Why I tell you about the legend is because it may have a bearing on the story I’m going to tell you. I say ‘may’ because I don’t know, some people have their own beliefs and others other. For my part, I have seen and heard enough in my lifetime to keep quiet whenever there is talk of anything extraordinary or unnatural, because you can’t really tell about these things. As I told Garry Johnson when we used to talk on the estate.
Johnson was an Englishman who had come out to Trinidad to spend a holiday on his friend Franklin’s estate in Sangre Grande, a district some twenty-odd miles from Port of Spain, a seemingly short distance but far enough in the island to make the difference of say a village eighty miles or so from London. He had left England in winter and was eager for the sunlight, much of which we had to give him. During the day it was hot enough, but in the evening wind came from the hills and it was almost balmy, a delightful spell before night fell and made it even cooler, a time when the three of us used to sit out on the verandah of the house and sip rum punches with crushed ice.
For Franklin was a human being. before anything else, and though I had my own house in the village his was open to me at all times. That I was overseer of the estate had nothing to do with it, though the villagers secretly thought l was favoured because of my position. Franklin was middle-aged, with greying hair. Before he bought the cocoa estate it was going to ruin. The price of cocoa had fallen in the world market, and the previous owner put the estate up for sale. It was advertised in the English newspapers — ‘rich cocoa plantation in the West Indies for sale, owner retiring’ - and Franklin got to hear of it. At the time he was considering emigrating from England and it looked like a good proposition to him. He was single, he had no ties, and a country away from the rigours of the English climate was just what he wanted.
In fact, he and Johnson had planned to come out to the island together, but at the last moment Johnson changed his mind.
Franklin treated his labourers well and the estate thrived. Even in the village he was respected for his kindness. When the dry season lingered on, the villagers would come for water from the two huge concrete cisterns on the estate, carrying it away in barrels on donkey carts. He could have made them pay and they would have thought it only fair: they offered him money from the little they earned toiling in the cane fields and in their gardens, but Franklin always shook his head and told them they could have anything they wanted on the plantation. So it was that he became godfather for many a ragged little child in the village, and no ceremony was held without an invitation to him.
My duties as overseer were to keep the estate working smoothly, and get the cocoa ready for market. Those evenings drinking rum punches on the verandah was a usual thing with us before Johnson came, for it was a chance to talk of the estate, what should be done about the last trees we planted, or if we needed more immortelles to shade the young trees on the plantation, and shop like that.
Johnson was a lot younger than Franklin. He was vigorous and active. He got up early in the morning and breathed great gulps of air long before either Franklin or myself was out of bed. He used to watch the girls who came from the village to ‘dance’ the cocoa seeds where they dried in the sun. The seeds were scattered on a large platform over which was a roof of galvanised sheets. The roof rested on wheels on the platform, so that it could be quickly rolled away - away when the sun was shining, back over the platform at the least sign of rain, for a downpour on the drying seeds would ruin all our labour. The girls ‘danced’ among the cocoa, turning them to and fro with their bare feet to ensure even curing. And Johnson sometimes joined them, and the girls would blush and titter to see the white man with his trousers rolled up, imitating the movements they made. He spent most of the day roaming the plantation with me, anxious to learn all about the estate, for he had money invested in it, though he confessed to me that he had no real interest in this sort of life, and had only come to the island because he hoped to get background material for a book he was writing, on superstition and witchcraft.
‘You'll get a lot of information here,’ I told him, ‘the villagers are very superstitious.’
But it was in the evenings that we really waxed warm on the subject. Although I myself held a neutral opinion about such things, I told Johnson such tales of local superstition as I knew. About Papa Bois, a spirit who lurked in the forests and lured evil hunters away from beaten tracks so that they were lost for days in the jungle. He heard of soucouyants which sucked your blood while you slept, and of balls of fire which appeared from nowhere and scared the people in lonely spots in the night. You could only escape from la diablesse by shooting it with a silver bullet, I explained, or if you see it approaching, quickly draw the sign of the cross in the air in front of you, and that-will keep the evil spirit away.
All this Johnson used to put down in a little notebook he kept. Franklin for his part listened more than talked, but he did say how one night he was coming in late from inspecting some young orange trees at the other end of the plantation, and a flaming ball of fire shot across the path and his horse got wild and galloped away, or else he didn’t know what he would have done.
‘What do you mean, a flaming ball of fire?’ Johnson asked, hoping to get some reasoning from Franklin.
But Franklin only shrugged and pulled at his pipe. ‘That is what it was,’ he said. ‘I can’t explain it any other way. I went back the next day, because I remembered the exact spot, but there was nothing to see.’
‘Come now,’ Johnson said, ‘you don’t believe all this rigmarole that Sam has been telling us?’
Franklin sloshed the ice in his glass of punch. ‘I've been out here longer than you have.’ And he wouldn’t say more than that. Sometimes we sent for a labourer to get a first-hand account of some weird experience. Once Chanko, the old Indian watchman, came and told us how one night he heard a rattle of chains as if dragged by some powerful animal, but he couldn’t see a thing. ‘All-you wouldn’t believe me, chief, but it had a man in the villare name Santogee, who used to work obeah and turn animal in the night, and go all about the village frightening people. So when we find out is he who doing all this business, we make up a head and decide to chase him out, and since he gone all the noise and thing in the night did stop.’
