Collected Short Fiction Page 29

  Channel and islets which I had never hoped or wished to see again. Still there. And I had been so calm throughout the journey northwards. Abstemiousness, even self-mortification, had settled on me almost as soon as I had gone aboard; and had given me a deep content. I had been eating little and drinking not at all. I fancied that I was shrinking from day to day, and this daily assessment had been pleasing. When I sat I tried to make myself as small as possible; and it had been a pleasure to me then to put on my spectacles and to attempt to read, to be the ascetic who yet knew the greater pleasure of his own shrinking flesh. To be the ascetic, to be mild and gentle and soft-spoken, withdrawn and ineffectual; to have created for oneself that little clearing in the jungle of the mind; and constantly to reassure oneself that the clearing still existed.

  Now as we moved into the harbour I could feel the jungle press in again. I was jumpy, irritated, unsatisfied, suddenly incomplete. Still, I made an effort. I decided not to go ashore with the others. We were to stay on the island until the hurricane had blown itself out. The shipping company had arranged trips and excursions.

  ‘What’s the name of this place? They always give you the name of the place in airports. Harbours try to keep you guessing. I wonder why?’

  ‘Philosopher!’

  Husband and wife, playing as a team.

  Already we were news. On the transistors there came a new announcement, breathless like the others: ‘Here is an appeal from the Ministry of Public Order and Education. Five hundred tourists will be on our island for the next few days. The Ministry urges that these tourists be treated with our customary courtesy and kindness.’

  ‘The natives are excited,’ a tourist said to me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think there is a good chance they will eat us. We look pretty appetizing.’

  Red dust hung in a cloud above the bauxite loading station, disfiguring the city and the hills. The tourists gazed, lining the rails in bermuda shorts, bright cotton shirts and straw hats. They looked vulnerable.

  ‘Here is an appeal from the Ministry of Public Order and Education.…’

  I imagined the appeal going to the barbershops, rumshops, cafés and back-yards of the ramshackle town I had known.

  The radio played a commercial for a type of shirt; an organ moaned and some deaths were announced; there was a commercial for a washing powder; then the time was tremendously announced and there were details of weather and temperature.

  A woman said, ‘They get worked up about the time and the weather here too.’

  Her husband, his bitterness scarcely disguised by the gaiety of his tourist costume, said, ‘Why the hell shouldn’t they?’

  They were not playing as a team.

  I went down to my cabin. On the way I ran into the happier team, already dressed as for a carnival.

  ‘You’re not going ashore?’ asked the male.

  ‘No. I think I will just stay here and read.’

  And in my self-imposed isolation, I did try to read. I put on my spectacles and tried to savour my shrinking, mortified flesh. But it was no use; the jungle pressed; confusion and threat were already being converted into that internal excitement which is in itself fulfilment, and exhaustion.

  Here on this Moore-McCormack liner everything was Moore-McCormack. In my white cabin the name called to me from every corner, from every article, from towels, from toilet paper, from writing paper, from table cloth, from pillow-cases, from bed sheets, from blankets, from cups and menus. So that the name appeared to have gone deep, to have penetrated, like the radiation we have been told to fear, the skin of all those exposed to it, to have shaped itself in living red corpuscles within bodies.

  Moore-McCormack, Moore-McCormack. Man had become God. Impossible in this cabin to escape; yet I knew that once we were out of the ship the name would lose its power. So that my decision was almost made for me. I would go ashore; I would spend the night ashore. My mood was on me; I let it settle; I let it take possession of me. Then I saw that I too, putting away briefcase, papers, letters, passport, was capable of my own feeble assertions. I too had tried to give myself labels, and none of my labels could convince me that I belonged to myself.

  This is part of my mood; it heightens my anxiety; I feel the whole world is being washed away and that I am being washed away with it. I feel my time is short. The child, testing his courage, steps into the swiftly moving stream, and though the water does not go above his ankles, in an instant the safe solid earth vanishes, and he is aware only of the terror of sky and trees and the force at his feet. Split seconds of lucidity add to his terror. So, we can use the same toothpaste for years and end by not seeing the colour of the tube; but set us among strange labels, set us in disturbance, in an unfamiliar landscape; and every un-regarded article we possess becomes isolated and speaks of our peculiar dependence.

