Without sin, I shall surely die.
Fellars who used to frequent the rum shops shepherded by their women passed in their best clothes with Bibles in hand on their way to the Crusade and their way back to God. From the veranda of his gambling club, Constantine Nieves, biggest gambler in the district, took in the week of prayer with an amused sadness, thinking that this too was life. Although he had announced that in that week drinks would be free from 7 to 8 and the table stakes for poker would be reduced from twenty dollars to ten, coming up the steps to the club was the smallest trickle of men who looked so far gone that they did not think even prayers could help them.
“And you know,” he said aloud, “with all the fuss they making, there going to be no wedding.”
Japan, the other great gambler in Cascadu, a moneylender, nearby on the big wappie table, playing a game of single-hand rummy with a stranger we knew only as Sailor, was quick to respond: “You betting on it?”
“You damn right, I betting. What odds you giving?”
“Even money,” said Constantine.
“With so much people against the wedding?”
“The bride and groom practically in the church already,” said Constantine, “I would be a fool to give you odds.”
“The man could skip town,” said Japan.
“And leave that woman? No.”
“Or an accident could happen to him.”
“Even money,” Constantine said.
When Japan finished the game, he called to Constantine, “How much you putting?”
“On what?”
“That the wedding not going to happen.”
“Whatever you have,” Constantine said.
And that is how Cascadu came back to its senses.
Once the news went out that the two biggest gamblers in the town were laying bets on whether or not there would be a wedding, first, those keeping vigil under the telephone post where BonAventure was fasting made their way to the gambling club to lay bets, some with Constantine, some with Japan. As others followed, the town began to feel once more in charge of its destiny. All over Cascadu people gathered up money to put with that of Constantine Nieves against the heap that Japan was anxious to lay on the table. Japan who had bet on the couple getting married was no fool, and to ensure that no accident happened to Clayton, he detailed Big John to follow Clayton and Oliver to follow Big John, and asked Sonnyboy to keep an eye on the two of them.
“So where you putting your money?” I asked Aunt Magenta.
“There will be no wedding.”
“No wedding?”
“Half the town against it and every day her mother down on her knees in front half a dozen burning candles and a picture of the Virgin Mary, pleading for Dorlene to come to her senses and call off the wedding.”
“You don’t think is too late for that? I know Dorlene, how she stubborn.”
“And I know the mother,” my aunt said.
Dorlene’s Wedding Day
So I was there to see Dorlene, in a white bridal dress, its train carried by Mercury Allgood and her sisters, then small beribboned children, present herself at the church for the purpose of getting married to Clayton Blondell, a man disliked by more than half the town and hated by Dorlene’s mother who, since the announcement of the wedding, each day went laboriously down on her knees before a burning candle and the picture of the Virgin Mary to plead for Dorlene to come to her senses and call off this wedding.
Up to the morning of the wedding day, Dorlene had not relented. The villagers, packed in the churchyard and hanging from the vantage of its walkway’s two enormous mango trees, were there to see the guests arrive from their respective worlds: Dorlene’s relatives, in private cars, their clothing displaying the self-assuredness of their class, duty-bound to put a brave face on the occasion, as if whatever objection they had to her choice of mate was less to be emphasized than the superiority of class and the solidity of clan; Clayton’s family turned out in the shiny extravagance of the poor, their chariots, the grandest taxis money could hire, in wondrous costumes they had gone into years of debt to afford; Aunt Magenta, draped in a buxom splendor of her own that matched theirs, a fan in one gloved hand, the other hand linked to the muscular arm of her escort Clephus Winchester, who was making his first public appearance with her.
