Bivouac Page 7

  “Some people prefer the real flowers. Symbolic, you know,” the woman added like a school mistress. She smiled for Alphonso to continue.

  “Arrangement mus’ make beforehand and we will kindly inform you of plans. We can make program if you want.”

  Ferron was uncomfortable. Alphonso looked to the ground. “Thank you,” Ferron said.

  “Thank you,” the woman said.

  “Thank you,” Alphonso said, and sloped away.

  “One of the rewards of my husband’s waywardness. Pity, eh? With skin color like that he coulda gone so far,” she said, shaking her head. “Drugs. Drugs. Mash him up. But he is the only one who interested in this place, you see? Maybe he will learn. Maybe.”

  She was suddenly extremely quiet. A heaviness fell upon her and she led him back to the office, wiping her hands with the kerchief. He made a down payment. She thanked him. She promised to be at the funeral. They shook hands and he noticed the age in her eyes. Beneath the mascara and eye shadow was a maze of wrinkles. Ferron wondered how they would do her when they buried her.

  * * *

  Outside, the sound system was blasting out dancehall music into the street. A teenage girl stood in the middle of the road dancing in the sun with her tiny shadow as her partner. She stared down into the ground, swaying and bopping in one swoop of motion to the “water-pumpy” bounce on the speaker box. Her rolling body undulated crazily on the unruly asphalt strip. Her eyes turned downward into herself, as her head, laterally steady as if held by a vice, nodded to the music. The rest of her was a dreadful beauty of circles, coming close to a disjointed climax. Her youth, her ability to disappear into herself, oblivious to his staring, impressed him. After Mrs. Abrams’s darkness, this sweating, this lively act of “shocking-out,” was like breathing.

  He thought of Mitzie as he stared at this display.

  It aroused him.

  Ferron walked slowly up the street. The heat caused his armpits to itch with sweat. He was startled by the screech of tires. Jumping aside, he watched a white Toyota race past him, the heads of four men darkening the inside of the car. The vehicle turned sharply at the top of the road. It looked like the same one he had seen the day before. He stood still, his knees trembling with the shock, his entire body itching. Just as suddenly, the street was empty. The music from the system, with the requisite announcement of a tight drumroll, shifted to a syrup-slow, sticky reggae.

  Unpublished notes of George Ferron Morgan

  . . . There is a reference library. They keep clippings in envelopes, untidy, very scrappy, and hardly the kind of reference material one can use with speed. Everything depends on the intelligence and learning of the people who make the clippings, and they seem to be deficient in both of these qualities. There is a clipping file of murders. It is the best-kept file. A thick folder with story after story of murders. I sometimes forget just how bloody this place can be. We kill so routinely. Of course, think who is murdered. The violence is so selective. Most of us live in fear that one day the killers will realize that the implications of murdering a politician or some big shot have been exaggerated. They will know that we can’t do a thing about it, and when they do, we will all enjoy a sweet and rich paranoia.

  Were I in Africa still, I probably would be dead. Maybe that is an exaggeration, but I would have no silly delusions that that file of clippings has nothing to do with me. When word came that the military tribunal had decided I was something of a nuisance, I knew they were telling me that I could die. Be killed. Of course my comfort here is nonsense. I am nothing, here. I am nobody. If anybody doubted that when I had a job, now they don’t. The election is over; I am nothing. I have no friends in high society. I can be done away with. My one comfort is that such a death would be heroic. But I am not even worth that kind of death. I am now silenced. Only revenge or the pathology of crossing t’s and dotting i’s could justify anyone making the effort to kill me. Maybe some people are bitter still, but they must know that I did so little to harm their lives. Still, there are those neurotic types—the ones who believe in completing things started. For someone like me still to be walking around is just untidy. Maybe I will be a clipping.

  You can get clippings but not the simplest information like the name of the librarian of Parliament. One chap there is a graduate of UWI and is a genuine poet. Strange, I met him some years ago being touted as a poet by Rupert and he was viciously anti-communist. He is now, without much precision, on the left and is tied up with the PDP’s new publication which he sells in the office rather like pornography. He has a good mind which, the editor says, makes frequent visits for treatment to Bellevue. He should leave this country for a while.

