Caribbean: a novel Part 50

'No, he's like so many Indian Ph.D.'s, especially in India-fabulously trained but unable to locate an opening.' Therese saw that he obviously wanted to say more, and again she suspected that he had been in some way responsible for Banarjee's loss of a job or, even more ugly, had caught the Indian in some misbehavior that made him unemployable, but since Carmody seemed to have decided not to talk about it, she ended the conversation lamely: 'Well, he's written the best book I've come across since Arciniegas' years ago.'

As Carmody rose to leave, he said: 'I must congratulate you. If a student digests your four books, she or he will have a good grasp of the Caribbean, but now I want to hear the French version of the story,' and he invited her to accompany him to Senator Lanzerac's first lecture. The senator spoke formal English, but with a mesmerizing French accent which he used to maximum effect: 'First thing to know about my island, it has been French for many, many years, and is indeed two islands separated one from the other by an arm of the sea you can almost jump across. After three hundred years of colonial status, it became in 1946 a structural part of metropolitan France, with two senators and three deputies who meet in Paris with all the others who help rule France. Therefore, we are nothing like Barbados, Trinidad or Jamaica, who pertain to Great Britain in an emotional sense but who are not a functional part of that country. Nor are we like Puerto Rico, which is essentially a colony of the United States, nor like Cuba, which is a free, independent country on its own. We are unique.

'Now when I say we, I mean of course the two related islands, Martinique and Guadeloupe. They are gentlemen, we are businessmen, but we form a strong team.'

A man who knew geography asked the question which must have been on many minds: 'Why, if you were so close to Martinique and so affiliated, did you allow the island in the middle, Dominica, to remain in English hands?' Lanzerac chuckled and cried: 'Ah ha! You're the one who asks the ugly question, and I'll give you the ugly answer.

'We tried many times to capture Dominica, and failed every time. Do you know why? Not that English arms were better than ours, but because the d.a.m.ned Carib Indians, fierce cannibals, ate our men every time we tried to land.'

'How did the English manage?' the man persisted, and Lanzerac said: 'Because the Caribs were sensible, like people today. They liked French cooking and they couldn't stand English.'

A vacationing professor from Chicago asked: 'I've read some fascinating accounts of this man Victor Hugues who seems to have invaded your island in the 1790s. Will you be telling us anything about him?'

'Indeed I shall. Early tomorrow, when we land at Point--Pitre, capital of the eastern island, I'll be giving a short talk there on the infamous Hugues, who chopped off the head of my ancestor Paul Lanzerac and did his best to do the same to his wife, Eugenie Lanzerac. In my family we have no love for Hugues, but his story is a gripping one and you may find it instructive.'

Later, Therese sat with him at dinner, and asked: 'Didn't this Hugues free the slaves on Guadeloupe?' and Lanzerac cried with some enthusiasm: 'He certainly did! Celebrations. A new day in world history. "I kill all the whites, free all the slaves." '

'From my point of view,' Therese said with a touch of humor, 'he couldn't have been so bad,' and Lanzerac agreed immediately: 'Splendid fellow, on paper. Of course, when Napoleon decided to reimpose slavery, who was his loudest supporter?' He pointed a sardonic finger at Therese and supplied his own answer: 'Your boy Hugues. And if I may use an Americanism to a fellow scholar ... a real b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

The traditional Caribbean cruise s.h.i.+ps, in order to save port fees, almost never remained in any harbor overnight; they left at dusk and spent the dark hours sailing to the next island. But since 'Cruise-and-Muse' had scheduled several important seminars on French history and culture at Guadeloupe, the s.h.i.+p spent two days on Grande-Terre, and Lanzerac immediately did something which established the quality of the visit: he conducted his lectures in the open area about the kiosk at the center of the marvelous square in Point--Pitre, and as he spoke, surrounded by the handsome old houses in which his ancestors had lived, he made the wild days of Victor Hugues come alive: 'In 1794 he erected his guillotine right there where you're standing. He dragged my famous Lanzerac forebear from that house there. In 1894 my grandfather was expelled from that other house when he married a young woman of color.' Later a student reported to Therese: 'A morning in the public square at Point--Pitre is worth a seminar in the library at Duke.'

