No Safeguards (24 page)

“Yes. And you. And I did because I could do so safely.”

Silence. A long one.

“Lashed out at myself too. I know that now.” He tilts his head upwards and pulls in his lips. “We have to invent our own happiness. I mean ways to feel at peace. I, for one, mustn't be idle for long periods. Even during periods of reflection I should keep a notebook beside me. When I'm idle desperation overwhelms me.” He lowers his head and stares at me. “You've never had to learn any of this. You've never had an idle moment in your life.”

“Is that a good thing, Paul?”

“For you, perhaps it isn't. For me it is.”

Silence. It lasts a good two minutes.

“You know what my main weakness is?”

I shake my head.

“Being ignored. It's hard, hard to admit this. I've done a lot of things I didn't want to do to get noticed.” He stops talking, twists and turns his neck, stretches his arms, and breathes out loud. “I cried when I found this out one rainy night in Antigua, Guatemala . . . Things would have been better between us, a helluva lot better” — he nods slowly — “if you'd answered me more often, taken up my taunts, pushed me to do my school work, and quarrelled with me about the company I kept. Pin me to the wall. Understand what I mean?”

No kidding. So you could pop me like a dry twig.

“You thought I wanted to be left alone. I used to say so, and I fooled you all.” He sighs. “Anyhow you had your own work to do. Sometimes I insulted you just to get your attention, like calling you vermin. That shit I spouted about the weak being food for the strong, that's stuff I was repeating, stuff that this Italian army cadet in our group used to say. I already knew that the powerful turn the weak into tools. I don't condone it, but I understand why poor people in Mexico, Jamaica and other places turn to drug trafficking and setting up their own protection army, knowing full well they could be killed. They know that in the scheme of things their lives ain't shit, and they refuse to be shit rags for the powerful who make the laws that protect their power and their loot. You're a historian. You know the how and why of colonialism. I know about it from your textbooks. When I learned that Britain went to war with China to keep selling opium to the Chinese, I understood how deeply depraved we human beings are . . . I am sceptical about what the Capitalist media tell us. I saw how the media work in Central America, whose opinions are broadcast, whose are ignored.” He looks away, bites his lower lip.

Silence.

“Yes, I wanted you to give me shit. That's what I wanted, as long as you didn't let Ma in on it. I found that out for certain while I was travelling and had nobody to dump on. Another thing: I can't live without affection.” A pained look envelops his face. “It frightens me, Jay. Loneliness frightens me.”

“Who is Carlos?”

There's panic in his face, and one hand rubs the back of his neck, the other kneads his chin. His eyelids flutter. “Ahm, he's Maria's brother. She's your age. A couple months older. Gilead-balm for my tired soul.”

“
Gilead balm
!”

He nods and smiles and takes furtive glances at me.

“So you'll be heading back to Guatemala soon?”

“Yes. Until she can come here. I want to be with her at Christmas.”

“Wow! How long have you known each other?”

“Eleven months and fifteen days. We've lived with her widowed mother at her house. She passed me off as a boarder.” His left hand goes back to his neck, his eyelids flutter, his right plays with his chin.

“So you took up with Maria and forgot about us?”

“That's not quite how it happened.”

“How did you meet her?”

“It began on a bus in Quetzaltenango, also called Xela, Guatemala's second city. I had fled there from Antigua. But after two days, I thought it would be better to go north, to Huehuetenango, Hue for short; partly to check it out, partly to see whether I could lie low there and find a way to sneak over into Mexico.

“I was on one of these chicken buses: imported old school buses with leg room for elementary school kids. I got to the station early, and I was the second person to board the bus. There was one other passenger, a young woman, about five rows back of me. A newspaper vendor came inside the bus, and I bought a newspaper. While I was looking for coins to pay her, she exclaimed,
‘¡Qué bellísima barba! ¡Me lo permite tocarla!'
(What a beautiful beard! May I caress it?) And, without waiting for a reply, she began fondling my beard, and asked:
‘Me quieres?
' (You desire me?) Jay, I was too surprised to say anything. And she's like,
Por favor, deme tus direcciones.'
(Give me your contact information, please.) I told her I was heading to Hue and didn't know when I would return. She reached for the newspaper she'd sold me and wrote a telephone number on it, and said I should call her when I got back to Xela.

