Collected Short Fiction Part 27

My mother said, 'You see how man stupid. Hat see what happen to Edward and you mean to say that Hat still get hisself mix up with this woman?'

Mrs Morgan and Mrs Bhakcu saw so little of Dolly they had little to dislike in her, but they agreed that she was a lazy good-for-nothing.

Mrs Morgan said, 'This Dolly look like a old madame to me, you hear.'

It was easy enough for us to forget that Dolly was there, because Hat continued living as before. We still went to all the sports and we still sat on the pavement and talked.

Whenever Dolly piped, 'Hat, you coming?' Hat wouldn't reply.

About half an hour later Dolly would say, 'Hat, you coming or you ain't coming?'

And Hat would say then, 'I coming.'

I wondered what life was like for Dolly. She was nearly always inside the house and Hat was nearly always outside. She seemed to spend a great deal of her time at the front window looking out.

They were really the queerest couple in the street. They never went out together. We never heard them laughing. They never even quarrelled.

Eddoes said, 'They like two strangers.'

Errol said, 'Don't mind that, you hear. All you seeing Hat sitting quiet quiet here, but is different when he get inside. He ain't the same man when he talking with Dolly. He buy she a lot of joolry, you know.'

Eddoes said, 'I have a feeling she a little bit like Matilda. You know, the woman in the calypso: "Matilda, Matilda,

Matilda, you thief my money

And gone Venezuela."

Buying joolry! But what happening to Hat? He behaving as though he is a old man. Woman don't want joolry from a man like Hat, they want something else.'

Looking on from the outside, though, one could see only two changes in Hat's household. All the birds were caged, and the Alsatian was chained and miserable.

But no one spoke about Dolly to Hat. I suppose the whole business had come as too much of a surprise.

What followed was an even bigger surprise, and it was some time before we could get all the details. At first I noticed Hat was missing, and then I heard rumours.

This was the story, as it later came out in court. Dolly had run away from Hat, taking all his gifts, of course. Hat had chased her and found her with another man. There was a great quarrel, the man had fled, and Hat had taken it out on Dolly. Afterwards, the police statement said, he had gone, in tears, to the police station to give himself up. He said, 'I kill a woman.'

But Dolly wasn't dead.

We received the news as though it was news of a death. We couldn't believe it for a day or two.

And then a great hush fell on Miguel Street. No boys and men gathered under the lamp-post outside Hat's house, talking about this and that and the other. No one played cricket and disturbed people taking afternoon naps. The Club was dead.

Cruelly, we forgot all about Dolly and thought only about Hat. We couldn't find it in our hearts to find fault with him. We suffered with him.

We saw a changed man in court. He had grown older, and when he smiled at us he smiled only with his mouth. Still, he put on a show for us and even while we laughed we were ready to cry.

The prosecutor asked Hat, 'Was it a dark night?'

Hat said, 'All night dark.'

Hat's lawyer was a short fat man called Chittaranjan who wore a smelly brown suit.

Chittaranjan began reeling off Portia's speech about mercy, and he would have gone on to the end if the judge hadn't said, 'All this is interesting and some of it even true but, Mr Chittaranjan, you are wasting the court's time.'

Chittaranjan made a great deal of fuss about the wild pa.s.sion of love. He said Antony had thrown away an empire for the sake of love, just as Hat had thrown away his self-respect. He said that Hat's crime was really a crime pa.s.sionel. In France, he said and he knew what he was talking about, because he had been to Paris in France, Hat would have been a hero. Women would have garlanded him.

Eddoes said, 'Is this sort of lawyer who does get man hang, you know.'

Hat was sentenced to four years.

We went to Frederick Street jail to see him. It was a disappointing jail. The walls were light cream, and not very high, and I was surprised to see that most of the visitors were very gay. Only a few women wept, but the whole thing was like a party, with people laughing and chatting.

Eddoes, who had put on his best suit for the occasion, held his hat in his hand and looked around. He said to Hat, 'It don't look too bad here.'

Hat said, 'They taking me to Carrera next week.'

Carrera was the small prison-island a few miles from Port of Spain.

Hat said, 'Don't worry about me. You know me. In two three weeks I go make them give me something easy to do.'

Whenever I went to Carenage or Point c.u.mana for a bathe, I looked across the green water to the island of Carrera, rising high out of the sea, with its neat pink buildings. I tried to picture what went on inside those buildings, but my imagination refused to work. I used to think, 'Hat there, I here. He know I here, thinking about him?'

But as the months pa.s.sed I became more and more concerned with myself, and I wouldn't think about Hat for weeks on end. It was useless trying to feel ashamed. I had to face the fact that I was no longer missing Hat. From time to time when my mind was empty, I would stop and think how long it would be before he came out, but I was not really concerned.

I was fifteen when Hat went to jail and eighteen when he came out. A lot happened in those three years. I left school and I began working in the customs. I was no longer a boy. I was a man, earning money.

Hat's homecoming fell a little flat. It wasn't only that we boys had grown older. Hat, too, had changed. Some of the brightness had left him, and conversation was hard to make.

He visited all the houses he knew and he spoke about his experiences with great zest.

