Night Calypso

by Lawrence Scott

  Vincent noticed the nuns huddled under the dripping canvas roof of their launch. Theo and himself were soaked, but already drying off in the hot sun.

  ‘We well baptise,’ Jonah laughed.

  Jonah had won his race again. He and the boatman of the Maria Concepción promised each other another challenge.

  ‘You need to learn how to drive boat, man,’ Jonah boasted.

  While Jonah steered the pirogue deftly alongside the jetty, Vincent stretched out for one of the rubber tyres which were slung along the side to prevent the boats being scraped. He tried to see if he could glimpse Sister Thérèse. Bowed heads, wimples and veils sheltered her from his view, if she were there at all.

  ‘A safe delivery, Doc.’ Jonah steered the pirogue alongside the Saint Damian’s jetty.

  Vincent threw the mooring rope to the boy hanging over the edge, supporting a crutch under one arm, the other stretched out to take the rope from Vincent, and crying out, ‘Here, here Docta.’

  ‘Okay, Ti-Jean, take care.’ Vincent waved.

  Ti-Jean was always there, waiting with a group of the more able children who loved to come down to the jetty to meet the boats in the morning. They wore their ragged khaki pants, bare backed, or with torn merino jerseys, part of the jumble sent by a nuns’ charity from Sancta Trinidad. They showed their open sores. Vincent put his hand on Theo’s shoulder, wanting to protect him.

  Ti-Jean was ready to give his doctor a hand up onto the jetty. Having tied up the rope, he was standing on one crutch and waving the other dangerously. He was jealous of this role and would not allow his position to be usurped by any other boy, or for that matter, any girl on the children’s ward. He was fourteen, bursting with life, but handicapped by the disease. There was a bond between the boy and the doctor. It had to do with his stumps, his hands and his feet. Vincent was determined to save them by repeated bandaging, except for the first joints of the fingers and toes. Disease and injury had taken those before Vincent had arrived.

  Ti-Jean represented Vincent’s great hope for his other patients. It was the spirit which Father Dominic had seen in the doctor, and which made him decide that Theo would be better off at Saint Damian’s. ‘Come, Theo, hold on to me.’ Theo held fast. How was this going to work with the two boys?

  ‘Here, here, Docta, take it, take it.’ Ti-Jean’s art was to stick one of his crutches out as a helping arm while he dropped the other and held on with all his young life to the mooring rope knotted to one of the pylons on the jetty. He was the great trickster.

  ‘Thank you, Ti-Jean. What would I do without you, boy?’

  ‘Fall in the water.’ The idea always wreathed Ti-Jean’s face in smiles. His laughter coincided with the disapproval of Mother Superior who did not take the chivalrous crutch, but chose instead the arms and shoulders of two of her nursing sisters to hoist herself out of the launch onto the landing stage, then up the steps to the jetty.

  ‘Ti-Jean, you should be in line for school. Doctor, you encourage this boy,’ Mother Superior said censoriously.

  Ti-Jean lowered his eyes, and then smirked mischievously.

  ‘I do. I do, Mother. Look how well he is,’ Vincent protested.

  ‘You know what I mean. You know exactly.’

  ‘I do. I do, Mother.’

  ‘You are incorrigible. And who is this boy?’ She looked at Theo.

  ‘This is the boy that Father Dominic has sent to stay with us.’ Vincent put his hand on Theo’s shoulder. He was not sure what details Mother Superior had had.

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember. Well, I hope you have him in hand. Let’s hope he can teach Ti-Jean some discipline.’ The two boys eyed each other. ‘And we’ve got a meeting today, Doctor.’

  Ti-Jean was quickly saved from Mother Superior’s admonishments by Sister Thérèse. ‘I’ll see to him, Mother.’

  ‘Good morning, Sister.’ Vincent had not noticed Sister Thérèse on the launch in the confusion of disembarking and the sudden rain. ‘We’ve got an appointment this morning to take those stitches out.’ Vincent tilted his Panama hat and smiled at the young nun. He could seem a dashing figure in his white shirt, khaki pants, and his Panama, shading his dark brown hair and wide dark brown eyes.

  ‘Good morning, Doctor Metivier.’ Her dark eyes shone.

