The Final Passage

by Caryl Phillips

  He arrived home drunk and found his grandfather sitting up waiting for him, the glow from a firing candle lighting up his face. With his eyes he silently beckoned his grandson to come and sit opposite him. As he did so he squinted, as if in old age he was beginning to see life through a plate of frosted glass. Young Michael sat nervously and watched his grandfather scratch at his thick arm where strength still slept, then slowly rub the palm of his hand over the stubborn and hard hair on his greying head. His hands were knotted, his teeth gappy and yellow. Like aged tombstones they sloped backwards. Somehow Michael knew his grandfather was about to die and that what he had to say would be important. In the corner stood his grandmother. She stared at Michael, a small giddy boy in short pants, slumped, trying to sit straight, and her face was heavy with disapproval. Michael avoided her eyes, waited for his grandfather and listened. The wind rattled the door and he knew it would soon rain.

  ‘So you sell the bat?’ Michael nodded, mystified as to how his grandfather knew. ‘Well, I glad.’

  His grandfather spoke as if conducting a funeral. ‘This island too full of old men who telling you how good they used to be, and how they nearly open at Lords one time, and all kinds of stupidness, and all they has to show for it is a piece of wood and an empty belly.’ He paused. ‘At least you don't going have the piece of wood and you already had the sense to buy some drink to put in you belly.’ His grandfather's voice began to falter a little but he went on, ‘You don't look to me like the type of boy who going to die in the arms of a white man.’ He let out a low crumbling laugh, then stopped abruptly. ‘But you might.’ He paused. ‘You might, boy, but tonight I going talk to you as a man and if it's man you want to live to be you better listen hard.’

  He pushed back his chair and turned to look at his wife. Waving his hand like a slow branch he gestured her out of the room.

  ‘It's man talk.’

  As if already briefed for this encounter Michael's grandmother left the men alone. Michael, his blood still rich with drink, looked at his grandfather and barren thoughts chilled his body.

  ‘You don't has no parents, Michael, for my son and your mother did die in the boat almost ten years ago this month, so it's only I can talk to you, and before I dead I going do so or I don't see no way I can have some peace with them in the next world.’ He paused, then looked Michael straight in the eyes. He raised his voice.

  ‘Michael, who plant the trees?’ Michael shook his head, but his grandfather did not seem to be expecting an answer. ‘Yam is Africa man tree, Mango is India man tree, Coconut is Pacific man tree, so who plant the trees, Michael?’ He waited a few moments, then lowered his voice to a lilting whisper. ‘Who plant the trees, Michael? Who plant them?’

  For a few moments they were silent, and in that silence Michael's head spun. The effect of the drink had worn off and it was a different kind of headache, as if a massive hand had reached down out of the ceiling and was clutching him threateningly around the throat. His grandfather's light voice boomed out.

  ‘Among the cane my own father did sire me with neither love nor law, you hear me? Neither love nor law.’ He paused. ‘I want you to remember this. Next time you see a piece of sugar cane ask yourself when the last time you did see a white man cutting or weeding in the field. I want you to think hard when the last time you did see a white man doing any kind of coloured man work and I want you to remember good.’ He paused to catch his breath, then pressed on. ‘I don't want you to hate, for I know too well what hate can do. I been doing it for the last sixty odd years and it don't be no good, but I see it in you too much Michael, and you is only a young boy still but you got too much fire in your heart and not enough water in your blood.’ Again he paused. He had to think out what he was going to say for he did not want to confuse the boy. So, putting extra weight on every word, he began to speak again, slowly this time.

  ‘You must hate enough, and you must be angry enough to get just what you want but no more! No more! For, if you do, you just going end up hating yourself. Too much laughing is bad for the coloured man, too much sadness is bad for the coloured man, but too much hating is the baddest of them all and can destroy a coloured man for true.’ He paused open-mouthed, as if somebody had snatched the words from him. Then he lowered his eyes as if praying. ‘It's true.’ He looked tired. He had said what he had to say.

