Amina listened to her parents and managed to slip back into the child she had loved being a year ago. It was safe and comfortable, and a relief from the turmoil in her mind.
After their evening meal, Devinia lit the kerosene lamps and sent the children to bathe.
‘Your father wants to talk to you,’ she told them.
After his wife’s evening prayer at the altar, Sankar got them all together, and Amina and Etwar sat on the goatskin rug with their mother. The children looked at each other in the candlelight wondering what all this was about. It was usually their mother who would tell them tales from the Bhagavad Gita, or read from the Ramayana, not their father. He then sat cross-legged in front of them.
‘The two of you are old enough to know what is what,’ he began. ‘And it’s time I talked to you. This place is Trinidad, but it’s not where I was born. But I chose to come here.’
‘Yes, Pa,’ Etwar answered first. ‘I know.’
‘I’m telling you this because they are not going to teach you this in school – that’s for sure. To them it’s not important. But to you, it should be. It’s how you came to be here too. Maybe hundreds of years from now, they’ll tell your great-great-grandchildren. But they will tell them a different story, I have no doubt. And not really how it happened.’ He gazed up at the ceiling with a pensive look in his eyes. ‘I’d like to be around if and when they do, though.’
He then cleared his throat, straightened his back and addressed them directly.
‘I, your father, Sankar Banderjee, came from India.
I was a young man, accompanied by my older brother, and we had travelled a long way, from Uttar Pradesh in the northern part of India to Kolkata on the coast. But I had decided it was the best thing for me, and also for my brother, Narine. His situation was bad. He had to escape.’
‘Escape? Why?’ Etwar echoed, wide-eyed.
‘We had heard of these ships,’ Sankar continued. ‘Coolie ships, they called them. Coolies. That’s what they called Indians – all of us. But we are not coolie caste. Not labourers. I just want to make that clear to both of you. My caste was Thakuri. We were landowners. Anyhow, when my brother and I got to the docks in Kolkata, we found there were thousands of people – all kinds of people – waiting there. Every caste. It was a terrible ordeal. We managed to get through all the checks however, and filled out the forms. They told us there was money to be made if we came over here. A lot of it – in a land of plenty. England couldn’t get enough of the sugar they were producing, they said. It was much encouragement.’
‘What kind of encouragement?’ Amina asked.
‘I will tell you,’ Sankar replied, smiling at her interest, then he murmured, almost to himself, ‘Did I ever tell you that you look like my mother?’
‘Yes, Pa.’
‘Well, at the docks, they said all we had to do was sift sugar. Sift sugar? They were total tricksters! Needless to say, that was a lie. But Indians were so poor that we would have been taken in by anything. We had no idea where we were going. But I liked the sound of an adventure. We got on board a ship and took their word for granted. Ram-ram-sita-ram, it took us a good four months to get to this island. Four whole months!’ he groaned.
‘What did you eat?’ Etwar asked. ‘Did you catch plenty of fish in the sea?’
‘That would have been a good idea,’ his father replied, ‘but nobody seemed to have thought of it. There were no nets, not even a broomstick to hit a fish if we did see one. Son, the food was terrible. Dried food – and half-boiled rice most of the time, with a spoonful of tasteless dhal. I mean, how is it possible to make dhal tasteless? There was no salt. Except sometimes we got an inch of dry salt-fish. Me and my brother, we were strong and healthy, but many others fell ill. Cholera and dysentery spread through the ship. Some couldn’t take it, and jumped overboard to their deaths. When the rest of us finally got here, we were weak. They sent us to a place called Nelson Island – put us in quarantine.’
‘What happened to your brother?’ Amina asked fearfully.
‘My brother . . . highly intelligent, but he did a stupid thing – he decided to . . .’
‘It’s time for the children to go and get some sleep now,’ Devinia interrupted.
‘No, Ma, I want to know what his brother did,’ Etwar argued. ‘That’s our uncle.’
‘I was adventurous,’ Sankar sighed. ‘I brought money – I had been working in India.’
‘Were you making jewels there too?’ Amina asked.