Half an hour after Dorlene’s appearance at the church, there was no sight of the prospective bridegroom, and Aunt Magenta, who is telling me this part of the story, in the church now, fanning herself with the letter-sized invitation (she had lent her own fan to Clephus) as she stewed in the luxurious vapors steaming from bodies enveloped in finery around her, was beginning to wonder whether the man would turn up at all, or if the candle that Dorlene’s mother had burning on his head had had its effect so that even as they waited he was on his way out of Dorlene’s life back to the depths of hell where the mother believed he had come from. Just then, Big John and Oliver, stiff-looking, in their formal wear, one in a green suit, the other in a brown one, appeared with Clayton just a step or two ahead of them. We would learn later that at the time when he ought to have headed for the church, he discovered he was nearly an hour too early. Not wanting to appear too anxious, he had asked the taxi to let him off at the gambling club, a place where nobody would look for him since he had never gambled in his life. There he was introduced to the playing of the card game wappie. He took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves so that the elbows of the shirt would not be soiled rubbing against the card table, and sat at the table. Fellars anxious to benefit from beginner’s luck encouraged him to cut the cards; he did, successfully, and went on to make nick after nick. He was still nicking when Big John and Oliver entered the club. They had looked everywhere else. And it was only when Clayton turned and saw them dressed in wedding clothes that he was brought back to the present.
“What time it is?”
“They waiting for you in the church.”
“Just let me wash my face.”
He stuffed the money in his pockets and went to the washroom in the back where he splashed his face, unrolled his sleeves, buttoned them at the wrist and put on his jacket, and he walked out, leaving the club buzzing over his amazing run of luck.
In the church he went past the whispers of the spectators, up to the altar to meet Miss Dorlene as the steelband began again to play “Here Comes the Bride” for the last time that day and they stood together before the priest, not meeting each other’s eyes until the priest asked the question, If anyone know a reason why this man and woman should not be joined in matrimony speak now or forever hold your peace, heard the silence settle like a roar in the church. At that point a troupe of women stood and made their way up the aisle, beside them their children ranging in ages from perhaps twelve months to twelve years, each one with Clayton’s long head and fierce eyes. The congregation groaned. It was Clayton’s children and their mothers.
In the silence, Dorlene’s mother made the sign of the cross and her scream rent the air. Dorlene stood in front Clayton. She lifted a hand to strike him. At that moment four pigeons flew into the church. Just for an instant Dorlene began to tremble and then all at once she stood calm. “Sorry,” she said, and still holding the bouquet she walked out the church, the three little Allgood sisters, not aware that anything was wrong, hurrying behind her, carrying out their office with the same fluent and rehearsed ceremony, the steelband breaking out into “Claire de Lune” and the mother, her lips smacking nervously, lifting her head to see Dorlene standing before her with an icy calm. “You satisfy now, Mother? You pleased?” And she pushed the bouquet into her mother’s hands and left the church, the mother stilling her own trembling lips to say softly words that only those near could hear: “Is not for me you do this, you know. Is not for me, you know.”
And then there was confusion with the money that people had bet.
The man holding the bet had been flanked by Mr. Constantine and Japan. On seeing Clayton enter the church, he had given over the bet to Japan
and Japan began handing over various sums to those who had bet along with him. Now Mr. Constantine wanted to get the money from Japan. In the episode that followed, Japan, accompanied by Big John and Oliver, went up to Clayton. They wanted to beat him, but Japan who now had to collect the money he had held only briefly, told Clayton, “Maybe is best for you to leave this town.” And they should have realized that something was wrong because Clayton just went on smiling and putting forward his arm to shake hands. And it was only afterward that they realized that Clayton wasn’t hearing them. He had tripped off into a world all his own.
Even then, we didn’t know how deeply wounded he was. We would understand the seriousness of his condition only later, when the next day at the same hour of morning Clayton visited the church in his clothes of a bridegroom that he had not changed, shaking hands all around. For the rest of that weekend and for some days in the new week, Clayton went through that same exercise. By then it was clear, from the scent emanating from him as he extended his hands for the umpteenth time, that he had not taken his clothes off since the day of his aborted wedding.
“That is what you get when you hang your hat where your hand can’t reach,” Aunt Magenta said.
