Night Calypso

by Lawrence Scott

  As Madeleine lay back on the bunk, Vincent found the bottom of her skirts, and felt the surprising down on her legs, as if she were a young boy. Her girdle, with the black rosary beads, clattered to the floor of the cabin. The noise startled them, the beads slid along the floor.

  Further up, under her skirts, his fingers recognised that soft mound above her cunt. The word came to his mind, like it did, when he talked with schoolboys about girls. It became a tender word.

  Madeleine raised herself with her ams about his neck to find his mouth. They missed at first, and then found each other’s lips. As Vincent’s fingers searched, he heard the word hymen in his doctor’s mind. Madeleine moaned. His fingers searched for another spot. She cried out when he touched it.

  So quickly, they were now here, transported to the small dark cabin beneath the almond trees. Madeleine could hardly recognise what she was doing. Her heart pounded. Her lips trembled.

  Sophie-Marie had told her not to let Marcel press his legs against her, tip her school hat off her face, when they were standing by the convent wall, put his tongue into her mouth, the fast river just beneath them. She was losing herself, losing herself in her mind.

  ‘Hold me,’ she whispered. ‘Hold me.’

  She had felt Marcel’s everlasting sling-shot in his pocket. She and Sophie-Marie giggled when she told her. She had not thought of Marcel like this for a long time. Marcel, what would he be doing as the German armies threatened France? Laying his traps for rabbits, stoning them with his sling-shot? Now, he must have a rifle.

  ‘Vincent.’ She was undressing him.

  ‘Madeleine.’

  They felt their nakedness, as they pulled at buttons and straps.

  It had begun raining again. The tide swelled beneath the boat. They felt that the moorings would break. The wind raced along the sides of the boathouse. The sides buckled.

  ‘What time is it?’ Madeleine asked suddenly.

  Vincent lifted his father’s pocket watch from his pants pocket. ‘Just before midnight.’

  ‘The storm has been raging for hours,’ Madeleine reflected.

  ‘Most unusual for this time of the year. My mother always says that the worse rains come up from the west, up from the Orinoco delta.’ Their conversation saved them from their own storm.

  They were now sitting up in each other’s arms. Their first nervous, passion had subsided. They were in various stages of undressing; his shoes, Madeleine’s sandals, his socks, her rosary beads and scapular were crumpled and scattered on the narrow strip of floor between the bunks.

  Accustomed to the darkness, he found her face. She looked more Jewish like this. Was that his imagination? What was it, to look Jewish? She must have just had her hair shorn. It felt like his shaving brush, when he ran his hand over her neat head and drew her close to rest on his chest.

  From her bare shoulders, hung a cotton shift. He had not allowed himself to look at her breasts. She covered herself again now.

  When he had first seen her in the infirmary at the convent in a similar shift, lying in bed, his hands had moved like a doctor’s, his fingers pressed with diagnostic sensitivity. Now, they lifted the light cotton to hold her breasts in the palm of his hands. She did not resist. He could feel her body go taut, and then gradually relax, trembling in his arms. He pressed his mouth against her nipples and sucked, feeling like the young boy who had first done that when first in love. She cried out with pleasure.

  The past filtered in like an intrusive pornography. Odetta, Simone.

  Madeleine held his head in her hands and moaned, kissing the whorls of his ears with her warm lips and her wet tongue. Shy, she nuzzled, and then explored with her fingers and tongue, her hands and legs, her whole body slipping and moving beneath and above him. How did she know where to go? He led her and then she discovered her own way to pleasure him.

  They were rocked by the sea. They almost fell off the bunk. It sounded like everything was crashing down around them outside. Their hideaway seemed even more necessary, an apt refuge.

  There was no other place at this moment. There was no past, no future, only this moment. This would not last. They pressed each other further and further.

  Their lips and cheeks were bruised. Their bodies ached where they had hurt them against each other, against the hard constraints of their love bed.

  It would only be when they were alone, in another place, that they would inspect the scratches and bruises which they had not felt. They had been anaesthetised by the pleasure searing through their bodies in the darkness.