“Did you ever see a soucouyant?” Johnson asked him, busily writing in his notebook.
‘Oh God Mr Johnson, don’ t call that thing name! If I ever see one! It had a time down Icacos, when I was walking in the coconut one night, and the wind did blowing strong, and what I could see but this piece of light, like fire in the air, coming at me. So I run out on the beach for my life, as I thought it wouldn’t follow me there. But I see the thing still coming. 1 was so frighten! But I stop and take my cutlass and I make the sign of the cross in the sand. I bawl out, “Come now, let we see who is man!” And you know what happen? The light come right up to that cross and it couldn’t pass it. It make two three circle in the air, trying to pass by the side of the cross, but every time it do that I make another cross, and in the end I had a circle of cross all round me, and I in the centre, and this thing going round and round in the air, until suddenly it disappear. Is really true, Mr Johnson, bad things does run from the sign of the cross.’
“This thing was quite near to you!’ Johnson asked.
‘About from where you sitting to where I standing,’ Chanko said
‘What did it look like?
‘Look like? I didn’t look too close Mr Johnson, but it look like a ball of fire’
Chanko would need a drink to wet his throat for him to continue, and as the labourers favoured rum more than whisky Franklin usually had a bottle of local rum to hand. Once he was under way there was no stopping Chanko, and I know that he made up a lot to tell the Englishmen as he went on, but no harm was done and I never said anything.
Whenever Johnson was not on the estate we took it that he was out collecting material for his book. He had made a few friends in the village and the natives were pleased to help him when they learnt that he was going to write a book about them, as they thought.
And then a rumour began to drift around. It started as a feeling in the atmosphere. You can’t pin a rumour down, or exactly explain how it gets into motion, but once started it takes a lot to stop it. First I noticed the girls who were dancing the cocoa whispering and smiling among themselves, as if at a secret joke. Then I heard them talking and Johnson’s name was mentioned.
‘What's that about Mr Johnson?’ I asked Seeta, a young Indian girl who should really have been attending school, but whose parents were so poor that she had to begin work at an early age.
‘Nothing boss,’ she said quickly. They all called me ‘boss’.
‘What is it?’ I said sternly.
The girl hung her head. ‘We was just talking about Mr Johnson and Urmilla.’
She would say nothing more than that, though I threatened her job, and I let her go ahead with her work and wandered off into the cocoa under the pretext that I wanted to have a look at a set of young plants we were experimenting with in a valley near the hills. I knew that I wanted a chance to think things out.
Urmilla was the most beautiful Indian girl I had ever seen. It was a withdrawn sort of beauty, you only saw it when she
was disturbed, like the time when her father wanted to marry her off to a rich merchant in the city. How Urmilla defied her father’s wishes I never found out, but she didn’t marry the merchant after all, despite the custom of her people of arranging marriages for their children and strictly controlling their lives up to that point, and sometimes even after that. And in those weeks when the marriage was in the air she bore herself with a kind of comely defiance, and the beauty that was withdrawn came to the surface, and her face was rosy and her eyes as pearls, and she had a way sometimes of tossing her long hair, as if in her mind she was having words with her father, Sookdeo, aware of his daughter’s fascination, had been anxious to have her married and shift the responsibility from his shoulders. He took the problem to Franklin, but the Englishman was too wise to offer advice one way or the other in a family matter like that. He listened patiently to Sookdeo and when he was finished he said there was nothing that he could do. However, if Sookdeo wanted, the girl could work on the estate - there were many odd jobs around. Sookdeo took that as being Franklin's decision on the whole matter, and the next day he sent Urmilla to work.
The girl worked well, and always managed to turn the advances of the men on the estate into a joke, and make the most serious approach seem as playful fun, and after a time the men let her alone, though there was not one -and I include myself - who would not have married her at the snap of a finger.
Johnson had remarked on the girl’s beauty one morning as she danced the cocoa, and later on I saw him talking to her. He walked to the village with her that evening when her work was finished. After that, I saw them sometimes together. That is to say, she would be working and Johnson would be helping her — he often did this with the women on the estate. Or else they would be walking away to whatever part of the estate Urmilla’s work called her.
And that was all, until the rumour began to spread. Now I am not one of those persons who stick their heads in the sand and pretend not to notice things, or scoff when suspicion is in the air. After all, Johnson was a young man, and Urmilla was just at the age of merging into graceful womanhood. That he was a white man and she an Indian did not make any difference at this stage. For companionship of his own society he would have to travel into the capital - a thing which Franklin himself used to do in the beginning, until he really settled down on the estate. And then he wouldn't budge except he had to go on business. On rare occasions - on Sundays, if at all — he had visitors from the city. When Johnson came he did speak about this, and offered to drive him into Port of Spain whenever he felt like it, or use the car himself if he wanted. But Johnson, too, seemed satisfied rambling around the district, and I never saw him using the ear.
