Caribbean: a novel Part 49

And then, even as she agreed with the instructor, Therese was thrown completely off balance-touched close to the heart-by a song of the Caribbean. Professional singers of some merit were offering the usual fare of songs popular forty years past, when onto the stage came two distinctive figures, a slim young soprano with a golden complexion, a haunting smile and a strong but gentle voice, and a very tall baritone dressed in somber black and wearing a nineteenth-century top hat. His voice was resonant and powerful as he introduced their duet: 'We bring you a song of the islands ... of all islands ... the island girl and the American missionary from Boston.' And with that, a small orchestra of six musicians began playing for him, while a steel band of eleven hammered gasoline drums as an accompaniment for the soprano, and as a result of exquisite timing and altered rhythms the two songs merged into an evocative whole of the most enchanting intertwined beauty.

He sang in deep, powerful tones 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic,' while in notes of delicate harmony she sang 'Yellow Bird,' and from the moment they started, Therese said in a soft whisper: 'Oh, this is something special,' for both the singers and their words spoke directly to her condition: 'He is trampling out the vintage Yel ......... low bird 'where the grapes of wrath are stored up high in banana tree'

The contrasting appearance they created and the magical blending of their voices created in Therese exactly the impression the singers had intended: She's all the island people. He's all the European missionaries and governors. The rivalry never ends. But as she listened carefully to the words the man uttered, all fire and bombast and death, she was almost projected out of her seat: My G.o.d! That's Judge Adolphus Krey! And it's me he's lecturing to, the black island girl! And at that moment the transformation was complete: the thundering ba.s.so was her proposed father-in-law, the girl singer was she, 'He hath loosed the fateful lightning Yel ......... low bird 'of his terrible swift sword you sit all alone like me'

When the duet ended to thunderous applause, Therese was limp, but she had to smile when students a.s.sured her: 'Your Caribbean has one good song!' Back in her cabin, with the images and sounds of the concert whirling in her head like an island hurricane, she knew she ought to write Dennis and share with him her Haiti experiences, but the implacable image of the elder Krey hurling the thunderbolts of the 'Battle Hymn' as if he were protecting his son against island women was so overpowering that she could not write nor could she sleep.

Her mind was filled with haunting images that she could not exorcise: Lalique returning from the dead, Henri Christophe building that insane fortress instead of roads or schools, that despicable portrait of a leering, all-wise Papa Doc, and especially the look on her uncle's face when he said that it was too late to escape from the prison of poverty. When she had boarded the plane in Boston she had expected to breeze through Haiti, nodding to family and friends and leaving a modest gift of money here or there, and then to depart the same person as when she entered; she had not foreseen that Haiti was a place which tore at the soul, especially the soul of an educated black woman. Rising from her bed, she tried again to write to Dennis Krey, but again she failed, because a two-week stay in the dark fogs of Haiti had converted her into an entirely different woman, and to explain this in a letter of one or two pages was impossible.

In the morning when the Galante approached San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, Therese stood with her students as they heard the voices of some excited Borinqueos, as natives of the island were called, announce over the ship's bullhorn: 'There on the headland, see it! El Morro fortress with its round tower set into the walls. We love to see that sight. It means we're coming home.' There were several of these little masonry towers jutting out from vulnerable corners, and she was still gazing at them as they glowed in the gold of sunrise, when a harbor boat pulled up to the Galante, bringing an eager young man from the State Department, blue-linen tropical suit freshly pressed and subdued red tie double-pa.s.sed to give the trim look at the collar that diplomats favor. When he debarked and clambered up the jury-rigged ladder, he hurried to the ship's elevator while the students tried to guess his mission.

'Must be coming to make a drug bust. One of the belowdecks crew.'

'No, he's inviting the captain to tea at the governor's palace.'

'Brain surgeon. Emergency operation. He came to fetch the patient.'

They were surprised when he sought out Professor Vaval and introduced himself: 'John Swayling, attached to the Columbus Quincentenary Commission. We've been awaiting you, eagerly, Dr. Vaval. We need your help ... urgently.'

