The Migration of Ghosts

by Pauline Melville

  ‘Well, I love it,’ he continued, half blustering, half disappointed. ‘I love our home in Brazil too, of course. But I love this as well.’

  She watched the traffic lights change colour. Then she spoke:

  ‘Actually, it makes me sick to look at buildings like this when I have to go back to the shacks that people are living in at home. I don’t know why we haven’t built things like this. It makes me feel ashamed of my own people.’

  Immediately, he was sorry.

  ‘Come on then. We’ll go.’

  ‘No. Wait a minute. I want to ask you. What do you think happens when you die?’

  ‘Nothing. I don’t believe in anything spiritual,’ said Vincent. ‘What do you think happens?’

  ‘When I die, I expect my spirit will return to my village and hover around there for a bit until it just dissolves.’

  ‘I would like to believe in reincarnation,’ sighed Vincent. ‘I really wish I had more than one life. I love life. I want to know what is going to happen. I’d come back as anything just to be here – a tree, a stone step, a feather, anything.’

  She stared ahead and spoke slowly.

  ‘Life hasn’t been too glorious to me. I wouldn’t want to have another innings, as you say about your cricket.’

  He waited for her to go on but she just looked ahead at the wet road. Traffic hissed past. Spermatozoa of rain wriggled across the windscreen. She shook her head in bewilderment.

  ‘Once is enough for me. When I done, I done. Life seems so unjust, so unfair. I wouldn’t come back as anything.’

  Vincent was taken aback by the conviction with which she spoke. Her body seemed to grow heavier, weighted down with defeat.

  ‘Once is enough for me.’ She turned and looked him full in the eyes. ‘I can’t wait for it to be over. Life has been a burden. All my life my own people have been under pressure – struggling. You are good to me, Vincent, and I am a practical person. I know I am better off than most, but sometimes I still dread the mornings. I want the darkness to stay around me. I can’t face the light. That damn thrush, I think to myself as the birds start singing. I’ve been so battered and I’ve seen such terrible things.’

  She rubbed her thumbs nervously against her closed fists.

  ‘I saw a whole family drown once in the Rio Negro when their canoe capsised. I was nine. There was nothing we could do. We stood on the bank and watched. I still have nightmares. Once some soldiers came running down to the beach by the river. They were a distance away and I thought they were playing with some of the girls from our village, but they were raping them and sticking broken bottles in their vaginas. And look at the massacre the other day. It won’t be the last. My own village could be next. Well, I suppose we all have to die.’

  Vincent started up the engine. This fatalism of hers always unsettled him. He thought vaguely about the collapse of communism. Maybe it did not disappear but just went up and down like a Mexican wave – disappearing in one part of the world and rising up in another. They drove in silence through the deserted West End. Bright neon lights threw shimmering zigzags of colour on to the black wet streets. He wondered about ghosts. Although he enjoyed his life in Brazil, perhaps he would never feel that he understood it properly because he did not know the ghosts. Just as Loretta did not know about Henry VIII or Kafka or Dachau.

  They stopped in traffic under the black dripping iron struts of the bridge over Farringdon Road. The inside of the car window had begun to steam up and Loretta reached in her bag for a handkerchief to wipe it. She felt an unfamiliar shape in the bag and pulled out the tin with ‘THE LAST BREATH OF COMMUNISM’ printed on the label. As she rubbed at the window with her hanky she pondered on what she would do with the tin. If the young communist was still around she would give it to him. But he had probably left by now. Perhaps she would give the tin to her father back in the village. Containers of any sort always proved to be useful out there.

  English Table Wuk

  ‘People’s princess, my arse. Of course she smile and hold a few people’s hand. She ain’ gat anything else to do.’

  The grainy funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales unfolded in front of four observers, three of whom lounged on a green padded sofa and one in a large bamboo armchair pulled close to the television in order to watch the procession. Slanting zigzag lines regularly fizzed on to the screen, interrupting the picture. Above the solemn tones of the commentator’s voice came the occasional clink of ice tinkling in glasses of rum.

