Night Calypso (32 page)

The hooks baited, the lines ready, and the story of Paris and the magnolia tree faded into the fast turning sepia light over Chac Chac Bay. They threw their lines together, and waited. Madeleine got the first bite, then Theo got a bite too. They pulled in a red snapper each.

‘We’ve got dinner for tonight.’

‘We sure do.’

Vincent was late that evening. Madeleine and Theo ate their supper in the kitchen without ceremony, Theo moving between the stove and the kitchen table with bakes, fried fish and a jug of cocoa sprinkled with cinnamon. They sat in the glow of the humming hurricane lantern.

As they finished, and were clearing up, Vincent arrived back. With the closed doors and the blackouts drawn shut, Theo and Madeleine had not heard the
put putting
of the pirogue’s motor, rounding the point at Father Meyer’s house. The first they heard was Vincent as he opened the door from the verandah. ‘You two still up. I’m sorry I’m so late.’

He stood behind Madeleine. He did not touch her or bend to kiss her as he wanted to. His fingers, at the back of her chair, tickled the nape of her neck with his secret touch. He still felt shy with Theo there, nervous of Theo witnessing their physical love.

He lit a cigarette and stood watching them eating. ‘My God!’ Vincent exclaimed.

‘What?’ Madeleine looked up.

‘What happen?’ Theo joined in.

They both turned to look at Vincent.

‘Theo, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I meant to be here.’ And, he went back onto the verandah. ‘Theo, forgive me.’

Madeleine looked at Theo, to see if he could explain these apologies. Vincent came back in, holding a long parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with brown twine. ‘Theo. We’ve not done this before. I can’t believe I’ve not done this before, that I’ve
allowed these four years to pass by without ever doing this, without wishing you a happy birthday, without giving you a gift on that day. I can’t believe I’ve allowed you to have that day pass, each year, without anything being done in this house, to celebrate and remember that day of yours, your special day.’

Theo and Madeleine sat turned in their chairs towards Vincent, who was standing in the middle of the room with his large parcel, giving his long speech. Madeleine motioned to Theo to go and receive his gift. Theo was suddenly shy, and looked overcome.

She watched him take the present from Vincent. The present was long and light, and he stood unwrapping the oddly shaped oblong.

Vincent broke in, ‘I had it made by one of Lalbeharry’s pupils in the workshop. There’s a boy there, Khan, he sewed the net and fitted it to the loop. The stick is young guava, strong, but pliant,’ Vincent described, as a butterfly net became visible, trailing on the floor. Theo made a feigned swoop at an invisible butterfly to show his pleasure in the present, as it emerged fully from its chrysalis of brown paper and twine.

Almost inaudibly, overcome, Theo said, ‘Thank you, Doc. Thanks.’ Then his voice grew stronger. ‘I go use it. I go try it out tomorrow.’

Theo was a burgeoning lepidopterist. This new interest had begun with collecting dead butterflies. Vincent was not sure how Theo was going to take to catching them and pinning them to death with the already mounted specimens of
Bamboo Page, Cracker, Yellow Migrant
and
Small White.
There was a
Brown Biscuit
kept in a matchbox on the kitchen table, and some
Blue Brilliants
stuck with flour paste to the jalousies in his bedroom.

‘Now, I want to say Theo, because I don’t think Madeleine knows. This is Theo’s sixteenth birthday.’ Madeleine looked surprised, but also reassured, having noticed that the boy was changing.

It was suddenly all too much for Theo, and he was quickly up to his room and his crystal set for the news, uncharacteristically leaving the clearing up of the supper things to be done by Madeleine.

Afterwards, she and Vincent sat out on the dark verandah, and watched as the moon cut its path from Patos to the wide embrace of Chac Chac Bay.

Madeleine was woken just after midnight. She followed the voice, and came and stood at the door of Vincent’s room. Theo was at the foot of Vincent’s bed on his usual perch. Madeleine listened, looking at Vincent and then at Theo.