What was wrong if he was seen in Urmilla’s company? Nothing, I told myself. Nothing, and yet . . . I shrugged as I thought. In a way, it was none of my business. If Franklin didn’t know or say anything, then I would hold my tongue. In any case, what could I say? Certainly nothing to Johnson. True, we were-friends, but I wouldn’t know how to approach him with a personal thing like that. And Urmilla? She would probably laugh and tell me that I was jealous. But it wasn’t jealousy that made me think that way. I was an Indian myself, and I knew that if their relationship came to light - if there was in fact, such a relationship, for so far there was nothing but the rumour - there would be hell to pay. White people feel they are stepping down when they fraternise with coloured people: they don't always seém to realise that it is just as shameful if not more so for the other party. Not that Johnson was a snob or anything like that, but I knew that old Sookdeo would kick up hell if he suspected anything. He had allowed Urmilla to come to the estate because he believed that Franklin would keep an eye on her - a responsibility which Franklin had never admitted, but which the Indian took for granted.
That evening I deliberately sought Franklin when he was alone, and tried to see if I could get anything out of him. But If he knew about the rumour at all he kept his mouth shut. Not a word or any remark to give me a clue. As for Johnson himself, there was nothing he said or did to indicate when he joined us later for our usual evening siesta on the veranda, that he was disturbed in any way, and I decided to leave things as they were until something happened.
But next morning Urmilla herself started the suspicion again in my mind. She was mending some cocoa bags — sewing the holes with twine - in a corner of the shed in which we stored the empty pods. I had entered the shed searching for a cutlass which I had misplaced. As soon as she saw me Urmilla said,
‘Sam, when Mr Johnson going back England?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ I asked.
Urmilla kept her head bent over her work. ‘Oh, I was only wondering’
‘Mr Johnson is Mr Franklin’s guest,’ I said coldly, unable to resist getting back at her for rejecting my advances in the past.
‘It is none of your business.’
But that flared Urmilla and brought the beauty to her face. She looked up and where her eyes should have been I saw pearls, ‘He tell me himself when he is going,’ she cried, ‘I don't have to find out from you!’
This was perhaps the time to find out if there was anything going on between them, but I held myself back. After all, what concern was it of mine? It was up to Franklin to put a stop to the matter. I muttered something under my breath to save face and left her.
That afternoon was the hottest I ever knew. One takes the constant sun for granted, living in the island, and the heat is never a topic of conversation. Clouds are always drifting across the sun and offering a few minutes of relief. But the sky now was so clear that a white heat seemed spread over the blue, and the sun had lost its dazzle, as if it had settled down to the job of setting the earth on fire, and it burned steadfast and strong. Leaves drooped in the heavy, motionless atmosphere and a kind of sleepy hush fell on the estate. Not a bird twittered in the trees - dogs, cats, poultry, all had left the open spaces and sought shade, I couldn’t see a labourer in sight, and it would have been heartless to seek them out from wherever they were and order them to go on working.
I thought it a good idea to take a stroll by the river, part of which ran through the plantation, and plunge into the water for a few minutes.
I had just emerged from a clump of bushes when I saw them on the opposite bank. I drew back quickly.
It was Urmilla and Johnson. They were sitting on the grass, she had a long shoot of grass in her hand and she was moving it against his cheek. The old longing I had thought dead rose in me like a flame. There was no mistaking their attitude. It was one of love. I was so jealous I bit my lip until it bled.
And then they kissed. I stood looking, a sort of numb pain running all over my body, my throat so dry I couldn’t swallow. I stood a long time and still his lips were on hers, It was very
still, nothing moved.
And then I could look no more. I stumbled my way back, not caring if they heard me, and my mind was numb with an aching pain. As soon as I got back to the yard a labourer said, ‘Boss, Mr
‘Franklin look for you.’
‘Where is he?’ I said.
‘Up at the house, in the office, boss.’
When I got there I knew what it was about. He was always outspoken with me, and came to the point without hedging, but this time he was obviously uneasy and didn’t know how to begin. ‘Sit down - have a drink,’ he said, waving his hand at a bottle of Scotch.
I did both; spooning ice from a jug into my glass and adding a touch of lime juice, before I took a seat.
It was very quiet. There were no sounds of work near the house. Poultry were scratching in the yard. From where I sat I could look out the window and see the huts of the village in the distance.
‘Do you know where Johnson is?
Urmilla was the only one who said ‘Garry’. I had taken my cue from Franklin ever since he came, and I never bothered to ask why.
‘I suppose he’s in the village or knocking about the plantation,’ I said.
Then he said, ‘You know Sookdeo’s daughter, don’t you?’ I didn’t bother to answer that, because Franklin knew. I just waited, shutting my mind from the picture on the bank of the river. There’ve been rumours going around.’ Franklin got up and stood near the window, blocking my view of the village.
‘Have you heard anything?’
‘Like what?’ I asked innocently.