On the second evening she suggested that she and Senator Lanzerac hold a colloquy ash.o.r.e for the students to which townspeople would also be invited, and since she spoke fluent French, he saw this as a fine opportunity to do some campaigning for the next election. So the parish hall was filled, with a bilingual islander translating in whispers for the students.

The forum provided Lanzerac with a springboard from which to glorify the Guadeloupean form of government: 'If you take every governmental unit in the Caribbean today, and I mean even Venezuela and Colombia as well as the mixed-up Central American nations and Cuba, the best governed, it seems to me, are the French islands. Becoming a structural part of metropolitan France (in 1946), just as if we bordered on the Rhone, helped us work out some difficult economic problems. We also have developed pragmatic solutions to the race problem, and we enjoy an unfettered freedom. We have no religious riots, no turmoil in the streets.'

'Can your young people get a good education here?' a student asked, and Lanzerac replied as elders had in Point--Pitre for the last two hundred years: 'Our bright boys we send back to the metropolitan for their education. I got mine in a fine little mountain village on the Italian border, Barcelonnette, if you care to look it up.'

'Why do that?' the interrogator pursued, and Lanzerac replied: 'Because it binds us to France.'

'But do you consider yourself French or Guadeloupean?' and he replied: 'French. I'm a citizen of France.' Then he smiled disarmingly: 'Of course, if my grandfather hadn't married a very lovely creole girl with golden-colored skin, I'd not be able to get elected to the senate here.'

Under heavy questioning from the students, he defended his thesis that the best run of the Caribbean islands, all criteria considered, were the French: 'We have a style suited to islands ... an inborn love of freedom but also a desire to make something of ourselves. We're pragmatic people. We handle race problems better than either the English or the Americans ...'

'How about the Spanish?' someone asked, and he said, whimsically but truthfully: 'The dear old Spaniards, they never handle anything well, race or anything else. They just go banging down the road of civilization like a car with one drooping fender. But dammit, they always seem to reach their destination at just about the same time that we and the English do.'

He emphasized the point that others had made about the Caribbean: it would probably be better if all the islands had remained under one European owners.h.i.+p rather than falling into scattered hands as they did, but he conceded that because Spain had been so lax in her custodians.h.i.+p, the scattering of interests became inevitable.

Before this easy generalization became too attractive to the students, Therese raised a ticklish question: 'Would one religion for the region have helped?' and he replied: 'Yes. In the Caribbean, in Europe, in the world.'

'The Catholic, perhaps?' and he said: 'Especially the Catholic. By and large, it's the easiest religion for a nation-state to live with.'

Therese pressed: 'You refer to the great accomplishments in Haiti? It's Catholic,' and Lanzerac replied, with an ingratiating Gallic shrug: 'You win some, you lose some.'

On the final morning the group rented horses, and Lanzerac and Therese led the students on a long canter to the east, following the paths taken by Paul Lanzerac and Solange Vauclain in 1794, before the terror broke, and they called to each other in French as Paul and Solange must have done on their daring rides. The earth and the sky and the memories became so French that Therese was almost persuaded to believe that even though France had made a complete mess of Haiti, which still bore the scars of her mismanagement, it might truly have been better for the Caribbean if these civilized men and women had made all the islands integral parts of homeland France. But that night when they returned to the Galante she asked Lanzerac: 'Have you ever heard about the terrible international debt that France hung around the neck of Haiti at the granting of independence in 1804?' and he said: 'Never heard of it,' and she said: 'A Haitian historian told the truth: "We spent most of our energy in the nineteenth century repaying France, and our nation fell so far behind in all social services that it could never catch up." ' And Lanzerac said: 'When I get back to Paris, I'll ask for a report on that.'

