During the next several months the house in Lengua took on the appearance of an abandoned property. The bougainvillea at the side of the porch grew thick and knotted and braided into the railings. Paragrass climbed up the copper. Jack spaniard’s nests hung like clay udders from the eaves. Because the doors and windows were usually shut, the house smelled of woodlice, dust, and a sharp, sweet odour—which, Jeeves realized one night, came from the oil his mother had applied to her sewing machine.
During this time too the ownership of the sugar factory, Tate and Lyle, passed to Caroni, a local company that immediately announced it was phasing out sugar production within the decade; the Manager finally won the county council election by bribing almost everyone in the village; and Mr. Doon, Kamini, and the twins moved into the downstairs apartment of the Manager’s house. At one time these changes would have drawn some scathing comment from Narpat, but each night when Jeeves returned from work, he would see his father clad in pyjamas on the Pavilion with a book in his hand. As Jeeves hurried to his room, he would sense the old man’s eyes following him. Sometimes he felt that Narpat’s quietness was his way of dealing with grief, but his silence seemed alert and cagey. Jeeves wondered what private battle his father was now locked into.
Narpat never spoke directly to his son nor inquired about his daughters. Sushilla had not returned since the funeral, and whenever Jeeves visited Chandra, his eldest sister spoke only of their mother. Once, cradling Gomuti to her breast, she had said, “I know how Mammy suffer. I know what she was going through.”
Jeeves thought: But you refused to listen whenever I mentioned her illness. He said nothing, though, because he saw how his sister drew comfort from her grief. Before he left, Chandra would give him a container with rice and pigeon peas and slices of plantain. He ate from the container in the night and placed the remainder in the fridge. Most mornings the container would be on the stand, empty. Before he left for work, he boiled himself a pot of cocoa or green tea, and when there was time, he gathered provisions—pumpkin and ochro and chives and shadow beni—from the backyard garden and made a leafy soup. In the night the remainder of the soup would be consumed, as would the jug of protein drink.
Yet his father never spoke with him.
Jeeves wondered how someone who had lived with a spouse for most of their life could so avoid the slightest reference to that person, and yet three months after the funeral, when his father for the first time mentioned his mother, the boy was enraged.
“She didn’t complete her task. She give up.”
“What task? Seeing about everybody problem but her own?”
“That was her duty. You take away her duty, and she had nothing else.”
“And what was your duty?”
“My duty isn’t to a single person or to a single family. Some people get placed on this earth for a very specific purpose.”
From then on the old man seemed to be baiting his son, uttering statements about duty and foresight. Perhaps it was because of Jeeves’s silence, or maybe he was working his way toward this stage—the boy was not sure—but one day he said suddenly, “I going to put up that statue of her. Right next to the tower.” And another day: “The girls’ boarding school will save all these young women in the village. And every one of them will see Mammy face when they enter and leave. The face of a saint.”
This infuriated Jeeves more than the previous oblique condemnation. But the belated acknowledgement of his wife seemed to remind the old man of his family. He began visiting Chandra and from her learned the location of Sushilla’s ashram. Although Jeeves was relieved by the move, Chandra began to complain about his interference and his constant sermonizing. She mentioned Sushilla’s annoyance too at his prolonged visits to the ashram, where he criticized the meals, the chanting, the idol worship, and the guru.
On successive weeks Chandra mentioned specific infractions: He refused to flush the toilet, he quarrelled with Ray and with Radhica, he barged into the bedroom at inappropriate times, he was putting nonsense in the children’s heads. Finally she suggested he return to Lengua. He told her a story of a woman. The woman, each morning, carried her parents on her back across a river, where they pounded stones for a living. She never complained because it was her duty, as it had been their duty to raise the young woman. But the story failed. Narpat could not recall the exact conclusion. He suggested that the girl drowned her parents, and at other times he insisted the girl took her parents’ dead bodies across the river. The daughter may have been a saint, a murderer, or a lunatic. Chandra wondered whether she had missed this disorder in the stories told by her father years ago. She grew uninterested. But Narpat, striving for meaning, became angry and frustrated. His calmness disappeared. He called her a neemakaram who was just waiting for his death. He accused her of poisoning his food. He stormed out, striking the ground with his cane. In the road he shouted that she need not worry about him being a burden because he would never cross her doorstep again.