I
CARRY
my nightmare along these corridors, up and down these stairs, out into the kitchen, with bucket and mop and broom, into the library with dusty book, out into the vegetable garden. I carry my nightmare as I plant
melangene
, as I plant ochro, as I plant pumpkin vine and
christophine.
I carry my nightmare in bucket to water the vegetable garden. I carry nightmare. I carry them in my work in the sacristy. I rub them into the brass. I arrange them in the flower I pick in the flower garden. I polish them into the floor.

I see my face in the mirror, Mama face and another face.

Work take the pain away and take away the fear.

I carry the gloom at my window, the voice at my door, the hand under the sheet. Sin I can’t confess, because they not commit by me, but by another. I learn not to tell the priest this sin. I confess my own sin. I learn not to tell that sin. No one go believe.

Bring down the Demerara shutter, keep the window stick by the bed, Father Dominic say. Is a dream that fright you? If the window stick make you feel better, put it by your bed. Say the rosary.
Pater Noster… Ave Maria…

Yes, Father Dominic come when I cry out one night, but no one there. Father Dominic come like Mama and sit on the bed. He don’t hold me, but his word caress. He smooth my forehead with his long slender finger. I never see finger so long. Like smooth ochro. Finger which turn the soft page of book in the library. Finger make for consecration, for the wafer and the chalice of wine at the elevation. Finger for washing in the cup of the Lord and drying on the linen towel.
Lavabo manus meas.

All the time I say, Father? Wish I had a father.

Mama say, Spanish go protect you. I hear her say that one day. Spanish go take care of you. Eh, Spanish, and you go take care of my son,
oui
?

Yes, Emelda, he say, is now you come to me after the fire in you belly, after you done bake the bread. And he run his finger through my hair. Sugar head. Like he know something. Emelda boy, he does call me.

Father Dominic blow out the candle and take the matches away. Far away, I hear Mama,
Do do, petit popo.
I curl up like a cashew nut. Rock myself to sleep sucking on my thumb. I sucking thumb again. Mama big boy, sucking thumb!

H
E DOES COME
in the night, scratching at the window, prizing with his finger at the jalousies, whispering my name, that name that sound like a bird,
Coco Coco Cocorito.

He is a voice, is an eye at the keyhole, between the crack in the door.

He arrive on horseback in the courtyard. He move across the gravel like
chac chac,
like
jumbie
bead in a calabash.

The horse snort and neigh and jostle at the rein and tug at the bit in it mouth.
Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes.

He come to sleep in my ear. Like a lizard in my ear. A tongue in my ear.

The horse sniff at the window, snort and smell like him who ride the back, who creep into this cell with bare wall. There is no match and I can’t light a candle to see who it is that come to perform the ceremony, I know since I small. I can’t light a candle to see the shadow, to see the shape of the shadow of the one who come. Phantom.

I believe that he invisible. Invisible with the touch which is like fire.
Socouyant,
sucker of blood, the fireball witch. Hot like ice. Tip
of the finger, like tong to pick meat. Like gabilan, the hawk, I see high high high over the convent sky.

The voice sound like,
Coco Coco Cocorito.

Who it is that ride a horse through the window, pawing at the floor, strutting across the cell, galloping into my bed?

I know that smell, the smell of a horse and
de l’eau
from the city of
Cologne
on Father Angel’s map.

Get the
eau d’Cologne
for the child.

Limacol is better,
Oui
!

Where Mrs Goveia? Now she does always have Bay Rum ready to revive the child when he faint.

I must stop breathing. And sleep. And then, die.

Pretend I’m dead. That is what Mama say I must do. Pretend you dead. If you dead you can’t do nothing, and nobody could do you nothing. You not there. You dead.

I dead, dead, dead, dead.

Playing a game I learn to play it better. Shut my eye and disappear.

Then the gravedigger has his way with the dead.

H
E LEAVE
before the bell for Matin in the little hour.

He leave the sheet scatter on the floor. Leave me in this corner to cry.

