Swimming in the Volcano (11 page)

Sir Cease-All:
The sentiment of a bachelor and card player. As for myself, you'll never find me lacking in my admiration for the fairer sex.

Beau:
I hear it's the speed of your admiration that falls short, heh-heh.

Joe Pittance:
As I see it, fellers, the lady's wisdom points right on target to the politicians, those keen at keeping poor St. Catherine in the bushes.

Sir C
: There you have it. Why, look at this boy Banks trying to fill the shoes of PM. Not to insinuate the worst, but I thought only the communistic philosophy allowed that it was fine and dandy to go around the countryside uprooting families and turning them off the land. First the planters, and now the peasants themselves must go! The people have placed their hopes and dreams in his trust and he has shown them his backside. There's a fine reward for a good deed, and now perhaps you shall tell me we shouldn't expect so much from a hot and sweaty youth who borrows his ideas from the academy rather than the workshop of experience.

Joe:
No no no. There are some ministers we would have no trouble naming who have begun to bite the hand that fed them, like they looking to smash up the Coalition, and bring old Pepper back to ruin us.

Beau:
Coalition my foot! That's what we are calling it now when cats decide they are better off with the rats and divvy the cheese between them. Shenanigans filled up Government House this time, fellers, not votes.

Eppy:
It's never an easy job to steer our beloved ship but I for one can't make heads or tails out of this land reform business. Who is doing what, and why, is what I want to know. Surely we each agree that fallow or underused land is of no help to the economic situation. For as anyone will tell you, you can't call it dancing if all you are moving is your feet.

Beau:
Is dancing all right, Eppy—straight into a potter's grave. A rat by any other name would smell as bad, but go ahead and put a fancy title to it like Agrarian Reform or PLDP. Mum, come to the window, is Agrarian Reform coming down the street. Well, poor Mum looking left and right but ain't see a thing but pests. PLDP?—all that is the PM's push to Kingsley's shove, eh?

Sir C
: I believe you speak of the practice whereby the political inclination of a parish is physically manipulated. If that were all it was, I would say that is the same old game of dominoes, but the persecution of innocents will not go unheeded if the programme is carried forth.

Joe:
With all due respect for your record of service, Sir C, the masses have had to do the best they can without a Robin Hood of their own. For their sake and for the good of the nation, the old estates which are now in the public domain must be reorganized and made to turn a profit as they did in the old days.

Beau:
I am hoping that our boys have a plan to do this without a return to the old ways.

Sir C:
You know that on all issues I share the view of God, the Queen, and of course the underdog.

Beau:
Make heads or tails of that without getting a headpain and a tailache.

Joe:
More for St. Catherine is more for all.

Beau:
More for government is less for all.

Eppy:
As they say, gents, A Naked Freeman is Nobler than a Gilded Slave. Let our little group set a standard for the rest. Practice patience and withhold judgment until we know more about the scheme. By the way, have you noticed the PM's anniversary present to the Police?

Sir C:
Well, it makes me very sad to see our men stripped of their smart white jackets and navy trousers with red stripe. How many young boys grew up longing for such distinction? Now they are required to dress as common troopers.

Beau:
Battledress is all the rage now for traffic patrol. Just look at
Dominica they playing Marine over there. Straight army fantasy, boy. Barbados the same thing, Jamaica, Trinidad.

Joe:
Modern times is what you're seeing in the force these days. The old uniforms left over from the colonial bygone had to go. I say cheers and best of luck.

Eppy:
Enough about appearance, as long as the force continues to do a very good job let them wear whatever pleases them. I might add before we part: the
Royal Tropic
shall call at the island this Wednesday for the first time in two years. Congrats to Mr. Dexter Brisbane of Tourism and Trade for bringing the
RT
back to us after the unfortunate assault on several of her passengers by scoundrels who weren't thrown into prison quick enough to suit me. Let's all be down at the wharves to welcome the ship when she comes in. Once again, it's time to show the world we are the friendliest folks in the Caribbean. Until next week then,
Clarior E Tenebris
.

