Caribbean: a novel Part 52

Therese s.h.i.+vered, 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 astonis.h.i.+ngly 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: 'Therese, 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.'

FURTHER READING.

A novel like this serves a commendable purpose if it encourages the reader to consult other books on the subject. The University of Miami, where I worked during the writing, has a library with a wealth of Caribbean material. No matter how obscure the subject on which I required information, the librarians invariably found the books I needed. From the hundreds I consulted, I recommend the following. Most of these t.i.tles, if not in your bookshop, should be available through your local public-library system.

Maya. To supplement my research on the ancient cities of the Yucatan Peninsula, I found The Ancient Maya by Sylva.n.u.s Morley (Stanford University Press, 1983) and The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization by J. Eric Thompson (University of Oklahoma Press, 1966) to be particularly helpful.

Columbus. In his magisterial biography Admiral of the Ocean Sea (Little, Brown, 1942), Samuel Eliot Morrison summarizes standard views of the great discoverer. Salvador de Madariaga, in Christopher Columbus (Hollis & Carter, 1949), a.s.saults the argument that Columbus was, in any way that mattered, an Italian and argues instead that he was probably a wandering Jew.

Spanish Caribbean. In Caribbean Sea of the New World (Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), German Arciniegas provides a brilliantly composed defense of Spain's accomplishments in the Caribbean. Strongly argued, rich in detail. On the stories of Cartagena, Eduardo LeMaitre's comprehensive Historia General de Cartagena has not yet been translated from the Spanish, but an abbreviated account in English does exist (no date, but 1980s) and is worth the search.

Pirates and Buccaneers. n.o.body knows for sure the spelling of the man's name or his nationality, but in 1684, Alexander Esquemeling published in London a powerful, some say mendacious, personal reminiscence of Henry Morgan and other pirates, The Bucaniers [sic] of America (Scribner, 1898, reprint). In a modern work of great merit, Dudley Pope's Harry Morgan's Way (Alison Press, 1977) gives a less hysterical but more astonis.h.i.+ng account of Morgan's exploits. And The Sack of Panama by Peter Earle (Viking Press, 1972) brilliantly re-creates Morgan's most memorable, indeed incredible, adventures.

Sugar and Slavery. Sugar and slavery will forever be linked as the glory and shame of the Caribbean Islands, and for this inexhaustible subject three books were particularly valuable: Sugar and Slavery by Richard B. Sheridan (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974); The Fall of the Planter Cla.s.s in the British Caribbean by Lowell J. Ragatz (Century, 1928); and A Jamaican Plantation by Michael Crayton and James Walvin (University of Toronto Press, 1970).

British Islands. Alec Waugh, elder brother of Evelyn, gives a fine portrait of an imaginary English colony in Island in the Sun (Farrar, Straus, 1955). The gallantry of the Cavaliers on Barbados in offering to fight the entire British Empire in defense of King Charles I is told by N. Davis in his The Cavaliers and Roundheads of Barbados (Argosy Press, 1887). James Anthony Froude's The English in the West Indies (Scribner, 1897) is probably the worst travel book written by any historian on any subject at any time. A boastful champion of white supremacy and a merciless reviler of blacks and Irishmen, the author reveals himself as such a consummate a.s.s that the modern reader alternately shudders and guffaws.

The Seamen of England. If the battles for naval supremacy in Europe were rehea.r.s.ed in the waters of the Caribbean, two English sailors contributed monumentally to the course of history. The exploits of Francis Drake are well recorded in The Life of Francis Drake by A. E. W. Mason (Hodder & Stoughton, 1941), and his major claim to fame in The Defeat of the Spanish Armada by Garrett Mattingly (Jonathan Cape, 1959). Chronicling the extraordinary career and unashamedly venal temperament of Horatio Nelson are The Life of Nelson by Robert Southey (Constable, 1916) and Carola Oman's cla.s.sic Nelson (Doubleday, 1946).

The French Connections. Cuba's finest novelist, Alejo Carpentier, in his Explosion in a Cathedral (first published in Mexico in 1962 and now available in Penguin Books, 1971), gives a dramatic portrait of Victor Hugues, with a background prior to his 'reign' in Guadeloupe much different from the one I offer. An excellent book.

Haiti. Haiti's fight for independence under a brilliant black general who outfoxed the French, the Spanish and the British is well told in The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture by the Reverend John Beard (Ingram Cook, 1923). The subsequent pitiful course of that independence is well covered in Black Democracy, The Story of Haiti by H. P. Davis (Dial Press, 1928) and in Haiti, the Politics of Squalor by Robert I. Rotberg (Houghton Mifflin, 1921). I especially recommend the work of a brilliant Trinidad scholar, C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins (Secker & Warburg, 1938).

Trinidad. The complexities of an island shared equally by ethnic heritages of Africa and India are well cited by Morton Kla.s.s in East Indians in Trinidad (Columbia University Press, 1961). Her emergence as an independent republic is ably reported by Donald Wood in Trinidad in Transition (Oxford University Press, 1968).

