Yanni replied without intonation, only fact. “He’s about twenty-one, five foot eight, but quite heavyset, wearing a white-and-blue University of Toronto jacket. And he’s blond... and white.” Persaud jerked at the last. “Maybe he’s just catatonic. Or in shock. All he does is stare up at me; at this window. Maybe he needs a doctor.”
Meera squeezed Persaud’s hand, then stood up. “Yanni,” she said, “it’s time we went to work. Let’s send for a wheelchair to take Mr. Persaud back to Palliative, then you and I had better report to Emergency. You think?”
Yanni detached himself from the window and scratched his head. “Sure, M. Let’s go.”
“Wait!” Persaud bellowed. “Listen! All me need is ten minute. Just listen a m’story fo’ ten minute, then you can do what the hell you want fo’ do. Yahhhm go come before ten minute. Just listen a m’story, na. I got fo’ tell somebody before me dead, or Kali go cuss m’soul.” He stared at the two of them for a good long couple of heartbeats. “You want she fo’ cuss m’soul? No? Good. Come listen, na.”
Yanni made an odd dismissive noise and returned to his post by the window, voyeuristically surveying the crowd. Sheepishly, Meera moved back to Persaud’s side, an imploring look in her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Tell me. But then we have to take you back to your own room.”
And Manoj Persaud launched into his tale...
It was years before Guyana had obtained its political independence from Britain. The decades that had passed of slavery for the blacks, of near genocide for the natives, and of indentured service for the Indians had bred a thirst for release from the chains of colonial rule. With each layer of Europeanness painted atop this weather-beaten Asian and African tapestry came a strengthening of its foreign matte, a calling for connections to lives and philosophies left centuries and fathoms away. African animism, sporadic puddles of voodoo, the naturalistic magics of the scattered native tribes, and the myriad faiths smuggled from India all found fertile soil in this wet chasm of discontent. Amongst the Indian immigrants, the cult of Kali was revived and flourished.
In the telling of the tale, Persaud gurgled and his words took on a distant tenor. “Goddess Kali,” he whispered. “Omnipotent power absolute. She be the origin of cosmos and spirit. Deity of time, eternity and source of all energies. Kali bless us and we triumph over evil, destroy rogues and knaves, expel inauspicious souls, and repel demons.” He focused on Meera again, slowly intoning, “She be knowledge. She be bliss.”
Meera felt the dying man’s pulse again, worried for his stress. She opened her mouth to speak, but Persaud covered it with his quivering hand. “Let me finish, na. You got fo’ undahstand. The white man, he afeared o’ Kali. He think she be demonic, wit’ blood and scariness. But dat is fo’ he. Kali is we mama. She be the female face of God, the angry mama who does protect she pickney, she children. We is she children. It is — what you say? — a metaphor. We weak before the white man, so we need one strong image of we mama fo’ protection. You see?”
Meera nodded. And Persaud continued his narration...
Manoj Persaud had been a priest at the temple of Kali, where scores of devotees came weekly, sometimes daily, to offer obeisance to the mother goddess. In exchange, they received stable employment, healthy children, enough food to last the month, or whatever else it was they prayed for. It was Persaud who interpreted the omens and prodigies, who interceded between mortals and goddess. It was Persaud who interpreted the lost ways of obscure India to the subcontinent’s forgotten and wretched Caribbean progency.
But tensions were mounting as demands for political independence grew louder on the streets, in the newspapers, the rum shops, and even within the temples. “And one day,” Persaud said, “dem came fo’ talk wit’ me.” Six men they were, regular devotees of Kali, some even Persaud’s relatives. They abased themselves before the priest and asked for a special puja, a divine way or ceremony, for Kali to guarantee and accelerate Guyana’s impending independence.
“I tell dem fo’ pray and fo’ make sacrifice to Kali, like dem always do, wit’ coins, food, and fasting,” Persaud said, a sense of both sadness and horror growing behind his eyes. “But dem say dem want something extra. Something more. Fo’ Kali. Fo’ big big magic.”
The younger Persaud had watched his devotees with growing unease, as the full extent of their petition came to be understood. For a boon of this magnitude, one affecting a whole nation of people, the old ways would have required a human sacrifice. But modern times employed modern methods, with pumpkins standing in for human heads; or the use of human effigies constructed of flour and mud, slashed with razor-sharp machetes. Persaud presented these tamer options to his petitioners.
“But dem know the magic,” he said with growing weariness. “Dem know the sacrifice, how the sacrifice must be aware. It must know it own fate and not be acting to stop the cutlass.” Only then would the magic work, when the ultimate unseemly price had been paid. Only then would Kali grant them their wish.
Meera grew pale with the unfolding of the tale. Like a journey taken on a cloudy morning, its horrifying destination was rapidly becoming clearer as more steps were taken. Persaud’s face was pleading, almost desperate with apology. “No,” he said. “I not want fo’ do dat! I tell dem. Dis pandit does not hold wit’ dem old ways!”
But he had to tell them something. If he just sent them away, who knew what atrocity they would enact? Perhaps they would kidnap some poor fool and murder him sloppily in their own homemade Kali puja, accomplishing nothing except creating misery for all involved — and offending God in every way possible.
“So I tell dem,” Persaud said. “I tell dem: It must be a white child. Dem must kill one white child.” He sat back against the wall, grinding his gums, waiting for Meera to react. But there was only silence.
Meera regarded him with a strange detachment, struggling to balance horror with pity and disgust. She felt herself slide backwards, her hands near her face.
Persaud leaned forward again. “Undahstand! You got fo’ undahstand! Where dem stupid boys go find one white child? We never see no white pickney. Only white man wit’ he gun, he whip, and he stick. Where dem skinny brown village boys go get one white child? I been tryin’ fo’ save dem, see? I been tryin’ fo’ prevent dem doin’ some damn stupidness!”
Persaud’s eyes exploded into tears. They rushed like torrents down his cheeks and into the sides of his huffing mouth. His breathing was shallow and forced, wheezing at times between bouts of fitful, pathetic wailing.
“I been tryin’ fo’ mek dem task impossible,” he whispered into the tissues Meera was using to wipe his face.
“But it wasn’t impossible,” Meera asked cautiously. “Was it?”
At that, Persaud reached into the front pocket of his pajama pants and pulled out a crumpled, yellowed piece of newsprint. Meera took it and unfolded it. On the top it read, Stabroek News, Georgetown, Guyana. The date was 1961. It was a story about the disappearance of the baby daughter of the overseer of a sugar cane plantation in rural Guyana. Her name was Helen and her surname was seemingly Dutch. There was no photo, but Meera assumed the girl was white.
“My God,” she said aloud. “They found one.” Persaud nodded and sobbed. “But how can you be sure they killed her? Or that they were the ones who killed her?”
Persaud laid back against the headboard of the bed, spent. His face glistened with tears and sweat and his head now resembled a desiccated brown skull. He seemed to be aging before Meera’s very eyes. Unexpectedly, he smiled in that dejected but resigned way that the elderly sometimes do. “I know,” he said, “because dem bring me she body. Dem wanted fo’ know if it been done right, according to the old ways.” He breathed sporadically now. “And I told dem yes. Yes, it been done good, according to dem damn old ways. Yes.”