Caribbean by James A. Michener
By the time the Galante reached Bridgetown, the pleasant port on the western side of the island, nearly everyone aboard was prepared to like Barbados, and when the tour buses set forth with the regular passengers, the occupants saw an island which in no way disappointed. The transition from a sugar culture to one of mixed enterprises had been easily, almost graciously made, and since Barbados had never had any spare land, when the end of slavery came, there had been no hiding place for disgruntled free men to run to, as there had been on the other islands; the blacks had to stay put and work things out with their former masters. There had been the standard uprisings, some of them quite vicious, but they had neither lingered nor festered, so that in the end Barbados found itself with about the best island relationships in the Caribbean.
‘The secret,’ one black bus driver told his wide-eyed passengers who were seeing a peaceful island at work, ‘is that each of us intends one day to make his fortune and go live like a toff in England.’ Proudly he added: ‘Besides, our little island has produced the greatest all-round cricket player the world has ever seen, the great Sir Gary Sobers, and believe me, that counts for something.’
Thérèse’s students met with government officials in an instructive seminar which told them much about the islands they had already seen or would be seeing shortly. The two principal speakers were Major Oldmixon and a black professor of history from the Barbados branch of the University of the West Indies. Their topic? The abortive effort in 1958 to unite all the British islands in one grand confederation, with one citizenship, one money system, one federal government and one common destiny. Oldmixon spoke first, and at times he was so deeply moved by the tragedy in which he had participated, tears almost came to his eyes:
‘Every Oldmixon of whom we have record for the past three hundred and fifty years has been staunchly in favor of Federation for the various islands of the Caribbean belonging to Great Britain, and we usually included land areas in the vicinity like British Guiana in South America and British Honduras in Central. In fact, one of my ancestors, Admiral Hector Oldmixon back in Napoleon’s time, was so enthusiastic about it that he went so far as to capture the French island of Guadeloupe to make it eligible to join. He kept it, alas, for only a few weeks.
‘Through the years we had a score of abortive attempts to join the islands into one sensible Federation, and from the beginning it was clear that the three moving forces would have to be Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica. Most money, most people, most advanced ideas and capabilities. So it became an infuriating three-way jigsaw puzzle. When Barbados and Jamaica agreed, Trinidad held back. And when Trinidad and Barbados saw eye to eye, Jamaica played hard to get. The little islands? They always dreamed of Federation and were willing to make real concessions to get it.
‘Finally, in January 1958, everything came together, and believe it or not, under careful urging from Britain, Federation was authorized, a site for our capital was agreed upon, a fine location in Trinidad, and in March of that year elections were to be held, and the final distribution of seats indicates the relative importance of the islands: Jamaica, thirty-one, Trinidad, fifteen, Barbados, five. Great idea, grand potential, but I’ll let Professor Charles tell you what happened.’
The black professor told a dismal story, one of regional hope and national despair, in which the personal ambitions of a few exhibitionistic leaders destroyed the hopes of the many:
‘In the end it came down to a clash between black leaders, both honors graduates from English universities: Manley, the strong man of Jamaica, Williams, the extremely vain man of Trinidad; and dear old Sir Grantley Adams of Barbados, always striving to make peace between the Big Two. Vanity, vanity! Reconciliation denied, wrong decisions pushed forward. Through all of 1958 this grand design that might have saved this corner of the world hung in the balance, but nevertheless, princess Margaret of England, the one who lost the man she loved, came out and inaugurated the Federation, with Major Oldmixon and me in the crowd cheering.
‘What went wrong? For the most insane reasons in the world Manley threatened to take Jamaica out, so Williams had to respond by threatening to take out Trinidad. Our world was threatened, and by 1960 it was crumbling about our ears. People like Oldmixon and me battled to save the concept, but in September 1961, Jamaica held a plebiscite and the vote was two hundred fifty-six thousand get out, two hundred seventeen thousand stay in, and the whole castle of cards came drifting down.’
Oldmixon coughed, then said: ‘Men like my family and his tried to get a Federation of Nine functioning, without Jamaica and Trinidad, but lacking mighty Jamaica, nothing was reasonably possible.’
The professor also lamented the loss, but he did have other considerations: ‘Geography was so against us. If only God had placed that damned Jamaica farther east, it would be in the center of any federation. What’s the problem? Jamaica’s our biggest unit, and it’s only six hundred miles from Miami but twelve hundred from Barbados, much farther than from New York to Kansas City. Maybe the essentials for a federation were never present, maybe these islands will never be able to confederate on anything.’
‘Could anyone else take the lead and organize the islands under some new banner?’ a student asked, and he replied: ‘There has been some speculation. It is possible that Cuba will stabilize, say, by the year 2020 when Castro’s gone, and by stabilize I mean in some form of economic and social pattern acceptable to all of us, and then take the lead in building a great hegemony that would take in everything in the area, including Venezuela, Colombia, Central America and Yucatán after Mexico falls apart, as it probably will.’
Before anyone could react to this idea so repugnant to many, he added: ‘I believe Cuba could take over Hispaniola and Puerto Rico fairly easily, I should think, also Central America. The English and French islands later, but economics and proximity work wonders.’
