Caribbean (143 page)

“You make a persuasive case for the elegance of Spanish custom,” Thérèse said, “but not for Spanish government,” and he bristled: “You young scholars infected by English interpretations of history should remember one basic fact. We Spaniards held the New World from 1492 through 1898, when you stole Cuba and Puerto Rico from us. Four glorious centuries of achievement. England held her empire only from the 1630s to the 1950s, pitifully short in comparison. And you cowardly Americans have been afraid to assume the burdens we laid down, so you have no right to lecture me. We were the great successes. And we’ll be so again one of these days. You can rely on that.”

Reluctant to proffer any further observations which might distress this elderly gentleman, she gazed about her at the handsome plaza, and the sadness which comes with the passing of old values assailed her, so that she dropped her head, a gesture which Ledesma noticed immediately: “What is it, Dr. Vaval? What’s happened to disarm you?” and she said: “This cruise. This intimate view of the sea in which my people slaved and triumphed and knew despair. It’s made a violent impression on me.”

“Disorientating?”

“Very.”

“That’s why we go on voyages. You’ll sort it out.” He stared at the lovely patterns made by the late-afternoon sun on the façade of the Inquisition building, then asked: “It’s a personal problem—your fiancé, I suppose?”

“Yes. I’m on the verge of marrying a lifelong New Englander. But I feel a growing sense of doubt … I find it impossible even to write to him.”

He bent way over and picked up some pebbles from the plaza, bouncing them up and down in his right hand. “My family has been on this spot for four and a half centuries, and it’s an act of faith with us that never in that time were any of us charged with heresy or united in marriage with an Indian or a black. It’s the way I was brought up, and believe me, if I had a son of marriageable age and you came around, I’d hustle him off to Salamanca for a graduate degree and a Spanish wife. That’s the way we are.”

“My family says the same about being African, but this light skin testifies they wavered somewhere.” When she laughed at the preposterousness of her situation, he said: “Let’s walk to the far end where the lookouts stood,” and when they had climbed to that eminence he said: “Here we served in darkness, Miss Vaval, staring at the Caribbean, watching for the enemy or the pirates or the hurricane, and never for three years in a row were we able to relax in assumed safety. That’s still the honorable task of a good man or woman. Man the watchtower, look for the enemy, and flash the signal. Not a bad assignment for a professor, either.”

It was exciting, that time she spent with Professor Ledesma, and as he said farewell that evening, for the ship would leave the harbor early in the morning, she took his right hand in her two and brought it to her lips: “I’m so glad that it was this cruise that you elected to take,” and in farewell he said: “Our first great Ledesma claimed that the Caribbean was a Spanish Lake. You’ve proved that a lot of good blacks have come in since then, but the color of the sea itself hasn’t changed. It’s still golden.”

He was about to leave with those appropriate words hanging in the air, when she suddenly cried: “Professor, stay one moment. I want you to mail a letter for me,” and she dashed to her cabin, grabbed paper, and scrawled: “Dear Dennis, It would be most improper for you to marry me, and entirely wrong for me to marry you. I’ve just
discovered the world of which I’m a part, so goodbye, with love and regret. Thérèse.”

During the swift passage back to Miami, Thérèse was so nervous and confused that she stayed by herself, avoiding even her students and sometimes standing at the rail for long spells, staring at her newly discovered Caribbean as if she were never again to see its glorious waves. Remembering the suspicions she’d had that night prior to her arrival at Trinidad, she thought: This amazing cruise really has been a turning point in my life. It introduced me to contemporary Haiti as it actually is, and gave me the courage to write the letter terminating my engagement to Dennis Krey. And now I’m on the eve of starting a new life at Wellesley. All were part of the watershed: I did the right things in the right way, so let them stand. But then her cockiness left her, for the real reason for her anxiety emerged as an image in the passing waves. It was Ranjit Banarjee’s grave face surrounded by the vibrant scenes of Carnaval, and she whispered: “Finding him was like finding a cove of calm water after thrashing around in turbulent waves,” and suddenly, exultant, she flung her arms wide as if to embrace the entire Caribbean: “You are my sea! Your people are my people!”