  ‘If you ask me the whole thing is a farce,’ came one disenchanted male voice. ‘Plenty people work all their lives to help the poor. This woman went home every night to a palace, an apartment with twenty-five rooms, or she partied. She could have bought Angola, never mind havin’ her picture taken with a few amputees.’

  The sitting-room was large and airy. Outside, yellow keskidee birds shrieked and the cacophonous honks of Georgetown traffic floated in through open windows on the back of the warm breeze. The television screen’s colour waned into black-and-white as the city’s power voltage dropped.

  Auntie May, the owner of the house, stood at the back of the room and slapped a last-minute iron down on the pink silk jacket she intended to wear that afternoon for the flight to Miami. She cast a casual look over to the coffin on the gun carriage. A lanky East Indian man in his thirties whose name she could never remember sat in front of the television, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He spoke up.

  ‘Every nation does like a good funeral. Look at us. Our president Cheddi Jagan dies. Half the people din like him but what happens? Everyone flock out in the street weepin’ and wailin’ to see the body pass. Death changes your mind about people.’

  Auntie May was built like two dumplings – a small one placed on top of a larger one. Her bottom wobbled and shimmered in the tight pink skirt as she vigorously manhandled the iron. She wrinkled up her snub nose. It was not good to speak ill of the dead. These visitors to her house did not meet with her approval. They were radicals, friends of her niece, Adriana, who was home from studying sociology at university in England. She endured them for Adriana’s sake because she loved her sister’s child. Adriana, a slender, intelligent, jet-skinned girl with black corn-row braids and spectacles, sat forward in the armchair with her elbows resting on her knees and her chin in her hands, gazing intently at the screen, trying to analyse what was happening.

  ‘Is it because she was beautiful? A fairy-tale princess for white people or what?’ she asked.

  ‘But look, there’s plenty black people in the crowd.’

  ‘Everyone would be beautiful if they spent that much money on they looks and wore all that fancy jewellery,’ piped up another slow cynical voice from the sofa. ‘It was because she lived out her life in the public eye. She became an ikon. A celebrity. She said she hated the publicity but she loved it. It empowered her. We jus’ watching the English monarchy re-invent itself. She’s part of the process. Why is it people don’ see reality? The rich create the poor, then they want extra praise for throwing the poor a few crumbs. At least we are a republic. We might be an ex-colony but at least we managed to leave all that sentimental rubbish and fantasy behind. Let’s drink to reality. A republican future and equality.’ They all solemnly raised their glasses for the toast.

  The conversation batted lightly to and fro, all eyes fixed on the screen except for Auntie May’s. She occasionally put down the iron and flurried around on last-minute tasks to do with her flight later that afternoon.

  One of the servants appeared in the doorway and addressed Auntie May. Gita was a short woman of about thirty-five who looked fifty. Her high waist barely made an indentation between her breasts and her belly. She wore a faded floral cotton dress and flip-flops. A semi-squint slanted one of her melted liquid eyes inwards towards her nose and her hair was tied back in an untidy bun.

  ‘Excuse me, mistress. I want to leave early this afternoon. I have to do some English Table Wuk. I lef’ de fowl curry in de fridge.’
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  Auntie May looked up from the ironing board.

  ‘All right, Gita, if you must.’ She did not know what Gita meant by English Table Wuk but imagined vaguely that it involved embroidering a pretty tablecloth or something of the sort. ‘I’ll see you when I get back. Please to clean out the back bedrooms for me properly. I’m noticing a lot of dust in there yesterday. Now where did I put that blasted iron?’

  ‘There,’ said Gita in her sonorous voice, pointing at the implement hidden behind a bag Auntie May had dumped on the ironing board. ‘The iron is lookin’ at you.’

  No sooner had Auntie May found the iron than the power went down all over the city. Both television and iron ceased to function. Everyone groaned.

  ‘I hate these blackouts.’ Auntie May stomped her foot and stood pouting, her hands on her pink-silk-clad hips. Adriana went to switch off the dead television. Her friends yawned, stretched, complained and began to say goodbye. The electricity was unlikely to come back on for several hours. The visitors drifted off into the early afternoon feeling satisfied with themselves. The spectacle of the funeral had filled them with the mild pleasures of righteous indignation and reassured them as to the rectitude and superiority of their own rational politics.

