This One Sky Day, page 25
When he went home and told his father these things, Intiasar took him to a stickball match and then they sat by the ocean and his father cracked corny jokes and Romanza laughed until his nose near fell off.
The teacher said that seventy-six people had died, mostly the emancipated, because their houses were broken down bad-bad. The next day at school, the class did a little skit and recited the names of the dead at the end. Each child had to read five names, but Romanza got six, which was quite hard.
‘Linden Prosperity Hughes, musician from Tuku died,’ Romanza murmured. ‘David Wilson, builder from Dukuyaie died. Kayeannie Francis Tuberose, forewoman from Dukuyaie died. Cecilie Annemaria Seabell, wife and mother from Battisient died. Isaac Breymar Mason …’
He didn’t remember what Isaac Mason did for a living, or the name of the last one and he wished he could.
If this wasn’t sweet hurricane, he didn’t know what it was. He needed Pilar’s counsel and the touch of his hand.
He paced the wet veranda, eating the last of the tamarind balls, for comfort. Maybe he should tell Xavier about the sweet-smelling tremors; he would know who to talk to about it. Or Cannonball: she wasn’t high in the Fatidique, but all obeah women had its ear. At least ask if they could smell it. Why was no one saying anything?
Perhaps he should just do what he’d been doing with everything else that was important: bring it to the people.
CAN YOU SMELL IT, TOO?
Yes, that would do. But there was also Sonteine’s wedding to think about, and he needed to help Xavier with that. He couldn’t be off stealing paint right now.
His throat hurt. He coughed. His spittle tasted like sugar. He almost expected a crunch between his teeth. He hawked and spat.
There was a bang from inside the house. The front door flew open. Xavier strode onto the veranda, Cannonball on his heels. He looked furious. Her hair was in mad disarray, her chin quivering. They were both weirdly silent. Romanza called out.
‘Xavier, what –?’
Xavier flung a white package onto the ground. He did it with a nasty flourish, staring into the obeah woman’s face.
Cannonball planted herself firmly in her doorway and crossed her arms.
Xavier brought his foot up high and stomped on the thing. It burst, like a raw bladder, splattering across the drenched veranda. Xavier stomped again, grinding down until there was nothing left but a thick patch, like glue. White paint. Sperm. What was that?
‘Xavier?’ yelled Romanza.
Cannonball began rippling in the breeze. Not just her hair, but her shoulders and belly, her head shaking back and forth. The rain, swept by the wind across the porch, flew through her. Romanza moved closer, concerned. It was melting her feet. Why live in such a rainy place, when you could melt like sugar?
‘Romanza, I need to leave here,’ snapped Xavier.
‘By all means, macaenus,’ said Cannonball. ‘Please step off my property as soon as you are ready.’
‘Where?’ said Romanza. He’d thought of trying to make peace; saw now it was impossible.
‘Dukuyaie.’
Romanza tried to catch Cannonball’s eye, but she was only looking steadily at Xavier, as if she hated and loved him in equal measure. Dukuyaie. Had Xavier given up the idea of using indigent food?
‘I show you the fastest—’ he began, but Xavier was already through the garden and pushing at the gate, his shoulders shaking; why was everything shaking? Romanza trotted after him, letting rain soak his hair, glancing back at the obeah woman’s house. Cannonball was lying on the veranda floor.
She was licking the veranda floor.
Romanza whipped his head back to Xavier, gesticulating to show him, but he was too far up ahead already. What in all the gods had happened between them?
He trotted harder, caught up and matched the older man’s stride, trudged next to him. Xavier was silent and hunched.
‘Why we –?’
‘Just show me.’
‘You can run?’
Xavier glared. ‘Can you?’
‘Come, nah.’
They set off. The bush spread before them, black and red and white, scraggly and thinning, like an old man’s beard. The wind blew hard, filling their ears. Romanza could feel his hair sticking to his forehead and cheeks. His muscles unset. His sphincter relaxed. His chest hurt, but he ignored that. He wished Xavier would untether too; prayed for the man’s shoulders to fall, for his arms to flow. Surely you couldn’t stay angry when you ran across the Dead Islands.
