Swimming in the Volcano (82 page)

Walking down to the esplanade, the morning light was blinding and seemed to shine right down on his witlessness, and he queued up with a workforce of laborers at a line of lorries ferrying the men leeward, wondering what he was doing, an explanation of sorts bursting through like madness, telling himself, But Isaac was up north in the mountains with Jack Nasty and the old white patriarch he had dreamed of at Josephine's and the bandits and the mercenaries and the forest gods that had migrated with the slaves from Guinea, the lost spirits of the Arawaks and now Sally and all the other phantoms that were gathering to consummate the destiny of the island in this day and in this time. So there was that, the mountains like a parallel universe, a land outside of the world where he might begin to look for the truth.

Asking himself, But does this make sense? and when the lorry came and the men started climbing onto the bed he stepped out of line, confused and homeless—both the ministry and the cottage in Howard Bay had been rendered uninhabitable—swallowed a codeine pill dry to soften the rising pulse in his wrist, and started walking, thinking, whoever his enemies were, all they had to do was let him be himself and eventually, as if it were a law of nature, he'd find a way to
fit their bill, he'd end up being whatever it was they needed him to be. It was easy work if you could get it.

In Scuffletown he stood in Mrs. Knowles' front-room apothecary, breathing the tannic aromas of her bush medicines, confronted by the armor of her hard and unpitying dignity, until finally she acquiesced to tell him what it would do him no good to know, that old friends still high-up had whispered to her of Isaac's incarceration on an unspecified charge, which these high-ups were not even aware of until someone had whispered to them about his release, or perhaps his escape, it wasn't clear to them and it wasn't clear to her. They say my Isaac gone to hide, she said without emotion, they say him start a
movement
. Tell me, Mistah Wilson, what kind of movement that bwoy goin start except the mind-you-own-business kind, the Keep-to-Youself Party. Eh? Eh? She sucked her teeth, chupsing, and said, Now I suppose you goin join up, nuh? She rebuked him, sucking her teeth angrily: You and my first son who is not a'tall like his poor dead father, you and he and the king of duppies, and you with all the woe you need since crazy men take to shootin good white people here on we St. Catherine of sorrow, and when she had spoken her mind she told him, Wait, left the room and came back to slip a juju around his neck, a tiny hand-stitched leather pouch attached to a strip of rawhide, to keep him safe from evil, from all the many evils.

As long as he was in Scuffletown he thought he would try again to find some bullets and stepped into several of the rougher bars—the Black Cat, Our Place, Hughes Alley—only to learn the police were arresting people on ammunition charges—he was unconcerned, there was nothing left to explain to himself about firearms and such—but until one of the men throwing back his rum in the daytime darkness of Our Place asked, he had forgotten that he still had no idea of the caliber of bullet he required. He fired a rum himself, washing down a codeine, while the fellow examined the gun in his pack and concluded he couldn't help him.

From Scuffletown, he dreamwalked to National Police Headquarters where he suddenly woke up into a disruption that was himself demanding to see the front desk logbook of two weeks past, learning just how big of a fuss was enough to convert the duty officer to the cult of possibility, and there on the log's blue-lined copybook pages, like a schoolboy's homework, was
Miss Defy's
accident report, a statement given in person by Renata Archibol, but no entry attesting to Isaac's presence at the station, and no record of arrest. From there he flagged a cab which took him through the lower slums and up the hills to Hubbard Heights, the ruling-class neighborhood preferred
by elite businessmen and those of ministerial rank, regardless of party affiliation, they lived in peace together in the Heights but not in parliament, the driver cruised the walled yards, the modern airy homes with their gardens and guard dogs, the grillwork on the windows and doors, families of domestic staff housed on the property, until finally he asked where exactly was it he wished to go, and Mitchell didn't know the address so they pulled over to where two yardmen were “mowing” a perfect zoysia lawn with machetes, stooped over like the old men the job would soon make of them, snicking the errant blades of grass, and the miracle of the day was that the two of them agreed immediately about the location of Archibol's house and were of the same mind as to the best and quickest way to get there. The minister was not home but the Missus was; she was not disinclined to speak with him but on the contrary gave Mitchell a warm reception, made him sit with her for a cup of tea, and answered his questions with cautious but unfailing courtesy, saying all she remembered was going to the station with her husband and a drunk boy who had banged up her import. She then paid effusive and heartfelt tribute to Sally, saying What I would like to know is this, did anyone ever say thanks to this young woman who gave these frequently despised youngsters friendship and understanding? That was all she could say except would you like another cup of tea, something stronger? we are a warm people, despite we troubles. He asked if she had any painkillers and he left with a handful of Darvon, walking aimlessly down the slope and then across it until the houses no longer boasted their affluence and he knew where he was without a conscious understanding of what he was doing there.

