Elixir of St. James

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation.
But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.
--The Epistle of St. James

At St. James Church, Mr. Malahoo, a too-fat man, leans on his thighs and with a heave, groans himself down on one knee and then turns up his mouth to receive communion wine.

Sweat and lavender oil from his hair drizzle down his forehead onto his rounded cheeks and down his many chins into the communion cup.

Father Mackan stood before him and felt his stomach lurch. Continuing down the communion line, the priest hoped he wouldn't have to drink from that same cup. He looked anxiously down the row-two or three more parishioners and he wouldn't have to.
Wembley Malahoo didn't feel the cleric's disapproval. Having successfully completed his mission, he was intent on the task of rising. Leaning on the altar railing, he grunted loudly and dragged one leg forward. Then, placing both hands on the communion railing and bearing down, he hoisted himself up. Along the balustrade the God-fearing felt tremors.

Malahoo trudged down the church's main aisle toward the shaft of light emanating from the open doors at its end. Never had a journey seemed so long. The communion wine had parched him dry. Sweat poured from his forehead as he lumbered out. He mopped his face and counted the paces to the door, lips moving silently with each stop.

Finally there, in the light and heat, Malahoo paused to draw some air. Inside, the chapel darkened as his bulk eclipsed the doorway's glow.

He attempted to quickly close the few blocks from St. James Cathedral near the savanna to Ramnarine's Rum Shop on Port of Spain's Main Road. Inside his shoes, his feet fattened and bulged. He winced each time his foot struck the pavement.

When he reached Western Main Road, he gulped the stench of spilt rum that oozed from the shops lining the street. Closing his mouth and breathing painfully though his nose, the enormous man prepared to pass them all. He knew the laborers, whose pence and shillings he doled out weekly at Revelation Sugar Estate, watched him from the narrow interiors.

Malahoo looked straight ahead, trying to walk steadily and control the limp he had developed from the tight shoes. Passing by rum shops with polished doors and newly installed electric lighting and ceiling fans, he finally arrived at his Mecca.

Ramnarine's was a smallish place without the benefit of a proprietor's sign. Once a living shack, it stood on stilts, alone on its own lot, apart from the neatly aligned buildings on the St. James district's main street. Inside, the pungent oil of the kerosene lamps had seeped into the floors and walls overpowering even the sour aroma of stale liquor. The slatted doors were closed firmly against the day's heat. On the wall there was a calendar with a drawing of the cruise ship Endeavor. Coated with yellowish grease, from the backroom where Ramnarine's wife did their cooking, the calendar told visitors that although ten years had passed, inside it would always be Good Friday, April 5th, 1924.

Malahoo found the proprietor in his usual position, sitting behind the wooden counter, chin in hand. The proprietor never spoke, not even to answer questions. He only moved to draw down bottles from the sagging shelves behind his head; his long, thin fingers moving with steady precision at the end of this long, thin arm.

Taking his regular table, Malahoo gave his customary nod to Ramnarine who nodded slowly in return, his turtle eyes never leaving the unseen point in the air across the bar. Pivoting only slightly on his stool, he reached down to where Malahoo's bottle was segregated from the rest of the spirits. Malahoo's job as a payroll clerk at the sugar estate afforded him a better class of rum than the field coolies.

Without interest, Ramnarine languidly extended a long forefinger toward the back of the shop where his daughter, a squat, dark girl slumped against the wall. Drawing the finger toward the bottle and then sweeping it over the direction of Malahoo, he roused the girl, who, with loud suck-teeth, rose and walked without lifting her feet toward the bar.

He ignored Ramnarine's daughter as she plunked the bottle on his table and swiped the glass with a towel hanging loosely in her hand before plunking that in front of him as well. She was a thick jawed, scowling girl, and like so many of the East Indian women in Trinidad, never seemed happy.

What was her name? Mona? Mano? He couldn't think. She was as dark as him, but Malahoo knew she resented serving a black man, like the Indian estate workers resented taking their pay from his hands.

Her father was different. For Ramnarine, a shilling was silver no matter what color the hand it came from. Color was color and drunks were drunks. Someone had to get rich from their habit. It might as well be him.

Malahoo stared at the mahogany-colored liquid in this glass. In the darkened shop the rum seemed cloudy and impure. As the rum began to work on his mind, he thought about the early days with Desireé and how her mother had cried when they married.

