The Chapel (part3)

"I might arrange something for the baby once it's born. But it must be born, my dear. Your daughter is slimly built. She's young, a child herself. To you she looks barely three months pregnant. Don't fool yourself, if the dates she's given us are correct, in three months she'll be full term. Anything now would be too, too messy."

"And if it's born," asked Mrs Narine falteringly, "if it's born, what does happen then?"

"No, Ma, I want it anyway, I want to keep it," said Ginnie quietly.

"Don't be a fool, child."

"It's my baby. Ma. I want to have it. I want to keep it."

"And who's to look after you, and pay for the baby? Even if that Kirjani does agrees to pay, who does you hope to marry?"

"I'll marry, don't worry."

"You'll marry! You does be a fool. Who will you marry?"

"Kirjani, Ma. I's going to marry Ravi Kirjani."

Doctor Khan gave a chuckle.

"So, your daughter is not such a fool as you think," he said. "I told you to marry her off. And the Kirjani boy's worth a try. What does she have to lose? She's too, too clever!"

So Ravi Kirjani was confronted with the pregnant Ginnie and reminded of that Sunday afternoon in the dry season when the canes were ready for harvesting. To the surprise of the Narines he did not argue at all. He offered at once to marry Ginnie. It may be that for him it was a welcome opportunity to escape a connubial arrangement for which he had little appetite. Though Sunita Moorpalani indisputably had background, nobody ever pretended that she had looks. Or possibly he foresaw awkward police questions that might have been difficult to answer once the fruit of his desire saw the light of day. Mrs Narine was staggered. Even Ginnie was surprised at how little resistance he put up.

"Perhaps," she thought with a wry smile, "he's not really so bad."

Whatever his reasons, you had to admit Ravi acted honourably. And so did the jilted Moorpalani family. If privately they felt their humiliation keenly, publicly they bore it with composure, and people were amazed that they remained on speaking terms with the man who had insulted one of their women and broken her heart.

Sunita's five brothers even invited Ravi to spend a day with them at their seaside villa in Mayaro. And as Ravi had been a friend of the family all his life he saw no reason to refuse.

The Moorpalani brothers chose a Tuesday for the outing - there was little point, they said, in going at the weekend when the working people littered the beach - and one of their LandRovers for the twenty mile drive from Rio Cristalino. They were in high spirits and joked with Ravi while their servants stowed cold chicken and salad beneath the rear bench seats and packed the iceboxes with beer and puncheon rum. Then they scanned the sky for clouds and congratulated themselves on choosing such a fine day. Suraj, the oldest brother, looked at his watch and his feet shifted uneasily as he said:

"It's time to hit the road."

His brothers gave a laugh and clambered on board. It was an odd, sardonic laugh.

The hardtop LandRover cruised through Rio Cristalino to the cross roads at the town centre. Already the market traders were pitching their roadside stalls and erecting great canvas umbrellas to shield them from sun or rain. The promise of commerce was in the air and the traders looked about expectantly as they loaded their stalls with fresh mangos or put the finishing touches to displays of giant melons whose fleshy pink innards glistened succulently under cellophane.

The LandRover turned east towards Mayaro and moments later was passing the cemetery on the edge of town. The road to the coast was busy with traffic in both directions still carrying produce to market, and the frequent bends and potholes made the journey slow. At last, on an uphill straight about six miles from Mayaro, the LandRover was able to pick up speed. Its ribbed tyres beat on the reflector studs like a drumroll and the early morning sun flashed through the coconut palms. Suddenly a terrible thing happened. The rear door of the LandRover swung open and Ravi Kirjani tumbled out, falling helplessly beneath the wheels of a heavily laden truck.

At the inquest the coroner acknowledged that the nature and extent of Ravi's injuries made it impossible to determine whether he was killed instantly by the fall or subsequently by the truck. But it was clear at least, he felt, that Ravi had been alive when he fell from the LandRover. The verdict was death due to misadventure.

Three days later Ravi's remains were cremated according to Hindu rights. As usual, a crush of people from all over Trinidad - distant relatives, old classmates, anyone claiming even the most tenuous connection with the dead man - came to mourn at the riverside pyre outside Mayaro. Some of them were convinced that they could see in Ravi's death the hands of the gods - and they pointed for evidence to the grey sky and the unseasonal rain. But the flames defied the rain and the stench of burning flesh filled the air. A few spoke darkly of murder. Did not the Moorpalanis have a compelling motive? And not by chance did they have the opportunity, and the means. But mostly they agreed that it was a tragic accident. It made little difference that it was a Moorpalani truck that had finished Ravi off. Moorpalani trucks were everywhere.

Then they watched as the ashes were thrown into the muddy Otoire River, soon to be lost in the warm waters of the Atlantic.

"Anyway," said one old mourner with a shrug, "who are we to ask questions? The police closed their files on the case before the boy was cold." And he shook the last of the rain from his umbrella and slapped impatiently at a mosquito.

You might have thought that the shock of Ravi's death would have induced in Ginnie a premature delivery. But quite the reverse. She attended the inquest and she mourned at the funeral. The expected date came and went. Six more weeks elapsed before Ginnie, by now thirteen, gave birth to a son at the public maternity hospital in San Fernando. When they saw the baby, the nurses glanced anxiously at each other. Then they took him away without letting Ginnie see him.

Eventually they returned with one of the doctors, a big Creole, who assumed his most unruffled bedside manner to reassure Ginnie that the baby was well.

"It's true he's a little pasty, my dear," he said as a nurse placed the baby in Ginnie's arms, "but, you see, that'll be the late delivery. And don't forget, you're very young . . . and you've both had a rough time. Wait a day . . . three days . . . his eyes'll turn, he'll soon have a healthy colour."

Ginnie looked into her son's blue eyes and kissed them, and in doing so a tremendous feeling of tiredness suddenly came over her. They were so very, very blue, so like Father Olivier's. She sighed at the irony of it all, the waste of it all. Was the Creole doctor really so stupid? Surely he knew as well as she did that the pallid looks could never go.

© Josef Essberger 2002