The week after the Ramleela in September, rain fell continuously, darkening the sky and sending Jeeves scurrying to the kitchen each time he heard the rumbling of thunder. Water filled the drains and spilled over into the roads, filling the potholes and submerging parts of the village, so that entire areas were cut off. Huge chunks of mud caved away from Crappo Patch, a landslide-prone section of Lengua. Wooden huts on the slopes lost their mooring and tilted like frozen dancers. A small house collapsed one morning, the frightened children rescued by a neighbour who lined them up, counting and recounting laboriously to make sure his rescue effort was not in vain. Bisons with humps of mud struggled in the brown water, dragging logs that sometimes stuck in the sludge.
Lettuce, cabbage, and pakchoi floated in the water, filling the air with the smell of rotting vegetation. The water rose and receded, then rose again with each new thunderstorm. Sadhus from the neighboring villages stood before the couteyahs they oversaw and invoked their favourite deities; when these entreaties failed, the Brahmin pundits, armed with Sanskrit books, were summoned. Schools closed early and parents grew short-tempered with their children. Jeeves spent the mornings gazing at his mother standing on the table and patching the holes on the roof with putty and tar. When he grew bored of catching errant drops in his open mouth, he wandered to the kitchen step and stared at the carailli vines swishing like snakes in the muddy water. A young, nondescript journalist known only as Partap’s son descended on the villages and filed dramatic stories, many beginning with, “On a day blight with black, quarrelling clouds …”
One night Narpat came home later than usual, when it was already dark, slushing in his tall tops and leaving muddy trails on the wooden floor. Jeeves eyed the tall tops hungrily but knew he would be rebuked if he attempted to slip his feet into them. During those evenings Narpat did not lecture his children on ethics or nutrition, but with his head propped against the wall and his palms flat on his knees, he spoke about the desperate attempts of farmers to haul their cane to higher ground. He explained that most of the crop was now useless because of the rain’s intensity, and that the flood had been caused by a hurricane called Flora that had destroyed most of the coastal villages in Tobago, the sister isle. Trinidad had escaped the eye of the hurricane, but houses in Debe and Penal were almost buried in water. He pulled a foot up and showed his toes, swollen from tramping in his drenched tall tops. While Jeeves stared at his father’s dilated toes, noting how much they looked like cherries and briefly wondering if they had the same taste as his thumb, Chandra said that her teacher had spoken to the class about the destruction in Tobago and had asked the students to donate unused clothes and toys. She stood up expectantly, wringing her hands until Narpat asked her to fetch the old clothing. Both she and Kala ran into their bedroom and returned with Jeeves’s nightie. Jeeves removed his thumb from his mouth and glanced at his father.
“You getting too big for this now, Carea,” he said, using his pet name for the boy. “Time you get a proper outfit. Something decent and comfortable. A nice flour bag shirt. The solid material will toughen your skin just like a shell. You hear that, Mammy,” he shouted to his wife in the kitchen. Then his mood lightened, and he told his children that he was drawing up plans for the village council, which met at the end of each month, to build a web of drains, aqueducts, and dikes to prevent flooding, and he was also thinking of constructing a moat around the house. Kala asked if he would fill the moat with alligators and water snakes, and he smiled and changed the topic. Some nights their mother pulled a stool and listened silently, but later the children heard her worried voice percolating from their parents’ bedroom.
Then as suddenly as it had descended, the rain stopped. Children on their way to school dipped their feet in the potholes and kicked up the watery mud. A few pothounds ventured out and sniffed the drains. Ducks wandering about like drunken midgets were chased back to their ponds. Walls were hurriedly repainted and posts strengthened by pounding boulders around their bases. The sun baked the mud on the road and congealed the silt that had been washed beneath the houses into crumbly wafers. Waves of heat, thick and smelly, rose from the road. The humidity was so strong that everything seemed weighted with lead. Dulari banished her son to the bedroom with one of Narpat’s National Geographics, while she shoveled away the mud from the front yard and pulled out the soggy tomatoes and the carailli vines from the back. When she saw Jeeves peeping from the gallery, she warned him about water snakes and lizards just waiting to climb up his new flour bag pants. He rushed back to his bedroom and flipped through the National Geographic, staring at men and women naked but for straw skirts, and monkeys hanging by their tails from trees.
