Читать книгу The Eavesdropper's Pen - A R Magaron - Страница 1
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ОглавлениеSunshine. Blue skies. Cool breeze.
Oh man, the morning of December 7th 1941 haemorrhaged perfection.
Ah, but almost immediately after the glorious morning sun had comfortably occupied the second half of the day, the unexpected happened: extremely foul clouds of grey and black obliterated every scrap of the sun’s bright light over the tiny East Caribbean island of Santa Maria. Seconds later the wind died. Lightning flashed and thunder clapped. Above and below the inimical skies frightened animals vanished. Chokingly, humidity hung in the air and knowingly, men, women and children braced themselves for Earth’s ultimate day – yes, thatbrute … Fate’s muscle-bound brute with the specially modified baseball bat had begun his frightening demolition game.
And the transformation of the island to rubble was about to commence.
Like a seething volcano the island began to brim over with bedlam – yet, astonishingly, within the walls of the Victoria Hospital the story had been vastly different. See, aside from the swift illumination of candles to compensate for the sudden electrical outage, hardly anyone in the hospital had noticed signs of impending spoliation. The hospital, fifteen or twenty minutes walking distance from Castries, the capital of the island, had been just as wanting as the town that was a mere caricature of wooden houses and narrow streets. But, in a narrow street close to the town’s centre, a stone’s throw from the solid concrete building that just happened to be the court of law, a huge diamond glittered. The glittering was the result of the immense Roman Catholic Church, and this symbol of worship was designed to impress! Man, listen, unlike the many ‘false’ churches on the island, this RC Church was notbuilt of ordinary wood and a tin roof. No sir, I ain’t kidding! God’s exquisite palace was all bluestone, slate roof and, in the traditional manner, adorned with polished stained glass windows that depicted images of fanciful angels and superannuated saints.
Then there was the clock. Oh-my-gosh, the clock! This timepiece turned out to be an illicitly large object that had been injected with a massive dose of Roman numerals and, just like a ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ poster, the ever-ticking thing had been pasted in a prominent position on the outside of the church for every living being to view. That blatant display of pseudo-elegance was supposed to radiate ice cube coolness, you understand – but what, I had often wondered, was the realtrue-to-the-soul-purpose of this costly clock? Unable to figure out the mystery, one nice and sunshiny day when the world was at peace with itself, I confronted a Vatican appointed cassock. I posed my delicate question delicately. Father Cassock looked at me with KGB suspicion. A bible was the cool tool of his trade and he carried that well-thumbed tool as if it was the first edition of the Ten Commandments; and the childless Fr Cassock, a seemingly wise and aging man, answered my question in a whisper – dunno why the haloed bugger whispered but he whispered nonetheless– that the time-gobbling machine had been placed outside the consecrated edifice as a reminder to one and all that time was not on anyone’s side; that the time had come to gallop into the church’s womb, deterge one’s sinful soul and pray for one’s ticket to ride unconstrained into the ‘next world.’
Fine. Except that not every so-called believer had been ready to die for that utopian ticket.
And so, one night while the island sweltered in the unforgiving Caribbean heat, without warning a colossal lighted match from one of hell’s factories came a-visiting and conflagrated the heart and soul of the penurious town. Man, not only had that vicious fire effortlessly emulated the 1666 London fire by cindering every wooden building in its path, it had also made charcoal of the only department store in the town.
Now sip on this: as if by some act of apostolic voodoo, the ferocious inferno had kept its nasty fiery fingers away from the ornate Catholic Church as if the church had been shielded by a gigantic invisible waterfall! The townsfolk, you know, the rosary-carrying flock, unable to explain the reason for the church’s survival quickly believed that God’s magnificent building had been clad in a cloak of blessed asbestos!
Amen!
That was what I said when I heard this fockery after an uneasy eavesdrop.
Because when one considers that in Lisbon in 1755, the dens of inequity known as the city’s brothels had escaped unscathed when a monumental earthquake plus a tsunami followed by a horrendous firestorm blitzed countless churches filled with praying and weeping worshippers, one is left God-confused!
All the same, no one was confused when, as a remembrance to the angry flames that had barbequed the little town of Castries, a somewhat mediocre gazebo was erected in the square a stone’s throw away from the super-fireproof church. Also within the square, on the far side of street where mylittle nondescript library stood, an enormous tree flourished. What sort of tree was it? Dunno man dunno. How old was it? I shrug my shoulders at this conundrum but, someone who had claimed knowledge said that in the month of December 1492, fluffy little minutes after a Genovese smoothie named Christoforo Columbo had alighted from one of his ocean-hardened ships (Nina? Pinta? Santa Maria?)the seed of the now magnificent leafy monster had been planted. No, not so, said some men of ‘superior’ knowledge. Christo-baby and his motley mob had been assailed by an army of Arawaks the moment their feet had touched the ground, therefore the grand prize for the planting of the awesome tree could not have been awarded to him.
