Read an Excerpt
Chapter OneThe Cereus in the yard will bloom soon. We planted a slip from the original cutting at least a year ago. That is how long it has been since I left my village on the other side of the island and moved to Paradise. I had to cajole Mr. Hector, the gardener here, who thought the plant nothing but an unruly network of limp, green leaves. Too gangly, he said, to be kept in a garden under his charge. When, recently, deep alizarin buds pushed through, his curiosity was piqued and he now visits the cactus daily and pats the cow manure around its trunk.
Judging from the way things turned out, I am sure you will agree it was no coincidence that I and the eye of the scandal happened upon Paradise, Lantanacamara on the same day.
The town seemed empty and quiet when I arrived. That was because everyone had left what they were doing and taken off to the house on Hill Side to see for themselves what was happening. Even though Paradise is spreading out, inch by inch, and taking over the sugar cane fields that surround it, it remains one of the smaller towns in Lantanacamara, so small that merely the news of one stranger passing through can be enough to ignite a wild fire of curiosity and jabber among its citizenry. But my arrival was eclipsed by the scandal on Hill Side, the discussion of which quickly became Paradise's most favoured pastime. Even the days following brought me little notice; Paradise was clutched by a menacing cloud that hung low over the town for several days and would not budge. The only sources of light in the town were the electric street and house lamps that remained lit all day. In a situation like that I could not haveexpected to be noteworthy.
Being an outsider at that time--and I suppose I still am and may well always be--I thought it best to exercise propriety. I was well aware what was unfolding but refrained from taking part in the daily dissections of new gossip and from helping its spore-like dispersal. By the time interest in the scandal had abated I was past being a novelty. Hardly any fuss was made of me when, in fact, I might well have been celebrated! I was, after all, the only Lantanacamaran man ever to have trained in the profession of nursing. I had taken courses abroad, in the Shivering Northern Wetlands where, to my astonishment, there were a number of men, albeit a small number, in attendance. But I was and still am the only man in the profession here. Not just in Paradise but in all of Lantanacamara.
Nevertheless, despite all my formal training abroad, and considering that nurses in Lantanacamara generally receive their sole training on the job, the matron of the Paradise Alms House, when assigning me my first chore, pointed toward a bucket, a square of cobalt-blue soap and a scrub brush, and sent me off in the darkness of the day to scrub the residents' shower stalls. So was the tone set for my duties. Later I was called by this one or that one to run errands and do menial chores. Regardless, every morning I presented myself wearing a freshly washed, starched and pressed white shirt and meticulously pleated trousers, both of which I had made from the same cotton as were the nurses' uniforms, all in the hope that I would be sent to tend a resident. What I really wanted was to make at least one old person smile or feel that she or he was of some value.
It is an interesting quirk of fate, I think, that for all the prattling by almost everyone at that time, sowing and tilling and reaping idle rumours about the Ramchandin family, and for all the scant attention paid my presence, I am the one who ended up knowing the truth, the whole truth, every significant and insignificant bit of it. And I am the one who is putting it all to good use by recording it here in the hope that any existing relatives of Mala Ramchandin, be it her younger and, to this day, most treasured sister, Asha, or anyone else, might come forward and pay the old lady a visit.
Three weeks after I arrived--the suffocating cloud had mysteriously lifted by then--I was out in the yard at Sister's request, sweeping the path. The home's regular yardboy, Toby, stood watching from afar, sucking his teeth and shaking his head and spitting low curses in my direction, when a black automobile pulled up. The arrival of any motorized vehicle was still cause for a gathering in this place, where people had not easily let go of donkey carts for labourers and broughams for gender folk, but an austere, black police vehicle brought an added element of excitement. The gathering of nurses and residents--those alert enough to noticed--watched anxiously as two slender men alighted, walked to the back and opened the rear doors. Even the gossipmongers among the nurses were silent when the stretcher slid out. On it lay the home's newest resident.
Mala Ramchandin was never tried in court. Judge Walter Bissey had dismissed the case in minutes. Several times he asked the prosecution, "I'm sorry. I can't seem to follow your logic. Tell me again, what is the evidence? What is the charge?" He shook his head in disbelief that his time was being taken up in such a manner. He thought for a minute how to avoid insulting the police and the prosecutors, and finally said, "But you say you cannot present a victim. No victim! You say that there are no witnesses. No witnesses! And there is no evidence that a crime was ever committed. Regardless of what the police reportedly saw? And you want to put a crazy lady on trial.
Cereus Blooms at Night. Copyright © by Shani Mootoo. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
