Guerrillas

  Harry said, “You met her on Friday, Jane. Did she tell you she was coming?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  Harry rocked in the hammock that was slung from the two front pillars of the porch. To Jane, in a chair at the back of the porch, he seemed to be swinging between the sea and the sky in his fringed Bermuda shorts and white canvas shoes and red-striped jersey. His arms were folded tight over his chest; there were dark rings below his sunken, distressed eyes.

  Harry said, “I asked Meredith and Pamela. But it look as if something keeping them back too. That’s the trouble. When you lose your wife it’s like a wedding in reverse. Some people on the boy’s side, some people on the girl’s side.”

  Harry’s turns of phrase, and his musical speech, could suggest humor where he intended none. Roche laughed. Jane watched for his tall, blackened molars. And she continued to study Roche’s face as he said, in his calm, reflective way, as though no human experience was outside his comprehension, “It’s the standard crisis. She’ll come back. When we are forty-one we all think it would be nice to make a fresh start. It’s the kind of thing we laugh at when we’re forty-two.”

  Harry said, “Yes, Peter. That’s what you told me. And that’s the little philosophical bit I’ve been holding. But I don’t know, man. This damn thing going on too long now. I begin to feel they’re playing for keeps. I don’t know what come over Marie-Thérèse. She is a completely different person. I don’t know how anybody could change so much. I told her the other day, ‘Marie-Thérèse, that guy is just having a damn good time in bed with you.’ And you know what she said? Jane? Peter? She said, ‘What do you think I am having?’ You would believe that?”

  Jane said, “I can believe it.” Her face had lost a little of its chalkiness. The rum punch was having an effect: she spoke quickly, gobbling up the words, and she laughed after she had spoken.

  Harry said, “Then you see more than me. I never know Marie-Thérèse talk like that. She even moving differently. She come in the house these days and she start moving about like some kind of ghost. Quiet, but fast. When I tell you, boy. Those hands of hers just going like that, whish-whish-bam-bam, and that’s it. She straighten everything and she ready to go. She is like some kind of nun when she come home these days. You know those working nuns? Really, it’s as though she’s under some kind of spell. What’s this guy’s technique? That’s what I ask her only Friday gone. ‘Marie-Thérèse, what’s this guy’s technique? Has he read some book or something? Tell me, Marie-Thérèse. I can read too.’ ”

  From seriousness he had moved to self-satire. He laughed, swung out of his hammock and said, “Let me go and see what Joseph is getting up to, eh.” As he went inside they heard him say, as though unwilling to let go of his joke, “Marie-Thérèse shouldn’t have done this to me.”

  Roche swayed in his hammock. Jane sipped at her rum punch and then took a gulp. She was drinking too quickly. She had no palate, Roche thought. She ate and drank as she sometimes spoke, in the same gobbling way. It was something about her he had begun to define, an aspect of the physical gracelessness he had begun to notice since they had moved apart and she no longer required his comfort. She lay back in her aluminum-framed easy chair and held her hand over her eyes. Her face was irregularly flushed now and looked blotched; her eyes were moist. She lit a cigarette; but then almost immediately, with a flick of her middle finger, shot it into the dry lawn. She lay back in the chair looking abstracted, distressed, but as though preparing to relax. She was still for a minute; then, abruptly, she swung her legs to one side of the chair and stood up and went inside.

  Roche let his hammock sway. The light now had a settled incandescence. The sounds, of wind and sea, seemed to have altered, were no longer the fresh sounds of early morning. Steady, repetitive, they emphasized the midday stillness. The cigarette Jane had thrown on the lawn smoked fiercely. As if from far away there came the sound of bells; and having heard this sound, Roche continued to hear it on the wind. His eyes felt strained. It was the light; he could feel a headache building up. He got out of the hammock and went inside to get his dark glasses.

