by Shani Mootoo
The following morning, when I pressed the doctor to explain why there was no improvement, but rather, why there was an obvious decline—for Sydney now had countless tubes and monitors attached to him, and his breathing was aided with oxygen—he urged me to have patience. The pneumonia was not recent. It had set in for some time now. The medications, the antibiotics, required time. The oxygen, he assured me, was being administered only as a precaution. The doctor insisted again that Sydney was a stubborn fellow, that Sydney wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. Never before had I experienced such a sobering apprehension of my own impotence.
Those of us who loved Sydney were no longer in a temporal eddy. It had become clear to Rosita, Lancelot and me, even if the doctors would not say so, that time was running out. Rosita and Lancelot joined me and kept watch. I stood at Sydney’s side, afraid now to turn away for even a second. I wiped his forehead with the thin washcloth, not because it needed wiping, but because that was all there was to do.
Towards the end, as he breathed shallowly into the oxygen mask, he seemed like a stranger to me, neither Sid nor Sydney. But still there were moments when it was as if curtains parted and revealed my beloved Sid in the bed, aged, but as she would have been had she never taken those hormones. Then the curtains would shut again and the face would become not Sid’s, not Sydney’s, but that of a stranger.
There is nothing more difficult than standing in a room doing nothing. We were simply there. That is all. Rosita, Lancelot and I. We were there, an arm’s length away from Sydney, a touch away, and we could do nothing. I was not even “waiting.” I was just present, and for some time I marvelled at the horror of our human powerlessness to effect change. I had always taken it for granted that being present was the same as being at the ready, as having agency. But, there I was, present yet impotent.
A memory eventually came to me, a gift really, for it lifted me out of the miasma of the present. A smile broke on my face, and I saw how closely related are smiling and crying. When I was a child, Sid used to say to me, “Yes, Jonathan, but how do we feel about it?” The use of the plural came about after Sid was chided by my mother—we the English, she’d said, do not admire indulgences—and I was corralled into a conspiracy of good-humoured mockery. When India was not in her study writing, she watched and listened to Sid and me with narrowed eyes and pouted lips. Sid would stretch out the ee in the word feel, and I would laugh at the way she did this. “How do we fee-eel?” I was old enough to detect some play in the use of the “we” even if I didn’t fully understand what was being played at, but I was too young to incorporate it into my own answer, so I used the singular “I.” I would concentrate at length, aware that I was being asked not only to have a feeling but to express it in words. Because it was Sid who was asking this of me, I wanted to be as honest and as clear and as creative as possible. I took the task very seriously. Sid sat for as long as it took, staring into my eyes. I looked back into hers, and saw her expectation and pleasure. I pondered how I felt, and found words and phrases and accurate explanations that surprised Sid and delighted me. I knew I had to begin my answer with I feel, and so, imitating and elaborating on Sid’s imaginative excesses, I once said, I feel as if there is a big blue sky in my heart, and in the sky in my heart, even though it is daytime, there is a meteorite shower, and the shower is shaped like a bouquet of flowers, and it’s exploding in every colour that exists in the world. Sid went scrambling for a pen and a piece of paper. She wrote down what I’d said and pinned it with a magnet to the fridge door. To this day I clearly remember that particular image I had concocted to describe my happiness. Later, I overheard India say, “What are you trying to do to Jonathan, Sid? You’re too indulgent with the child. He should learn that to yield too readily is not something we do or admire.” Now, so many years later, it occurs to me that my mother might not have been the disciplining parent I thought her to be then; perhaps she was nervous about, or simply jealous of, the closeness and playfulness between Sid and me.