  Night crept on and they sat looking at each other, communicating silently across the years. An hour passed by. The sky had broken and now the rain was falling steadily. It would go on like this for days. Then the remaining small piece of candle flickered violently and his grandfather's face danced to ghostly life.

  ‘In Costa Rica I never did talk to a white man with my hands in my pockets. Now? Always.’ He peeled back his buckled lips and a sly smile creased his face.

  ‘In Panama an old, old man, he can barely pick up an axe, he tell me that the economics of the world be soldered with my sweat. Well, I looking at the man like he crazy or something for all I trying to do is earn two pennies to rub together.’ He allowed his smile to break into a laugh. ‘Well, boy, it take me nearly forty years to realize that I done meet a prophet, for the economics of the world be soldered with my sweat and your sweat and his sweat and the sweat of every coloured man in the world, you understand?’ he asked, his eyes now burning with a near-spent life.

  Michael nodded.

  ‘You don't know, boy! You don't know!’ He laughed. ‘I suppose you also know what I mean when I tell you the West Indies is a dangerous place to be a failure.’ Michael nodded again, and his grandfather laughed even louder.

  ‘Ambition going teach you that you going has to flee from beauty, Michael. Panama? Costa Rica? Brazil? America? England? Canada, maybe? West Indian man always have to leave his islands for there don't be nothing here for him, but when you leave, boy, don't be like we. Bring back a piece of the place with you. A big piece. I sick of hearing old men talking about ‘When I was in such and such a place’ and ‘when I was here and there and every damn place’ and still they don't has nothing. Ambition going teach you that you going has to flee from beauty and when you gone to wherever, remember me, boy. Remember me.’

  The elder of the two men leaned forward and, shielding the little flame of the candle with his cupped hand, he blew out the light and plunged the island into darkness. Outside the gutters raced with water, and the rain drummed out a gentle endless tropical beat on the corrugated iron roof. It was the first bar of a very long song.

  Michael saw a car coming towards him, its headlights bouncing like two lost soldiers waving their torches on a lonely road. He dipped out of the light, knelt and pretended to be working on his broken bike. The car rushed past him, his face having been briefly shelled in the glare of the lights. It sounded a friendly horn. Michael had sufficient time to recognize Mr Johnson as the driver and Millie as the passenger. He stood up and watched carefully as the night extinguished the glow of the red tail lights, and again the night was his. Millie was obviously going to stay by Leila tonight. She had probably woken up a tired Mr Johnson so she could take his dollar taxi ride from Sandy Bay to St Patrick's. Again he leaned against the bike and thought and waited, and this time he fell asleep.

  Michael heard the taxi coming back down the road so he quickly stooped and pretended to be still working. The taxi bounced past him throwing up a cloud of dust which crept into his throat. This time Mr Johnson did not sound his horn. Michael coughed, stood up and looked down the road after the car. He had decided. He knocked the bike off its stand and began pushing it the remaining five and a half miles down the road to Sandy Bay. He would not bother going to stay at Beverley's tonight as her house was at the far side of the village. He would stay with his grandmother, that is if he made it back at all, for the bike was not light and the day had already been long.

  He began briskly but soon found himself stopping every few hundred yards and looking upwards as he caught his breath. He saw the fireflies speckling the sky with their individual
fire, hundreds of them, lights to guide the night flights of restless birds, nature's airport in the sky. Above them the trees watched, like dancers frozen in a fantastic pose, their arms thrown up high over their heads

  By the time Michael woke up his grandmother had fallen asleep. The service over, he could hear her snoring on the front step. He realized that it must be at least six in the evening, for the light no longer streamed in under the door. There was little more than a dull yellow band and the air was heavier and slightly musty. He peeled back the sheet and rolled out of bed into the same long pants and pink shirt that he had worn the previous day. Half of his clothes were here and half were at Beverley's house. He would change there.