‘Yes. I had just finished my apprenticeship, but people were handing down their jewellery more and more early, instead of buying new. So, my trade was not going that well. Everyone was hard up. Anyway, when we finally got here, we were put into those filthy barracks.’ Sankar pulled a face. ‘I decided then, I was not going to live like that.’
‘What was wrong with it, Pa?’ Etwar breathed.
‘You mean what was right with it! Twelve people living in a small box. All strangers. Nothing private. You had to tread human filth, to get to the latrines, boy. And one small coal-pot to cook for the lot of us. Food rations were small.’
Amina curled her toes and shuddered.
‘As for my brother . . .’ Sankar continued, ‘well, what I didn’t tell you was that instead of listening to me and leaving quietly, he ran away with his sweetheart.’
Both children’s eyes practically jumped out of their heads.
‘You never told us that before,’ Etwar said.
‘Your mother never wanted me to tell you. You see, this is what happens when you break the rules. In India anyhow. My brother fell in love with the daughter of a Brahmin.’
‘Like you and Ma?’
‘We are in Trinidad, not India.’
‘But you are Hindu,’ Amina said.
‘It is hard enough to find a suitable other Indian for your children, let alone worrying about which caste they are from. Look at your mother and me. She is Brahmin, I am Thakuri. Since on the ship, no one bothered about caste. We were all brothers and sisters on those journeys.’ He sighed. ‘All that sickness and death just brought us closer.’
‘So, we are all the same caste then!’ Etwar exclaimed.
‘Quite right, son.’ Sankar nodded approvingly. ‘If we consider ourselves brothers and sisters, how can there be any caste difference between us?’
‘But many are still looking for caste matches for their children,’ Devinia said.
‘People will always want what they don’t have instead of making most of what they do have. And working for it! They always harp back to India. They can’t embrace change.’
‘I’m glad you said that, Pa,’ Amina told him. ‘Because that is what I think too.’
‘What happened to the girl?’ Etwar asked. ‘Did she run away from home as well?’
‘She did, unfortunately,’ Sankar said. ‘I told my brother to leave her behind.
“You’ll forget her about her soon enough,” I said. “You’ll have a new life.” But no! He didn’t listen. He had to be with her. He was struck down with love. . . But they couldn’t stand the barrack conditions when they arrived.’
‘So where is our Uncle Narine now?’ Etwar wanted to know. ‘Did he go back to India?’
‘Enough. No more of this,’ Devinia interjected.
‘Are you mad?’ Sankar continued, ignoring her as he replied to his son. ‘If they went back to India, they would be made to suffer. They would be outcasts, and nobody would speak to them. That is why some people ran away to the ships in the first place. It was a chance to escape all of that.’
‘So where are they now?’
‘Sadly, my son, I have lost touch with him. My only brother.’
Devinia ushered the children off to bed, leaving her husband quietly brooding, reliving the past. She knew he needed to be alone to think about those he had lost. Sankar remained there deep in thought about what he had lost, and how to smooth the path for his own children.
TWENTY-TWO
One da
y, the gossip at the standpipe changed again. Someone said that Sumati was back home. Apparently, the missing girl had been found wandering near the Cedros docks, battered and bruised, and asking her way back to Granville. Amina gulped for air. Cedros was a long way off San Fernando, where she and Farouk had headed.
‘Was anyone with her?’ Amina asked.
No one seemed to know. Some had guessed that she was with Farouk as he also had disappeared – which was why both their families were cujart, being shunned.
When Amina asked around, Ramona said that Sumati had definitely not been at home because she would have seen her. But Pryia said that someone had told her that the Kamalsingh boy who lived near the big rose mango tree, had been spotted with her.
‘I can’t believe that,’ Amina said stoutly. ‘He was at the funeral and he was on his own. Besides he said . . . No – nothing. I’ll go past her house. There’s bound to be washing at least on the line.’
