Uncle Zoltan

by Ismith Khan

Central Market, Port of Spain

(Originally published in 1994)

The last time I saw Uncle Zoltan was in the Central Market in Port of Spain. He was still the hard tough man he had always been, barrel-chested, thick arms and legs to go with it, and now he was beginning to show a little paunch. His trousers were caught by a wide belt way down low, below the navel. But his gait was the same, his arms thrown out to the sides like a gorilla ready to pounce, or a wrestler pacing about in stances before he got a hold. I was sure that he could still take on four men at a time and throw them helter-skelter in different directions. I had seen him do just that when I was a boy in the old Britannia Bar, then he went back to his nip or rum, and muttered to himself, “A man can’t even drink he rum in peace no more.”

I had been away for several years and I wanted to see as many of my huge family as I could, but no one knew where Uncle Zoltan lived. When I asked my mother she simply said that he might very well be doing a stint in the Royal Gaol. She saw him on occasion, either on his way to jail, or on his way back. He always stopped in to tell Mother that he was going “up” or that he was “out,” and since Mother’s house was the meeting place in the city for all the relations from the hinterland, he would simply leave word with her, “just in case” he would add, never saying just what. Every six months or so he gathered up a few things: a straight razor, a pair of wooden-soled shoes, a pipe and a copy of a book called She which he thought was the greatest book ever written; he had read it hundreds of times but it still fascinated him. “Every time I read it I find something new in it,” he had told me.

Although he rarely shaved when he was on the outside, he had learnt that one should look one’s best in jail. “You have to make the turnkeys respect you, then they will know that you is a gentleman.” The wooden-soled shoes he took along because he did not like to step on the damp floor of his cement cell, it was too cold, too much of a shock when he awoke in the mornings. And he took along a pipe although he always smoked cigarettes on the “outside.” Why? “Every schoolboy know the answer to that one,” he assured me. If you had cigarettes you had to offer them around, and he was not one to hide odds and ends from his cell-mates like others did. The pipe needed only to be filled and if anyone wanted a puff, that was all right, but he did not have to run through as much tobacco if he smoked a pipe instead of cigarettes. I once suggested to him that he was foregoing his own pleasure by not smoking cigarettes, which he adored, simply to avoid having to share them around, but he only laughed. “You think I is one to cut my nose to spoil my face?” he asked in a tone of injured pride, which left me with the feeling that I should not press him any further.

What looked like spite to others was his code of honour, and somewhere in his mind he saw something proud, beautiful and honourable in this code of his. The reason he went to jail periodically, for example, was because he and his wife had a “falling out” years ago and she took him to court to get support for herself and their small child. He reasoned that she had a rich father and that he could take care of them; his pride was injured when they actually filed papers and brought him before the magistrate, who did not see eye to eye with him and ordered him to pay up or go to jail. In those days he had a little establishment on Charlotte Street in which he pretended to make filigree jewellery. For the most part he hired a few boys who were part apprentices, part errand runners and part bar attenders for Uncle Zoltan and his cronies who argued all day long in his “shop.” He managed to get people to apprentice their young boys to him, not because he was a fine craftsman, but on my father’s reputation. Everyone knew that it was my father who was the real craftsman, yet somehow the parents of the apprentices no doubt felt that something must have rubbed off on my Uncle Zoltan if his brother was so well known. And Uncle Zoltan never felt that he was being dishonest. As soon as one of the boys became fairly proficient and began to demand more wages or treatment like a full professional, my Uncle Zoltan would give him a sharp clout on his head and send him home. “And tell you poopa I want to talk with him . . . to tell him what a worthless rogue he have for a son . . . ain’t even begin to learn the trade and he want full salary . . . It only have one boss here . . . and that is me!”

It was at this point in time that the magistrate ordered him to pay support. He did away with his “shop,” and with the few dollars left he idled about with his cronies until they decided to send him off to jail, where he adapted nicely. He got to know the turnkeys and since he was no ordinary thief he did not have to do hard labour breaking stones at the quarry like the other prisoners. His class of prisoners had all the light jobs and my Uncle Zoltan managed to get out of those as well.

