Authors: Lawrence Scott
‘You can never be in a financial jam when you working for Uncle Sam,’
Jonah teased cynically.
‘With France, Russia, Japan, Czech Slovakia, I think the safest place is to live is in America.’
Singh added to the
mamaguy
, with Tiger’s calypso.
‘And what about Atilla,’ Jonah loved the excitement.
‘The Yankees launched a real social invasion.’
‘We don’t want any Yankee here. The dollar is one thing, but not the rest.’ Singh was adamant.
Vincent ignored the joking.
Jonah’s group would do a hut to hut search, questioning people of Theo’s possible movements.
‘Ask them all. You see the Doctor boy? Ask everybody that,’ Vincent instructed.
Madeleine and Vincent, with some of the older boys taken out of the school, would make their way first to La Tinta and then to Salt Pond.
The groups would communicate with each other across the island by blowing the conch. One blow to gain attention, two blows a positive find, three if it turned out to be negative.
The search went on all morning to no avail. There was no sound of the conch from any part of the island. The heat grew with the approach of noon. The glare was blinding.
Madeleine and Vincent got the boys to search all the caves in La Tinta Bay and the surrounding cliffs. After Salt Pond they inspected the shoreline beneath the navigation light.
As they stood on the rocky cliffs, covered with agave and cacti, they looked down to the peninsular. It was just possible that Theo could be among the mangrove. But from where they stood, they saw nothing moving on the shores of the Salt Lake.
Suddenly, a wild cacophony, a huge pandemonium of hooters and sirens were heard coming from the bay. As they made their way back to Perruquier Bay, they could see the Stars and Stripes being run up the rigging and unfurling in the bright light. ‘What’s going on?’ Vincent exclaimed.
When they arrived in the bay below, they went out to the jetty to get information from some of the Marines who were working there. This was when they heard the news. The Japanese city of Hiroshima had been bombed. The Atomic Bomb had been dropped on the city. ‘That’s all we know, Sir.’ The GI turned away to his fellow soldiers.
Madeleine and Vincent met up with the boys who had gone to search La Tinta. They picked their way through the mangrove to Saint Damian’s. The boys were running along with the excitement of the sirens and hooters which were still going. They met a Marine coming along the shore. ‘They’ve dropped
Little Boy
on the Japs,’ he shouted boastfully.
‘What did you say?’ Vincent stopped him as he was hurrying past.
‘Little Boy,
the Atomic Bomb.’
There was a strange, ordinary reality about everything. Apart from the noise, everything seemed as usual and just itself. Nothing had changed, nothing was amiss. The Atomic Bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. It was quite simple.
Back at Saint Damian’s, they joined the crowd outside Mother Superior’s office, where the radio was on loud, coming from the verandah. The news they had heard was repeated. It had occurred
at 8.15 am Greenwich Mean Time that morning. It was a clear sky, said the news announcer, as if it were a weather report. Everyone stood silently, listening.
It was difficult for Vincent and Madeleine to get hold of the enormity of what had taken place. The search for Theo had to continue. The search parties regrouped under the almond tree. Everyone was to be fed properly, and then the search would be resumed. Elroy had one bit of news to report. An old woman in one of the huts had said that she thought she saw the boy climbing the barbed wire fence into the base yesterday. He was carrying a butterfly net and she had thought nothing of it at the time. ‘So, he might be in the base?’ Vincent said. ‘Get hold of Jesse.’ They could trust Jesse to be discreet, to conduct his own search within the base. What was Theo up to now? Jesse had grown fond of Theo and understood the need for discretion. He would keep Vincent informed.
Jonah and Singh reported a strange unease at Saint Damian’s. The talk of atomic bombs, fired cities, spread its own terror among the patients. Not all the facts of the war on the Japanese side were at hand, and the soldiers at the base came under verbal attack from patients.