I get up from the dead and wash myself between the legs, and let the water fall over my chest, and fling it at my face and gargle, and scrub away the smell and taste of the dead on my mouth and under my breath. And I fling open the window to fly, fly up into the milky con-stel-la-tions. And the perfume are lily flowers, funeral flowers in the garden beIow. Don’t fly.

We done loss the science of flight.

I let the bell rope take me up up, the big heavy bell with a heavy tongue in its throat. Toll, toll, toll.

Then I see him leave the yard on his chestnut horse.

In the past, before they stopped, Vincent had always been pleased to receive Father Dominic’s letters. They were long and sprawling. He always thought that the friar had been infected by Theo’s storytelling.

“I have looked into this matter of the one who visits in the night. This question of nightly visitations is very upsetting. Another preposterous phenomenon to explain to Father Superior. It would mean that I would have to keep vigil every night, and be able to get up with strength for Matins, as early as we customarily do. I do not think I can manage that and carry out my duties to the community in the day. It would soon be evident that I was under a strain. Which I am. But at that moment I insisted on getting my night’s sleep. I went to the boy when I heard his call. No one else had seemed to have heard the call, thank God. I do have so much to thank God for. But yes, there is the story of the one who comes into his room. There is the chestnut horse. There is the dying that he must do. His Mama told him to die. I do not understand any of this. This is beyond me. I had to wait for him to tell me more, to describe more. Some of this I did not want to hear. I was disturbed by what I heard.”

B
ENEDICAMOUS
D
OMINO,
is the knock on the door.

Deo Gratias.
I is a good boy. I get up.

Is another day. The man-horse don’t come every night. Sometime, only once a month. I don’t know. I lose time when I dead. I don’t mark it on the calender.

I don’t know when the horse go neigh. And I can’t stop myself. I must go to the window and throw down the key.

When this start?

All the time the sea was breathing just near the windowsill. And, in the distance, a thunder. Vincent was alert. Madeleine perched at the top of the bed, got down. She could not listen to any more. She went to sleep on the couch downstairs.

I
COME INTO MY ROOM
after Compline one night, and I feel this big key on the table by the window with the wash basin and the jug. I see the key and I wonder about it. But I sleepy. I say I go find out in the morning.

I clean my teeth. I pick nice hibiscus twig to make a good brush. I pass the wash rag over my face. Sleep come heavy after the hot day.

But it cross my mind, someone come in my room, when I not there, and leave this key. There is nothing to come in my room for. There is nothing in my room. This room more empty than Popo mother house up Pepper Hill. This room have nothing. The crucifix with the crucified one. The five wounds. The crown of thorns. The ill-used head from the hymn. My conversation is only a prayer I don’t understand.

Carry your cross, Father Dominic say.

Father Dominic must’ve come to see if I hiding matches under my mattress. He have fire on the brain. Leave the key by mistake.

In the dark there is nothing at all, my naked body standing in the middle of the room. There is the naked man on the cross.

He don’t come for anything. He come for me. And I am nothing.

I hang my cassock and scapular on a rusty nail behind the door. I crawl into my flour bag nightie. It still smell of flour. Like flour bag at the back of Chen shop up Pepper Hill. I lie on the coconut fibre mattress and I look at the stars, peeping through the jalousies.

If is moonlight it flow onto the floor and I can see the table and chair. I can see the wash stand. I can see my white cassock and black scapular and leather belt and beads hanging on the rusty nail. And the whip, the discipline, I en’t use yet. I hear the friars Friday night lashing their back. I can see in the moonlight.

But tonight is dark. No moonlight. I creep to the wash stand and touch the iron key. I lift it, heavy, cold in my hand. Smell it. It smell of cold iron. Rust. It smell of lock and keyhole. It smell of
oil someone rub on it, long ago to make it turn in the keyhole. It smell of mortice and latch.
Clackityclack.
It turn and squeak. It jam. Is a key to open some door. Heavy and cold. It belong in a hole in a door somewhere. My door to my cell don’t lock. There is no key in my door. I don’t have the key.