His mind was made up about one thing, that his father-in­law should take care of things, that he would in the end wear them out and they would finally leave him alone to live his life the way he wanted to, and so he went to jail at regular intervals at first, then later on when his father-in-law began to weaken, Uncle Zoltan went to jail at less frequent intervals, and then finally, when he was getting his gear all set for jail, no policeman came to serve him with a summons. He was infuriated. He got shaved and dressed and went up to visit his wife and his in-laws and propositioned the old man this way: “I have a good friend who want to sell a lorry . . . if you put up the money for me to buy it, I will work and save you all of these court costs.” The old man all but fainted. His body became rigid; he could not even move a limb to strike Uncle Zoltan, so great was his rage.

I felt that I really wanted to see Uncle Zoltan before I left for the States, but my mother would not hear of it. “You know how he done gone and spoil up the family name . . . Sometimes when people ask me, I have to tell them that he ain’t belong to this family . . . that he is only a stranger . . . that Khan is a common name . . . and now you want to go up to the jail and let the whole world know that he is family?” Of course she was right, I thought. What right did I have to go up to the jail and let everyone know that we had a jail-bird in the family? I was there for a short visit, and then I would be off, while everyone else would have to bear the shame of it all, so I let it go at that.

After a couple of days during which my mother had been turning things over in her mind, she asked very casually if I had heard anything of Uncle Zoltan. She must have realised that I would find him on my own anyway and now she decided to help, but not without a certain amount of sighs, groans and complaints. “Well, we couldn’t be the last to have a jail-bird in the family,” she sighed. I thought of any number of things I had learnt in the States about criminals and crime and people, and society being partly responsible and any number of other things which would excuse Uncle Zoltan, but I also knew that this wasn’t my mother’s way. She had to lay a good groundwork of shame, humiliation and “think about us here after you leave in a couple of weeks,” so I waited without saying anything. “You know that that rascal nearly killed me right here in this house four months ago?” My heart leapt, because even as a boy I had heard a rumour that Uncle had killed a man in one of the backwater villages. He was what was known as a “Bad-John” in all of the rum shops in the city, and if some weakling in the family got into an argument with someone he could not beat, he would threaten, “I have a cousin who is the worst Bad-John in Trinidad . . . better watch you mouth,” and as soon as the stranger learnt that he was toying with a relation of Bad-John Zoltan, they would drop the argument.

My mother kept rattling the breakfast dishes in her special disgruntled movements. I think that she wanted me to come to Uncle Zoltan’s rescue, but first she would tell me what a really worthless type he was and how could I defend him, etc. etc., only to end up with a “Very well then, go and find him . . . and remember, he is your father’s brother, we don’t have any jail-birds on my side of the family, thank God.” Of course, I knew all of this about my mother, but she apparently knew me even better than I thought I knew her.

My instinctive reply was, “Did he really try to kill you?”

She took away another armful of dishes and came back adjusting her hair over her temples with the motions of an actress­-philosopher who had set her own stage, who had fully pre­pared her audience, and now she had them tense with the “And then what happened?” kind of expectation which she had so thoroughly ingrained in all of us children since we were toddlers at her knees, listening to all of those gory tales of ancient Indian mythology. I had no sooner asked my foolish “And then what happened?” than I realised that I had played right into her hands. She remained silent, moving back and forth, not without a kind of triumph in her gait and strut, until I asked again, with the old childish image of Uncle Zoltan burying the corpse of a man somewhere in the hinterland. I was almost tempted to ask her whether he really did kill a man in the old days, but I checked myself. It was a foolish kind of exasperation I felt, and if my mother knew me well, I knew her well too. She would not speak her line until and unless she could sense just the right amount of exasperated curiosity in her listener’s voice.

“Well, did he really try to kill you?” and for good measure I thought that I would add her own little refrain, “Right here in this house?”

She had one hand on her hip and a pot spoon in the other before she felt that she was quite ready to answer. “Well,” she said, “you know what kind of man he is; I don’t have to tell you.” I let out a long sigh, cupping my forehead in my palm.

“Look, Ma . . .” I began, but she did not let me finish; it was her dream come true—both listener and audience were worked up to the point where something had to happen, as it did.

“Well . . . he didn’t really try to kill me in the way you think.”

“Oh,” I let out, “thank God for that.”

“But that ain’t all . . . that ain’t all,” she said hastily, as though sensing that she was losing her ground, her audience, her flow and gentle build-up to crescendo.

“Well, what happened then?” I asked with even more exasperation than before. I must have stood up without realising it, and she was quick to take advantage of this and give herself another pause.

“Sit down and listen . . . why don’t you. You’re just like your father’s side of the family . . . always getting excited over nothing.”