  His stocky figure presented itself in front of the full-length mirror that covered the inside panel of the wardrobe. The bed apart, it was the only piece of furniture in the room. Michael quickly ran a dull comb backwards across the top of his stubbled head. He pulled on his jacket, stepped out of the bedroom, then crept through the front room and out past his grandmother into the humid air. It was a surprisingly bright evening, the time of the year when days seemed to drag on longer than they should. His bike was still there at the side of the house where he had left it. There seemed little point in even trying to use it. What he needed was a new bike.

  Beverley lived ten minutes away, but to get there Michael had to wind his way through a jungle of back streets. Past the old houses made up of sheets of zinc and flattened butter tins nailed together, thatched cane leaf roofs and dirt floors. Past the open bars where on a hungry day if you were lucky, and had 50 cents in your pocket, somebody would sell you a bowl of rice and black-eyed peas, or some vegetables in an oily stew with a piece of bread to dip in it. Past the squatting schoolboys, homework done, toasting their feet on the top of the road which, even at this time of day, was still as hot as an oven. They sat with their sugar cane, chew-suck-spit, chew-suck-spit. And past the small girls pushing soursops into their faces, the juice bubbling down their flat naked chests.

  An old knotted woman sat and looked, her heavy round breasts fighting against the sweat-stained fabric of her shirt. She was too old for conversation. She could only stare. Her husband, sitting beside her, bony and gnarled, like a twig washed up by the sea, looked up and smiled with both his teeth.

  ‘Crop come, boy. No more weeding, plenty cutting, plenty work.’

  The man had known Michael since he was a baby, and if Michael lived to be a hundred years old he would still call him ‘boy’. He carried on working, the sharp metallic scratching of cutlass on grinding stone meant that his life had once again taken on some kind of seasonal sense. Michael moved on, too embarrassed to answer.

  When he arrived Beverley was preparing Ivor for bed. Michael came in and without saying a word he sat at the table. Beverley put down their child and picked up a pan. She silently spooned some chicken and rice on to a plate and set it before him. Then she carried on putting Ivor into a new nappy.

  She was a small, plump woman with a brown skin light enough to be freckled. She had successfully straightened her hair so that it dropped eagerly towards her shoulders. Her husband had left her three years ago to carve out a new life for them both in America, but he had never sent for her. She had everybody's sympathy, though she had no friends. Having recovered from the shock Beverley tried to guarantee herself against further hurt by expecting nothing of this world except a clean house, her child's health and her breath in her body every morning when she woke. Everything else was a complication that could, if necessary, be ignored.

  Her house was empty, like the inside of a packing case. It was just one room, with a small bedroom created by a hanging curtain. There were no pictures on the walls, not even one of Jesus, only old calendars. And nothing grew in this home, not even a flower. Behind the curtain stood a low and almost permanently unmade bed. Out back there was a small but clean yard, home for a few thin chickens and a pair of goats that looked more like sick dogs. They wandered aimlessly in between the water tank and the fruit trees, too poor to make any noise.

  Michael tossed the chicken leg back on to the plate, having sucked it clean. Ivor's young eyes slid involuntarily across the room, but his mother turned his head and regained his attention. Beverley put the final pin into place and took him across to his father. Michael cradled the boy in his greasy hands. Then, half-heartedly, he touched Ivor's face, but the child began to cry and struggle weakly. They had both had enough. He held the boy up like a bunch of bananas at the market place and waited for a bid. Beverley was the only bidder and she took him, pulled back the curtain, and entered the bedroom space.

  Michael pushed the plate away and waited for her to come back out. Sometime ago, when marriage seemed a long way off, he had promised his grandmother that he would spend the night before his wedding at home with her. He would soon have to go. Beverley came back out and carefully pulled the curtain behind her. She turned around and, without looking at Michael, came forward and took up the plate. She put it on the side. Michael followed her with his eyes, knowing that he would simply make love to her, then walk back across the village the way he had come. Prolonged interest in her aroused body was a game he was tired of playing.

  He walked quickly. The occasional light was still on but he had to pick his way carefully down the moonlit streets and cut across back gardens and up small alleyways. In his grandmother's house both lamps were lit. She was waiting. The small wooden shack stood slightly apart from the other houses, and Michael climbed the one step and carefully curled himself around the door.