To onlookers they might have been a smudge; they were moving faster than running. The horizon was purple. Crunching, grey earth. Matching footsteps. Same pace, same tread.
Breathing, steady.
Easy.
They flew, for a while.
‘Cannonball say something about me?’ asked Romanza.
‘What?’
‘Anything about my sickness?’
They were soaked to the bone.
‘Everything with you is as she said.’ Well, that wasn’t a lie.
‘So why you mad?’
Silence.
They reached the hill top, bent double. Below them, a long beach, wind swirling in the sandbanks, filling the sea-line with gold dust. Romanza spotted two black canoes, tethered under cannonball trees. One burst free and spun along the shore; a ladder; someone’s big-faced clock.
Xavier tripped in the sand, scrambled to keep his balance, fell heavily, his weight on one ankle, grunting painfully. Purple thorns scattered out of his satchel, followed by a shiny notebook, which burst open, pages flailing, pushed along by the wind. They reached for it at the same time, crashing foreheads.
Xavier reeled back, swearing loudly, grasping head and ankle. The notebook rolled into a pool of water.
Romanza rubbed his forehead, which hurt like hell. He scooped up the notebook. It didn’t look so bad. The cover was strong.
Xavier snatched the book. ‘Look!’ He waved it around, flicked through the pages, clearly agonised. ‘Look, Romanza!’
‘Is not so bad—’
Xavier hopped about on one foot. He hugged the wet notebook to his chest. ‘Ruined! I knew it!’
‘But Xav, it’s not ruined—’
‘Since when me and you is the same size? I tell you to call me Xav?’
Mortified.
‘I—’
‘Man, this is my wife things. You understand? My wife. This blasted place trying to mad me? That bitch back there must think I won’t take her backside to the Fatidique. And where the hell is a boat? I going to have to hop-hop down this damn sand dune like a fucking chi-chi man!’
Romanza felt his chest might break open.
‘What you just said?’
Xavier stuffed the notebook down the front of his pants.
‘My ankle, boy, I—’
‘Chi-chi man? You mean bottom feeder?’ Rage, boiling through the wind. ‘Pilar always warn me, can’t trust none of you! Why the hell you think we live a-bush, eh? Men like you and my father!’ His whole face hurt, but he couldn’t stop yelling. ‘Playing cards, he have to win! Election, he have to win! Both of you cut from the same stinking cloth. He want you to do walkround. You don’t want to do walkround. Selfish! Anybody ask Sonteine what she want?’
‘You are Intiasar’s son?’
Romanza’s head cleared. The man was taller than him. Bigger than him. Abruptly, frighteningly so.
‘You – I – you—’
Xavier repeated himself, enunciating carefully.
‘Are. You. His. Son?’
What to say? All his fight was dried up, as suddenly as it had come.
Move. He apt to kill you right now.
Romanza Intiasar backed away from Xavier Redchoose. Watched as Xavier staggered down the dune, falling to his knees, rising again and falling.
*
Mrs Intiasar’s maids often masturbated her in the morning. It wasn’t something she discussed with anybody, least of all the maids. In fact, she hardly thought about it.
The Governor frequently left his hammock and joined her on the pallet to talk – he valued her opinion on society, politicking and what robe he should wear to so-and-so engagement – but sex was mercifully rare. She assumed he took mistresses and visited whores, which was just fine with her. She’d given him the two children he wanted and that had been hard enough. These days she thought of that green pallet in the middle of the room as a peaceful place, a kind of oasis between them.
She didn’t like to see the maid’s faces during the task; it was too distracting. It was hard to find faithful staff; domestics were like cheese or milk, with expiration dates. When they spoiled, her old houseboy Salmonie fired them. He was a true stalwart; he’d worked for her father, a former Governor, until he died.