Dulari grew increasingly short-tempered. Her irritation was directed not only toward Jeeves; when Sushilla returned home with carbuncles on her knees, she was reprimanded for scratching and set in the corner, smelling of camphor, aloes, and saffron paste. Once Jeeves noticed her tasting the mixture and reported this to their mother. For the remainder of the afternoon, Sushilla glared at Jeeves from beneath the table, grumbling, “Little news carrier.”
By contrast, Narpat grew increasingly mellow. He scratched outlines of his proposed aqueducts and dikes on the ends of cardboard boxes. The children sitting around him peered at the detailed illustrations while the gas lamp choked and threw a flickering light on the cardboard, making the drawings seem like small dismembered animals.
He became more expansive as the night drew on. The flood, he told them, was not the result of divine punishment, as some of the villagers were claiming, but was a natural occurrence that, if harnessed, could lead to surprising benefits. He thrust out his hands and said that the world was constantly balancing itself. The silt that had been swept beneath the houses and into the backyard gardens was rich in nutrients. The houses buffeted by the water were little reminders to the owners about repairs postponed. His own house—he stamped his feet on the sloping floor—had survived because it was built with precision and foresight. Anything that was defective or weak must be swept away: this was how the earth cleansed itself. Countries like Trinidad were in particular danger because nothing was ever attempted with planning and foresight.
In the kitchen, Dulari tapped her broom loudly, the way she did when she was exasperated, but the children, fascinated by Narpat’s commentaries, forgot the discomfort of the last few weeks and listened attentively. Narpat brought out his old Hindi texts from Carnegie and said that the world was always changing, and those who were not prepared were swept away. “Right this very minute, each of you changing.” He looked at his children circumspectly, as if he could detect these changes. Jeeves glanced at his arms and legs. At night, while they lay in bed, the images of ancient, engulfed cities drowned the sound of displeasure from their parents’ bedroom.
One Friday night Narpat showed them one of his more detailed drawings, which looked like an ascending submarine. He explained that they would soon have hot water with which to bathe. “Is the flood that give me this idea. All this water that cause so much damage could be very useful with the right planning. But you have to be a futurist to see this. Take all that heat that coming up from the chulha, for instance. What happening to it? It escaping, just escaping. Yet is the same heat that does power train from city to city, and ship from country to country.”
The next morning a hammering on the aluminum roof awakened them. They ran outside and saw Narpat on a ladder balanced against the eaves, hauling up a bucket of water. Two lengths of pipe had been removed from beneath the house and now stood at the side of the ladder.
“Allyou move out from there quick sharp before that water contraption fall on somebody head.” The children rushed back to the porch to their mother, who was shaking her head in dismay. For most of that morning, she glanced up apprehensively at her husband hammering away. At night she and Narpat could be heard quarrelling from their bedroom.
“All right, the hot-water system complete now.” The children bounded out and saw Narpat on the topmost rung of the ladder, gazing at a network of pipes running from a barrel perched on two scantlings on the roof, down to the side of the house, where they were tied together with bicycle tubing. “It still have a little work here and there. Have to get a proper valve and some unions and a lock joint to stabilize the apparatus good and proper. Get it to balance. It still rocking a little bit.” He glanced at the barrel. “But it should hold.”
The next day Jeeves was dragged by his ear from the yard. “What happen, you looking for gold and silver?” His mother kicked the mound of mud Jeeves had been exploring. “I wonder if any pile up here?” She scanned the roof. “Or maybe you come outside for a nice hot bath. That blasted, blasted man.” For the rest of the afternoon Jeeves puzzled over that statement.
Then unexpectedly, the quarrelling stopped. Two entire days passed without any major flogging. Tasty fruits were served with dinner, Julie mangoes, papaw and slices of pineapple. In the middle of the week stew chicken and pigeon peas and wedges of sweet potato, a meal usually reserved for Sundays, were placed on the table. The children, intrigued by this pleasant development, pressed their ears against the wall, straining to hear the conversation from their parents’ room, glancing at one another when they caught bits of laughter and strange, purring sounds.
