In partnership with Commonwealth Foundation, Granta presents the regional winners of the 2024 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Portia Subran’s story is the winning entry from the Caribbean.
After hearing a phrase of music, memory suddenly rises in front of you like the clearing mist of the blue Northern Range.
The heavy smoke of pitch-oil flambeau.
The smell of rain on warm asphalt in the night.
The wail of your father. The silence of your mother.
Some nights you will not forget, even though you feel you bury it deep enough.
Is a brand to the back of your skull, somehow still burning, still on fire, hiding up in layers of flesh, follicles, a web of nerves. Then suddenly it come back to malign your mind with misery and guilt.
Is like that for me now, stick up in traffic on the way to San Fernando, and a station start to play a song that feel like a knife plunge in my belly.
Me eh know what old time disc jockey dig up this old-time song from my youth. Gogi Grant’s The Wayward Wind.
The song is a pull to my navel string. The way eating the flesh of the armoured cascadura does call you to come back home to die in Trinidad – that song pull my soul back to Chaguanas.
Old Chaguanas, from sixty years back. A flood of memories erupting and fighting for the spotlight in my mind – the smell of burning sugarcane and rotting bagasse – that scent like festering flesh. The splash of cold water from a gleaming copper basin on the days that boiled us in sweat, roaming through the rows of Woodford Lodge estate looking for adventure. The sizzling crack of a film projector, the unnatural firmness and coldness of the Anglican cemetery.
The bellowing of a bison, his voice vibrating down the thick muscles of his neck. The Chaguanas I did only know about was the one from the early fifties, when a talk did start up bout electricity coming to the village. Back then it was a village, but oui papa, today them does call it a Borough.
To help we understand what this electricity did mean, they had was to set up a Delco generator and a silver screen in the Woodford Lodge Cricket Field to play a flim.
I could remember that day good, man.
Me and my pardna, Jaikaran, had gone down early in the morning to gawk at the equipment. A huge scaffold coming down where the cricket fielders woulda be posted. A string of bulbs wrapped around the massive appamat trees, an untethered silk screen whipping out in the breeze. And reel, man, reel ah flim offloading from a cart.
We ask the man, what it have dey on them flim?
He say it go show a man and his wife tending to a farm with the use of something none of we had – electricity. The flim wasn’t meant to be science fiction, but it did feel like that way to we.
We did live in darkness. If you did forget to light your home flambeau, you was getting suck into the oblivion every night.
Papa did tell me it was a good thing that we was going to get electricity, because the kinda darkness we in, it does let the mind run mad with superstition.
Papa was a logical man who did follow the see it and believe it platitude of life. Mammy was the opposite – according to my Pa, she find great solace in the greatest superstition of all – religion. Never see a woman so deeply committed to the tenets of the church and feel she self more missionary than parishioner. She favourite story revolve round the evangelising and conversion of the savages.
But here in the heart of Chaguanas, it didn’t have no such savages, so she find them in she own children.
She had us reading the Bible every morning, covering it end-to-end every three years. Up to now, I can quote everything from the wrath of Elijah to the temptations of Christ.
And as much as she believe in the angels, Mammy believe even more in the devil. She listen to every tale of myth, spirit and monster and did know of every practised way to outwit a demon.
Rub dog yampi in your eye, look through a keyhole and you would see a lagahoo.
If you meet a La Diablesse, strip yourself naked, turn your clothes inside out and put them on again, she eh go seem to trace you after that.
To see a soucouyant, put fowl shit in your eye and watch up in the night sky.
That last one, I make it up, but I sure I could ketch my mother with it.
Mammy did feed on every tale the neighbours had about the strange things they see while walking home in the night. The latest one was from Brother Lal, a fellow parishioner from two streets over. A few nights earlier, he did come across a bison while walking home from the train station. The bison was standing up on two hind legs at the crossroads beneath a wide spreading Samaan tree. He mouth was open long and low, almost big enough like a man could crawl in. The beast give a long, wide grin – teeth glittering in a rod of moon light, glittering like gold. When he watch good, this bison whole mouth was full of gold teeth. The lips curl back and a deep baritone voice rumble from the belly of the beast and ask – ‘How you coming home so late, Lal?’
