The Writer and the World (33 page)

Kidogo, as an American, didn’t need a visa. And in Christina Gardens he swanned around, a Bostonian among the natives, taking a lot of photographs with an Instamatic camera, helping with none of the household or menial chores, apparently saving himself for his special job. He bought a cutlass and fooled around with it in the yard; in his idleness he carved the letter K on the wooden haft.

If Abbott was afraid of Kidogo because he thought of Kidogo as a professional, there were people in the commune who were just as afraid
of Abbott. One day, when Abbott was washing the jeep, Malik said to Chadee, the motorcar salesman, “That man is a psychopath.” Chadee never trusted Abbott after that. This was how, in the commune, Malik orchestrated fear and kept everyone in his retinue up to mark.

Benson returned from Guyana, and it was full house at the commune on Christmas Day. Abbott would have liked to visit his mother that day, but he wasn’t allowed to go. He stayed with the others; and in his statement afterwards he spoke of the Christmas gathering at Christina Gardens with an odd formality, an odd deference to the women of the two houses. “We all spent Christmas together, including Mrs. Michael, her children, and Jamal’s lady, Halé, who was an Englishwoman whom I met at Michael’s house.” There were two other English people: a man called Granger, and the woman called Simmonds, then in “total involvement” with Steve Yeates.

On December 31, Yeates, Simmonds’s “excellent lover,” found time to buy a six-inch file. And it must have been that file Abbott saw Kidogo using—that very day, or the day after—on the cutlass on whose haft he had carved the letter K. Kidogo’s cutlass was a “gilpin.” The blade of the gilpin widens at the end and curves backward to a sharp point, like a scimitar. Abbott saw Kidogo filing off “the gilpin part” of the cutlass and asked him why. Kidogo—a professional, but clearly inexperienced with cutlasses—said it didn’t “balance properly.”

In the evening there was a party: Old Year’s Night, and it was also Simmonds’s thirtieth birthday. They ate the calf that had been killed eight days before; and Simmonds enjoyed the “big feed.”

Malik had invited Chadee, the motorcar salesman, to the Old Year’s Night party. Chadee, a man of thirty, of a goodish Indian family but of no great personal attainments (he was also a part-time debt collector), thought that Malik was very rich. At their first meeting, a few months before, Malik had said he wanted to buy twelve new cars, and Chadee was hoping to do big business with Malik. Malik saw Chadee as a man with many interesting contacts, a possible commune recruit, and he had begun to involve Chadee in the commune’s social occasions. Two or three weeks before the calf feast, Chadee had been taken by Malik on a moonlight beach picnic.

And now, just after midday on New Year’s Day, Chadee came again to Christina Gardens. He called first on Jamal and Benson. Chadee had been introduced to them a month or so before by Malik; and Malik had
told Chadee at the time that Jamal didn’t really like Benson, that Jamal didn’t think he looked “good” with a white woman in Trinidad. Chadee now wished Benson and Jamal a happy new year; and Benson, who apparently didn’t have too much to say to Chadee, then left the two men together. They sat out in the veranda. Jamal, still besotted by his own writing, read out passages from his autobiography to Chadee, in all the heat of the early tropical afternoon, and spoke of the book he was writing about Malik.

Later Chadee went across the road to Malik’s and wished Malik a happy new year. He saw Abbott. Abbott had been given permission to visit his mother that day, and Abbott asked Chadee to drive him there (Malik never lent his vehicles). Chadee agreed; and he and Abbott decided to take along Parmassar, an Indian boy who was glamoured by Malik and was a member of Malik’s group. They drove to Montrose Village, to Abbott’s mother’s house. Abbott’s mother was a retired schoolteacher, seventy-one years old. Abbott was proud of her and Chadee found her “a pleasant, charming person; she was articulate and expressed herself well.” The three men were given cake and ginger ale. They left at seven, and it was about half-past seven when they got back to Malik’s house in Christina Gardens. Malik asked Chadee to drive his car into the yard. When Chadee did so, the gate was closed. Malik then asked Chadee to hang around with the boys for a while, and Chadee hung around.

