Caribbean (116 page)

As the first non-white member of The Club, Bart paid his dues regularly but never imposed himself on the membership except in those cases when as police chief he had to entertain dignitaries from
other islands. Then he appeared neatly dressed in his quasimilitary uniform, introduced his guests to any who were in the bar, and had dinner quietly in a corner where he could discuss Caribbean problems in carefully modulated tones.

At Bart’s death, The Club sent an official delegation of seven to his funeral, and in the elegies they spoke of him proudly as their first member of color and a man who had served both The Club and the island with distinction. His son Thomas, the present police chief, now called Commissioner, inherited his sensible attitudes toward relations between the races, and had passed them on to his children. Two days earlier, when his daughter had informed him that she planned to join the discussion group on negritude, he said: “Fine. Your grandfather wrestled with the problem when he lived in a Crown Colony with its rigid attitudes, and he taught me how to handle it in these years of independence. Your job is to be prepared for the future, for whatever changes are coming.”

As Wrentham reflected on these matters while eating his supper alone, Sally was immersed in a tense meeting of her group, some sixteen of the brightest young officeholders, all brown or black, who were discussing the significance of a powerful book on the subject of negritude written by a fellow Caribbean, Frantz Fanon of Martinique. His great book,
Les Damnés de la Terre
, had been published in English under various titles, but the copy which the leader of tonight’s discussion had acquired was called
The Wretched of the Earth
, and its mind-shattering call for social change had considerable application to black islands like All Saints.

But when the animated discussion was at its height a young brown woman named Laura Shaughnessy who worked in the governor general’s office appeared belatedly, bringing with her the young white Englishman who had come out from London seven years ago as economic adviser to the island government. Some of the discussion group were disturbed that a white official had been inserted into their group, for they feared his presence might inhibit the free flow of ideas, but the young woman who had brought him allayed their fears: “This is Harry Keeler. You’ve seen him about the halls. I invited him because he had been a British official in Algiers during the troubles and witnessed the economic and social data on which Fanon based many of his concepts.”

After that introduction, Keeler made a brief statement about his experiences in Algeria and Tunis during the anticolonial revolutions, and then submitted himself to questioning. He could see in the dark faces of his audience their intense interest in his generalizations, so he refused to water down or in any way soften his conclusions: “Negritude is a powerful unifying force when fighting to gain independence, but I doubt it provides much effective guidance when it comes to governing the territory you’ve won.” When he was hammered on this conclusion, which most of his listeners did not want to hear, he stuck to his guns and reiterated his message that whereas Frantz Fanon would have been an admirable guide to browns and blacks of All Saints fifteen years ago, what they needed now was an understanding of how General Motors and Mitsubishi operated: “When your Caribbean islands rejected federation in 1962, I wept. It was your chance to build a viable union of all the big and little English-speaking islands, and you frittered it away. Problem now is to evolve some sensible alternative.”

When this evoked a storm of comment, he listened attentively, made notes of the salient points, and then asked for the floor. He was careful to speak only as an economist and only on those matters about which he had acquired expert knowledge, but he ended forcefully: “I’m not sure you understand what I’m saying. We’ve allowed the discussion to become too adversarial. It shouldn’t be that. Fifteen years ago on this island, I’d have been a follower of Frantz Fanon on one simple principle: ‘It’s high time!’ You and I won that battle. I fought for it in an African country gaining its independence. But tonight it’s an entirely different battle, and Frantz Fanon is too impractical to teach us about how to take our next steps.”

His words were so judicious and so straightforward that when he finished, Sally Wrentham went up to him and said: “Mr. Keeler, you made great sense as a white man looking down from above. But how about us blacks who have to look up from below?” He noticed that although she could have been considered white in many societies he had known, she preferred to call herself black, a good sign in his opinion.

“Now wait a minute, Miss Wrentham. You’re the police commissioner’s daughter.”

“I am.”