Lloyd Peters stood restlessly to his feet, straightening the square tail of his linen bush jacket, and sat back down, aware that it was his role to lead the men in the room to certain conclusions, his role to make points of views inevitable, to establish clear lines of direction, like a magnetic compass, and then herd his comrades to a common path, thus giving the prime minister the opportunity to make decisions in an atmosphere of consensus, if not factuality. He must do this because Eddy was a bit of a dreamer, a disappointed Utopian for as long as Peters had known him, until now, because throughout the past year he had watched the most subtle of transformations occurring in Eddy Banks: the whole, imposing presence of the prime minister these days was of a disappointment in the process of recovery. Eddy was healing himself, had begun to believe in the gift of his power, yet still his capabilities remained fragile, and in need of orchestration.

Not all of the men present in the private quarters of Edison Banks' office understood this fragility; or, in understanding, appreciated the barrier it implied at this critical juncture in their reinvention of the world. They were the ones who had set the roots in the thin soil of St. Catherine, organizing the study group that had hardened and crystallized into the People's Evolutionary Party, each of the founding members of PEP now a chief minister or advisor, within the circle, to the government, and they were intent on clarifying the ambiguous nature of what was out there beyond the circle, what mutation might have erupted to deform the dream, what conspiratorial viruses may yet infect it, other than their own. Unlike Grenada, on St. Catherine fate and Eddy Banks had allowed a window for rational change; its own alliance of opposition parties did in fact manage to constitutionally defeat the old regime, and thus embarked on a
delicate, factionalized stewardship of the nation which—and Peters did not have to persuade anybody on this point—was the most push-and-shove way to achieve nothing, to achieve less than nothing, like harnessing a donkey at each end of the wagon of reform, each driver lashing the dickens out of his own ass, striving to get down the road. PEAS—the ruling alliance—was a classic coalition of conflicting interests, united in a common hatred but divided by irreconcilable ambition. Yet this did not disturb the young men of PEP, the People's Evolutionary Party, not at all; they had expected just such a conflict, and had anticipated managing whatever attitudes or selfish aspirations, whatever regressive manipulations, sought to inhibit the forwardness of their programs, especially land reform, the modernization of agriculture on the admittedly backward island. All that Edison Banks required of their efforts was that there be a beauty to them, an inspiring elegance of execution, so that they could say, when the struggle was over and won, that they had done no more than to provide their foes with a rope to hang themselves with, and were blameless in the hearts of the people, and could not be held accountable in the more severe scrutiny of their real and lasting enemies.

Lloyd Peters—the former civics teacher at St. John's; a Boston-trained lawyer and now, by choice, minister of information—had educated Banks in this aesthetic, but the youthful Banks had allowed his own immaturity to color it—which was not intellectual immaturity but moral naïveté—and now, as prime minister, he placed an unfortunate faith in love and forgiveness, and it was Lloyd Peters' mandate not to dissuade him from this faith, not likely at any rate, but to protect him from its consequence. There were occasions when Peters looked at his former student—Banks' piercing visage of a gaunt nobleman, like a reproduction of an El Greco Moor, the crescents of inanimate flesh that drooped from the bridge of his nose to below the flat sockets of his lugubrious owl eyes, giving the impression of someone often overtaken by bouts of melancholic insomnia—and thought of him as a romantic anachronism, a monarch from a golden age, so contrary to the blunt West Africanness of an Archibol or a Kingsley, the minister of agriculture, or Peters himself, as polished and lacquered as Guinea totems. Eddy acted as if he had lost a world he never had, thought Peters.