My mother gave him tea.

Hat said, 'Is just what I expect. I get friendly with some of the turnkey and them, and you know what happen? I pull two three strings and bam! they make me librarian. They have a big library there, you know. All sort of big book. Is the sort of place t.i.tus Hoyt would like. So much book with n.o.body to read them.'

I offered Hat a cigarette and he took it mechanically.

Then he shouted, 'But, eh-eh, what is this? You come a big man now! When I leave you wasn't smoking. Was a long time now, though.'

I said, 'Yes. Was a long time.'

A long time. But it was just three years, three years in which I had grown up and looked critically at the people around me. I no longer wanted to be like Eddoes. He was so weak and thin, and I hadn't realized that he was so small. t.i.tus Hoyt was stupid and boring, and not funny at all. Everything had changed.

When Hat went to jail, part of me had died.

17 HOW I LEFT MIGUEL STREET.

MY MOTHER SAID, 'You getting too wild in this place. I think is high time you leave.'

'And go where? Venezuela?' I said.

'No, not Venezuela. Somewhere else, because the moment you land in Venezuela they go throw you in jail. I know you and I know Venezuela. No, somewhere else.'

I said, 'All right. You think about it and decide.'

My mother said, 'I go go and talk to Ganesh Pundit about it. He was a friend of your father. But you must go from here. You getting too wild.'

I suppose my mother was right. Without really knowing it, I had become a little wild. I was drinking like a fish, and doing a lot besides. The drinking started in the customs, where we confiscated liquor on the slightest pretext. At first the smell of spirits upset me, but I used to say to myself, 'You must get over this. Drink it like medicine. Hold your nose and close your eyes.' In time I had become a first-cla.s.s drinker, and I began suffering from drinker's pride.

Then there were the sights of the town Boyee and Errol introduced me to. One night, not long after I began working, they took me to a place near Marine Square. We climbed to the first floor and found ourselves in a small crowded room lit by green bulbs. The green light seemed as thick as jelly. There were many women all about the room, just waiting and looking. A big sign said: OBSCENE LANGUAGE FORBIDDEN.

We had a drink at the bar, a thick sweet drink.

Errol asked me, 'Which one of the women you like?'

I understood immediately, and I felt disgusted. I ran out of the room and went home, a little sick, a little frightened. I said to myself, 'You must get over this.'

Next night I went to the club again. And again.

We made wild parties and took rum and women to Maracas Bay for all-night sessions.

'You getting too wild,' my mother said.

I paid her no attention until the time I drank so much in one evening that I remained drunk for two whole days afterwards. When I sobered up, I made a vow neither to smoke nor drink again.

I said to my mother, 'Is not my fault really. Is just Trinidad. What else anybody can do here except drink?'

About two months later my mother said, 'You must come with me next week. We going to see Ganesh Pundit.'

Ganesh Pundit had given up mysticism for a long time. He had taken to politics and was doing very nicely. He was a minister of something or the other in the Government, and I heard people saying that he was in the running for the M.B.E.

We went to his big house in St Clair and we found the great man, not dressed in dhoti and koortah, as in the mystic days, but in an expensive-looking lounge suit.

He received my mother with a good deal of warmth.

He said, 'I do what I could do.'

My mother began to cry.

To me Ganesh said, 'What you want to go abroad to study?'

I said, 'I don't want to study anything really. I just want to go away, that's all.'

Ganesh smiled and said, 'The Government not giving away that sort of scholars.h.i.+p yet. Only ministers could do what you say. No, you have to study something.'

I said, 'I never think about it really. Just let me think a little bit.'

Ganesh said, 'All right. You think a little bit.'

My mother was crying her thanks to Ganesh.

I said, 'I know what I want to study. Engineering.' I was thinking about my uncle Bhakcu.

Ganesh laughed and said, 'What you know about engineering?'

I said, 'Right now, nothing. But I could put my mind to it.'

My mother said, 'Why don't you want to take up law?'

I thought of Chittaranjan and his brown suit and I said, 'No, not law.'

Ganesh said, 'It have only one scholars.h.i.+p remaining. For drugs.'

I said, 'But I don't want to be a druggist. I don't want to put on a white jacket and sell lipstick to woman.'

Ganesh smiled.

My mother said, 'You mustn't mind the boy, Pundit. He will study drugs.' And to me, 'You could study anything if you put your mind to it.'

Ganesh said, 'Think. It mean going to London. It mean seeing snow and seeing the Thames and seeing the big Parliament.'

I said, 'All right. I go study drugs.'

My mother said, 'I don't know what I could do to thank you, Pundit.'

And, crying, she counted out two hundred dollars and gave it to Ganesh. She said, 'I know it ain't much, Pundit. But it is all I have. Is a long time I did saving it up.'

Ganesh took the money sadly and he said, 'You mustn't let that worry you. You must give only what you can afford.'

My mother kept on crying and in the end even Ganesh broke down.

When my mother saw this, she dried her tears and said, 'If you only know, Pundit, how worried I is. I have to find so much money for so much thing these days, and I don't really know how I going to make out.'

Ganesh now stopped crying. My mother began to cry afresh.