“The young woman five seats back was Maria. As soon as the newspaper vendor left, she came to sit beside me, and we chatted all the way to Hue. She wanted to know why I was going to Hue. I lied, of course. She told me she lived there, with her mother and brother, who taught French. She was eager to know where in Hue I'd be staying. I told her I didn't know yet. She said maybe I could stay with them. She called her mother on her cell, and then said it was okay. They live in zone II, near the centre of Hue, a few blocks uphill from the central market, about 20 metres from the Temple of Minerva. Three nights later, she came into my room and said, ‘
¡Qué bellísima barba! ¡Me lo permite tocarla!
' I laughed because I had already shaved my head and beard. She bent down and kissed me. And so on and so forth.

“She's Ladino, a mixture of Spanish and Maya, and is as dark as most South Asians. She's a trifle taller than me and a bit on the heavy side. Guess from all that starchy food. In bright light her hair looks blue-black, like the feathers of a male grackle.”

“She persuaded me to stay on in Hue to perfect my Spanish.” He smiles broadly and looks away. “And I didn't object. We're as good as married. She and I quarrelled once, about why I wasn't in touch with you all. I told her you and Ma had put me out because I'd flunked school, and so I left home angry and wasn't ready to mend the break.” The left hand to the back of his neck, the right to his chin.

“You told her that!”

“What else could I tell her?”

“The truth.” I wonder where this bullshit is heading
.

“She was puzzled about where I got the money to travel. I told her the truth: that I inherited it from my grandmother.”

This is the first truthful part of your story but I won't challenge you.
“So you were in Guatemala City when you found out about Ma's death?”

“Yes. One of Maria's aunts was dying in a hospital there. She, Carlos, and Rosa went to visit her, and, since I didn't teach on Thursdays and Fridays, I went along too.”

“You left out something important: What made you run away from Antigua and want to sneak across the border into Mexico?”

“I'll tell you in due course.”

“Why not now?”

“I'll tell you. Don't worry. No one's coming to arrest me.”

A long silence.

“So you're in love.”

“I am. It's the best feeling in the world. Here's somebody who loves my ugly asthmatic body. And I love her too. It's a helluva lot more than I've come to expect. Too much rejection. From every quarter.”

“Not from us and not from your teachers. Be fair!
You
rejected them.”

“I have news for you. My chemistry teacher, the computer science teacher — they were bigots. I won't even go into the details about the chemistry teacher. Suffice it to say he had it in for me because of the way I'd answered a question.”

“What was the question?”

“‘Where are you from? You don't speak like a Black.' Imagine asking me that, and in front of the entire class! He had this thick accent that would make us laugh at times. He was hump-backed, shorter than me, and his beady eyes peered through glasses centimetres thick. I answered: ‘
La Terre, monsieur. Et vous?
' The class exploded with laughter and desk drumming. Jay, he turned lilac and held on to his desk. It was cruel of me. I know that now. If I ever run into him I'll apologize. After that, every day he'd ask me questions about things he knew I didn't know and sneer at me. Every day, for about two months, I wanted to kill him. I stopped going to his class. He lost control of his class shortly afterwards and was off for a long time on burn-out leave.

“And as for Illich, the computer science teacher, oh boy.” He shook his head and clenched his teeth. “I wanted to
spit
in
his
face. Richard Hazan sat beside me in the computer room. One day he put a paper clip in the computer I was using and shorted it. I knew he'd done it, but you don't rat, see. Illich said it was me: ‘It works with electricity, not witchcraft.' Jay, he said that to
me
. The sonofabitch said that to me. The class laughed. I brought the computer crashing to the floor and headed for the door. He tried to step in my way. When I lifted my foot to kick him, he moved aside. I never went back to his class. A monstrous eel, that's what he looked like. Blue-stone eyes. Smelled like ham. A week later, he tried to apologize to me in the corridor and begged me to return to class. I clamped my lips, afraid of what I'd say to him.”

I want to tell him his reaction was excessive, but remember there are no half measures with Paul.

“Jay, I've told you before, I'm telling you again: count your blessings you didn't have to go to high school here.”