Then she heard a man’s voice: “Talking to yourself?” It was Michael Carmody, and when she made no reply, he said: “Let’s take these chairs, because we should talk. You’re in trouble, Dr. Vaval. It’s been obvious to anyone who watched you from the start of our trip.”

“Who are you to presume …?” she snapped. But she knew immediately that this was the wrong tack: “I’m sorry. For you this voyage has been a working vacation; for me, a leap into a maelstrom.”

“No need to explain. From what I saw of Haiti, this trip must have started with a shock.”

“It did,” and he said quickly: “You’re right. I was presumptuous, but you’ll learn that teachers are that way when they fear time’s running out.”

“What does that mean?”

“I came to Trinidad when I was about your age, as penniless as you were when you landed in Canada. I’ve always spent my life, my dreams in Trinidad, always hoping I would come upon that one brilliant lad who would justify my sacrifices …”

“Teaching’s never a sacrifice.”

“Professor Vaval, you know that people like you and me could earn vastly superior sums if we applied our energy to business or law.”

“Ah, but we’re not interested solely in sums.”

“You’re so right, and it’s good of you to voice it, because it makes what I have to say much easier.” He brought his forefingers to his lips, hesitated, and said: “We search endlessly to uncover that one resplendent intellect, and you’ll find that years will be wasted, and then you begin to despair …” He found it difficult to continue, but then words came in a rush: “For me, Ranjit Banarjee was that boy. Heavenly sonnets, essays of great brilliance, he had the world before him.”

“If he was on the fast track like you say, how was he derailed?”

“In the development of that fantastically able brain, nothing went wrong. He grows better year by year. In his private life, everything.”

“Do you care to tell me?”

He considered for some moments, then said: “No. But I will tell you this. The moment I heard you speak aboard the
Galante
, and learned that you were not married, I almost shouted: ‘There’s the one! She’s the one that could do it!’ ”

Thérèse laughed, then explained: “Oh, Mr. Carmody, at college the girls used to sit around and tell gruesome case histories that always ended: ‘So, girls, there it is. Never marry a moral cripple. Spend that little extra effort and find yourself a real man.’ ”

“Dr. Vaval, believe me, this man is no cripple. He needs to have his soul set free. Someone to help him become the man he could be.”

Soberly she said: “I suppose you could say that of many men.”

“He’s different. He’s worth it.” While she was pondering this, he said rather boldly: “On the second night of Carnaval, when I saw you and Ranjit sitting together, you looked as if you, too, for the moment had been set free.”

“You should have joined us.”

“It was clear you wished to be alone. Now it’s clear that you wish you were back in Trinidad.”

Thérèse, biting her knuckles, stared at the Caribbean and its white wave tips dancing by in pirouetting joy, but she felt only sadness in leaving this sea of her choice. She would miss its golden grandeur and its varied people, especially the man in Trinidad who knew it even better than she. Then came the quiet voice of the college counselor, as if he were talking to a student having trouble with algebra, except that in this instance the trouble was with the student’s heart:
“Dr. Vaval, since you’re from Haiti, I must assume you’re Catholic, and he’s certainly a Hindu. As a Catholic myself, and immersed in Trinidad, I must in all decency warn you that such radical differences are almost irreconcilable. But yet, it seems to me, with you and Ranjit the similarities are much greater than the differences, are they not?” And she whispered: “Yes.”

Carmody, sixty and aware that his years as a teacher were ending with the job undone—he had not got his one brilliant student properly started—took Thérèse’s hands in his and said: “You too are growing older, my dear. Twenty-five doesn’t last forever, and thirty-five brings panic in all of us, especially women. I’ve seen it. So two lives are at stake, his and yours … and I have the feeling that the peril is almost equally shared.”