  His attentive grandmother was sitting in her dressing gown, which hid the well-worn cotton nightdress that had grown old with her. Michael stood like a stranger and looked about the room. On a rusty nail behind the door hung her ‘burying hat’ a hat that looked like an old black felt box that had been crushed out of shape. All her friends were dying. The journey to the door, to the church and back again to the rusty nail was becoming more frequent. Michael waited. Then she creaked slowly to life, pretending she had been asleep, and she looked blankly at him and rolled her tongue around her mouth. She had a full set of upper teeth but her lower jaw contained just three teeth, set at random angles, outcrops of white rock. The middle one jutted out over her bottom lip. But despite her teeth her gums were red and healthy. Sweet, almost succulent.

  ‘So what you has to say for yourself now you soon going be married?’

  Michael sat opposite her with his back to the front door.

  ‘Don't really be much I can say, is there? It's going to happen and that's all there is to it.’

  ‘If you say so.’ She paused for breath. Without taking her eyes from him she went on, ‘And what about the Beverley woman and she child? You think about them?’ Michael avoided her knowing stare. She carried on, ‘Don't worry, I think you is better off with the white girl for she going look after you right if you look after she, you hear me?’

  Michael nodded. He looked at his grandmother, then past her and around the room. He saw wisdom and experience not only in her face but in the bundles of letters that were piled up high in boxes and stuffed away in every corner. On the cabinet top were photographs, old, grey, brown, new, bright, of her family, now scattered all over the world, a family she never talked about for she had never seen them. She looked at Michael and forced a smile.

  He spoke quickly. ‘I think I'll go to bed now.’

  They sat in silence for two minutes more, but to Michael it felt like an age. He looked once more at the treasures of her life and thought of his grandfather. He had never noticed before, but without him the house was totally empty. All of a sudden he was missing, gone, and after ten years Michael felt as if he understood his grandmother a little better. He began to feel guilty that it had taken him so long.

  He got up, kissed her lightly on the cheek and went through to his room. Michael sat on the bed and listened carefully but he knew his grandmother was going to sit until she thought he was asleep. There would be no Bible to
night. She would spend the whole night praying hard, then sleeping, then praying hard again, and in those moments of consciousness she would listen to make sure that he slept well. He lay back on the bed, hands behind his head, and waited. Now, only hours away from marriage, he thought of Leila.

  He always found himself caught between giving to her, and thinking if he was ever going to make anything of his life he would need every last ounce of energy to spend where he chose and when he chose. Sometimes he chose to spend it on her, sometimes not. He had explained this so many times to Bradeth that he began to wonder if his friend was going deaf. It was nothing to do with Beverley, he would say, it was just Leila whom one minute he could like, and the next minute he could look at her filled with a horror that she might betray him in some unknown way. Bradeth usually shrugged, unable to comprehend his friend's slick logic; Michael, however, told him only half the truth.

  Most people thought Leila too good for Michael. But he felt that to talk of this with anyone, including Bradeth, was admission to his alleged inferiority. Therefore he kept his anger locked up. This frustrated him, but it also made him more determined to prove something to himself and everyone. What exactly it was he was trying to prove he was still unsure. And how he would prove it he had no idea.

  An hour slipped by, and outside he could hear the shrill voices of the crickets. Then he heard the soft ache of wood as his grandmother levered herself out of the chair, and the resigned leathery rustle of her bare feet as she made her way across the empty space to her bedroom. Michael turned over and fell asleep.

  *

  The next day being Saturday Leila was married. But there was no string band, and nobody danced or sang in the street, and nobody walked with the wedding cake firmly balanced on their head. The service was as her mother had wanted it, strictly conventional, with Leila dressed from head to foot in a lacy white dress, large raindrop-like earrings in both her ears; and Michael looking smart in a dark blue suit, a white shirt and a tie. He had made an effort, and it showed. Leila was grateful.