Caribbean (141 page)

“No,” he said ruefully as he laughed at himself. “I found she worked in a kind of massage parlor. Met men there and conducted her own lucrative business on the side. I was shattered. Flew to Barbados, found myself right in the midst of one hell of a revolution. Had I remained here on All Saints, I’d have become a sentimental old fool, a kind of self-made English remittance man.”

“Harsh lessons, but you certainly learned something. Your books on the Caribbean are quite valuable.”

“There’s a chap in Trinidad who’s better. I’m nineteenth century, he’s twenty-first.”

“Who’s this genius?”

“Chap named Banarjee.”

She gasped with the joy of mutual discovery: “I’m using his Yale book as a text aboard the
Galante
.” Suddenly he grasped her hands with deep emotion: “It’s so exciting to meet someone who’s trying to push knowledge forward. Oh, I would love to be forty years old and teaching in some university. Your problem about marrying across color lines? Give it no thought. You’ve already won the ball game.” He kissed her and said: “May God bless you.”

As the
Galante
headed south for Carnaval in Trinidad, Thérèse’s emotions were so incandescent and jumbled that as she walked the deck under the stars, she thought it apt that the ship was leaving the comfort and order of the French and British islands and heading for turbulent Trinidad and the old Spanish mainland at Cartagena, because her life seemed to be traveling a parallel course: I’m seeing the Caribbean in a totally different light. Before I understood it as a scholar. Now I feel it as a human being.

She had been profoundly impressed by some of the academic lectures,
like Carmody’s on the realities of life in Trinidad and the black professor’s speculation that one day Cuba might extend her hegemony over the entire Caribbean. Also, her fresh rereading of Banarjee’s Yale publication on the islands had startled her with its vivid depictions of Caribbean customs and values, and she remembered that both Carmody and McKay had praised the author for different reasons: If I’m going to be a real professor, I’d better meet that man, because he knows something I don’t.

So next morning when the ship drew alongside the quay in Trinidad and students rushed off to plunge themselves into the riot of Carnaval, she lingered on deck, waiting for Michael Carmody, and when he appeared, she asked him, rather boldly: “Your man Banarjee. People seem to think highly of him. Any chance I could meet him?”

“Simplest thing. He was my student. Lives not far from here.”

As they looked down upon the quay a horde of young islanders, boys and girls, all dressed alike in gold and blue festival uniforms of the most flamboyant design, thronged into the area prior to marching through the streets, and when they were joined by sixteen elders in gargantuan multicolored mechanically controlled costumes, confusion filled the place. Then, as the chaos intensified, a band of sixteen men playing tantalizing music on marimbas made from gasoline drums marched through, until, with one wild spasm, Trinidad’s Carnaval exploded.

In a hesitant voice that betrayed her misgivings that she might not be able to see the scholar, Thérèse said: “I suppose he’ll be involved with that riot down there,” but Carmody reassured her: “I doubt that a man like him will be much concerned.”

As they descended into the maelstrom they found themselves in the midst of two large groups of young people, one dressed like mice, the other like astronauts. “Who pays for these costumes?” Thérèse asked, and Carmody said: “The parents of the kids. This is Carnaval, once a year.”

Thérèse, growing more and more attentive to the throbbing of the steel bands, could barely hear Carmody when he explained: “Dr. Banarjee lives in a famous old house. Owned by his people for more than a hundred years.”

“Does he live with his family?”

“Odds and ends of people look after him. He’s not married.”

Something in the way the Irishman said this troubled Thérèse, and she stopped in the middle of the confusion and grasped Carmody’s
arm: “You’re hiding something from me. Is he what the girls in college called a weirdo? Or someone I should be afraid of?”

Carmody was astounded: “He’s one of the finest, gentlest men in the Caribbean. Almost a genius.”

“If he’s not a professor, how does he make his living?”

“This is his place—and by the way, it’s usually referred to as the Sirdar’s House,” Carmody said, glad to be able to avoid her question and indicating a fine, haphazard old building. “A lot of Indians have got their start in this one,” and he climbed three steps to knock on the door.