"Please gal, don't do me so!" she had wailed, "Any low-down coolie, but not a nigga-man!" She had gotten on her knees, and tore at her dress. "What me people go' say?"

He had been proud of how Desiree jerked her foot away from her mother's clutching hands and walked away. She had left the old-bitch screaming in the dirt-all for her man.

Now, Malahoo found himself on the other side. Desireé had left him and hadn't even offered that foot for his tears.

He wished he were a violent man. He wished he had the nerve to howl in the street when she walked out. He wished he chased her and her lover down the road like any of his coolies would have done, waiving a cutlass high overhead. But its weight would have been unfamiliar in his soft, unmarked hands.

Instead, he went to church over and over and begged God to grant him a solution. And all the while town talked:

"Malahoo wife run-off with the overseer's son," said the Indian market-women.
"And he white you know," said the postal clerk.
"She too fast with she self," was the reply at the Anglican Ladies Charitable Society.
"But then, he too damn slow with he own self," laughed the old Hindu priests from the estate encampments in Chaguanas Village where Desiree had been raised.

How quickly they forgot that quiet Desiree had lived in his house like a contented bird for ten years. He knew she didn't love him, but she didn't seem to hate him either. She had never cussed or quarreled or made him feel small.

Desiree, the backward girl from Central, had first been his servant. She was happy to mind a city house but would not live as his cheap woman when Malahoo came to want all her services. A girl who, unlike her village sisters, insisted on marriage. But after they were married she prayed for hours, bare-kneed, on the wooden floor rather than enter his bed. When she gave in, she lay under Malahoo like part of the bedclothes. He had thought her innocent.

This same Desiree had run off with another man. Dark as she was, thick legged and hairy, she got a white man too. Malahoo swallowed down bitter saliva, imagining just what she would do-what she surely could do to get such a man. What she wouldn't do for him.

Malahoo knew himself to be blameless like Job, visited with misery he hadn't caused. But he prayed with most pious sincerity. Surely God would help him.

His thoughts were suddenly broken as a ray of light fell upon his glass and illuminated the rum to a clear honey color. A young girl had opened the rum shop door. Quickly drawing it behind her, she extinguished the momentary glow and headed toward the owner.

"Good morning uncle," she said shyly to Ramnarine. She quickly placed a brown package on the bar and stepped back. She raised her head just enough to glance around the room.

Malahoo looked at her with interest. The girl was a fair-skinned East Indian, with green eyes. She wore a traditional pale blue shalwar cameez and a gauzy green urni-scarf lay gently atop her reddish hair.

"'ey, Zena-gal. Kaisan hal tohr mai heh?" said Ramnarine.
"Mommy fine uncle-she send these sweet bread for you," she paused and put her head down, "For thank you, nuh..." She looked down again.
Ramnarine put his long hand on the package. "Is nothing man..."

But, in fact, he knew those few shillings he gave to the girl's mother when he could were everything. She was his fourth cousin. There was so little blood between them really, but she was alone with six children since her husband killed himself two years before. He had sat down right there in Ramnarine's, poisoned his own rum and drank it down. He was a sorry sort-overeducated, playing at this and that. Gold-smithing was the last, but his jewels were too shabby for event he lowest-caste women to want.
Ramnarine looked around frantically for his daughter and beckoned her over. She scuffled over like a sloth.

"Millie go' marry a boy down San Fernando way," he told Zena. Then, turning to his girl, "Say a lil' good morning to cousin, nuh?"

Zena smiled shyly. "Is congratulate I mus' give you girl." Impulsively, she reached for Millie's hand, but the darker girl stepped out of reach eyeing Zena coldly. The fair girl's hand dropped like the towel the other dragged around. Zena looked down again and reddened.

It was not enough for Millie to be the only child of one of the few Indians who wasn't indentured. Her impending match to a big-shot lawyer did not satisfy her. It was more than too much that this pretty girl with light skin, who lived on the charity of far-distant relations, had a stronger lure than a weighty dowry.

Zena spoke to Ramnarine without looking up.
"Mommy say she done se dem shirt for you."

Ramnarine was sitting again now, taking up his vigil of Endeavor, watching as it sailed ever from warm waters into cold.
Malahoo sipped his rum. It left his teeth feeling sticky. He called out to Zena.
"You does sewing?"
Zena started, glanced up and down again, and then nodded.