Brother Lal say he dunno if he grow wing and fly, but he reach home in a panic and fall down in front he gate.
Mammy hold a long prayer session the next night for Brother Lal and he family, with she own offspring as congregation in tow. Brother Lal look like he couldn’t even raise up he head good, cold sweating on a bench under a pitch-oil lamp. He big daughter sitting on a peerha, massaging he foot.
‘The devil doesn’t come in person, he too full of spite and shame and laziness,’ Mammy say. ‘He does always send he son, that is who Lal see that night.’
‘Minds running mad with superstition,’ Papa say. He eh even try to whisper self.
Mammy never take he on, nah.
She see so much children dying of obeah-inflicted polio, and maljeaux tuberculosis, that she give she first born child a name that would strike fear into the hearts of any demon. To ensure the protection of any scion to follow.
The name was Gabriel and that unfortunate first-born was me.
As the oldest sibling, I always had to walk with a horde of children – three boys and five girls. Me at the head, bearing the name that meant Warrior of God.
We use to walk in order of birth. To church, to school. Eventually the line start to look uneven when my brother, Isaac, then thirteen, just three years younger than me, had a potent growth spurt. A whole head taller than me.
He throw everything off balance.
He whole existence used to throw me off balance.
If I say A, Isaac went with B.
He was prone to what he did call adventures, like if he had an irrepressible pull to wander every trace and tributary contained in Chaguanas.
He go come up to me and say, ‘Boy, you hear it have wild cat in De Verteuil Estate?’
‘Boy, it eh ha no wild cat there,’ I go say.
But come Saturday evening, this boy cover up in mud and scratch, eyes wide, mouth spreading, belly big with laugh, telling me he see the wild cat.
What I go say, Isaac live up to the meaning of his name, He Will Laugh. You couldn’t tell him to do nothing, no chore at all, he done disappear for the next adventure, and more laugh.
He exist without any kind of responsibility, waltzing and chirruping, full of songs, his favourite one being fit for his ceaseless wandering – Gogi Grant’s The Wayward Wind.
And then, every lick of trouble he get into, it was the Warrior of God collecting the blame and an even share of the licks.
Brother Lal was usually the one marching down to we house on Taitt Street to give my mother the scoop on what she eight children was doing that day. We did always know he was coming down the street when he start calling out, Sister Ragbir! Sister Ragbir!
That day I was in the yard, repairing a spade for my job with Mr Beharry by the cemetery.
It was a few years now I was working there with Jaikaran and some other boys around All Souls, fixing up the graves for the family and them to light they candle. Something about the slow decomposition of Chaguanas’ dead Anglicans did make the soil like steel and plenty times I did find myself having to replace the handle of my spade.
Around noon, Brother Lal find he way into the yard. He settled he-self on the wooden stool near the half open dutch doors.
‘Sister Ragbir, I had was to tell you!’
And so he start.
While taking he morning constitution round the neighbourhood, he stop at the Invictus Cricket Field to watch an ongoing match. And lo, he see Isaac squatting under the stands, creeping from spot to spot, like if is penny he was gathering up. Is only when Brother Lal stop to wipe he brow, he ketch that Isaac was quietly snatching up the cigarette butts as soon as the livid patrons was dropping them – collecting and then taking a long pull from each.
Mammy face look like somebody smash she head with a Coke bottle.
She thank him, wait for him to leave, then tell me to bring Isaac from the back of the house.
He was there staring into a huge puddle from the rain all the nights before. The water was tea coloured, stained from all the leaves that did continuously fall into it. Isaac’s hair was slick back with a dollop of petroleum jelly, he hand caressing the water, fingers sieving for inky tadpoles.