Nevertheless—and it was not a masquerade but a separate self—in crowds or addressing parliament, the prime minister was, as a man of the people, a charismatic lion; an object of veneration and source of national pride. He was not the distant, preoccupied man known to
his closest associates, nor was his mind perpetually inhabited by matters of state, or circumscribed by the images of power. He could be lighthearted and teasing, yet impervious to social niceties, never shaking a hand or asking after wives and kids, but he was famous for showing up unannounced at the wattle huts of villagers with a sack of groceries in his arms—
For the children, a little something, eh?
he'd say—and then sit to share their country dinners of dasheen and gristle. For superficial gestures and synthetic contact he showed little tolerance, but he would come to his work at Government House from his modest two-bed up the hill in Cunningham's, the middle-class suburb where he was raised, riding the crowded lorries with the laborers, grinning attentively at his constituents, not quite knowing what to say to them but more interested in listening anyway, joining the good-natured laughter that rolled with their criticisms, a son or brother who awoke their loyalty, and their ribbing would turn away from
pal-o-tics
or
pol-i-tricks
to life's more vital topics, women and cricket and sailing and fishing, farming, building, the art and science of normalcy, the dream that they carried to consummate the greatness of Edison Banks.

They agreed on goals—the coalition was a marriage of convenience, a hybrid fruit meant to bloom only once, briefly, for display, for
color
, and then be promptly discarded, and a more prolific and pure variety grafted to its roots. Unhouse Kingsley, they all agreed: it was both as simple and as complicated as that, for once you invited the devil to your table, he would eat and eat and eat, and always call for more, and could not be discouraged or dislodged by mere force alone. Shove his face into his own shit, they were learning, and he will devour it, smacking his lips.

They agreed on goals, but on the path they had chosen, they were running out of solid ground: parliament, the courts, the constitution, so defiled by the former government. Rule of law. Unlike their opposition, they were young men, they had no time to waste, they had waited a year, and a year was plenty, a year was enough. A year without change, some of them argued, was
too much
. They agreed on ends but not on means, yet now the resistance of those among them most unwilling to risk bolder actions, to risk
risk
itself, had begun to waver, a change of atmosphere for which Lloyd Peters gave himself credit. They were less reluctant to try things out, test the limits, make things up—like this gerrymandering so artfully introduced, at Peters' suggestion, into the land reform program—as they go along. But Kingsley had not taken their bait, he had not dug in his heels and
reacted predictably when they shoved his face into his own shit and began, without his knowledge or consent, to shuffle the peasant communities squatting on the government estates and relocate them irrationally (but temporarily, insisted Banks) on unsuitable lands. Dispossess the peasantry. Blame it on Kingsley, the minister given authority over these affairs.

They didn't expect the scheme to work, but that, too, was part of its beauty. It was a constitutional issue and would be tossed up through the courts, yet by then it would be too late. Kingsley's constituency would be decimated. Better still, Kingsley's own frustrations and impatience would accelerate his demise, he would make a mistake, invite disaster, and then anything was possible. What might he do? Who knew, who could say? They would welcome resistance in any of its forms, but Joshua Kingsley had said nothing and done nothing to undermine himself. He continued doing as he had done since the beginning—dragging his ass—mouthing his allegiance to the land reform program insofar as it achieved the restoration of the sugar industry—and this to the dismay of his ministry's own experts.

Sugar was his phoenix, all he secretly cared about. If he could have that, Kingsley believed, he could have everything. He, himself, would be restored.

Lloyd Peters was not going to let him have it—which is not to say he disagreed with the minister of agriculture about the power of sugar, because the Achilles heel of every revolution was the economy, and to make a strong economy the masses needed discipline, they needed organization, needed control and structure.

They needed sugar. And, if not sugar, they needed hell, as they had never known it, to focus their hearts and minds, but he could not say these things as yet to the men assembled in the room. The triumph of their compromise still rang in their ears. No one was actually prepared to say the word
revolution
—the one word in their vocabulary softened by success.
No
, they found themselves forced to say to the world,
we are not a revolution, we are a coalition
.