  (I have bashed away at this typewriter since eleven o’clock this morning, without a break, and it is now a quarter to five. The Gardens’ people at “Action Station” jabber on and my concentration gutters.)

  I am sick and tired of politicians’ voices, so drawn up, so insincere in the effort at sincerity. Few of them, in this country, speak English. It is remarkable that they are turned out in print in a reasonable, legible way. My desire at this end of my life is to listen to and speak to only upper-class Englishmen or Africans. I am not depressed but some of this sharpness is a result of the apparent bitchiness of this office. Perhaps their awkwardness is really due to personal insecurity. But for people with secure jobs that they enjoy doing, they behave very strangely indeed.

  “What’s the Latest?” is a complete flop. It is not what the MD wants and is therefore a nonstarter. I am now being required to do “investigative reporting.” Can this be what it seems? Scandal is an essential element in this kind of reporting. It frightens me. With a byline in Jamaica? A profound degradation. At the simplest level, one needs a car and one needs to be exposed always to people one despises or is indifferent to. How many months?

  eleven

  Everybody came to the funeral. Cars everywhere—not just cars, but long, black, sleek vehicles. Suits intermingled with dark lace, blacks and deep mauves. Hats floated on the green lawn in front of the square gray-bricked chapel. It was an event. The sun softened the day; a late-afternoon breeze swooped down off the Blue Mountains onto the campus. A few students looked into the chapel, curious about who was being buried. The prime minister smiled, shaking hands with everybody. The Frats, five men in badly cut white tuxedos, sang a madrigal, smiling all the way through. Lucas accompanied himself on the piano, singing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” with a long jazzy solo which the old man would have liked. He must have made up with the Christians for a group from the church sang with him. They were good.

  Ferron had suggested he read a passage. Lucas did not want to read. Ferron read the passage.

  Few people were crying. Ferron noticed two; they were hard to miss. His father’s close boyhood friend, Rupert Jones, and Delores. Rupert Jones’s weeping made some sense. According to the old man, they had been friends through Jamaica College where they shared the sometimes strained position of being from the rural lower middle class—scholarship boys. Old Man Ferron had managed to use cricket to endear him to the wealthier and light-skinned boys, but Rupert, according to the old man, had resorted to humor—a dangerous clowning that was always physical and that constantly made him seem the buffoon. Most of the time, though, the old man had defended him against bullies, against those who felt he needed to be turned into a manly type, instead of the effete boy he was. The old man took him to parties and clubs and was never ashamed to be around him. He was, though, a genius. They had been at Oxford together, Rupert on a Rhodes, and the old man hustling his way through.

  Ferron knew Rupert as a soft-spoken, small man with an obsequious smile and a hard-to-believe concern for every detail of his life. He would ask about school, ask about his health, ask about his diet, ask about just about everything. It made Ferron uncomfortable. But Rupert’s most annoying quality was how he seemed to remember details about his friendship with the old man that always made the old man seem like a hel
pless bungler, while he looked like his rescuer. “He would have starved at Oxford, you know . . .” All this said with a soft quality of pity in his voice. Ferron could not understand why his father was friends with this man. His reputation around the university was that he was probably gay. Ferron was impressed by the old man’s openness to several gay friends, but this was a decidedly odd one. One day Ferron asked the old man, “What is what with Rupert Jones, anyway?” The old man responded as if he had been waiting for the question. First he had recounted the story of their school days, and then after skimming over the years after Oxford when they lost touch while Rupert was in the US practicing medicine, he explained why he regarded Rupert as a comrade, as a true revolutionary. This seemed unlikely, but it was what the old man said. Rupert Jones had spent three years in the bush with Mugabe as a field doctor during the war in Rhodesia. He had been wounded, but he stayed on. The old man arranged for his return to Jamaica when he became too frail to continue in the bush. The war was still in earnest. The old man arranged for a teaching position at the university hospital, training students in trauma and emergency medicine. This impressed Ferron. But watching him weeping, a deep moaning sound coming from his throat during the funeral, his kerchief constantly on his face, and his right hand patting his thigh while he kept interjecting, more loudly than seemed appropriate, throughout the ceremony, “Poor George, poor George . . .” it all seemed so pathetic to Ferron. So pathetic.

