Silence of the Chagos

by Shenaz Patel

  All that had been racing around his head for most of the night. He hadn’t been able to stop watching the clock. The glow-in-the-dark paint on the minute hand had peeled away, forcing him to lean toward the light from the hallway to see if the hour hand was showing one in the morning, or two, or later than that. He had dropped the accursed alarm clock several times already as he’d groped in the darkness, and had to feel around for the battery that had fallen out. When Jeannine shook him awake, he had jolted. Five o’clock. He still had half an hour, why bother him now?

  “Tony.”

  “Hmm…”

  “Tony, you have to take me to the hospital.”

  “Hmmmmm…”

  “Tony, I’m going into labor, get moving!”

  She wasn’t the least bit happy that he had refused to accompany her. No, he hadn’t really refused. Quite simply, he couldn’t. Not today. Not this minute. He had to go to his job at the harbor. You don’t miss your first day, she should have understood that.

  She had cursed him out, calling him an outright mule and a few other animals besides, before getting in a cab with their neighbor who was squinting after having been woken up so early that her pillow’s wrinkles were still imprinted on her fat, round face.

  He had arrived right on time for his job, a minute later and he would have been late. His first day, really, she should have understood, he had no choice, not with two children to feed and a third one on the way.

  The work seemed easy enough. He was assigned to a sentry box, by the pedestrian entrance, set off from the main entrance where the sagging trucks came and went, laden with huge containers and heavy loads. There weren’t very many pedestrians, in fact, just a few brokers who hadn’t made their fortunes yet and who were racing toward that moment when they could afford one of those cars that their colleagues showed off with a squeal of the tires.

  As he only ever saw men here, he could clearly recall the shock he’d felt when he’d seen her approaching at a brisk pace. A red scarf wrapped around her hair, a flower-print dress buttoned over her breasts, she had stopped just before the sentry box, had set down her wicker basket, blown on her fingers where the handle had imprinted itself, then picked up what she had been carrying with her other hand, leaning the other way for balance. He had to get out of the sentry box to stop her.

  “E, kot ou pe ale?”

  She looked at him with equal parts surprise and annoyance, like someone unused to being asked where she’s going.

  “To pa kone?” she shot back.

  No, he didn’t know. Even though clearly he should have. He was new here. He still didn’t know everyone yet. He had to write down who came and who went, pure and simple, that was his job.

  “Biro Rogers, mo pe al biro Rogers,” she finally said, with evident contempt and impatience.

  Oh, yes, the Rogers office. He was about to show her where it was, over to the left, but stopped when he saw her exasperation. She was determined, she knew exactly where she was headed: she made a beeline right for the office.

  Charlesia was really starting to get tired of all these Mauritians trying to get in her way. Some time ago, at the hospital, the doctor had said that her husband had recovered fully and that they could go back. It was clear that he was cured, and honestly she was sure that they could have treated him back at home in Diego. A few days of a filao-seed infusion to bring down his hypertension and some fresh coconut milk to clean his body out, and he would have been shipshape. But the nurse there, a man, had been rather worried.

  “You should go to Mauritius,” he had said. “We can’t treat him here anymore, you need to go see a doctor in Mauritius.”

  He had kept on saying that to Charlesia.

  The administrator, too, had urged her to go.

  “Go, you need to go, he’ll get better care in Mauritius, and besides, you should take advantage of the opportunity, you’ve worked hard, it’s a chance for a little vacation, take the kids, do it, don’t worry.”

  They finally wore her down. She’d packed some pickled fruit and vegetables steeped in large jars of spices and oil and some woven straw mats as gifts for the acquaintances who would host them in Mauritius. They set off on the Mauritius, a ship that shared its name with where they eventually disembarked, at the end of this quay that bordered the noisy, dusty city of Port Louis.

  That had been more than a month ago, her husband was better now, and it was high time to go back. She had nearly overstayed her hosts’ welcome with six children, and their friendship would sour any day now, she knew it. And she wanted to be back home, with no constraints on her movements or hours, no obligations to accommodate other people’s habits and preferences. People here lived oddly, always in a rush, crowding together in stifling, rowdy slums. The children were getting fussy, they needed space, their own space. The night before, in her fitful sleep, Mimose had talked about the Catalina and her schoolteacher, Miss Léonide, at the school, back there.

  This time, they had to give her an answer at the Rogers office. She’d already come twice to ask when the next boat for the Chagos would be. She imagined herself on board, turning her back on this gray port ringed by too-high mountains, taking deep breaths of the sea breeze, a week’s calm trip northward, then, one morning, dawn’s raking light would illuminate their rosary of islands, scattered across the water like so many sweetly whispered prayers answered at last.

  Charlesia pulled a flower-print handkerchief from her blouse, wiped her forehead. She stepped into the office where several ceiling fans sluggishly swept the air, their blades speckled with dust and flyspecks squeaking slowly. Several men were sitting behind green Formica desks with their sleeves rolled up as they contemplated their dirty mugs and piles of folders. Charlesia went straight to the one closest to the door. He tilted his head up, glanced at her.