Now sample this: another group of unintentionally funny and shambolic men had insisted that a seedfrom thetree in the Garden of Eden had been the real mama of the town’s tree. When asked the mysterious question: whohad planted the seed on the insignificant island of Santa Maria? In one unanimous voice the sham-religious dicks shouted –‘God!’ the very same tyro God that had banished his innocent and motherless children, Adam and Eve, from his pristine Garden for the ‘sin’ of nibbling on an ‘apple’ from his untouchable tree. Following blindly in the footsteps of brainlessness, these very same Godfearers went on to swear that the town’s ‘antediluvian’ tree had been specially selected by the Pope of the day to protect the world’s only fireproof church until Judgement Day!
Man, things got worse. The constant bombardment of religious excreta brought the heavy industrial fan to a standstill because, on the opposite side of the pointless ‘debate,’ the un-scrubbed and the uncircumcised – you know, the usual later day cretins that placed brass pennies on the power of evil – contradicted anyone who had had the effrontery to declare that the Church’s fire-defeating bluestones had notplayed any part in the church’s fiery survival at all. So to whom did they credit the miraculous deed?
Dydina Fyrestorm.
Yep! Madam Voodoo! The witch-bitch with the twitch that itched to show the world that she had not switched or ditched the solid pair of iron balls that she had been born with – that same obeah witch, others had claimed, because she was easily the most notorious and nefarious woman on the entire island, for personalreasons had saved the church from incineration!
Man, that sort of obeah superstition had glowed bright in yesterday’s newspapers.
Today though, according to the angry black clouds that obfuscated the blue sky over the beautiful isle of Santa Maria, biblical fire and brimstone would soon descend upon the land. In the interim, on the opposite side of the troubled world, the fanatical Japanese were indiscriminately decimating the dormant and unprepared US Navy in Pearl Harbour and, somewhere on the death fields of Europe, the odious Grim Reaper laughed. Oh yes, he laughed. But not so the folk of Santa Maria; all they worried about was the loathsome bastard with the lethal Yankee cudgel.
Intriguingly though, while the uncontainable stinker had been busy contemplating the best-worst way to mash-up the island, the normal course of events had run smoothly enough in the maternity ward of the hospital to ensure that, at 13.35 p.m. a boy had been brought safely into the world.
The boy was me.
The woman who had given life to me was called Anthea; the midwife who had helped with the traffic was christened Gloria, and this undiplomatic woman was the product of a fetid joke. Hardly a glory to God as her name suggested, after smacking my arse to evoke cries that confirmed life, and knowing that my mother had a great love for America and all things Americana, in memory of the Pearl Harbour calamity, she figured that I should be named Pearl!
Fock-off!
At least that is what I like to think my five foot nine, born and bred Caribbean mother had said or thought. I mean, had I been born a girl my mother would have had no soup naming me Pearl. Pearl is a lovely name; a respectfully wicked name; a name that conjures all sorts of romantic songs by Frank Sinatra; a name that dances coolly in the moonlight, but man, I belonged on the gut-ripping side of the battlefield so my mother rejected the midwife’s suggestion with an abrasive ‘no!’ then treated herself to a wee glass of the giggles. The giggles worked. Damn right it worked, because the midwife was left as confused as an orange cabbage on a mango tree. To compensate, she silently swore beneath her breath and vamoosed.
View this: Gloria’s suggestion to label me Pearl had been a serious one and she had expected my mother to see it as such, but then, upon realizing that my mother would not bend like pliable bamboo in a ferocious wind, she displayed he mule-like stubbornness and decided to dig for gold again. Poor Gloria. Just before big dig number two it dawned on her that she had not explained to my mother whyPearl should forever be my tag. Okay, that was fine, but now the time had come to remedy the situation. And man, with the remedy on the tip of her lemon coloured tongue, she skilfully poured the medicine into my mother’s ear. ‘Woman!’ she began with faux theatrical drama, ‘Lemme tell you somefing. Today de wicked yellow Japan people drop de bombs on de heads of de pink Yankees in Pearl Harbour, hundreds die and hundreds hurt.’ The nullipara, the childless woman, paused just long enough to gauge my mother’s reaction then continued unmoved by the shock that was so visibly stamped on my mother’s face. ‘Ma dear Anthea,’ she groaned in a begging tone, ‘maybe now you’ll un’erstan’ whyAh tell you to name de lickle chile Pearl, eh?!’
