Collected Short Fiction Read online

  He used to hold the Bible in his right hand and slap it with his left and say in his perfect English accent, ‘I have been talking to God these few days, and what he tell me about you people wasn’t really nice to hear. These days you hear all the politicians and them talking about making the island self-sufficient. You know what God tell me last night? Last night self, just after I finish eating? God say, “Man-man, come and have a look at these people.” He show me husband eating wife and wife eating husband. He show me father eating son and mother eating daughter. He show me brother eating sister and sister eating brother. That is what these politicians and them mean by saying that the island going to become self-sufficient. But, brethren, it not too late now to turn to God.’

  I used to get nightmares every Saturday night after hearing Man-man preach. But the odd thing was that the more he frightened people the more they came to hear him preach. And when the collection was made they gave him more than ever.

  In the week-days he just walked about, in his white robe, and he begged for food. He said he had done what Jesus ordered and he had given away all his goods. With his long black beard and his bright deep eyes, you couldn’t refuse him anything. He noticed me no longer, and never asked me, ‘So you goes to school?’

  The people in Miguel didn’t know what to make of the change. They tried to comfort themselves by saying that Man-man was really mad, but, like me, I think they weren’t sure that Man-man wasn’t really right.

  What happened afterwards wasn’t really unexpected.

  Man-man announced that he was a new Messiah.

  Hat said one day, ‘You ain’t hear the latest?’

  We said, ‘What?’

  ‘Is about Man-man. He say he going to be crucified one of these days.’

  ‘Nobody go touch him,’ Edward said. ‘Everybody fraid of him now.’

  Hat explained. ‘No, it ain’t that. He going to crucify hisself. One of these Fridays he going to Blue Basin and tie hisself to a cross and let people stone him.’

  Somebody – Errol, I think – laughed, but finding that no one laughed with him, fell silent again.

  But on top of our wonder and worry, we had this great pride in knowing that Man-man came from Miguel Street.

  Little hand-written notices began appearing in the shops and cafés and on the gates of some houses, announcing Man-man’s forthcoming crucifixion.

  ‘They going to have a big crowd in Blue Basin,’ Hat announced, and added with pride, ‘and I hear they sending some police, too.’

  That day, early in the morning, before the shops opened and the trolley-buses began running in Ariapita Avenue, the big crowd assembled at the corner of Miguel Street. There were lots of men dressed in black and even more women dressed in white. They were singing hymns. There were also about twenty policemen, but they were not singing hymns.

  When Man-man appeared, looking very thin and very holy, women cried and rushed to touch his gown. The police stood by, prepared to handle anything.

  A van came with a great wooden cross.

  Hat, looking unhappy in his serge suit, said, ‘They tell me it make from match-wood. It ain’t heavy. It light light.’

  Edward said, in a snapping sort of way, ‘That matter? Is the heart and the spirit that matter.’

  Hat said, ‘I ain’t saying nothing.’

  Some men began taking the cross from the van to give it to Man-man, but he stopped them. His English accent sounded impressive in the early morning. ‘Not here. Leave it for Blue Basin.’

  Hat was disappointed.

  We walked to Blue Basin, the waterfall in the mountains to the northwest of Port of Spain, and we got there in two hours. Man-man began carrying the cross from the road, up the rocky path and then down to the Basin.

  Some men put up the cross, and tied Man-man to it.

  Man-man said, ‘Stone me, brethren.’

  The women wept and flung bits of sand and gravel at his feet.

  Man-man groaned and said, ‘Father, forgive them. They ain’t know what they doing.’ Then he screamed out, ‘Stone me, brethren!’

  A pebble the size of an egg struck him on the chest.

  Man-man cried, ‘Stone, stone, STONE me, brethren! I forgive you.’

  Edward said, ‘The man really brave.’

  People began flinging really big stones at Man-man, aiming at his face and chest.