  “Well, look who’s here!”

  A brief burst of laughter ran through the room. Charlesia stayed ramrod straight.

  “Mo le kone kan bato pou ale.”

  She wasn’t asking them to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Just to tell her when the next boat for the Chagos, for her home, was scheduled to leave. The fans groaned a bit louder.

  “Mo le kone…”

  “Oh, just tell her.”

  The voice came from the back of the room, by the glass door through which another office, a bigger one, could be seen, with massive wood furniture, where an air conditioner was humming. Between two piles of folders, another man kept peering at her out the side of his eyes. But his voice was firm.

  “You need to tell her.”

  A heavy silence settled upon Charlesia. It took root, abruptly, in her bosom, which contracted without any conscious thought on her part. Another voice rang out beside her.

  “You can go and tell her yourself.”

  The man wavered. He twirled his pen between his thick fingers.

  “I’m going to ask the boss.”

  His chair scraped the floor. He knocked once on the glass door, listened for a second, turned the copper handle, and slipped into the office before shutting the door behind him.

  Charlesia could see him, he’d barely stepped into the room. Sweat had traced brown squiggles on the back of his beige shirt. He talked for a long while, turning to point to where she was standing. Charlesia waited. The others had gone back to work, leafing through huge folders and clacking away at their typewriters. The man raised his hand again, reached under his collar, rubbed his neck mechanically. Then he shook it in front of him, he seemed to be insisting on something, finally he nodded, turned around, bent down toward the handle, opened the door, and carefully shut it again behind him.

  He headed toward his desk. Sat down. The colleague closest to him didn’t even look up from the column of numbers he was meticulously checking as he asked:

  “So?”

  “Well, he told me to tell her.”

  “Hmm. Maybe you should take her outside. That’s quite a handful you’ve got there!” he said with a chuckle.

 
; Charlesia had the feeling she was supposed to be furious. Were they talking about her? What was all this back-and-forth about? She walked over to the man.

  “Ou ena kiksoz pou dir moi?”

  He barely looked up at her. Yes, he had something to tell her. Might as well get it over with. It would be noon soon and he needed to hurry up if he wanted to avoid the crowds at the sandwich shop. Yesterday he had to get a cold, rubbery omelet sandwich because the fried chicken liver with onions, his favorite, had been sold out. And in the end, this whole mess had nothing to do with him.

  “There’s no boat back for you.”

  He spat the sentence out as his square-cut fingernails snapped shut the metal rings of the folder on his desk. Charlesia didn’t move. For a second she was worried that he might catch his fingers between the serrated points of the rings, she could already see the bleeding flesh of his fingers twisting frenetically in the steely clasp that the trembling left hand couldn’t quite pull back open. The binder’s noise reverberated in her mind. The rings’ click, the drawer’s slam. He’d told her something but she hadn’t heard it properly. She looked at him so he would repeat himself, but he kept on cleaning up his papers. The others got up around him.

  Charlesia didn’t move. She kept on staring at the man, waiting for him to say his line again.

  “There are no more boats back. You’ll have to stay here. Zil inn ferme.”

  He was talking tersely, he’d lowered his head and put his last things in a drawer that he’d then taken care to lock with a key. Charlesia heard the fan’s blades shifting the air, slicing it and sending back his last words. Zil inn fer-me, zil inn fer-me.

  She blinked. The man walked up to her. Aside from them, the office was deserted. He set his hand firmly on her shoulder, turned her to face the exit. She was outside. He disappeared.

  Beyond the quay, the sea called to her. She pushed against the crowd of people headed toward the exit and made her way, step by step, toward the far end of the quay, where she came to a stop. From his sentry box, the attendant watched her, mesmerized by this woman whose red headscarf stood out sharply against the aquamarine background of a glittering sea. He watched her and, he had no idea why, he was reminded of his wife, at the hospital, perhaps in the middle of childbirth, seized by spasms and pain, while he was stuck in a cubbyhole, watching a woman facing the sea who seemed to be waiting. Waiting for what?

  A boat. Or rather, the absence of a boat, imprinted on the unmoving retina of a watchwoman. Charlesia stayed there, standing, unwavering. Without even that light tremor that would have betrayed her breathing. A flawed statue, her shoulders slumped, one of them tilted toward a shapeless basket at her feet.

  She probed the blue, infinitely blue expanse with all the intensity she could summon forth and marshal from the smallest fibers of her body. Two piercing, fiery pupils that did not blink, that proved equal to the incandescent heat of the Port Louis noon, that started to gleam, that clouded over in a blinding, hot haze. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t break through the veil, no crack would let through what she desired with all her being. The sea remained obstinately empty. There was no boat, there were no more boats for her.

  That’s what they had been saying. Just another one of their stupid jokes to while away the time.

  No more boats. That didn’t mean anything. This sentence didn’t make any sense. They’d be better off shutting up than spouting such nonsense.

