Night Calypso (27 page)

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Stay with me. I’m lost.’

Vincent was in a quandary. What could he do?

The tide was beginning to come in gently, seeping over the rocks. A tug had come around the point, and was waiting for the tide to rise before coming any further into La Tinta. A group of Marines were attaching ropes and chains to the tail flukes of the whale, to begin pulling it off the shore, when they thought they could catch the incoming tide, and hopefully float the mammal. It might just move off, though there was not much hope that it would eventually survive this ordeal.

The smaller children, on the higher ground, were waving back at the whale. The adult patients were speculating about what had happened. Many were fearful of the talk about the war. The fishermen who came into Coco Bay told stories to the patients who fished off the side of the jetty. The stories spread like wildfire. They had stories of survivors in lifeboats on the north coast of Sancta Trinidad. Some claimed to have seen a submarine surfacing off Saut d’Eau Island, and others, who fished, to have seen one as close as Corozal Point, up the coast from the Boca de Monos.

Jesse kept trying to engage Vincent in small talk but he had his mind on Thérèse. She stuck to Vincent. He hated to think what kind of impression was being created. How were they going to handle what Thérèse had done. What had she done? She had so obviously chosen him. He hoped everyone saw it as choosing the doctor in her distress.

‘There was a very old guy in our home town,’ Jesse began telling a story. ‘He had a wound on his back. Theo’s wound reminds me of that, took me right back home. But that was something that happened in those bad days. You know, slavery days. In the warm
weather he walked around bare backed showing it to everyone. Letting us see. His back was a kind of monument, a kind of way for everyone from those days, and I guess, for all of us youngsters, to remember something, something of that history. So my Mama said, anyway.’

‘Lieutenant?’ Vincent interrupted.

‘Jesse, Sir, if you please.’

‘Yes, of course, Jesse, your story.’

‘I grown in South Carolina. Mama grown all her children there. We flourished like a field of corn. Papa, he took off North.’

‘South Carolina?’ Vincent was distracted.

‘Yep, you know, Charleston. You must know Charleston. I bet you’ve danced that music with a pretty gal.’

At that moment, Jesse looked at Thérèse who had turned away, and was staring out towards the whale. Tears were streaming down her face, drying in the sun, smudging her cheeks.

Vincent went towards her. Jonah was looking on and said, ‘Leave her be, Doc.’ Jonah sounded wise about the matter.

Jesse continued, more now to fill the space with something else. ‘The world dancing that music.’

‘What did you say, Jesse?’ Vincent asked.

‘Well, that history in that music, in the playing. But don’t mind me Doc, I see you’ve got your hands full.’ He laughed nervously.

‘No, Jesse go on. Your story is important.’ Vincent went and stood behind Thérèse, and in full view of the men, Jonah and Jesse, and those who could see from afar, he put his hand on her shoulders from behind to calm her.

‘It’s okay now, Madeleine,’ he whispered in her ear.

Jesse continued, more not to seem awkward than to continue with his conversation, ‘The blues and jazz, and you know, like down here on the islands, with your calypso. I hear a little of that. I hear the fishermen coming over the bay in the early morning when I’m lying in my bunk. They sounds as if they’ve real fun. We’re going into Porta España soon, and I go find myself a gal and dance them rhythms.’

Jonah and Vincent turned to him and nodded. Jonah tried to joke. ‘You go find them by the corner working for the Yankee dollar.’

Jesse got the point. ‘Oh, yeh.
Rum and Coca-Cola.’

‘You got it, Lieutenant,’ Jonah laughed.

Jesse changed the tone and directed his remark to include Thérèse who had rejoined the group. ‘It seems that we’re all far from home, with this war,’ he said meaningfully.

‘That’s true, Lieutenant.’ Thérèse came into the conversation, listening intently. She looked distraught. ‘But then I’ve left home to find a new one. And, now, I’m alone.’

‘Here?’ Jesse asked.