They did not like the boasting. Fellas who rowed at night to Carenage to go to the clubs in Porta España returned with stories of the sweet life, the money, the good time. People had work and good pay. They also told of the drunken sailors and how men were complaining that their women were going with the Yankees. This angered those who had been listening to Jonah’s and Singh’s arguments under the almond tree. One of the tunes people were singing now was from The Growling Tiger:
With the circulation of money
at the advent of the Yankee
Take this advice from me
Because I am sure that after the war
Things are not going to be as they were before.
The jokes and the carnival rhythm of the calypsos masked the anger and spoke the irony in the feelings of people. The drunken
soldiers themselves laughed at the lines of
Rum and Coca-Cola, working for the Yankee dollar.
The fellas under the almond tree were now singing another version.
‘Rum and Coca-Cola / Kill the Yankee soldier.’
When after two days there had been no news of Theo, Vincent and Madeleine remained at the house. Krishna and Jonah knew that they were there, and any news of Theo’s presence was to be brought to them immediately. The search parties were combing the coasts for a washed up body. The fishermen were asked to be alert. Jesse had not reported back any evidence of Theo’s presence on the base.
The days after the Hiroshima bombing continued to be blazing hot. The white light, the intense glare. It was unusual weather for early August.
On the morning of the 9
th
of August the sombre tones of the BBC announced that a second plutonium-type bomb had been dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Vincent and Madeleine were up early having their coffee on the verandah. They listened in silence. Their hearts heavy at Theo’s continued absence, they listened stunned by this enormous, far away event. Only this week they had been reading in the American papers, which Jesse had passed them, a press release which told of $2 billion dollars spent on the greatest scientific gamble in history which they, the Americans, had won. The article had continued with:
We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city… If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.
The bomb was nicknamed
Fat boy.
In a later broadcast, they heard President Truman speaking.
‘The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbour. They have been repaid many fold.’
He went on to describe the Atomic Bomb as a gift of God.
‘We thank God it has come to us instead of to our enemies. May he guide us to use it in His ways and for His purpose.’
Vincent walked to the edge of the verandah and looked out on the gulf.
‘Who is this God? What are his purposes?’
Theo had been missing for nine days. Vincent and Madeleine had given him up as dead. They both went about the house trapped in their own grief. On the 15
th
of August, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, the Japanese announced their surrender.
VJ Day was proclaimed, and another day of rejoicings began which allowed people to come out with the
tamboo bamboo
bands and the steel band. Madeleine and Vincent did not have the heart for the celebrations, though they were relieved that the fighting was over.
At Saint Damian’s there was a red alert. They did not want the celebration to degenerate into a riot. More police were brought in, and the soldiers were on standby. That evening, the destroyers, barges, tugs and mine sweepers in Chac Chac Bay were lit up. There was a fire works display, and sirens and hooters blared across the bay and the hills of El Caracol.
Vincent and Madeleine sat on the jetty at the Doctor’s House and watched the garish display which ran deeply counter to the feelings in their hearts and minds.
After the noise of celebration had died down on Chac Chac Bay that night, the children were put to bed. The older patients made their weary way to their huts.
The following morning, on the crowded jetty, a witness told what she had seen in the night. She had seen a figure running in the night with a
flambeaux
, and what looked like a large tin of kerosene. As the figure darted in and out of the buildings, a trail of fire streamed out behind.
The fire had burnt all night. Every major building, except the huts and the childrens’ hospital, had been torched. The fire had leapt over in places to the base. Fortunately, people were saying, the soldiers had been up and alert, so that the fire hoses were quickly brought into operation, otherwise all the huts and the hospital with the children would also have caught fire, and been
burnt to the ground before the children and old people were brought out, They had been led down to the jetty, and put in almost every available boat in the bay. Some were ferried over to the convent and to the jetty at Perruquier Bay. The judgment was quickly made that Saint Damian’s would have to be evacuated completely.
Vincent, Jonah and Krishna immediately discussed how this could be the beginning of the rehabilitation that they had been planning. This was an ironic gift. It would now be forced on the authorities. All the patients, as far as the sisters had counted, had been brought down to the jetty area. There was a fear that not everyone had made it. But so far, only one or two people were possibly unaccounted for, and the sisters were following up the reports.
