‘Have you got some turtles?’ cried the girl. ‘Let’s go and see them.’
We went down to the boat. On the way a charming little Hindu girl took my hand without the least shyness. All these different-coloured people called out ‘Good afternoon.’ I took the turtles out. ‘What shall we do? Put them back into the sea? Or would you like them for your garden?’
‘The pool at the bottom is sea-water. We’ll put them there, and then I’ll have something to remember you by.’
‘Fine.’ I gave the onlookers everything in the boat except for the compass, the tobacco, the water-cask, the knife, the machete, the axe, the blankets and the revolver, which I hid under the blankets – no one had seen it.
At five o’clock Mr. Bowen appeared. ‘Gentlemen, everything is in order. I’ll drive you to the capital myself. First we’ll drop the wounded man in at the nursing-home and then we’ll go to the hostel.’ We packed Clousiot into the back seat of the car: I was saying thank you to the girl when her mother came out bringing a suitcase and said to us, ‘Please take these few things of my husband’s – we give them to you with all our heart.’ What could we say in the face of such very great kindness? ‘Thank you, thank you again and again and again.’ We drove off in the car. At a quarter to six we reached the nursing-home – Saint George’s nursing-home. Nurses carried Clousiot’s stretcher to a ward with a Hindu in it, sitting up in his bed. The doctor came, and shook Bowen’s hand: he spoke no French but through Mr. Bowen he told us that Clousiot would be well looked after and that we could come and see him as often as we liked. We went through the town in Mr. Bowen’s car.
It astonished us, with all its lights and cars and bicycles. White men, black men, yellow men, Indians and coolies all mingled there, walking along the pavements of Port of Spain, a town of wooden houses. We reached the Salvation Army, a building whose ground floor alone was made of stone – the rest of wood. It was well placed in a brightly-lit square whose name I managed to read – Fish Market. We were welcomed by the captain of the Salvation Army together with all his staff, both men and women. He spoke a little French and all the others said things to us in English, which we did not understand; but their faces were so cheerful and their eyes so welcoming that we were sure the words were kind.
We were taken to a room on the second floor with three beds in it – the third being laid on for Clousiot. There was a bathroom just at hand, with towels and soap for us. When he had shown us our room, the captain said, ‘If you would like to eat, we all have supper together at seven o’clock, that is to say in half an hour’s time.’
‘No. We’re not hungry.’
‘If you’d like to walk about the town, here are two West Indies dollars to have some tea or coffee, or an ice. Take great care not to get lost. When you want to come back just ask your way by saying “Salvation Army, please”’
Ten minutes later we were in the street. We walked along the pavements; we pushed our way among other people; nobody looked at us or paid any attention to us: we breathed deeply, appreciating these first steps, free in a town, to the full. This continual trust in us, letting us go free in a fair-sized city, warmed our hearts: it not only gave us self-confidence but made us aware that we must wholly deserve this trust. Maturette and I walked slowly along in the midst of the throng. We needed to be among people, to be jostled, to sink into the crowd and form part of it. We went into a bar and asked for two beers. It seems nothing much just to say ‘Two beers, please.’ It’s so natural, after all. Yet still to us it seemed absolutely extraordinary when the Indian girl with the gold shell in her nose served us and then said, ‘Half a dollar, sir.’ Her pearly smile, her big dark violet eyes a little turned up at the corners, her shoulder-long black hair, her low-cut dress that showed the beginning of her breasts and let one guess the rest was splendid – all these things that were so trifling and natural for everybody else seemed to us to belong to some unheard-of fairyland. Hold it, Papi: this can’t be true. It can’t be true that you are turning from a convict with a life sentence, a living corpse, into a free man so quickly!
It was Maturette who paid: he had only half a dollar left. The beer was beautifully cool and he said, ‘What about another?’ It seemed to me that this second round was something we shouldn’t do. ‘Hell,’ I said, ‘it’s not an hour since you’ve been really free and you’re already thinking of getting drunk?’
‘Easy, easy now, Papi! Having two beers and getting drunk, those are two very different things.’
‘Maybe so. But it seems to me that rightly speaking, we shouldn’t fling ourselves on the first pleasures that come to hand. I think we ought to just taste them little by little and not stuff ourselves like hogs. Anyhow, to begin with this money’s not ours.’
‘Fair enough: you’re right. We must learn how to be free in slow stages – that’s more our mark.’
We went out and walked down Watters Street, the main avenue that runs clean through the town; and we were so wonderstruck by the trams going by, the donkeys with their little carts, the cars, the lurid cinema and dance-hall advertisements, the eyes of the young black or Indian girls, who looked smilingly at us, that we went all the way to the harbour without noticing it. There in front of us were ships all lit up – tourist ships with bewitching names, Panama, Los Angeles, Boston, Quebec; cargo-ships from Hamburg, Amsterdam and London. And side by side all along the quay there were bars, pubs and restaurants, all crammed with men and women jammed together, drinking, singing, bawling one another out. Suddenly I felt an irresistible urge to mingle with this crowd – common maybe, but so full of life. On the terrace of one bar there were oysters, sea-eggs, shrimps, solens and mussels arranged on ice, a whole display of sea-food to excite the appetite of the passer-by. There were tables with red-and-white checked cloths to invite us to sit down – most of them were occupied. And there were coffee-coloured girls with delicate profiles, mulattoes without a single negroid feature, tight in their many-coloured, low-cut blouses, to make you feel even more eager to make the most of what was going.
I went up to one of them and said, ‘French money good?’ showing her a thousand-franc note. ‘Yes, I change for you.’ ‘OK.’ She took the note and vanished into a room crammed with people. She came back. ‘Come here.’ And she led me to the cash desk, where there was a Chinese sitting.
‘You French?’
‘Yes.’
‘Change thousand francs?’
‘Yes.’
‘All West Indies dollars?’
‘Yes.’
‘Passport?’
‘Got none.’
‘Sailor’s card?’
‘Got none.’
‘Immigration papers?’
‘Got none.’
‘Fine.’ He said something to the girl: she looked over the room, went up to a nautical character with a cap like mine-gold band and anchor – and brought him to the cash desk. The Chinese said, ‘Your identity card?’
‘Here.’
And calmly the Chinese wrote out an exchange-form for a thousand francs in the stranger’s name and made him sign it; then the girl took him by the arm and led him away. He certainly never knew what had happened. I got two hundred and fifty West Indies dollars, fifty of them in one and two-dollar notes. I gave the girl one dollar; we went outside, and sitting there at a table we treated ourselves to an orgy of sea-food, washed down with a delightful dry white wine.
Fourth Exercise-Book First Break (continued)
Trinidad