a bathe, I looked across the green water to the island of Carrera, rising high out of the sea, with its neat pink buildings. I tried to picture what went on inside those buildings, but my imagination refused to work. I used to think, ‘Hat there, I here. He know I here, thinking about him?’
But as the months passed I became more and more concerned with myself, and I wouldn’t think about Hat for weeks on end. It was useless trying to feel ashamed. I had to face the fact that I was no longer missing Hat. From time to time when my mind was empty, I would stop and think how long it would be before he came out, but I was not really concerned.
I was fifteen when Hat went to jail and eighteen when he came out. A lot happened in those three years. I left school and I began working in the customs. I was no longer a boy. I was a man, earning money.
Hat’s homecoming fell a little flat. It wasn’t only that we boys had grown older. Hat, too, had changed. Some of the brightness had left him, and conversation was hard to make.
He visited all the houses he knew and he spoke about his experiences with great zest.
My mother gave him tea.
Hat said, ‘Is just what I expect. I get friendly with some of the turnkey and them, and you know what happen? I pull two three strings and – bam! – they make me librarian. They have a big library there, you know. All sort of big book. Is the sort of place Titus Hoyt would like. So much book with nobody to read them.’
I offered Hat a cigarette and he took it mechanically.
Then he shouted, ‘But, eh-eh, what is this? You come a big man now! When I leave you wasn’t smoking. Was a long time now, though.’
I said, ‘Yes. Was a long time.’
A long time. But it was just three years, three years in which I had grown up and looked critically at the people around me. I no longer wanted to be like Eddoes. He was so weak and thin, and I hadn’t realised that he was so small. Titus Hoyt was stupid and boring, and not funny at all. Everything had changed.
When Hat went to jail, part of me had died.
XVII
HOW I LEFT MIGUEL STREET
My mother said, ‘You getting too wild in this place. I think is high time you leave.’
‘And go where? Venezuela?’ I said.
‘No, not Venezuela. Somewhere else, because the moment you land in Venezuela they go throw you in jail. I know you and I know Venezuela. No, somewhere else.’
I said, ‘All right. You think about it and decide.’
My mother said, ‘I go go and talk to Ganesh Pundit about it. He was a friend of your father. But you must go from here. You getting too wild.’
I suppose my mother was right. Without really knowing it, I had become a little wild. I was drinking like a fish, and doing a lot besides. The drinking started in the customs, where we confiscated liquor on the slightest pretext. At first the smell of spirits upset me, but I used to say to myself, ‘You must get over this. Drink it like medicine. Hold your nose and close your eyes.’ In time I had become a first-class drinker, and I began suffering from drinker’s pride.
Then there were the sights of the town Boyee and Errol introduced me to. One night, not long after I began working, they took me to a place near Marine Square. We climbed to the first floor and found ourselves in a small crowded room lit by green bulbs. The green light seemed as thick as jelly. There were many women all about the room, just waiting and looking. A big sign said: OBSCENELANGUAGE FORBIDDEN.
We had a drink at the bar, a thick sweet drink.
Errol asked me, ‘Which one of the women you like?’
I understood immediately, and I felt disgusted. I ran out of the room and went home, a little sick, a little frightened. I said to myself, ‘You must get over this.’
Next night I went to the club again. And again.
We made wild parties and took rum and women to Maracas Bay for all-night sessions.
‘You getting too wild,’ my mother said.
I paid her no attention until the time I drank so much in one evening that I remained drunk for two whole days afterwards. When I sobered up, I made a