‘Yes, here. But now, where?’ She looked into the faces of each of the men in turn. They stared, embarrassed.

Then, they all three looked at the pilgrimage of patients, higgledy piggledy, zig-zagging along the beach under the manchineel and almonds.

‘You do good work, Sister. You do a good work,’ Jesse said gallantly. He noticed Jonah’s deference. He was still confused by the sister’s dress. He left to join his fellow Marines at Perruquier Bay. Then he turned to Vincent, ‘One last thing Doc, the boy, he talks a lot about Chantal. Has he talked to you about Chantal? A girlfriend?’

‘Chantal? Yes, he’s mentioned her.’ Vincent answered without giving anything away.

Jesse smiled. ‘I’m right behind your house,’ he waved. ‘Okay if I call with my banjo?’ They all three looked ahead and waved him off.

Vincent asked Jonah to take care of Theo, and to take him to Saint Damian’s. ‘Keep him with you by the jetty, till I get back. He doesn’t want to go by Singh.’

‘I understand, Doc,’ Jonah looked at the boy.

‘Ti-Jean, you must get back to school,’ Vincent added.

Thérèse stayed back and walked along the beach with Vincent. ‘Well, what a day!’ Vincent exclaimed.

‘It’s hardly begun. You have the children to inject with Chaulmoogra Oil today.’ Thérèse was still thinking of her duties.

‘Oh God.’ Vincent hated the pain it gave the children.

‘I know,’ she said, almost her old self again.

‘Hopefully we’re going to be able to stop the use of
Chaulmoogra. What you said about Sulfa drugs. That’s what we want from the Americans. You’re right. We must get our hands on that stuff. And the wonder drug, Penicillin. Our patients need them.’ Vincent was continuing as if everything was as normal. Even his inquiry, ‘Any news of your father?’

‘No, only nightmares.’

‘Nightmares?’

‘Mine, made of nothing but what I don’t know. And the letters that tell of Drancy.’

They looked at each other, avoiding the poisonous sap of the manchineel, as they stooped below the low trees. Vincent let their talk carry on in this vein as if nothing was amiss. They stopped in the shade of the sea grapes. It was only now that they were alone and Vincent looked again at Thérèse, and she became Madeleine, that the full impact of what she had done stunned both of them.

‘Where on earth did you get this dress?’ He flicked at her frilly sleeves with his fingers. ‘These things!’ He looked for the first time at her shoes, and a pathetic discarded handbag she had slung over her arm, that he had not noticed before, and seemed hooked there permanently.

Thérèse stood there and just looked at him as he looked at her, uncomprehendingly. ‘Madeleine! Madeleine!’ he repeated with sighs of bewilderment. Then, he said firmly, ‘Sister, this can’t go on.’

She stooped near where the water lapped beneath the hanging branches of the sea grape and logwood, cupping her hands in the gentle waves which chuckled over the sand and shells, like bones. She tried to wash off the rouge and lipstick from her face. As she bent there at the water’s edge, he saw the notches of her spine, the stretched nape of her neck.

The others were now out of sight. They were alone, hidden beneath the trees. She turned and their faces met. They kissed, their mouths dry and hot, tasting of salt. ‘What’ve we done?’ Vincent asked.

‘What’ve we done?’ Thérèse echoed him.

‘What will we do now?’

‘I’m not going back.’ Thérèse was adamant.

Her stark statement cut deep into Vincent’s consciousness. He realised at once, without really knowing how he was going to respond, that she was his responsibility. ‘Madeleine you have to go back.’ He tried to speak bravely and decisively, but he felt like a coward and thought he sounded like a coward. He unpinned the yellow star from her lapel and threw it into the water, where it floated for a moment, and then became saturated and sank, looking like the poisonous sap of the manchineel.

They took their shoes off and walked in the shallows along the beach to Saint Damian’s. They walked, dangling their shoes in one hand and holding hands with the other. Vincent felt pulled both ways. They kicked at the water. There was a sense in each of them that nothing mattered now as they came in sight of Saint Damian’s. Thérèse reiterated, ‘I’m not going back.’ Vincent pulled away.