Franklin got angry at that. ‘You know more than I do,’ he said, turning from the window. ‘You're among the labourers all the time, you must have heard what they're saying. Don’t pretend with me, Sam.’
‘If you mean about Johnson and Urmilla,’ I said, ‘I don’t know more than you do. The labourers are talking, all right, but that doesn’t prove a thing. You know how they are. To see a white man going about like that with a native girl must have made them curious and talkative.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Franklin said, ‘I don’t like it at all. How long have these rumours been going on? Why haven’t you told me about it before?’.
He didn’t wait for an answer to that. He poured himself a drink and went on, ‘Listen, Sam you're an Indian yourself, but somehow you’re different. You know what this can do. You've got to stop it. It’s up to you. Let the girl leave the estate, if you have to.’
‘That wouldn't do any good,’ I said. ‘If they want to see each other they'll find a way. Why don’t you drop a hint to Johnson?’ I had worked with Franklin a long time and I wasn’t afraid to suggest that to him. But he shook his head, ‘I don’t think there's anything in it myself,’ he said, ‘but the gossip could cause trouble. There’s no need to let on to Johnson that we know anything. But you do what you can to stop the labourers from talking, Sam. Johnson’s only here for three weeks more, anyway, and I don’t want to spoil it for him, he seems to be enjoying his holiday.’ Then he changed the subject. ‘I'm going to town and may be back late.’
All well and good for Franklin to say kill the rumour, I thought, as I left the office, but what was I supposed to do? Call the labourers together and make a speech to them? Tell them they weren't to talk about Mr Johnson and Urmilla?
Late in the afternoon I noticed that Urmilla was not around. There was nothing unusual in this, she could be anywhere on the estate, but somehow I felt uneasy. I didn’t see Johnson around, either.
The labourers had finished work and gone home, and I was
banding a cutlass handle with wire, sitting on what we used to call a ‘copper’ -a huge metal basin, found on estates in the country districts and presumably used at one time for storing water; this one was rusty and upside down - when I saw Urmilla hurrying from a wooded part of the plantation. When she got up to me she was exhausted and could hardly speak. Her hair was wild and her face rosy, and her breasts heaved with heavy breathing. ‘What's the matter?” I cried, jumping off the ‘copper’.
‘It’s Garry’ she gasped, leaning on my arm, ‘he climb a tree and now he can't come down’
‘Where is the tree?’ I asked, more amused than alarmed.
‘Come, I show you,’ and exhausted as she was, Urmilla turned and began to walk swiftly back into the plantation. It was only as we were hurrying to the spot that I realised she had called Johnson by his first name. Johnson had climbed an immortelle tree. How he managed I don’t know, for the trunk of this tree is so stout it sometimes takes three men with outstretched arms to encircle it, and no branches grow for about twelve to eighteen feet off the ground. The trunk was rough, but even so it didn’t offer much of a foothold. I had never heard of anyone climbing an immortelle in the first place, why? The tree was planted on the estate to shade the growing cocoa from the sun, and it bore a beautiful blossom, but no fruit.
‘Why should anyone want to climb an immortelle?
Johnson sang out when he saw us, ‘Hello there’. He was sitting in the first fork - quite eighteen feet from the ground - with his feet wrapped around the branch. He was smoking. ‘
What are you doing up there?’ I couldn’t help the question.
‘Tell you later,’ Johnson said calmly. ‘But get me off first. My hands and knees are bruised with the climbing, and I don’t want to risk further damage coming down. Can you get a rope or something?’.
There was a ladder at the house, but it wasn’t long enough. As for rope - I cast my eyes about, looking for a vine - ‘supple jack’ we called the variety on the estate. I found one a short distance away and cut it. I flung one end up to Johnson, and he wrapped it around the branch and twisted it again and again, tucking in the end.
‘Let me try it first,’ I said, and I tugged with all my strength. It held.
Johnson came down cautiously, holding on to the vine with both hands, and sliding down the trunk with his feet. He had to drop the last six feet, holding the vine, but his height made this easy. He stumbled when he fell and got up quickly.
All this time Urmilla had been silently watching on. Once Johnson was safe on the ground she turned to go. It seemed as if he wanted to say something to her, but he checked himself.
Franklin and I got the story out of him that evening as we sat drinking. The day had been hot, but now the wind was cool and scented with guava blossoms, and there was a twilight atmosphere on the estate. This was the time of year for such light - a brief three weeks when the day hesitated before plunging into night: for the rest of the year, from the moment the sun sank it began to get dark, and in a few minutes night descended.
Johnson had been told by a native that the egg of a corbeau - local name for a vulture - was a lucky charm, that the possessor only had to ask for what he wanted, and Aladdin-lamp like, it was his. But if he took an egg, he had to replace it with an ordinary domestic one, hard-boiled. So he had set off to look for a corbeau’s nest, and thought he saw one in the immortelle tree. After his struggle to climb he found it was only a broken branch with dry leaves.
‘Corbeaux don’t nest in trees,’ I told him, after we had laughed so much that Franklin spilt his drink, ‘you find them in holes in the ground, near bushy places, or in the trunks of dead trees.