  ‘I hope Sister Luke has been keeping that wound clean and dressed. We don’t want tetanus or septicaemia spiriting you away. We must take the stitches out today.’

  Sister Thérèse looked at Mother Superior as if for permission to speak, and then answered. ‘Yes, Doctor, once I’ve seen to the children.’

  ‘Then you’ll see to me? I mean, I’ll see to you.’ Vincent liked to tease the young nursing sisters. He felt that this troubled nun needed some humour in her life. It was also a way for him to get along with the nursing nuns. The doctors always teased the nurses at University College, where he had been a houseman.

  This kind of banter got Vincent a severe, reprimanding stare from under Mother Superior’s eyes, while Sister Thérèse was tugged away by her sleeves into the procession of nursing sisters; she in turn, tugging Ti-Jean along.

  ‘Sister!’ Vincent called her back. ‘Theo, come, you go with Sister Thérèse and Ti-Jean. Is that okay, Sister?’ Theo was hesitant.

  ‘Come, Theo.’ Sister Thérèse put out her hand. ‘Let me show you our school.’ The boy relented, looking over his shoulder at Vincent for reassurance.

  ‘Go along, Theo. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘You not hear the trouble, Doc?’ Jonah stood by Vincent after tying up the pirogue. ‘You know Singh talking to the people. Singh think he is Uriah Butler. They say he walking barefoot all over the place. Like the Creole, Cipriani, he rousing the people.’ Jonah was alluding to the French Creole and the black labour leader, Butler, who had been imprisoned for inciting riots in thirty-seven down South, on Sancta Trinidad. The riot which had caught like a cane fire had not burned out. He knew that it still caught fire in the mind of Theo at night. It was also burning in the mind and heart of Krishna Singh, the pharmacist.

  Vincent made his way to Mother Superior’s office between the rows of huts which reminded him of the dilapidated barrack rooms on his family estate at Versailles. On the right of these, in a cluster, were some which Singh was asking to be made available for the married quarters. Mother Superior was resisting. Singh had taken it upon himself to represent the demands of the patients, or the people, as he called them.

  When Vincent entered Mother Superior’s office, Singh was already there and in full flow. ‘Mother Superior, you can’t have people living in these hovels, these barrack rooms. You can’t have men living away from their women. These people are people, you know.’ Vincent let Singh talk. He was saving his powder for later.

  He watched Mother Superior’s eyebrows arch as Singh went on. She began with, ‘Mr Singh,’ in that sardonic tone. ‘I’m running a hospital and a convent. You seem to be starting a revolution.’

  He came back at her. ‘Mother Superior, I with the people and we asking for some basic human rights.’

  ‘Mr Singh, we’re talking about poor, ignorant people who have an incurable disease!’

  ‘Where we agree is that they poor. Where we differ is that they are ignorant and incurable.’

  He would not leave it alone. Vincent found himself an unlikely, momentary, mediator.

  Singh was pressing for change. Vincent wanted it too, but done differently. ‘Use your scalpel, Doctor. Is an operation we need here.’

  ‘That’s not the only remedy a doctor has at his disposal,’ Vincent answered. ‘With many of my patients disintegrating before my eyes, the lancing of wounds is the last thought on my mind. It is more a question of education in hygiene, awareness of their conditions and the truth about their disease.’

  ‘Doctor Metivier, I agree. We’re just putting it differently. But as the pharmacist here, I’m frustrated by how few drugs we’ve got at our disposal to administer.’

  ‘I agree with that. We‘ve go
t to press the authorities for this.’ Singh was schooled in the politics of protest and struggle. He had noticed. He had come from the labour riots in the cane fields. He had had his education at the university of hunger as he called it.

  ‘Gentlemen. We don’t have the drugs. But what we’ve got is prayer and faith,’ Mother Superior interjected.

  ‘Prayer and Chaulmoogra oil. Dr Escalier’s way.’ Vincent was never too sure that his new appointment had met with Mother Superior’s approval. He was appointed by the government, she by the church. This was an old battle. She had been very fond of his predecessor, the old Frenchman, who had retired and wanted to return to France before the outbreak of the threatened war, to be with his family. He had been a firm believer in the repeated injections of Chaulmoogra Oil.

  As Singh and Vincent left Mother Superior with tempers boiling, she interrupted their departure. ‘Doctor Metivier.’ Singh left the room. ‘Remember your vocation, Doctor.’