Earlier, hidden beneath the sea grapes and the manchineel, his mouth on her mouth, Vincent had seemed convinced that Madeleine was right, and that he would support her in her decision. He could have, just a moment ago, dashed with her along the beach into some other future.

‘Madeleine. There’s nowhere to go,’ he said earnestly.

‘I can be with you.’

Her words twisted his heart. ‘No! No, you can’t.’

The incongruity of Thérèse’s appearance struck Vincent even more now as he saw Jonah waiting on the jetty with Theo and Ti-Jean who had not followed his instruction. Both boys waved ecstatically and called out, ‘Docta, over here!’

Life was calling Vincent. He managed to wave back. Thérèse had been part of that life, veiled, sandalled, the nun who worked alongside him on the wards and in the pharmacy, her head bent over her microscope.

‘Madeleine, you can’t go any further like this. Let me get you something to change into, something to cover you up.’

‘Cover me up. Is that what you want to do? Hide me away.’

‘Madeleine!’

‘Yes, your Magdalene.’ She stood facing him with her hands on her hips.

‘Madeleine, trust me. This is not how we must go. We run the risk of losing everything.’

She looked at him questioningly. ‘I’ve already lost everything.’

Back on the beach, Vincent was refusing to imagine what he had to do. He hoped that the nuns would deal with the situation, find some way to take her back to themselves. Because of the public nature of her behaviour, they had let it pass by as if nothing much was amiss. Even Sister Rita had not acted. Now, Vincent saw her coming along the beach as if she had guessed his thoughts.

When she arrived with a nun’s white cape, Thérèse was sitting on the beach. She knelt next to her. ‘Sister, come, come with me, come put this on,’ and she began to drape the white cape of the Sisters of Martha and Mary over the shoulders of her sister, Thérèse.

Vincent felt relieved as Thérèse did not resist, but seemed strangely comforted by the act of Sister Rita. But at the same time, he felt guilty. He had not found a way to take her with him. He could not find the way to do it and keep his job, keep the trust of his patients, their struggle, and above all his credibility in the eyes of Mother Superior and the authorities.

‘Thérèse, go with Sister Rita now. Later I’ll come and visit. I will. I promise. Sister Rita, tell Mother Superior that I’ve spoken with Sister Thérèse and that I have recommended that she take some rest. She is under too much of a strain at the hospital, and would benefit from a rest. I’ll come and see her later today.’

As Sister Rita went ahead, Vincent whispered, ‘Madeleine, trust me. I won’t abandon you.’ She looked back with longing and disbelief.

Much later that day, away from what many had noticed about
the sister who break out of the convent,
when the evening burnt down with no one watching particularly, the tug pulled the whale off the rocks. It floated on the high tide and was borne away on the fast moving currents of the Boca Grande. Its dorsal ridge faded into the distance like a disappearing island in the haze.

In that same sunset, Vincent walked up from the jetty at Embarcadère Corbeaux to the nun’s infirmary. He had a duty to
perform. He had decided that this would be the end of the affair. How he would tell Thérèse this and make the visit one of a doctor concerned about a patient, he was not certain. She would surely see it as his abandonment of her. He was resolute.

Saint Damian’s was a prison while Vincent and Thérèse battled with the authorities of state and church. Vincent was called in to Mother Superior’s office.

‘This is a misunderstanding, Mother. Yes, Sister Thérèse Weil and I have grown close. You might say that’s an indiscretion, but our research has made this possible. It’s a professional relationship and she has grown to trust me in her distress.’

‘That’s just it. That’s why I think it’s better that Sister Thérèse change her duties. I want her to be in charge of the patients kept up in the hills, with those who find it difficult to come down to the hospital for treatment. Some of our worse cases.’

‘Very hard for one sister. Very taxing work. Possibly dangerous, because of the unhygienic conditions.’

