Is Just a Movie

by Earl Lovelace

  After Marissa left, many of the women of Cascadu saw Rooplal as a man to avoid and forbade their female relatives to look him in the eye. For protection against the force of his magical charms, they bathed in water perfumed with sweet broom and red lavender and doused themselves in prevention powders they got from another more reliable obeah-man, kept their heads straight so as not to meet his eyes and fingered their rosaries when they saw him passing. But to another set of women, Marissa’s revelations had added to Rooplal’s mystery and appeal and his homelessness now offered an occasion for their solicitude. After she left, there was a steady stream of women of all levels of maturity who came by with rosaries or ohrinis or religious tracts, about them the soft grace of angels of mercy, shyly asking directions to where he might be found. Many of them offered him temporary accommodation, others offered him food, and some brought clothes. He accepted the full package of accommodation, food and clothes from Miss Zeena, a widow, a soft-spoken big-eye Christian woman with long hair and a body not so much weighed down as propelled by the sincere and muscular roll of a formidable bottom. After six days in which no one in the town saw him, he moved out of her place and settled into a two-roomed house behind the gas station.

  With Marissa no longer there to harass him, and without the sewing machine to distract him, Rooplal gave up tailoring, but exposed the town to his other skills. He spoke on the political platform of any candidate who came to Cascadu and who would pay him. He made or pretended to make counterfeit money, and endeavored to find every means of making money without the inconvenience of orthodox labor. He linked up with Alligator Teeth, a loudmouthed big-eyed fella, a mouther whose claim to notoriety was his fearsome-looking teeth, loud voice and his boast that he was not too squeamish to scratch out the eyes or bite off the parts of any man who was so foolish as to get into a fight with him. With him, Rooplal roamed the countryside presenting himself as a maker of counterfeit money and trying to sell people the idea that there was treasure buried in their yards. In support of his claim, Rooplal produced two gold coins, which he said had come from a certain piece of land nearby, from treasure buried in the seventeenth century by Blackbeard the pirate. For a small fee, he was prepared to unearth the treasure. Some people chased him out of their yards, but there were the few who believed they were getting a bargain and paid him to dig, which he did, until they turned their back and he and Alligator Teeth disappeared with whatever money they had been given.

  By the time Sonnyboy fell in with them, they had pretty much given up those moneymaking schemes and were focused on the more legitimate activities of gambling. Rooplal’s disregard of the consequences of his actions on himself or on others was what principally fascinated Sonnyboy, and as he listened to Rooplal’s stories of his escapades, the cards he marked, the women he fooled,

  the people he fleeced, Sonnyboy glimpsed in that approach to life something liberating, and Rooplal, sensing a willing apprentice to his methods, drew Sonnyboy to him.

  Soon Sonnyboy became one of the party, going with them to whatever festivity was taking place in the town and its surroundings: to wakes, with two decks of marked cards and two packs of candles to provide light, at village fairs and sports meetings and harvests, with a folding table on which to play Over Under and Lucky Seven, or the Three Card game, with he, Sonnyboy or Alligator Teeth taking the role of the lucky punter, the decoy, pretending to be the one who could spot the Queen. They took their crooked games also to the various venues for horseracing, the savannah in Port of Spain, Santa Rosa in Arima, Skinner Park in the south of the island and at the open-air venues for Kiddies’ Carnival. They went to Tobago only once and were chased away from setting up a game of their own by the Tobago hustlers and they ended up bathing in the sea and eating crab and dumplings from vendors on the beach at Store Bay. And so he had gone on, guided by the philosophy of how to get his own way and what it is he had to do to end up with a dollar in his pocket.

  For Carnival, Rooplal and Alligator Teeth continued their hustle in more artistic vein, taking the role of Midnight Robbers, Rooplal adopting the persona of “The Mighty Cangancero” and Alligator Teeth that of “Ottie the Terrible.” They left Cascadu and headed for Port of Spain, stopping at towns along the way, engaging each other in mock confrontation, drawing audiences at every street corner and coming away with purses full of money.

