from woman to woman. And that evening under the eaves of Ma-Ho’s shop, before the closed doors, he delivered a tremendous funeral oration. And his six little girls sang hymns. Afterwards he came in, sad and sobered, to Henry’s and began to drink beer.
Henry said, ‘To tell you the truth, Priest, I was shocked when I hear you sell Ma-Ho insurance. Is a wonder you didn’t know the man had diabetes. But with all these coffins all over the place, I didn’t think it was any of my business. So I just keep my mouth shut. I ain’t say nothing. I always say everybody know their own business.’
‘Diabetes?’ Priest said, almost dipping his beard into his beer. ‘But the doctor pass him in everything.’ He made circular gestures with his right hand. ‘The doctor give him a test and everything was correct. Everything get test. The man was good, good, good, I tell you. He was small, but all of all-you used to see him lifting those heavy sugar bags and flour bags over the counter.’
Henry asked, ‘You did test his pee?’
‘It was good. It was damned good pee.’ Priest wept a little. ‘You know how those Chinese people neat. He went into the little backroom with all those children, and he bring out a little bottle—a little Canadian Healing Oil bottle.’ Still weeping, he indicated with his thumb and finger the size of the bottle.
‘Was not his pee,’ Henry said. ‘That was why he didn’t want to go to the doctor. That was why he wanted the doctor to come to him.’
‘O God!’ Priest said. ‘O God! The Chinese bitch. He make me lose my bonus. And you, Henry. You black like me and you didn’t tell me nothing. You see,’ he said to the room, ‘why black people don’t progress in this place. No corporation.’
‘Some people corporate in one way,’ Henry said. ‘Some people corporate in another way.’
‘Priest,’ I said, ‘I want you to insure Selma for me.’
‘No,’ Selma said nervously. ‘I don’t want Priest to insure me. I feel the man blight.’
‘Do not mock the fallen,’ Priest said. ‘Do not mock the fallen. I will leave. I will move to another part of the city. I will fade away. But not for long.’
And he did move to another area of the city. He became a nervous man, frightened of selling insurance, instilling terror, moreover, into those to whom he tried to sell insurance: the story of Ma-Ho’s sudden death got around pretty quickly.
Ma-Ho went, and with him there also went the Chinese emblems in his shop. No longer the neat crocodile left and entered the back door of the shop; and from being people who kept themselves to themselves, who gave the impression of being only temporary residents on the island, always packed for departure, Ma-Ho’s family came out. The girls began to ride bicycles. The insurance money was good. The boys began to play cricket on the pavement. And Mrs Ma-Ho, a who had never spoken a word of English, revealed that she could speak the language.
‘I begin to feel,’ Blackwhite said, ‘that I am wrong. I begin to feel that the island is just about beginning to have an existence in its own right.’
*
Our own flag was also about to go down. The war ended. And, after all these years, it seemed to end so suddenly. When the news came there was a Carnival. No need to hide now. Bands sprang out of everywhere. A song was created out of nothing: Mary Ann. And the local men, who had for so long seen the island taken over by others, sang, but without malice, ‘Spote, spote, Yankee sufferer,’ warning everyone of the local and lean times to come.
The atmosphere at Henry’s subtly changed. Gradually through the boom war years there had been improvements. But now, too, the people who came changed. Officers came from the base with their wives, to look at the dancing. So did some of the island’s middle class. Men with tape recorders sometimes appeared in the audience. And in the midst of this growing esteem, Henry became more and more miserable. He was a character at last, mentioned in the newspapers. The looser girls faded away; and more wabeens appeared, so expensive as to be indistinguishable from women doomed to marriage. Henry reported one day that one of his drummers, a man called Snake, had been seized by somebody’s wife, put into a jacket and tie, and sent off to the United