Vidiadhar Naipaul - A Way in the World

“He had come in his calash, with the Gourville arms. I didn’t want to notice its condition now, didn’t want to look at the coachman’s alpargatas. I appreciated the style. I had been so cast down — for so many of those days at Briarly’s, as I now realized — that the regard I saw in the eyes of McKay and even the sickly young billiard-playing clerks downstairs was like balm.

“Bernard’s estate was in one of the valleys to the north. So we had to drive right through the town, from south to north. It was like a public display of my worth, in streets where the Leander Americans still made trouble and the Spaniards and Venezuelans still sometimes remembered to hiss. And I knew that other people as well (in spite of what Bernard said) had begun to be uncertain about me.

“It was an act of pure friendship on Bernard’s part. There is now nothing I can do for him. Friendship like this wasn’t something I had ever looked for from him, and I felt it was a correct instinct that had prevented me from treating him roughly when he came to see me at Government House. I had seen something like pathos in him: he had dressed with such care. My heart had gone out to him. Such emotions are often reciprocal, and it occurred to me as we drove that perhaps at that same moment six months ago, when my position here was unquestioned, when my headquarters were at Government House (not far away now) and my authority exceeded Hislop’s, Bernard had seen a similar pathos in me.

“We left the town. We entered the narrow winding valley road. After a mile or so, we began to pass a new estate. It was Bernard’s, or perhaps the Gourvilles’. Cocoa and coffee grew together, and young shade trees, samaan and immortelle, perhaps no more than fifteen years old, both now in flower, rose above the low cocoa woods. The red-and-yellow immortelle flowers on the ground looked like bright paint. Heavy cocoa pods, all the colours from green to yellow to red to purple, grew directly out of the young black trunks and boughs and hung by short thick stems.

“I got the very smell of damp earth and dead leaves of the cocoa valleys to the north of Caracas. But no vanilla. Instead, an acrid smell of fermenting fruit, which became more pronounced near the house: like the smell of maturing casks or vats of wine.

“Bernard said he was so used to the smell he hardly noticed. He thought I was smelling the tonka bean, an acid, pulpy fruit used to give flavour and body to cocoa. Then he said no, he knew what it was: they were ‘sweating’ the cocoa beans in the cocoa house. We went out to the cocoa house and he showed me. Cocoa beans grow in a pulp inside a cocoa pod. When the pods are cut open, beans and pulp have to be sweated or fermented for a week or so until the pulp rots. Fermentation gives the cocoa bean its flavour; and that is why some people say chocolate has a slight narcotic effect. I used to hear as a child that certain people in the bush drank their cocoa cold and bitter.

“I said, I always thought I knew about cocoa beans. And I’m sure I did at one time. I knew there were many processes, as with so many ancient foods. But I’d forgotten about the sweating. When I left from La Guaira in 1771, my father made me take eight fanegas of cocoa beans.’

“Bernard said, That’s a lot of cocoa beans. Most of a cocoa pod is pulp.’

“ ‘The beans were an extra form of currency, if all else failed. It was no trouble to me. The carts brought the cocoa from my father’s warehouse to La Guaira. The sailors stowed it in the hold of the Prins Frederik, and Aniño, our agent, took charge of it in Cadiz and some time later sent me the money. I don’t think I actually saw or smelled the beans.’

“A little way from the sweating shed I saw a strange sight. About twelve women or girls moving very slowly, and in silence, hardly bending their knees, on four raised platforms. There were three girls on each platform. At the side of each platform was a pitched roof of wooden shingles that looked as though it had slipped away from its platform. The fully sweated cocoa beans were drying on those platforms. They took some days to dry. At the slightest sign of rain the seemingly slipped roofs were to be lifted over the platforms; the beans would rot if they got wet. From time to time the drying beans had to be turned over. That was what the twelve girls were doing. They were ‘dancing’ the cocoa, moving slowly, toes pressing down, through the beans. ‘Dancing’—that was the word used here, Bernard said. At the end of the dancing, after some days, the dried beans would have a slight shine. The girls were not all moving in the same direction, and the slowness, and the different positions of the girls on the raised platforms, the seeming self-absorption of each girl, did suggest a strange, subdued dance.

“One girl was lame. I asked Bernard about her.

“He said, ‘Marie Bonavita. She was one of the queens when they were planning the rebellion last year. At night she was a queen. She would take one of the estate mules and ride off to their meeting place. When she was there she was not allowed to walk. She was carried everywhere. Her courtiers wore wooden swords painted blue and yellow. Her king was Samson, a carter on Luzette’s estate. He had his own uniform, with blue facings. Once she had a big loaf baked here in our oven, and she gave a piece to all her followers. They paid two bits each for that. People were very upset when they heard about that mock communion.’

“ ‘Marie Bonavita. Mary of the Good Life, Mary the Pure.’

“ ‘My wife gave her the name, and always cherished her. After they had killed everybody, she was going to be one of the Negro queens. It came out at the enquiry. Quite a few of these girls were in it. Most of them got away with a whipping. Twenty-five lashes. Marie Bonavita got a little more than that, and she has to wear that ten-pound iron ring on her right ankle. The blacksmith made it for her. She is all right now. She’s not dangerous. She’s calmed down. She always asks after my wife.’

“ ‘How long will she have to wear the ring for?’

“ ‘Forever.’ ”

“MY EVER dear Genl, Your rebuke gratefully accepted, your good words about friendship striking straight into my Heart. Mr. Turnbull heartbroken by your news, after all the High Hopes, and he came here to sit in the Little Library for a quiet half hour he said and to think of his old dear Friend far away. He exprest Sorrow and Regret for the unkind Words he had passed in my Presence. He said he had since gone into the matter and only three booksellers Accounts not paid up Dulau, White, Evans, and he had told them that if they pressed Gen M too hard their Goods wld be returned to them without any Thanks. He said there was still Hope, all the Manufacturing Towns of England were ready to send supplies to my dear G for a new attempt. But this time with an adequate force of reliable men. So my Gen must be patient.

“Both Mr. Turnbull and Colonel Rutherfurd are keeping an eye on the politics here with the new ministers. My Gen can imagine the to-ing and fro-ing, and Mr. Rutherfurd says that being on the spot as my dear Sir is and ready to move is more than half the battle. Mr. Turnbull sends a messenger with fifty pounds the first of every month from the money you left with him I never have to ask. It was Mellancolic my dear Sir the old greyhaired man angry with the Gen when things were going well and now grieving for my dear Sir’s misfortune. Colonel Rutherfurd came with Colonel Williamson in a post chaise, such a commotion in Grafton Street, Leander thought it was his Father coming home as he continuly dreams and he was Overjoyed. He stared all the time at Colonel Williamson and the colonel said he was affected seeing the face and actions of my Gen in the boys every movement. I find much Conciliation in my boys in the absence of my dear Sir who must learn to find Patience as we do here.”