Chandra and Kala both offered differing interpretations over the mix of Hindi and English their parents used in private conversations. One night Chandra, who had been lying awake in bed, bolted up. “Baby!”
“A baby going to happen tonight?” Jeeves asked.
Sushilla glanced dismissively at Jeeves. “Stupidee. It take”—she paused. “It take one year.”
Chandra pressed a finger against her lips. “Shh. Go turn down the wick and sleep.” After half an hour Jeeves fell asleep, dreaming of squirming babies stacked on the Pavilion.
The next morning he followed his mother around, flicking swift glances at her belly, but Chandra had cautioned him not to ask any questions. His mother smiled wryly and patted him on his head. Later, while she was poking the firewood in the chulha, she said, “Let me see what Bhola will say now. Let me see what Babsy will say when we buy it.”
In the afternoon Jeeves reported this snippet to Chandra. She snapped the rubber band holding her plaits, chewed her lip, and frowned. But she could make no sense of it.
A few hours later the mystery was laid to rest. Their mother barged excitedly into the children’s bedroom. “Come quick. You hearing it?” Jeeves listened for a baby’s cry but could hear only a faint grumbling in the distance. “Come in front.” They had never seen her as agitated.
The rumbling grew louder.
Dulari wiped her hands in her apron and held Jeeves before her on the porch. The growling grew into a clatter as if something far away were crashing to the ground. Dulari held Jeeves tighter. He looked up at her face. The house vibrated and wobbled. The pipe hanging from the roof swung like a pendulum. The barrel rocked on the scantlings. A slight frown appeared on her face. Jeeves glanced at his sisters and then stared in the direction of the commotion.
“Daddy!” Sushilla ran to the yard. “On a tractor.”
“Get back here now.”
Jeeves freed himself from his mother’s clasp and climbed the railing. From around the corner an old rusty tractor seemed headed straight for the house.
“Get back here now, I say. Look how old it is. You don’t know if it have brakes.” Dulari sighed, and in that sigh Jeeves felt that all her enthusiasm had bled away.
The tractor headed for the drain, spluttering and coughing up slabs of mud. It stalled briefly, then seemed to leap into the air with a roar and charge into the yard. Jeeves screamed and fell off the railing. Miraculously, it stopped right before the front step. Narpat stood on the axle, his legs on either side of the seat, surveying his astonished family and waving his hat like a cowboy. “You like it, Mammy? Top of the line.”
Dulari gazed at the rusty tractor and thought of a skeletal beetle and then of a dead crab. The tractor shuddered and belched up a spurt of smoke through its upright exhaust. She smelled the gas and glanced at the dented fuel tank and the line leaking gas onto her crushed zinnias, daisies, and marigolds. “It nice.”
“Just nice? Is a top of the line tractor. A Farmall H. Nineteen forty-one model.” He tapped the long rusty pipe onto which the steering wheel was attached. “Four-cylinder incline overhead valve. Idle speed of sixteen hundred. Firing order of one, three, four and two.” The tractor, as if understanding, bucked violently, spitting sparks above Narpat’s head. He grinned. “You see the power? Is like a wild horse.” He patted the steering wheel and ran his fingers along the pipe. “I think I might have to tame him a little bit. Break him in. All right, who want to go for a ride?” Jeeves’s sisters glanced at their father and at the old smoke-belching tractor, but when their mother walked silently inside, they followed her. “The last train to Bangalore pulling out now,” Narpat said jovially. “Hop aboard, hop aboard before it full up.” Jeeves walked down the step to the tractor and Narpat bent down and hoisted him up. “Women and machinery don’t mix much.” He ground into reverse, and the tractor jerked back sharply. Jeeves almost tumbled off his father’s lap. They pulled off in a cloud of smoke, bouncing over the drain.
“You smelling that smoke? Is the best thing for some of these stubborn bacteria and them. Wipe them clean out. Take a deep breath.” Jeeves inhaled and felt dizzy, but Narpat shouted, “You just kill out half the hookworm in your belly.” And a few minutes later, “You notice them loosening up with all this bouncing up and down?”