  It was dark in the living room, and cool; and in the bedroom, up two or three steps from the living room, it was darker, the window facing the sea wire-netted, the external storm shutters half closed, the wooden louvers inside tilted up, with just stripes of white light showing through the slats. Jane was standing on the other side of the bed, next to the window. She was naked below her cotton blouse; her blue trousers, with the pants inside them, were thrown on the bed. Half naked like this, she looked big and tall. She glanced at Roche as he came in; then, turning her back to him, and facing the window, she seemed about to sit on the bed. She came down hard on the very edge of the bed, which dipped below her weight; but she didn’t sit; she threw herself backward in an apparently abandoned attitude, opened her legs, raising her feet up against the wall, and inserted what Roche now realized was the tampon she held in her hand; and then almost immediately she was sitting, had seized the blue plastic tampon case from the bed and sent it spinning with a low, level flick of the wrist to the corner of the room where their basket was, with their beach things. The tampon case struck the concrete wall and clattered on the floor.

  It had all been done swiftly, in as it were one action; and she had appeared quite athletic. Her shoulders had barely touched the bed before she had jerked herself up into a sitting position; and even while, fumbling at the bedside table with his dark glasses, which lay there with his car keys, Roche was recovering from what he had seen, Jane had pulled on her pants and trousers and, without a word to him, had gone out.

  He remained behind in the room, looking at the window and the stripes of light, putting on his dark glasses, raising them above his eyes, playing with the contrast of glare and cool. Apart from the first glance as he had entered the room, she had not looked at him. That throwing back of herself on the bed, the swift gesture of insertion, and, above all, the shooting of the plastic container to the corner, that gesture with her large hands: it was as though she didn’t belong to her body, as though there was some spirit within her that was at odds with the body which she yet cherished and whose needs she sought to satisfy.

  He stayed in the bedroom a while longer. When he went out to the porch, Jane was again lying in her chair, smoking; and Harry was swinging in his hammock, his arms tightly crossed, as though he was cold.

  “Lovely, eh?” Harry said, looking out toward the sea. And after a pause: “It could be so damn lovely here, man.”

  His words lingered between them. Then he said, “Well, I suppose Marie-Thérèse isn’t coming. And Meredith and Pamela had better hurry up. Otherwise I am man enough to start eating without them. I feel Meredith is coming late for spite, you know. Merry’s getting a little funny these days. I don’t know whether you notice. I hear he’s getting a little closer to the powers that be. I tell you, boy, whatever people say, I’m damn happy I’ve acquired this Canadian landed-immigrant status, you hear?” He laughed; it turned into a choked, asthmatic gasp. “It’s a damn funny way to live. When you were inside I was sitting here and looking up at that rusty hammock hook and thinking, ‘I better get the place repainted soon, before that rust take hold.’ And I don’t even know who will be here to enjoy the house next year. It’s a funny way to live, living in a place and not knowing whether you staying.”

  Again there was the sound of bells from the beach. It rose and fell with the wind; and then it disappeared.

  Harry said, “I hate music.”

  Roche said, “This is a lovely rum punch, Harry. I love the nutmeggy flavor.”

  Jane recognized his dry, precise, rebuking tone. It puzzled her; she dismissed it.

  Harry said, “It’s well cured. Most of the stuff you get in bars is raw like hell.”

  Jane said, “I didn’t mind those people down on the beach. I was fascinated. I thought I could watch that man and that woman all day.”

  “And they could keep it up all
day,” Harry said. “Those people would dance their way to hell, man. Do you know, Jane, I have never tapped my feet to music. Never.”

  Roche said, “When I was in jail I would play whole symphonies in my head.”

  Jane said, “But, Harry, I thought you would be a marvelous dancer.”

  “In Toronto, you know what they call me? Calypso Harry. Up there as soon as you tell people where you come from they think you’re crazy about music.”

  Roche said, “Harry, you were born in the wrong place.”

  “No, man, Peter. You can’t say that. But I mean. How the hell can you respect a guy who starts tapping his feet to music and jigging up in his chair? Apart from everything else, I find it looks so damn common. Especially if the guy is a little old. You feel the feller has no control at all, and that at any moment he is going to tear his clothes off and start prancing about the room. You were saying something about jail, Peter?”

  “I used to play whole scores in my head. From beginning to end. No cheating. And I would time myself.”

  “That’s the only place where it should be permitted. In jail, and in your head. But, Peter, you are serious?”

  “Other people did physical exercises. Other people kept diaries. I arranged concerts for myself.”

  “Better you than me. But that is a hell of a thing you are telling me, man, Peter. Jane, is this true?”