‘That’s what I think she needs, Doctor. Allow me, please, to make this judgment here. It’ll remind her of the primary duties of her vocation. This will take her mind off all the other things, extraordinary things she fills her mind with. Yellow stars! And this research of yours must be put on hold.’

Thérèse was removed from Vincent’s influence. He saw her trudging up to the hills. He looked out for her visits to the chapel. He had to be content with glimpses.

But Mother Superior was still gunning for the dismissal of,
‘That
Doctor Metivier,’ speaking to Father Meyer and the authorities in Porta España.

Vincent had got the support of Jonah who had organised the patients. They marched to Mother Superior’s office. She heard their deputation. ‘We can’t risk another riot,’ Major McGill advised
her. Elridge Padmore’s inquest had brought back a verdict of accidental death by shooting. That night there were fires in the hills. Soldiers patrolled the perimeter fence.

The patients resented the Yanks. ‘They kill Eldridge for nothing.’ Their sabotage continued.

‘You can’t dismiss him now,’ the Medical Board concluded, in their report to Mother Superior, knowing that they could not easily replace Vincent. They prevailed upon her to be patient.

‘How can I have him working alongside my sisters? Think of the risk of scandal. Under my very nose!’ she complained to Father Meyer. Her pride was hurt.

‘Sister Thérèse cannot return to Europe at this time. We can’t just throw her out,’ Father Meyer counselled.

‘I suppose I should get to the bottom of the matter of the yellow stars.’

Father Meyer advised her to ignore that matter.

It was at this time, in the middle of 1942, that the most certain news they had had for some time was smuggled in a letter by Sister Rita to Vincent, one day in the pharmacy. She had taken Thérèse’s duties. She was her
confidante,
visiting her in the hills, becoming her go-between with Vincent.

The letter Sister Rita brought gave the clearest description of the
Grand Raffle
of that year in the middle of July, of Jews being deported from Drancy to a German camp across the border of Germany, just within the borders of Poland. They had heard the name in a previous letter: ‘Auschwitz,’ Sister Rita read. Another name for Thérèse to add to her litany of fear, Vincent thought.

In return, Sister Rita carried a message from Vincent. Jonah would be in a pirogue near the small jetty by the womens’ huts at eight o’clock that night. The message joked that he had no intention of swimming across the bay to meet her. He wanted to be alive for her, not dead. But he was sending his boatman to bring her to him. Sister Rita buried the letter in the folds of her habit.

He knew he was playing on Thérèse’s vulnerability. She would be disturbed by the recent news in the letter he had just received. But, maybe, she had wanted him to realise that.

Jonah entered willingly into the secrecy. For a long time, he had thought that the Doctor needed a woman. Theo had become such a permanent presence, he wanted to encourage a feminine and maternal influence upon the doctor’s house. ‘All kind of thing does happen in this life, Doc. You can’t plan these things. You can’t plan love.’

‘I don’t want Singh to know.’

‘Doc, he done suspect.’

‘Yes, I thought so.’

‘Anyway, he and Christiana. You know?’

‘No I don’t know. I have left it so long to speak to him. Theo won’t return to work in the pharmacy.’

‘Well, she’s a young woman now, Doc. But it going on a long time. Singh go understand. As I say, you can’t plan love. He should know that.’

Vincent did not know whether Thérèse would come. In the end, waiting on the jetty, he thought she would not at the last minute. He had been wrong to try and persuade her. She would have the good sense to see that.

At first, Vincent did not see her in the approaching pirogue. Then, there she was, in the halo of the kerosene lantern. Under cover of his usual routines, Jonah had fetched Thérèse without any trouble.

She and Vincent stood awkwardly on the jetty.

She wore her cotton dress with the blue forget-me-nots which she had worn at La Tinta. Was that a sign of something? They were formal in front of the others. The men winked at each other. Theo noticed. Over her arm was her nun’s white cloak which she had used for her escape.

