An Embarrassment of Mangoes (20 page)

Get out the cleaver: Cutting and coring the one I’ve bought requires serious muscle—kind of like dealing with a particularly ornery turnip, only one with twice the usual diameter to push the knife through. Islanders sometimes cook them whole, either in the oven or outdoors in the coals of a hot fire, and I’m beginning to see why. Once I’ve wrestled it into pot-friendly pieces, I boil it until it’s al dente, about fifteen to twenty minutes.

By the time it’s drained and cooled, I realize I’m confronting quite the pile of breadfruit. I cut half of it into cubes and mix it with chopped onion, celery, dill pickle relish, and a mayo dressing for the long-awaited breadfruit salad. I have enough for an extended-family picnic and, when we taste it, we’d swear we are eating potato salad. The other half I panfry in oil with a little onion. We’d swear we are eating home fries—and I have enough to serve an entire diner during morning rush. Not that both aren’t delicious, but it’s an awful lot of fuss to end up eating potato salad and home-fried potatoes
for days
.

From now on, if we want breadfruit, we’ll get it in a restaurant—which isn’t exactly hard to do. Wedges of boiled or roasted breadfruit are usually part of “provision,” an assortment of root vegetables that accompanies traditional West Indian meals: boiled yam, sweet potato, dasheen, and taro, and sometimes boiled green plantain and pumpkin as well. The name “provision,” also referred to as “ground provisions,” is a perfect description for these abundant, readily available, nutritious, cheap, and easily prepared root vegetables, which have long provided sustenance in tough times. Eaten as part of provision, breadfruit is kind of like white bread: bland and inoffensive, albeit a useful vehicle for sopping up sauce and filling up hungry customers.

But wouldn’t you know it? Now that I’ve satisfied the urge to cook my own breadfruit, the next time I beach the dinghy by the derelict boats, walk the overgrown track, and play twenty questions, Mr. Butters volunteers: “I got breadfruit ready. How ’bout a nice breadfruit?”

T
he cruisers’ grapevine has more than Mr. Butters and a rumored hotel development to keep it humming these days. Carnival is around the corner, and there are decisions to be made.

“Carnival” comes from the Latin
carne vale
, which means “farewell to the flesh.” This annual revelry traditionally precedes Lent, and got its start in medieval Europe when the aristocracy held elaborate celebrations and gorged on meat before the fasting and restraint imposed by Lent began. It came to the Caribbean with the French in the seventeenth century, was picked up by their slaves, who began to mock their masters with their own pre-Lenten celebrations, and grew in exuberance from there.

But it’s early August—six months before or after Lent, depending on which way you look at it, and Grenada is getting ready to celebrate Carnival. The connection to Lenten denial has lost out here to practicality. The reason is Trinidad, a scant 75 miles to the south and home to the third largest Carnival in the world (behind Rio and New Orleans). Grenada simply couldn’t compete with Trinidad’s pre-Lenten bacchanal, and therefore switched it to summer, when it would coincide with the August anniversary of the Emancipation Act. Ironically, Grenadians only have themselves to blame: They were the ones who introduced Carnival to Trinidad, when Grenada’s French settlers moved there in the late eighteenth century, after Grenada was ceded to the British under the Treaty of Versailles.

For cruisers spending hurricane season in Grenada, the timing is perfect. By the beginning of August, posters in the shop windows in St. George’s have started trumpeting the various events. Though the preliminaries and semifinals of the music competitions begin weeks ahead, the heart of Carnival is three days, starting with
Dimanche Gras
—French for “Big Sunday”; through
J’Ouvert
—French for “daybreak”—on Monday morning, when revellers spread mud, oil, and greasepaint all over themselves and onlookers; through to Monday Night Mas, an “everybody dere” street party; through to the big Carnival finale on Tuesday.

Nimrod’s is full of chat about which band to join for Monday Night Mas.

“Carib deh best.” This, from a local who’s stopped in for a quick eighth of rum with Hugh.

“But they’re not taking any more people.” This, from Steve, who’s already tried to sign us up for the Carib band.

“How ’bout Heineken den?”

“Yeah, I saw the sign in Arnold John’s store. We get six beers apiece if we join that one, which sounds pretty good. Besides, it may be the only band left that will take us. And Ann doesn’t want to be left out.”