None of the students who spent those two days in old Point--Pitre would ever again feel that the Caribbean was a Spanish Lake, or an English one, either, for it also contained a powerful French coloring, which made it even more interesting.

As the Galante steamed south from Guadeloupe an informal committee of women students accosted Therese with a justified complaint: 'Wherever we stop, the stories are about men. Your ancestor Vavak, the murderer Hugues. Weren't there any women on these islands?'

Therese thought it odd that the question should come at this propitious moment, for to the west, adorned in sunset glow, rose the majestic peaks of France's other island, Martinique, and she told the women: 'Fetch the others and I'll tell you about two girls a little younger than you who went to visit a cave on that island in the 1770s.' When some men students wandered by she invited them to listen, so as night fell, most of her cla.s.s were either sitting cross-legged before her or lounging about the deck where they could hear.

'Two centuries ago on that island lived a daydreaming girl of n.o.ble ancestry with a name like a poem, Marie-Josephe-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, and she had as her bosom friend a girl who was an even more confirmed dreamer, Aimee Dubec de Rivery. One afternoon, summoning their courage, they climbed a hill near their homes to visit a sorceress who lived in a cave. It must have been a mysterious affair, with incantations and rituals calculated to impress young girls, but suddenly the sorceress stopped in midflight, stared in open-mouthed amazement at the two, and said in a powerful voice they had not heard before: "You will each become a queen! You will live in palaces surrounded by a magnificent court. You will reign over entire nations and men will bow before you, because you will have majestic power." The strange voice stopped. The sorceress resumed speaking as before, and when the girls asked what the interruption had been, she affected not to know what she had said, but she a.s.sured them: 'Whatever it was, it was the truth, for I did not say it. But since the ancient ones spoke through me, you can rely upon it."

'As the impressionable girls returned to their homes, each looked at the other and burst out laughing: "You a queen! Palaces and glittering festivities!" The idea was so ridiculous they told no one of their visit, but in the long years ahead, separated by thousands of miles, they must often have reflected on that strange session in the cave.'

'What happened to them?'

'Does the name Beauharnais mean anything to you?' When no one responded, she said: 'The Tascher girl married a handsome young n.o.bleman, Alexandre de Beauharnais, when he visited the island, and he took her back to France. He didn't amount to much and was guillotined during the Revolution, leaving her a widow in perilous times.'

'What happened?' one of the girls asked, and all leaned forward to hear the conclusion of this tantalizing story.

'She called herself Josephine, became known in Paris, was thrown into prison, and was on the verge of being guillotined herself when she caught the eye of a young officer with a bright future. His name? Napoleon Bonaparte. He fell desperately in love with her, married her, and she became, as the cavewoman had predicted, his empress.'

There was silence as the young people studied the gradually vanis.h.i.+ng island. 'And what of Aimee?'

'A French s.h.i.+p on which she was sailing in the Mediterranean was captured by Algerian pirates. She was whisked off to Constantinople and sold as a slave. One of the sultan's eunuchs, seeking replenishments for the royal harem, saw her, bought her for his master, and she was so entrancing, so wise and witty, that she made the sultan her emotional slave, and he made her the equivalent of his queen.' When some of the young women gasped, Therese added: 'Romantic things can happen on the islands ... especially French islands.'

One young woman, already beginning to dream, asked: 'Could what you've just told us possibly be true?' and Therese replied: 'I'm like the old woman in the cave. Everything I said is true.'

Almost as if the organizers of the trip wished the tourists to see in rapid sequence the best of the French followed by the best of the British, the Galante deviated slightly to visit next the placid, gentle island of Barbados, treasured by stormbound Canadians, who sent two or three big airplanes down to Bridgetown every day filled with tourists seeking respite from the rigors of Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. As a representative of the Swedish Lines remarked to Therese: 'If you closed Canadian airports for one week, Barbados would perish.'