  ‘I’ve not heard any call, Mother. I’m motivated by justice and wanting to heal patients, rather than faith in God.’

  ‘Well Doctor, that’s what you call it. But I know that it must be God that has called you here or else you would fail.’

  ‘Krishna, Hanuman the monkey, which one? Which pantheon are you using? Is it your Triune god? Or is it the prophet Mohammed’s Allah?’ He could not help it sometimes, provoking Mother Superior. ‘Are you talking about Shango?’

  At this she fumed. She might as well know his true colours. There was no arguing. Why get into these discussions? Vincent thought. She might have the power to get rid of him.

  ‘Which drums should I listen to? Those that beat for Legba, the Prophet Mohammed or the Messiah?’

  ‘Doctor, you run the risk of blaspheming. And you know I would not be paying any attention to drums. You shouldn’t encourage these people in their superstitions.’

  ‘You can only blaspheme if you are a believer, Mother. Superstitions? Me? Encourage? Who is more superstitious? The drums at least have some life in them. You can’t live on El Caracol and ignore the drums.’

  ‘You think intellectualism will save you. You’re a young man. You’ll learn. You’ll see, one day you’ll reach the end of your endeavours, and there’ll be someone else you’ll have to call on.’

  ‘When I reach the end of what I know, Mother, I’ll say I don’t know. I’ll wait. I’ll wait. I’ll search. I’ll research, and I’ll keep observing.’

  ‘Wait for whom, for what? Search for whom, for what?’

  ‘Facts. Knowledge. And there is beauty.’ Vincent looked to the hills and then over the sea, stretching out his hand.

  ‘A poet as well, I see, Doctor?’

  They always agreed to differ. But he heard her sigh and bemoan the fact that she had lost Dr Escalier.

  Singh was waiting outside. ‘We want you on our side,’ he said to Vincent as they walked down from the verandah.

  ‘I’m always on the side of my patients.’

  ‘On the side of the people?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I know you is a doctor. But…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘And is up in Gran Couva you come from? Versailles, big cocoa estate? All you French creole! We know all you, you know.’ He turned away.

  ‘Singh, don’t turn from me like that. I know what you mean. But you’re going to have to trust what I do, even if you don’t like what I sometimes say. And you’re going to have to mistrust appearances. I am who I am. But what do you see?’

  Singh turned back and smiled. ‘Okay, Doctor.’

  From the verandah, Vincent watched the light play with the trees, with the water and with the sky above. In the shimmer, the separateness of everything was diminished. Returning, after his seven years of training in England, had given him a transfigured vision of the place, the land and its history. Its hope was in this mingling of people, a shocking idea for some, he knew; as the trade unions pressed for their rights and the old planter class and the new import-export businesses resisted. He would have faith in the people and in the endurance of the place. Yes he did believe in the people.

  Each day was like he had arrived yesterday. ‘This is beauty, boy!’ He turned towards Singh. ‘Just ordinary beauty.’

  ‘What you say, Doctor?’

  ‘Ordinary beauty!’

  ‘We place.’

  ‘I think it should be.’ There was pride in Singh’s voice which delivered his words with the timbre of a labour leader.

  Coolies in the sugar and niggers in the oilfields. Vincent heard Theo’s voice, ringing the bitterness out of Mister’s words in his night calypso. The child was reading the time.

  Parrots, in pairs, screamed low across the sky above them, splashes of green; minnowing shadows skimming over the surface of the sea, hysterical.

  ‘Docta?’ Ti-Jean had escaped again from the nuns and the classroom and was tugging at Vincent’s arm, while balancing on his crutches. ‘You daydreaming again!’

  ‘Just the man I want. Let’s make our rounds. Where’s Sister Thérèse and Theo? I need them too.’

  ‘Them in the school. How old he is, Doc? He quiet quiet. But he could read. He could read pappy! He read from the Royal Reader to all the children. But I know that story already so I come to look for you.’

  Vincent winked at Sister Thérèse as she joined them. She had a soft spot for Ti-Jean as well. Theo had elected to stay in the classroom. Sister Rita had chosen him as her assistant. He was reading and doing sums with the small ones.