In the midst of all of this emergency and confusion, with Vincent fully occupied dealing with injuries and small burns, Madeleine at his side – openly now, no matter what Mother Superior thought – a young soldier found Vincent and told him that Theo’s butterfly net had been discovered, caught on the barbed wire fence on the cliffs behind the convent, above Salt Pond.
This was the first real sign they had had in days. Vincent grabbed Madeleine and told Sister Rita to take over the treatment of burns and bandaging. They made their way, as fast as they could, with Jonah in the pirogue.
They arrived at the nuns’ jetty. From there, they clambered up the slopes to the cliff path above Salt Pond. Vincent wanted to go alone with Madeleine. Jonah waited on the jetty. ‘Take a conch with you, Doc. You could blow conch?’
Vincent took the conch. He smiled. ‘Of course I can blow conch. Wait till you hear.’
There was the butterfly net which Vincent had given Theo as a birthday present, entangled on the barbed wire fence. The pole had got wedged in the ground. The net was torn. A bit of the gauze which was free of the barbs, fluttered in the breeze, like a cluster of butterflies. ‘It’s a flag!’ Vincent exclaimed. Indeed it flew like an
SOS. It signalled with its own peculiar kind of Morse. Vincent tried to disentangle it. It proved too difficult and time consuming. ‘He’s trying to tell us something.’
‘Yes, he’s leaving a clue, like children in a game, leaving a trail.’ Madeleine followed behind Vincent along the path.
Together, they descended the track through the agave towards the lake. The same hot blistering weather had continued. The white light and glare was intense here, because of the sand and salt margins of the lake. In the distance, the heat shimmered and rose above water.
‘Do you want to blow the conch to tell Jonah that we’ve found the butterfly net?’
‘No,’ Vincent said softly. ‘Let’s go it alone.’
They each picked their way carefully. Together they had their eyes peeled for clues of their dear boy, on the scuffed path, for any trace of him on this deserted, windswept landscape.
The salt margins of the lake drew them to the mirror of lucent water. The deserted place held its own peculiar kind of beauty. In front of them, there were a myriad
Yellow Migrants,
issuing as if from a funnel of swift air; the rate at which they were fluttering and flying forth. They crouched together and stared. White egrets looming on the higher branches were disturbed, and sailed off to the further end of the peninsular.
Looking into the distance, following their flight, Vincent and Madeleine noticed, at the same time, what looked like a crouching figure. How had they not seen him before, out in the open in the blinding light, but seeming like a mirage in the rising heat?
They continued to stare, drawing close to each other. They got up and began walking slowly towards the figure they now saw plainly as Theo, crouching over a log at the far end of the open spaces around the lake. They skirted the shore, their steps crunching on the salt. They did not want to frighten him. Their own feelings were a mixture of intense relief, and ecstatic excitement. But rising in Vincent was a kind of anger. Why had he done this to him? He controlled his anger. Who knew why this boy did what he did? Did he himself?
Vincent and Madeleine, with Theo now before them, utterly
absorbed in something in front of him, both exclaimed, ‘Theo!’
Theo turned and looked over his shoulder blankly at them.
They moved forward to kneel behind him. He continued to be absorbed by what they then saw was a chrysalis attached to the under part of a dry log.
The caterpillar had found this well camouflaged spot to spin, with its sticky saliva, its silken web. It had already purged itself of its intestines and entwined the hind part of its body to the web of silk. It had shrunk considerably. The caterpillar was now a chrysalis. A dry leaf like the other dry leaves on the salt shore. This was what Theo was staring at. How long had he been here, to catch the short moment from caterpillar to chrysalis, this metamorphosis?
The outline of the butterfly could be seen clearly beneath the chitinous outer shell which must have been here for three weeks at least. They had caught it on the last part of its journey. The top and sides of the chrysalis had popped, and the head and shoulders of the butterfly were emerging. The butterfly was pushing itself out on its wiry legs. It was now half-way out, the wings crinkled like colourful tissue paper.