A special lecturer joined them for the next three-day leg of the journey. He was Major Reginald Oldmixon, descendant of a famous Royalist family who had led a minor uprising in favor of the Divine Right of Kings after the beheading of Charles I in 1649, and at his first session with the travelers he made his apologies: 'Barbados has a black governor general, a fine black prime minister, a black chief law officer, and black heads of most of the departments. I'd probably do a more representative job if I were black, but I do like to talk, and my family has been on the island since before any part of the United States was settled, so I do know something about the jolly old place.' He laughed and said: 'And to make things perfectly clear, my immediate boss is a black who can beat me at tennis.'

He proved a great hit with the younger pa.s.sengers and especially with Therese's students, for he had a lively wit, an apt.i.tude for making himself the b.u.t.t of jokes, and an agenda which he jolly well intended to further: 'My job is to make you interested in Barbados and to feel at ease on our glorious island. It's always been popularly known as Little England, and we're proud to confess that the name has been appropriately awarded. When the rascals in the homeland chopped off the head of our king, we on Barbados said: "You can't do that!" and declared war on the whole empire, such as it was at the time. We still feel that way. If things go bonkers in England, you can always find refuge in Barbados. Population two hundred and sixty thousand, like a small American city, area a hundred and sixty-six square miles, about like one of your larger counties, quality of life, among the best in the world.'

By the time the Galante reached Bridgetown, the pleasant port on the western side of the island, nearly everyone aboard was prepared to like Barbados, and when the tour buses set forth with the regular pa.s.sengers, the occupants saw an island which in no way disappointed. The transition from a sugar culture to one of mixed enterprises had been easily, almost graciously made, and since Barbados had never had any spare land, when the end of slavery came, there had been no hiding place for disgruntled free men to run to, as there had been on the other islands; the blacks had to stay put and work things out with their former masters. There had been the standard uprisings, some of them quite vicious, but they had neither lingered nor festered, so that in the end Barbados found itself with about the best island relations.h.i.+ps in the Caribbean.

'The secret,' one black bus driver told his wide-eyed pa.s.sengers who were seeing a peaceful island at work, 'is that each of us intends one day to make his fortune and go live like a toff in England.' Proudly he added: 'Besides, our little island has produced the greatest all-round cricket player the world has ever seen, the great Sir Gary Sobers, and believe me, that counts for something.'

Therese's students met with government officials in an instructive seminar which told them much about the islands they had already seen or would be seeing shortly. The two princ.i.p.al speakers were Major Oldmixon and a black professor of history from the Barbados branch of the University of the West Indies. Their topic? The abortive effort in 1958 to unite all the British islands in one grand confederation, with one citizens.h.i.+p, one money system, one federal government and one common destiny. Oldmixon spoke first, and at times he was so deeply moved by the tragedy in which he had partic.i.p.ated, tears almost came to his eyes: 'Every Oldmixon of whom we have record for the past three hundred and fifty years has been staunchly in favor of Federation for the various islands of the Caribbean belonging to Great Britain, and we usually included land areas in the vicinity like British Guiana in South America and British Honduras in Central. In fact, one of my ancestors, Admiral Hector Oldmixon back in Napoleon's time, was so enthusiastic about it that he went so far as to capture the French island of Guadeloupe to make it eligible to join. He kept it, alas, for only a few weeks.

'Through the years we had a score of abortive attempts to join the islands into one sensible Federation, and from the beginning it was clear that the three moving forces would have to be Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica. Most money, most people, most advanced ideas and capabilities. So it became an infuriating three-way jigsaw puzzle. When Barbados and Jamaica agreed, Trinidad held back. And when Trinidad and Barbados saw eye to eye, Jamaica played hard to get. The little islands? They always dreamed of Federation and were willing to make real concessions to get it.