I was surprised at her lack of sympathy.
Seeing that I wanted to speak, she looked at me sharply. “You have something to say?”
“No, no,” I said too quickly. Then, on reflection, “No, it is a terrible thing. Plenty people sorry.”
“I sorry too,” in her tone more triumph than sorrow.
“I suppose,” said Clephus, spitefully, “Sonnyboy will have to finish build the sphinx now.”
But I wasn’t amused.
Up the Hill
I had seen Dorlene grieve before: anger, vexation, self-pity, her eyes brimming with a soft unutterable hurt, accusing you, making you feel, no matter how innocent you knew yourself to be, that you were a part of the world that had hurt her. But this time she didn’t cry, she didn’t scream, she didn’t curse. In the months after the scandal of the aborted wedding, she endured the presence of Clayton in Cascadu, overhearing him ridiculed, teased, the whisperings when she passed, the poor thing mouthed by sorrowful shakes of the head, endured the how nice you looking from people glad to see her taken down a peg, not because they bore her any particular ill will, but because this rejoicing at someone else’s sorrow kept it away from their own door. Then he left Cascadu, but that didn’t end the attention from the town. She tried at first to hurry past the comments, and when she couldn’t she decided to be deaf, not hearing, and then to be blind, not seeing, and then she was dumb; so that when I saw her walking in the market, drawn to her full height, her chin tilted upward, her eyes fixed on the horizon, she didn’t see me. She didn’t look healthy. It was as if she was stuffing herself with the wrong foods. Her face looked swollen. Her hair was straightened, its silky ends, curling comically around her temples, like the relaxed feathers of a dusting broom. She was wearing a tailored suit to camouflage the size she had put on, but it did not hide much. Her neck had grown bigger, her back and shoulders had thickened and the flesh of her arms bulged over her sleeves. “Hello,” I said, intending to stand and talk to her. She contrived an off-putting smile and continued on her way briskly, I am sure to avoid having to speak to me, but also in a backhanded way, I thought, to see if I cared enough to pursue her. I didn’t know what to say. I felt guilty, helpless and responsible. The disaster of the wedding had saddened me and I saw that she needed someone, she needed me.
It was a week or so later, I went to her home. I had the correct excuse to do so. I had received an invitation from the Culture Ministry of Grenada’s Revolutionary Government to visit the island to take part in a grand event involving artists from the Caribbean. I had listened to reports of the revolution from afar, had followed the events, the seizing of the police stations without a shot being fired, the banning of the newspapers, the formation of the militia, the people’s revolutionary army, the defiance of the USA. I had gone to hear their leader and prime minister Maurice Bishop speak when he came to Trinidad, and had been impressed by his charisma, hopeful that here at last in the Caribbean was a group of persons prepared to tackle the silence that had continued from emancipation.
When I got to Dorlene’s home, she wasn’t there. I met her mother sitting on their veranda in her rocking chair staring ahead, the old newspapers that she must have been going through scattered around her feet. Weeds were overgrowing the garden to the side of the path, a cat was asleep on the steps.
Her mother recognized me: “Dorlene is not here,” she said.
As I turned to leave, I asked her if she knew where she was.
Then her tears, her grief began to flow: “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me. She doesn’t talk to me. She doesn’t tell me anything. She leave me here alone. I am not well. I am a sick woman. Sugar. Pressure. Why she doing this to me? I am not guilty of any wrong. I am not to blame.”
“Do you know where she might be?” I asked.
“She left three days ago to go by her brother, I am not sure. She was talking about going to find Clayton. Up in some dangerous place. Exactly where I do not know. Her brother in Woodbrook should know. You know her brother Claude?”
I remembered him as the one member of the Hard Wuck Screening Committee who had spoken in support of Sonnyboy’s candidacy. I had the impression that he was no longer an active member of the Hard Wuck Party, but I didn’t know for sure. I had lost interest in the organization and it seemed to have abandoned what it called electoral politics.