My mother’s heart bled. The little drum of life bled like an over-ripe beetroot that had been crushed underfoot by a size twelve boot – the ridiculous explanation, you see, had been responsible. All told, the midwife had meant well; but partly out of respect for the American servicemen that had lost their lives in the atrocious bombing and partly because the name Pearl was more suitable to the opposite sex, my mother kept her cool under her cotton blouse and once again refused the woman’s insane demand.
Rancid Gloria, did she up the white flag? Ha! Undeterred she changed the tone of her voice to make it sound more human-friendly and, trying to make the best use of garbage psychology she asked my mother, ‘Your surname … eez Harber, yes?’ In spite of being conscious of the midwife’s foolish ploy to entrap her, my mother acknowledged the so-called question with a nod and a grin and allowed the midwife to retain her starring role in the pantomime. Encouraged, the silly woman concluded by pleading, ‘So go on Anthea, go on. Let de whole worl’ know how motch you love America. Call de boy Pearl …pleeese!’
Man, at a time when death and destruction was ubiquitous, at a time when the sound of raucous laughter could easily have been construed as uncaring and insensitive, the midwife had chosen to display her stupidity and asininity with such intense seriousness, my mother shovelled all caution out of the hospital window and indulged in a large blast of laughter. The midwife pretended to be hurt. The silly bitch rolled her eyes around their sockets like the little ball on a roulette table then dramatically threw her hands in the air as if a Texas cowpoke had poked a Colt 45 in her upside down ribs. As if that farce had not been entertaining enough, she called my mother an ingrate in a voice that sounded as if she had whiffed helium. Completely satisfied, she turned her back and walked away, probably to harass some other unsuspecting soul.
It was no lie, though. My mother’s great love for America and all things Americana had no equal, and as much as she would have loved to display that love and fealty for America by naming me Pearl, she also knew that she could not make a jackass of me – so what did my sweet mama do? She decided right there in the hospital bed to compromise: she named me Earl Cassius PrimusHarber.
It could have been worse. Mama could have chosen for me the names of some of Rome’s most cruel emperors: the likes of Nero, Caligula or Commodus. Fortunately she had never heard of those historical men. However, later in life her well-meaning compromise had me feeling like a knackered bullock with a heavy yoke around his neck, so much so I ceased to disclose my middle names to anyone and yet, the question still haunts me: had my mother thought that one day I would miraculously revert in time, discard my first and last name and become Rome’s first black emperor?
On the other hand, whether the mid-wife had thought the compromise a good one after hearing the news of my Roman names, I shall never know. What I do know from whispered talk was this: at the very second of my fatuous naming, Earth was reprieved! The grey and grimacing skies turned blue again and a grinning sun came out to play – and guess what? Every religious man and woman on the island danced the dance of the thirteen voodoo veils, and they praised Him. Realistically the praises should have been heaped high on thatbrute, that sometimes despicable and unpredictable brute, for it was he who had spared the little island from total annihilation.
A quick look in the rare view mirror tells me that all I have written so far reads like the first instalment of a bullshit story, and yet, and yet, every word is true. I mean, every crab-face pillock knows the more unbelievable the crap the truer the crap, and the pile that I now wade through barefoot had been obtained through endless eavesdropping – a skill I mastered at an early age after accidently learning that almost immediately after my birth, my mother handed me over to Iris.
Iris? Yep. The lady was my mother’s bosom friend and the mother of two growing sons, Alver and Alwen. Short, stout and proud, with neatly plaited hair and turtle shell glasses, she was but a thimbleful of years above my mother and lived her life according to the hatchet-like words of the bible.
Unlike Moses, I had not floated down a river in a waterproof wicker basket to be discovered by a rich princess. As I have already said, I had been physically handed over to dirt-poor Iris, who subsequently became my surrogate mother, and with this unceremonious handing over my biological mother was now free to gather wind in her patched-up sails.
Man, times were harder than biblical bread. Dollar bills were rarer than duck’s teeth and, not blind to the facts, at an opportune moment my never-say-die mother, her sails already pregnant with wind, climbed aboard a semi-battered vessel and landed squarely at the feet of a tall iron lady with spikes in her head and a torch in her hand. The lady was called Liberty, and with nothing better to do, Lady Liberty stood high on a podium and simply gazed at the wonder of New York Harbour.
