PERSONAL COLUMN

Trinidad revisited

SHIVA NAIPAUL

Rain. And in Trinidad, let it be known, no one works when it rains. A light drizzle and the streets clear like magic. The citizens, huddling under eaves, resemble those crowds that await the passage of a royal procession.

Perhaps it is due to the influence of cricket

which looms large in the national life: it is a well known fact that the slightest flail of a

raindrop sends the players scuttling back to the pavilion. If it has such a profound effect on important people like cricketers, why then .

I arrived in the middle of a tropical down- pour. A leaden sky gave no promise of im- minent relief and the ship lay prostrate and unattended against the pier. My fellow pas- sengers watched helplessly as hooded, rain- coated figures gazed stolidly at us from the safe shelter of the Customs shed. Not even money could tempt them from their lair. 'If you think,' one of them shouted at me, 'I'm going to go out in that rain and catch a cold just for the sake of a few dollars, you have something else coming, Mister' It is not only rain, however, that seduces so many of our citizens away from the nor- mal course of their duties. Fire sirens, am- bulances and police cars have exactly the same effect; and in any case thousands of Trinidadians have no duties at all. The evi- dence is visible in the young men and women standing aimlessly at street corners, the listless drunks lounging near the rum- shops and the burgeoning numbers who are fooled by the racketeers in the desperate rush for American and Canadian immigra- tion visas. Almost everyone I met had, at the very least, flirted with the idea of emi- grating to richer, cooler countries.

Yvonne came to work for my family when she was ten years old. Her family lived in a wooden shack down the street from us. Many years before her father had fled and her mother eked out a living by taking in washing. When she was fourteen, Yvonne became pregnant and went away from us. Six years later, Yvonne is still unmarried, unskilled and the mother of three children, the last of whom is mentally subnormal. Her mother, ailing, rheumitic and querulous, still takes in other people's washing. She has seen her remaining daughters go the way of Yvonne. I sit listening to her complaints. 'All Yvonne like is rum ' and dancing.' Yvonne wants to go to New York. She knows some 'nice white people over there' But she has no money and the Americans refuse to give her a visa. In the meantime she does what she likes to do; the only things she knows how to do: drink rum and dance. I give her mother some money and feel like a fool.

Still, it is not merely people like Yvonne Who wish to emigrate. There are the doctors, the dentists, the lawyers, the engineers, the economists, the middle-class newly weds. 1 hey get the visas. They go. The trapped inevitably seek some form of escape. Rum' and dancing. But there is also the steel band. Steel bands have gained prestige in recent years and the more suc- cessful make a substantial living for their members. Even so, rising prestige has meant rising exclusiveness. The rest must be con- lent with the cinema, which has more than uryived the rivalry of television. For Trini- dadians, there are basically, only two kinds

of 'film: the Western and the light Holly- wood melodrama. As an art form the cine- ma is quite unknown. I was amazed, going back after six years, to see many of the Westerns I watched as a boy still doing the local circuit and drawing large, enthusiastic audiences. On impulse, 1 went to the local cinema. It used to be called the Rialto but it had been given a face-lift and rechristened

the Alper. The film was The Miracle of Love, Part Two, an 'educational' German sex film. What The Miracle of Love, Part One must have been like, I am afraid I can- not say; but I do know that Part Two was

a great disappointment to local audiences.

The film began with a learned discussion on the pitfalls of the life sexual by a panel of psychiatrists. The audience behaved gener- ously: they recognised that the discussion was a small price to pay for the expected goodies. Unhappily, it went on too long. After fifteen minutes the Pit began to grow restive. After thirty, it was in open rebellion. Chairs were overturned and abuse shouted at the management. I was sympathetic.

This, however, is not the only kind of German film that Trinidadians see. Televi- sion is littered with the wrecked footage of their film industry. At almost any time the captive audience (there is only one channel) might be treated to a lecture on German horse-breeding, canoeing or traffic problems. I believe while I was there I saw a film on Hamburg's traffic problems no fewer than three times. What is even more mystifying, these films are sometimes cut off abruptly to make way for scheduled programmes. The Federal Republic must eventually have a distinctly odd effect on the cultural life of the island.

That cultural life is the virtual monopoly of a handful of resident literati. In Trinidad, there tends to be one—occasionally two— of everything. Item: one literary critic. Item: one poet. Item: two writers. Around these little courts gather. This is not to say there are no other pretenders. They abound. Trinidad is extremely proud of the few super-stars it has produced and the number of hopeful writers, dancers, poets and paint- ers is legion. This, no doubt, is a good thing. Unfortunately, much of it teeters on the brink of absurdity. The preoccupations with things ethnic and the problems of the so- called third world lead in the end to a kind of intolerance. Horizons narrow. In these circles, everyone reads Frantz Fanon and the autobiography of Malcolm X. After a while, claustrophobia descends.

Nevertheless, matters can and do take a disarming turn. Antiques, for instance, are very much the thing to collect these days. They are defined as anything over twenty- five years old. There is the dentist, turned patron of the arts, who scours the island in search of antique beds, cramming his house with monstrosities that resemble overgrown cockroaches. Or the society lady who, suc- cumbing to the craze, began going to every auction and bidding wildly for whatever was on offer. In this way she managed to collect irreparable chandeliers, worthless tables and chairs and, shortly before I met her, two dozen tins of glue. 'Imagine', she exclaimed, delightedly aghast, 'paying two hundred dollars for some tins of glue. I never dreamt they would have something like that up for auction.' Sadly for her, they did.

There is little overlap between this group and the conventional middle classes. The latter, content with the pursuit of money or dreaming dreams of emigration, remain aloof, uncomprehending and suspicious.

They build vast, not too tasteful houses out in the suburbs where they carefully isolate themselves from the low life of the island. The Yvonnes can only enter that world in the guise of servants. There are very few books in their houses. The Carpetbaggers is probably one of their favourites; their fav- ourite picture probably the Dome of St Paul's or a German landscape.

When the Black Power riots broke out the response in these suburbs was to organ- ise vigilante committees. Their dustbin lids and midnight patrols became national jokes. Further analysis seemed in most cases im- possible. All the clashing worlds of the island exist on the brink of fantasy: Black Power no less fantastic than the rest in its rejections and aspirations.

On the eve of my departure, the riots were over. Our moment of glory in the world's news had already begun to fade, leaving frustration, disappointment and futility. The emigrations continued apace; the intelligentsia continued to read Frantz Fanon and discuss the outlines of the great new society they were going to build; antiques continued to be bought and sold and, certainly, there are more tins of glue waiting in the wings; Yvonne's visa is yet to come through.

The morning I was due to fly out of Trinidad. it rained. My plane was delayed for four hours,