I sat down, and I decided that I was not going to say another word . . . not a single word for the rest of my stay. I’d been too excitable—well, I wasn’t going to be any longer, I would wait and wait and wait, and even if it took until doomsday, I would wait that long for her to tell her tale.

“Now listen,” she said, sitting down now across from me, her pot spoon still in hand as she began, “your Uncle Zoltan come running in that yard (she pointed to the yard with her pot spoon) must be three four five month gone. You know how I like to sit down in the backyard under the breadfruit tree when it get hot by two o’clock?” I nodded. “Well, that boy (she always referred to Uncle Zoltan as that boy) come running into my yard like a deer out of season. He see me sitting in me rocker half asleep and he run come and bury he face in my lap. ‘Oh God, Didi . . . I kill a man, and police after me.’ Your father wasn’t home at the time, otherwise I don’t know what would happen. My heart jump! I ask him, ‘Who you kill, boy, why . . . why?’ But he only want me to hide him from the police. Well, what to do? I feel how he heart beating and how he shakin’, so I ask him better he eat something before he faint in the hot sun. Mister man well eat and he well drink and just before five o’clock, you know, just before your father come home, he come and say to me, ‘Didi, I don’t want to bring shame on the family. I have to go to the bush and lay low . . . I have to lay low.’

“‘Suppose they catch you and lock you up?’ I ask he, and he only walkin’ up and down, shaking he head as if he really don’t know what to do. ‘I have to go to the bush and lay low . . . lay low,’ that is all he could say, and he walkin’ up and down, up and down. I had to take one of my heart pills, my heart begin beating so hard too. ‘Didi . . . you could lend me a couple dollars till next month, please God . . . I go pay you back, so help me God.’ That is the exact exact words he say. Well, you know I so frighten, every noise I hear I think that is the police comin’ to lock him up, and then it gettin’ to be five o’clock, I say to myself, if you father come here and catch him, he will hand him over to the police . . . you know what kind of man your father is, I don’t have to tell you . . . brother or no brother, if he really done gone and kill a man, you father will hand him over. Well anyway, to make a long story short, I have a few shillings save up from my market expenses and I give him five dollars. ‘Listen, boy,’ I say to him, ‘if you really in trouble I feel glad that you come to one of the family instead you go to a perfect stranger.’”

She stopped to catch her breath, and I could sense all the old anger and the old fright of the moment rekindling in her veins. “Hm,” she said, and as before I waited while she sat there in front of me, her pot spoon down at her side, her eyes staring blankly into space. “Well, is he a murderer now . . . ? In the old days he used to be just a pleasant jail-bird.” She snapped out of her reverie. “That worthless rogue ain’t kill nobody . . . he just did want to get a few dollars, and is me of all people that he choose to play this trick ’pon.”

I felt that I would explode if I did not burst out in laughter, but I knew that I had to contain myself if she was going to help me to find Uncle Zoltan, and I could not help feeling the irony, the paradox of her emotions. Perhaps if Uncle Zoltan had killed a man she would feel better, at least her pride would not have been injured even if the family name was ruined. But as before, I thought to myself better not confront her with this thought.

“Anyway,” she sighed, “blood thicker than water and I will feel bad if you have to go ’way without seein’ your family on your father’s side.” My mother had thirteen brothers and three sisters. My father had only one brother, Uncle Zoltan, and as long as she could put Uncle Zoltan in that category of being on my father’s side of the family, she was relieved. I could tell from the tone of her voice that a great change had come over her. “I made a few inquiries for you and I find out that he drivin’ a lorry these days bringing fruits and ground provisions to the market from the bush . . . Don’t ask me where he livin’ because since that day he ’fraid to show he face in this house.”

Did he finally persuade his father-in-law to get him that lorry? Did he really kill that man in the old days? Did he really get into trouble that day when he came to mother? From the way she told it, it seemed impossible to fake all that tense fear and anxiety unless he had really done something terrible.

The next morning I went to the Central Market. My mother had sent me to one of the vendors with whom Uncle Zoltan traded and I learnt he was due in from the bush that morning. I tried to find out from the man in the market any number of things about Uncle Zoltan, but I learnt nothing. “Your uncle is a funny kind of man . . . I don’t have to tell you that. If anybody ask him any kind of question, he tell them to mind their own business, and you know what kind of Bad­-John he is, so you leave him alone . . . Look, look . . . look, he comin’ now.”

