“I was thinking of myself. I intended no rebuke to you. I am a military man. That has been my ambition since childhood. My last active service was in Gibraltar. That was twenty years ago. I have been becalmed in these parts for ten years. I still think of myself as a military man, still think I have a future. But really I no longer know what I’m doing. They put you in a place called Government House and they call you the governor, but you’re really only a jailer for these planters. I would much rather be with you. There, General. I’ve said what’s been on my mind these many months. I have longed for this meeting. For the last four months I have been learning Spanish. Learning Spanish one hour a day, and for the last year or two I’ve been dreaming of an elegant society, with fine houses and polished floors and beautiful Spanish ladies, where I might one day practise this Spanish. I have not seen action recently. But I could be on your staff. I could smooth things for you with our admirals and generals. I know many of them. I know their characters. I would know the words to use. The correct words are important with military people. That could be of value to you.”
It grew dark, and the rain came again beating on the ground outside and the roof and making conversation difficult while the first onrush lasted.
Hislop said, “This is the kind of weather that can carry you off. Make you a banquet for the blue crabs, as they say here. Put on a jacket and you start sweating. Take it off and you shiver. After ten years in these parts my health has broken down. I dream of a June day in England. But to get to England in June a lot of planning is necessary. You have to be in Tortola in the Virgin Islands by March, for the convoys. I don’t want to land in England in November.”
“Caracas will be better for you. The seasons don’t matter there.”
“General.”
“The Caracas valley is known as the land of eternal spring. The flowers have a deeper hue and the fruit are sweeter and bigger.”
Miranda showed the anonymous letter that Hislop said had been thrown into the sentry-box. The seal was still unbroken. He put the letter to one side and said, “I thought it would be better to read it in your presence. Not now. A little later.”
Hislop was moved. He said, “General.”
The servants began to bring in the dinner, stamping with bare feet on the solid planks, bringing with them a smell of rain and leaf-mould, woodsmoke and charcoal fumes, from the kitchen hut Miranda had seen.
Hislop said, “No banquet, General. It’s like living on a ship here. We’ve got twenty thousand Negroes working on the plantations from five in the morning to six in the evening, six days a week. But the scarcest thing here is food. All they do on the plantations is cocoa and cotton and sugar-cane and coffee. The Negroes in their free time grow some ground provisions, cassava, yams, sweet potatoes. But they’re not allowed to sell anything. The peons — the ’pagnols, as they call them here — bring in a little wild meat from the forest sometimes, and some of the free people of colour sell a little poultry when they have it. But we’re nearly always close to a famine. Nearly everything we eat here is smoked or salted and comes in a box from Canada or the United States. Beef, mackerel, salmon, cod, herring. Even tobacco comes in a box. Butter is orange-red with salt and costs six shillings a pound. No one thinks of churning it locally.”
“You don’t have to apologize, General. I know this food. I’m at home, remember. What’s happening in your grounds? Do those men know what they’re doing?”
“I doubt it. As a military man you must know that if you can’t gauge what a group of men are doing, it is because they themselves don’t know. They’re just doing as they’re told. We’re trying to make the land slope away from the hills, to take off the flood water. At the same time we’re digging in drainage trenches, with rubble at the bottom. It should have been done years ago, when they made this house Government House. You dig a ditch, you put in the rubble, and then you cover it up. It’s to prevent water stagnating. As soon as water stagnates here you get mosquitoes. If you get mosquitoes, you can’t live here. I tell the commandeur of the gang what to do, and he pretends he knows, but he doesn’t really know why I am asking him to bury stones. Plantation people would have some idea, but these new Negroes know nothing about anything. I don’t think they even know that they’re working, doing something called work. They probably just think they’re being punished. These Negroes believe that during the day they’re in hell. Literally. Did you know that? A strange kind of hell, where it doesn’t matter what they do or what is done to them. When the sun goes down the real world begins for them. Everything changes then. As soon as night falls, and you know that in these parts night comes in five minutes, things balance out for them. We become ghosts. They become kings and queens and dauphins and grand judges. They wear the crowns and have the whips. That’s what their sorcerers tell them. And it’s what they believe. It doesn’t matter what you do to them or how much you try to break their spirit. They believe that in the night the power is theirs. It was one of the things that came out at an enquiry we had earlier this year. You live in a place for ten years, you think you know it, and then you find out that all the time you’ve been standing on quicksand.”
“In Venezuela we always knew that the Negroes liked dressing up and playing games. They were great mockers. I don’t remember anyone thinking of holding an inquiry into it.”
“We had to. I don’t know whether they told you in Barbados, but last December we had a scare here. We were very close to a full-scale rebellion. They were all in it.” He jerked his chin towards the servants. “Everybody’s Negroes were in it, whether they belonged to white people or people of colour. It had been building up over some years, under our noses, and we didn’t know. One day they were going to kill all the white people. And then, when there was only one colour — that was the way they talked at the enquiry — they were going to go to church to take communion and then they were going to eat pork and dance. That was as far as they had thought in three years. They were going to eat pork and dance and live happily ever after. You might say it’s a game, but they were going to kill people and burn the houses and fields. Before, I never looked at a Negro. You know what I mean. I don’t want to look now, but I find I do all the time. And I am not sure what I am seeing. Anyway, in a month or two all this is going to change. These people in the grounds will go to the galleys and proper public works, and other people will be working on the grounds here. No one here knows as yet. We have to keep it secret. We are getting some Chinese.”
“From China?”
“Not strictly. From India, from Calcutta. But they’re going to be the first Chinese ever in this part of the world. It was such a desolation around Government House when I came here three years ago. I thought we should have a botanical garden. They have them in the other islands. It isn’t something the Negroes know about, and the planters wouldn’t like it anyway. They don’t want Negroes to do any agricultural work away from the estates. I wrote to London about the Chinese, and the wheels slowly began to turn. It’s all taken nearly two years. The East India Company recruited the Chinese in Calcutta. You won’t be here when they arrive, and I must say that I have lost interest. Mi cama aquí …”
“General!”
“Let me practise my Spanish, General. Mi cama aquí …”
“My bed here … Your accent is very good.”
“… no ha sido …”