Vincent explained that they were going on a fishing expedition to the island of Huevos. The crossing was short but hazardous, particularly at night, and because of the military restrictions.

Jonah navigated the boat in such a way that it did not run the risk of setting off any alarms. Theo was all eyes and ears in the bow. What was he making of the present company? Vincent had to talk to him about Singh and Christiana. He had to talk to him about
himself and Thérèse. Maybe he had already sorted these things out in his own way.

The fishermen in another pirogue led the way, keeping a look out for the Coast Guard.

They had to be careful. The stories of more and more torpedoed ships off the coasts of the continent and the island of Sancta Trinidad, alarmed everyone. At times, the fishermen brought back more than fish with them, in their catch, from off the north coast. There were bodies found on the rocks, or tangled in their seines.

On the beach, around a cooking fire, Vincent and Thérèse listened to the fishermen, who had come to fish for cavalli, tell their tales.

There were the natural comparisons with other wonders which had been experienced, like the whale at La Tinta. They shared their stories like food. ‘Who ever see a
macajuel
with a cow inside it belly?’ Jai Singh asked, jumping up all of a sudden. He was from the plains of Caroni near the mangrove swamps and the oyster beds where he had been with his father searching for conch, throwing seine for
cascadu
, scraping off the blue lipped oysters from the mangrove branches, when they had come upon the
macajuel
boa constrictor on the path between the canals. They had interrupted its digestion and disgorged it of the crushed cow. Eyes opened wide and some fellas joined in the chorus of exclamations, ‘I never see thing so, boy. You ever see thing like that?’

Not to be outdone, Sunil Ramchand, in a small voice, just above the crash of the waves, said it was
Divali
time when he went by cousins down Manzanilla way to keep the celebration, and his uncle took them to a green pool which they got to by taking a boat up the brown Ortoire, and then paddling under the manchineel and the mangrove to where the giant manatee grazed along the edges of the river. Their shadows, just beneath the surface of the water, were like the shapes you see in the clouds. ‘Them is shy animal, only the tip of the head and sometime the back you see, you know. Sometime, the shadow, or the tip of a baby head riding the back of the mother.’ The others nodded with understanding, imagining his wonder. He had clearly seen something, without really seeing anything at all.

There was the dull thunder in the distance. A flare on the horizon prompted speculation. ‘Them U-Boat out there, boy.’

Thérèse was beginning to fall off to sleep. She and Vincent were going to spend the night on the beach while the fishermen sank their seine for cavalli. Vincent suggested a walk.

Theo kept the fire going to ward off the sandflies and mosquitoes, but also to keep the fish broth simmering. The air was perfumed with citronella. He was happy to sit and listen to the stories, looking after the pot. He watched Vincent and Thérèse walk away down the beach.

They were stopped in their tracks. ‘Look. Do you see her?’ Vincent pointed out the turtle.

‘Yes. Extraordinary, how she pulls her great weight through the surf.’ Thérèse knelt in the sand.

As they sat on a high dune and watched, the turtle chose her path without being deterred. She scraped with her fins, heaving her weight up the beach for the safety of the sandy dunes. She was in search of a safe place to lay her eggs. This was an annual ritual, a pilgrimage repeated through instinct over centuries.

‘Should we call the others? Theo would love to see this,’ Vincent enthused.

‘No, not just yet.’ Thérèse put her hand on Vincent’s knee. ‘There’ll be another one. Let’s watch this one on our own.’ They had hardly had any time together on their own. Invariably, Theo or Jonah were hovering. ‘I nearly did not come.’

‘You’re here now, Madeleine.’

‘Yes.’

‘I missed you. I’m sorry.’ Vincent felt guilty.

‘I suppose I had to come. How could I not?’ she reassured him.

‘After all this while.’

‘It must mean something,’ Madeleine insisted.

They stared, leaning in on each other, wrapped in their own thoughts and in the spirit of the place, and what they were witnessing.