  “I don’t know. But I suppose I can believe it.”

  “If I had my way I would ban music. And dancing. Make it a crime. Six months for every record you play. And hard labor for the reggae. Jane, I am serious. This is a country that has been destroyed by music. You just have to think of what is going on right now on that beach. And think how lovely and quiet it would be, eh. None of that reggae-reggae the whole blasted day.”

  Jane, sitting forward, said quickly, “I know what Marie-Thérèse is doing now. She’s tapping her feet to music.”

  Harry said, “What’s that guy’s technique?” He sat up in his hammock. His legs, slender, brown, and sharp-shinned below the fringed Bermuda shorts, hung free; his white canvas shoes looked very big. “Ever since that girl cut loose, the language, Jane. The language that girl now uses to me. I’m ashamed to tell you. What do you suppose they’re doing now? At it, eh?” He lay back in the hammock and looked at the ceiling of the porch. “At it all the time.”

  Jane said, “They’re probably having a terrific quarrel at this minute. Sunday’s a bad day for rebels. They’re probably not even talking this morning.”

  “Calypso Harry.” Harry swayed in his hammock, considering the hammock hook. “I give up explaining now. People always call you what they want. They always call you by the last place you’ve been. Do you know, Jane, Peter, that the surname I carry is really the name of a town in South America? Tunja. When we were in Tunja we were called de Cordoba. And I suppose in Cordoba it was Ben-something-or-the-other. Always the last place you run from.”

  Roche said, “Tunja?”

  “It’s in Colombia. I don’t know. I never went looking for the place. Nobody has heard of Tunja. And I suppose that’s why it was a good place to leave. Those wars, too, you know—1830, 1840. It was the time the Siegerts were taking their Angostura business from Venezuela to Trinidad. We came here. The British Empire, the English language: I suppose it made a lot of sense. And now at least I can go anywhere. And I suppose the time has come to move on.”

  Jane said, with an old brightness, “The airport. Every day I look at the airport and wonder when it will close down.”

  “Mrs. Grandlieu,” Roche said. “I don’t think it will come to that.”

  “But you’ve had a good run for your money,” Jane said to Harry.

  Roche said, “Not better than you.”

  Jane leaned back in her chair. Her lips closed slowly over her teeth.

  After a pause Harry said, “I don’t want to go. I love this country. But when you feel the ground move below you it is damn foolishness to pretend you feel nothing. The other day I was standing outside the office with old man Sebastien. I don’t know whether you know him. He is one of those manic-depressives—all their madness come out in property. He was in one of his manic moods. And when he is like that the family can’t control him. Everybody selling or trying to sell, but Sebastien just want to buy now. The man come to your house at midnight. He suddenly want to buy this or he suddenly decide to buy that. I was standing up with him on the pavement, trying to cool him down and prevent him coming inside the office. And this old black feller come down the street, pushing a little box cart. Old black feller, old rummy face—thousands like him. When he reach us he stop in the road, he raise his hand and point at me and he say, ‘You! You is a Jew.’ Just like that, and then he move on, pushing his little cart. He didn’t make any big scene. It was as though he just stop to ask me the time. Now why the hell should an old black man stop and accost me like that? He make me feel I get off the ship in 1938 with a pack on my back.”

  Roche said, “He was probably drunk.”

  “Well, yes. Drunk. But what the hell does it mean to him? What kind of funny ideas are going around this place? I don’t know whether you notice how suspicious everybody is these days. Everybody nervous and a little tense. You don’t feel it? Everybody feel that the other guy have some important kind of secret. Look, like the way I know people feel about me since this landed-immigrant status. Like the way I too feel about Meredith these past two-three weeks. I don’t know what it is. All I know is that Merry is up to something, and I have to be a little careful. Sometimes in this place, you know, you can wonder what century you living in. Mrs. Grandlieu ever tell you how her father-in-law died? He was going round one of the estates one morning. In the middle of the morning he went back to the estate house for breakfast. He drank some water from his own icy-hot—a thermos flask, nuh—and straightaway he feel he want to vomit. You know the first thing he ask for? A basin, to vomit in. It took him six hours to die. Six hours.”

  “Poison,” Roche said. “That’s very African.”