‘Are you a Marxist?’ one of the brighter students asked, and he laughed: ‘Oldmixon and I are known as reactionaries. But I do speculate about the movement of nations, the realignments, and I would strongly advise you to do the same, because then you will probably have anticipated the changes that arrive on your doorstep some September morning.’
None of the students could visualize a Cuban hegemony spread over the Caribbean and its shores, but one young man asked: ‘Why not an American hegemony, with Miami as its focal point?’ and the professor answered: ‘Young man, don’t you ever study maps? Your idea came to me about forty years ago, and as you can see, I must have been pretty young then. But with an American leadership, we come to what might be called the Jamaica Impasse. Miami is so very far off to the west,’ and the young man proved his mettle by saying: ‘Professor, may I insult you?’ and the black scholar chuckled: ‘My students do, why shouldn’t you?’ and the young fellow said: ‘Maybe you better look at your maps again. Miami is east of about half of Cuba and ideally situated in relation to Central America and the relevant shoreline of South.’
The professor laughed, and said: ‘Let’s talk north and south. Your Miami is totally out of the picture, but Cuba forms that huge northern boundary of the Caribbean,’ but the young man would not give in: ‘Like New York and Washington perched on the edge of their domains, or Sidney, Australia, on its. We have jet aircraft, you know,’ and the professor said: ‘I wish you’d transfer to my university.’
When Thérèse said goodnight to her students on leaving Barbados, she warned them: ‘I’m going to call everyone a half-hour before dawn,’ and when there were moaning protests, she became impatient: ‘Young people! As soon as I saved a little money, I took the cheapest cruise available to the Caribbean. A room so small and far belowdecks, I was practically swimming with the sharks. It was sensible for me to rise early, and I learned that one of the glorious experiences of travel is to be in a small boat just before dawn as you approach a tropic island. Darkness everywhere but a sense that something lies ahead. Then a distant glimmer of light, a kind of throbbing in the air, and because it is in th
‘Is it as exciting as you say?’ a girl asked, and Thérèse replied: ‘It’s not an ordinary island, Marcia. It’s All Saints. Nothing in the Caribbean to match the harbor you’ll see tomorrow.’
And next day, when, with shocking abruptness, a bronze sun leaped into the sky, the drowsy students saw with gasps of delight the two Pointes which guarded the bay, then the distant Mornes, the white beaches, and finally the red roofs and spires of Bristol Town, each in turn revealing its loveliness in such a perfect way that some of the young people would remember this dawn forever.
The highlights of the morning came by accident, for as the students piled ashore, a girl from the University of Indiana saw a tall, loping figure that she recognized from the books she’d read during the cruise, and with a wild yelp she shouted to those behind: ‘Hey, kids! That’s got to be a Rastafarian!’ and all rushed to speak with a gangling black man dressed in flowing garb topped by a gold and green tam-o-shanter from beneath which tumbled long strands of matted hair that covered his back and shoulders. ‘They’re dreadlocks!’ the girl shouted, and soon the students had surrounded the stranger who had come to the pier to do missionary work with just such tourists.
His name, he said, was Ras-Negus Grimble and he had come to All Saints from Jamaica some years ago: ‘First time I come here, gommint throw me out. But I like All Saints, much better than Jamaica. So I come back, promise to behave. Gommint here grow up, they able to accept me now.’ He spoke with a lovely soft accent, throwing in an occasional Rasta word that no one understood, and when the students saw Thérèse coming down the gangway, they called: ‘Professor! Over here,’ and as she joined them she said, for the man to hear: ‘I’m so glad you’ve met a Rastafarian. They’re a big influence in Jamaica and I was afraid you’d miss them.’
Since it was early morning, she invited the Rastafarian to join them for coffee or a drink of some kind, and when she asked where they might find light refreshment, he said: ‘All tourists go the Waterloo,’ and he led them to a kind of bar, where Thérèse cried with the pleasure of discovery: ‘Wrentham! I have a letter for Sir Lincoln Wrentham,’ and when she asked the proprietor where she might find him, a young good-looking black man said: ‘Let me have the letter. I’ll have the boy run it up to Gommint House,’ and she said: ‘If I gave him a dollar, could he deliver these other two for me?’ and the young man said: ‘One trip does all and there’s no fee,’ so off went letters to Millard McKay, a well-known writer on Caribbean subjects, and Harry Keeler, an Englishman with a long affiliation in All Saints.
In the meantime the Rastafarian, at home with young people, had sent for his homemade lute, on which he was now playing songs written by the famous Jamaican reggae artist Bob Marley, and two students who had records back home by Marley asked if he would sing ‘Four Hundred Years,’ the song of slaves coming out of Africa to the Caribbean. Several black men lounging in the bar joined the informal concert, but Thérèse wanted her students to know more about Rastafarianism than its music, so she interrupted: ‘Mr. Grimble, will you explain to my young people something about your interesting religion?’ and he asked: ‘Sister, do you know anything about us, yourself?’ and she said primly: ‘I know a great deal, but it’ll be so much more interesting if you tell us.’ Then she smiled: ‘Besides, all I know is what I read in books, and that could be wrong.’ He smiled back.
