together, but when they do, it can be an unbeatable combination. Nicholas will achieve things. His achievements will spread outward from this one island like ripples in a lake.”

Thrusting his hands into his pockets, Courzon walked the length of the room and back.

“Independence will give us initiative. From initiative comes character, a national character, with which to build democracy. But you have to begin with a strong leader, who can show the way. And Nicholas is strong—strong and large-minded. He will fight.” He was exhilarated. “You’ve picked a time when great changes are about to happen, Mr. Luther.”

“That’s exactly what my Uncle Herbert told me.”
Warned me.

“From a different point of view, I imagine.” Courzon smiled. “Do I offend you? I hope not.”

“No,” Francis said soberly, “if I’m to live here, I should know every point of view, shouldn’t I?”

“It would be wise. That always has been part of the trouble, the ownership of the great estates by individual absentee owners—or worse, by foreign companies. They can’t know, hence don’t care, what is happening here.”

“Well, I do care. My head is full of projects for cooperatives and—” Francis’ voice trailed off, as he recalled a rush of ideas, Kate’s ideas. “For one thing,” he resumed, “I want to build some decent housing on my place for my permanent employees.”

“I heard you did.”

“You heard?”

“I told you, news travels on St. Felice. Well, if you can do that, just make a start at it, and if others will follow suit—which is to be doubted, I’m sorry to say—you’ll be doing a great deal. Poor housing is certainly one of the reasons why the family structure is what it is. But we could talk all day”—Courzon threw his hands up—“I should end by discouraging
you with all my talk! You’ll want to clear out tomorrow and go home.”

Francis shook his head. “No. Home is here now.”

He was intensely curious about this man. Cambridge, nearly white, he had yet appeared to identify completely with the Negro peasant. He took a chance on a blunt request.

“Tell me something real about
yourself,
Mr. Courzon.”

“Something real?”

“Yes,” Francis said boldly. “What it’s like for you, living here—as you are.”

“Not being white, you mean?”

“I suppose I do mean that, partly. What is it you want most?”

“To begin with, I’d like to lift the restrictions on the franchise. One man, one vote. I don’t own property, I’m a renter, so I can’t vote. Listen, Mr. Luther, on this island as throughout the Caribbean, ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of the people are black, or some shade of it. Very few own property, so they have nothing to say about the way they are to be governed. Nothing at all.”

“That’s outrageous, of course it is. I’m told, though, that it’s about to be changed. This year, even. What I meant was yourself, your personal life. You’re married?”

“I have a wife, Désirée. We live in town.”

“Désirée? Not the one who works at Da Cunha’s?”

“Yes. You know her?”

“She waited on me for Christmas presents and for my wife’s birthday. But I haven’t seen her in a while, not that I do so much shopping.”

“She’s stopped working there. We have two children and they need her.”

The rain had ceased entirely. Heavy drops splashed from the roof and the trees. The sun shone through a steamy haze. The two men walked to the doorway.

“I like to think the world will be better for my two children—and for all the others,” Courzon said. “And I’m
an optimist, I have to believe it will be. When you look back over history, making allowances for some bloody backsliding, the general trend, although you can barely discern it, the general trend, I believe, is upward.”

“I hope so,” Francis murmured.

A strange man, this, and a very strange encounter. And he had a sudden thought about history: it was power, history was, and that’s all it was. Winning it and losing it. Power for good, but more often for ill. He could use power here, not with the greed which had brought the downfall of his poor foolish father, but with justice. Lionel and his kind would say he was as great a fool as his father had been! Yet he felt secure enough, this moment, to refute them.

He had begun his good-bye when something held him back. “A magnificent tree,” he said, pointing to the sumptuous green bower beneath which he had parked his car.

“A flaming royal poinciana. Red flowers in June. You must have them on your place.”

“None that large. They remind me of flamingos when they bloom.”

“Speaking of flamingos, they used to be plentiful on this island. Not so long ago, either, when I was a child. You’ll pass Flamingo Pond on your way home; they used to feed there on shrimp. There were fifty or sixty in a flock, a gorgeous sight. Bonaire’s the only place you’ll see them nowadays. Hunted to death.”

“Change isn’t always to the good, is it?”

“Not always. The whole world could be Eden if it weren’t for the waste and destruction.”

Francis folded his wet jacket over his arm. “I must say you’ve told me more about this place in half an afternoon than anyone has done yet except”—he didn’t know for the life of him what made him say it—“except my relative, Kate Tarbox.”

Courzon said simply, “She has heart.”

“I forgot, you know her! Or your wife does.”

“We both do. I got to know her through my father-in-law, Clarence Porter. They’re involved in a good many projects, mostly through the Family Counseling. Clarence is helping raise money in the unions for a decent clinic, and Kate, of course, knows all the important families. It’s hard, though. The people who could give don’t want to, at least not more than tokens. But Kate’s a rare woman, don’t you agree?”

“I imagine so, although I don’t see her that much.”

Courzon shook hands. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Luther. Good luck with all your projects.”

“I’ll tell you,” Francis said, “I’ll tell you—you ought to come visit,” he blurted.

“Do you mean that? Or is it just ‘drop in some time,’ which I would never do?”

“I don’t say things I don’t mean.” Marjorie would hardly be overjoyed, but no matter. He liked this man so much.

A smile spread from Courzon’s quiet mouth. It was the first true smile of the afternoon, a smile without irony or melancholy.

“I shall call you. You’re in the book in Covetown? Patrick Courzon?”

“I’m in the book.”

He was still standing with arm upraised in a wave when Francis turned out of sight around the curve, downhill.

“Have I shown you this? I must have,” said Francis Luther, offering a leather-bound volume. “It’s the diary of my first ancestor on St. Felice.”

“I’ve seen it, but Nicholas hasn’t.” Patrick glanced at a page before handing it over. “‘I mean to buy land and live on my property like a gentleman, to marry well.’ This is original history, Nicholas.”

“Fascinating,” Nicholas murmured.

He occupied the seat on the window ledge with particular grace. His slim feet in their English shoes were crossed at the ankles; his patrician head was sculptured against the afternoon light. And Patrick felt some simple pride in having brought him for the first time to this house, even though the suggestion had come from Kate Tarbox. He saw himself as a link between the gentleman planter who owned the house and the brilliant black politician whose rise to prominence was unmistakably beginning.

“Books,” Francis was saying, “are my one extravagance.” He gestured toward a pile of new ones in bright jackets. “I keep having them sent down from New York. If there’s anything you want to borrow, you’re welcome as always.”

“This is fascinating,” Nicholas repeated, replacing the diary.