'What's up, Doc?' an irreverent student asked, imitating Bugs Bunny. Therese smiled and said: 'The Feds are after me. See something of significance when you go ash.o.r.e,' and with that, she and the State Department man hustled below, climbed down the rope-and-wire ladder leading to the harbor boat, and disappeared toward what the guide on the bullhorn was describing as 'the old city.'

On the way ash.o.r.e, Mr. Swayling outlined the day: 'We have representatives from some forty nations meeting here. To plan the five-hundredth anniversary of our boy Christopher. I use that slang term because everybody's claiming rights to the old fellow ... and wants to dictate how he shall be celebrated.'

'That could get sticky,' Therese said. 'Spain, Italy, Portugal, United States.'

'Keep going! Like Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, not to mention Hispaniola, Jamaica and Puerto Rico.'

'That could be a dogfight.'

'It is.'

'Speaking of Puerto Rico. What's the political sentiment on the island? Regarding future status?'

'We had another plebiscite ... last in a long series ... inconclusive as ever. Continue the Commonwealth status quo, forty-six percent. Enter the Union as the fifty-first state, forty-four percent. Complete freedom immediately, six percent.'

'That's only ninety-six. What about the balance?'

'Who gives a d.a.m.n? Four percent.'

When they left the boat, Swayling had a car and driver waiting, and as they sped through the wakening city he said enthusiastically: 'This is a gorgeous city. Wish I could be stationed here permanently.'

'I know the rest of the Caribbean rather well. What's so great about this place?'

'The Spanish heritage. The grand old buildings. And the women.' There was a moment of silence in which he obviously expected her to speak, and when she didn't, he added: 'I've seen about two dozen I'd like to know better.'

'Young women of color, perhaps?'

'Every color you could think of. Why do you ask?'

'Because I'm engaged to marry a young man just about your age, and white like you. I know problems do arise.'

'I'm engaged to a white girl and problems arise there, too.'

'Now, what about this conference?'

Before he could respond, the car swung onto a handsome boulevard lined with st.u.r.dy old buildings dating back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when Spain relied on the incredibly stout walls of El Morro to defend the galleons heading back to Sevilla with the treasure from Peru and Mexico: 'Hawkins and Drake both tried to sail past that fort over there and failed. I know that Hawkins died in the attempt, and Drake may have received wounds from which he died shortly after. This was a tough nut to crack.'

'The area looks so Spanish. Quite extraordinary,' and the young man explained: 'You've touched the dilemma of the island. As you can see, they want to erase all signs of American intervention. U.S. army barracks used to be over there, another big American building at this corner. All being torn down as if to eradicate any memory of American influence. Huge funds spent to restore this as a Spanish city.'

'It was Spanish for much longer than it's been American,' Therese said.

'Yes, but at the same time the Borinqueos want to be completely Spanish. You get no cachet whatever if you're American ... only Spanish counts ... What point was I making?'

'I think you're going to say that although they want to be Spanish emotionally, they want to be American economically.'

'Exactly.' And together they marveled at the brilliance with which this part of San Juan at least had been reconverted into a Spanish town, and such thoughts brought them to a discussion of the important task the American government had asked her to perform. 'We hope, Dr. Vaval, that as a scholar of high caliber, you could represent us today with the black leaders who are going to be most vociferous.'

'What's it about?'

'A hilarious contretemps, really, except that it's so d.a.m.ned important,' but before he could elaborate they were at the entrance to Casa Blanca, the exquisite mansion long held by the descendants of Ponce de Len, who represented the acme of Spanish society and influence. It was perched atop a small mound that commanded the beautiful bay, El Morro and the princ.i.p.al buildings of the colonial era. When Americans a.s.sumed ownership of the island in 1898 they chose Casa Blanca as the residence for their military commanders, but after 1967 all evidence that they had ever set foot in the place was obliterated, and Casa Blanca became once more a Spanish mansion.

It was a stunning building, with ma.s.sive white walls, cool patios, windows guarded by beautifully carved wooden spindles and floors of dark blood-red tiles in various shapes. It was a n.o.ble house and it breathed Hispanic values, but Therese was not allowed to savor it, for even though it was now only seven in the morning, four representatives of the United States delegation were waiting to brief her on the day's events.

Said the chairman: 'It would be amusing if it weren't so pathetic. Spain and the United States will be putting up most of the money for the Columbus celebrations, which should be a glorious affair.'