His story fascinated the Americans: Marcus Garvey and his vision of a return to Africa; the emperor Haile Selassie as the new incarnation of the Godhead come down to earth; the rituals, customs, the arcane language, the vision of a black hegemony in the Caribbean and the music. When he reached that point in his informal lecture he took up his lute again and sang some of the compelling protest songs, then asked the prettiest of Thérèse’s girl students to sit by him as he switched to love songs, which he sang to her alone.
At this point a stately white man in his seventies entered the café and asked for a Professor Vaval, and Thérèse hurried to meet him: ‘Are you the writer Millard McKay?’ and when he said he was, she led him to a chair among the students and told them: ‘This is the American whose books you’ve been reading. He came down here as a newspaperman, when?’
‘From Detroit, 1938. Wrote a series of articles for my newspaper, first of their kind in America, and a New York publisher on vacation down here read them and invited me to put them together in a book, which did so well I moved here, married a local girl, and have made my living writing about the Caribbean ever since.’
Thérèse said with obvious enthusiasm and respect: ‘Kids, this man is an object lesson. He wrote fifty, a hundred great articles, but one day he stumbled upon the one subject that matched his talents. And what do you think his world-famous essay dealt with?’
Their guesses pretty well covered the Caribbean, but failed to come even close: ‘ “How to Eat a Mango” swept across the world of magazines and books, and it could not have been funnier or more quotable or more accurate.’ McKay smiled benevolently, his white hair complementing his tanned skin, and she placed her hand in his and gave a brief résumé of his lucky one-shot: ‘He started out by telling the truth, that the Caribbean mango is probably the world’s most tantalizing fruit, a little smaller than a cantaloupe, with a heavy skin in variegated colors, and an immense central pit. How many of you have ever tasted a mango? A kind of mix between pineapple and peach with just a hint of turpentine?’
Quite a few had, and the students could not fathom why she was making such a fuss about this particular fruit, but now she reached the heart of his essay: ‘Mr. McKay, as an American newspaperman, knew that he ought to eat this “queen of fruits” he’d been given by his black housekeeper, but he didn’t know how, and he tells of his disastrous adventures while trying to solve the problem, until his housekeeper rescued him. “Take off your shirt,” she said, “and your undershirt, and now lean way over the sink and go at it.” And he did, golden-yellow juice flowing down his chest and arms. But when he wrote about it, he described it as well worth the effort.
One of the men in the group asked the barkeeper: ‘You got any mangoes?’ and the black man said: ‘Not the season,’ whereupon Thérèse laughed and turned to McKay: ‘What was it that your housekeeper said: “Mangoes like sex, very messy … but what’s better?” ’
Thérèse left the students to have lunch with the other lecturers at Gommint House, and when she returned in early afternoon, her students were still in session with the Rastafarian Grimble and three of his dreadlocked acolytes, who were alternately preaching their religious doctrine, smoking ganja, and singing the songs of Jamaica. Nodding to them, Thérèse sat alone at the bar and nursed a Coca-Cola until Millard McKay returned to fetch her for tea at his place, and when she reached his pleasant cottage set amid flowers and overlooking the glorious bay, she was faintly surprised to find that he had a colored wife, lighter than herself and much older, but very charming. And inside waited the other man she wanted to see, the Englishman Harry Keeler, who worked for the island government, and his wife, Sally, who was also colored. ‘I hear you had lunch with my brother Lincoln,’ Mrs. Keeler said. ‘He’s been made the Gee-Gee recently and loves the pomp.’
After desultory conversation about the economic condition of the various islands—topic number one wherever one went, Thérèse concluded—she looked at the two couples and boldly asked: ‘From firsthand experience—are mixed marriages difficult?’ To justify her prying, she added quickly: ‘I’m engaged to a white man, totally liberated, and I’d appreciate some pointers,’ and to each of her listeners in turn she flashed a beguiling smile.
They were eager to
Then Mrs. McKay said: ‘When Millard and I were married, it was too soon. We were outcasts, but when his book did well and he had gained a bit of both fame and fortune, they rushed to accept us. After that, clear sailing.’ And Mrs. Keeler added: ‘I think we might have had it a wee bit easier here in All Saints than you would in the States. We’re rather ahead of you, what with my brother as the Gee-Gee and all his cabinet black.’
McKay, a wise man who had served as one of the prototypes for Alec Waugh’s witty novel, asked: ‘Why do you ask these questions? You having doubts?’ and Thérèse replied ‘No!’ so quickly that they knew she had. They agreed that if both she and Dennis already had good teaching jobs, and they planned to live in the North, the prognosis for success was high. ‘As a matter of fact,’ Mrs. Keeler said, ‘I don’t believe I know of a single case here on the island in which a mixed marriage has foundered because of race. It just doesn’t happen,’ and Thérèse said: ‘Yes, but you’ve worked out the relationships. In the States, we haven’t.’ And they agreed that this was true.