Just like Desiree with them lookin'-down eyes, thought Malahoo. He refilled the glass and drank quickly. Lookin' down but seeing everything. His unsteady hands poured again and then brought the glass to his mouth. It chinked against his teeth causing a cold little pain that traveled through his head. He tried to refocus on the girl.

"You can do suit and such?"

Zena looked uncertainly at Ramnarine, who tore himself away from Endeavor and jutted his chin toward Malahoo. Millie gazed at the fat man with more interest now but

Zena still hesitated.
Malahoo poured another drink, drank it fast, and breathed out through clenched teeth, "Well come closer nuh, I ain't go do you nothin'"

With a last glance at Ramanarine, Zena shuffled toward Malahoo and stood nervously behind the chair opposite him.

A clear-skinned Desiree, thought Malahoo, easy for she to get a man-without no service work either.

"Sit nuh," he said.
She sat and Malahoo nodded toward the bottle.
"Oh, na, na, I doesn't drink sir" she said nervously. Millie smirked and sat at the bar to watch.
"I Malahoo-from the sugar estate," he continued
"I does know that sir,"
"You does know that." He stared at her for a bit, she annoyed him suddenly with her primness-playing a game like Desiree.
"Does you know me wife leave me too?" Zena reddened and looked down at her lap.
"My oldest brother does cut cane by you," she whispered.

Quiet she was. Desiree bird, Zena mouse, he thought cloudily. It didn't matter, he thought, he did what he could. At St. James church, he drank the blood, ate the bread. His prayers would be answered.

She was looking at him strangely. "Sir?"
"You pretty, you know that girl?"
He drank slowly, watching her bent head.
"My wife was coolie too-but no-how nice as you," he reached toward her hand she jerked her back.
"Pretty, pretty but not for touch, eh girl?" he held his hand in front of him, palms inches from her scared face.

The tall bottle was now empty. Looking up to call Ramnarine, he found the old Indian's froggy eyes staring him down. They reminded him of something. He reached for the glass, but he had already taken the last swallow. He slammed it down.

Yes, he thought, the old woman. Desiree's old mai. All "dem coolie eyes" the same, he thought. Why was Ramnarine watchin' him so? Like a nasty old-bull-frog, like the old woman sobbing on the floor, her big red eyes watching him the whole time.

Zena rose hesitantly. Malahoo snapped his neck around to look at her.
"You running?"

For the first time ever, Mohajan Ramnarine addressed Wembley Malahoo directly.
"Sit down man, I bringin' you a new bottle." Reaching under the bar with his right hand, he motioned with his left for Zena to move away from the table.
Malahoo looked from Ramnarine to Zena and looked the girl straight in the eyes.

"Bitch-girl come in here waivin' she ass at me, then runnin'" he thought. What she thinking? I a man, ain't? It not for me to look if she waivin' she wares open? Is 'dem bitch in the market make she lose respect for me "Malahoo wife run off with a white man. Fast, she too fast, any coolie-gal marry black got to be," they gossiped. Zena didn't know how strenuously he had prayed for Desiree at the church up the road. Even here Father Mackan's voiced poked at the inside of his head, "filio, patri, spiritu sancti."

The sweet taste of rum fermented in his mouth. The girl was backing away now and Ramnarine was extending those long fingers to draw her near. Malahoo reached out too.

"Ay gal, I say I ain't gon do you nothin'," he said rising, stumbling forward.
His head was raging now. He had to make her see. She must know that he had kneeled at the altar of St. James and his prayers must come true.

She wouldn't leave if only she knew how piously he has asked God, "Dear Father, end my shame, relieve me of my burdens, strike her down where she stands. Please Lord make Desiree die."

But, at the bar, the trio stood close. Knowledge was not theirs. Malahoo sat down heavily. Zena, Ramnarine, and Millie watched Malahoo carefully. No one moved. This, his chapel, was quiet and still.

Watching them, so sure and steady, he could almost believe that divinity was close by. He blinked a few times. His eyelids were like sandpaper over his eyeballs. He looked at them again. They were so calm and unmoved, they could almost make him think that all was well: That his wife hadn't left him, and his soul wasn't wasted, and that he was not tempted-at a dingy table, in a ramshackle bar, on too-hot day, in the quarter of St. James.

Contributor: Ramin Ganeshram