  Hear Rooplal, The Mighty Cangancero:

  Away from the dark lagoon of gloom came I the Mighty Cangancero, the most notorious criminal grand master.

  With my every step, I cause the earth to tremble, my smile brings rain.

  My laughter causes the heavens to rumble, trees to fall, rivers to overflow, animals to stampede and human beings to look for shelter.

  I am known in Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the planet they call Uranus,

  I am the intergalactic bandit whose face is on the Most Wanted list of bank robbers, kidnappers, plunderers, assassins and bounty hunters.

  I traffic in precious metals, rubies, diamonds and pearls.

  For I am the most notorious criminal that was placed upon the face of the universe. Everywhere I go the police and secret services of the planets are on the lookout for me.

  I am Public Enemy numbers one two and three.

  So bow, Mook-man, and deliver your treasures unto me.

  And Alligator Teeth, Ottie the Terrible:

  Are you not afraid to walk this long lonely road, where I this bloodthirsty terminator performs his daring crimes. For I live today when men who seek to destroy me are all dead. I can bite off a portion of the moon and shorten a season. A breath from my nostrils can melt the north pole, inspire raging torrents, overturn continents and cause islands to disappear. A wave of my hand can stop rain, and cause, in what was once luxurious green, the panic of deserts to appear. Women moan and children groan when meeting me, this criminal master, so for your own good, I ask you to seek my sympathy and bow, Mook-man, and deliver your treasures unto me.

  Sonnyboy did not go with them. He headed directly to Port of Spain to link up with his brother Alvin and other relatives who from whichever part of the island they lived would find their way into Tokyo steelband, all of them, the whole Apparicio clan, the older ones holding aloft bits of shrubbery, the younger ones waving handkerchiefs, the streets of the city their own for this one time of the year, so they have no fear of nothing, nobody could touch them in this band, people had to clear the road for them; Sonnyboy himself lined up with the rhythm section, the assembly of hard-muscled men, there to keep up the tempo and maintain the rhythm, as the guardians and force of the band, armed with an instrument that had the heft of a weapon they could employ if the need arose to fight. But fighting was out now; their mission was to give life to music, to make the rhythm sing, to draw people into the Festival of Spirit, into the Orisha of dance, into the defiant consolation of song, so they could know that poverty was not strong enough to overwhelm them, nothing could subdue the freshness of their enduring, nothing overwhelm the monument of their spirit, or overturn the cathedral of their dreams; Uncle George, the smooth one, the saga-boy, older now, with what remained of his hair still black, still slicked back, still neat, with two gaudily dressed and made-up women holding on to him, but not with the desperation of those of an earlier time, more as if supporting him; Sonnyboy’s uncle Egbert, the one who tried to be a calypsonian, his shirt open showing his chest, portraying a wounded soldier, dressed in an army jacket, his head bandaged, embodying the response to the unutterable poignancy of the occasion by drinking to excess and wanting to fight, less to inflict hurt, it turned out, than to engage another human being, to let out this thing he couldn’t express, this love that he was trying to find a way to give, in the end quieting down like a child, collapsing with that rubbery yielding, embracing the very ones a moment before he wanted to fight. Sonnyboy watching the pantomime of grief and nostalgia as Egbert staggered along, his arms thrown over the shoulders of the two men carrying him, not knowing what to do with himself, wanting to
challenge the world, to fight with it, wanting it to know that he hurt, that something was missing. Sonnyboy held the tears inside himself, cradling the iron and looking across at another uncle, beating iron beside him, Bruce, a big strong man who Sonnyboy see one time bathing at the standpipe, having soaped his skin, lift a tub of water and pour it over his body to rinse off, Bruce now with the iron up under his chin like is a violin he playing, except that instead of sawing across the instrument, beating down on it, his arms curled and glistening, his shirt front wet with sweat, the music in his head, in his ears, in his belly, in his stones, and Bruce looking across at him too, striking the iron with a fresh resolve to challenge and encourage a new intensity from him to match and counterpoint his beating, Sonnyboy calling upon his muscles for the effort, feeling them respond, the iron ringing afresh, clatack, clatack, clatacanging with a new triumphant benediction. And behind them, in the band, people flowing with their soothing rousing dance, every triumph and disappointment and pain understood, a fella with the mincing, zany elegance of the king sailor, moon-walking across the street, the sweet obscenity punctuating the sober poetry of his uncle Egbert’s challenge to the world: “Beat that! Beat that!” opening his arms and pointing to the pans, to the music, to the dancing: “Beat that!” Beat that! Wanting an enemy to fight, finding a brother to embrace. Because this morning he could fly. No army could defeat him, no force could keep him down: Beat that! And his friends would come and hold him and embrace him and understand his tears and rage and pride: Beat that! And, bearing him up, they would flow forward, linked together with arms on shoulders and hands around waists, and he, Sonnyboy, beating the iron, clakatang clakatang, still beating when somebody put the mouth of a bottle of rum to his lips and he throw back his head and drink two-three gulps, still keeping up the rhythm for the band, and next to him his uncle Bruce, with the iron up under his chin, balang balang balang balang bang, everything else forgotten. And that would be Carnival for Sonnyboy.