Two nights later Ray stumbled on him on the porch, his head on a peerha. Ray called his wife, who looked at Narpat’s shivering body and asked him to come inside. He said he was comfortable. The hard floor firmed his back, the splinters improved his circulation, the peerha relieved the pressure on his neck. His chakras were enjoying this exercise. She brought him a blanket. He began another story. Midway through she returned inside. He continued the story in a loud voice. This story was about a god wandering the earth as a beggar and discovering generosity and cruelty in unexpected situations. It was the kind of story Narpat had mocked as Puranic nonsense.
For the next two weeks his father did not show up in Lengua.
From then on the old man shuttled between Chandra’s place, the ashram, and the house in Lengua, showing up unexpectedly and leaving without notice. The boarding school idea revitalized him, as had the factory for so many years. But now he was frail and even more cantankerous, and his muddled plans drew annoyance from his children and frustration from strangers. He accused his children of turning their back on him, and strangers, of stupidity and weakness.
At the ashram, he resurrected his notion of futurists and dancing monkeys. The chanters, imitating rituals they could not understand, were gibbering chimpanzees; the guru, a slightly stooped, bearded man, was an ape. “All this meditation no different from the sort of trance an animal will go into when it facing some crisis. Instead of spending five hours every day like zombies, why you all don’t do something beneficial. Like build a boarding school.” He criticized the diet during every meal. “Starch and sugar and oil. Is not real meditation that going on here. Is the body shutting down. The organs going one by one.”
The members of the ashram, who chanted “peace and love fill my heart” daily, struggled with their hatred. Avoiding direct criticism, they spoke of his negative aura. During a meal Sushilla told him he was “disturbing the vibrations of the ashram.”
“Vibrations? What vibrations you could get in a place where everybody does fall in a trance anytime a bhajan begin?”
“If this ashram don’t agree with you, brother, may you find peace in another.” The guru tried to hide his annoyance.
“All these sects is the same. Creating zombies and fanatics.”
“May you find peace in another, brother.” The guru’s voice was slightly higher.
“You all don’t want any disputation. Just blind loyalty.”
“We try to avoid discord, brother.”
“In the ancient days, a ashram like this was a place for discussion. Everyone was free to voice their opinion. And there wasn’t any chanting either. And none of this sugar and starch allyou serve here every day. In those days the members would go to the forest each morning and collect nuts and grains and fruits.”
Sushilla got up. Some of the other members followed her. The guru closed his eyes and chanted. Narpat stormed off, limping along the mud road for almost three hours until he came to the bus stop. The driver glanced at him and contemplated driving on.
He took his boarding school idea to Chandra, and when she mentioned Ray’s late hours and her preoccupation with her daughters, he told her, “These same daughters will benefit from the school. They will learn the value of fasting and penance, and they will do exercises to strengthen the mind and body. Real tests instead of stupid games.” Chandra gazed at her daughters playing with a stuffed rabbit and said she was in no position to help. He reminded her that the school would be dedicated to her mother and accused her of selfishness.
He went to Huzaifa, who was briefly excited by the image of industrious little girls operating spinning jennies in a humming room, but whose experience with the factory alerted him to all the dangers of this new project. When Narpat departed, Salima said, “He building school for his dead wife now. Why he didn’t do all that when she was still living?”
“Dedication. Posthumous.” Huzaifa still felt obligated to defend Narpat to his wife.
“I see. Dedication. Posthumous. You will dedicate anything to me when I go.” He thought: You wouldn’t go, Salima. Some people get put in this earth to create hardship. “Allyou mans and allyou crazy idea. Don’t let me catch you with that blasted crazy man again, you hear. Allyou mans!”
Narpat went to each of the cane farmers whose land ownership he had facilitated, and each spoke of their problems and wished him luck. Finally, he hobbled across the road to the Manager, who was brushing his teeth in the gallery. The Manager looked at his approach warily at first, then with growing apprehension. He swallowed, flicked his toothbrush against his pants, and placed it in his pocket. His weak smile was made maniacal by the toothpaste foaming down his chin. He gazed at Narpat struggling up the stairs. “Life is a funny thing when you think of it. Just last night I tell meself, ‘You know something, Manager? You living here nearly a year now, and you never visit Narpat as yet.’ And look how you appear right here in front of me.”
“I didn’t appear. I walk across the road.”