“It seems to me,” and he spoke with charming diffidence, as if he had no right to a strong opinion on something which concerned him
intellectually and her emotionally, “that we must look neither from above or below, but from dead-eye level … at the reality.” The idea was strong and expressed so cogently that Sally offered no response, so he added: “In the old days on All Saints men like me were up and blacks like you were down. Your question then would have been quite pertinent. But today I believe that on this island, there is no up or down … just level eyes sighting level horizons.” With the fingers of his right hand he built an imaginary bridge from his level eyes to hers, and, gesturing, he touched her cheek … and an electric thrill passed between them.

On that evening throughout the world, as the sun drifted to sleep in the west, thousands of young unmarried men in a hundred different countries met socially in groups to talk with young unmarried women, and with reassuring frequency some man would see in a flash some woman of intelligence or understanding or sympathy or sheer attractiveness, and his breath would catch and he would find himself assailed by ideas which he had not entertained even ten minutes before, and everything would be changed.

“Your interest in these matters?” he began, and she stopped him: “My grandfather, Black Bart Wrentham they called him …”

“I know. He led the fight for independence. Sterling man I’m told.”

“He really was. Struggled to build a profitable café, saloon if you will, and became the first police chief under independence. Powerful force, that one. Died Sir Bart Wrentham, because respect for his integrity reached even to London.”

“You must be proud of being in that family.”

“I am.”

“And did you attend school in England?” The question had a chilling effect on Sally, for despite the best intention on Keeler’s part when he asked it, the only interpretation she could give it was: Since you are obviously a first-class person, your parents must have saved enough money to send you to England for your education.

She was irritated and about to rebuke him, when the door to the meeting room burst open to admit two men. The first was about five feet six, very black, and well regarded on the island as a sensible master of bookkeeping techniques and budgetary controls, but on this night no one even greeted him, because in tow he had the Rastafarian from Jamaica with his frayed shirt proclaiming
DEATH TO POPE
,
HELL DESTRUCTION AMERICA
and his coconut shell clacking against his lute as he walked toward the group.

“This is my friend Ras-Negus Grimble,” the accountant said, “with messages for us from Jamaica,” and the parlor discussion of abstract negritude ceased, for here in the flesh was the epitome of one kind of real negritude.

Serene, his dreadlocks framing his bearded face, the newcomer flashed one of the most all-embracing smiles that Sally had ever seen, and said: “I Rasta Man come to help.” His eyes swept about the room, and he added: “I-man come this I-land help I-&-I I-cover things to happen.” When she, like all the other listeners, betrayed her inability to follow what he said, he lapsed into normal English, with a Jamaican lilt that was most agreeable: “I have come from Jamaica to help you discover and achieve whatever it is you think ought to happen.”

“Who sent you?” someone asked, and Grimble lapsed into Rastafarian again: “I-man have vision. ‘Seek out I-&-I belong All Saints bring I-vine help I-alogue.’ I-man come.”

“I think you better tell it straight,” the questioner recommended, and the visitor complied: “I was I-rected, I mean directed, to come here and hold I-alogue with you.”

“Do you mean
dialogue
?” a man in back asked, and with a big smile he replied: “Oh yes! I do.”

“And what is your message?” a young woman asked, and after carefully placing his shell and lute on the floor, he pulled up a chair, sat gracefully upon it with his long thin legs wrapped around each other twice, a feat totally impossible for a fat man or for most of medium weight. Flashing once more his smile of embrace and forgiveness, he explained: “Rastafari is a belief in peace, in tranquillity, in love of all persons …”

“How about the pope?”

Without changing pace or expression, he concluded: “… except those of evil intent.”

“We heard that in Jamaica, your people led riots, real violence.”

Turning on his chair, he looked benignly at his accuser and said in low, gentle tones: “It was Babylon that abused us, never the other way.”

“But don’t you say that Babylon must be destroyed?”

“With love. The way Gandhi destroyed the Great Babylon that oppressed him.”

Now Sally spoke: “Why do you say I so much—what does it mean?”