“Your wife nice. You don’ want vex she.”

Mas—pronounced “mahss”—is short for masquerade. The
real
mas bands have been at work for months, stitching sequins and feathers and sparkly bits of cloth into elaborate, sometimes overwhelmingly massive—and other times decidedly scanty—costumes that reflect the theme the band has chosen for this year. These mas bands are serious business, and they will strut their spectacular stuff first in a glittering pageant on Monday afternoon, and then in a parade through St. George’s for Carnival’s finale on Tuesday. We will be spectators for those parts; Monday night is when
everybody
gets to play mas and dance up and down the hills of St. George’s—no sequins, feathers, or practice required. The costume part is usually just a shirt or maybe a cap advertising the band’s sponsor.

And so about a week before the start of Carnival, Steve comes home from town toting two Heineken T-shirts and the fistful of beer tickets that came with them. “Terry and Nancy and some other people we know joined the Heineken band, too,” he tells me. To our surprise, though, we’ve discovered that not all cruisers are as determined as we are to get involved in island culture. Some aren’t only ignoring local events and music, they’re still
eating
much as they did back home. “They’ve got bigger freezers and more money than we have,” Steve says, “but I’ll bet they’re not having as much fun.”

T
he auditorium at the Grenada Trade Centre is packed with well-heeled locals; a government minister is in the front row, and the seats next to me are filled by middle-aged ladies in summery evening-out dresses who chat sedately before the show begins. But once the first performer takes the stage, all semblance of sobriety evaporates and the ladies turn raucous. Soon they’re slapping their thighs, elbowing each other, wiping tears from their faces, and generally killing themselves with laughter. I’m laughing too, though I have only the barest clue why.

This is a pre-Carnival calypso and soca concert headlined by the Mighty Sparrow, Grenadian by birth but long since adopted by Trinidadians as their own. Calypso, or
kaiso
as it’s called in Creole, is social and political commentary, oral history, and just plain bawdy mischief set to music. It has its roots in African culture, and was brought to the Caribbean with slavery. Soca, born in the seventies, is a “rhythmically enhanced” form of calypso with an intricate bass and percussion line; the name is a combination of
so
ul and
ca
lypso. Much calypso these days is influenced by soca, and the division between the two musical forms is indistinct. Both, though, are lyrically driven—and when you’re unfamiliar with local culture, politics, and players, still having trouble interpreting basic conversations, it’s not likely you’re going to get the innuendoes of a ribald, government-critical calypso.

It isn’t until the third time through the chorus that I catch on that “Four Kings,” sung by the very popular Beast—a member of the Royal Grenada Police Force when he’s not savaging the government in song—is a double entendre; I must have been misled by the sedate ladies next to me, who unabashedly scream out, “Four King,” every time Beast cues the audience in. The ladies also seem partial to “Deh Monkey,” sung by a handsome young Grenadian named Randy Isaac: “My friend Deneva invite me home by she/She went and take out deh monkey from where it been/Put it under she dress . . .”

“Ah want to see deh monkey, Ah want to see deh monkey,” the ladies belt out enthusiastically when it comes time for the chorus.

Much to my glee, when Mighty Sparrow takes the stage after intermission, he addresses a question directly to one of our group, an I-know-more-than-you-do cruiser who had raised my anxiety level every time I was in his company from Florida, where we first bumped into him, south to the bottom of the box. Now, accompanied by his pale-skinned wife, both their faces tinged a shade of brilliant red, he’s getting it back. “Do you eat white meat?” Mighty Sparrow asks him for all the audience to hear. Unfortunately (from my point of view), he understands what he’s
really
being asked, and saves himself from further embarrassment by emphatically nodding yes. Mighty Sparrow makes things easy for outsiders by prefacing each of his calypsos with a little introduction, and he has just explained that the next number accuses the men in the audience—mostly black, of course—of lying when they don’t admit to eating “white meat.” This is accompanied by a dangerous throaty chuckle, and the song that follows is performed in a rich, powerful voice with amazing range and color, accompanied by incredibly sexy moves. The Mighty Sparrow is no spring chicken: Sixty-three years old, he’s been performing for more than four decades. Some of his themes are serious—education, emancipation, a unified Caribbean—though there are also odes tonight to Billy Boy (his penis) and saltfish, the piscine term for white (and dark) meat. The audience knows all the numbers and sings right along.