  The other noticeable weeper was Delores. She sat on the balcony with her family. Clarice had suggested she sit with Ferron, but she declined. During the ceremony, her sobbing floated down from the high balcony. Ferron could not quite understand it. She knew the old man, and they got along fine, but they were not really close. Was she crying for Ferron? Or was she simply establishing her role as the fiancée of the bereaved? If that was what she wanted to do, then why had she not sat with him. Of course, he really had not wanted her beside him. He felt this even more when he saw Mitzie. Mitzie came in a simple knee-length black dress. She wore black stockings and clipped along the shining tiles in high-heeled shoes, her bottom rolling easily. He looked at her stomach. She was still showing, but she carried it well. They did not speak. She just smiled at him. Two young cousins sat beside her. Ferron thought she was staring too hard at him. He liked it.

  The three ambassadors, including the old man’s writer friend from Nigeria, arrived together in full colorful regalia. They poured libation at the doorway and then strolled into the chapel nodding to the left and right as their sandals slapped the tiles. People whispered. Femi, Nigerian and self-appointed delegation leader, was a handsome man with streaks of gray in his hair. His eyes twinkled when he spoke. He walked a few paces ahead of Kamau, another Nigerian with sharp features and slow eyes, and Quackoo, a squat Ghanaian whose plump face made him look too gentle, gentler than he really was. None of them smiled. They were mourning a dear friend.

  After the ceremony, the hearse took the old man away. No one wanted to attend the cremation. Rupert Jones, eyes bloodshot and still sniffling, came up to Mother and embraced her. He did not speak, he just held her hands staring in her face. Then he turned to Ferron: “I should have done more for him. He helped me, you know? I should . . .”

  Mother spoke softly, “It’s alright, Rupert, he knew you were grateful, he knew . . .”

  Rupert Jones walked away after saying thank you to the entire family. Mother said goodbye to the coffin at the church door. She too cried as she tried to thank those who came.

  Ferron did not hear much of what was being said to him. Everything was contained in tired clichés. He nodded, and tried to look properly bereaved until the dignitaries had all filed out, jumped into their slick cars, and sailed silently out of the graveled driveway.

  Mitzie stood leaning against an off-white pillar outside the church. He watched her swallowing the spectacle, the faces, the dresses, the perfumes, then she caught him looking and peered down.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said, glancing around for Delores.

  “Which one she is?” Mitzie smiled.

  Delores was still in the chapel waiting for her parents to finish their condolences to Mother. Ferron pointed her out.

  “Nice girl. Hips too low, though. Cesarean,” Mitzie said seriously. Then she looked at him. “It was nice.”

  “Yeah?” She was growing on him. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Why? Nuh you invite me?” Mitzie tried to look offended.

  “But you didn’t have to come,” he said.

  “You never have to come look for me at Jubilee,” she said, staring hard at him.

  “No,” he said.

  “Right?” She was smiling.

  “Right,” he said.

  “Real nice.” She nodded to the chapel. “I like the African dem. You know them?”

  “Uncles, sort of,” he said.

  “Real Africans, eh?” She seemed genuinely impressed.

  “Yes. Ghana and Nigeria.”

  “Proud, though. Proud. Man, Lewis woulda love see this.” Lewis was her baby father. A dread. “Nice.” She stepped away from the wall, putting her hands behind her and straightening her back. Ferron noticed that she tucked in her stomach. Delores and her family were coming toward them.

  “It was very pleasant, dear, very, very pleasant. He would have liked it,” Delores’s mother, Gilda, said, lightly embracing him. Thick perfume—very expensive.

  “Yes,” Nestor, her father, said, nodding.

  Delores touched his arm. “Are you alright?” It was the first time she had touched Ferron since. She moved her hand away quickly when he looked down at it. She played with her bracelet.

  “Yes. Thanks for coming. Gilda, Nestor, Delores,” he said to the parents. Nestor smiled sheepishly—he seemed to have grown shorter and thinner since he had retired from the bench. He was aging rapidly, and had the look of a very bullied man. His eyes were red and wet. Ferron thought he was weeping for himself.

  Mitzie did not move. She stared from face to face, half-smiling.

  Delores looked at Mitzie and then at Ferron.

  “You will drive with your mother, right?” she asked. “You don’t need a lift?”

  “No,” Ferron answered. “We will be alright. Thanks.”