The day after Daya’s funeral, Rajnath’s father, Kamal Singh, was up early as usual. He worked at the Coromandel sugarcane plantation as an overseer, and was never late. As he made his ablutions, he noticed that two of the wooden slats on the bathroom walls were broken, leaving an immodest gap facing the house. There had been a wind in the night, but he hadn’t thought it was that strong. He went to the woodshed to get some wood to mend it but as he entered, he jumped back in shock.
Two chickens flew out of the shed as if they were possessed by some spirit, and ran off into the yard, squawking madly. He couldn’t understand why they would be there at all, unless they had got locked in by mistake. They normally roosted in the trees with the others, huddled close together on a branch. He wondered if they had become too fat to fly because Parbatee, his wife, was over-feeding them hoping they would lay more often. He rummaged through the different lengths of logs and bags of charcoal, looking for something suitable, when he had the strangest sensation on finding a big bundle of something soft in the corner.
Kamal Singh backed out of the shed immediately, his heart pounding. He closed the door behind him quietly and hurried across into the house to find Parbatee. He sat on the chair at the side of the bed, breathless and barely able to speak. His wife had just woken up.
‘What happened?’ she yawned. ‘You look like you’ve seen a jumbie?’
‘You had better come outside and see for yourself. Come on.’
‘What? Are the chickens dead? Mongoose got them?’ Parbatee kept guessing as she hobbled out in her chemise, but all she could see was her son, Rajnath, in the yard in his vest and shorts, a knife in his hand, cutting a datwan from the hibiscus bush to clean his teeth.
‘Morning, Pa!’ the boy called.
‘I thought you were still asleep,’ Kamal Singh said to his son.
‘You want me to get a thrashing?’ Rajnath replied, a sly grin on his face. ‘You know what overseers are like if you’re late.
Rajnath worked as a cane cutter on the Galapados sugarcane estate, a different one to his father, and since their altercation some months back, he now spoke to him as little as possible. The quarrel had ended with his mother and brother Annan having to separate the two men physically.
Ignoring his son’s rudeness, Kamal Singh was surprised to see the shed door open. He was certain he had closed it behind him. He quickened his pace to the doorway, beckoning Parbatee to come with him.
‘What are you looking for?’ Rajnath said.
‘It’s gone.’ Kamal stood at the doorway with one hand on his hip, scratching his head. ‘I must be going mad.’
‘Yeah, Pa! There’s no must be about that. Old and mad.’
Parbatee was waddling as fast as she could, dragging her feet, inside the wooden slippers. She stood next to her husband, who was staring inside the shed full of chopped pieces of firewood and logs.
‘Well I never!’ he uttered, and pulled the towel tight around his waist.
Just then a big bird fluttered past them, out of the shed, leaving them shivering.
Parbatee began to shake. ‘It’s a sign,’ she whispered. ‘And it’s suddenly gone cold.’
‘You felt that too?’ Kamal asked.
‘What is it you called me outside to see?’ she asked grumpily.
‘There was something inside here,’ Kamal said.
‘Kamal Singh has gone mad.’ Rajnath laughed out loud. ‘An owl just flew out of there. What did you think it was – a ghost? It was nothing.’
‘Boy,’ Parbatee said in a pacifying tone, ‘watch your mouth. He is your father. Don’t forget that.’
‘Nothing?’ Kamal said quietly. ‘It was not nothing. I know I saw something.’
That afternoon, Rajnath wasted no time leaving the plantation after clocking out. He rushed past the men, women and children who were chatting and plodding towards the tool sheds and got home by five o’clock just as the sun was lowering in the sky. He stripped off his grass-stained work clothes and muddy rubber boots, and filled a bucket with some rainwater from the copper at the back of the house to bathe. It was warm from the sun but refreshing. He splashed a few calabash-fuls over himself and scrubbed the day’s plantation dirt off with the block of blue marble washing soap. As he washed, he was mulling over what he was about to do. Half-dry, he hurried inside and took a clean, pressed shirt, hoping his mother wouldn’t ask any questions. Then he laced up his shiny boots and slipped away down the road towards the standpipe.