‘Ever heard that one before - about the lucky charm, I mean?’ Johnson asked Franklin.
Franklin shook his head sleepily. He had only returned from Port of Spain a short while and he looked tired. After another drink he left us and went to bed.
‘I thought it was something serious, the way Urmilla came racing out of the plantation,’ I said. This was the first time I had ever mentioned the girl's name to him.
‘Yes,’ Johnson said slowly, as if he were thinking of something. ‘This girl, Urmilla, what do you know about her, Sam?’
‘There isn’t much to know about poor people in a small village,’ I said, but I told him how once her father wanted her to marry and she wouldn’t have it.
Johnson got up and sat on the wooden top of the railing at the edge of the veranda, and he looked up at the hills.
‘I love her, Sam’, he said.
I didn’t know what to say: what could I say? Sometimes people tell you things and then expect you to comment as if it were your duty to do so, and you don’t really know what to tell them, I didn’t know if Johnson expected me to say something, but I kept quiet, not that I had any choice. I was thinking about the time when I was in love with Urmilla myself, a love which would still have existed if she didn’t kill it slowly with a kind of day to day indifference until I knew it was no use, she didn’t and wouldn’t love me no matter what I did. No matter how strong love is it could die that way, with no reciprocation whatsoever. What had hurt me most was that she was always friendly to me, there was no question of dislike or hatred. I hated her when she first told me, but I had learnt to bear my pain quietly. Now, she didn’t matter so much to me again. I intended to work some more years on the plantation and save my money - there was no place around to spend it, anyway - and then go to America. That was my goal, and ever since the decision I had kept it in front of me like an image to bar the memory of her, and it wasn’t difficult anymore to think of my future. And seeing her every day on the estate had made me accustomed to the sight of her, though there was still a catch in my throat sometimes which no one ever knew about. I had a funny feeling when Johnson said, 'love her, Sam.’ I didn’t expect him to say that, nor the way he said it. It made me realise my own true feelings for Urmila. It had been all right to bear the rejection while I knew there was no one she was likely to fall in love with. Now that this had happened, I felt that silly catch in my throat once more. I tried hard to think of America, of my ambition to save and go away to another country.
‘But you're going back to England in a couple of weeks,’ I said. I had wanted to say that to myself, as a sort of consolation, but the words came out.
‘I know,’ he said.
After that he was silent, and he didn’t even know when I left, he was staring out to the hills, where darkness was making weird shapes of trees and risings.
The next day Sookdeo came to see Franklin, We were in the office, checking some accounts which Franklin had brought back from his trip to the city, when a labourer stood outside the window - it was quite low, and pushed open on a stick- and called out that Sookdeo wanted to see Mr Franklin. Franklin looked at me, and I looked at him. I hadn’t slept well that night. My eyes were red and I had a pain in the back of my head. I rose to go. ‘You might as well stay and hear what he has to say,’ Franklin said, motioning me to sit down again.
Sookdeo came in and stood holding an old felt hat in his hand, turning it round and round. It must have needed a lot of courage to come to Franklin. ‘Mr Franklin,’ Sookdeo said, ‘we having a christening in the village tomorrow for Doolsie child, and we want you to stand godfather, please.’
Franklin breathed a sigh of relief. I admitted to myself that I was disappointed.
‘Certainly, Sookdeo. What time is it?
‘In the evening time, when sun set.’ Sookdeo still turned the hat, like how the women turn a roti round before slapping it on the baking iron.
‘Have a drink,’ Franklin offered, as the Indian still stood there uneasily.
Sookdeo looked at the bottle of Scotch and gulped. I poured a drink and handed it to him. He swallowed it neatly, quickly, and returned the glass.
‘Thanks Mr Franklin,’ he said, wiping his sleeve across his mouth. He turned as if to go. Halfway to the door he stopped and turned again. The drink had given him the courage he needed to talk. ‘Mr Franklin,’ he blurted out, ‘when I send Urmilla here, I thought you going take care of she and keep she out of trouble.’ He hesitated, then went on, ‘Now I hearing things about she and Mr Johnson that I don’t like at all. Mr Johnson is a white man, and I respect him, but he must respect we Indians too. Urmilla not for him, and I want you to tell him to leave the girl alone, Mr Franklin, or else trouble start on the estate and in the village.’
‘What things have you been hearing, Sookdeo?’ Franklin asked.
The Indian waved his hand in the air vaguely. ‘All sorts of things, about how Mr Johnson always seen with the girl, in the village, and on the estate, and all about. Ramdeen tell me one day he see she with he hand round she waist, and another time he see them down by the river together.’
‘I never knew you listened to the gossip of other people, Sookdeo,’ Franklin said reprovingly. But I knew that he felt there was truth in all this, and he was only fencing around for a way to make the matter pass off as decently as possible. He turned to me and said, ‘You're on the estate all the time, Sam. Have you ever seen Mr Johnson with Sookdeo Daughter?’ I thought of the time I had seen them on the bank of the river, and of the kiss that for me was never ended. I still saw them in my dreams. He was holding her, and she clung to him as how a vine clings to a tree, as if she were wrapped around him, and I saw his lips coming down on hers. And the dream used to stay like that, with them kissing that one kiss, on and on, as if they were frozen and would never let loose of each other.