He touch he chin for a moment, a bristle of adolescent hair now emerging. When I call for him he look up doe-eye at me, but I pull him up rough, and haul him over by he magga shoulders to stand in front of Mammy. I lean against the wall, my ropey arm cross over my chest, waiting for she to let Isaac have it.
Instead she say,
‘Where you was, Gabriel?’
Me? Where I was?
I shoulda know I was coming as God’s warrior again, to protect this wotless child. I coulda lie, is only natural to protect yourself from danger – but I couldn’t manage to lie to my mother.
I confess to liming with Jaikaran. Silence hanging in the air now. Mammy looking up at me, and Isaac gazing down.
I start to explain,
‘Checking out the screen set up for the flim tonight –’
She hand slide down she shin, unhouse a leather slipper from she foot and Wallop! Wallop! I collect two hard slap in my face.
‘Watching them set up a Devil’s Screen!’ she start she bawling. ‘This is why you wasn’t watching the chile!’
I bow down my head, face burning like if a thousand jep now land their stingers on it. She push a hard hand on each one of we shoulder and had we on we knees.
Mammy did not give lecture. She did give sermon.
Describing to us the ways in which the Devil’s influence could leave the screen and pour into the mind of us, the innocent.
The Devil’s House, that was what she did call Jubilee Cinema – a half mile up the road from our house. Sometimes me and Jaikaran would break biche from work and bolt up the road to see the latest flim. Jubilee was a small, smoke-filled theatre, powered by a generator. The cheapest seat we coulda afford was Pit, sitting right in front the screen, you break your neck backwards to see Rita Hayworth tempting Tyrone Power in Blood and Sand. If that was the Devil’s House, then of course the set up in the grounds was call the Devil’s Screen.
Mammy bang she fist on the butcher’s board in place of a pulpit and we was sentenced to memorise Matthew Chapter 4, Verses 1-11. Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. We was to repeat it until she finish cook lunch.
I watch Isaac staring at the ceiling. A small smile creeping on he face.
I watch this boy, his voice turning to a sing-song thing.
I watch, and even though I couldna do it then, I imagine slapping him repeatedly, keeping rhythm with the verse.
Again and again and again. And I just thinking, this boy does get to live he life, and I does have to get punish for it.
–
Working in the cemetery for Mr. Beharry was gruelling. Twelve o’clock hot sun, sweat like the river of Jordan down your back, you could get delusional like you hearing voices from the graves. Especially on All Souls. Me and Jaikaran never understand how the rain coulda be pouring, and the earth of the grave couldn’t get any softer. New pools of water did erupt under we every day, so we was always dodging them while trying to finish the people wok.
We did also have to watch out for Mr. Beharry’s ill-behaved grey bison – whom he affectionately call Beta. And my God, the man did love the bull like he own son.
But the bison didn’t like nobody, not even Mr. Beharry.
In my mind, taking a page from my mother book, Beta real name was the Devil’s Son.
Beta didn’t want nobody crossing into what he perceive to be he land, walking through them fields near the cemetery. His permanent seat of residence was under the swinging branches of the jamun tree grove, slurping up the fallen berries, his muzzle permanently stained bright violet. Spat out the seeds right on the edge of the deep, deep ravine.
To be honest, nobody want to go near that ravine anyhow. We was lucky we was in the rainy season, it was always full of water, but then Mr. Beharry did tell we, the bodies of them long dead Anglicans does push out, and if you look hard in the dry season, that ravine floor full of bleach-white bones.
Sometimes we would take a little ease up, sitting on the generously broad headstone of Mr Lowen Bullen, ketch kicks on he name. Wondering who Mr Lowen was bulling there in the afterlife.
Where we wanted to be though, was under them jamun trees to ketch a break, but that was Beta liming spot, stretch out and shaded under long, thin boughs of the jamun trees – a massive pile of grey folded flesh, eyes like fire. Snorting out gusts of dust and phlegm, like something out of Stan Jones’s mind, a bison from the Devil’s Herd.
Jaikaran say Beta never properly get break in with the yoke. Instead, he nearly kill the man who try to train him.