He passed people walking home from work, or from their day’s gardening with garden forks and machetes swinging, and jute bags full of fruit and vegetables over their shoulders. Dogs barked from yards, and branches rustled in the late-afternoon breeze scented with orange blossom. Rajnath smoothed his wet, oiled hair with his hands as he got to the standpipe. He looked for Amina at the standpipe but he had either missed her, or she hadn’t yet been to fetch water. He continued walking and spotted Etwar on his way back home with a bundle of grass on his head.
‘How are you?’ Rajnath called out.
‘All right, man!’
Moments later, Rajnath saw the glint of gold on a thin figure gliding across the road, her diamond-cut earrings slicing the sunlight, giving her away. His heart jumped and he turned around and hurried towards her.
‘We have to talk,’ he said abruptly. ‘It’s about your friend. Meet me by the spring.’
‘No,’ Amina said firmly. ‘I’ll be in trouble. Besides, no one goes there anymore.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I have to talk to you alone. It’s important. Be there.’
He turned and disappeared through the gap in the bushes which led to the short cut, leaving Amina bemused. The pink Jump-up-and-Kiss-me flowers were still open, catching the last rays of the sun. Rajnath headed towards the old wooden barrack building about fifty yards from the main spring. It was empty. Passing a tangerine tree, he jumped and pulled down a low branch full of fruit.
Meanwhile, Amina returned home from the standpipe with a bounce in her step.
‘Ma,’ she called, ‘I’m just going to see one of my friends. I’ll get more water later.’
‘Don’t worry about the water,’ Devinia replied. ‘Go and see your friends.’
Amina hurried off, worried about getting caught. A clandestine meeting with Rajnath would give her as bad a reputation as Sumati, but she had to go – for Sumati’s sake. As she walked she tried to turn back but her legs went faster, until she got to the spring, breathless.
There was nothing but a heap of clothes sitting next to the top pool, where the water gushed out through the rocks and pebbles, clear and blue from the sky’s reflection. She hadn’t been there for months. Memories of early childhood returned: her mother washing clothes under the shade of the green, overhanging trees; children running around the grassy banks between the white items spread stiff on the grass to bleach in the blazing sun; naked children splashing in the shallow end of the pool, while older people bathed in the deeper, downstream end, in skin-soaked pink petticoats, or long johns. She recall
ed the day she had slipped and felt the water cover her nose . . . Amina broke out in a cold sweat, and looked around to see if anyone had returned to claim their washing. But no one was there.
She leaned on the trunk of a tree and watched the water, remembering how the spring would swell when it rained, and the fun she and Etwar had splashing till it turned murky, drinking it as they bathed. The doctor said that although that water looked clean, it was more than likely where she might have picked up the typhoid. Her father refused to believe it. He said the water was given by the gods. It could never be dirty. The doctor said different, and Amina did not know who to believe. But the doctor was a learned man who must have read scores of books. Her father had the sort of learning that could not be read in books.
The spring looked inviting, and she longed to strip off and leap in, but not after having suffered typhoid.
Then something swirled in the water close to the huge rock, and a head appeared. It was a young woman with long hair. Her slim curves hugged the pale chemise, clinging, wet around her body, and the water ran down her skin as she rose to full height. Amina couldn’t believe her eyes.
‘Sumati? Is that you?’
The woman was wiping the water off her face and neck, and wringing out her hair. Then a man’s voice shouted, crystal clear.
‘I got some,’ he said.
Rajnath was coming out of the old, disused barracks, walking towards the spring, calling out to Sumati. He didn’t look around, and so didn’t see Amina on the other side. He was naked to the waist. His shirt was hanging on a low branch of a tree. It looked like the one she had seen him wearing earlier.
Amina’s legs went weak. It was Sumati, all right. Thinner, but still her friend. The girl got out of the pool, shaking herself and smoothing down the wet chemise even closer around her body, twisting her hair into a bun as Rajnath approached her. He handed her something pink – a pomerac. She bit into it ravenously. In no time it was gone, and she flung the stone into the bushes and took another.
The Wedding Drums Page 12