Oops! Almost forgot. Before my mother departed she said that she would be away for only as long the war lasted. The war ended. For the sake of mankind the allied armies had marched through Hitler’s turf and silenced his blaring guns; peace had become the order of the day; the world had once again settled down; the munching on the bread of contentment had been resumed; nectar had been sipped from the cup of optimism, and through the scratchy lens of my toy binoculars mama was nowhere to be seen.
Did I pine for that woman? Man, did I ever cease wondering when she would be coming home? With little option left to me, I waited. Time sped by with velocity unknown to the speed of light and stillno mama. Then one day, when my atom-size brain had grown to the size of a coconut, for some strange reason a disturbing question popped into my head. Hey boy, the question had asked, how young were you when you become conscious of your existence? How the F would I know?! I replied annoyingly. Later though, with the passage of time and without as much as a tiny knock on my skull’s door, a messenger came barging in with the answer.
The messenger, who had remained confined in the darkest corner – whoa! I must confess something important. I am a six foot old man with a head of grey, a dodgy back and a leg in the grave. As if my suffering was not enough a cross to bear, an age-old torturer called arthritis has me pinned to the rack. My muscles, once steel-hard have become baby-soft. My eyes, once condor-sharp have become dependent on glasses; but why should I complain? Without the miracle of glasses I had seen nature at its best and worst. I had seen hurricanes and windless days, watery moons and scorching suns, shooting stars and ebbing tides – moreover, before my bones began to brittle I had run marathons aplenty, read books by the score, kissed pretty girls galore, and after most of my energy had sapped, the messenger, who had remained confined in the darkest dungeon of my mind, clearly manifested that I had become aware of my existence seven months before my forth birthday! More than that, his record also showed that I had been playing happily beneath the mango tree in the back yard. Iris had been wearing a drab dress that had fittingly known drab days, and it was while she had been hanging more drab dresses on the line that a reptile called Miss Tilda slithered unannounced into our backyard. The reptile was our next door neighbour (sob-sob) and no sooner had she made her dramatic entrance, like an unhinged banshee she howled at the top of her voice, ‘God be praise Iris! De war eez over! De war eez over!’ and I have never forgotten how the reptile’s unexpected but joyful cry had Iris standing tall and straight and as happy as an Egyptian obelisk.
Ah! But once Iris had loosened the screws in her joints, she did a dance of relief and responded with the usual coffee and milk blend of French and English, ‘Mon Dieu! God be praise, you hear!Oui, God be praise!’
Beyond my understanding was why, immediately after Iris’s praise to God, I became aware of my existence, my fatherlessness. That mindfulness had me trying to pin a face on him, but every face I pinned on the bugger seemed wrong.
Iris. I figured shehad to know something; so I waited until the reptile with the face that had once launched a thousand shits had gone. I waited until Iris had hung the last bit of drab clothes on the drab line, then I pounced. ‘Mam’– that was how I addressed her –‘wez ma fadder?’
My suddenly asked question had Iris in torpor. Reclaiming herself, she looked at me from above the rim of her glasses and casually handed me the cold facts in the hot tropical sun. ‘Earl, your fadder iza broad!’
‘Ma fadder iza frog?!’
‘Not ah frog you lickle fool! Ah said ahbroad! In anudder country! Now go wash de wax outta yer ears!’
‘What udder country? I asked, ignoring her pleasantries.
‘In anudder country, awright?’
The answer may have been awright for an uninquisitive dulch but it was not awright for me, so I persisted, alright? ‘Tell me, Mam, what udder country?’
‘Chile!’ Iris thundered, ‘you axe too motch questions!’ and at that particular moment questions were not all I wanted to axe, believe me. All told, realizing that she had bawled at me for no reason, she capitulated like a demoralized army and said quietly but dismissively, ‘I will tell you one day … when you get bigger. Now go rest yourself and don’ axe no mo’ questions, you hear?’
Yes, I took a rest, stopped axingquestions and tried to think of other things; but so filled I was with yearning to know my father, I tried again to mentally compose a picture of him. Unable to forge a convincing composite of the man responsible for one half of me, and momentarily forgetting that no mo’ questions were to kiss my axe, I slipped in the very question that was driving Iris and me coo-coo. ‘Mam, please, tell me, wez ma fadder?’
‘Chile! Ah’ll tell you for de las’ time! Your fadder iza broad!’
Obviously Iris had believed the non-existence of my father was none of my business and questions relating to him, discreet or otherwise, were for ‘when you get bigger.’ Iris had really meant older. With the passing of time Iris’ memory dimmed and she forgot to fill me in on my father. Then Madam Memory stepped in. Much older now, she took my aging hand and walked me down the crumbling road of yesteryear. She reminded me that the youthful me – determination to know what skeletons had cowered in terror in the family closet – had continued to eavesdrop on Iris’s chattering with friends and neighbours, hoping that the odd titbit or two about my father would drop in my eager ear. Nothing of consequence had dripped from Iris’s mouth about my father. Nothing. For a long time … man, I am out-sprinting my own shadow, so I shall back track a little and examine the seed that Iris had planted in me – the seed that was the making of me.