Young bison does be out and bad, fierce and strong. Them could release a man from he life easy, easy, unless you break them in. Yoking them to a silk cotton buttress, let him run like the enraged beast he is for an hour or two, until he settle down to the docility of a lamb.
But Beta never settle.
He ploughed through the estate, head drive down low into the ground, scooping men up, throwing them off the crown of his horns. I hear he did pierce one man, and the foot had to cut off from the gangrene. But Jaikaran did tell me, the horn eh so bad, is the tongue that worse. That a bison tongue could lick the flesh off a man, as easy as peeling silk fig. Devil ting, I telling you.
Jaikaran say they was going and slaughter him for beef, but Mr. Beharry couldn’t let that happen, and say he would mind him, keep him as a watchman for the graveyard. And is true.
I never see Beta pull no cart, drag no plough, anyway. The bison’s job was to stare at we. Make sure we wasn’t slacking.
–
That night, Mammy was protesting – I coulda hear she from the roadside, going on about how they did set up a Devil’s Screen in the middle of Woodford Lodge Cricket Grounds, and how we would all be gazing up at it. And how she didn’t know what would become of the whole Ragbir family after this. But Papa was quick to shut she down.
‘Is something important for Chaguanas!’ he growled, ‘When electricity come, them boys could study in the night, you could read your Bible at any hour. No candles. Me meself, I could work better without straining my eyes in this darkness.’
Mammy face look like a mad baker had knead it into folds.
Papa left with us. Me in the front with my battery powered torch in hand, Papa at the tail with a flambeau.
It did feel like the whole of Chaguanas leave they house to come out and see. Everybody waiting impatient in front this flapping silver screen. The Delco generator finally did get crank up and a brilliant white illuminated us all. The title Fifty Acres bulleted across the screen. The booming voice of a Yankee accent echo over we heads. We was sitting here in Chaguanas in the late evening and, by some kind of magic, we was watching the sun rising over a homestead in a place called Illinois, in Foreign.
My heart was pounding watching men made into giants by the screen, this was nothing like the small screen in Jubilee.
These giants was hoisting electricity poles, tall lamps illuminating the trail from the house to the barn. Huge machines chipping wood, heating up water, streetlights pouring light over the workmen, all marching home at sundown. No burning flambeau over the skin; no torch to suddenly run out of juice.
Then was the glorious scene inside the house.
An electric stove.
Pots and pans, bubbling and simmering on the top. They had a few things cooking at the same time – hot saucy beans, chicken, steaming white rice.
‘Eating everything hot one time,’ my father murmured to we – neck pushed back, face silver in the light. ‘Too bad your mother not here. She woulda like that part.’
Everybody in the audience did love the indoor four-ring electric stove, until the chef put the spoon in he mouth, and put it right back in the pot. Everybody shout out, Oh geed! The chef jutaa the pot!
The final flim was a musical performance by Gogi Grant.
Adorned in a silvery threaded dress, her voice echoing the sound of Isaac’s favourite song. The Wayward Wind.
I could see Isaac shelve between my sisters, face long and bright, mouth parted, eyes wide, enraptured. There was a tender feeling about to bloom inside me, something that had the chance to crescendo into brotherly love. He was just a child after all, slipping off somewhere whenever the opportunity presented itself. He disappeared into it – away from us. The tender feeling evaporated as Isaac started staring into the distance. He was staring at Mr. Beharry, laughing with a beer in he hand, his thick moustache covered in foam, eyes bloodshot. Isaac was watching round cautiously. He make a crawl and slip away from we other siblings.
I see him exit the field through the small iron gate.
And I had to follow him.
Even though evening was softly passing into night, it still had a heat wafting out from the asphalt under my washikong shoes. The pitch-oil flambeaus lined the road and threw my shadow across the walls of cane lining the Woodford Lodge Factory.
I creep up behind Isaac and wallop a hard one to the back of his head. I pull him by the shoulders, turn him round to face me.
