The Valley of Cocoa

by Michael Anthony

Mayaro

(Originally published in 1961)

There was not much in the valley of cocoa. Just the estate and our drying-houses, and our living-house. And the wriggling little river that passed through.

And, of course, the labourers. But they didn’t ever seem to speak to anyone. Always they worked silently from sunrise to evening. Only Wills was different. He was friendly, and he knew lots of other things besides things about cocoa and drying-houses.

And he knew Port of Spain. He knew it inside out, he said. Every day after work he would sit down on the log with me and would tell of the wonderful place.

As he spoke his eyes would glow with longing. The longing to be in that world which he said was part of him. And sometimes I knew pain. For Wills had made the city grow in me, and I knew longing, too.

Never had I been out of the valley of cocoa. Father was only concerned about his plantation, and nothing else. He was dedicated to wealth and prosperity, and every year the cocoa yielded more and more. So he grew busier and busier, building, experimenting, planning for record returns. Everything needed out of the valley was handled by Wills—for people who knew Port of Spain could handle anything. Business progressed. The valley grew greener with cocoa, and the drying-houses were so full that the woodmen were always felling timber to build more.

Wills, who one day had just returned from ordering new machinery in Port of Spain, sat talking with me. The sun had not long gone down but already it was dusk. Wills said it was never so in Port of Spain. Port of Spain was always bright. He said as soon as the sun went down the whole city was lit by electric lamps, and you could hardly tell the difference between night and day. And he explained all about those lamps which he said hung from poles, and from the houses that lined the million streets.

It was thick night when we stopped talking and got up. In the darkness Wills walked straight on to a tree, and he swore, and said, By Jove—if that it could have happened to him in Port of Spain! He said one of those days I’d go there, when I got big, and I’d see for myself, and I’d never want to come back to the valley again.

* * *

The machinery arrived soon afterwards. It came in a shining new van, and the name of the company was spelt in large letters on the sides of the van. The driver was a bright-looking man and when the van stopped he jumped out and laughed and called, “Hey, there!”

Wills and Father went down to meet him and I eased up behind them. I was thrilled. It was not every day that strangers came to the valley.

Father looked worried as he spoke to the man about payments. He complained that business wasn’t doing well and the machinery was so expensive. But the man was laughing all the time, and said who cared about payments when Father had all the time in the world to pay. Father was puzzled, and the man said, yes, Father could pay instalments. Wills said it was true, that’s what they did in Port of Spain. The man made Father sign up for instalments and while Father signed, the man pulled at my chin and said, “Hi!”

Father was paying the first instalment. The man stretched his hands for the money and without counting it he put it into his pocket. Every time my eyes caught his he winked.

“Hi!” he said softly.

I twined round Father’s legs.

“Bashful,” he said, “bashful,” and he tugged at the seat of my pants. I couldn’t help laughing.

He opened the door of the van and the next moment he was beside me. He was smiling and dangling a bright coloured packet. I held on to Father’s legs. Then I felt something slide into my pocket. I looked up. “Like sweets?” the man said. I turned away and grinned.

From about my father’s legs I watched him. He pulled out a red packet of cigarettes. He passed the cigarettes to Father, then to Wills, and as he lit theirs and lit himself one, he seemed to be taken up with the estate below.

“All yours?” he asked after a while.

Father nodded.

He shook his head approvingly. “Nice—nice, old man!”

The evening was beginning to darken and the man looked at his watch and said it was getting late and he’d better start burning the gas. Father said true, because Port of Spain was so far, and the country roads were bad enough. The man claimed there were worse roads in some parts of Port of Spain. He laughed and said, “What’s a van anyway, only a lot of old iron.” Father and Wills laughed heartily at this, while the man turned a silver key and started the van. Then he said, well cheerio, cheerio, and if anything went wrong with the machine he’d hear from us.

The days that followed were filled with dream. I continually saw the grand city, and the bright, laughing man. Port of Spain, I kept thinking. Port of Spain! I imagined myself among the tall, red houses, the maze of streets, the bright cars and the vans darting to and fro; the trams, the trains, the buses; the thousands of people everywhere. And always I heard the voice. “Hi!”—it kept sailing back to me. And every time I heard it I smiled.

Months passed, and more and more I grew fed up with the valley. I felt a certain resentment growing inside me. Resentment for everything around. For Father, for the silly labourers; even for Wills. For the cocoa trees. For the hills that imprisoned me night and day. I grew sullen and sick and miserable, tired of it all. I even wished for Father’s fears to come true. Witchbroom! I wished witchbroom would come and destroy the cocoa and so chase Father from this dreary place.

* * *

As expected, the machinery soon went wrong. It wouldn’t work. Wills had to rush to Port of Spain to get the man.

I waited anxiously towards the end of that evening, and when in the dusk I saw the van speeding between the trees I nearly jumped from sheer gladness.

From the hill Father shouted saying he didn’t know what was wrong but the machine wouldn’t start. The man said all right and he boyishly ran up to the hill to the house. He stopped and tugged at me and I twined round Father’s legs. The man tickled me and we both laughed aloud. Then he gave me sweets in a blue and white packet, and he said he’d better go and see to the machine because the machine was lazy and didn’t want to work.