A
s Carnival draws closer, we’re singing right along too.

“Dey have deh bellee, dey have deh bellee.” It issues from the speakers on the bus to town, from people walking along the street, and from the radio on
Receta
during the daily “Top 20 Carnival Countdown.” A contender this year in
both
the National Calypso Monarch and the National Soca Monarch competitions that are part of Carnival, “Deh Bellee” has caught fire. “But tell dem I am here to help deh country out/And to stop me dey will have to put a handcuff on me mouth/Dey have deh bellee, dey have deh bellee . . .” Getting more airplay even than “Monica Lewinsky” (“Go tell your uncle, go tell deh judge/go tell deh prosecutor dat you and I made love”), “Deh Bellee” even makes it into one of the prime minister’s speeches.

The week before Carnival just happens to include Fidel Castro’s first-ever state visit to Grenada, a major and controversial event, with most of the population still able to recall firsthand the Cuban presence and the U.S. invasion. We go to Tanteen, the parade grounds in St. George’s, where we are given little paper Grenadian and Cuban flags to wave as Prime Minister Keith Mitchell and Castro take the stage. Mitchell makes the formal introduction. Dr. Fidel Castro, he says, has shown during his forty years in power that he has “deh bellee.” If you have “deh bellee,” you have guts, stamina, nerve,
cojones
.

We need bellee to survive Carnival.

The printed schedule says the semifinals of the National Soca Monarch competition start at 10
P
.
M
. Steve and I arrive right on time. The club is deserted, no equipment on stage. We’re on our own tonight; even those cruisers who
are
interested in island music are put off by the hour—past everyone’s usual bedtime, and requiring late-night reef-running dinghy rides to and from shore. And these are, after all, only the semifinals.

We wander around by ourselves in the over-air-conditioned room until someone takes up residence behind the bar at the far end. “Aren’t the soca semifinals here tonight?” Steve asks him.

“Yeah, mon.”

“What time do they start?”

“Jus’ now.”

With typical North American logic, we interpret that to mean in a couple of minutes. By 10:30, a few people have wandered in and a couple of guys have started to arrange some mikes and amps. By 11, the room has begun to get crowded. Still no performers, though. Finally, around 11:30—when we, and the entire room, are well lubricated—the first singer takes the stage. The judging is based not solely on the music—in fact, the backup bands are on tape—but also on the performance: how the singer incites the crowd to a dancing frenzy. By 1:30, when we call it a night because I can barely stand or breathe in the steamy gyrating crowd, the competition is barely half over. And this, by the way, is a weeknight.

Castro’s speech had started “jus’ now” too: Thousands of Grenadians (and us) had sweltered in the hot afternoon sun for
three hours
past the scheduled time before the prime minister took the stage with his honored guest.
Three hours
. Steve says the literal translation of “jus’ now” is “jus’ throw away the schedule.” It is the perfect island phrase. We adopt each other.

T
he finals of the soca monarch competition are at Seamoon, a huge open field where rallies, conventions, concerts, and sports events are held. A pavilion and stage are at one end and covered bleachers at the other, where we sit with Terry and Nancy from
La Esmeralda
. Like us, they jump at the chance to check out local happenings; Terry had taken charge of this outing and organized the transportation to Seamoon, more than midway up the island in St. Andrew’s parish. “Bleachas deaaaddddddddd,” shouts the emcee on the stage. And, comparatively speaking, I suppose we are. Most of the crowd—thousands of people—is on the field, dancing deliriously, jumping, waving flags, shirts, towels, rags in the air, a churning mob in the darkness, dancing, madly dancing, crowding the stage, backlit by the lights. “Stay calm, stay calm,
staaaaaayyy
caaaalm,” the emcee exhorts the crowd, in tones intended to build the riotous excitement. Every few minutes, a flame shoots skyward from between the flags and rags, when someone ignites the spray from an aerosol can—hair spray, I think—throwing part of the spectacle into vivid silhouette and imprinting the ecstatically dancing figures on my eyeballs. We had been told we couldn’t bring bottles inside the grounds; flame-throwers, obviously, are a different matter.