  Back in the kitchen, Gita also felt content at having secured permission to leave early. She lifted up the lid of a pan of boiling ham and held it there for Barbara the cook to add a handful of cloves and some mustard. Billows of escaping steam filled the room with a delicious smell from the bubbling pot.

  ‘Please to pass the ladle for me please,’ said Barbara, licking her fingers. Barbara and Gita had worked together for nearly five years.

  Gita sank down on her hands and knees to find a ladle in one of the tiny louvred cupboards under a sink full of snook fish waiting to be gutted, their scales glittering like sequins beneath blood-stained heads.

  ‘How your father’s funeral was?’ asked Gita. Gita did not possess a television, nor did she read newspapers. But the solemn music introducing the programme upstairs had reminded her that Barbara’s father had been buried at Blairmont the weekend before.

  ‘It was nice. We did sit up and sing hymns and march about. My brother did call out de words.’

  ‘Call out de words,’ repeated Gita like a gong as she peered breathlessly into the back of the cupboard. She had the habit of repeating with grim satisfaction the last few words of whatever had just been said.

  Barbara went to the meat safe and took out some spare ribs. She placed them on the counter and wiped her hands on her apron, her ebony forehead shining with steam from the pot, steam that had also dampened the tiny coils of her greying hair.

  ‘They say when you goin’ die, you does get strong,’ she announced, prodding the ham with a fork. Then she set about wrapping the spare ribs in foil.

  ‘You does get strong. Yes. An’ your pulse does move,’ gasped Gita, straining to reach behind a pile of kitchen utensils. There was a rattling collapse of egg whisks, graters, colanders, aluminium pans, egg poachers and pancake griddles. She pulled out a ladle and handed it to Barbara.

  ‘They say you don’ die if somebody lookin’ at you,’ continued Barbara, savouring a mouthful of broth, allowing her taste buds to measure the saltiness before swallowing it. ‘When somebody go away to sleep thinkin’ you is all right – is then you die.’

  ‘You must always stay awake if a dead person is in the house,’ said Gita, settling down with the grater between her knees to shred coconut. ‘There was a woman died in a house near to me. They covered her with a sheet and the other eight people in the house went to sleep. Well, the dead woman rose up, tore a strip off the sheet and made eight knots in the sheet, one for each person. She began to swallow them. Someone woke up in time and stopped her. They pulled the cotton strip from her throat. She had swallowed six. If she had swallowed all, they all would have died. She come alive and when she see they sleepin’ – she vex. Since then, at a funeral, some sleep but others must stay awake.’

  The shadows from the sapodilla tree outside fell across Gita’s face as she scooped piles of grated coconut on to the draining-board. Then the sun went in and a brief but fierce shower sent spikes of rain lancing through the kitchen windows. The two women peered through the window as they heard a taxi slooshing through the rain to pull up at the gate.

  ‘Mistress. Your taxi come,’ Gita called up the stairs from the kitchen door and then flip-flopped back to the window. ‘The rain does not want her to go to Miami today,’ she remarked ominously to Barbara while watching with the utmost care, making sure that she observed Auntie May’s departure with her own eyes. Auntie May left as usual in a fluster of shouted instructions to her staff, farewells to Adriana and angry jabs at the rain with her umbrella. The guard dogs barked fiercely as she hauled her plump legs into the car which sped off almost immediately.

  It was already past the time when Barbara should have finished work for the day. She only worked in the mornings. Once the fish in the sink had been packed into the freezer and the boiled ham placed in the fridge, she put on her raincoat, said goodbye to Gita and thankfully let herself out through the gate.

  It was what she had been waiting for. Gita had the kitchen to herself.

  Ten minutes later, when Adriana wandered downstairs to fetch herself another glass of plum juice from the fridge, she was stopped in her tracks by the sight of Gita’s furtive movements through the kitchen door. As she watched, she saw Gita hastily taking all Auntie May’s antique silver knives and forks from the drawer and bundling them up in napkins. These she was placing in a large canvas bag alongside two clearly visible silver jugs and some silver tankards and a silver candelabra. Then she took down some of Auntie May’s best Royal Doulton china from its place on the sideboard, wrapped each item carefully in more white napkins and placed them, one after the other, in a capacious nylon bag decorated with a Union Jack.