  And he would go back to Cascadu refreshed, renewed, to the sawmill and to the outings with Rooplal and Alligator Teeth, the dance of his king sailor walk giving him a certain unbalance that brought mystery and authority to his bearing, so that Rooplal, ever on the lookout for new moneymaking schemes, seeing him walking said, “Wait. I have the exact job for you. We could start a church. We could make bags of money with you as a pastor.”

  “And you collecting the tithes?” he said, turning it into a joke. But it was true. Rooplal was his friend, but Rooplal had not seen him either. Fearful that if he was not careful he would fade into the nothingness of the town, roused from slumber by his one day of Carnival, Sonnyboy grew quiet. He began to cultivate a way of speaking that muffled his words so you not sure exactly of what he saying. He developed a gruffness of manner as the best face with which to face this world, his arms folded across his chest like a genie, his voice clear and decisive when he had to speak, in his eyes a look of inquiry, to keep people on edge, deliberately stepping into their space to unsettle them, to have them shifting and uncomfortable. There were young fellars who were ready to fight him just for that challenge, but his own readiness to oblige them gave them pause. Fellars had to take their time with him. Conscious of his power, he stepped off even slower now, his elbows turned outward away from his body, one foot rising and falling in sync with the other in the rolling motion as if he was pedaling a bicycle, so that even his grandmother find that for a big man he was walking too pretty. And he only begin to think of his future when, participating in one of Rooplal’s audacious schemes that had to do with counterfeiting money, he found himself with Rooplal and Teeth in a room of a house somewhere in the countryside, in the middle of nowhere, while Khalid, the man who had brought them there, lay sleeping. Earlier that evening Sonnyboy had watched him sharpen his cutlass, then release his five pit bulls to patrol his yard. He had then invited them to dine with his family of a wife and five daughters. It was a delicious dinner of curry duck and steamed breadfruit. Khalid had paid Rooplal to produce 1,000 dollars of counterfeit money. Rooplal take the man money and had not delivered. He had danced the man until the man catch up with him. Now he had to produce the money by morning. There was no way that could be done since the whole thing was a con job gone bad. At the dinner Rooplal reminding him again that while he was overwhelmed by his courtesy he did not believe it was really necessary for them to remain. Khalid had in his possession the device to produce the money. All he would have to do would be to open it after the 12 hours. Yes, the man tell Rooplal. But I don’t want to make no mistake. I would rather you remain. And he showed them to the room in which they were to sleep. As soon they enter the room the man give them to sleep in, Teeth start to tremble and then he came up with the idea that they should join hands and pray.