  “Zil inn ferme.” That’s it, okay, zil inn firme. Her island is closed. What was that supposed to mean? What did that bunch of morons think? That it was a restaurant? Or their office of good-for-nothings? Something with its hours written on the door that opens at nine in the morning and closes at four in the afternoon? They must have been out in the sun too long.

  This had dragged on long enough. Her children and husband back in the slum were waiting for her to tell them when they’d be able to get on another boat to go home. The next boat. They wanted to return. She had so much that had been put on hold back there while they were off in Mauritius. They needed to go back. To see their parents and their friends again, pick up where they had left things off, relish the sweetness of evenings again.

  The night before, she had woken with a start: she had thought she could hear the resonance of the makalapo. It had bewildered her. Nobody here played it. Only the Chagossians knew that instrument. She herself had always been careful around it. When she was a child, she had watched reverently as the gran dimounn had made them: getting the tinplate barrels from the stores; burying them in the ground along with a flexible stick that they bent; connecting the two with a string that released a deep reverberation when plucked.

  She’d never really liked this instrument. Nobody ever quite trusted it, they had to unhook the wire at dusk. Otherwise, at night, in the garden, spirits would come and play it. She had heard it, one evening when her brother had forgotten to take it apart. She had been perched on the end of her bed, sewing, when her ear had picked up a noise through the open window, light at first, then more distinct, notes that resounded in the calm, fresh air, leaving behind an otherworldly, threatening echo. She’d berated her brother, shouting: “Have you gone mad?” Didn’t he know he had to release the makalapo after playing it? Did he want to attract ghosts to their house?

  She’d felt the same odd fear last night, when she’d been woken up by that metallic sound she could have recognized anywhere. A makalapo, here, in the middle of the night? She listened for a long while. Nothing followed. Until this morning.

  Standing on the quay, Charlesia thought back to this bad omen that had revealed itself to her. She looked at the empty sea and told herself that they’d cut the cord, buried it back there, under the earth that had shaped her feet.

  She had a tune in her head. A song she’d launched into the last night of sega before departing for Mauritius.

  La Zirodo, kifer ou ena leker bien dir

  Mardi sizer la Zirodo

  Kriy pasaze anbarke

  A story from the island. A young boy, in love with an underage girl, saw her parents putting the girl on the boat for Mauritius. He caused a scene, yelling at the captain, a man named La Giraudeau, for failing to warn him of this early-morning departure. And, in his despair, he had tried to throw himself into the water to follow the boat.

  Zet lékor

  Zenn zan zet to lékor dan dilo

  Zet lékor

  La Zirodo pa pou viré pou amas li

  But the others had warned him that the boat wouldn’t turn around to pick him up. He just had to stay and be consoled by the songs of Tino Rossi, his friend.

  If she threw herself into the water, would the boat that had left too soon turn around to find her, to save her, to bring her back home, on the other side of the sea? Charlesia took a step closer to the quay’s edge. The oil-slick water splashed against the parapet. The song had died down. Back there, the horizon was blazingly clear. The boat had already crossed it. Without her. And she wondered where this wave suddenly careening in her head had come from.

  From his sentry box, Tony watched her. She stood in exactly the same spot she had last year, as rigid as a statue, the fraying fabric of her dress fluttering against her calves, the same red headscarf, tightly knotted, unmoving.

  Should she waver, he would be ready to leap into action. She had scared him last time, he’d been sure she was about to jump into the water. She had swayed, suddenly, backward then forward, like a pendulum regaining its momentum in the belly of a long-stopped grandfather clock, he’d had the feeling she was about to fall, completely, without even taking a step forward. She’d frozen again. He’d kept on watching her, hardly daring to approach her. Something in her had kept him from doing so. Her back had been bristling, he could sense it, although he couldn’t be sure why, it was too nice, too warm outside for her to feel afraid or cold.

  Everybody had left. He would need to lock the barriers soon. The horizon had thinned the sun. He had to head back as well, to the hospital,
there hadn’t been any news, he had to go see his wife, maybe his new child, he couldn’t stay there forever.

  She finally turned around, forced her way past the metal barriers stiffly, without looking at him. He hadn’t seen her again. Until today. But he’d thought about her often, each time the sun struck the water blindingly enough to render him dizzy, each time a boat docked at the end of the quay, where she had left the imprint of her figure.

  Everyone is emotional here, a voice said. He heard the cannon still thundering. The radio went quiet for a brief moment before broadcasting the first notes of the national anthem. A set of brass instruments started off, slowly at first, and rose up in a stomach-tensing, heart-pounding swell.

  Tony felt it coming, this emotion the broadcaster had mentioned just now. On his table, next to the radio he was angled toward, stood a photo of his son, his boy, his darling, his love, his life, his small mouth smiling at him, his lively mischievous eyes, his lips revealing his first tooth, one year already, he’d have to start making plans for the birthday party they would have for him.

  One year already. He looked up. Gazed at the figure at the end of the quay. One year, and she seemed to have shrunk, to have sunken within herself. He would have liked to walk up to her, touch her shoulder, talk to her. But he couldn’t leave the sentry box.

  That red headscarf against the blue background: it could have been a painting.