Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  "Did I tell you about my Lucien, Mr. Roddy?" she asked proudly in English.

  He patted her hand on the desk. "You're always telling me about your Lucien, Dela. What's he up to this time?" No change in the boy could be half as remarkable as the one that had taken place in his mother over the past few years. Looking younger than she had in the beginning, she was now cheerful, dependable, and almost embarrassingly loyal. With Olive's help she had taught herself workaday English and could even read and write a little.

  "He is in the orchestra now, Mr. Roddy!"

  "The school has an orchestra?"

  "But of course! And he plays in it. He plays the piano." Her handsome face took on a broad smile. "Only eleven years old, and he is as bright as anyone his age in the whole school, Sister wrote me. She says he may soon be able to go part time to some other school. Isn't that wonderful?"

  "It certainly is," Roddy agreed. And so are YOU, he silently added.

  Olive joined him at breakfast. They were the only ones in the dining room at that hour until her friend Sharon appeared. "Two lovely ladies at a six-thirty breakfast?" he said, rising with a flourish to hold Sharon's chair for her. "I'm flattered! And I hear you have your heart set on seeing La Tortue this time, Sharon."

  Olive's longtime friend was indeed a most attractive woman, blonde, blue-eyed, with a figure that was drawing more than a few male glances at the beach. "I've been reading Esquemeling," she said. "You know—the buccaneer author who sailed with Morgan? So I just have to see what the old pirate island of Tortuga looks like.

  "It looks like a long mountain ridge sticking up out of the sea," Roddy said, "with a string of pretty beaches on the south side and sheer cliffs on the north. No roads, no cars, not much of anything except some fifteen thousand peasants and a Catholic mission hospital run by a French priest. And Olive wants to go with you, but not today."

  "Of course not today. I understand how busy you are on weekends. Anyway, I want to soak up some more sun."

  Roddy leaned forward to peer at her face. "Of which you ought to be careful. Even the black peasants respect this Haitian sun, you know. 'Soleil-sa kab mange ou,’ they say. 'This sun can eat you. "'

  "It'll have to eat me, then. Because I'm going snorkeling this morning with a very nice Jacksonville attorney I met yesterday."

  At ten o'clock the two Cap Haitien businessmen arrived with their wives and children. They had spent weekends at Le Refuge before, and Roddy greeted them as old friends.

  At ten-thirty the two young medics and their girlfriends arrived. They, too, had been guests before. Olive was at the desk when they came in, and she used their first names when welcoming them.

  Just before noon a black Cadillac sedan turned into the parking area and four men got out of it. Four men without women. Roddy was again at the desk when they walked into the lobby, and at the sight of them was instantly wary. Though well-enough dressed in slacks and sport shirts, they were unsteady on their feet as they came through the doorway, and at the desk they slouched while facing him. Which might not have been surprising had they been elite Haitian youths on some sort of bender, but their ages ranged, he guessed, from thirty-five to forty-five or fifty.

  "M'sieu, we are from Port-au-Prince and will spend the day here. Tomorrow also, perhaps." The statement was made in French.

  I should tell them we're full up, Roddy thought, but something like a buzzer sounded in his head, warning him that to do so might be unwise. You never knew about strangers these days. The Tonton Macoutes, for instance, had not become any less powerful with the passing of the man they had been organized to serve. On the contrary, they were said to be even more omnipresent and more ruthless than ever—if that were possible.

  "I can give you adjoining rooms with two beds in each." He quoted them a price and watched their faces, half hoping they would respond with an argument so he might say, firmly, that the hotel policy was to charge all guests the same. When they only looked at one another and laughed, he turned the register toward them and watched them sign. The names meant nothing to him.

  He handed over the two keys and said, "Your rooms are down the hall, gentlemen. If you have luggage in your car, I can send a boy out with you."

  "No luggage." Again they looked at one another and laughed, as at some secret joke. Then they walked unsteadily across the lobby and down the corridor, peering at room numbers asthey went, and that was the last he saw or heard of them until an hour or so later when he heard their familiar guffawing from the dining room.