‘Where the hell you going?’
Isaac wriggled his shoulder free from my fingers. ‘I wait to see if that Bison could call my name.’
‘Bison? How you mean? Beta?’
Isaac grinned. ‘Is either Brother Lal gone mad or is Mr. Beharry bison he did see that night, standing on two foot, mouth full of gold. I want to see it for meh-self!’
He push off and start to make for the cemetery. I start running after him.
If we retrospecting, like how I doing now, this boy really choose a good night to make a mischief. Every man jack was gathering in that field, and the whole of Chaguanas Main Road was silent, dead. Only the wicked was out here in this hot night.
I see Isaac, jumping the water-logged drain, dropping to all fours in the wet grass, creeping behind the headstones, edging around the puddles.
‘Aye, aye! Yuh ass! Get back here!’ I call out in a harsh whisper.
He laugh and continue to crawl towards the silhouette of the jamun trees, branches long like tendrils, fluttering leaves edging each one. Within the base of the grove, I could see it, a slow heaving, large, black mass blocking the soft glow of the half moon.
I watch Isaac scrape he-self across the reddish-brown dirt of the graveyard, so near to the beast. I lunge at him and all I collect in my hand is the warm night air. He roll away from me, and into the darkness of the Jamun grove, and all I coulda hear was my own voice asking me,
Why it is I must get blame for this too?
‘GO AHEAD AND KILL YUHSELF THEN!’
My shout arouse the black mass, and it start to rise up. With a massive tremble of its flesh, it shake off the graveyard dust from the folds of its wrinkled grey skin.
I throw meh-self against the gravestone. I could hear the muffled snorting, but it was only when I throw the light of the torch I did see.
Beta there like a behemoth over Isaac, hooves digging rough into the hard earth, horned head tossing rabidly from side to side, thick foam flying out from his mouth.
Isaac’s chest was pinned under its front right hoof, his hands around its hock, trying to pull the hoof off.
He shouting something, but I was trembling so much, I drop the torch.
The light continue to shine on them as Beta bellowed – loud, deep, the pitch so low, it reverberating in my bones. He lower he muzzle over Isaac, thick white saliva gush into every orifice of Isaac’s face, his eyes, nose, his open screaming mouth.
And it was like Jaikaran had said, with the dragging of the tongue – He Will Laugh – his once smiling face was being torn into bloody shreds of skin and flesh.
Isaac’s scream went higher, like baby now born. No, like a small animal being gutted.
I cover my ears. I cover my eyes.
Not for this too, not for this too, I was whispering.
The sound of something dragging in the dirt.
Then, the splash beyond the jamun grove, beyond the graveyard. The ravine where the bones of old, dead Anglicans longed to push free.
The screaming stop.
I start to run out of the graveyard, slip in a puddle of water, and hit my head on the gravestone of Mr Lowen Bullen.
A faint presence of rain drawing lines down my muddy face when I wake. The earth and my blood congeal over my forehead and my eyes. When I stagger into the main road, I could smell the rain as it beat the warm asphalt, a soft mist curling above it. Through the drizzle, I see a hundred flambeaux coming towards me like a firestorm. Like the whole of Chaguanas looking for we. Within the crowd, I find my father, his face crumpled with the deep exhaustion that only comes when hope is lost at night. Eyes wet, red rims and wide, his mouth too, open wide and a low moan that has no beginning nor end, it goes up and down like the drawn out note of a hymn. But it never end.
‘Look he dey!’ Is Brother Lal, shouting and pointing.
Mammy push through the crowd, her face like stone.
Before words could come out, it was clout after clout. Her hands on my head, my neck, my arms. I let her do it, and I wonder if she will bless me with darkness again, but she suddenly pull back, breathless, sweat leaking down her throat. Somebody holding her back, not my father.
I cough. ‘We have to go to the graveyard and look for Isaac.’
My voice cracking, weak. I let myself collapse to the ground, scraping the warm, wet asphalt with my hands. Mammy stare down at me, I could see now it was a church sister holding her. I didn’t have no words, it didn’t have nothing there.