  “The man vomiting up his guts. He is a dying man, and you know all he could think of? He want people to save his vomit—all his vomit—and take it to the police. That is the only thing he is talking about. And that is how he spent his last hours on earth: thinking about Negroes and the police and punishment. As though on the last day of his life he went back a hundred and fifty years and was a slave owner again. I don’t want to die with thoughts like that in my head, man. And that was just in 1938, you know. You know how they catch the poisoner? A month later, Christmas week, a crazy old black woman start parading through the town, shouting and crying, ‘I see Jesus! I see Mary!’ She was the poisoner. And she nearly cause a riot, eh, before they put her away in the madhouse. She had nothing to do with the estate. She’d just seen old Grandlieu in the morning, that’s all. When I hear people shouting about Jesus and Mary, and I see candles on the beach, I feel funny.”

  Jane said, “Mrs. Grandlieu never told me that story.”

  “People prefer to forget certain things. But if that happened to Mrs. Grandlieu today, she would behave in exactly the same way. These people are different from you and me, Jane. This is their place. When that black feller with the box cart point at me and say ‘You is a Jew,’ he didn’t point to Sebastien and say ‘You is a white man.’ He knew it was Mr. Sebastien.”

  The sun was edging toward that side of the porch where Roche’s hammock was hung. The black shadow of the porch roof was moving at an angle to the south. The cigarette that Jane had thrown on the lawn had burnt itself out; the wind was eroding the ashy little cylinder. Sky and sea were white; the sea, splashing out of its basin, grated on the coarse sand below the cliff. Ice floated in water in the bowl on the table. The Honduras pines bent in the light breeze; the almond trees, with their big flat leaves and solid lateral branches, hardly swayed at all. The morning was over; it would soon be time for lunch: the quick climax of these Sundays at the beach house. After lunch there would be drows
iness, no talk, relaxation, rest; and then the drive back through the forest and the coconut estates and the bush to the late-afternoon dust and heat of the city.

  Faintly at first, and then with growing distinctness against the breeze and the waves, there was the sound of chatter below the cliff. It was hard to ignore; they all three listened. It was not easy to tell from which direction the chatter came. To Jane it was like the sound of chatter in the gully at the foot of their garden on the Ridge. It was a group, clearly, walking fast. Soon the voices were immediately below the house; and then the unseen walkers passed on and their voices were lost.

  Jane said, “I wouldn’t call Mrs. Grandlieu white.”

  Roche said, “Not as white as you.”

  Harry, coming out of his abstraction, the rings below his eyes very dark, said, “That’s another question. Here she is Mrs. Grandlieu. And she is not a stranger.” He began again to swing in the hammock. “And still, you know, as I look up at that hook and the rust running down, I know I will get the place repainted. You can’t do anything else. But it’s a damn funny way to live. Listen, I think that’s Meredith.” He jumped out of the hammock, and left it swinging slackly.

  They heard the car come into the yard. Harry went through the living room to the kitchen; and, as the engine cut out, just behind the kitchen, it seemed, and as a door banged, they heard him say, in a tone which was at first like a continuation of the tone he had been using with them, but which then became more emphatic, brisker, a performance: “Eh-eh, Merry-boy! I was just saying that you weren’t coming for spite. Where is Pamela? She couldn’t make it. But this is beginning to look to me like a boycott, man. Well, come in, nuh. Peter and Jane here since morning. They nearly drink out all the damn rum punch.”

  MEREDITH HERBERT was the first man Roche had got to know on the island, outside his work; and for some time they had remained close. They had met at dinner at Mrs. Grandlieu’s; and even if they hadn’t spoken at length then Meredith would have stood out. Meredith didn’t pretend, as one or two of the older, and more jauntily dressed, black men did, that he was at home with Mrs. Grandlieu. His comprehension of the situation was complete. He didn’t laugh at Mrs. Grandlieu’s racialist jokes; he didn’t respond to her provocations. Mrs. Grandlieu was reserved with him; and in Meredith’s courtesy toward this middle-aged woman with the pale brown skin, who spoke deliberately badly and with an exaggerated local accent, Roche detected something like compassion for a woman whose position in the island was no longer what she thought it was.