  Man-man looked hurt and surprised. He shouted, ‘What the hell is this? What the hell you people think you doing? Look, get me down from this thing quick, let me down quick, and I go settle with that son of a bitch who pelt a stone at me.’

  From where Edward and Hat and the rest of us stood, it sounded like a cry of agony.

  A bigger stone struck Man-man; the women flung the sand and gravel at him.

  We heard Man-man’s shout, clear and loud, ‘Cut this stupidness out. Cut it out, I tell you. I finish with this arseness, you hear.’ And then he began cursing so loudly and coarsely that the people stopped in surprise.

  The police took away Man-man.

  The authorities kept him for observation. Then for good.

  6 B. WORDSWORTH

  THREE BEGGARS CALLED punctually every day at the hospitable houses in Miguel Street. At about ten an Indian came in his dhoti and white jacket, and we poured a tin of rice into the sack he carried on his back. At twelve an old woman smoking a clay pipe came and she got a cent. At two a blind man led by a boy called for his penny.

  Sometimes we had a rogue. One day a man called and said he was hungry. We gave him a meal. He asked for a cigarette and wouldn’t go until we had lit it for him. That man never came again.

  The strangest caller came one afternoon at about four o’clock. I had come back from school and was in my home-clothes. The man said to me, ‘Sonny, may I come inside your yard?’

  He was a small man and he was tidily dressed. He wore a hat, a white shirt and black trousers.

  I asked, ‘What you want?’

  He said, ‘I want to watch your bees.’

  We had four small gru-gru palm trees and they were full of uninvited bees.

  I ran up the steps and shouted, ‘Ma, it have a man outside here. He say he want to watch the bees.’

  My mother came out, looked at the man and asked in an unfriendly way, ‘What you want?’

  The man said, ‘I want to watch your bees.’

  His English was so good it didn’t sound natural, and I could see my mother was worried.

  She said to me, ‘Stay here and watch him while he watch the bees.’

  The man said, ‘Thank you, Madam. You have done a good deed today.’

  He spoke very slowly and very correctly, as though every word was costing him money.

  We watched the bees, this man and I, for about an hour, squatting near the palm trees.

  The man said, ‘I like watching bees. Sonny, do you like watching bees?’

  I said, ‘I ain’t have the time.’

  He shook his head sadly. He said, ‘That’s what I do, I just watch. I can watch ants for days. Have you ever watched ants? And scorpions, and centipedes, and congorees – have you watched those?’

  I shook my head.

  I said, ‘What you does do, mister?’

  He got up and said, ‘I am a poet.’

  I said, ‘A good poet?’

  He said, ‘The greatest in the world.’

  ‘What your name, mister?’

  ‘B. Wordsworth.’

  ‘B for Bill?’

  ‘Black. Black Wordsworth. White Wordsworth was my brother. We share one heart. I can watch a small flower like the morning glory and cry.’

  I said, ‘Why you does cry?’

  ‘Why, boy? Why? You will know when you grow up. You’re a poet, too, you know. And when you’re a poet you can cry for everything.’

  I couldn’t laugh.

  He said, ‘You like your mother?’

  ‘When she not beating me.’

  He pulled out a printed sheet from his hip pock
et and said, ‘On this paper is the greatest poem about mothers and I’m going to sell it to you at a bargain price. For four cents.’

  I went inside and I said, ‘Ma, you want to buy a poetry for four cents?’

  My mother said, ‘Tell that blasted man to haul his tail away from my yard, you hear.’

  I said to B. Wordsworth, ‘My mother say she ain’t have four cents.’

  B. Wordsworth said, ‘It is the poet’s tragedy.’

  And he put the paper back in his pocket. He didn’t seem to mind.

  I said, ‘Is a funny way to go round selling poetry like that. Only calypsonians do that sort of thing. A lot of people does buy?’

  He said, ‘No one has yet bought a single copy.’

  ‘But why you does keep on going round, then?’

  He said, ‘In this way I watch many things, and I always hope to meet poets.’

  I said, ‘You really think I is a poet?’