  The hotel's head waiter appeared at the lobby desk a little later, nervously massaging his hands. "M'sieu Bennett, those four men from the capital . . . they have drunk too much and are disturbing the other guests!"

  "I know. I hear them."

  "What shall I do?"

  "What do you suggest, Gerard? That I order them to leave?" Gerard had been hired for his youthful charm and good looks, not for experience or wisdom. His mouth dropped open now and the massaging of the hands became more rapid. "No, no, no, m'sieu! You must not do that. They could be friends of those people in the palace!"

  "Exactly." Roddy turned his own hands palms upward. "So have them served as fast as you can, Gerard, and let's hope they leave."

  It was an hour before the quartet from the capital emerged from the dining room. By that time more than a few other guests had finished lunch and sent questioning glances at Roddy as they passed through the lobby. One man, whom Roddy knew well, even came to the desk and said with a scowl, "What the hell's going on in there?"

  "Too much of our lovely Haitian rum, I suppose," Roddy guardedly replied.

  "Can't you kick them out, or shut them up?"

  "If they keep it up, I guess I'll have to."

  When they did leave the dining room at last, the four spent only half an hour in their room and then reappeared in swimsuits, on their way to the beach. Not much of a solution, Roddy thought unhappily. Though beautiful, the beach was not a long one and the others using it would not be able to escape being harassed. Again he considered telling the four they must sober up or leave. But Olive had joined him by then, and when asked her advice she shook her head.

  "They're too sure of themselves," she pointed out. "It's almost as if they're challenging us to say something, so they can turn on us and show us what big shots they are."

  The afternoon passed slowly. Two or three times Roddy considered walking down to the beach to see what was going on; each time, he abandoned the idea. Sharon DeCosta would be there with her gentleman friend from Florida. When they returned, he could question them.

  But the four from Port-au-Prince came first, two of them flapping their hands at him in some sort of ribald salute as they slouched through the lobby en route to their rooms. Before Sharon came, they even had time to reappear in their by-now-familiar slacks and sport shirts and cross the lobby a second time. They had come without luggage, Roddy remembered. When he saw them get into their black Cadillac and drive off, he wondered where they might be going.

  Then, when Sharon returned from the beach a few minutes later, a single glance at her face told him something was wrong.

  She was not crying, exactly. That attractive face seemed rather to have shrunk into ridges and wrinkles, the mouth quivering uncontrollably, the eyes glassy. Trudging like a zombie into the lobby, she seemed to have trouble locating the desk before she could come to it.

  "They—they're monsters," she sobbed. "You have to call the police and get them out of here, Roddy."

  Olive came into the lobby at that moment and hurried toward them. A glance at Sharon's face told her, too, that something terrible was wrong. "What happened?" She caught hold of Sharon's hands. "Sharon, what happened?"

  "They—we—Chuck and I were down beyond the beach, at the point, andthey found us there." The dam had broken now; the words came rushing out in a flood of sobs. "They—they surrounded us and made remarks about me—nasty remarks—filthy ones—and then when Chuck tried to protect me, they knocked him d
own and kicked him unconscious. I've been there all this time trying to—to bring him back—and I can't, I can't! Oh, my God, you have to do something. We have to get a doctor. We have to call the police and have those bastards arrested."

  Roddy, his face livid, came shouting from behind the desk, and was out the door almost before two of the hotel help came in answer to his summons. With her arms around her friend now, Olive said in a low voice, "Did they—rape you, Sharon?"

  "N-no. They just made believe they were going to. It was all a—a kind of drunken game with them, twisting my arms behind my back and laughing while they took turns mauling me. Oh my God, Olive, I was never so scared in my life . . .”

  Outside, Roddy made for the beach at a run, with the two men from the hotel struggling to catch up. Then, seeing a crowd coming toward him, he stopped. Sharon's Florida friend must have come to after she left him, and made his way back along the shore to the beach proper. As the crowd came closer now, escorting him to the hotel, Roddy saw that his face was puffy and some of the sand clinging to his body was red. The other guests all seemed to be talking at once.