  They were not who they were. Decorum slipped away.

  They lay sweating and naked against each other.

  How would their lives ever be the same again?

  They forgot to think. Now, only taste, and smell. The darkness became their natural element. Their fingers read a braille of moles, rough and smooth skin, down and bristle.

  Once more, Vincent climbed up, to enter Madeleine, and she pulled him into her, so that they might each steal, once more, from each other, what they had come here for, before they would have to scramble up the debris on the floor, find their old selves, the masks of their old selves, for a world they could not imagine they had ever inhabited differently from this one. Not that they thought of that in this last instant which lasted an eternity, and then was over in a flash.

  Their cries reached a pitch, which was part of all the noise the firmament unleashed this night; this night of the strange and unexpected hurricane.

  They suddenly drew up against each other in consternation. Waking as from a dream. They thought they had heard footsteps outside, but it was the almonds falling. Hidden between walls, they held on to what the world would call forbidden.

  Vincent’s mind ran to the house, through the sorrel bushes, to Theo, the boy, his responsibility; to Jonah, his pardner. How would he explain this?

  Thérèse was waking in the convent with her fellow sisters for Matins. Deus in adutorium meum intende, Domine, ad aduvandum me, festina. Make haste, O Lord to help me! Make haste!

  Their fingers were now expert at finding things in the dark, as they dressed themselves, eager not to leave any incriminating evidence of their presence, as they each silently began to reflect, too soon, upon the possible repercussions of their deeds that night.

  The foreday morning light filtered through the shady branches of the almond trees. A strange peace welcomed them back into the ordinary world outside the boathouse. The salt air was fresh. The earth was renewed. The sea was unmuffled. The palms sang soft psalms.

  But, as they climbed the track again, alongside the sorrel bushes, they began to see the devastation that the storm had wrought. The sea, through the bushes, was churned up with a muddy silt, the colour of cocoa. They hurried along the donkey track, having to crawl under uprooted trees and torn off branches.

  As they reached the path to the upper terraces, they began to see what had occurred in the night while they were hidden in the cabin of the launch in the boathouse. Red-dirt water poured off the hillsides. Landslides had taken with them a number of the huts which lay dilapidated on their sides, their galvanise roofs peeled off by the wind. Patients covered in crocus bags, picked their way through the ruins of their homes for their few belongings which had not been made useless by the rain and the wind.

  Vincent and Thérèse stood together, looking down on Saint Damian’s.

  ‘Hurucan,’ Vincent pronounced.

  ‘Hurucan?’

  ‘A local god.’

  ‘Hurucan, hurricane. Was it a hurricane?’ Thérèse asked.

  ‘Something as strong as.’

  ‘Mon Dieu!’

  ‘I hate to think what more we shall find.’

  They gradually separated, assembling their official roles, as nurse and doctor, making their way down to the hospital, calling in on still standing huts, and helping patients in the broken-down ones, to retrieve their lives. They knew that they had a duty to do this, but they also knew that they had to look
as if this was why they were here in the early morning, why they looked the way they did with wet clothes streaked with mud, shoes and sandals caked with debris.

  The sisters from the convent would not be arriving for another two hours. Vincent and Thérèse had not agreed on a story, except that she remembered his first idea when they were leaving the clinic. They would pretend that they had gone up to the top huts; that they needed to go to see Theo.

  Vincent met Mother Superior on his rounds. The children’s ward was spared. ‘Who would wish to harm these mites?’ she said, inferring maybe, that there were others who deserved the destruction, and that the hurricane was an instrument of a vengeful God.

  ‘Do you think some of us might’ve deserved destruction? Of all the places to choose?’ Vincent inquired.

  ‘Well, you know, Doctor, it must be more than coincidence. Have you noticed that it’s the new married quarters which bore the brunt of the attack.’

  ‘The attack, Mother? Who exactly is attacking whom and for what reason? Nature simply manifests itself for perfectly natural, though not immediately known reasons.’