When the scholar appeared he looked like a man who had settled into a groove in which he would remain for the rest of his life. In his mid-thirties, he stood less straight than he had as a boy; he slouched forward just a bit, like a man searching for something he had lost, and the fires of youthful enthusiasm had definitely waned. His hair was still a handsome black with no signs of gray, and when he smiled, which he did perfunctorily, his teeth were as white as ever. He looked, Thérèse thought when she first saw him, much like the deferential Indian bookkeeper one reads about in English novels on India, and she liked him.

Carmody spoke first: “Ranjit, I bring you a most intelligent young woman, Dr. Thérèse Vaval, professor-to-be at Wellesley. She’s been using your Yale book as a text.” But before Banarjee could acknowledge the introduction, she hastened to explain further the reason for the intrusion: “You’re a major contributor to the subjects I’ll be teaching. Caribbean history, Caribbean thought. I’m Haitian, you know.”

Without a shred of envy, Banarjee clapped his hands and cried: “You lucky, lucky woman! I’ve wanted to teach those subjects all my life. Never got the chance.”

It was such an honest cry that Thérèse said quickly: “But, Dr. Banarjee, you teach all of us.”

Pleased by such recognition from a fellow scholar, Ranjit broke free from the reticence that usually imprisoned him, and with the boyish enthusiasm that Indian men of all ages can occasionally display, he cried: “Mr. Carmody! Dr. Vaval! We shall mount a small celebration of this propitious day,” and he hustled about, bringing them a pitcher of limeade and a deep saucer filled with pistachios. Carmody would take none: “I promised I’d spend the day at my college. Paperwork. You must excuse me.”

“You will be coming back to the ship?” Thérèse asked, for she had grown to like this sensible man.

“Of course! I’m responsible for two more lectures, and reporting the student’s grades.” As he departed he added: “I leave you in good hands.”

When they were alone, Banarjee said: “Now, tell me, please, how did you ever get from Haiti to Cambridge, Massachusetts. To begin with, how did you escape the Tontons Macoutes?”

The words of her reply reverberated in the hot Trinidad air like the echoing of crystal bells, summarizing three centuries of Caribbean history: “We escaped perilously, in a small boat with insufficient food. We were picked up, far north, by a Canadian shipping vessel and deposited in Québec City. I was nine.”

“Could your father have been Hyacinthe Vaval?”

“With scars.”

Ranjit rose and saluted, then asked: “So you were a nine-year-old black Haitian girl in Québec City. How did you get to Cambridge?”

“Well, of course I already spoke French. And the Canadians, they have hearts of molten gold beneath those cold exteriors. They adopted me. My teachers …” She paused. “Each one should get a medal.”

“I’ve had teachers like that,” Banarjee said, and then he wanted to know about her advanced schooling, and she gave the answer that bright young people so often give: “My teachers wanted me to succeed. I was the only black girl they’d ever had with any promise. They wrote to Radcliffe.”

Banarjee snapped his fingers: “With me, the same. At the little college here in Trinidad. At the islands’ university in Jamaica.”

With that beginning, the two scholars launched into a swift, impassioned exchange of ideas, concepts, guesses about the future of their islands, and the chances for Third World countries even to survive, let alone prosper. Each had command of the general knowledge that formed the groundwork of the other’s understandings, and each respected the peculiar expertise in certain subjects that he or she did not have. Thérèse peppered him with questions about Trinidad and he sought specific details about the debacle on Haiti.

Without being asked, she told him of her remarkable experience with Lalique Hébert, the zombie, and he expressed no surprise. “ ‘There are more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.’ ”

They slipped easily into a discussion of the recent political switches in both Jamaica and Trinidad, and Ranjit asked: “Will Haiti ever mend itself?” and Thérèse said frankly: “Father wants to return to try to salvage something …”

“And you?” She replied: “After two weeks on the island just now, I warned him not to go. You can survive only so many escapes in small boats with no shelter or food.”

“Are the Macoutes still active?”

“They emerge in all nations, in varying forms. If good people don’t stand guard …”

“Tell me, Dr. Vaval, how do you feel spiritually about turning your back on Haiti and taking refuge in the United States?”