At the end, Sydney had the presence of mind to ask that his oxygen mask be moved aside. His breaths came shallow and quick. I was holding his hand when he half opened his eyes and looked at me. He whispered, one slow word at a time, that when I was a child my hair was as yellow as corn. Some minutes passed before he spoke again. “It’s so dark now,” he said, and I assumed he meant that the room had become dark, which I knew was the sort of thing that people are said to experience when the end is near. But he followed that with, “It’s like your mother’s. Dark like hers.” This was, finally, all that I had ever wanted from him. I felt small, self-centred, upset that it had come so late and deeply grateful all at once. He shut his eyes again, and what seemed like several minutes passed before he looked at me and uttered, “You look just like India.” He squeezed my hand and said, “You didn’t take after me one bit, did you, Jonathan?” It wasn’t a question. There was a sort-of smile on his face. I heard myself plead that I did. He sighed and closed his eyes. He seemed to sleep then.
About half an hour later, he opened his eyes and again looked directly at me, urgently, and then he spoke what would be his last words. I saw in his eyes the panic, and heard it, too, in his voice, when he said, “Zain, Zain.” I stroked and patted his hand. I think he relaxed. It soon became clear that he would not awaken again. Rosita and Lancelot were asked to wait outside the room by the nurses, who were now present all the time. I was allowed to stay at Sydney’s side. I found myself whispering, shamelessly pleading like a desperate child or a forsaken lover, “Please don’t go just yet, Sid. Sydney, hang on just a little longer, please.”
I brought my lips to his ears and brushed them against his skin as they formed the words, without sound: Sid, I want to say it plainly: Not a day has passed when I didn’t think of you as one of my two mothers. My love for you has never faded.
But I betrayed myself in that moment. For even as I felt an unfathomable love for Sydney, I felt the hurt rise again, that old hurt of having figured so little in the stories he had recently told me, and the new hurt of there being no chance of that changing now.
At the official pronouncement of Sydney’s death, I cursed the wall of irreversible time and my own stunning ineffectualness. I was left with his body in his room—I don’t know for how long—and I indulged myself in all the feelings for which India, my other mother, would have had little patience. I went to the window and pressed my aching forehead against the glass. While the driver of a car in the parking lot below tried and tried again to reverse out of the space in which he was caught, I thought about how this was India’s loss too. And then I had an out-of-place and out-of-time realization, entirely irrelevant. Yet tears fell down my face because of it, and I went and stood at the foot of the bed in which Sydney lay. I wrapped my hand around Sydney’s blanket-covered foot and watched him from there, doused in regret that he, that she, would never see my mother’s family’s house in Marrakesh. In that moment, it seemed that this irrelevant loss was the most important and regrettable thing.
In a flash I recalled being on our rooftop terrace in Marrakesh. It was just after sunset. On one side of the city the sky was a dark, luminous blue, and on the other it was the colour and sheen of a golden hued pearl. The call to prayer had ended a quarter of an hour ago, but hung in the air still. I leaned on the surrounding wall and watched the cobbled street below. Having cleared during the call, it was coming alive again with men and women and children. I recalled, too, the sense I used to have when I was up there of India’s presence on the far side of the terrace that wrapped around the courtyard below. I would stand where she couldn’t see me, look out and wish that Sid was there with us. I used to think that Sid would understand the people down on the street, that she might even be able to speak with them in their language, that she would have made friends with them.
All of this came in a moment, and along with the regret that Sydney had never seen that house in Marrakesh I felt, inexplicably, a strong remorse, as if this were my fault. And ye
t, neither India nor I had been to Morocco, to that house, in more than three decades. I hardly ever think of that house anymore, and when I do, I imagine it taken over by the caretaker’s family or occupied by squatters. It was that absurd anachronistic regret which brought home the fact that Sid and Sydney were gone for good.
In my pants pocket was Sydney’s bayrah. A nurse had taken it off his wrist on his arrival and handed it to me. Now I squeezed the circle of heavy gold with all my strength. We had intuited, Rosita, Lancelot and I, that this would come to pass, but I saw that, even so, death is untimely, and in the very moment one is inevitably unprepared.