It was lunchtime, Josephine's Shoovie wasn't in the drive, so he didn't even bother knocking but sat down on the stoop to wait. He wondered, for the first time, and not with confidence, if this was a revolution, if that's why things were even more fucked up than ever.

He thought, the liberation of zero commitment would be at least one way to describe Johnnie.

He took a Darvon. There were steamy wraiths of self-condemnation in his head. Josephine came home, took him inside, and made him lie down.

“I don't know why I'm here,” he mumbled apologetically. “I wasn't sure. I didn't know. Where else really.”

She sat on the edge of her bed, where she had put him, stroking his unshaven cheek. She understood, she said, she understood everything, she was sad, for the dead girl but for him too. Her hair was trussed in a kerchief, the braids extruding under a triangle of calico at
the back of her neck. She looked fresh and youthful but still urbane, sleek in her designer jeans and remarkably white tee shirt, almost gaunt with seductiveness though both of them knew his coming here, and her accepting him, wasn't about sex, and couldn't be, naturally, until ... but neither of them could say. She acknowledged his depression, made a halfhearted attempt to be plucky and cheering—
But you does know why you come here, mahn
, she said with affectionate sarcasm,
ain dis what black women do, eh? tek in hand white bwoys? eh? eh?
—then brushed her lips across his and let him be, shuttering the room and then retreating to her work desk where she sat on a stool in the shadows, sketching, while he stared, unseeing, listening to the gliding scratch of her pencil. Mourning, he had heard, can be a very selfish act, but what was he to do? Sometime later he was aware of her leaving the room, he heard Josephine talking to her aunt, heard her scolding and then playing with her child, smelled cooking, she came back after a while to ask him if he wanted to eat but he wasn't hungry, then she came back to tell him she had to go out for a while to meet some people, he watched her change into a dress, shyly turning her back to him, then she was leaving, telling him not to bother himself with anything, he could stay by her as long as he wished, he was to think of her house as his, and then she had returned, smelling of cigarette smoke and sweat and perfume, candles guttered in the stale air of the room, and she was beside him in bed, holding him sleepily and telling him she had heard that tomorrow there would be a memorial service for Sally at her school on the waterfront, in the morning, wiping the tears on his face, whispering,
but it hurts me to see you grieve so, Wilson
, whispering,
okay, okay, mahn, okay
, but in the morning he only got out of bed to use the bathroom, he watched her prepare to leave the house and then woke up when she came back in at noon, he asked for a glass of water to help swallow his pills, and she told him the island was losing its mind, everybody making speeches and calling for strikes, there was a way in which he was at the center of it but in truth it had nothing to do with him at all, it was nothing more than PEP versus PIP, there were many speeches by both sides, new security measures, Kingsley's men were in parliament demanding a vote of no-confidence in the prime minister, it was all a mess, he had no understanding of his political position, there seemed to be a growing mood of belligerence among the people, someone she knew wanted to pass by to see him this afternoon and wanted to know if he would be received.

There was nobody he wanted to see, he tried to tell her, but she said he was an important person, a good man, and Mitchell acquiesced
without bothering to ask why, or who it was, because what difference did it make, everything he had to say and anything anybody had to say to him, all of it came from a very lean and common script, and what did it matter who read the lines, and no one came anyway, it was just he and Josephine alone in the house, she working quite contentedly at her desk on designs for a show she had been contracted to put on at one of the better hotels, he remained supine on her bed, wearing only his gym shorts and sweating unhealthily, listening to the alarm clock of pain in his lower right arm, unable to move, his mind recycling an impoverished array of thoughts, asking himself how do you match up the moments and the answer was, you can't.