Jeeves felt a soreness in his body each time he landed on his father. “Yes. I feeling them.”
They passed Crappo Patch, a stretch of narrow, dilapidated roads dotted with mostly abandoned houses. A dog, startled into motion by the tractor, ran yapping after them. Soon other dogs joined. “Royal escort.” Narpat chuckled. He shifted gears, and soon the dogs were left behind. “Hold tight. We pulling into Toolia trace to survey the canefield.” Jeeves held tightly to the steering wheel, twisting with its rotation.
Narpat drove more slowly now, explaining to Jeeves that the squealing, flapping sound was caused by a loose belt. He suspected that the fuel line was too close to the exhaust manifold, causing vapor lock and misfiring. He would have to wrap some aluminum around the line and, when he was finished, check the radiator for lime buildup and core leakage. Jeeves strained to hear what his father was saying, fascinated by his knowledge of so many things. “Every single pound of pressure raise the boiling point by three degrees. Might have to change the pressure cap, or that hose right below there will blow straight out.” He swelled his cheeks and made a popping sound. Jeeves laughed.
They passed a few tired-looking men returning from the fields, and Narpat shouted to a young man seated on a bison, “Time to trade in that bhisa, Jairam, for a newer model.” He came to a creaking stop beneath a mango tree with the branches spreading over the road. He stood on the seat and raised Jeeves onto his shoulders. “Pick the reddish one.” Jeeves reached for a plump purple fruit and twisted it off its stem. “Calabash mango. The sweetest variety you could find anywhere. Full of vitamins and iron.” He allowed Jeeves to climb down from his shoulder and retrieved a penknife from his pocket.
While Jeeves was eating the sweet, spicy mango, Narpat pointed to his field. “Your legacy. Hard work but honest. You don’t have to outsmart anybody or depend on anyone when you own one small plot of land. ‘Cause it always there.” He jumped down from the tractor and spread his arms, but Jeeves clutched the seat and dismounted carefully. “When you depend on the land for your livelihood, you grow close to it. Like a part of the family.” The dusty track leading to the field was shadowed by a towering hogplum tree with perpetually yellow leaves. “Careful you slip on these.” His father pointed to the carpet of spotted hogplums on the track. Kiskidees and semps were flitting from fruit to fruit.
Jeeves inhaled the sweet, decaying fragrance. “It good to eat?”
“Only if you suffering from constipation.”
As they walked alongside the narrow drains separating the cane into rectangular plots, Narpat explained that unlike most of the other farms, his field had escaped the brunt of the flood because it was on slightly higher ground. He held Jeeves’s arms lightly and swung him over a drain. The trickling water was transparent enough for Jeeves to notice tiny black conches fastened to mossy pebbles. While they were walking in the field, Narpat spoke about his early days in the canefield, like his father and grandfather before him. He mentioned the negligible price paid for cane, the early death of his father, and the times when he, his mother, and his younger sister had been close to starvation. “Some days all we had to eat was boil plantain and bhaji. Bush that I collect from the ground.”
“How that taste?”
Narpat opened his mouth and fanned his tongue. Jeeves grinned. “From morning to night, I was working, working, working,” Narpat said. “No time for play, no time for school. And by the time I meet your mammy, I already had my own little field.”
“Mammy family had their field too?”
“No, Carea. They was business people. They thought cane farming was a backward profession. You believe that? Look at how interesting this field is. Just me and two other workers maintaining it. Two youngboys I hire during the crop season.” Jeeves followed his father’s gaze and was transfixed by the ringed stalks, the waving arrows, the ravines with multicoloured guppies and conches, the aroma of cane, and his father’s hand on his shoulder. Narpat broke off a stalk and twisted it, allowing the juice to fall into Jeeves’s mouth. “Okay, is time to go back now.” Jeeves didn’t want to leave; he wished this trip could last forever.
He gazed at the fishes in the ravine. The mud in the field, from yearly plowing, was hard and grainy, and the ravine was not as muddy as the roadside drains. “This water looking good to drink.”