It wasn’t the diabetes or his weakened heart that had killed him, the doctor told me. It wasn’t the years of injecting his body with low levels of testosterone. It was simply the pneumonia which had gone undetected for too long. Who had not detected it, I asked, my voice low in volume, but raised in pitch by at least a fifth, betraying my astonishment and disbelief. I broke the silence that followed by saying, “I thought you said that Sydney was strong, I thought you said that he was stubborn.” The doctor said nothing. I persisted. “Is this just the kind of thing you always say?”
“It happens,” the young doctor with the heavy-rimmed glasses explained wearily and turned away. No one was to blame.
PART TWO
5
One could walk a straight line from the house to the spot by the retaining wall where I used to park Sydney in his wheelchair. How awkward this past tense, and how strange that one so quickly takes it on. But I meandered, delaying my arrival. Once there, I circled it. From our spot—did I imagine this?—came a hint of the cedar and lavender hair oil Sydney used to use. He and I used to spend countless hours sitting there. In the early hours of morning we would watch the pale yolk of sun breach the faint east-coast horizon and the ensuing spectacle of rapidly unfurling sky over the breadth of the island. Sydney used to point in the direction of the southwestern end and the names of villages down that way would dance like mercury on his tongue: Los Gallos, Icacos, Bonasse, Fullarton. If he was on the patio and I in my room, and some drama of sky and sea were unfolding, he would call for me to come and watch with him. In the evenings, if it was particularly clear, we would face the other side of the island and wait to see the sun, like a maraschino cherry, plunge behind and silhouette the Peninsula de Paria that defines the neighbouring Venezuelan coastline. And it was here, the ever-changing spectacle of land, sea and sky as backdrop, where Sydney used to painstakingly relate his stories to me.
Today, there was no such spectacle. Rosita brought me a cup of coffee and then presented a large brown envelope. My name, Jonathan Lewis-Adey, was scrawled across it. Sydney had months before entrusted Rosita with the task of locating the envelope, if and when this particular moment should come to pass, from a drawer in the desk in his room and delivering it into my hands. The envelope was a repository for two others, one of which, a fat one, was addressed again to me. Inside, among other documents, was a letter. My dearest Jonathan, it began.
My heart beat faster. I expected this greeting would be followed by an acknowledgement of the original relationship between us, or of the newer one that had begun when I first started visiting Sydney here in Trinidad nine years ago. But the words were simple and straightforward and, save for the superlative in the greeting and the line immediately following—I am sure that, of all people, I can count on you in particular to look after my business—the letter was without sentiment.
Sydney wasted no time addressing the details of his “business.” I was to first inform Gita, his sister, of his passing. There were phone numbers for her and for her husband, and for Pundit Brahmanandam Rao, who would officiate at the funeral. Pundit Rao, the letter said, would instruct me in organizing the ceremony’s details. Sydney had already made his arrangements with a funeral home, whose director would procure the death certificate and the other necessary legal papers. His funeral had been paid for—there was a receipt (attached to another enclosed set of papers) dated six months earlier—but its details were to be worked out by the pundit and me. I had only to stick to the budget, Sydney advised in the letter, not because there was no more money than he had paid, but because further expense was unnecessary. Then came the names of the pallbearers. I was not, I noticed, to be one of them. There were numbers beside their names. They had not been asked yet, naturally. That would be one of my forthcoming duties. Sydney had even gone so far as to draft the copy for his obituary that was to be printed in the newspaper.
Mahale, Sydney. 1950—. Foster parent to Jonathan Lewis-Adey of Toronto, Canada. Parents: the late Dr. Amresh Mahale and the late Mrs. Sita Mahale. Sibling to Gita Patil, in-law of Jaan Patil. Employer of Rosita Debisingh of Mathura, Lancelot Mitchell of Diego Martin, Sankar Dass of Princess Town. Ceremony at home, 21 Hibiscus Drive, Seaview Lots, Scenery Hills, to be followed by cremation at the Caroni River, —. In lieu of flowers please support the Priority Fund at the Trinidad and Tobago Baphomet Private Health Clinic.