'Finally, in January 1958, everything came together, and believe it or not, under careful urging from Britain, Federation was authorized, a site for our capital was agreed upon, a fine location in Trinidad, and in March of that year elections were to be held, and the final distribution of seats indicates the relative importance of the islands: Jamaica, thirty-one, Trinidad, fifteen, Barbados, five. Great idea, grand potential, but I'll let Professor Charles tell you what happened.'

The black professor told a dismal story, one of regional hope and national despair, in which the personal ambitions of a few exhibitionistic leaders destroyed the hopes of the many: 'In the end it came down to a clash between black leaders, both honors graduates from English universities: Manley, the strong man of Jamaica, Williams, the extremely vain man of Trinidad; and dear old Sir Grantley Adams of Barbados, always striving to make peace between the Big Two. Vanity, vanity! Reconciliation denied, wrong decisions pushed forward. Through all of 1958 this grand design that might have saved this corner of the world hung in the balance, but nevertheless, princess Margaret of England, the one who lost the man she loved, came out and inaugurated the Federation, with Major Oldmixon and me in the crowd cheering.

'What went wrong? For the most insane reasons in the world Manley threatened to take Jamaica out, so Williams had to respond by threatening to take out Trinidad. Our world was threatened, and by 1960 it was crumbling about our ears. People like Oldmixon and me battled to save the concept, but in September 1961, Jamaica held a plebiscite and the vote was two hundred fifty-six thousand get out, two hundred seventeen thousand stay in, and the whole castle of cards came drifting down.'

Oldmixon coughed, then said: 'Men like my family and his tried to get a Federation of Nine functioning, without Jamaica and Trinidad, but lacking mighty Jamaica, nothing was reasonably possible.'

The professor also lamented the loss, but he did have other considerations: 'Geography was so against us. If only G.o.d had placed that d.a.m.ned Jamaica farther east, it would be in the center of any federation. What's the problem? Jamaica's our biggest unit, and it's only six hundred miles from Miami but twelve hundred from Barbados, much farther than from New York to Kansas City. Maybe the essentials for a federation were never present, maybe these islands will never be able to confederate on anything.'

'Could anyone else take the lead and organize the islands under some new banner?' a student asked, and he replied: 'There has been some speculation. It is possible that Cuba will stabilize, say, by the year 2020 when Castro's gone, and by stabilize I mean in some form of economic and social pattern acceptable to all of us, and then take the lead in building a great hegemony that would take in everything in the area, including Venezuela, Colombia, Central America and Yucatan after Mexico falls apart, as it probably will.'

Before anyone could react to this idea so repugnant to many, he added: 'I believe Cuba could take over Hispaniola and Puerto Rico fairly easily, I should think, also Central America. The English and French islands later, but economics and proximity work wonders.'

'Are you a Marxist?' one of the brighter students asked, and he laughed: 'Oldmixon and I are known as reactionaries. But I do speculate about the movement of nations, the realignments, and I would strongly advise you to do the same, because then you will probably have antic.i.p.ated the changes that arrive on your doorstep some September morning.'

None of the students could visualize a Cuban hegemony spread over the Caribbean and its sh.o.r.es, but one young man asked: 'Why not an American hegemony, with Miami as its focal point?' and the professor answered: 'Young man, don't you ever study maps? Your idea came to me about forty years ago, and as you can see, I must have been pretty young then. But with an American leaders.h.i.+p, we come to what might be called the Jamaica Impa.s.se. Miami is so very far off to the west,' and the young man proved his mettle by saying: 'Professor, may I insult you?' and the black scholar chuckled: 'My students do, why shouldn't you?' and the young fellow said: 'Maybe you better look at your maps again. Miami is east of about half of Cuba and ideally situated in relation to Central America and the relevant sh.o.r.eline of South.'