He tried to tickle me again. I jumped away and we laughed, and Father and Wills and he went to the shed. They had not been there five minutes when I heard the machine start again.

* * *

The labourers had changed a little. They had become somewhat fascinated by the new machine. It seemed they sometimes stole chances to operate it, for the machine went wrong quite a number of times afterwards. And so, happily, the man often came to us.

In time Father and he became great friends. He gave Father all the hints about cocoa prices in the city and about when to sell and who to sell to. He knew all the good dealers and all the scamps, he said.

He knew all the latest measures taken to fight cocoa diseases and he told Father what they did in West Africa, and what they did here and what they did there, to fight this, that, and the other disease.

With his help Father did better than ever. And he was so pleased that he asked the man to spend a Sunday with us.

“Sure!” the man agreed. And I ran out then, and made two happy somersaults on the grass.

* * *

That Sunday, when the man arrived, I was down the other side of the hill grazing the goats. The voice had boomed down towards me.

“Kenneth!”

I turned and looked round. Then I dropped the ropes and ran excitedly up the hill. “Coming!” I kept saying. “Coming!” When I got there the big arms swept me up and threw me up in the air and caught me.

Directly Father called us in to breakfast and afterwards the man put shorts on and we went out into the fresh air. The whole valley of cocoa nestled in the distance below us. The man watched like one under a spell.

“Beautiful!” he whispered, shaking his head. “Beautiful!”

“And the river,” I said. Strange! I had hardly noticed how pretty the river was.

“Yes,” the man answered. “Yellow, eh?”

I grinned.

“The water good?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Sure, sure?”

“Sure, sure,” I said.

“Well, come on!” He took me by the hand and we hastened into the house.

The next moment we were running down the hill towards the river, the man in bathing trunks and me with my pants in my hand and sun all over me. We reached the banks and I showed where the water was shallow and where it was deep, and the man plunged into the deep part. He came to the surface again, laughing and saying how nice the water was. He said there was no such river in Port of Spain. He told me to get on his back, and he swam upstream and down with me and then he put me down in the shallow part. Then he soaped my body and bathed me, and when I was rinsed we went and sat a little on the bank.

He sat looking around at the trees and up at the hill. I looked, too, at the view. The cocoa trees seemed greener than I ever remembered seeing them, and the immortelles which stood between the cocoa, for shade, were like great giants, their blooms reddening the sky.

I looked up at him. We smiled.

Quietly, then, he talked of the city. He told me the city was lovely, too, but in a different way. Not like it was here. He said I must see the city one of these days. Everything there was busy. The cars and buses flashed by, and people hurried into the shops, and out of the shops and everywhere. He said he liked the city. It had shops, stores, hotels, hospitals, post offices, schools—everything. Everything that made life easy. But sometimes he grew tired, he said, of the hustle and bustle and nowhere to turn for peace. He said he liked it here, quiet and nice. As life was meant to be. Then his eyes wandered off to the green cocoa again, and the immortelles, and here at the river, and up again to our house on the hill.

And he smiled sadly and said that he wished he was Father to be living here.

We went back into the water for some time. Afterwards the man dried my skin, and his, and we went up to the house.

After we had eaten, Father took us into the cocoa field.

It was quiet there between the trees. The dried brown leaves underfoot, together with the ripening cocoa, put a healthy fragrance in the air.

It was strange being so near those trees. Before I had only known they were there and had watched them from the house, but now I was right in the middle of them, and touching them.

We passed under immortelle trees. The ground beneath the trees was red with dropped flowers and the man picked up the loveliest of the flowers and gave them to me. Father broke a cocoa pod, and we sucked the seeds and juicy pulp, and really, the young cocoa was as sweet as Wills had told me. The man sucked his seeds dry and looked as if he wanted more, so I laughed. And Father, watching from the corner of his eyes, understood, and said, “Let’s look for a nice ripe cocoa.”

* * *

It was already evening when we took the path out. Father and the young man were talking and I heard Father ask him what he thought of the place.

“Great, Mr. Browne,” he answered. “Mr. Browne, it’s great, I’m telling you!”

Later, late that night, I eased up from the bed. I unlatched the window and quietly shifted the curtain from one side.

The valley lay quietly below. The cocoa leaves seemed to be playing with the moonlight and the immortelles stood there, looking tall and lonely and rapt in peace. From the shadows the moonlight spread right across the river and up the hill.

“Beautiful . . . !” the voice sailed back to my mind. And I wondered where he was now, if he was already in Port of Spain. He had been sorry to leave. He had said this was one of the happiest days he had known. I had heard him telling Father how he liked the valley so much and how much he liked the little boy. I had cried then.

And now it swept back to my mind—what he had told Father just as he was leaving. He had said, “Mr. Browne, don’t be afraid for witchbroom. Not a thing will happen. Just you use that spray—you know—and everything will be all right.”

Quickly then I drew the curtains and latched the window. And I squeezed the pillow to me, for joy.