  ‘You’re as good as me,’ he said.

  And when B. Wordsworth left, I prayed I would see him again.

  About a week later, coming back from school one afternoon, I met him at the corner of Miguel Street.

  He said, ‘I have been waiting for you for a long time.’

  I said, ‘You sell any poetry yet?’

  He shook his head.

  He said, ‘In my yard I have the best mango tree in Port of Spain. And now the mangoes are ripe and red and very sweet and juicy. I have waited here for you to tell you this and to invite you to come and eat some of my mangoes.’

  He lived in Alberto Street in a one-roomed hut placed right in the centre of the lot. The yard seemed all green. There was the big mango tree. There was a coconut tree and there was a plum tree. The place looked wild, as though it wasn’t in the city at all. You couldn’t see all the big concrete houses in the street.

  He was right. The mangoes were sweet and juicy. I ate about six, and the yellow mango juice ran down my arms to my elbows and down my mouth to my chin and my shirt was stained.

  My mother said when I got home, ‘Where you was? You think you is a man now and could go all over the place? Go cut a whip for me.’

  She beat me rather badly, and I ran out of the house swearing that I would never come back. I went to B. Wordsworth’s house. I was so angry, my nose was bleeding.

  B. Wordsworth said, ‘Stop crying, and we will go for a walk.’

  I stopped crying, but I was breathing short. We went for a walk. We walked down St Clair Avenue to the Savannah and we walked to the race-course.

  B. Wordsworth said, ‘Now, let us lie on the grass and look up at the sky, and I want you to think how far those stars are from us.’

  I did as he told me, and I saw what he meant. I felt like nothing, and at the same time I had never felt so big and great in all my life. I forgot all my anger and all my tears and all the blows.

  When I said I was better, he began telling me the names of the stars, and I particularly remembered the constellation of Orion the Hunter, though I don’t really know why. I can spot Orion even today, but I have forgotten the rest.

  Then a light was flashed into our faces, and we saw a policeman. We got up from the grass.

  The policeman said, ‘What you doing here?’

  B. Wordsworth said, ‘I have been asking myself the same question for forty years.’

  We became friends, B. Wordsworth and I. He told me, ‘You must never tell anybody about me and about the mango tree and the coconut tree and the plum tree. You must keep that a secret. If you tell anybody, I will know, because I am a poet.’

  I gave him my word and I kept it.

  I liked his little room. It had no more furniture than George’s front room, but it looked cleaner and healthier. But it also looked lonely.

  One day I asked him, ‘Mister Wordsworth, why you does keep all this bush in your yard? Ain’t it does make the place damp?’

  He said, ‘Listen, and I will tell you a story. Once upon a time a boy and girl met each other and they fell in love. They loved each other so much they got married. They were both poets. He loved words. She loved grass and flowers and trees. They lived happily in a single room, and then one day the girl poet said to the boy poet, “We are going to have another poet in the family.” But this poet was never born, because the girl died, and the young poet died with her, inside her. And the girl’s husband was very sad, and he said he would never touch a thing in the girl’s garden. And so the garden remained, and grew high and wild.’

  I looked at B. Wordsworth, and as he told me this lovely story, he seemed to grow older. I understood his story.

  We went for long walks together. We went to the Botanical Gardens and the Rock Gardens. We climbed Chancellor Hill in the late afternoon and watched the darkness fall on Port of Spain, and watched the lights go on in the city and on the ships in the harbour.

  He did everything as though he were doing it for the first time in his life. He did everything as though he were doing some church rite.

  He would say to me, ‘Now, how about having some ice-cream?’

  And when I said yes, he would grow very serious and say, ‘Now, which café shall we patronize?’ As though it were a very important thing. He would think for some time about it and finally say, ‘I think I will go and negotiate the purchase with that shop.’

  The world became a most exciting place.

  One day, when I was in his yard, he said to me, ‘I have a great secret which I am now going to tell you.’

  I said, ‘It really secret?’