The professor laughed, and said: 'Let's talk north and south. Your Miami is totally out of the picture, but Cuba forms that huge northern boundary of the Caribbean,' but the young man would not give in: 'Like New York and Was.h.i.+ngton perched on the edge of their domains, or Sidney, Australia, on its. We have jet aircraft, you know,' and the professor said: 'I wish you'd transfer to my university.'

When Therese said goodnight to her students on leaving Barbados, she warned them: 'I'm going to call everyone a half-hour before dawn,' and when there were moaning protests, she became impatient: 'Young people! As soon as I saved a little money, I took the cheapest cruise available to the Caribbean. A room so small and far belowdecks, I was practically swimming with the sharks. It was sensible for me to rise early, and I learned that one of the glorious experiences of travel is to be in a small boat just before dawn as you approach a tropic island. Darkness everywhere but a sense that something lies ahead. Then a distant glimmer of light, a kind of throbbing in the air, and because it is in the tropics, where the sun rises and sets with a rush, not a lingering tease, here comes the great orb, all of a sudden. Light everywhere! And then, far ahead the outline of an island in the midst of a great ocean. More light, more island, and as your boat sweeps in you see the palm trees and the hills and the rea.s.surances that people live there. Don't miss a thrill that may come only once in your lifetime.'

'Is it as exciting as you say?' a girl asked, and Therese replied: 'It's not an ordinary island, Marcia. It's All Saints. Nothing in the Caribbean to match the harbor you'll see tomorrow.'

And next day, when, with shocking abruptness, a bronze sun leaped into the sky, the drowsy students saw with gasps of delight the two Pointes which guarded the bay, then the distant Mornes, the white beaches, and finally the red roofs and spires of Bristol Town, each in turn revealing its loveliness in such a perfect way that some of the young people would remember this dawn forever.

The highlights of the morning came by accident, for as the students piled ash.o.r.e, a girl from the University of Indiana saw a tall, loping figure that she recognized from the books she'd read during the cruise, and with a wild yelp she shouted to those behind: 'Hey, kids! That's got to be a Rastafarian!' and all rushed to speak with a gangling black man dressed in flowing garb topped by a gold and green tam-o-shanter from beneath which tumbled long strands of matted hair that covered his back and shoulders. 'They're dreadlocks!' the girl shouted, and soon the students had surrounded the stranger who had come to the pier to do missionary work with just such tourists.

His name, he said, was Ras-Negus Grimble and he had come to All Saints from Jamaica some years ago: 'First time I come here, gommint throw me out. But I like All Saints, much better than Jamaica. So I come back, promise to behave. Gommint here grow up, they able to accept me now.' He spoke with a lovely soft accent, throwing in an occasional Rasta word that no one understood, and when the students saw Therese coming down the gangway, they called: 'Professor! Over here,' and as she joined them she said, for the man to hear: 'I'm so glad you've met a Rastafarian. They're a big influence in Jamaica and I was afraid you'd miss them.'

Since it was early morning, she invited the Rastafarian to join them for coffee or a drink of some kind, and when she asked where they might find light refreshment, he said: 'All tourists go the Waterloo,' and he led them to a kind of bar, where Therese cried with the pleasure of discovery: 'Wrentham! I have a letter for Sir Lincoln Wrentham,' and when she asked the proprietor where she might find him, a young good-looking black man said: 'Let me have the letter. I'll have the boy run it up to Gommint House,' and she said: 'If I gave him a dollar, could he deliver these other two for me?' and the young man said: 'One trip does all and there's no fee,' so off went letters to Millard McKay, a well-known writer on Caribbean subjects, and Harry Keeler, an Englishman with a long affiliation in All Saints.