From day one, like a wrinkle-neck Kentucky turkey, Iris had been religiously force-feeding me with words from her bible. Whether the force-feeding had been for the benefit of preparing me for priesthood, she never let on; but I now suspect that I was being indoctrinated at that ridiculously early age for her own personal satisfaction.
Iris was in a hurry. Man, was she in a hurry? Now that she had made a literate child out of me, she shoved her bible in my hand, turned the page to the Adam and Eve lie and said with big bright stars in her eyes, ‘Chile, now dat you can read you’ll be able to understan’ de words of de Lord. Now read de beautiful story for me.’
Read? My tongue lapped up every word of the story as if I were a cat devouring a saucer of milk. At the end of my lapping-up, I probably had understood the Lord’s odd word or two, but I certainly had not been able to understand the words of his talking serpent. How could I when I had not been able to understand how the slimy slithering thing had mastered the art of conversing in the first place? How could I when I had not understood, even though I roasted with desire to know, why God had allowed his yapping agent to tempt his innocent children into ‘sinning?’ But yes, everything in God’s book was true, true as triangular Earth, and since everything was true I had not dared confront Iris with my doubting questions, especially since I knew that the price of doubt would have been branded large on my backside like an advertisement on a billboard. All told, that was the beginning of my perennial battle with God, religion, my fascination for the allegories of the bible, my scribbling every story on paper and the realization that we were poor – poor enough to live in a shack next to a mosquito infested river.
Man, the shack had stood on wooden stilts. It had boasted three tiny rooms; sharing those rooms were Iris, Alver, Alwen and me. In this shack Iris had taught me to be obsessively clean to the point of felony, for she had a morbid fear of disease and I too contracted this fear known as nosophobia. Absurdly fastidious, she always made sure that the shirt on my back was clean and well pressed, likewise my trousers and sliders –underpants. A born preacher, she needed no encouragement to preach and would remind me from time to time, ‘You never know when or where you eez goin’ to fall sick, so make sure your backside and sliders eez clean, boy,’ followed by the usual ‘you hear?’
With a brain that constantly screamed for learning and understanding, little passed me by. For instance, I understood without being told that we only had a few belongings, and those belongings, in monetary terms, was of no real worth. Not even Iris’ precious bible and rosary had qualified as vendible items and so, submerged beneath the grubby waters of penury, our heads rested only slightly above the hunger line.
How could I possibly forget that there was only one bed in our shack and only Iris’s plaited locks were allowed to rest on the pillow? Alver, Alwen and me slept on rags on the floor, and within those rags were more bugs than all the stars in the night time sky. Rest assured, tiny inconveniences such as being eaten alive by those nasty little critters were the least of our problems, for we had an even greater problem: running water, or the lack of. The life sustaining liquid had to be fetched from the public tap, two streets away. Electricity? Behave! A kerosene lamp was all we were able to afford. A proper flushing toilet? How we wished! A lucky few had the luxury of a deep hole in the ground in their backyards and they were happy to call those holes of glory toilets, but many more called those same holes latrines. The majority though, the ones with an acute sense of smell, were honest enough to call those pits by their proper names: shitholes. Curiosity, that strange phenomenon that compels us to know, had often made me wonder what names the countless pathogenic creatures – if they were capable of rational thought – had for those holes that they had so lovingly occupied. Paradise, perhaps?
Unfortunately, paradise, large or small was not to be found in our tiny backyard. Unhappily we disposed our bodily waste in a galvanized bucket and, when the bucket was filled to the brim, the frassman, the waste disposal guy or the crapologist as the Americans would probably say, would be summoned. The sour truth was Iris could ill afford to pay the frassman. Worse, she was far too proud to allow her precious boys to carry the effluence to the appropriate place; but everything on Earth has a price, for no sooner had she sacrificed the precious brass penny than tears would glide down her cheeks like firemen down a fire station’s emergency pole, and yet, Iris had not minded shedding those tears, for that was the price she had been willing to pay for her false pride.
On the flip side of the coin, pride, authentic or sham was not a luxury the frassman had been able to afford. The little business of must eat to survive had trumped his pride and so, rather than steal, with a big fat grin he happily transported the waste to the effluvial place that the townsfolk had honestly labelled Shit Alley.