I turned and saw the burly stocky man with his arms flung out to the sides like a gorilla, his beard and his hair of the same length. As he got closer I could see that the shoes he wore were made of old automobile tires and his trousers were three-quarter length, frayed at the bottom. And I could tell that he must have recognised me; he gave a little jump to one side and his head tipped forward as though he could not believe his own eyes. He threw his arms around me and then, with his powerful hands still on my shoulders, stood back at arms’ length to get a better look at me.

“Boy, you don’t know how you gettin’ to look more like your father every day.” He was being very vain, but subtly so; he too was the image of my father when he was shaved and dressed up, and I could tell that he was very proud of that. And turning me around and around so that he could examine my chest and shoulders, the shape of my head from behind, he said to the vendor, “This is my own blood, you know, my own flesh and blood, man!” The vendor only nodded as though this were a rare occasion when he saw my Uncle Zoltan reacting to anything as a human being.

“Listen, boy,” he said to the vendor, “the lorry outside on George Street . . . better get a couple of your idlers to unload . . . I have to spend this time with my nephew who I ain’t see for years.” And then turning to me, “Come on, man, let we go and fire one in the rum shop.” We were headed for the old Britannia Bar which I remembered well, and as we moved through the streets Uncle Zoltan’s arms, still thrown out, would bang into people, but he moved along unconcerned. I knew that if anyone got banged by his elbows and wanted to take him up on it, he would be quite ready to put them in their place. A few people looked around as they got struck by his arms, but that was all. When we got to the Britannia with its sawdust and its smells of ancient kegs of rum, the bar attender left a little clique he was gossiping with and came rushing over to Uncle Zoltan. “I want you to meet my nephew, man . . . just come down from USA,” and he ordered a nip of rum without taking his eyes off me.

“So how are things up there . . . plenty motor cars . . . plenty people?”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s a big country . . .”

“I hear that everything work by machine up there . . . You could go into a restaurant and put your money in hole and food come out?”

“Yes,” I said, “there are places like that, and . . .” I had the feeling that he was getting tense and anxious about something and he simply wanted to get these preliminaries out of the way.

“Listen, boy . . . you make any money up there?” he finally asked, facing me squarely. I hardly knew what to say. I had a few hundred, and the exchange was about two-to-one so I felt rich and expansive. I nodded grandly. He suddenly changed his tone of voice; it was now tuned down to a whisper. The bar attender had placed our drinks on the counter and disappeared. Uncle Zoltan turned his head slowly and suspiciously around as if to make sure that he was out of earshot, and he must have caught my eyes and the curiosity in them, then he changed his tone again and became loud. He raised his glass filled with the amber rum, and not exactly proposing a toast to both of us but more a toast to the tall glass of rum which he had poured himself, he pronounced wildly, “Here’s to those that wish us well . . . may the rest of them be damned in hell.” I hardly had my glass to my lips when Uncle Zoltan poured the powerful rum down his gullet and wiped his mouth with the back of his hands. His body gave a quick little shiver as though his organism was jolted by the sudden impact of a crude blow, and then he smiled broadly and clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Picture of your father, boy . . . you is the picture of your father . . . it make me happy to see that you don’t look like the other side of the family.”

I suddenly thought all over again how strange life was. My father, who was older than Uncle Zoltan, treated him with a kind of firm, strict, clipped tone—it was often one of admonition—and for the first time in my life I realised that if Uncle Zoltan feared no one or respected no one else in this world, not even God, he was afraid of my father. He was always docile and fawning whenever he spoke to my father, or rather when my father spoke to him, because it was always a stern kind of lecturing to Uncle Zoltan—how he should mend his ways, how my father had heard through the grapevine what a low type he was, how little ambition he had, etc. etc. . . . And Uncle Zoltan, in his own way and in his own world, treated all the people he came in contact with with the same kind of harsh clipped words of condemnation for which they all respected him. I was a little surprised to find that he was reacting to me in pretty much the same way that he reacted to my father, and I wondered if he sensed this. He had poured a second shot as tall as the first, but now he was savouring it. He sipped this one slowly and he began to get all furtive and cagey; each time he had a sip of rum he looked over his shoulder to make sure that he was not being watched or followed or overheard. He also developed a sud­den twitch of the arm with each sip of rum as though he were warding off a sudden blow; his eyes would twitch and again he would turn his head around ever so slowly. I thought that any moment now he would come right out and ask me whether anyone was listening to us or staring at us, but he didn’t, he only became more and more agitated.