This present girl was eager to keep her job, it seemed; she had taken to seizing her, in unexpected venues, as if they shared some great passion. Mrs Intiasar had had to push her away several times. If she kept on like this, Salmonie would have to be called in. There was enough to be worrying about.
The impending election announcement was making her husband fractious, stamping through the house and holding meetings on the back veranda, complaining about hidden enemies, even though he knew she didn’t approve of politics after supper. Her mother had enjoyed the debate and the drama of a political house until all hours; not she. She’d told Bertrand when they were courting, if he wanted a happy home, he was to ensure her children never woke up to the sound of plotting.
She’d chosen her husband well, despite his vulgar cors. Speed. If you’d told her she would marry that when she was a young girl, she would have been appalled. Such sacrifices! But he was a good man, for her purposes.
After the debacle of a radio interview, she went to see him in his study, sure he would need a back rub and a chance to swear. She found him counting more coins than she had ever seen. He tried to order her out, but she shut her mouth and sat beside him, contemplating the sacks. A man on his own, hurriedly counting money, was never up to any good. The other radio stations would need even more money now, to discredit that dirty Hah gyal.
The Governor paused, waiting on her censure. She looked back. This was what you did, to prosper. He needn’t feel bad for playing that game.
Ah well, Mamma, he said, and took out a little knife. I am just one mango man, after all. She watched him cut away strips of his skin, pieces of hair, then slice deeper into the forearm, so he could bleed onto the money. She helped him bind the wound and looked away as he straddled the sacks for the final part, groaning when he was done. A bribe, sealed with all his bodily fluids. She hadn’t heard that sound for a long time. He smiled at her faintly.
They should have known they were in serious problems when the Fatidique refused to set spell against Pony Brady three months ago. They’d set one for every other rival: in the last decade they’d moved the air and earth for the Governor and his money. When Pony start come-up, come-up, making it clear he intended to stand against Bertrand in the election, Intiasar swore he was the Orange Man – that blasted orange graffiti even reach the side of their house last season! But rumour had it that the Fatidique leadership was changing, and the favour was refused. Refused! The Governor come back to the yard so vex, the maids and the mongoose-them alike had to hide in the crawl space under the house.
It turned out they needn’t have worried about Pony. Strangled by his own nastiness, all over the walls of Popisho early this morning. So Pony was no Orange Man, but she could have told Bertrand that. Pony didn’t have the balls for anything else but troubling people’s girl-children.
These bitches who used to jump obeah circle and ride the gods with Bertrand by their side, they were disgraceful. Disloyal. It suited the Governor to seem nothing more than a businessman, but she had watched him in that obeah circle, eyes rolling, naked, talking to the gods, clasping hands with the Fatidique, deep in the drumbeat. It was his love of their traditions that made her marry him. Not very many people knew he could sing a whole year’s worth of Temple songs, and he’d learned them out of love and faith.
Mrs Intiasar sipped the cold chocolate at her elbow, spat and glared. That blasted maid might rub pum-pum good, but she never know how to make chocolate. Too much pepper. She set the small blue mug on her vanity board and hissed at it. The mug disappeared, with an audible popping sound. She hissed again and the spoon was gone, too. When she was a child, she’d imagined another reality, a kind of ethereal warehouse on the way to heaven, packed with all the things she’d ever made disappear.
It was almost strange she’d never tried to disappear a whole person.
*
A mile out from the Dead Islands, a certain kind of man, the kind excited by sorrow, catches a ghost-who-used-to-be-a-woman by the arms. He takes her away from the beach and the hot air. When he lays her down, he is distracted by the sweet stink filling up his whole house: jasmine and lemon balm, angel’s trumpet and kiss-me-quick, the extra-sweet nectar from pink hibiscus flowers and climbing oleander. But he soon forgets, because the creamy texture of her heel is like goose liver and the taste of her tears is exquisite and people always saying you should put ghosts out of their misery.