Jamaica. There is a wealth of material on Jamaica, written at all stages of her history. Oliver c.o.x's Upgrading and Renewing the Historic City of Port Royal, Jamaica (Shankland c.o.x, London, 1984) is an enchanting official report replete with maps and plans. Robert F. Marx's Pirate Port, the Story of the Sunken City of Port Royal (World Publis.h.i.+ng, 1967) provides a capitulation of the basic facts. On the tragedy of the Morant Bay rebellion under the governors.h.i.+p of John Eyre, Australian apologist Geoffrey Dutton, in The Hero as Murderer (Collins, 1967), depicts Eyre as an unquestioned hero during his tenure in Australia and as the cool-headed savior of the white man in Jamaica. In The Myth of Governor Eyre (Woolf, 1933), Lord Olivier, a later governor of Jamaica, proves his predecessor to have been a b.u.mptious fool. For current books on Jamaica generally, two contemporary Jamaicans have made excellent contributions. Sir Philip Sherlock's West Indian Nation (St. Martin's Press, 1973) and Clinton V. Black's History of Jamaica (Collins, 1961) pull no punches, albeit in their own gentlemanly fas.h.i.+on. Sherlock was personally most helpful in guiding me toward experts on many aspects of Jamaican life, past and present.

Cuba. Of many instructive books, I used three which pertained directly to my story. R. Hart Phillips' Cuba, Island of Paradox (McDowell, Obolensky, 1959) is the intimate report of steps leading to Castro's triumph, by the mother superior of newspaper correspondents. Carleton Beals's The Crime of Cuba (Lippincott, 1933) is the standard pre-Castro warning of a liberal observer. Tad Szulc and Karl E. Meyer's The Cuban Invasion (Praeger, 1962) is a gripping account of the Bay of Pigs disaster. Of the more formal histories, I profited from Jaime Suchlicki's Cuba from Columbus to Castro (Scribner, 1974).

Rastafarians. Two books attempt to explain the many confusing aspects of this mystifying religious movement. Dread: The Rastafarians of Jamaica by Joseph Owens (Sangster, Kingston, Jamaica, 1976) and The Rastafarians by Leonard E. Barrett (idem, 1977) are supplemented by a gripping biography of reggae star Bob Marley by Timothy White, Catch a Fire (Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1983).

Cricket. The importance of the Caribbean's other main religion, cricket, is rarely appreciated by the outsiders, but I have not exaggerated its significance. From the score of technical treatises I recommend two delightful reads: C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary (Pantheon Books, 1984), a reminiscence of boyhood in Trinidad, and Frances Edmonds' Another b.l.o.o.d.y Tour: England in the West Indies 1986 (Kingswood, 1986), the irreverent report of an Englishwoman intellectual married to a professional cricketer. (England was ma.s.sacred by the islanders, 5 matches to 0.) Caribbean. I found that most islanders p.r.o.nounce this Car-ib-bee-an, and dictionaries give that as preferred, with Ca-rib-ee-an in second place as acceptable. A wag explained: 'The hoi polloi use the first, but intellectual sn.o.bs prefer the second.' And so do I. I have been unable to pin down when the word was first used to designate the sea which now bears that name. We know for sure that this confusion started with the first Spaniards who saw that the all-important Isthmus of Panama ran not vertically north to south, as laymen would always believe, but horizontally east to west. This caused early mariners to refer to the Pacific Ocean as La Mar del Sur (South Sea) and the future Caribbean as La Mar del Norte (North Sea). Sir Francis Drake did not sail into the Pacific on his historic circ.u.mnavigation of the globe: he ventured into the South Sea, and this usage continued through the sixteenth century and probably into the seventeenth. Sir Henry Morgan and his pirates ravaged the North Sea, not the Caribbean, and I have seen maps printed as late as 1770 still using the older terminology. I would appreciate instruction clarifying this interesting geographical puzzle.

THE SETTING.

971,400 square miles, of which land is only a small portion.

BY JAMES A. MICHENER.

Tales of the South Pacific.

The Fires of Spring.

Return to Paradise The Voice of Asia The Bridges at Toko-Ri.

Sayonara The Floating World The Bridge at Andau.

Hawaii Report of the Country Chairman Caravans.

The Source Iberia Presidential Lottery.

The Quality of Life Kent State: What Happened and Why The Drifters A Michener Miscellany: 19501970 Centennial Sports in America.

Chesapeake The Covenant.

s.p.a.ce Poland Texas Legacy.

Alaska Journey Caribbean The Eagle and the Raven Pilgrimage.

The Novel James A. Michener's Writer's Handbook.

Mexico Creatures of the Kingdom.

Recessional Miracle in Seville This n.o.ble Land: My Vision for America.

The World Is My Home with A. Grove Day.

Rascals in Paradise with John Kings Six Days in Havana.

About the Author.

JAMES A. MICHENER, one of the world's most popular writers, was the author of the Pulitzer Prizewinning Tales of the South Pacific, the best-selling novels Hawaii, Texas, Chesapeake, The Covenant, and Alaska, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.

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