In the meantime the Rastafarian, at home with young people, had sent for his homemade lute, on which he was now playing songs written by the famous Jamaican reggae artist Bob Marley, and two students who had records back home by Marley asked if he would sing 'Four Hundred Years,' the song of slaves coming out of Africa to the Caribbean. Several black men lounging in the bar joined the informal concert, but Therese wanted her students to know more about Rastafarianism than its music, so she interrupted: 'Mr. Grimble, will you explain to my young people something about your interesting religion?' and he asked: 'Sister, do you know anything about us, yourself?' and she said primly: 'I know a great deal, but it'll be so much more interesting if you tell us.' Then she smiled: 'Besides, all I know is what I read in books, and that could be wrong.' He smiled back.

His story fascinated the Americans: Marcus Garvey and his vision of a return to Africa; the emperor Haile Sela.s.sie as the new incarnation of the G.o.dhead come down to earth; the rituals, customs, the arcane language, the vision of a black hegemony in the Caribbean and the music. When he reached that point in his informal lecture he took up his lute again and sang some of the compelling protest songs, then asked the prettiest of Therese's girl students to sit by him as he switched to love songs, which he sang to her alone.

At this point a stately white man in his seventies entered the cafe and asked for a Professor Vaval, and Therese hurried to meet him: 'Are you the writer Millard McKay?' and when he said he was, she led him to a chair among the students and told them: 'This is the American whose books you've been reading. He came down here as a newspaperman, when?'

'From Detroit, 1938. Wrote a series of articles for my newspaper, first of their kind in America, and a New York publisher on vacation down here read them and invited me to put them together in a book, which did so well I moved here, married a local girl, and have made my living writing about the Caribbean ever since.'

Therese said with obvious enthusiasm and respect: 'Kids, this man is an object lesson. He wrote fifty, a hundred great articles, but one day he stumbled upon the one subject that matched his talents. And what do you think his world-famous essay dealt with?'

Their guesses pretty well covered the Caribbean, but failed to come even close: ' "How to Eat a Mango" swept across the world of magazines and books, and it could not have been funnier or more quotable or more accurate.' McKay smiled benevolently, his white hair complementing his tanned skin, and she placed her hand in his and gave a brief resume of his lucky one-shot: 'He started out by telling the truth, that the Caribbean mango is probably the world's most tantalizing fruit, a little smaller than a cantaloupe, with a heavy skin in variegated colors, and an immense central pit. How many of you have ever tasted a mango? A kind of mix between pineapple and peach with just a hint of turpentine?'

Quite a few had, and the students could not fathom why she was making such a fuss about this particular fruit, but now she reached the heart of his essay: 'Mr. McKay, as an American newspaperman, knew that he ought to eat this "queen of fruits" he'd been given by his black housekeeper, but he didn't know how, and he tells of his disastrous adventures while trying to solve the problem, until his housekeeper rescued him. "Take off your s.h.i.+rt," she said, "and your unders.h.i.+rt, and now lean way over the sink and go at it." And he did, golden-yellow juice flowing down his chest and arms. But when he wrote about it, he described it as well worth the effort.

One of the men in the group asked the barkeeper: 'You got any mangoes?' and the black man said: 'Not the season,' whereupon Therese laughed and turned to McKay: 'What was it that your housekeeper said: "Mangoes like s.e.x, very messy ... but what's better?" '

Therese left the students to have lunch with the other lecturers at Gommint House, and when she returned in early afternoon, her students were still in session with the Rastafarian Grimble and three of his dreadlocked acolytes, who were alternately preaching their religious doctrine, smoking ganja, and singing the songs of Jamaica. Nodding to them, Therese sat alone at the bar and nursed a Coca-Cola until Millard McKay returned to fetch her for tea at his place, and when she reached his pleasant cottage set amid flowers and overlooking the glorious bay, she was faintly surprised to find that he had a colored wife, lighter than herself and much older, but very charming. And inside waited the other man she wanted to see, the Englishman Harry Keeler, who worked for the island government, and his wife, Sally, who was also colored. 'I hear you had lunch with my brother Lincoln,' Mrs. Keeler said. 'He's been made the Gee-Gee recently and loves the pomp.'