“Yes, I know Claude.”
“You going to look for her.” It wasn’t a question. And it required no answer. “Tell her for me I sorry, am not a bad woman. The best is all I want for her. That is all. That is my sin: to want the best for my daughter.”
“But I don’t have the address of her brother,” I said.
“It is Woodbrook. Let me give it to you.”
She wrote out the address for me. So I was in it now. After I left her, I went to see Sonnyboy to find out if he had an address for Clayton. Sonnyboy didn’t have Clayton’s address, but he wanted to come along to see how Clayton was doing. That was fine. Early next morning we set out for Port of Spain. We found the Woodbrook address easy enough and we met Claude. Dorlene wasn’t there. She had gone to visit Clayton, he told us, but he had the address. Laventille. His first impulse was to give us the address and leave us to find our way, but in the little time we spoke, he changed his mind. I suppose the fact that we were from Cascadu had something to do with it. Now, he wanted to go up the hill. It was something he had always wanted to do and he was glad for the opportunity to see the hill of resistance, the birthplace of pan. He didn’t want to drive. We could take a taxi down town, then walk up the hill. Did we mind walking?
It was all right with me and I suspected that although Sonnyboy didn’t say anything, he didn’t mind either. As far as I knew he had, in the last years, not frequented the place where he was born and spent his early years. I didn’t know what to expect or how he would respond.
Going up the hill was going into a world that the rest of the city had left behind. It was an old part of the town, with posters plastered on the walls that hugged the margins of the street, announcing the showing of movies from cinemas no longer in operation, of fêtes featuring music bands no longer in existence, the only current items the smiling faces of the candidates for elections: Vote for Oswald Sanguinette Your National Party Candidate. Vote Machel Des Vignes for Labor Party. Vote for Wilson Toppin. Of the faces of promises, one candidate had an eye gouged out, another had his teeth blacked out, one candidate had been given a beard, another a pair of spectacles. The only pristine face was that of the National Party candidate looking out contentedly, his victory assured.
The place looked aged, bleak, its architecture faithful to the template of poverty, neglect, the new houses painted in the same colors of the old, matching the feel of decay, or garishly highlighting it. The first person
we saw was a man alone standing before a half-built house, contemplating the unfinished building, the holes of the windows, the doorless openings, the absent steps, the unpainted pillars, the boxing with the lengths of steel into which the mortar is to be poured, his collapsed shoulders holding up, in faith, the faith. You couldn’t call out to such a man to ask him directions. And we walked on up the hill until we got to a corner where another alley disappeared and saw on the other side of the street a young fella with the sharp eyes of a hustler and the air of a fugitive, alert to run, and, I suppose, intuiting that we were not the police, inquired, “You looking for somebody?” in that double-, triple-speak, partly to put us off, partly to intimidate, really to discover who we were.
“Yes. We looking for somebody,” Claude answered. “Clayton. Clayton Blondell is who we looking for,” speaking with the self-assurance of an experienced adventurer.
“Clayton Blondell? Clayton Blondell?” The young fella sounding the name for it to register.
“Who they looking for?” Another fella, older, a turban on his head, dark shades, a military jacket, had materialized.
“Blondell. Clayton Blondell.”
“Blondell, Blondell, Blondell? Oh-ho, Sharkey brother. The mad one. What you want him for?”
“He’s a friend.”
The man with the turban looked at me again, recognition in his eyes.
“Wait! You is . . . don’t tell me – calypsonian? Kangkala?”
“King Kala,” I said.
“King Kala, yes.”
As if to confirm his discovery, he began singing one of my calypsos:
Nothing is changed
Not the silence not the shame
It can’t be humans living up here
Conditions so bad
These people forgotten
In this dream they calling Trinidad . . .
“You remember that calypso? Nearly win everything with that one song: Panorama, the Road March. The Monarch competition.”
“Yes,” I said, flattered, but not wanting to make too much of it.
Is Just a Movie Page 18