'Certainly, those two nations can't be feuding,' Therese said, whereupon the delegates burst into laughter.

'Oh, you're so nave you're wonderful. Spain and the U.S. are at each other's throats. Spain wants this to be a celebration of Spanish contributions to the New World.'

'I see nothing wrong with that.'

'But Congress, which designated the members of our delegation ...'

'I thought you were our members.'

'No, we're just the supporting staff. The members have gone home in a terrible huff.'

'Why?'

'The Italian contingent in Congress, and it's powerful, sent down a delegation one-hundred-percent Italian. New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, leader types, and they were determined to use the Columbus affair to prove that it was Italy that had found the New World and given it the big push toward a wonderful civilization. To hear their plans, there couldn't have been any Spaniards aboard the three ships.'

'Did Columbus think of himself as Italian?'

'Never wrote a word in that language, so far as we can find. Operationally, pure Spaniard.'

'So what happened?'

'The other nations, laughing disgracefully, would not allow the American Italians to be seated.'

'Did that solve anything?'

'Well, it got rid of our delegation, and maybe the funds which Congress was prepared to authorize, but the Spanish-speaking nations said: "Good riddance. We're not going to pervert history to please the American Congress." '

'So the Spaniards won?'

'Not really, because when they started to take command, to make it a great Spanish fiesta celebrating the fact that Queen Isabella ...'

A counselor to the mission, a distinguished scholar from Stanford, broke in: 'The real trouble started with that unfortunate word discovered. Nations of Central and South America, especially Mexico and Peru, had sent Indian delegates, who cried: "Hey, wait a minute! n.o.body discovered anything, neither Italian or Spanish. We were already here and were doing rather well. Whoever Columbus might have been, he visited us, he didn't discover us. Let's celebrate this as an important visit." '

'I see some merit in the argument,' Therese said, and then, focusing his attention on her, the chairman said: 'This is where you come in. Because after the Italians, the Spaniards and the local Indians had finished registering their claims, the black rulers of the Caribbean islands pointed out, quite correctly I believe, that in the Caribbean generally for the last three hundred years it's been the blacks who have really counted-grew the cane, made the sugar, distilled the rum, grew the tobacco and tended the cotton. They insisted: "It should be a celebration of what the blacks of Africa have achieved in the islands Columbus found," and since we had no black member of our group to talk with them, they ignored us.'

It was now heading for eight-thirty, when the day's plenary session was to begin, and final instructions were heaped upon Therese, who said, in response to questions: 'Yes, my ancestors were slaves on St. John and later heavily involved in Haiti's fight for freedom. You might say that had I been in attendance at the earlier sessions, I would have supported the black leaders.'

'Excellent. Represent us as ably as you can.'

'Specific instructions?'

'Fraternize, listen, encourage. And above all, let them know they have a friend in America. We hope you can help us salvage something out of this mess.'

It was a day of tropical brilliance, spent in a house whose every aspect recalled those earlier days when men of good will had sat in this white house plotting steps to defeat English villains like Drake and Morgan, forestall Admiral Vernon at Cartagena, and import fresh supplies of slaves on the yearly commercial armada from Africa. There was not even a shadow across the tiled floor to remind anyone that American military officers from states like Kansas and New Hampshire had ever ruled Puerto Rico from these halls, or that the island was now an integral part of the United States. Here, Spain still ruled emotionally.

Therese felt that she was achieving little for her government because the delegates from the Caribbean islands spoke so often and so forcefully that she was required to say nothing, but members of the American team a.s.sured her: 'Your presence is worth two battalions. Word is circulating. They realize we cared enough to send for you. Sit with them at lunch at let them know your feelings.'

She did so, and when she conversed with these intelligent men and women from Barbados and Antigua and Jamaica and Guadeloupe, she felt an affinity of interest and outlook that ran deep in their consciousness and hers. At several points she cried: 'I know just what you mean!' and her enthusiasm was so real that they began to ask her what she did in the United States, and to her surprise she found herself talking about her appointment to Wellesley.

'Is that an important college?' a black from Trinidad asked, and a young woman from St. Kitts cried: 'A university, and one of the best. In many respects equal to Yale.'