Father Dominic keep the matches and the keys.

I smell it, and then I don’t know why, I lick it. In the dark I kneel by the wash stand and I hold the heavy cold key in my hand, and I lick it. It taste of rust and oil, and the taste of the metal stay on the tip of my tongue.

I heavy with sleep and I crawl back in my wooden bed. I hold the heavy cold key under my pillow. I wait for sleep with my eyes open and my heart beating.

Is worse than before.

Then, that night, I must’ve close my eyes and fall into a dream. The horse at the window neighing and jangling it reins. I not hear a horse in the friary before. I sleep walk to the window. I find myself there. I lift the latch and throw open the shutter them. The horse chestnut and sweating in the hot night under the stars.

I see the horse. It all one figure, the horse and the man on top of it. He come like
borokeet
carnival time.

It go back on its hind leg and start to climb to the window from the courtyard.

Is the body of the man, and is the man who say, Give me the key. Give me the key.

Then I understand. I run by my bed for the heavy, cold key under my pillow. I lean over the windowsill and let down the key.

It worse than ever.

Them divide them self and the man leave the horse, so that the horse alone as a horse. The chestnut horse, Mister tether near the mango tree in the backyard. We call him Prince.

He is the devil. Pay de devil.

Not the carnival passing with
jab molassi
and red devil and
moco jumbie.

He is the devil. He get over the wall.

Pay de devil.

Spanish say, give the devil a baby for dinner.

Mama say, cheups!

He have the key for the door. The horse stamping on the courtyard. I crawl back in my bed. I curl up like a cashew nut.

I don’t sleep. I dream. I call it that, or else I dead. Mama say, die, die. Be dead.

She say once, that she fear that she might have carry me dead in she belly. Curl there like a dead leaf. Then I trans-pa-rent, like light on a muslin curtain.

No branch from she body go get cut out.

Cut it out, child. Go by Ma Sidone at the bottom of the track, cut it out.

She hear them voices tell her that. She say no, she not cutting out the child.

And Abraham take a knife to slaughter his son Isaac. And I look around for an angel. No angel in that room that night. Unless this devil was an angel in masquerade.

No angel in that room that night. No angel in battle array. No guardian angel with their hand on your shoulder, looking over your shoulder to take you down the path of darkness to goodness. Like the holy picture Mrs Goveia give me for my First Communion. No angel with fiery sword. No angel to cast Lucifer, carrier of light, from the height of heaven to the depth of hell. No Michael with a flaming sword. No Gabriel with annunciation. No seraphim, no cherubim. I find no one in that room that night. Not one of all the host of angel.

I wait, curl up like before I born. No match to light candle to see my way. I must wait in the dark. Above me on the bare wall he hang naked, crucified, the crucified one.

I taste rust in my mouth, the rust of the cold key, the metal of the bit in the chestnut horse mouth. The key is a bit in my mouth. Suck it, I tell myself.

Suck it, he say.

Don’t hear no door open, no latch click,
Clackityclack
!

Must be a beetle. A black backed beetle which drop from the ceiling. Or a cold
mabouyan
lizard drop on the floor from it hiding place behind the crucifix. That was the only sound. My eye squeeze up as I try to die.

Pretend you dead, Mama say. If you dead nothing can’t happen to you. You can’t do nothing. Nothing go do you. Is not you. You not there.

Suck it.

I can’t breathe. I can’t bawl.

No one can hear. No one go know. And no one go believe.

But then, no one know when I say no. No one know what happen then, no one know when I force his hand, and there and then I must go and get the switch.

Not now, because of the silence of God’s place.

Out in the yard to find a nice smooth one on the guava tree, or a sweet wiry one on the tamarind tree, like it use to be on Pepper Hill, out into the silence of the Thursday afternoon, all the windows and doors of the little house in the yard shut up and peeping at me as I go down the silent trace to pick a switch for Mister in the bush.