  ‘You are going to spend the night ashore?’

  The question came from a small intelligent-looking man with a round, kind face. He had been as withdrawn from the life of the ship as myself, and I had always seen him in the company of a big grey-suited man whose face I had never been able to commit to memory. I had heard rumours that he was very rich, but I had paid no attention; as I had paid no attention to the other rumour that we had a Russian spy on board as a prisoner.

  ‘Yes, I am going to be brave.’

  ‘Oh, I am glad,’ he said, ‘we are going to have lots of fun together.’

  ‘Thanks for asking me.’

  ‘When I say fun, I don’t mean what you mean.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean either.’

  He did not stop smiling. ‘I imagine that you are going ashore for pleasure.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that you could call it that.’

  ‘I am glad we put in here.’ His expression became that of a man burdened by duty. ‘You see I have a little business to do here.’ He spoke gravely, but his excitement was clear. ‘Do you know the island?’

  ‘I used to know it very well.’

  ‘Well, I am so glad we have met. You are just the sort of person I want to meet. You could be of great help to me.’

  ‘I can simplify matters for you by giving you a list of places you must on no account go to.’

  He looked pained. ‘I am really here on business.’

  ‘You can do good business here. I used to.’

  Pleasure? I was already exhausted. My stomach felt tight; and all the unexpended energy of days, of weeks, seemed to have turned sour. Already the craving for shellfish and seafood was on me. I could almost feel its sick stale taste in my mouth, and I knew that for all that had happened in the past, I would eat no complete meal for some time ahead, and that while my mood lasted the pleasures I looked for would quickly turn to a distressing-satisfying endurance test, would end by being pain.

  I had been the coldest of tourists, unexcited by the unexpected holiday. Now, as we landed, I was among the most eager.

  ‘Hey, that was a pretty quick read.’

  ‘I read the last — the butler did it.’

  In the smart reception building, well-groomed girls, full of self-conscious charm, chosen for race and colour, with one or two totally, diplomatically black, pressed island souvenirs on us: toy steel-drums, market-women dolls in cotton, musicians in wire, totem-like faces carved from coconuts. Beyond the wire-netting fence, the taxi drivers of the city seethed. It seemed a frail barrier.

  ‘It’s like the zoo,’ the woman said.

  ‘Yes,’ said her embittered husband. ‘They might even throw you some nuts.’

  I looked for a telephone. I asked for a directory. It was a small directory.

  ‘A toy directory,’ the happy tourist said.

  ‘It’s full of the numbers of dolls,’ I said.

  I dialled, I waited. A voice I knew said, ‘Hullo.’ I closed my eyes to listen. The voice said, ‘Hullo, hullo.’ I put the receiver down.

  ‘Naughty.’

  It was my friend from the ship. His companion stood at the o
ther end of the room, his back to us; he was looking at books on a revolving bookstand.

  ‘What do you think Sinclair is interested in? Shall we go and see?’

  We moved over. Sinclair shuffled off.

  Most of the books displayed were by a man called H. J. B. White. The back of each book had a picture of the author. A tormented writer’s-photograph face. But I imagined it winking at me. I winked back.

  ‘Do you know him?’ my friend asked.

  ‘I don’t know whether any of us really knew Mr Blackwhite,’ I said. ‘He was a man who moved with the times.’

  ‘Local writer?’

  ‘Very local.’

  He counted the titles with an awed finger. ‘He looks tremendous. Oh, I hope I can see him. Oh, this looks very good.’

  The book he picked up was called I Hate You, with the subtitle One Man’s Search for Identity. He opened the book greedily and began moving his lips, ‘ “I am a man without identity. Hate has consumed my identity. My personality has been distorted by hate. My hymns have not been hymns of praise, but of hate. How terrible to be Caliban, you say. But I say, how tremendous. Tremendousness is therefore my unlikely subject.” ’

  He stopped reading, held the book out to the assistant and said, ‘Miss, Miss, I would like to buy this.’ Then, indicating one title after the other: ‘And this, and this, and this, and this.’