Later Therese could not recall how she happened to reveal that she was engaged to a white man, but when a contentious delegate from St. Lucia asked: 'Does that mean you'll be abandoning your black heritage?' she replied sharply: 'The name of the course I'll be teaching is "Black Societies in the Caribbean," and it will draw me ever closer to you.'

Late in the afternoon, after some prompting from her chairman, she asked for the floor, and said: 'The United States would look with favor upon any kind of exhibition or celebration which would emphasize the considerable contribution to Caribbean culture, economics and government made by the African slaves and their descendants, of which I'm one.'

The group then turned to the delicate problem of how it could best lure the American Italian delegation back to the conference without surrendering the meeting to them, but since Therese had to hurry back to the Galante before it sailed for the American Virgins, she did not learn whether this attempt at reconciliation worked or not.

That night the Swedish captain stepped before the screen prior to the start of the movie to announce: 'We're sailing with an extraordinary group of lecturers, and if you four will join me, I'd like to make some fascinating introductions.' When they stood self-consciously beside him, he said: 'Professor Vaval is not only charming, as you've discovered, but she is also a distinguished Haitian. Her ancestor General Vaval helped defeat Napoleon, another served as president, another was a trusted leader under the Americans. You can believe what she says.' He then moved Dr. Carlos Ledesma forward and said: 'This fine scholar is not only one of the most brilliant men in Colombia, but also the descendant of a great Spanish leader who dueled for forty years or more with Sir Francis Drake and won more often than he lost. Other Ledesmas governed Cartagena, where we will end our cruise, with distinction, one of them being a hero of the battle against Old Grog Vernon that you'll be hearing about.'

Now Senator Maxim Lanzerac of Guadeloupe stepped forward: 'And this fine politician will within the next few days be telling you about a sweetheart of a fellow who came out from France with a neat little machine that chopped off people's heads, and one of the first to go was a Royalist called Lanzerac, ancestor of our speaker, who now strives to see that such things don't happen again.' He ended with a graceful statement: 'So we're not only sailing in the Caribbean, we're bringing it with us,' and the voyage became doubly meaningful.

When the fourth lecturer joined the captain, Therese realized that she had not known he was aboard or in any way connected with the floating university. He was a white man, in his sixties, gray-haired, slightly stooped and with the relaxed, pleasant face of one who had never partic.i.p.ated in the aggressiveness of either business or university life. He had apparently determined his level early in life and found satisfaction in it. 'This is Master Michael Carmody, a distinguished scholar from Queen's Own College in Trinidad,' the captain said, 'and he will give a series of six lectures, four of them prior to our visit there. Listen attentively, for he will introduce us to his fascinating island, unique in the Caribbean, half blacks from Africa, half Indians from Asia.'

As the speech ended, Therese moved across the salon to introduce herself to the new man, and when she heard his magical voice she said: 'You must be Irish,' and he replied: 'Long ago.'

'I hope you'll allow me to audit your lectures. I teach Caribbean history and my knowledge of Trinidad is inadequate.'

'They're not lectures, really. Reflections, ruminations.'

'That's where learning begins. The raw data about the island I already have, it's the ruminations and reflections that I need,' and they spent the balance of the evening in the pleasant way that he, using an old English phrase, described as 'discussing a rum punch.'

Next day, Wednesday, February 1, was one of intense involvement for Therese, for as she left the ship in Charlotte Amalie, capital of the American Virgin Islands, a bicycle gang swooped down upon her and the lead man used his front wheel to shove her off balance, whereupon the second in line deftly reached out, grabbed her handbag from her arm, and made off with it. Her money and her wallet, though fortunately not her pa.s.sport, were gone.

When fellow pa.s.sengers who had seen the bold robbery helped her in reporting to a policeman, the latter shrugged: 'It happens all the time. No way possible for us to halt it,' but he did say: 'Government has been begging the young hoods not to destroy our tourist business, and it's had some effect. Chances are the ones who grabbed your handbag, ma'am, will lift the money and throw your bag where we'll find it. If they do, we'll return it to your ship before you sail.'

With that ugly introduction to the Virgins, she borrowed funds from a pa.s.senger who had joined a small group she was leading to the nearby island of St. John, where the Rockefellers had their huge resort, and they taxied to the other end of St. Thomas, the main island, where a ferry waited to take them the short distance to the smaller island.