  ‘Well the reason is plain enough, Doctor. But it’s a manner of speaking, as it were.’

  Vincent’s patience was failing him. All things were part of her God’s mysterious plan, even to have picked out those huts, the married quarters, on the middle terrace, for particular destruction. They had been part of Mother Superior’s reluctant policy after the murder of Michael Johnson, and the drowning of Sonny Lal. Indeed, Vincent had heard the name of the policeman more than once on the lips of quite a few this morning.

  ‘You see, Doctor, people can’t do what they like and get away with it.’

  Why not? He was hoping to get away with something himself. He hoped Thérèse would get away as well. There had not been time to really worry about what had taken place, and what they would do now. Even dealing with the peculiarities of Mother Superior’s invisible God seemed an easier proposition.

  At least Hurucan was plainly visible.

  Ti-Jean beamed when Vincent entered the children’s ward, happy to see him after the terrifying night, though he would not want to admit that he had been frightened, imprisoned on the ward for days. His wound was worse. The boy was weak. But it was Vincent’s habit to encourage. ‘You’ll soon be out and about, old man.’ Vincent put the last touches to his new dressing. ‘That football team is missing their coach.’

  Vincent was just finishing the first cigarette that he had had a chance to smoke that day, when Mother Superior was at his elbow again; not with some piece of her macabre theology, but indicating that they were bringing a body down from the married quarters. ‘I hear the women in the kitchen saying that it’s Mr Cardinez. His wife,’ Mother Superior cleared her throat, ‘his common-law wife, they say, is safe, but beside herself with grief.’

  Vincent could not resist it. ‘It seems that this precision attack, Mother, to separate out the common-law marriages from the religious, is ingenious.’

  Mother Superior seemed not have got the ironic point, and was already down in the yard off the verandah, where they were laying out the body on the ground, so that the doctor could come and see. Vincent indicated that they should take the body to the small room which served as a mortuary behind the pharmacy.

  Mrs Cardinez eventually arrived. She and her husband had both had remission for sometime. If only there were the Sulfa drugs, they might have regained their own look. While Mrs Cardinez wailed, Vincent could see in her eyes, and in the eyes of the women who accompanied her, in their keening, that they too subscribed to the theology of the mysterious plan, though he was sure that they had not a jot of a thought that Mr Cardinez deserved this punishment.

  A beam had fallen across his chest. Those who came to help when Mrs Cardinez called did not have any fingers, and hardly any hands to lift off the heavy weight.

  ‘You would think that the unemployment on Sancta Trinidad could solve this problem,’ Singh argued, looking at the devastation.

  ‘The authorities do not see it that way. Anyway, too many people scared to work at Saint Damian’s. By the way,’ Vincent looked directly at Singh, ‘were you all right in your quarters during the storm?’

  ‘How you mean? Yea, yea. A few leaks nothing serious.’

  ‘Good. I saw you running across the yard in the lull.’

  ‘You saw me?’

  ‘Yes, with that young girl? Your student, Christiana?’

  ‘Oh, yea, we get trap in the pharmacy.’

  ‘Late lessons?’

  ‘She keen to study. But where were you? I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Trying to get back to Theo.’

  ‘Working late? H’mm. I thought I saw Sister Thérèse was staying over.’

  Vincent looked embarrassed.

  The two men circled each other with their suspicion and innuendo.

  Vincent and Thérèse found themselves standing on the jetty, waiting for the respective ferries. He looked at her all veiled again and pinned up. Cocooned. He could still smell her.

  They chatted about their work. The pharmacy had not suffered any damage. The papers containing their research from the day before were safe. She was flushed. They kept looking at each other as they talked about their work. Their eyes spoke the conversation of the boathouse. Their hands touched, their fingers entwined, as they both took the rope thrown by Jonah to tie up the pirogue alongside the jetty. They did not want to let go.

  Theo was in the pirogue. Vincent was relieved to see him safe and well. How could he have doubted Jonah’s care?

  ‘Tomorrow, Sister.’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ Then she boarded the Maria Concepción.