She rose and walked about the veranda of this very pleasing house, then confessed: “I’ve had a testing time on this cruise … my islands … my culture … my people trapped in their tragic dead ends. I flew out of Miami a totally assimilated American, with a great job, unlimited future and …” She stopped in midsentence, for she did not care to tell this stranger: “… and a delightful man to marry.” But she did finish with part of the truth: “However, two weeks in Haiti, seeing my people again and the terrible poverty …” She stopped abruptly and asked for a tissue, after which she asked: “Professor Banarjee, you know the Caribbean. How did the slaves in your Trinidad and my Haiti have the courage to remain alive? Or the ancient Indians?”

He said very quietly: “The Arawaks refused. They handled the Spaniard very simply. They died. Just died.”

“I see no evidence that either your people or mine will be satisfied to do that. My God! To be a Haitian and to be alive, merely alive. That’s an act of unbelievable courage.” He had no comment, for her words cut like red-hot swords snatched from the forge; there had been days in America when he had not wanted to stay alive, but he had. Nor was it easy to accept the years when he had to swallow his pride and go out on the streets of Port of Spain, nodding to people who he knew had read accounts of his failures.

In that pregnant moment of silence, of perfect unspoken communication, each person knew that the time had come for someone to say: “Why don’t we have dinner and view the great nonsense of Carnaval?” but she was restrained because not even now did women in the islands make such suggestions and certainly not in a strange country and within a society as alien as Banarjee’s. And he could not
for a most painful reason: he had no money, and the precious instant of recognition might have passed had he not confessed: “Dr. Vaval, I would be most honored if I could invite you to dinner on this festive night, but I have …” and she said far too quickly: “Doctor, that’s not a problem. We’ll go Dutch,” and he had to confess: “The allowance my family …” He came so close to breaking down that he could not complete his sentence and explain that his meager allowance came at stated intervals and that …

With the graciousness that marked Haitians when dealing with people they respected, she said with no embarrassment: “Doctor, your writings have brought light to certain dark pools of my life. I would be deeply honored if you would show me the glories of what our guide said was ‘one of the major celebrations in the world.’ ”

He nodded, and they left the house, went out into the streets and mingled with the riotous crowd, then found themselves seats at a moderately priced restaurant where they ate and drank and gawked at the passing throngs in their wildly expensive costumes and masks. When steel bands went by, he explained how the soft musical quality of the gasoline drums had been discovered only lately, during World War II.

She was delighted when a band came by as accompanists to a famous calypso singer, Lord of all Creation, who had merciless rhymes about Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev and several local figures she did not recognize. But the highlight of the protracted evening came when they heard a familiar voice shouting above the babel: “Ranjit! Thérèse! I hoped I’d find you out enjoying the scene.” It was Michael Carmody, back from his day’s work at his college.

Ranjit desperately wanted to invite him to join them for a drink, but even as he hesitated, Thérèse quickly perceived what ought to be done, and said graciously: “Won’t you honor us?” and she summoned a boy peddling drinks. A night of revelry had been launched.

Thérèse found that Carmody’s predictions about Carnaval had not been exaggerated, for the brightly costumed marchers came by in thousands, the noise was deafening, the calypsos daring and funny, the steel bands throbbing with invitation to join the dancing, the food spicy and the rum drinks endless. Even Ranjit, usually abstemious, allowed his friends to buy him two tall punches made with fruit juices, soda water and a dollop of Trevelyan dark.

At four in the morning, when the strolling bands seemed to burst
with refreshed energy, Carmody suggested above the noise: “Let’s go aboard ship and put the celebration to bed with a sunrise breakfast on the top deck,” and this they did, eating their eggs Benedict as they gazed down upon the revelers and listened to the wild music.

At nine in the morning the party broke up, and it was time for Banarjee to make his departure, but when Thérèse accompanied him to the gangway she said: “Let’s sleep till one or two, then I’ll stop by and we’ll watch another night.”

“I’d like that,” Ranjit said, and they spent that afternoon on his veranda with limeades and intense, far-ranging discussions: the differences between the behaviors of the various occupying nations, the current role of Cuba and its Marxism, the unwillingness of the United States to provide area leadership, and the residual effect of slavery on today’s blacks.