When she said nothing, but did leave her hands in his, he continued: “A college guidance teacher deals with two kinds of students, those who need to discover the fundamental truths for themselves, nudged by his quiet prodding, and those who need to be told in the simplest and sometimes most brutal terms: ‘Francis Xavier, change your ways or I will throw you out of this college.’ ”

“And you think I’m the latter?”

“I know it. So I’m giving an order. When the
Galante
docks in Miami tomorrow, you and I will grab a taxi, rush right out to the airport, and catch the next plane back to Trinidad. You’re needed there.”

Alarmed by the impetuousness of the step she was about to take, she asked in a burst of anxiety: “Would I be insane if I did fly back … I’ve known him only two days?” and the older voice said quietly: “Love is the self-revelation of two souls. Sometimes it comes in a blinding moment in only one day, sometimes after a slow awakening of eleven years. God takes no cognizance of the timetable.”

So next morning when the ship was safely moored, the two popular instructors bade their students farewell, caught a cab, and sped to Miami International.

When Thérèse Vaval walked up the steps of the Sirdar’s House and knocked on the door, her first words were abrupt and intense: “I was drawn back by a thousand magnets, Ranjit. Your ideas, your potential, and above all, by the fact that you need me to unlock the frozen doors.”

When he did not respond, she spoke of her own frozen doors, of her engagement to Dennis Krey and of her confusion in Haiti. By his quiet smile she knew that he guessed these to be peripheral reasons, so she told of her conversation with Carmody and his insistence that she fly back immediately, since the rest of her life was in jeopardy. Only then did he realize that she had been as wounded by life as he. There was silence for a moment. Then, clearing her throat, she said: “Now, Ranjit, tell me how it was with you.”

Mustering his courage and licking his dry lips, he said: “When you sailed away at the end of Carnaval, I learned what torment was. I lingered at the dock till your ship was out of sight, mumbling to myself: ‘There she goes. The one light in this world.’ And when I thought that I would never see you again, I was disconsolate … books were tedious. It was then I discovered what love was.”

“As the ship sailed I was feeling the same, Ranjit. But the questions remain: Who are you? Why are you here and alone?”

Fear almost paralyzed him as he wondered how much he should tell her, how much he dared tell without frightening her and driving her away again. Seeing no escape, he blurted out: “I had an overpowering desire to be a scholar in the States, but my permit to stay was running out. I had to do something. So I went to a man who made a business of arranging marriages for foreign students so they could get American citizenship … and I married his sister. But it turned out that she had a real husband, a Nicaraguan, and three earlier fake marriages … no divorces. It was shameful and I was part of it.”

Thérèse shivered, wondering what was to come next, and the burst of revelation shattered the quiet room like the gusts of a hurricane: “A bed in the cellar … punched me … her husband with a knife at my throat … the Immigration hearing … the expulsion.” When he saw she was numbed he stopped, rummaged among his notebooks, then held before her the front page of the Miami paper from the day of his deportation:
JEALOUS NICARAGUAN LOVER MURDERS
 …

Now she asked only one question, but it was astonishingly blunt: “Is your banishment for life?” and he replied: “I think so,” and she said firmly: “Well, I don’t. And I shall devise some way to get you back into the States … permanently … and find you a job teaching!” Then, as if a dam had broken, she threw her hands over her face, and from the convulsions of her shoulders he knew that she was silently sobbing. Finally she dropped her hands and looked straight at him: “We’ve never even kissed … and here I am, proposing to you.”

He did not, as an ordinary man would, rush to embrace her; instead, he stood fearfully apart and said in a low voice: “I was married to Molly Hudak for nearly two years and she allowed me to kiss her only once, at our wedding when the clerk said almost menacingly: ‘Now you may kiss her.’ Apparently I’m not the kissing kind.”

This broke the spell, and she came toward him, arms held wide. But he drew back, hesitant, for there was one more thing he was bound in honor as a gentleman to do. Softly he asked: “Thérèse, will you marry me?” and then, moving forward evenly, they kissed, and she whispered: “We’re children of the golden sea … its destiny and ours are linked … and together, you and I shall help it find its way.”