“Is just a prabble I was prabbling. So how everything?” His wariness increased as he spotted the stern expression on the old man’s face.
“Everything is how we make it. Is up to us to perform our duty. My duty is to build a boarding school for girls in the memory of my dead wife, and …”
The Manager had heard the rumours. “That is a very good dreamsanhope.”
“… And your duty, as the elected councillor, is to assist in worthwhile ventures.”
“Worthwhile?” He fiddled with the concept, searching for an escape. “What is worthwhile and what is not worthwhile? Who is to decide? One day something is worthwhile, and the next day it come worthwhileless.” He thought of Narpat’s descent from a leader in the village who had facilitated the important land deeds and had won the county council elections, to a miserable old man. “The villagers, my loyal constituents and stakeholders, is really the one to judge the Manager.” He used a phrase from a political speech. “They is the holders, I is only the stake. Is for them to decide.”
“The school could be completed in two months. Before rainy season.”
“Just the other night I was telling meself, ‘You know something, Manager? We have one of the best school in the island right here in Lengua.’”
“A school just for girls.”
“The modern saying is that girls no different from boys. They cut from the same cloth.”
“The only one of its kind in Trinidad.”
“What is good for the goose is good sauce.” He was fast running out of prabbles and felt increasingly irritated.
“You could cut the ribbon at the ceremony.”
“Eh? Ribbon? Ceremony?” He was sorely tempted, but he knew Narpat too well. He remembered the humiliation of his previous election defeat and then being chased away by Narpat when he’d come with his land purchase proposal. He recalled all the lectures to which he’d been subjected. He decided to cut the conversation short. “The best I could offer is this offer. You build the school, and I will ‘ganize the ceremony. Half a loaf is just as good as teaching a man to fish.”
“I must do the dog-work while you collect the fame?”
“Fame? What is fame? Is like a light that—”
“I not interested in hearing any of that illiterate nonsense. Will you, Sookdeo, help or not?”
“Illiterate?” The Manager fought his rising temper. “This same illiterate chamar in front of you does sit in big-big committee and decide who getting water and ‘lectricity, who—”
“Who fulling your wallet.”
“Eh? You insulting me in my own doorstep?” He spoke loudly, attracting the attention of the workers downstairs.
“Trained monkey. Can’t see more than a few step before you.” He grasped the step’s railing and lowered himself.
“I glad that I is a monkey. I glad that I, the elected councillor, who does sit in big-big committee, suddenly come a ugly monkey and a scrapegoat.” The workers gazed up at him. “Get to ass back to work, allyou sickly little jackass. Is I, the Manager, the so-call monkey and chamar, who ordering allyou back to work.” He pounded the railing, then withdrew his toothbrush and flung it at the goat. He was frustrated at the return of his self-pity, and unnerved that an old invalid still possessed the ability to pry out his old weaknesses.
Just before Narpat crossed the road, he uttered a statement that would have surprised his family. “You living in a house that had some values at one time. But none of that rub off on you.”
For the rest of the day, the Manager quarrelled with his workers and his goat.
The hurt lingered. In the night, after his son-in-law had left for the rumshop, the Manager walked down the inside steps to the Brahmin’s stockroom. He noted the books on the shelves and in the cardboard box beneath the table. When his daughter asked why he was grumbling, he said testily, “I just trying to get some dreamsanhope.” The Hindi texts were useless. Then he saw a book, its green cover inscribed with a playful, squiggly circle. He pried out the book and took it upstairs. “Open Spirit, by Boros. No pictures, but nice, simple title and nice ball on the cover.” During the following nights he read, underlined, and half-memorized a variety of sentences. At the next committee meeting the other members were stunned to hear him quoting from Dante and Socrates. (He kept away from Nietzsche and Teilhard, whose names were too difficult to pronounce.) He also practiced on his son-in-law, who in turn told his wife, “The bitches never cease to amaze me.”
“Hush, Tolly. Hush, Dolly. The house will be quiet in a little while. Is almost six o’ clock.”
Occasionally the Manager would ask his daughter to read from Open Spirit, and with cigarette smoke drifting to her sons perched on her knees, she would read until one of her boys fell asleep. Her father would say with genuine wonder, “I never know it had fellas who could prabble so good. Read over one or two for me.” Frequently she was forced to read till late in the night.