  Sonnyboy had actually begun to pray when Rooplal let go of his hand, put a finger over his lips and stepped lightly out the room. He was following the trail of the aroma of desire left by one of the daughters who as they were having dinner had made the fatal error of looking into his eyes and had fallen under his magical spell. He found her in her room quite awake, fully dressed and with a suitcase packed, waiting to be rescued from the boredom of her village and taken to the places of excitement she had seen in his eyes. She was prepared to lead him past the dogs on condition he take her with him. He agreed, and while the rest of the house was asleep, she led Rooplal and his party out of the yard, into the road and to freedom. Rooplal tried to explain to her that life with him would most likely be hard and that he couldn’t immediately provide anything comparable to what she was leaving. She didn’t want to hear anything. She put one arm around his neck and clung to him. She would go wherever he was going. As soon as they walked out of the yard, Alligator Teeth started to run. Sonnyboy followed him. At some distance from Khalid’s house they stopped until Rooplal came with the girl clinging to him and joined them and they set out walking in the direction of Cascadu, until a truck taking produce to the Port of Spain market stopped for them. Rooplal, the girl and Teeth proceeded to ride the truck all the way to Port of Spain, but Sonnyboy got off at Cascadu. He had decided to leave the association with Rooplal and Teeth for good. It was only after the truck had gone that he pushed his hand in his pocket and realized that Rooplal had not given him his portion of the money. Next day, knowing that Khalid and his men would be looking for him, he headed for Port of Spain to cool out by his brother at Rouff Street.

  A few weeks later he would hear that Teeth playing badjohn at an excursion in Mayaro had his left hand chopped off just below the elbow by a young fella from Tunupuna whose name he didn’t know was Blade. Rooplal, he would hear, had migrated with the girl to Canada. Sonnyboy would begin a new life as well.

  In Port of Spain, Sonnyboy met Big Ancil, who

  was originally from Cascadu but now was a supervisor

  on a project in Port of Spain. From Big Ancil he got a job as a laborer on the project and he went about his work with few words and his trademark diligence. Struck by his strict mumbling tone and his diligent, if sullen, performance as a worker, Ancil had made him a foreman. He had managed the men under his control with a stern and intimidatory appearance and a minimum of words, spoken in the same mumbling indecipherable language, a display that so impressed Big Ancil (who was also a moneylender) that he employed him to extract money owed him

  from delinquent debtors. Later, delighted by his success in this very important matter, Big Ancil, who at that time was supporting the National Party, engaged him to provide protection for their supporters at their meetings

  in opposition territory. There he ran in once more to

  Big Head and Marvel, who were doing the same pro-

  tective work for the Democratic Party. They had allowed their diligence to get out of hand and at their meetings actually began to jostle people who too vocally opposed the party they supported. Sonnyboy was clear. He

  didn’t want any war with them. “Live and let live,” he tell them. “All of us getting a bre
ad from the politics. We not here to kill nobody.” And he exacted a truce from them.

  One day Sonnyboy was riding in the car with Big Ancil when Big Ancil, who was announcing the details of a political meeting, seized by a fit of coughing, handed the microphone to him. After the shock of discovering how odd his voice sounded, Sonnyboy went on, with the approval and encouragement of Big Ancil, announcing

  for the rest of the evening. After that, whenever Big Ancil was tired he handed the microphone to him. At first Sonnyboy gave the information of the meeting, the time, the speakers, the venue; but, bored with repeating the same things again and again, he began to talk about things that interested him, about labor, about workers doing a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, about the pressure placed on people who he called the underdog in society, about how it was only one set of people the police arrested. He spoke about the difficulties his mother had to mind him and his brother and of her having to go away to get a better life. He told again of what happened with his father the day he put the notes on the steelpan and how Blackpeople didn’t raise a hand in his protection. All that, Big Ancil came on to say, was what the National Party was going to change. The reason they were voting was to get that better life here. So between he and Big Ancil there developed a dialogue in which Sonnyboy outlined the problems and Big Ancil came on to say what the National Party was going to do about them. Big Ancil was finding driving the van too exhausting and he encouraged Sonnyboy to get his driving permit so he could take over the driving. It was while on his way to have his birth certificate reissued to him at the Red House that Sonnyboy, walking through Woodford Square, came upon the arguments and discussions on religion and politics and race relations that men were having in little groups all over the Square.