He turned almost a complete revolution on his chair, and for a
long moment Grimble sat silent, twisting his legs tighter together and staring into Sally’s eyes until she felt mesmerized by the floating beard, the green and gold beret and those dreadful snakelike braids reaching into his lap as he leaned forward. Then came the liquid, pacifying voice of a totally committed young man: “In Rastafari we use our own language.
I
is straight and tall and beautiful and strong and decent and clean.
You
is bent over and twisted and losing its way and ugly and straight in nothing. So the pure
I
is given to all human beings. I-man means me. If you were speaking, you would call yourself I-woman.”

“But who is I-&-I?”

“You, those over there, all in this room, the whole world apart from me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“So when Rasta Man want to say
you
, he do not separate himself from you. He mean that you and he are together, you and he and everyone else in this room, we are a team. So it has to be I-&-I, because in Rastafari all people are equal. You cannot exist without a part of him. Rasta Man cannot exist without all you people to help him fight his battles against darkness. It is I-&-I, always the immortal team.”

Sally, shivering at the intensity of his reply, was relieved when another woman asked: “But I heard a lot of other
I
’s in what you said,” and now he turned his searchlight gaze on her: “You must understand. We Rasta Men lead simple, pure lives. Only natural foods eaten from this coconut shell. No meat. Every cloth I wear must be handwoven of natural threads. Same with words. From any word with morally sinful elements or negative syllables, we knock out those elements and substitute I, which is clean and pure.”

“How can a syllable be morally negative?”

Eagerly he leaned forward to explain this basic tenet of Rastafarianism: “Words with
ded
, like
dedicate
, mean dead. Life gone. Word must become I-dicate. Beautiful ideas like
divine
or
divide
one’s goods, they have
die
in them. They have to be cleansed, become
I-vine
and
I-vide
.”

“You mean you go right through the dictionary?”

“Yes, beautiful words like
sincere
and
sinews
must be cleaned up.”

“Why?”

“They have in them the word
sin
, so they have to become
I-cere
and
I-news
. But words with
sin
which are ugly and cruel, like
sinister
and
sinking
, they stay that way. They warn the world of their evil intent.”

“Conversation among your members must be rather painful,” volunteered a black accountant standing next to Harry Keeler. The Rastafarian whipped around to address him, but he falsely assumed that the speaker had been the white man, the only one in the room. His manner when speaking to Keeler became even more preachy than before, and the light in the room was such that he assumed an almost Christ-like sanctity: “You make a profound observation, my friend. Speech with us is sometimes slow and painful, ideas half expressed, half understood. But we do not speak to conduct idle conversation. We speak to bare the soul, and such words have to be carefully chosen, carefully protected.” Looking about the room, he launched into a kind of Rastafarian prayer, a chant of all the mnemonic words, with Haile Selassie’s name recurring frequently and Negus and Jah and Lion of Judah, all embellished by a blizzard of I-words which he made stand out with grace, dignity and power.

Sally, who understood not a word, whispered to the woman standing next to her: “It’s like Latin in the Catholic Mass. You’re not expected to understand. Each religion has its own mystical language,” but when he concluded, she raised her hand and asked: “Share with us, please, what you were saying,” and he replied: “Exactly what I said in your language. That words are important and we must clean them up now and then … to keep them pure.”

For the members of the group this verbal and visual introduction to the Rastafarians was a mind-expanding affair, but with an innate showmanship Grimble had saved his most powerful impact till last—and reaching down, he picked up his lute.

It was a wooden box, sealed except for an opening over which four strings passed. Its neck was a length of board imbedded with seven staples as frets, while a metal bar served as bridge. When plucked, it had a surprisingly good sound, and when the box was drummed on, it echoed deeply.

Sitting with his legs still intertwined, he strummed for a moment, then startled his audience with one of Bob Marley’s most powerful chants, “Slave Driver,” which spoke of days in Africa and nights aboard the slave ship. It was powerful music, even more powerful imagery, and before long he had these descendants of slaves chanting with him: “Slave driver, slave driver.”