  She did not turn back to wave. Vincent watched her figure diminishing, as they reached the halfway mark between Saint Damian’s and Embarcadère Corbeaux. The convent stood, resplendently white in the afternoon sun on the cliffs above La Chapelle Bay, awaiting her arrival, reclaiming her. When she did turn to look back, the figure of Vincent had disappeared.

  By the end of July, they were back at their jobs, trying to revive their research on hands. Hands, all he had were hands and her face. She was the veiled nun again.

  Vincent felt doomed. He was going to father another child, he was sure, who would be taken from him. He had begun to think about Odetta. Where was she? He had been looking for changes in Thérèse, but noticed nothing which might alarm him or her sister nuns.

  A ray of hope had been lit for Thérèse, by a letter which had arrived mysteriously via a sister house in Montreal. A sister at Notre Dame du Lac had a brother with the Free French in London. The mail came down on the convoys after many delays. Her father’s letters had ceased, once the occupation of France had taken place. Thérèse conveyed the news to Vincent, barely being able to contain herself. ‘Look at this news.’ He could never get her away from the fears for her father.

  Mother Superior read the letters out in the Chapter House before Compline. There were deep sighs when they heard of the visit by Hitler to Paris. This was how they enlarged on the news of Petain’s armistice, De Gaulle’s broadcast from London.

  The different sisters carried the legacies of the original political affiliations of their families. Somewhere in their midst was the embroiderer of the yellow stars.

  They heard of the setting up of the Vichy government. Deep divides fractured the community when the news came through of the British sinking of the French navy at Mers-el-Kebir, on the 3rd July, 1940.

  Jean Michel – no surname was ever given for their informant from London – told in a postscript of the banning of Jews, who had fled to the Southern Zone, prevented from returning to the Occupied Zone. All this talk of zones mystified the sisters. What had happened to their beloved France? Towards the end of the year they heard of the Statut de Juifs, of the census according to the Statut, by which Jews were no longer allowed to hold public office. Thérèse feared for her father as a senior surgeon in the hospital in Avignon, where he had moved.

&
nbsp; It was only just before Christmas, almost as an aside, that Thérèse said to Vincent, ‘I’m not pregnant,’ as they pored over their notebooks.

  ‘Why’ve you not told me before?’ All his fear spilled out.

  ‘I could barely contemplate the possibility. I wanted to be absolutely sure. I’ve missed periods before, once, when I had Dengue fever, the radical change in temperature threw my cycle out.’

  ‘Madeleine!’

  ‘You never asked me. I didn’t know what you thought. We didn’t talk. We don’t talk. What can we talk about?’

  When would he tell her about his son? Could he? Vincent thought.

  They had kept things strictly formal according to their duties and research, though he could see her passion in her eyes. He spoke with his.

  Jean Michel’s letters from London via Montreal, after their perilous journey south as part of the convoys, had given them something different to talk about. By the end of the year, Thérèse was fearful of who were agreeing with Petain’s advocation of collaboration.

  Mother Superior was censoring the letters from Montreal, and not reading out those parts of the letters which referred to ‘Jewish Affairs’, as she called them. Thérèse had overheard Mother Superior talking to Mother Hildegard about, ‘Jewish affairs’, how the news ‘inflamed’ the sisters.

  But she heard of the second Statut des Juifs, excluding Jews from commerce and industry, requiring a census in the Southern Zone where Thérèse still believed her father to be. The letters contained news of the resistance, and of Germans being shot. For instance, in August of 1941, they heard of the shooting of a German by Colonel Fabien at the Metro, and of a German soldier shot at the Gare de L’Est.

  Advent

  ‘Cut the motor, Jonah.’ Theo was poised in the bow. Since the night of the hurricane, Vincent noticed that the boy and Jonah were closer than ever. Theo needed no encouragement now. He was leaping from the bow, with the coiled rope, to tie up on the jetty, before Jonah had fully pulled in alongside. He was giving the instructions. ‘Easy, easy!’