  ‘First, I want to see the patients who came in recently on the boat from Porta España. That girl, Christiana. Did you notice any bad cases?’ Then he remembered that Sister Thérèse had not been at the hospital for the last week.

  ‘When they meet you, Ti-Jean, they know that there is hope. I want you to organise a football match in recess. And I want the teams mixed. No more of that bad cases in one team, good cases in another. Let the girls play too if they want. I know Monica will take on any of you fellas. Ask Theo to play and Christiana, the new girl.’

  ‘He could play football? He quiet quiet!’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to see.’

  They began their rounds in the infants’ ward. Ti-Jean and his irrepressible talk and humour kept everyone amused and distracted from the horrors which were the inevitable object of the doctor’s rounds.

  ‘So, spirits high today! But first let me see your wounds. Are they healing? Ti-Jean, what’s this sore? And this on your toe. Come, come! How can I take you onto the ward as an example of how the others must look after themselves, if you let me down. Sister, come, let’s get this boy cleaned up.’

  ‘I sorry Docta. I don’t know how this happen. I sorry, Docta.’

  ‘We’ll have you cleaned up in a jiffy. Don’t say sorry. Say, I’m going to be more vigilant.’

  Sister Thérèse watched Vincent at each bedside, his hands always reaching out to the children. These were the ones who moved her the most, and he was particularly good with children. ‘Touch.’ He had taught her that. ‘You must touch your patients, not only professionally, but as a friend. And these little ones, pick them up, hug them, caress them.’ She knew that his advice was not Mother Superior’s which spoke of decorum. She was of the school of thought who believed, despite the evidence, that infection was easy. She believed in quarantines. Vincent’s new regime meant increasingly open nursing and proper education in hygiene. ‘We have to understand this disease. We don’t believe in Medieval plagues.’ He spoke like her father, Sister Thérèse thought, both as a doctor and as the free-thinking Communist her father was. Both he and her mother had joined the party.

  Even with the windows open to the sea breeze, there was that pervasive smell of rotting flesh mixed with the smell of Chaulmoogra Oil when they peeled off the used bandages. Sister Thérèse was at hand with new dressings, the lint falling through her fingers.

  ‘I want all these wounds dressed today. We must have fresh dressings everyd
ay. I insist. Even if it means they have no cotton bed sheets left in Sancta Trinidad to sleep on. Strip them and tear them into bandages.’

  Vincent turned to Ti-Jean, took him by the shoulder. ‘Stand straight, boy.’ He smiled at Ti-Jean. They alone knew that they had just got him ship-shape for this exhibition. ‘This boy is not a miracle,’ Vincent announced. ‘He’s a trickster, yes. Stand straight boy. But no miracle.’ Ti-Jean was giggling, trying to balance straight, playing tricks with his crutches like a performer in a circus. He was enjoying the attention and the prominence on the ward.

  ‘There are no miracles here. Only common sense and hygiene. Medicine is reason and science. Keep your bandages on. Watch yourselves as you move about. Watch for rats!’ The small children screamed. Rats were an endemic problem in the night, nibbling toes and fingers. ‘You must divide up the time to keep watch at night. Those who spot a rat and chase it off get a penny from me.’ Vincent continued down the ward on his rounds, giving instructions, examining, making the children smile and laugh. He was speaking to the staff more than to the children. He believed in the repeated insistence of his theories which he was developing. ‘You may think you have been trained. Well, you have to retrain.’

  ‘And love, Docta. You know is love too.’ One of the old ward assistants was mopping down the floors between the beds. She had lived her entire life on El Caracol.

  ‘Yes, Ma Rosie, there’s love. Yes, sweetheart.’ She beamed. He bent and kissed her on the cheek. She beamed again.

  ‘Is faith that heal me,’ she proclaimed to the ward.

  ‘Don’t believe a word,’ Vincent echoed, ‘Hygiene and common sense. But, have your faith as well, Ma Rosie, if it makes you look after your sores and wounds. Have your faith.’

  ‘Thank you, Docta.’ Ma Rosie beamed again. ‘Is love, I mean.’

  ‘And what about the prayers the chaplain does say with we?’ Sybil Goodridge, who had been at El Caracol since she was a baby, declared. She was one of Mother Superior’s spies, Vincent calculated.

  ‘If prayers help, pray. But don’t forget what Dr. Metivier tells you.’