  Adriana recoiled from the door post, unsure of what to do. It already preyed on her conscience that she came from a family which employed servants. None of her student friends in England approved of that, however much she tried to explain that it was commonplace amongst middle-class Guyanese. But she knew that even her friends at home in Georgetown would probably support Gita in this act of theft. All property is theft, they would say. Gita is just redistributing wealth. Gita is poor. Your aunt is rich. Gita is redressing the balance. Adriana stepped quietly away from the door and began to climb hesitantly back up the stairs, pretending to have seen nothing. From the stairs she caught another glimpse of Gita methodically securing the bulging bags full of her aunt’s beloved silver and crockery. Adriana hovered on the stairs. She felt sorry for Auntie May and responsible for the about-to-disappear valuables. She decided at least to follow Gita and see what she did with the stolen property. Perhaps she could recover it later.

  After ten minutes, Gita left the house and set off with a heavy bag in each hand. She threaded her way round gleaming puddles in the road. A tiara of glittering water surrounded the corner rum shop as the sun blazed down again after the shower. The bags contained much of the silverware of the house, wrapped in linen napkins lest it clanked and gave her away. Adriana followed at a distance behind Gita’s short, determined figure as she made her way along the streets to where the mini-buses assembled touting for custom. There she put the bags down on the muddied ground amongst the teeming throng waiting for transportation. Adriana, fearful of losing her quarry in the milling crowd, took a deep breath and decided to confront her.

  ‘Gita! What do you think you are doing?’ The question came out breathlessly.

  Gita spun round in horror at the sound of Adriana’s voice. Then she began to laugh right in Adriana’s face. The laughter was a high-pitched screech of embarrassment.

  ‘I goin’ to Mahaica for the English Table Wuk, Miss Adriana. I bring back everythin’ belongin’ to your aunt tomorrow. Don’ worry at all at all.’

  ‘Well, I think you should bring everything back right now and I’ll
say no more about it.’ Adriana adjusted her spectacles on her nose, a nervous habit, and tried to appear both firm and sympathetic as the crowd jostled around them.

  ‘No more about it,’ repeated Gita in some distress, and then shook her head vehemently. ‘No, no, no. You don’ understand. Come with me, nuh. Come with me and you will see.’ Gita seized Adriana’s arm in a powerful grip. ‘Come with me. I show you someting,’ she insisted, letting go of Adriana’s arm for a moment to hoist the weighty bags on to the bus destined for Mahaica. Then she grabbed Adriana’s arm again. Adriana weakened and allowed herself to be dragged on to the crowded mini-bus. Gita sat next to her in silence clutching the two laden bags on her lap. Occasionally she coughed and looked out of the window. Every time Adriana asked for an explanation, Gita came back at her with, ‘You goin’ see in a minute.’

  As soon as they stepped off the bus on to the ground, Adriana recognised the yellow, concave face of Abdul the night watchman at her aunt’s house. She wondered anxiously whether she had fallen amongst a gang of thieves. Abdul stood looking around him, apparently waiting for Gita with a group of five or six others, some of whom, Adriana gathered, worked in the nearby village of Mosquito Hall. Gita gave them no explanation as to why Adriana was with her and nobody enquired. Abdul merely looked serious, nodded his head in her direction and said good afternoon. After brief greetings, they all set off in silence down the muddy red track of road fringed with bush still dripping from the rains. Adriana tried not to feel uneasy at the fact that they were heading out of town, away from the crowds.

  Some twenty minutes later they reached their destination. It was a patch of land, half-hidden from the road by bushes, in front of a coconut grove which had once been an orange plantation. On the opposite side of the road was the burial ground. It had stopped raining. Six men were already on the open piece of land, struggling under the hot sun to manoeuvre a solid mahogany table over the lumpen clods of earth which rain had turned to sticky red clay. They were attempting to place the table as closely as possible to the centre of the field. Two women unpacked a large, dazzling, white damask tablecloth from an Air Canada travel bag. This they arranged carefully on the table, pulling at the edges until it fell evenly on all sides.