There a memorable experience awaited, for another taxi took them to the north side of the island, where at considerable expense the government had excavated and restored some dozen major buildings of the old Danish sugar plantation at which Vavak the slave had labored. Lunaberg it had been called, and as Therese led her charges among the ruins she could recall the emotional stories of how the original Vavak had toiled here, watched the terrible executions of his fellow slaves, and run away to Haiti.

When she reached the top of the plateau where in the old days the main buildings had been concentrated, she felt as if she had known each mill and holding pit and storage barn personally, and with remarkable accuracy she explained to her group how sugar was produced, from the planting of the cane, to its cutting and grinding, then the collection of the rich juices and their progressive treatment until the two contrasting products resulted, muscovado for sugar, mola.s.ses for rum.

But that was not the end of the process, not by a long shot, and when her group was seated on benches which provided a good view of the hilltop, Therese spoke of the immense fortunes made by sugar planters in islands like Barbados, Jamaica, Guadeloupe and Haiti, of the way such owners lived in Paris and London and Copenhagen, and of the importance of sugar in the old days. But after these colorful details had been shared, she became serious and spoke of the hardships the slaves had endured to make this largesse possible, and when she explained in some detail their daily life, she chanced to point to the exact spot where her ancestor Vavak had had his mean little hut and from which he fled to freedom, two hundred and fifty-six years earlier. She made the slave experience so vivid that when she finished her prepared comments, her listeners kept her among the ruins for another half-hour, asking about the sugar culture of the islands, and it was then that she expressed for the first time a basic truth about the Caribbean. 'The one crop we are expressly qualified to produce'-and she herself was not aware that she had used the p.r.o.noun we as if identifying herself personally with the islands-'is sugar. On all the islands that's the premier crop, sugar, sugar, sugar. Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad ... all the rest. And what's happened? Why can't we sell our sugar anymore? Why are our fields left barren?'

The tourists guessed at half a dozen plausible explanations, none of them close to the mark: 'German chemists, that's what killed our sugar industry,' and being a born teacher, Therese invited her guests to unravel that conundrum. When they failed, she explained: 'In the 1850s, I think it was, German chemists, clever lads, discovered that whereas you could make excellent sugar from cane, you could make it even better, and with much less trouble, from beets, not red beets that you pickle, but huge white things just crammed with sugar. There went our cash crop, and we've discovered nothing to replace it.'

Some men in the group offered ingenious suggestions for new industries, but were told that most had been tried, disastrously, so as the discussion ended she offered her own solution: 'The industrial nations of the world, but especially the United States, because these lands are at her doorstep, ought to band together to buy our sugar at just a little over world price. A few cents a pound would allow all the islands you'll be seeing to prosper ... save them from revolution or worse.'

'Does anyone pay that now?' a man asked, and she replied: 'Russia buys from Cuba, a little over world, Cuba thrives. France does the same with her two big colonies, Guadeloupe and Martinique. But the United States refuses. Sugar-beet interests in states like Colorado won't allow it.' She hesitated, then added: 'So we stagger along toward a disaster whose timing we cannot predict, but whose coming is inevitable. We're a fleet of magnificent islands, lost in the sun.'

But even as she uttered this doleful prediction she turned to go down from the plateau where Vavak had labored under those terrible laws of Denmark, and she saw to the north and east the wonderful little islands of the British Virgins, Great Thatch, Little Thatch, big Tortola and the rest, and she thought: Vavak must have seen them a thousand times and wondered what was over there, but they were never mentioned in our family. My G.o.d, they are magnificent, a chain of jewels, and as the Caribbean had a way of doing, the present beauty erased the old ugliness.

But not entirely, for when Therese's group piled into their taxis to catch the ferry that would take them back to St. Thomas and the Galante, they found themselves caught in another of the ugly cheats which irritate experienced Caribbean travelers and scare away the novices. Vavak's plantation, Lunaberg, was on the extreme northern edge of St. John, the ferry depot at the opposite end, and at the start of the trip the taxi drivers had agreed upon a price, fearfully high Therese thought, and everyone a.s.sumed it was for the round trip-ferry landing and back-but now the drivers carried the travelers to a way station far from the ferry, and said: 'You get out here.'