I had only to fill in the relevant dates and time. I was instructed to open the other attached papers and did so. Among them was a handwritten will, witnessed by Kareen Akal Sharma, a name that meant nothing to me, notarized and dated only a few months previously. I scanned it quickly. It was a simple will, with several mentions of my name, and as far as my limited experience with such matters allowed me to discern, it appeared that I was to take the larger share of his estate, which included, besides the house and financial investments, a number of notebooks in which, he wrote, he had jotted down bits and pieces about his life and which I had full permission to read and to use in whatever way I saw fit. Gita’s son, Devin, along with Rosita, Lancelot and Sankar, Kareen Akal Sharma and the Priority Fund at the T and T Baphomet Private Health Clinic were left smaller sums of money.
It is a strange honour to be the beneficiary of anything, particularly at the expense of the life of a person you love. I swung between feeling considered, remembered and, dare I say, loved and overcome by shame. This was, I suppose, the price one paid to be the inheritor of another’s life. There was a key to a safety deposit box in that envelope too. The smaller second envelope, which I did not open, was addressed to a Mrs. Ula Morgan, under whose name was the full address of a bank in Diego Martin. Sydney’s letter dictated that I was to present myself, with appropriate identification, to Mrs. Morgan at the bank. She was expecting me.
I paused to wonder when this package that included Sydney’s will and his letters had been prepared, and for how long Mrs. Ula Morgan had been expecting me. Although I had fulfilled Sydney’s expectation that I would come when called, I felt an unnecessary terror that this had happened only by chance, for had it not been for Lancelot’s manner on the telephone, had it not been for my correct reading of his unconscious formality, I might just as easily have second-guessed him and waited a little longer before incurring the trouble and expense of a short-notice flight.
Although I had been directed by Sydney to immediately call and inform his sister, it was my mother, India, I called first. I was surprised by her attentiveness. She asked for details about the three days in the hospital and the upcoming funeral. When I told her that responsibilities for the arrangements were falling on me, I recognized her pensiveness and worry in the silence that followed. She asked if I needed her. I was moved, even as a small recalcitrant part of me felt that she might have assumed rather than asked. So I said that while I was able to handle the situation on my own, perhaps she might want to come to the funeral for Sydney’s sake. There was a pause. Then she replied that he would not have expected it, and besides, Graham—her common-law husband of some twenty-odd years—had not been well lately and she would not feel comfortable leaving him. We exchanged a few polite words before saying goodbye. Some minutes after the call ended, I felt a twinge of regret that I had neglected to ask what was ailing Graham, but I consoled myself that had it been serious she would have told me.
I dreaded the telephone call to Gita. Sydney
had lamented that he and Gita were in touch with each other only because he took it upon himself to make short monthly telephone calls. I had a brief reprieve when my call was received by Gita’s housekeeper, who revealed that the family was in England to take care of arrangements for their son Devin’s first year in university. The housekeeper promised to waste no time in contacting them to tell them of Mr. Sydney’s passing.
Some hours later, Gita telephoned. As I fumbled in my explanation of who I was, she interrupted: “Yes, yes. I know who you are. You were a child when you came with your mother to Trinidad.” She made no further attempt at familiarity. She said flatly but politely that as unfortunate as it was, there was no point to her or Jaan returning for the funeral, as they would have to make the trip back to England again immediately. They had not finished all they were doing for Devin there. The phone call ended abruptly, unsatisfactorily.
I was in such a state that the smallest thing could have caused me to brood, and this was not a small thing. But I had to bear up and carry on. Responsibilities, ones that my life until then had not prepared me to handle, loomed. I had never before attended a funeral, yet I was suddenly responsible for organizing one. The pundit Sydney had retained assured me on the telephone that he would meet with me the next day and guide me every step of the way, and that it would all be quite simple. All six pallbearers responded to Sydney’s request as if it were an invitation of the highest honour. I consoled myself that perhaps I had not been afforded the same honour because I needed to take charge of the general arrangements, and perhaps that was an honour in itself.