After desultory conversation about the economic condition of the various islands-topic number one wherever one went, Therese concluded-she looked at the two couples and boldly asked: 'From firsthand experience-are mixed marriages difficult?' To justify her prying, she added quickly: 'I'm engaged to a white man, totally liberated, and I'd appreciate some pointers,' and to each of her listeners in turn she flashed a beguiling smile.

They were eager to talk, all four of them, and Mrs. McKay said with humor: 'To tell the truth, this American of mine fell in love with the island first, then me, but once he gave me the eye, I wouldn't let go,' and Mrs. Keeler said: 'This cautious Englishman brooded and tortured himself: "Could I be happy married to a black?" so one night I pushed him and said: "Jump in! The water's fine." '

Then Mrs. McKay said: 'When Millard and I were married, it was too soon. We were outcasts, but when his book did well and he had gained a bit of both fame and fortune, they rushed to accept us. After that, clear sailing.' And Mrs. Keeler added: 'I think we might have had it a wee bit easier here in All Saints than you would in the States. We're rather ahead of you, what with my brother as the Gee-Gee and all his cabinet black.'

McKay, a wise man who had served as one of the prototypes for Alec Waugh's witty novel, asked: 'Why do you ask these questions? You having doubts?' and Therese replied 'No!' so quickly that they knew she had. They agreed that if both she and Dennis already had good teaching jobs, and they planned to live in the North, the prognosis for success was high. 'As a matter of fact,' Mrs. Keeler said, 'I don't believe I know of a single case here on the island in which a mixed marriage has foundered because of race. It just doesn't happen,' and Therese said: 'Yes, but you've worked out the relations.h.i.+ps. In the States, we haven't.' And they agreed that this was true.

As she prepared to return to the s.h.i.+p she told her hosts how grateful she was for their having allowed her to burden them with her problems, and Harry Keeler replied: 'In these matters the only sensible rule is, do what's burning you and to h.e.l.l with the others.'

When the laughter subsided, McKay was reluctant to let Therese go, and taking her aside, he said: 'You're so fortunate to be on a s.h.i.+p that stops at Trinidad. Most don't, you know, and travelers to the Caribbean lose so much.'

'The only reason we're stopping is that the line sold a lot of our students on the promise that they'd see Carnaval, which they tell us is pretty gorgeous.'

'Ah, there's far more than Carnaval,' the writer said. He was seventy-seven and eager to share meanings with anyone who evidenced a sincere interest in the part of the world he had made his own. Almost forcing her into a chair, he said: 'My adult life started in Trinidad. I came to All Saints as a callow Detroit newspaperman, studied the island, loved its English ways, and concluded that I knew the Caribbean. Then I drifted down to Trinidad, by accident really, and the place blew me apart-its color ... its Hindus ... the magnificent poetry of its young women. I wrote a series of articles on it, and my editor cabled back: "So you finally fell in love. Who is she?" He was right. She was one of those golden Trinidadians, walked like a poem, flas.h.i.+ng eyes that were not afraid to stare at men, not at all. Three heroic days. I wanted to quit my job, stay in Trinidad forever, marry this heavenly young woman.'

He sighed, and Therese, tremendously interested these days in who married whom, and how, asked, pointing to Mrs. McKay: 'Apparently you didn't marry the girl?'

'No,' he said ruefully as he laughed at himself. 'I found she worked in a kind of ma.s.sage 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d bless you.'

As the Galante headed south for Carnaval in Trinidad, Therese's emotions were so incandescent and jumbled that as she walked the deck under the stars, she thought it apt that the s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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, Therese said: 'I suppose he'll be involved with that riot down there,' but Carmody rea.s.sured 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?' Therese asked, and Carmody said: 'The parents of the kids. This is Carnaval, once a year.'

Therese, 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 Therese, 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, Therese 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. Therese 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 Therese said quickly: 'But, Dr. Banarjee, you teach all of us.'