When the aunt returned with the boy Josephine set aside her pens and colored pencils and went into the other part of the house to be with them. He heard the child pestering her, he heard her husky laughter. At suppertime she marched back into the bedroom, headstrong and feisty, to tell him he didn't have a say-so in the matter, he must get up and come eat a bite of Auntie's chicken-back and dumplings, don't bother dressing just come, and so he followed after her down the hall, shirtless and barefooted, and took his seat with the family at the kitchen table, Auntie gracious and solicitous, the boy in his high chair, enthralled again by Mitchell, absently smearing his bits of fruit and dumpling on the board in front of him, Josephine popping morsels into his mouth when she could get his attention, Mitchell practiced holding a spoon in his left hand but ate sparingly, unable to find his appetite, Auntie said if he would eat a little more she would bring him a rum, and then she got up and brought him the rum and put a plate of sweet biscuits in the center of the table. They talked, careful not to say anything that might plug the trickle of his forgetting.

After a second rum, he found himself entertaining the idea that this now was his life.

He watched the women clear and wash the dishes, comforted by the mock indignation of their gossip, uncensored and unsweetened, about a neighborhood romance between a too-old man and a too-young but slutty girl. Josephine took a washcloth and wiped off the boy and his high chair, saying to Mitchell, Come, we will let him look at a show and then it is his bedtime. They adjourned to the front parlor, Josephine going ahead to turn on the television, and sat down, the boy cross-legged in front of the screen, Josephine on a plaid settee, Mitchell adhering himself to the surface of a red vinyl-covered chair, like the type commonly seen in doctors' offices in another country. Auntie followed a minute later, lowering herself into a rocking
chair. The TV was old, a big wooden box with its own legs, covered with a large doily and a vase of plastic roses, and it projected an ethereal blue light throughout the room after Josephine had flicked off the overhead. Television was still a novelty on St. Catherine and there was only one station, the bulk of its programming transmitted from Barbados, frequently jolted by static interference. They were all immobilized by a commercial for the Royal Bank of Canada and then, to his dismay, on came “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” a rerun from the early Sixties, the unearthly blue light in the air, emanated from the characters, was like a clear, odorless exhaust of mortality, at the sound of the first laugh track he got up and went to the kitchen, poured himself a third rum, and came back to the parlor and sat down, his eyes wandered over the chromoliths of Jesus and Virgin Mother and Child and another of St. Catherine being unpinned from her wheel by the bridegroom Christ, then back to the screen, Dick Van Dyke tripping over an ottoman as he entered a room, it was the wrong thing to be watching, it made being here with Josephine and her aunt and son seem promiscuous and far too unreal, it was a starburst of decomposing nostalgia and he felt it thrusting him back to a boyhood he no longer claimed or wanted for himself. He knew the only thing to do was get back up and get back inside the sanctuary of her bedroom but first there was the television's own awful attraction to overcome, he could also just stay there and bathe in its soporific light, but then it was Josephine, not Mitchell, getting up, stepping behind the set to pull aside the lace curtains drawn across the open window and look out onto the street, where he too had heard someone stop in front of the house, a car door clicked open and then slammed close.

Eddy has come, Josephine said, walking back through the parlor and out into the hallway to answer the soft rap at the door, and then she was back in the room with Edison Banks, Banks was nodding at him with a sheepish grin, soon disposed of, saying, Stay put, mahn, don't disturb yourself, but Mitchell was frozen with embarrassment anyway, humiliated to be discovered in the awkward and counterfeit position of bare-chested domesticity, and then the prime minister had taken a seat on the settee, next to Josephine, who by way of explanation was saying, Wilson, Eddy is an old friend of the family, you know. Banks ignored him, though not with any blatancy, catching up on family news with Josephine and her aunt, and Mitchell slipped away to put on a shirt and came back to his chair, stricken by curiosity, the boy was being admired by Banks, bounced on his knee, and Mitchell could not help but gaze overtly upon this man who had
made himself the hope incarnate of his people, by appearance alone he succeeded as the model citizen, a well-shaped symbol of the new St. Catherine, he had the physical charisma granted to slim, self-assured men and seemed to be made absolutely solid and unbreakable by the understated but prideful arrogance that honed a razor-edge of glamour to the sword of power, and yet watching Edison Banks with Josephine's son he could easily believe that not all the innocence had gone from the world, that still there were dreams that were more than the illusions of powerless men. His mind shifted toward gratitude and kinship, he felt a transcendent sense of relief foreshadowing the healing that he imagined, wrongly, was the purpose of this visit.