My mind wasn’t working right, but my mouth did start to forge a truth Mammy would listen to.
‘It was the bison,’ I say, looking up at the faces crowding over me. ‘The bison with the mouth full of gold. It was bellowing he name – he Christian name. And . . . And he went to it.’
Whispers start shooting through the crowd like arrows carrying all my lies so quickly, I coulda never take them back.
‘Gabriel, this is what you see?’ Her voice was calm.
‘And he call he-self, the Devil’s Son,’ I muttered over and over. ‘He call he-self the Devil’s Son, he call he-self the Devil’s Son . . .’
The inferno of flambeau troop through the streets of Chaguanas. Every narrow road, alleyway, drain, no matter how shallow. Where there was darkness, a flaming rag found its way and devoured it. Revealing nothing, no trace, no Isaac.
The rain started pouring harder – reflecting orange against the fire of the flambeau. A horde of men descend upon the graveyard. I go with them, and Pa remains, the rain mix with his tears. There was a call for more pitch-oil, more rags, more rods. They illuminated the headstones, the red earth of the cemetery. Through the sheets of pouring water, I see the jamun grove, the branches torn away, the hoof prints under it.
Beyond, the thrashing water of the ravine turning wild, flowing away from us, away from me.
I watch and wonder if it did channel my sin down to the swamp where it would sleep for all the years to come.
The water around our ankles start to pool and the men cannot resuscitate each flambeau in time as the rain did worsen and storm upon we. The search for Isaac and Beta come to an end.
In the morning, the constable come, and the next day Mammy prepare for a service to be done in Isaac name. Then ten days of nightly prayer for his soul. Prayer to weaken the Devil’s hold on my brother. Prayer for some kind of release, some kind of sign.
The rains fall for days, and eventually everybody was ready to give up. Rescue party turn into recovery party to at least find a body.
Papa did continue to search for life. He hold on to me, wild eyes, grip my shoulders, asking: Did I ever call out Isaac’s name while I worked in the cemetery? Was Beta ever looking at Isaac when he walk past? Did I ever hear Beta speak before?
Had I ever seen his mouth open wide enough to show teeth glittering like gold?
Eventually Beta turn up again, once more taking he rightful place under the shade of the swinging jamun branches, consuming all the fallen berries, face still stain bright violet.
Papa took this as his own sign and told Mr. Beharry he had to cut Beta open, and there he would find his son in the belly. But Mr. Beharry did protest; call police on Papa.
Papa did not leave the house again.
Yet did not turn to drink.
He stopped working and then find he-self in the church.
Then, regular pilgrimage to the Mount, to light a black candle on Mr. Beharry head – Let it fall down dead! Let the beast, the Devil’s Son, split open and come bounding out, Isaac! Papa withers, wails and I could no longer bring myself to look at him or admire him.
One night, I steal away, like if my name is Iscariot, fold myself into the darkness and run deep in the south lands. I become an apprentice of the black gold we call oil and for 43 years I live in successful amnesia in the heart of Pointe-A-Pierre.
But now in the traffic, the haunting voice of Gogi Grant start to creep up, start to claw up into my own flesh and make me remember everything.
If I return to Chaguanas, would I go in the dry season?
If I look in the bare ravine, would I find him?
Would I find Isaac, find him as a boy, never age, standing there whole and complete, laughing back me?
Or would I find him – skin then fascia, nerves and tendon, flesh and fat, then the bare bones – all licked clean by the most corrosive of all elements, the tongue of Beta?
Beta, the one who bellows and vomits fire, eyes bloodshot, this lost bison still looking for its master.
And I, his brother in debauchery, aren’t I also the lost son of the Devil’s own herd?
I push the power button. I cut Gogi’s voice into silence.
The light turns green. The palm of my hand rotates the steering wheel.
I guide my car down the San Fernando Bypass, towards my home.
Photograph © Kelly-Ann Bobb