‘No,’ I lied. What was I, big-heart or something? Why didn’t I put Sookdeo on the warpath before it was too late?’
‘I see for myself,’ Sookdeo said, and now his voice was no longer respectful. ‘One evening I passing in the track near to the hill behind the plantation, and I hear voices in the bush. When I look, what you think I see? I see Urmilla laying down in the grass with Mr Johnson, and they was doing all kinds of things that I don’t have to tell you...’
I rose to go, to get away from all this, my heart thumping in my chest. But when I got outside Sookdeo’s voice followed me and
stayed with me. I got my cutlass and I went into the plantation where the labourers were clearing a piece of land, and I hacked with them at the bush and shrub and knotty grass, and Sookdeo said, ‘.. they was doing all kinds of things that I don’t have to tell you…’
I skipped the get-together for a drink that evening. Nobody knew how it was with me concerning Urmilla, and I was afraid I might say or do something emotional and give myself away. The village offering no entertainment, I had been happy to spend the evenings with the two Englishmen. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I tried to read some magazines, and I tried not to hate the Englishmen. I had always boasted to myself a broad mind and a wide philosophy which embraced the whole world. Now I was thinking in terms of colour, of black and white. What right had Johnson to come across thousands of miles of ocean from England and turn the course of my life like that? Was he going to marry Urmilla and take her away to England? The girl was a fool to believe anything he said. You never could trust these white people who came out from England, they laughed and talked with you but when it came to a serious matter they always felt themselves superior... I suddenly realised how foolish I was and I laughed aloud. Love could do that to a man, I thought, it could make him lose his reason.
Iwas irritable with myself. I lit a cigarette and after I had taken a few puffs I decided to go back to the estate. I could always tell Franklin that I had had something to attend to in the village, and had to leave early.
When I got there the pattern was as usual: Franklin in his rocking chair and slippers, Johnson in an easy chair slumped so low I only saw his hand moving as he sloshed the ice in his glass punch.
I intended to act as if nothing had happened, and had in fact a sentence already framed in my mind to ask Johnson how his book was getting on. But they had been talking about Urmilla. I knew from the way they stopped as soon as I appeared, and it threw me off the balance, as it were, and I only said hello, and took a long time pouring myself a drink.
‘I have just been telling Johnson that Sookdeo came to see me today,’ Franklin said.
‘Oh,’ I said, trying to pretend I wasn’t particularly interested.
‘Johnson says he is sorry for having started this, and that he won't see the girl anymore, before he leaves next. week.’
“Next week?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ Johnson’s voice came from the depths of the easy chair. ‘There’s a ship leaving and I know one of the officers on board. That will brighten the long voyage.’
‘Oh,’ I said again.
Then Franklin himself changed the subject, and we got around to superstitions and black magic and that sort of thing, but Franklin and myself did most of the talking. When I was leaving Johnson said he wanted a bit of fresh air and would walk halfway to the village with me. Stars covered the sky in such profusion it was almost as if there was moonlight. The night was cool, with a gentle breeze bringing the scent of wild bush.
I hoped with all my heart that Johnson wasn't going to pour out his feelings to me. But it was a hope in vain. He began as soon as we were clear of the house.
‘I can’t take her back to England with me,’ he said.
‘Of course not,’ I said, ‘as if it was the most natural thing in the world, But I was thinking, You'll break her heart.
‘She knows that’, he said, ‘And she understands and accepts it. She’s a wonderful girl, Sam’.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘If things were different, if I could have stayed here... he ‘sighed. I was thinking, if I loved somebody, nothing in the world would stop us from being together. But you can’t think for everybody, I couldn't think for Johnson, I didn’t know anything of his background in England, or what reasons he had for what he did. Sometimes the way you think, you feel everybody else should think that way too. But it doesn’t work out that way at all.
I was pleased to find myself in a rational frame of mind once more. Pleased, but I was far from happy. Only a few days remained now before Johnson left us. We had a deadline for getting the cocoa to market, and I was fairly busy. I deliberately kept out of Urmilla’s way, and if I saw her at all it was in the distance. Franklin was giving a dinner and dance for Johnson the night before he sailed. He expected quite a few people from Port of Spain, and was even paying an orchestra to come and play for the night. One of the buildings in which the cocoa was stored was cleared out and cleaned to be used as a ballroom. The estate had never seen such activity and excitement, and it was the topic in the village from the time the news got around.
Johnson had inevitably heard the legend about the cascadura in his search for material for the book and he was determined to go fishing before he left. So that day I went out with him to a branch of the river that flowed down from the hills behind the village, with the strangest fishing gear he had ever seen.
‘Don’t tell me you're going fishing with a bucket and a basket,’ he said.
‘Wait and see, I laughed.
