Oonya Kempadoo - All Decent Animals

Ata goes with Fraser and Vernon over to Fraser’s apartment, for him to think about moving back home. This is just an initial visit, first time back since he had fallen ill two months ago. They sit on the veranda in the cool afternoon. The passion fruit vine has grown plentiful on the arbor and is bearing fruit and flowering at the same time. The yellow globes hang idyllic among the shiny leaves. Honeybees crawl lazily into the purple-and-white delicate cups. The white tiles, blue-striped canvas chairs, and clean walls — his little Mediterraneany bit of tropical paradise.

Fraser sighs and Ata goes to find the passion fruit juice Vernon had put in the fridge. Fraser had said that he was scared to move back but had missed home. She is as glad as he is, that this isn’t sad or scary now but a gentle relief.

He sighs again as Ata gives him his glass with one of his artist-friend coasters. He admires the juice, the coaster’s colors, the glorious vine on white rail, and the valley beyond, again. “I love Trinidad, yuh know. I really do.”

“I hate it too. You was planning on going somewhere?”

The turtle is slow to answer, gazing away through squinty eyes. “Many times I left, before I began to build my practice here.”

The times Ata knew about, he had disappeared off, gone gallivanting somewhere in the world doing God knows what, without contacting anyone, leaving his staff, clients cussing, staff smalling-up themselves.

“There’s an ancient Greek argument, a long one, about those who love boys and those who love women — who is better. You know I am not into boys, but get what I mean … Roberto Calasso looks at it in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony —you should read that one day, you’d like it. The question, since time immemorial: ‘Which takes the erotic prize — love with boys or with women?’ I, of course, always tell discerning persons that, like a good old clock, my pendulum swings both ways.” He chuckles and Ata scoffs a laugh, knowing that his days of proclaiming love with a woman were long gone.

“And there’s the scales — balanced with passion for both, at exactly the same height — Theomnestus. But the debate goes on, this one blinded for saying that women gain more pleasure from sex than men — Tiresias — that one torn apart, for declaring the superiority of love with boys — Orpheus…”

“I believe everyone is born bisexual,” Ata states, and Fraser takes his eyes off the hills and turns to her with raised eyebrows. “Then through physiological, hormonal, emotional, psychological occurrences , they choose, or find, a comfortable preference or preferences. Sometimes in phases. One choice is not better than the other.”

“Sometimes the preference ain’t so comfortable, nuh.” He turns back to the view. “But the fear of women and their … overwhelmingness, is written about back then too. The terror of the invasion of the Amazons, the women of Lemnos who slaughtered their men — there is a sheer, intangible power of women that I see at its peak in Carnival. The beads, the glitter and beauty, is terrifying sometimes. ‘Sparkling with desire, laden with aromas, glorious.’ There’s a Pseudo-Lucian passage that describes ‘a man climbing out of bed saturated with femininity , wanting to dive into cold water.’” Fraser sips his passion fruit juice.

“Calasso says ‘the makeup and female smells combine to generate a softness and beauty that bewitches and exhausts. Better for men the sweat and dust of the gymnasium.’* Boys they looking at — give me men, though, not boys,” he quickly adds.

“The ‘gymnasiums,’ eh, the ‘primordial setting for desire’ where the lover prowls, looking for the innocent or not so innocent beloved. Stalking, eyeing the boys working out in the dust, sneaking glances at the prints of their genitals in the sand, waiting until midday when the combination of oil, sweat, and sand blooms ‘dew and down, as on the skin of a peach.’” Fraser takes another cool sip and Ata waits patiently for him to carry on.

“The ‘gymnasiums’ of London are the packed little streets of Soho, full of grimy and slick, hard-skinned or soft but grubby men — mostly dressed in black and dull colors like the pavements, the chrome stools, and old chairs that clutter up the cafés there. Cigarette smoke. Everyone smokes. And cold English rain. Gray drizzle and white skin stubbled with black hair, or a forearm covered in blond fuzz…”

Ata wishes she could write it down ’cause she can see it, she can feel it. Just how the written word seems so powerful and almighty to him — she is transported by words that roll out pictures and sounds and smells. A different side of the London she had glimpsed on her visits, but one she can imagine.

“… here now, the ‘gymnasiums’ are Jouvert and Carnival, fetes. Even when a man is jamming on a woman’s ass, there’s a show of physicality and genitals, almost Olympian-like in its competition of ability and endurance. Have you seen some of the dancehall moves out there, I mean in a fete? Combined with soca antics — it’s amazing. ‘The primordial setting for desire,’ ha! But anyway, I lost track of what I was trying to say. What is the point?”

“The point?” Ata smiles. “The point is we’re all just decent animals. And we have sex too.”

“What!”

“People think animals are lower but it’s the other way round — when we like sex, and the various forms of it, it doesn’t mean we’re debasing ourselves. The beastly-behavior part is when we dehumanize, for conformity’s sake, power, religion, whatever — to the point of oppression or abuse…” She lost the point too. Wondering where honesty and dishonesty comes in with all of this, with one’s self, with others …

Fraser always thought her brain was a little too loop de loop.

“Anyway, where all this Greek fascination comes from?”

“I was educated in the days where we had to learn Latin. In certain boys’ schools and certainly for stellar, scholarly performance.” He sniffs and raises his beak toward the Passiflora edulis. The flowers release no scent. He turns graciously to face the hills again. “I like home. I ready.”

* * *

Sammy had bring Mrs. Goodman all the way from Arima because her husband busy. She in the guest room with Fraser now, trying to find fault with the nurse. Sam and Thomas can hear her from the garage.

“Da woman ain’ easy, yuh know. She talk talk through de whole drive ’bout everyt’ing under de piping sun. Test me — is not a thing that go on in Trinidad she ain’ touch on.”

Thomas don’t take up the challenge. He rest the wet spade against a post and take off his straw hat. This might be a long chat. Sammy must be feeling better. “That’s how Moms is, sometimes. You does have to let dem talk. I glad to see you back working, though, tha’s good.”

Now Sammy have to wait around, till Mrs. Goodman ready to leave. She never like him making turns when he waiting for her ’cause she might find errands to do, at any moment. Waiting is a thing.

Sam watch Thomas’s comfortable slackness on he face, all the patience in he sluggish pose. Sam own phone not even ringing much these days, and he ain’t start back football on a evening with them fellas, yet. His Queen had make a habit of cooking dinner regular for them now, and sitting and eating it with him when he reach home. She make sure she home round six and have a plateful set out for him nice and neat. If he bring his daughter home, better yet. His Queen know how to show love. Good cow-heel soup, peas’n rice and callaloo. Thick creole love. “She can’t cook, yuh know, Fraser Queen.”

Thomas squinting, embarrassed for she, and look down at a oil patch on the concrete. He thinking he must throw some Breeze soap powder on that stain.