“Too much chemicals. But it good to bathe in.” After a while he added, “You don’t need to drink the ravine water when you have cane all around. Is a perfect meal. A man could survive on that for a month, at least.”
“It might have somebody hiding here then?”
“Just a few animals.”
“Like in a zoo?”
“A sanctuary. Or a sort of burial ground. Some of these animals like to die in a peaceful place.”
On the way back the boy held tightly to the steering wheel and watched the branches, some of which he could almost touch, streaming by. By the time they came to a stop on the flattened flowers, he had already decided that it was the happiest day of his life.
His mother though was not as thrilled. She grew moody and touchy; the conversations in the bedroom stopped entirely. Jeeves received some of his most memorable beatings during this period. He began spending more time in the bedroom, sitting on the floor with the National Geographic magazines and gazing at the wondrous pictures of animals and huge rivers and strangely dressed people. One morning Dulari saw him staring at a photograph of women wearing nothing but skirts and headdresses. She scooped up the magazine and rolled it into a cylinder. The first whack rocked Jeeves against the wall, the second sent him spinning to the floor, and the third loosened his throat.
“Yes bawl. Bawl hard so everybody will know that I is a useless old mother.” He blocked a blow with his feet. “A useless woman with a son who like to spend his time watching shameless naked women.”
Jeeves rolled over, knowing from experience that his back was more tolerant to pain. “His father training him good. Nasty magazine! Hot water! Tractor! Mash up flowers!” Jeeves, scrunched up in a ball, contemplated the connection between the four. “Useless, obzokee tractor. I can’t wait for Bhola and Babsy to see it. I just can’t wait.” Finally, overcome by exhaustion, she gave up.
For the rest of the morning she blew into the chulha, rearranged pieces of wood, stirred the pots, and grumbled. Jeeves lay on the bed with his eyes on the doorway, and when he heard her approaching footsteps, he shut his eyes tightly and pretended he was sleeping. He smelled the aroma of porridge, opened his eyes, and saw his mother with a bowl of Quaker Oats in her hand. Her eyes were red, and a streak of hair fell over her forehead. While Jeeves sipped the porridge, she straightened the sheets and thumped the pillows, and when he was finished, she sat on the bed next to him singing an Indian movie song and passing her hand through his hair.
Jeeves basked in this unexpected softening and imagined it was a sign of better days. In the afternoon, when his sisters returned from school, they saw Jeeves on his mother’s lap. Sushilla folded her arms, sank her chin into her chest, and began to sniff. “How was school, Popo?” Dulari asked, using Sushilla’s pet name.
Miraculously the arms loosened and the sniffing stopped. “It was okay.”
When their mother went into the kitchen with Chandra and Kala, Sushilla unlatched the clasps on her khaki bag and held it upside down, spilling three dog-eared copy books, a West Indian Reader with a varnished cover, two pencils, a chewed-down eraser, a bowclip, five tamarind seeds, and some loose sheets held with a rubber band. She reached for the sheets, snapped the band, and looked at Jeeves. She cracked it once more, irritating Jeeves with the buzzing sound and with her mysteriousness. Then she rolled away the band and arranged the pages on the bed. Pictures of deer with twisted, intersecting horns. Trees covered with ice. In the middle of these strange trees, a white cottage with light shining through one of its windows. Three frightful-looking men gazing at the sky. A chunky man smiling as if he had remembered a joke.
“Who is that?” Jeeves took the sheet with the smiling man.
Sushilla snatched it away. “Pappy.”
“Pappy?”
She bit her lips, thinking. “Pappy Christmas.”
“What he does do?”
“Drop toys on the house.”
“Why?”
“Stop asking all these stupid question. Is his job.”
“How?”
She rolled her eyes, a habit she had picked up from Chandra. “He could do these things. That is all.”
“From a plane?”
She thought for a while, clicking her nails. “From a tractor.” She retrieved another picture. “These deer does pull it.”
Jeeves pushed his thumb into his mouth and sucked. After a while he began to laugh, but that night he dreamed of a rusty tractor plowing through the clouds while a fat, cheery man unloaded his toys onto the houses. In the morning his memory of the dream shifted, and he remembered only his father flying through the air in his tractor.