  He was not the only one. Many of the tourists had been deftly guided to the bookstall.

  ‘Native author.’

  ‘Don’t use that word.’

  ‘Lots of local colour, you think?’

  ‘Mind your language.’

  ‘But look, he’s attacking us.’

  ‘No, he’s only attacking tourists.’

  The group moved on, leaving a depleted shelf.

  I bought all H. J. B. White’s books.

  The girl who sold them to me said, ‘Tourists usually go for I Hate You, but I prefer the novels myself. They’re heart-warming stories.’

  ‘Good clean sex?’

  ‘Oh no, inter-racial.’

  ‘Sorry, I need another language.’

  I put on my spectacles and read on the dedication page ‘You see,’ he said, ‘they’re all after him. I don’t imagine he’ll want to look at me.’

  We were given miniature rum bottles with the compliments of various firms. Little leaflets and folders full of photographs and maps with arrows and X’s told us of the beauties of the island, now fully charted. The girl was especially friendly when she explained about the sights.

  ‘You have mud volcanoes here,’ I said, ‘and that’s pretty good. But the leaflet doesn’t say. Which is the best whorehouse in town nowadays?’

  Tourists stared. The girl called: ‘Mr Phillips.’ And my companion held my arm, smiled as to a child and said soothingly: ‘Hey, I believe I am going to have to look after you. I know how it is when things get on top of you.’

  ‘You know, I believe you do.’

  ‘My name’s Leonard.’

  ‘I am Frank,’ I said.

  ‘Short for Frankenstein. Forget it, that’s my little joke. And you see my friend over there, but you can’t see his face? His name’s Sinclair.’

  Sinclair stood, with his back to us, studying some tormented paintings of black beaches below stormy skies.

  ‘But Sinclair won’t talk to you, especially now that he’s seen me talking to you.’

  In the turmoil of the reception building we were three fixed points.

  ‘Why won’t Sinclair talk to me?’

  ‘He’s jealous.’

  ‘Hooray for you.’

  I broke away to get a taxi.

  ‘Hey, you can’t leave me. I’m worried about you, remember?’

  Below a wooden arch that said WELCOME TO THE COLOURFUL ISLAND the taxi drivers, sober in charcoal-grey trousers, white shirts, some even with ties, behaved like people maddened by the broadcast pleas for courtesy. They rushed the tourists, easy targets in their extravagantly Caribbean cottons stamped with palm-fringed beaches, thatched huts and grass skirts. The tropics appeared to be on their backs alone; when they got into their taxis the tropics went with them.

  We came out into an avenue of glass buildings, air-conditioned bars, filling stations and snappily worded advertisements. The slogan PRIDE, TOIL, CULTURE, was everywhere. There was a flag over the customs building. It was new to me: rays from a yellow sun lighting up a wavy blue sea.

  ‘What did you do with the Union Jack?’

  The taxi driver said, ‘They take it away, and they send this. To tell the truth I prefer the old Union Jack. Now don’t misunderstand me, I talking about the flag as a flag. They send us this thing and they try to sweeten us up with some old talk about or, a pile gules, argenta bordure, barry-wavy. They try to sweeten us up with that, but I prefer the old Union Jack. It look like a real flag. This look like something they make up. You know, like foreign money?’

  Once the island had seemed to me flagless. There was the Union Jack of course, but it was a remote affirmation. The island was a floating suspended place to which you brought your own flag if you wanted to. Every evening on the base we used to pull down the Stars and Stripes at sunset; the bugle would sound and through the city of narrow streets, big trees and old wooden houses, every American serviceman would stand to attention. It was a ridiculous affirmation – the local children mocked us – but only one in a city of ridiculous affirmations. For a long time Mr Blackwhite had a coloured portrait of Haile Selassie in his front room; and in his corner grocery Ma-Ho had a photograph of Chiang Kai-shek between his Chinese calendars. On the flagless island we, saluting the flag, were going back to America; Ma-Ho was going back to Canton as soon as the war was over; and the picture of Haile Selassie was there to remind Mr Blackwhite, and to remind us, that he too had a place to go back to. ‘This place doesn’t exist,’ he used to say, and he was wiser than any of us.