One night, after a trip to the alley, the frassman had not returned and Iris was concerned. Was she concerned for the man or for her bucket? Her bucket, most likely. According to the story, she quickly assigned Alver the job of solving the bucket problem. Alver sped to the man’s shack as if one of Hitler’s rockets had been inserted up his ass. He banged urgently on the fragile wooden door. Quickly the rickety door opened and with razor blade eyes the angry frassman gazed at Alver, said nothing but swiftly dashed back into the house as if hisass had been rocket-propelled too.
What the … Alver mumbled, but before he had the time to utter the prevalent f-word the frassman returned with a razor-sharp cutlass! Another murderous look and the irate man began displaying his homicidal tendency. Waving the lethal weapon in Alver’s face, he screamed, ‘Ah weel keel you! You stoopid dockfocker! Ah weel keel you!’
Alver resented being called stupid, and he resented being called a duckfucker even more, but at that perilous moment there was nothing he could do about it and, with no wish to wind up like bacon, he concentrated on finding a way to quell the problem.
So what was the problem? Was the frassman discontented with his poop-earned coin? No man no. The man was livid because, on the way to the valley of frass the bottom of the deteriorating bucket collapsed and the contents had him cemented like a Roman column. I mean, who on this ever-spinning Earth would be happy to pong like a skunk and simultaneously resemble the grandson of the creature from the Black Lagoon? Of course the focking man was not happy! But not for long – see, Alver pleaded for his life and after a hard bargain handed the lion-livid man a fortune. Sixpence! Oh man, that did it! Iris farted verbs and commas by the score! That sixpence had meant salt fish and breadfruit on the table and now eating a satisfying meal was right out of the window. Unable to eat properly that day, we were forced to settle for scraps, but Iris refused to accept the glaring truth: we were neck-deep in muck. Indulging in her usual cut price philosophy, she told her family ‘we now exist in de grave for de livin’!’ A week later, while everyone sat quietly at the old wooden table enjoying a reasonably tasty meal of black eyed peas, green bananas and flying fish, Iris detailed the reason for our survival: she had prayed; her prayers had been heard and bundles of saints had toppled down from the furry sky to rescue us – that was whythe family had emerged from the grave alive and kicking!
Holy goats! My overly-religious guardian had once again credited heaven’s saints for the good deeds of mere mortals. In reality it was Alver and my mother’s monthly allowance that had enabled the rest of the family to subsist at all, but what was the point of telling that to the five foot three, neither fat nor thin Iris?
Poorly schooled but undeniably literate Iris had a tendency to transform black into white when it suited her. It was the same with words. Words large enough to go on a diet were sometimes used instead of anorexic ones, and those fat words were constantly used in the company of her semi-literate friends. Like everyone else, including me, her inclination to make mincemeat of the English language was without parallel, so where had those words come from? The bible? That confusing book had been responsible for her usage of large words?
At the end of the day Iris must be given the credit she deserved. Besides her usage of large words and the biblical tuition that she had insisted in ramming down my throat in the cock-crowing hours of the morning, she had also preached to me the unforgettable: chile, knowledge is power and power is king that’s what life’s about. Those words, among numerous other sage words, had sounded good to me, so as humid days made way for windless nights I tried to be knowledgeable. I also learnt to be independent, to look after myself properly, to make my caban –bed of rags, prepare myself for school, wash the chipped dishes, sweep and tidy the shack – all that I did before my six birthday. One day, I had the temerity to complain, ‘Mam, why do Ah have to do dese girly fings?’
Stupidly I had expected her to reply with a clear and logical answer, instead she replied bitchily, ‘Shet up and do what Ah tell you to do!’ and as if to mollify me she added, ‘Earl, one day you’ll understan’ and you’ll fank me for it.’
Yes. But I was unable to ‘fank’ her for the extreme discipline that she had insisted in instilling in me. In moderation a meal of discipline was fine, but Iris had no boundaries to her military-style discipline. For instance, there were times when I had been playing some game or other with friends, I would sometimes stumble and fall and as a result the skin on my knees would be torn to shreds. Iris would not ask for an explanation, nor would she apply ointment and band aid to my wounds, no sir! Instead, for my “clumsiness” I would be flogged. If per ill-fated chance I had accidently torn my shirt or pants, the same punishment would be rigidly meted out, followed by this ill-considered statement, ‘Why you so foolish you foolish fool?!’
