Ella would cheer me up but it would not last, the doom of the years ahead slamming into my lone wolf ruminations. It wasn’t another person so much as another beat that I yearned for, one not overcome by the ease of propriety, one with a cussed, impossible sense of style. It was Trinidad that I longed for — that crazy, maverick place, the strange logic of its illogic, its contradictions, that walk and talk that haunted me day and night, which would not, could not, leave me alone.
In this mood I telephoned Micah, not my lover really, although we had been lovers and friends for the last two years in what we saw as a thoroughly modern, noncommittal sort of way, separated by the wide Atlantic. I wailed and ranted about my sorry lot and in the end accepted an invitation to stay at his house while I sorted out the misery of my untidy life.
Flying low over the Northern Range, picking out the Rasta huts in small clearings, wondering who lived there and how they managed for everyday things — no road, no waterway even, just a hut, a vegetable patch maybe and then deep forest, the symmetry of valleys and mountains undisturbed for centuries. I could hardly contain my anticipation as the contours of my early island home defined itself, its odd shape, its forest, swampland, and undulating plains set out in such clear geographical alignment that surely, only a deliberate hand, the hand of an ancient god, could have achieved it.
Arriving at Piarco airport, the air washed clean after the rain, my heartbeat quickened as I spotted Micah waiting, exuding his usual restraint, looking older than our meeting last year, his beard now beginning to gray slightly. I felt tender toward him, his unconcerned elegance, his long tapering fingers, his deep sincerity. This is a man I could love, I thought, unlike Ella’s fix-ups. Micah held me close, his warmth a welcome relief from emptiness, and I thought how fine it would be to have a shoulder like his to lean on. The talk was light on the way to his house — the latest scandals in the country, corruption, crime, calypso, the IMF and World Bank antics, the dependency of the so-called Third World. I asked about his own assiduous grassroots work.
“The revolution ent happen yet?” I said it as a joke and he grinned wryly.
“Well, no,” he joined my mood, “but we still trying. It go happen soon, don’t fool yuh fat about that.”
We drove along the Eastern Main Road, ducking into the drive-thru market at the Croisee in San Juan, then continuing on the Saddle Road running deep into the Santa Cruz Valley, to his house secreted inside the mountains. The forested peaks lay serene, unmoved by the suburban elements cutting into their sides, the poor people at the bottom, still scrabbling in the dirt, the professionals at the top, their homes cut into terraced rock faces, the whole purple mountain range tumbling behind these architectural wonders perched on rocky promontories like wary gabilans, their claws and beaks at the ready, waiting to swoop down on prey as the opportunity arose. I shuddered at the thought and Micah put a protective arm around my shoulders. A kind man, a good man, but a gabilan all the same, poised for swooping.
We arrived at his house. And the preceding months gave way to a deep and eloquent exhaustion. I slept at once. Whenever I awoke he was there, teasing and playful. My love, I thought hazily, through our meandering bouts of lovemaking and sleeping. Home. I was lying deep in a mountain crevasse, in a pitch-black night, no moon, no stars, only smooth touches from his hands, the air thick as velvet, cool as velvet, wet and dry in turn, the nightbirds’ great wings holding the darkness intact, pedaling the night air into an early dawn, a dawn full of rosy promise, promises as vast as the distant savannah rolling out from the edges of these northern hills. Dawns and sunsets merged into the steady rhythm of insects, birds, and frogs — cigales and flying crapauds, cocks crowing and dogs barking — old noises that settled me back into that time when the world began.
Then I awoke. I discovered that it was three days after my arrival. The house was washed over with the last late gold of daylight, that hour just before a sinking feeling of tasks left undone overpowers you and night flattens the land. On the bank at the top of the hill, adjacent to the driveway, Micah had planted an herb garden and the fragrance of thyme, chives, parsley, and tulsi bushes rounded out the evening air. I was touched by this; it had been my suggestion on a flying visit two years ago when I first saw the house with its unused stretch of paragrass running wild, a clean sweep from top to bottom.
I walked slowly back into the vast room with the bed, a great flat throne, in the middle of it. Night was falling now, and fast; I had forgotten how rapidly twilight turned into darkness here. The bed floated serenely in space, the undefined room lapping at its vulnerable edges. A wide veranda surrounded the room, forming an L-shape, ornamented with intricately carved wrought-iron fretwork. The sliding glass doors on both angles of the “L” were open but protected from mosquitoes by screen doors and barricaded against the night with burglar bars. I sat on the bed staring through these bars. The night had turned again, whispering and sighing and heaving great petticoats to hide or show women’s wares, shifting itself onto the flattened marriage pallet. I had no responsibilities, nothing to live up to. Yet the ominous sense of things left undone weighed heavily on me, that and the unrelieved darkness of the outside.
I got up, moving further inside the vastness of the room. Off the main area there lay an open dressing room leading into a bathroom, both immensely spacious. In the bathroom the toilet and bath faced each other squarely. The dressing room was lavish. Cupboards everywhere, mirrors, folding doors, sock drawers, shoe racks, suit closets, shorter blouse-hanging areas. An elaborately crafted his-and-hers affair. His into hers, his everywhere, hers intertwined into his.
The next morning I struggled through the open doorway to the bathroom. He was already there and called cheerfully to me from the shower. The smell of my offal mixed unhappily with the steam from his bath. The steam was oppressive, and anyhow, I didn’t like sharing my bowels so early in the morning. No coffee yet or anything. He remained cheerful, not the least bit bothered by the smell. He soaped and sang, loud and off-key, and came out toweling himself, his workmanlike attitude readying his body for the day.
I left the bathroom in his wake. In the large his-and-hers, he was now dressing. I had flung my makeup case and moisturizer on the dressing table the night before. In the few minutes between the end of his bath and my lingering moments in the toilet, alone, he had given it its appointed place on the left side, cutting the surface into two uneven divisions. His joke was lame. “One-third for female paraphernalia, two-thirds for male needs.” My hurried flight to the kitchen on the other side of the house, groping for coffee, did not miss the reality behind the joke nor the inexplicable sense of desperation that descended upon me.
Stumbled upon by the merest of chances, my connection with Micah had moved from astonishingly large bedroom antics during our occasional trysts, into this more domestic visit. Until now, I had let it drift, no problem, but my coming here for a longer stay meant that maybe I too was wondering about the possibility of permanence. He, I was beginning to understand, had always had it in mind, partly because of a mad desire to hold onto passion, to go to sleep with it and wake up with it, but also, his needs ran to more careful arrangements which included assets, earning power, social status, and housewifery. What he called desire also held the underpinnings of marriage, all of the parts finding their appropriate places. I knew the signs; I had run out of an earlier life that contained all of these expectations. But my discomfort was hard to explain, even to myself, and muddled was what I ended up feeling.