  Delores opened her purse and reached for her keys. “Well, see you then. Nice to meet you,” she said, nodding at Mitzie.

  “Yes, yes,” the father said.

  The mother said nothing. She just smiled curiously at Mitzie, and then they left.

  “Definite cesarean,” Mitzie said, watching them walk away. Ferron noticed the short trunks of Delores and her mother. “You know where she get that, eh?” She then turned to him. “So you alright, then?”

  “Trying . . . You look great,” he said.

  “Dress kinda tight but tha’s all me could find. Not too short?” she said, twisting around to see the back of her dress.

  “No, not at all.” He smiled.

  She looked at him and held his gaze. She knew he was telling her she looked sexy. “You too bad. I shoulda wear something longer,” she laughed.

  “Then if you did you wouldn’t make Delores know what she up against,” Ferron said, still grinning.

  “You really feel you are that important to me, dutty bwai?”

  “Who knows,” he said. He took her hand and squeezed it. “Thanks.”

  “No problem, baby,” she replied with tenderness. “Make sure you alright.”

  “I am fine,” he said. “Just fine.”

  The chapel was empty except for the three ambassadors. Ferron realized that Mitzie must have taken the bus. “You need a lift?” he asked.

  “No, no . . .” She bent over and slipped off her high-heeled shoes and stuffed them into her bag. She now stood just a few inches below him. From her bag she took out a pair of worn leather loafers, tossed them to the ground, and slipped her feet into them. “Nice. Ready now. Give me a shout nuh. The girl want to see you. I think she like you.” She leane
d forward and put an arm around him. “You must cry, you hear? Cry.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek, looked in his eyes, and smiled. With that, she strolled away. He watched her climb the slight banking in front of the chapel and trot across the main road. She disappeared around some buildings.

  * * *

  In the car back to their home, Lucky Dube’s mellow reggae pulsed. Femi shouted above the music, balancing a glass of the libation whiskey. “We should have lined up the whole bloody lot of them and shot them there on the spot!” he shouted. “Fucking hypocrites! That was the prime minister, eh? He looks like a damned prune!”

  “At dawn. Line them up at dawn and shoot!” Quackoo, the Ghanaian, shouted back. They laughed. “Let him wave his white kerchief at the sky, let him shit himself.”

  Femi sipped and shook his head. “Oh Ferron. My brother. They did this to you.” His eyes were filling. “We must talk soon, eh?”

  “Yes,” Quackoo laughed, raising his glass. “Comrade!”

  “Comrade!” Femi shouted. And they emptied their glasses. Clarice drove quietly, but she was smiling. Ferron chuckled. These men were like uncles and they helped to ease the burden of Mother’s sorrow. Kamau, the most reserved one of the lot, yet the one they all knew had been present at many executions on beaches, drove with Lucas in Mother’s car. He had spoken very little since his arrival.

  * * *

  They stood there on the lawn, the smell of white rum thick in the muggy night, with the odd star darting across, staring out and reminiscing as if trying to summon the old man back to another all-night vigil of rum and roasted nuts. Inside, Salif Keita wailed on the stereo. Lucas had gone to his room. Renewed in his faith, he had abandoned smoking again and was beginning to find Femi’s constant teasing of his Christianity tiresome. Clarice had left with her boyfriend for the north coast. She said she needed a holiday. Mother sat on the lawn. She had entertained a few visitors, her workmates and the wives of some of the old man’s friends. She offered them food and soft drinks. Some drank wine. Then they left just as darkness started to gather. Theresa had arrived at around seven thirty to see Femi. They had a short but heated argument on the back veranda, and so she withdrew to the white lawn table where Mother was sitting. Theresa wanted Femi to stay with her that night. Femi explained loudly to her that he was in mourning: “My greatest friend, my brother, is dead and you are talking about fucking? What the hell is wrong with you? Where is your decency, woman. Where?” She sat with Mother, thoroughly cowed and embarrassed. She tried to explain that she had cooked for Femi, and that he had told her he needed a place to stay, and it was not like she was suggesting it, and how crude he could be. Then she lamented the death of the old man. She started to drink, and she kept drinking steadily, weeping intermittently, until she was stunned into a still stupor. Mother smiled most of the time, hummed, and stared out.