There are two ways to catch the cascadura. One is to dam the muddy area where you suspect they are, and bail out the water and pick them up floundering in the mud. The other is to look for a spot where twigs and leaves and other odd debris float down and form an island near a calm part of the stream. Under such shelter the cascadura lays its eggs. All you have to do is to dip your bucket partly into the water, so that you cover the nest, and splash the water near the basket. When the fish hears the noise it leaps towards it, and you catch him in your basket and drain off the water, and you've landed your first cascadura. I think Johnson enjoyed this excursion more than any other during his stay in the island. We had on leggings and we waded into the muddy sloshes looking for islands of leaves and dead branches at the side of the stream, and Johnson got a cascadura at his first attempt. It was the breeding season and the only reason that we didn’t come back with the basket full of cascaduras was because neither of us was expert at this sort of fishing. As it was, we got a full two dozen and we strung them on a strip of black sage bark and walked back with them dangling in our hands. We gave most of them away as we walked back to the estate, for Johnson took one look at them and shook his head.
‘I'm not going to eat that,’ he said, screwing up his face.
‘They’re delicious,’ I said.
‘I only wanted to have a look,’ Johnson said.
So we gave away the last six to Sookdeo, whom we met in the village. The old man was glad for them. He went so far as to shake Johnson's hand and wish him a speedy voyage, all animosity gone now that the Englishman’s departure was imminent.
I put on my best suit that evening to go to the house. I am not one for parties and dancing and that sort of thing, and Franklin knew it. Besides, the white people in Port of Spain were a snobbish lot and I don’t think many of his friends would have relished the idea of the Indian overseer dancing with their wives. But Franklin had asked me to come anyway, to keep an eye on the serving and to see that everything went alright. There was dinner and dancing as the guests felt inclined, and things went off well enough, with some dancing and others eating. Curious villagers had come and were standing on tiptoe outside the windows to have a look at the unusual grandeur in the cocoa house.
I was having a drink with myself for company when I saw someone gesturing near the door. It was Urmilla. She wore her sari like a sort of veil, hiding her face.
‘What do you want?’ I asked her.
‘I bring something for Garry, Sam. Something for him to eat before he go. I cook it myself,’
‘You can’t see him now, Urmilla,’ I said. ‘He’s dancing With a white girl, I added spitefully.
‘All I want you to do is to give him this, and say that I cook it especially for him.’ She had a ware bowl wrapped in a white towel in her hand.
‘What is it?’
‘Curry cascasdoo,’ she said, using the local name for the fish.
I mocked her. ‘Those who eat the cascadura will, the native legend says, wheresoever they may wander end in Trinidad their days. ’ Her eyes flashed but she bit her lip and held back whatever she was going to say.
‘Do it for me, Sam,’ she pleaded, ‘just give him and say that I make it for him to eat.’
‘You don’t believe that legend, do you Urmilla? You don’t think eating that fish is going to make Garry come back? Besides, he doesn't want to eat-cascadura. We gave away all we caught today.
‘You - just - give - him - this,’ she said slowly, and say that I make it especially for him. You will do a little favour for me, Sam?
‘All right, all right,’ I said angrily, and I took the bundle from her and put it on a table.
I not only had to bear the pain of hearing Johnson talk of his love for her, but now I had to suffer the indignity of aiding her in her love for him. I downed another drink, then another. When I saw Johnson alone I told him. . .
‘Where is it?’ he asked.
I led him to the small room where the food was being kept.
‘Is she gone?’ he asked.
I nodded.
He took the towel off and looked at the dish.
‘Um, it doesn’t look so bad when it’s cooked, does it?’
‘I told you, it’s delicious,’ I said, without enthusiasm.
Johnson tasted it with a fork. Then he sat down and ate the lot.
Afterwards I was busy trying to get drunk by mixing every kind of drink I could lay my hands on. It must have been two hours or so later. Johnson came to me and said, ‘Listen, Sam. This party is getting high. There is a suggestion of dancing and wining until the morning, and then all of us going in to Port of Spain together to see me off. I don’t mind, but I’ve got to get away for a while?’ ‘What you mean,’ I said drunkenly, ‘is that you've got to bid a last fond farewell to your love.’
‘You're getting drunk, Sam. But that is exactly what I want to do. Can’t you get some girls from the village to do some Indian dancing and singing for a half hour or so to cover up my absence? ‘Sure, sure,’ I said, ‘bring on the dancing girls. You leave everything to me, Garry. You leave everything to me.’
And so to the last hours of his departure I was being involved. After the cascadura, now this. He was going off somewhere to meet her, ‘a rendezvous somewhere on the estate, under trees in the moonlight, on the soft, dewy grass... I started to sing a soppy sentimental song, and went off to ask the watching villagers outside if they cared to dance and sing for the white people. Two of them ran back to the village to find costumes and their own musical instruments. I passed out drunk as a lord after that.
Time went by slowly in the valley after Johnson’s departure, but gradually its passage increased as memory of the Englishman dimmed, and two years went by without much incident on the estate. During this time I had renewed my wooing of Urmilla, but with little success. The beauty she radiated while he was here was withdrawn, nothing seemed to excite or interest her.