The first time Iris called me a ‘foolish fool,’ in spite of knowing that I would be severely punished, I giggled, for I was savvy enough to know that a fool was obviously foolish. At some other time when I had arrived home with my shirt in tatters after a fight, the inevitable strap she used to bite into my back, followed by another of her keen observation. ‘Clothes don’ grow on trees, you know!’ which I suppose was a departure from telling me, after she had caught me dumping cooked breadfruit in the bin, ‘Breadfruit don’ grow on trees!’
On that particular occasion I had the nuts to tell her, ‘Yes Mam, I know dat! Everybody know trees don’ grow in de ground!’ only to be whipped for my intended sarcasm.
In the little hovel that had been adorned with the usual French jalousies, well-worn linoleum floor and all that was basic, I began to adapt to Iris’s unintended cruelty, which in fact was the bible’s chief mantra: spear not the rod and spoil the child.Aside from that I also had to adapt to nature’s cruelty, and so in our tiny wooden house on stilts that stood twenty feet or so away from the little river, little old me learnt to adapt to all about me, good or bad.
Almost the first thing I learnt was to adapt to the hurricane season. At times like these, when it rained, the river would naturally swell and the little house would sometimes be threatened; and the brown, perilous waters, while carrying a glut of broken trees and branches and other débris, would, but for a matter of a few inches, threaten to flood our shack completely. Those meagre inches, believe me, were the difference between life and death and, as if that scare was not enough, the howling winds would also threaten to blow the family’s wooden box to smithereens. Meanwhile, countless young trees would be uprooted; fences and corrugated iron roofs would take to the skies like kites; flimsy wooden bridges would topple like packs of cards; power lines would fall like drunken sailors – in short, anything that was not properly tethered to the ground would sprout wings and fly. Man, nature’s heartlessness knew no bounds, for after the violent sound of thunder had rattled the teeth out of our mouths, just to make life that little bit scarier, vicious winds would once again join forces with the incessant rain and would bear down heavily on the corrugated roof with the full force a billion ball bearings. At such times I prayed that the world remain intact; prayed that my prayers would be heard by the man above and the answer favourable. Favourable? Ha! All I got for my trouble was more drama as fiery fingers of lightening vented its anger all over the land.
So what had I learnt from that? I learnt that at times like these it was best to scramble under Iris’s bed and hide from the demons of the skies that posed a threat to my life. And yes, I had also needed an explanation for the chaos that happened so casually above me, so from beneath the bed and above heaven’s din I questioned Iris loudly, only to be told that ‘God is arrangin’ his furniture, so chile, don’ worry.’
Worry? Man, God it seemed was arranging his furniture in competition with a do-or-die hashish-smoking poltergeist, and I was being told not to worry? I was petrified of the petrifying God who, according to what I had observed after reading Iris’s bible, seemed to punish anyone for the least infraction. I blamed Iris. No, I did not blame her because of God’s love for dishing out punishment left, right and centre. I blamed her because had she not started educating me in His strange and frightening ways at three years old I would have had no reason to pose unanswerable questions to her at five and a half. ‘Mam,’ I began, knowing very well what the answer would be. ‘God, he have angels?’
‘Of course God have de pretty lickle angels.’
‘Den why de angels don’ arrange de furniture for Him, Mam?’ was my not unreasonable question.
‘Because ...’ I waited for an answer, but Iris seemed terrified of crossing the heavenly red light. I continued to wait, and for what seemed like eons she sat mesmerized at the edge of her bed watching marble-size drops of rain fall from the leaking roof into her battered tin pisspot. To me it was obvious. She was petrified of saying anything that would ‘upset’ the Almighty and, as I watched her in that mute and pitiful state, I was forced to use my budding imagination to craft a picture of the troublesome God.
And there He was, exactly like the pictures in the holy books had manifested him: a bleached and timeless man in timeless bleached attire, wearing a long bleached beard. I saw that old man clearly. He was not arranging His furniture but was throwing impossible large boulders with immense force on his unbreakable marble floor. I also saw the white beard grinning from ear to ear and, frightened of Him as I had been, I was far from pleased with the image of him grinning while frightening me in the offing. ‘Mam,’ I repeated, ‘de angels would make less noise if God let de nice lickle angels arrange de furniture for Him?’
‘Look chile!’ she began, her eyeballs now halfway into the half-filled pisspot while searching for an appropriate answer. Seconds passed. Finally she provided an answer that was pleasing to herears. ‘God works in mysterious ways!’