  ‘At the moment, yes.’

  I looked at him, and he looked at me. He said, ‘This is just between you and me, remember. I am writing a poem.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was disappointed.

  He said, ‘But this is a different sort of poem. This is the greatest poem in the world.’

  I whistled.

  He said, ‘I have been working on it for more than five years now. I will finish it in about twenty-two years from now, that is, if I keep on writing at the present rate.’

  ‘You does write a lot, then?’

  He said, ‘Not any more. I just write one line a month. But I make sure it is a good line.’

  I asked, ‘What was last month’s good line?’

  He looked up at the sky and said, ‘The past is deep.’

  I said, ‘It is a beautiful line.’

  B. Wordsworth said, ‘I hope to distil the experiences of a whole month into that single line of poetry. So, in twenty-two years, I shall have written a poem that will sing to all humanity.’

  I was filled with wonder.

  Our walks continued. We walked along the sea-wall at Docksite one day, and I said, ‘Mr Wordsworth, if I drop this pin in the water, you think it will float?’

  He said, ‘This is a strange world. Drop your pin, and let us see what will happen.’

  The pin sank.

  I said, ‘How is the poem this month?’

  But he never told me any other line. He merely said, ‘Oh, it comes, you know. It comes.’

  Or we would sit on the sea-wall and watch the liners come into the harbour.

  But of the greatest poem in the world I heard no more.

  * * *

  I felt he was growing older.

  ‘How you does live, Mr Wordsworth?’ I asked him one day.

  He said, ‘You mean how I get money?’

  When I nodded, he laughed in a crooked way.

  He said, ‘I sing calypsoes in the calypso season.’

  ‘And that last you the rest of the year?’

  ‘It is enough.’

  ‘But you will be the richest man in the world when you write the greatest poem?’

  He didn’t reply.

  One day when I went to see him in his little house I found him lying on his little bed. He looked so old and so weak that I found myself wanting to cry.

  He said, ‘The poem is not going well.’

  He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking through the window at the
coconut tree, and he was speaking as though I wasn’t there. He said, ‘When I was twenty I felt the power within myself.’ Then, almost in front of my eyes, I could see his face growing older and more tired. He said, ‘But that – that was a long time ago.’

  And then – I felt it so keenly, it was as though I had been slapped by my mother. I could see it clearly on his face. It was there for everyone to see. Death on the shrinking face.

  He looked at me, and saw my tears and sat up.

  He said, ‘Come.’ I went and sat on his knees.

  He looked into my eyes, and he said, ‘Oh, you can see it, too. I always knew you had the poet’s eye.’

  He didn’t even look sad, and that made me burst out crying loudly.

  He pulled me to his thin chest and said, ‘Do you want me to tell you a funny story?’ and he smiled encouragingly at me.

  But I couldn’t reply.

  He said, ‘When I have finished this story, I want you to promise that you will go away and never come back to see me. Do you promise?’

  I nodded.

  He said, ‘Good. Well, listen. That story I told you about the boy poet and the girl poet, do you remember that? That wasn’t true. It was something I just made up. All this talk about poetry and the greatest poem in the world, that wasn’t true, either. Isn’t that the funniest thing you have heard?’

  But his voice broke.

  I left the house and ran home crying, like a poet, for everything I saw.

  I walked along Alberto Street a year later, but I could find no sign of the poet’s house. It hadn’t vanished, just like that. It had been pulled down, and a big, two-storeyed building had taken its place. The mango tree and the plum tree and the coconut tree had all been cut down, and there was brick and concrete everywhere.

  It was just as though B. Wordsworth had never existed.

  7 THE COWARD

  BIG FOOT WAS really big and really black, and everybody in Miguel Street was afraid of him. It wasn’t his bigness or his blackness that people feared, for there were blacker and bigger people about. People were afraid of him because he was so silent and sulky; he looked dangerous, like those terrible dogs that never bark but just look at you from the corner of their eyes.