'But we want the ferry!' Therese protested, and they laughed: 'Trip always ends here.'

'How do we get back to the ferry?'

'He might do it,' one of the men said, and pointed to a confederate, who said yes, he could deliver them to the ferry, three trips, twenty-seven dollars. Before they could protest this holdup, the three original drivers had fled, so that they had to pay the extra fee or miss the sailing of the cruise ship.

When the angry pa.s.sengers reported their mistreatment to the ship's officers, one young Swede took them aside and said: 'You'll find that sort of petty cheating wherever you go in the Caribbean. They want tourist dollars but they treat tourists like sc.u.m. By the way, Miss Vaval, the police did retrieve your handbag and papers.' She was so relieved to have her cards back that she actually felt grateful toward the thieves: 'It was decent of them to return my credit cards,' and the officer said: 'We have reason to believe the thief was the brother of the policeman. Small dark fellow with a mustache?' 'Yes, I saw him clearly.' Then the officer grinned: 'When he grabs a handbag we always get the papers back. His brother sees to it. But beware, on other islands it can be much worse.'

The three academic credits that students could acquire for 'Cruise-and-Muse' were not easily won: in addition to the two weeks of cla.s.sroom study at Miami, and the submission of a sixty-page report within a month after the end of the cruise, the students were given a long reading list by the six lecturers. For her reading list, Therese had a.s.signed four nicely differentiated books chosen for high quality and familiarity with English: German Arciniegas' view of the Caribbean as seen in 1946 by a Spanish scholar, Caribbean, Sea of the New World; a recent Yale University publication, Prospect for the Caribbean, by a local specialist, Ranjit Banarjee from the University of the West Indies; Alec Waugh's 1955 saucy but instructive novel of Caribbean life, Island in the Sun; and a remarkable book which few today would otherwise know, The English in the West Indies, 1887, by one of the crustiest, most opinionated historians ever to lift a pen, James Anthony Froude. The literary executor and biographer of Thomas Carlyle, he had adopted that surly gentleman's near-n.a.z.i inclinations and applied them sulfurously to the Caribbean.

'His opinions,' Therese warned her students when placing copies of his book in the corner of the ship's library reserved for those taking the cruise for credit, 'are outrageous, and some are downright infuriating, but it's refreshing to know what learned and cultured gentlemen thought of this part of the world back when quote "things were so good" unquote. Read and enjoy, but please do not spit on his preposterous pages or throw the book overboard.'

After such an introduction the students became immersed in Froude, and during the next few days Therese heard squeals of outrage as one student after another discovered the obiter dicta of brother Froude, who despised slaves, anyone with a drop of color in his blood, Catholics, Baptists, Indians from India, liberals, and with special venom, any Irishmen or Haitians. One student found what seemed to be Froude's leitmotif: 'The English have proved that they can play a great and useful role as rulers over people who recognize their own inferiority.'

When Michael Carmody heard the rumpus being made over Froude's hideous statements about the Irish, he asked one of the students: 'How can a mere book create so much confusion?' and after he had looked into what Froude was saying, he asked: 'What other books did your professor a.s.sign?' and was delighted to learn that she had selected a work by one of his former students. Seeking her out, he found Therese on the sun deck watching the sky, and asked: 'May I take this chair?' and she nodded. Seated beside her, he asked: 'How did you learn of Ranjit Banarjee's study?' and she explained: 'Yale University plugged the book heavily among Caribbean scholars, and rightly so. It's a fine work, and I was looking for something by a Jamaican.'

'He's Trinidadian.'

'But I'm sure the blurb said University of the West Indies.'

'It could just as properly have said University of Miami and reared in Trinidad.'

'That must account for his breadth of vision. It's an eye-opening book for my young people.'

'It is indeed. And when we make our stop in Trinidad for Carnaval, you must meet him.'

'Where does he teach?' She noticed that when she asked this question, a slight frown skittered across Carmody's face, as if he had at some point been at odds with the author of the book. After some undue hesitation, the Irishman said: 'It's quite unfathomable, really. He has no university affiliation.'

'High school?'