Whenever I went down to the village to collect the estate mail she wanted to know if there was a letter from Garry for Mr Franklin, and when he was coming back to Trinidad.
‘He isn’t coming back, Urmilla,’ I told her again. ‘He told us that before he went away.’
‘Mr Franklin must tell you what Garry write in the letters, Sam. What he say, eh? He getting married to white girl in England?
Once I was in such a vicious mood with her pestering for news about him that I said, ‘He's getting married next month to a girl who works in the office where he is.’
‘You’s a liar, Sam!’ She said it so passionately that I hastened to say it was untrue.
If you want the both of we to remain friend, Sam, you must never tell me any lie about Garry.’
‘Why can’t you forget him, Urmilla? Do you think he remembers you? Now he is among his own society, do you think he will ever come back?’
‘He eat cascadoo, he must come back, even if it is to dead.’
‘You can’t go on living and hoping on the strength of a thing like that,’ I said earnestly.
‘Even if it can’t be me, then I would rather you loved somebody else and spent the rest of your life happily than go on like this’ . ‘You know anybody who ever eat cascadoo and leave Trinidad and didn’t come back?
There was no reasoning with her. Sometimes a person gets beyond reason, and you wonder what it is they have that sustains them, that makes them quietly strong. Urmilla was locking her life away, as it were, awaiting his return with an infinite patience.
Yet womanhood crept up on her, as if it were forcing a beauty on her she didn’t want to accept just yet. There was nothing girlish about her now. She was ripe, and she was waiting to be plucked.
Another year went by, a year in which I tried desperately to win her love. Except for when we talked about Garry, she appeared to be a little less unhappy, and even laughed sometimes. I knew that Sookdeo was after her to marry me, but he knew better than to try and force a marriage again. And I wouldn’t have him do it.
‘Leave her alone,’ I told him. ‘Let her make up her mind for herself’
‘She have to be married soon,’ Sookdeo said. ‘I getting old and sickly, and I want she to married before I dead.’
It was her father’s health which finally made Unmilla decide. He fell seriously ill and was ebbing away helplessly, but before he died he made her promise to marry me. I told her afterwards that it was all right. that I wouldn’t want to hold her to the promise unless she réally wanted me, but she said she was ready any time I was. I don’t know what made me delay the marriage, maybe it
was some stubborn pride, but while I was giving her time to grow to love me, a letter came from Garry. I waited to hear what the news was, and Franklin told me as soon as he read the letter. ‘Johnson is ill,’ he said. ‘He’s got a rare blood disease’
‘Is it bad?’ I asked.
‘They don’t give him much time to live,’ he said. ‘He wants to come out here next month. His doctor feels he should get away from the English climate’.
I didn’t want to tell Urmilla, not just yet, but she knew a letter had come that morning, and she questioned me with her eyes without saying a word.
‘Johnson is coming back next month,’ I said, trying hard to make it sound casual. I didn’t tell her about his illness. I knew then that my case was utterly hopeless. I could never bring the pearls to her eyes like the news about Garry. She didn't even try to hide the joy she felt.
‘Remember what I told you the night your father died, Urmilla’, I said. ‘I don’t hold you to any promise’.
It was funny the way everything was turning out for me.
‘One thing,’ I told her later. ‘You must never tell Garry about us. That is a promise I would ask you to keep’. She promised eagerly, I never stood a chance, even if I had married her.
Before Johnson arrived I made my plans. I had never completely forgotten my desire to léave the island: perhaps it was a sort of escape I kept open all the time. I had saved enough money to see me well on the way.
I told Franklin I was leaving. He knew it had to come some time, and I told him when Johnson came he would be able to help a little until he found somebody to take my place. He saw reason in this. He thanked me for all I had done - not only with words, but with money. He gave me three hundred dollars with my next wage packet.
I refused to entertain the one last hope that perhaps Johnson
had forgotten all about Urmilla. I didn’t bank anything on it,
I was going to leave in any case. The trend of events pointed that way for me.
‘But Johnson hadn’t forgotten, as was so obvious when they met.
He had written the book and it had been accépted for publication and he intended to go on writing. There was nothing physically wrong with him, there was just this disease that was mysteriously shortening his life.
When I left the estate, his marriage to Urmilla was already being planned. He was going to marry her according to Indian rites, and they were to settle on the estate in a house Franklin was going to build for them.
The last time I saw him, he gave me the last twist of the knife. He said, ‘What I can’t understand, Sam, is why you didn’t marry Urmilla yourself. Haven’t you got an eye for beauty, man?
‘My ambition was always to go abroad,’ I said naively. ‘I never thought about it’. Then I said, ‘So the cascadura legend really worked, and brought you back to Trinidad. ‘I can’t get Urmilla to believe otherwise,’ he laughed. Urmilla was positive that the cascadura had worked a charm. The last thing she was doing when I left the island was consulting the local obeah-man for a medicine to cure Garry's illness.
This is the original text of the short story Johnson and the Cascadura written by Samuel Selvon
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