Silence.

“Love can do miraculous things. I lost that anger in Guatemala.”

No kidding.
“I've heard all you said, but I'm still puzzled by why you chose to fail in high school.”

“
Chose!
Wrong word. I won't study boring stuff.” He pauses, smiles. “And let's just say my academic success would have been a big thing for Ma, something for her to brag about. She was living her life through us.”

“What's wrong about her bragging?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? You didn't go to high school here. You went to Kingstown Secondary where it was cool to succeed. You studied all the time, even during vacation. That won't gain you any cred here. We went through this already when Ma had me see that psychologist.”

“But some students resist and succeed.”

“Yes, geeks. Guys like Alvin. This pitch-black Jamaican with a chest like a steamer trunk and the face of a bulldog. He and a girl called Gina were the only Black geeks that hung out with us. He graduated my fourth year there, won several prizes, and was valedictorian. One day when the Jamaicans were carrying on about what to do with all the ‘battybwoy-them like pest all ‘bout the place,' he said: ‘You all sound like those lunatic Christian Reconstructionists. I bet unno twenty dollars unno don't know what Jamaica motto is.'

“‘I know Barbados motto: Pride and Industry,' Doc said. He was a gigolo. A dougla fellow from Grenada moved away from the group and shouted: ‘All you motto is: Woman fi get lick and battybwoy fi dead,' before bolting up the stairs, leaving thunderous laughter from the non-JAs. We ‘small-islanders' loved it when the Trinnies and JAs got their comeuppance.

“Then Alvin said in disgust: ‘Out of many one people. That include battybwoy too. Every day is battybwoy this and battybwoy that; chi-chi man this and chi-chi man that. That is all unno know?' He didn't stay around for their reaction.

“That's how I found out about Christian Reconstructionists. I asked Wilma if she was one. She belonged to a religion like Ma's and saw every military conflict as the beginning of Armageddon. You remember that conversation we had about them?”

I nod.

“Alvin was a born leader. No doubt about it. He insisted that we go to the protest that Reverend Gray led when the police killed that fellow from St. Vincent. His girlfriend, his father, mother, and an older brother — a law student — were all there. His father was on the executive of the Montreal Caribbean Cultural Association then. I'm sure you've seen him talking on television about police brutality and racial profiling.

“I don't know how Alvin got away with it. Guess he had the brawn to protect his brains. But some of those guys owned guns or had easy access to them. Every once in a while he and Doc would come close to blows. Tall and good looking — that was Doc — could easily be a GQ model. Alvin gave him the name Doc. One day Alvin was getting on his case about his occupation, and he told Alvin to bugger off, that Alvin's role was to solve equations and his was to heal.”

“Just two academic students? There had to be others.”

“Sure, in the elite classes — the Black geeks. There was one geek class per grade. Ten-ten twelve Blacks in each, mostly girls and gays. They didn't hang out with us. Probably hid from us. Probably ashamed of us. And yeah, the Black girls on the whole. They all did some homework. Even the worst slackers among them got serious at exam time. But for Black guys in the group I hung out with, a successful Cedien had to be good at sports, have a great body, and a big dick. And in gym the Black guys who did teased the ones who didn't.”

Silence — a long one.

“Gay guys are just as obsessed with dick size. Some gay dating sites request it as part of the dater's profile, sites like Priapus. Carlos and I used to read them and laugh.”

“Is Carlos gay?”

“I don't know.” Hands to the back of his neck and his chin.

“Continue.”

“I skipped gym on account of all that. When I did push-ups and my breathing got loud, this guy used to laugh and say: ‘My papa did have a ‘orse what sound just like you. Them did shoot it for put it out o' him misery.' Too much locker room shit, Jay — too much. I'm no athlete. An upside-down bottle:
une bouteille renversée
— a Haitian called me that in a cuss-out.
Una botella invertida,
the Hispanics took it up, laughed, high-fived.” He pauses, stares at the floor. “Still you have to give me some credit. I kept up English, French, and history all the way. Bégin didn't give me the English prize — I won it fair and square. He vetoed Mrs. Mehta's decision, because I'd screwed up in most of the other subjects. Those teachers understood me. They did, and they taught what I liked, and they could teach.”