Those thoughtless words had my little brain vibrating with unreligious questions that said, Man, God’s mysterious ways are dangerous and, why was He trying to destroy our little island? Those questions should have stopped with me, but I passed them on to Iris who seemed frazzled by my inquisitiveness. Lucky Iris. I was about to drop more unanswerable bombs on her plaited locks when God stopped the raucous that had passed for the arrangement of His furniture. And the world went deafeningly quiet. Now that His rain, wind, lightning and thunder had ceased, Iris, happy as the duck that had laid the golden egg, seized the opportunity and dumped the rainwater from the battered pisspot in the roaring, brown, débris-filled river. Next she poked her head out of the window. She looked up to the sky. What was she seeking? Assurance from Noah’s little white dove waving a little white flag indicating that the turbulence was over? God’s broken furniture tumbling down from the heavens? None of those things she saw; just a clear blue sky that had her thanking God for the cessation of the hurricane. And I was baffled. Why? Because beyond my understanding was why she had not asked God this simple question: why had he unleashed such a merciless hurricane on us? Still, I was relived, because the nastiness had disappeared to some distant land with a strange name called Florida, or so I was told. The hurricane’s disappearance to Florida however was of little concern to me, for the elements had left behind numerous dead and battered bodies in their wake that had to be quickly disposed of. The elements had also destroyed most of the town’s infrastructure that, they said, was beyond the government’s ability to repair.And yet, a few of comparative affluence, fearful of being the victims of robbery and violence, unanimously and angrily urged the government to take action by putting the people to work! Again, how was that possible when there were hardly any funds in the government coffers?
One man, an eccentric with a shrunken grapefruit for a brain and a lob-sided face, who by some quirk of fate just happened to be the leader of the opposition, claimed to have the answer. To solve the nasty business of poverty, a war, he said, had to be fought. Obviously most thought his statement a joke. But when faced with the question of what sortof war he had in mind to rid the island of poverty, the politician declared straight face and unabashed, ‘Simple. Shoot the poor!’
Shoot the poor? Once again some thought his ridiculous proposition a stunt; a cheap political gimmick; but others more desperate and hanging by the skin of their skin saw things differently and took matters in hand. As a result, one moonless night the politician with riotous ideas was captured, was stripped, was gagged, was flogged and, without as much as God-have mercy-on-his-soul, was hastily dumped in the blackness of Caribbean waters. Yet the disappearance of the loony politician was of little help, for austerity refused to disappear.
Thanks once again to Alver and Anthea, who from abroad had provided financial succour, Iris and me had a sufficient amount of food to put our empty stomachs to rest.
Only once, and that was during the war, had I known hunger. Iris as usual had been hanging her drab dresses on the line in our postage-stamp-size backyard; my stomach, earnestly believing that my throat was cut, complained bitterly. I strolled up to Iris. I handed her the urgent message in three gruelling words. ‘Mam, Ah’m hungry.’ Sad in voice and momentarily helpless, Iris said gloomily, ‘Earl, dere’s nuffing to eat.’ Fair enough. But how was my stomach to know that? Still starved for food, my stomach continued to grumble as much as my tongue and I went back to Iris and complained about my stomach’s complaint. My face must have registered that pathetic look that belonged on the face of a seal, because her answer, though she knew it would make little sense to me, was short and concise. ‘Earl, de worl’ is at war.’
De world is at war? Holy goats! I had no concept of the world in any meaningful way and had even less concept of war, all I knew at that particular moment was that I was one inch away from expiring from hunger, so I cried, and I bawled, prompting Iris into action. Concerned, she cast aside her faded frocks and went about scavenging something. Somewhere in the land of nothing she found a piece of something that she expertly doctored and handed to me. In times of hunger no one questions the quality or quantity of the food, so I happily bit into the lifesaving something, crunched, swallowed and temporarily my unaccustomed hunger was curbed.
Many years later, while browsing in the local market, I recalled that day of hunger and wondered why there had been nothing to eat during the war. In every corner of the market were mangoes, oranges, bananas, plums, star apples – all kinds of food. Breadfruit, the staple diet of the Caribbean was to be found everyone’s backyard, so why was there a food shortage that day? I shrugged, not knowing the answer – until one day while I happily eavesdropped on a conversation between two men reminiscing about the war. Listening carefully, in one quick lesson I learnt that food had been hoarded and sold on the black market. That was when the penny dropped. The essential penny to drop in the hands of the black-marketeers, Iris had been without. Later, much later, I would learn a great deal more about the fruit that tasted like nothing at all on Earth.
See, an article that I had read in some obscure magazine in the library, said that a certain globe-sailing Captain Bligh had been responsible for the myriad breadfruit trees that had been planted on the island. In 1793, the article had stipulated, to solve the problem of feeding the Caribbean slaves, Bligh had brought to the West Indies, from the South Seas, 2100 breadfruit trees and planted them on the islands.
And Iwas wiser man.