This had been happening before there were middens, when the only graves were the bones of coral and the sigh of shells.

The turtle was six feet long and four across. They watched and waited for her climb to end. At first, she went one way and then
another, then choosing the highest dunes with the softest sand. When she had chosen a suitable spot, Vincent and Madeleine crept closer, knelt by her side, and read the ancient runes on her back. They were inscrutable. She circled the spot. She settled. They waited and watched and were patient with her patience.

Then her rear fins began to scrape and dig and scoop what was an ancient form of excavation. They were both aware they were witnessing something which had been going on for centuries, ever since there had been turtles. ‘She’s scooping out a womb in the sand to catch her eggs.’ Madeleine was animated.

‘Yes,’ Vincent murmured. They hardly wanted to speak aloud.

‘Look.’ They watched the turtle’s rear fins repeat their action again and again, until it instinctually felt the depth was sufficient to hold its horde of eggs.

‘A safe place for incubation,’ Madeleine commented scientifically.

Vincent watched Madeleine stooping, leaning towards the turtle and her excavation. The cotton frock with the blue forget-me-nots now as if in memory of her first rebellion. She had tucked her skirt between her legs to kneel more effectively. He saw the stretch of her back. He crept behind her, massaging her spine, his fingers kneading her back through the soft cotton, stroking her neck. Over her shoulder, he too stared at the turtle. He kissed the nape of Madeleine’s neck.

‘How still she is,’ he whispered, licking the whorl of her ear.

‘She’s waiting to lay.’

Then they began to come, eggs, one, then two, followed by another, and then in quicker succession, the size of ping pong balls, soft and wet. As they continued to watch it seemed so quick, like ten, then hundreds of membranous moons caught in a stream of light from the now high moon, a glutinous milky way. ‘Turtles’ eggs. A miracle,’ whispered Madeleine.

‘Nature’s way,’ Vincent responded.

All the while the turtle stared implacably with the wisdom of time at the incoming tide she had to reach to leave, once she had buried her future. Tears seemed to ooze from her eyes. The stream of eggs stopped. Then, as methodically as she had dug and scooped, she began to fill the hole to cover the eggs. Madeleine and
Vincent watched as she raked in the sand and began to pat it down, with one fin then another. When this was complete, she then circled the spot twice. Then she dragged herself across the same spot twice more. This was her last, camouflaging, caring act. Her mothering was now complete. She had done enough for survival.

‘How long have we been here?’ Madeleine asked.

‘An hour, I think.’

‘A solitary hour.’

They could hear the voices of the others down the beach. There were the inescapable cries of Theo’s excitement. ‘They must’ve found a turtle of their own,’ Vincent commented. Before deciding to rejoin the party, they stayed to see their turtle return to the sea.

They watched her scrape her way back down the steep beach, while her tracks were erased, as quickly as she had made them, by the incoming tide. Her epic had been lost.

‘Her legacy is now ours,’ Vincent said philosophically.

‘Yes, we must come back for the hatchlings.’

As they looked about them, dazed after their meditative witnessing of their first turtle, they thought they had been lucky at the end of the laying season to see one. Then they noticed that two others were on the beach performing the same ancient ceremony. ‘Wonderful!’ Madeleine exclaimed at the sight.

They had to pick their way back down the beach between the laying turtles. Theo came running up to them, ‘Come and see!’

Vincent and Madeleine knelt beside him and watched a similar excavation. They stared without talking. Theo was all eyes. He pointed in amazement, as if he could not contain this on his own, had to show it to the others. At intervals, he would look up behind him to either Vincent or Madeleine and smile to confirm their joint experience.

‘Doc, you ever see thing, so?’ He tugged at Vincent’s arm.

Theo had become exhausted with his watching and was sleeping by the fire which was a mound of glowing embers among hot stones, keeping the chill off in the damp hours of the very early morning. Jonah was also sleeping. The fishermen were testing the cavalli
nets. All hands would be needed to pull seine before dawn.