They pick their way along the pavement toward the grungy rumshop.
“The bands nowadays have security, traveling toilet, AC lounge-room on de truck — you have to pay for all dat…”
Only a few of the ole boys there but well lubricated, so they make up in volume for the half-empty table. The overdone topic — Trini women is the best in the world — slurs, shouted over Roaring Lion’s “Papa Choonks.” They take no notice of Sam’s new friends and Ata’s glad for that as they hover, almost on the pavement.
The choonkuloonks powder-puff squeezy tune is the best, new but a classic already. Ata relaxes with her last drink, half listening to the conversation and playing cool in the town-night scene she rarely gets to see. Fraser is in his element, tired, but widened eyes and a tentative smile showing how much he’s trying to absorb all he can. He sways a little, out of rhythm, and Sammy insists he sit. One ole boy swipes a stool for Fraser and almost falls off his.
Sammy sits too, shaking his head with Fraser — how these ole fellas so excity and enjoying theyself so much over rum and old songs. He glad the one who like to lash the table loud not here right now. The racket, eh — they clashing with the music playing. And the image of the big ugly horner-man, creeping, coming to commit adultery, the mother hushing him, and the child pointing, Mama look a boo-boo, had them good.
Fraser smiles serene.
Ata dancing slight by the door, gazing at a madwoman searching for something in the drain.
“But Bomber! Bomber come with the one, “Foolish People,” with Ras and Choonkie. Yuh rememba? She charging for a kiss and giving he bow-wow to eat. Rememba?”
“When he akse what is dat, she bawl, meow — he say what! From now I eating cat.” They squeal and hoot, remembering well. Sammy and his friends don’t know this one and the ole boys start talking all at once, clamoring to explain more of the song. Fresh, listening blood.
“Ah, but where does the name ‘calypso’ come from?” Fraser eventually dares ask. He knows there’s no definitive answer.
The barrage of conflicting answers jumble out, just as one of his waves of tiredness sweeps over him, a strong one.
Carib cariso and French carrousseaux, Spanish/Venezuelan caliso and the various meanings of joyous song, drinking party, festivity, topical song. Each arguing, then admitting there wasn’t one source, agreeing soundly that the West African kaiso is not to be disputed.
Fraser’s impressed. And relieved, down to his soul, that he could find this and still be impressed.
Ata thinks, his Terence would enjoy this too. This is the stuff he and other returnees and intellectuals romanticize. They write theses about this, and would be tickled, and more attentive than Fraser is now, behaving like foreign researchers even though they’re local. Anthropologists, sociologists, linguist, orthographist, philologist, and every other “-ist” kind of heaven here, especially around Carnival time.
The madwoman has moved to the other side of the street and is scouring along the curb there. Suddenly, a car lurches round the corner and swerves crazy. Green light shines from under the car, and scratchy treble noise, men’s arms and faces, blare from it. A bottle pelts out from the car, aimed at the woman, misses, catching the pavement just by her foot. Laughter and red blinking lights on the rear spoiler, swoops and disappears.
“… tha’s why they end up calling a good calypso kaiso.”
“Who tell you dat? You mad. I know it have good calypso, and it have good kaiso, and the both is the same t’ing.”
“Shu’ yuh mouth, nuh, boy.”
“But allyou know the Greek meaning of calypso too?” Fraser intervenes.
“Of course, somet’ing with a island…”
Ata thinks they should be going, enough is enough. Fraser’s looking weak but he is set. “The nymph, who imprisoned Odysseus on her island—”
“Da is Trinidad, de island.”
“—to make him her immortal husband. Daughter of the Titan Atlas—”
“Ent’ nymphs does have plenty sex?” Sammy wants to show off his learning too. “This man here have a lot’a knowledge about book things and religions, and so on,” he boasts.
“Nymphymaniac, that is dem Trini women in true.”
“Where? They only playing so, is only trick they tricking man, to mamaguy you. If you have money, they want to married.”
Another rounds sets off, about Maestro’s “Mr. Trinidadian” and how he love mamaguy, ’cause “Trinis don’ know what dey want…”
Fraser gets up and joins Ata, chipping slowly side to side, “I want a man, to hold on in de parrr-ty. Somebody to rub up … and everyt’ing will be irie, irie … shake yuh dingaling…”
Just so — Fraser falling to the ground. Ata grabs him and Sam rush in like lightning but he reaches the pavement. Ata’s heart’s in her mouth as she calls his name, checking … eyes not opening but … a mumble, as all the ole boys helping to pull him up, and bundle him into Sammy’s car.
They speed off to the private hospital. Ata on the mobile, to his doctor.
THIS IS THE BLOODY THING he couldn’t understand. Why go through all of that, why bother, when it’s just a show? Pierre had come in to work in the afternoon, after helping Ata and Helen take Fraser home from the hospital. It was a relapse from overdoing himself. His toxicity levels were a little high. Pierre guessed he must be eating whatever he felt like, now he’s feeling better. What irresponsibility. And Ata and the damned jump-up nonsense.
The draft report of the MDG launch is on his desk for review and comments. The whole thing is a farce. This Trinidad office is a farce. He remembers thinking that this would be an easy post — the jokes by other new arrivals about what a piece of cake it is, to be in a place like this for a change. The beaches, sailing, no wars or hordes of starving children, a minuscule population. He used to like to ask about the numbers, in meetings, just to remind others of the scale that their percentages blow out of proportion. What a joke. And now, because of the evangelical U.S. embassy, IOM setting up office too. What trafficking? Drugs, yes, but … even when there’s outright corruption, can the U.N. do anything?
Pierre drops the stupid report back onto his desk. Mandated to work with governments. That is the part that eats him up and makes him become a smaller man, as technical adviser with UNDP. The bureau-pusher feeling, of dealing notes-for-the-record documents and reports, in exchange for “accountability.” The well-educated Trinis had learned the language quick enough. Well-crafted proposals were flowing in, wheelers flocking to convince that they can take them to the promised land. Yes, we are the new pirates, Pierre thinks, what the hell am I still doing in this job? The Millennium Development Goals, with the imaginary eight pillars of … must be the promised gold. Or is it the other way around? Them feeding us plans of action and visions, mapping the way to this fantasy millennium, and we pay the pirates in return.
As Pierre leafs through the pages absentmindedly he knows, the sham of it all is ludicrous. The amount of guilt money actually filtering through to “direct beneficiaries” or real results in projects was negligible, in the face of what it cost to keep them all employed here. A shame. A trapped-in kind of shame, to realize, at this point in his career. A setup so very like this tragic-comic, dangerous island he’s stuck on. A waste.