  Taking over, he walked the injured man back to the hotel, where Olive helped to get him to his room. "Those bastards," the victim kept muttering. "Those filthy bastards. They ought to be in a cage."

  There was a doctor in Bayeux who came when needed. He arrived in thirty minutes and dressed the man's wounds, saying they were not serious. Olive took Sharon DeCosta to her room and stayed with her. Roddy phoned a nearby police post, then stationed a hotel worker in the parking lot to let him know when the Cadillac returned. But what, he asked himself, would he do when it did return?

  Two policemen came. They listened to what he said. They looked at each other as though frightened at finding themselves in a situation that could only mean trouble for them. Half an hour later they said, "Call us again if those men come back" and departed.

  Roddy did not see them again, ever.

  The Cadillac did not return.

  "They never meant to pay their bill, did they?" Olive said. "They probably never pay a bill anywhere, for anything. Roddy, do you think we should stay in this country? Papa Doc may be gone, but it isn't going to get any better, you know. I think—if you ask me—it's actually getting worse."

  A war was going on in Vietnam these days, Roddy reflected bitterly. Maybe he should pack up here in Haiti and go there. At least he would know what he was fighting.

  BOOK SEVEN

  1976

  For two weeks Lyle had ventured no farther from his bedroom than the Great House veranda. There, two or three times a day when the urge would not be denied, he sat in his pajamas and bathrobe and smoked a cigarette or two. With every puff he hated himself more for what he considered a weakness of character.

  This evening, though, he had walked from his bed to one of the easy chairs in front of the fireplace in the drawing room—that big, handsome room in which so much had happened since his coming to Glencoe twenty-six years before. The other chairs were occupied by his wife Alison, his son Cliff, and Cliff's wife Luari. It was, in a way, a council of war.

  "We have to decide what to do," Lyle said, lifting some Gleaner clippings from a folder on his lap. "Let's begin with what happened in Morant Bay the other day, because it happened so close to us here."

  "The Randalls," Cliff said darkly.

  "Yes, the Randalls. We all know them. The opposition's Mr. Seaga has submitted a complaint to the Police Commissioner signed by a number of prominent Bay people because, he says"—here Lyle took up a clipping and read from it—"'the St. Thomas attacks follow a now well-established pattern of attacks on JLP supporters which have occurred elsewhere since the State of Emergency."'

  "There was political rough stuff in Danvers Pen, too, Dad," Cliff said, naming another nearby community. "Just this morning I heard some of the workers talking about how people there were knocked down and kicked, then made to crawl around on their hands and knees."

  Lyle nodded. "But what was done to the Randalls was worse. He's a Justice of the Peace, remember. At four-thirty in the morning—in the morning, mind you, as if this were some totalitarian police state—they were awakened by a loud banging on their doors. When they asked who was there, they were told to open up for a security check."

  "A what?" Luari asked.

  "A security check." Bitterly, Lyle added, "Something that goes with this so-called State of Emergency, I suppose. Anyway, Randall opened the kitchen door and found himself confronted by police and soldiers with guns, including—God help us—machine guns. Then he went to another door and found himself face to face with more armed men. He says there were twelve to fourteen in all."

  "Policemen?" Alison said, with an expression of disbelief. "And soldiers. And they tore the house apart from top to bottom," Lyle continued in a controlled voice, "while Randall, his wife, and his father, who lives with them, were held at gunpoint. Listen to this part of the statement: 'They even went into the nursery where our two small sons and their cousin were asleep and insisted on searching through their clothes. This was in spite of the fact that I asked them to refrain from entering that room for fear the boys might awaken and be frightened.'"

  "Randall's father is a J.P. too, you know," Cliff said. "He's the senior J.P. in the parish."