  Now, driving through the city whose features had been so altered, so that alteration seemed to have spread to the land itself, the nature of the soil, I felt again that the reality of landscape and perhaps of all relationships lay only in the imagination. The place existed now: that was the message of the flag.

  The road began to climb. On a culvert two calypsonians, dressed for the part, sat disconsolately waiting for custom. A little later we saw two who had been successful. They were serenading the happy wife. The taxi driver, hands in pockets, toothpick in mouth, stood idle. The embittered husband stood equally idle, but he was like a man fighting an inward rage.

  The hotel was new. There were murals in the lobby which sought to exalt the landscape and the people which the hotel’s very existence seemed to deny. The noticeboard in the lobby gave the name of our ship and added: ‘Sailing Indefinite’. A poster advertised The Coconut Grove. Another announced a Barbecue Night at the Hilton, Gary Priestland, popular TV personality, Master of Ceremonies. A photograph showed him with his models. But I saw only Priest, white-robed Priest, handler of the language, handler of his six little hymn-singing girls. He didn’t wink at me. He scowled; he threatened. I covered his face with my hand.

  In my moods I tell myself that the world is not being washed away; that there is time; that the blurring of fantasy with reality which gives me the feeling of helplessness exists only in my mind. But then I know that the mind is alien and unfriendly, and I am never able to regulate things. Hilton, Hilton. Even here, even in the book on the bedside table. And The Coconut Grove again in a leaflet on the table, next to the bowl of fruit in green cellophane tied with a red ribbon.

  I telephoned for a drink; then I telephoned again to hear the voice and to say nothing. Even before lunch I had drunk too much.

  ‘Frank, your eye is still longer than your tongue.’

  It was an island saying; I thought I could hear the words on the telephone.

  Lunch, lunch. Let it be ordered in every sense. Melon or avocado to start, something else to follow – but what? But what? And as soon as I enter
ed the dining-room the craving for oysters and shellfish became overpowering. The liveried I saw Sinclair’s back as he walked to a table. He sat at the far end like a man controlling the panorama.

  ‘Are you feeling better?’

  ‘Leonard?’

  ‘Frank.’

  ‘Do you like seafood, Leonard?’

  ‘In moderation.’

  ‘I am going to have some oysters.’

  ‘A good starter. Let’s have some, I’ll have half a dozen.’

  The waiter carried the emblem of yellow sun and wavy sea on his lapel; my eyes travelled down those waves.

  ‘Half a dozen for him. Fifty for me.’

  ‘Fifty,’ Leonard said.

  ‘Well, let’s make it a hundred.’

  Leonard smiled. ‘Boy, I’m glad I met you. You believe me, don’t you, Frank?’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘You know, people don’t believe I have come here to work. They think I am making it up.’

  The waiter brought Leonard his six oysters and brought me my hundred. The oysters were of the tiny island variety; six scarcely filled one indentation of Leonard’s oyster plate.

  ‘Are these six oysters?’ Leonard asked the waiter.

  ‘They are six oysters.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Leonard said soothingly, ‘I just wanted to find out. Of course,’ he said to me, ‘it doesn’t sound like work. You see—’

  And here the liveried page walked back through the dining-room beating a bright tune on his toy pan and calling out a name.

  ‘—you see, I have got to give away a million dollars.’

  My oysters had come in a tumbler. I scooped up about a dozen and swallowed them.

  ‘Exactly,’ Leonard said. ‘It doesn’t sound like work. But it is. One wants to be sure that one is using the money sensibly. It’s easy enough to make a million dollars, I always say. Much harder to spend it.’