“Listen, man . . .” he finally said, “I am in a jam!”

“What kind of jam?” I asked.

He took another sip of rum and clenched his teeth together. The bar attender came strolling along to see if there was anything we needed and Uncle Zoltan again changed his tone. He slapped me on the shoulder, grasped me by the shoulder and literally rocked me back and forth.

“So, man . . . what you doin’ up there in the USA?” And not being able to answer his question as quickly as he was ready with another, he went on again. “Listen, man . . . I want you to carry a message for me when you go back to the USA. It have a fellar who write a book called She. I want you to tell him that I read it and is the biggest book I ever read . . . You think that you could carry this message for me?”

I nodded half-heartedly. I had the impression that the book was written by an Englishman and that he was no longer alive, nor had he ever lived in the States, and I also wondered just where and how one would go about finding such a person. Uncle Zoltan made it sound as though any place in the world was after all not too different from Trinidad and all one had to do was ask around. Just as I had found him, surely I could get word from the grapevine of anyone’s whereabouts.

“I’ll tell him,” I said. I thought that the rum was going to my head too. The heat was unbearable; I had become spoilt by a temperate climate, air-conditioned movies where you could escape the worst of the summer, and at least the water in the taps of the most wretched tenements in New York was cold if you needed a drink. Everything died fast in the tropics, not just human bodies, but plants and insects and woodlice and mosquitoes. They all had their glorious colourful fling for a day, but the heat never let up and the water in the tap never cooled off and the frenzy of life was like a wound-up toy; it flirted, flitted and paraded in its glorious colours and then it died fast, and whether it was the weather or the rum, I thought about how simple it would be to go to the New York Public Library, look up something like a writers directory, find the man who wrote She, call him up on the phone and say, “Look . . . I’ve just come back from Trinidad and I ran into this uncle of mine who leads one of the most isolated and curious kind of lives, and he has read your book and he wanted me simply to get in touch with you and tell you what a wonderful book you’ve written and how much it has done for his life.”

But as soon as the bar attender looked at our drinks and was sure that we did not need anything else and wandered away, Uncle Zoltan changed his tone again. He was once more furtive and suspicious as though every word he had to say was to be in total secrecy. He took a sip of rum, gargled it about in his mouth, and clamped his eyes shut as he swallowed hard. “You come at the right time, man . . . it look as if my guardian angel send you.” Just as he had scrutinised me in the market, I now looked carefully at him; he seemed a little bit older, his teeth were blacker than I had remembered and he had a small bump on his forehead just below the hair line, no doubt from butting someone with his head. I remembered how he fought—hands, feet, head—all came into play automatically. I could never understand how he managed to keep that finely shaped nose of his after the innumerable brawls he had been in.

He still looked over his shoulder from time to time to make sure that no one was listening, and his arm jerked in the same short spasms as if he was instinctively warding off blows from an unseen opponent. He must have noticed my concern and he pointed to the bump on his head. “You know how I get this?” he asked, but it was more of a statement than a question; he simply nodded as though there was some tacit understanding between us, a secret which we both knew, and although he did not explain, it was to be part of an even deeper and darker secret which came moments later. He grabbed me by the shoulder and drew me close to him so that he could almost whisper in my ear. “Listen, man . . . I need a few dollars.”

I reached for my billfold, and he craned his neck again to make sure no one was watching, then he peered at the bills as I opened it up. “About how much do you need . . . what kind of jam are you in?”

“Man . . .” he shook his head with such pathos and regret, “this is just between you and me . . . I hope that you don’t mention a word to the family . . . you know how they like to worry about things.” I nodded, waiting with the open billfold in my hand to hear how much he thought he needed, but he simply said, “I leave it up to you . . . Whatever you can spare.” He must have seen the question on my face. I didn’t know what kind of jam he was in or how much I should give him. He finally drew me close to him and grated out in tense whispers, “I kill a man . . .” He stood me at arms’ length to examine the shock on my face. “I kill a man and police after me. I have to go to the bush and lay low . . . lay low!”

After I gave him a five, and watched him leave the Britannia Bar, he turned once to say, “Just between you and me . . . Remember, not a word to the family.”

And I waved out to him as he disappeared in the crowds of the market shoppers.