22
Xavier stood in the neat yard, looking at the house. Above him, cream buildings melted into the hillside, a smooth road snaking through them like a dark belt. He flinched as a putt-putt zoomed past, slicing the quiet. It felt as if he’d been standing here for a long time, the moth pouch humming deep in his satchel, seeing the same image in his head. The same image chugging underneath everything the whole of this one-sky day.
Dip the first two fingers into your pouch. Throw the head back, like a bird drinking water. That simultaneous crunch and inhalation. Throat, quivering and iridescent. It took your ears, your throat, your nose, your eyes.
Gone, he’d be gone.
Why you think Romanza cleaves to you? He smells it, too.
So Romanza Intiasar got his beauty from his mother’s side, then.
He’d let the boy inspire him, and if he’d stayed with him one minute more, he might have beaten the beauty off him.
Both of you cut from the same stinking cloth.
Romanza might be angry now, but boys were always angry with their fathers; who knew when he might next sit with Intiasar over wine and speak of the macaenus? How vex you make him, Pap, all day he let you mad him.
Pink grapefruit and ortaniques littered the earth. Cashews dried on a plastic sheet near a large open-air altar, flanked with goddess statues, five feet high, its coral brick warm in the late afternoon sunshine. Three long, thin orange-and-black cats posed like striped stick insects, grooming themselves. One began to purr loudly then stopped, as if embarrassed.
Most people believed Intiasar’s son had gone foreign years ago, like his father before him, part adventurer, part traitor. But all it would take to bring him down was this one fine son: flagrant, indigent, lying with men. Bad blood, they’d say. Curse from the gods. Nobody would vote for a man who had lost control of his boy-child.
He could see Intiasar’s colouring on Romanza now, the same playful twist of the lips.
The old trees in the yard stared at him, rustling their sticky, tie-dyed leaves. You have a moth, they seemed to say, so close to your mouth.
He’d washed his sandals in the angry sea, but he still imagined he could feel the ghost heel’s glutinous remains. It had squirmed in his hand before he flung it down, like a slug under salt. Writhed as he mashed it underfoot, popping like a fetid eyeball. He thought of the ghost in Cannonball’s yard, how small and helpless and ugly it had been. Cannonball was just like any pedlar. I have plenty heel, she’d whispered. She might as well have said it was—
Clean.
A cat pawed the empty air and licked its backside.
On impulse, Xavier knelt in front of the cats and the altar and placed ten fingers on the edge of it. Looked up at the statue of Eheh, goddess of surprises.
He offered her blank eyes a prayer for the soul of the person whose heel he’d destroyed.
A flock of olive parakeets fluffed themselves in a coconut tree.
The image: two-finger dip, head flung back.
He had to knock on the front door, now.
*
Dozens of thin, silver-white plaits fell down her shoulders. The style suited her very well. She’d shrunk; or perhaps he’d grown in the minutes it took her to open the door, his fingers dangling, biting his bottom lip like a schoolboy. She carried a heavy ruby monocle and an orange cotton shawl and began her examination of his body at the groin, glancing at his feet, then up to his face. When she saw it was him, she put a hand to her cheek and grinned.
‘Hello, Des’ree,’ he said.
Des’ree stepped backward, shooting out a hand and pulling him into a large, old-fashioned receiving hall. She slipped the satchel off his shoulder, stood on her tiptoes and kissed the corner of his mouth, chuckling. Her lips were warm. It seemed the most natural thing, and he was amazed at her ease and his spasm of pleasure.
Des’ree glanced at the ceiling. ‘House.’
The hall bulged, elongated and spat out a perfectly formed coat rack. Des’ree slung his satchel on a hook. His satchel holding moth. He wondered if it might shake and quiver. She pulled her shawl off, revealing yards of gleaming neck and shoulder. Her skin was soft and unblemished.
‘Well. Xavier Laurence Redchoose. You like what you see?’
He shifted uneasily.
‘You look good.’
‘I know that. I was enquiring if how good I look pleases you.’
She reached up to stroke his cheek; he let her touch him. She smiled and nodded; seemed satisfied by something she saw or felt. Her teeth were white and strong.