  "Which makes it all the more incredible, doesn't it? And finally the statement says this: 'It would appear to me that the State of Emergency is a blanket under which known supporters of the JLP and their families are being intimidated and harassed."' Lyle put the clipping aside and took up another. "Now how about this front-page story about the political violence in Kingston? Four gunmen kicked down the door of an apartment on Spanish Town Road, it says, and cold-bloodedly shot to death a man and his eight-year-old son. The man was a vital eye-witness, quote-unquote, to the murder of a constable earlier. It also says that hundreds of residents in parts of Kingston have fled their homes in terror after attacks by gangs of armed thugs. One fellow says that when he returned to get his belongings, everything was gone."

  "Lyle, you don't need to go on," Alison said. "We've read the papers too, and heard all this on the TV and radio. There hasn't been a day of late when some new violence hasn't occurred on this island.”

  Cliff said angrily, "It's tearing Jamaica to pieces."

  "It's certainly killing the tourist trade," Alison said. "The government has already had to take over about half the hotel space, to keep hotels from closing."

  Cliff shrugged. "Or because, under socialism, everything of that sort has to belong to the politicians."

  "I thought you approved of the PNP. You always have."

  "That was when Norman Manley was the head of it."

  "I take it you don't approve, then, of what's going on now. Well, I must say that's a relief." Lyle blew his breath out. "What changed your mind? The Prime Minister's going to Cuba to receive the Jose Marti award from his beloved Fidel?"

  Cliff made a face, and then shrugged. "Things have gone further than I thought they would, that's all."

  Lyle held up another clipping, a small one. "Did you see this in the Gleaner?"

  The others leaned forward to peer at a cartoon by the paper's popular Leandro. As usual in a Leandro drawing, it featured two Jamaicans talking and the message was in what they said. Here one exclaimed, "Medical exchange with Cuba coming!" and the other replied, "Boy, wid all these Cubans coming here we better start learning Cubish!"

  "And it isn't only medical exchange," Lyle pointed out, "even though the Prime Minister assured Parliament he made no secret deals with Castro when he went there. The fact is, frightened Jamaicans are leaving this island in droves. You've all seen the bumper stickers, I'm sure."

  "'Will the last person leaving the island please turn off the lights?'" Luari quoted. "They're everywhere. I even saw one in Rainy Ridge."

  Lyle said, "I'm told that homes along the north coast are selling—or rather being offered for sale with no takers—for half what they're worth.
The north coast, mind you, where people used to boast about having Noel Coward and Ian Fleming for neighbors, along with assorted dukes and duchesses. Makes you wonder what kind of price we might get for Glencoe if we decide to give it up."

  "You're missing something, Dad," Cliff said very quietly.

  "Am I? What?"

  "Jamaicans leaving the island aren't allowed to take any real money with them. Fifty dollars was the last I heard. And while we're not Jamaicans, we'd have to sell Glencoe for Jamaican money —no one's going to give us American dollars for it—and we'd be in the same boat. We'd arrive back in the States broke."

  There was a long silence until Alison spoke. "But if we stay here," she said, "what will we be facing? Just what does 'Democratic Socialism' mean, anyway?"

  "Whatever they want it to mean," Cliff said. "Probably steak and potatoes for those in the government, crumbs for everyone else. I think the bigger question is what will happen to freedom here? You've been reading the paper's top-gun columnist, haven't you?"

  His mother nodded.

  "You remember what he wrote a while ago? He said that as the island's economy goes to pot and added restrictions are imposed on us, our freedom will gradually be taken away as well. At the same time, those in power will keep up a huge propaganda campaign to convince us we're a great new country when in fact we'll be turning into another Haiti."

  Lyle said quietly, "In some ways we could be worse off than Haiti. Mr. Seaga says—if I'm quoting him correctly—that we're being led into the Communist system and the Communist ideology. That's one abyss the people of Haiti haven't fallen into yet."

  "Have you got the Gleaner's reprint of that piece from the Wall Street Journal, Dad?" Cliff asked.

  Lyle found it in his folder and passed it over.

  "In all fairness, let me read what the P.M. says in answer to all the charges being fired at him," Cliff said. "I'm not waving his flag, mind you. I've already told you how I feel. But just to be fair. Okay?"

  "Go ahead," Lyle said. "Never let it be said that we didn't listen to both sides before reaching a decision here."