At a quarter to nine—and at this stage everything appears to follow a timetable—Malik told the men present that he wanted to talk to them privately in the servants’ quarters at the back of his house. One of Malik’s daughters was there, listening to records with a black girl who did occasional secretarial work for Malik. Malik told the two girls to go elsewhere. There were cushions on the floor; Malik asked the men to sit. Malik himself sat on a chair. Steve Yeates sat on a cushion on Malik’s right, Kidogo on a cushion on Malik’s left. Facing them, and sitting on cushions, were the boy Parmassar, Chadee and Abbott. Jamal was not there.

Malik said that Jamal was suffering from mental strain, that Benson was the cause of the strain, and that she had to be got rid of. Abbott said Malik could give her a plane ticket and let her go back where she came from. At this, Yeates—the man with the wound of England on his back—jumped up and said he wanted “something definite.” “Michael just sat stroking his beard,” Abbott said, “and said he wanted blood.” Blood was the only thing that could keep them together.

Kidogo said nothing. He just looked at Abbott and Abbott saw murder in Kidogo’s eyes, and Yeates’s, and Malik’s. Abbott didn’t look at Parmassar or at Chadee. And Chadee was sick with fear. Malik had told him that Abbott was a psychopath, and Chadee felt now that it was true. He didn’t believe what Abbott had said about giving Benson a plane ticket. He thought it was said to trap him into making a statement that would turn them all against him. So Chadee said nothing, and Malik outlined his plan.

In the morning they would dig a hole for Benson, by the manure heap at the dead end of the road. Steve Yeates would take Benson to the farm to get milk and keep her looking at the cows while the hole was being dug; Malik would take Jamal to some other place, take him out for an early-morning drive. The hole would have to be dug fast, in forty-five minutes. That was all that was said then by Malik: a hole was to be dug in a certain place, within a certain time, for a certain purpose. Steve Yeates was to bring Benson to the hole; but nothing was said about how Benson was to be killed, or who was to kill her. And nobody asked. As for Chadee, he wasn’t to go home. He and the other Indian, the boy Parmassar, were to sleep in that room, on the cushions. And, Malik said, everybody should go to sleep early and get up before the sun. At ten o’clock the meeting was over.

Abbott left to go across the road to Jamal’s house, where he had his room. Malik reminded Abbott to lock the gate as he left the yard; and Chadee saw in that instruction about the gate a direct threat to himself, a further order to stay where he was. Malik, after this, got up and went to the main house. Chadee didn’t see what he could do. The boy Parmassar was with him; Steve Yeates was in the second bedroom of the servants’ quarters; Kidogo had the back bedroom in the main house, just across the patio from the servants’ quarters. Chadee lay down on the cushions next to Parmassar. His mind was “in a mess”; he had never heard “such a conversation” before. He prayed to God and hoped that in the morning the plan would be forgotten. Then his mind went blank and he fell asleep.

Across the road, in the house with Jamal and Benson, Abbott didn’t sleep. He was lying down in his clothes, thinking. He thought about his mother and what Malik might do to her. He remembered the looks Malik, Kidogo and Steve Yeates had given him earlier in the evening.

At six in the morning Malik woke Parmassar. Parmassar woke Chadee, sleeping beside him on the cushions. And then Malik sent Parmassar
across the road to get Abbott, to tell him that the time had come to start digging the hole for Benson. Parmassar didn’t have to wake Abbott: Abbott hadn’t slept, and was still in his clothes.

They were all up now. Chadee saw Steve Yeates and Kidogo come out of Kidogo’s room. Yeates called Chadee out into the yard, and Chadee sat outside against the kitchen of the main house. Kidogo and Parmassar (reappearing) went “to the back” and began to collect tools: a spade, a fork, two shovels, a cutlass and a file. They asked Chadee to help. He took the two shovels. Parmassar had the fork and the spade; Kidogo had the cutlass and the file. Abbott was waiting outside the gate. They passed the tools to him, climbed over the gate and walked down the road to the dead end, two hundred feet away from the house, on waste ground above the ravine.

Not long afterwards Malik reversed his Humber car to where the four men were—Abbott, Kidogo, Parmassar and Chadee—and showed them where the hole was to be dug. It was beside a manure heap; Chadee saw “a lot of bamboo poles around the manure.” Malik asked Kidogo for the time. Kidogo said it was six-twenty, and Malik said again that they had forty-five minutes to dig the hole. Malik himself wasn’t going to be present while anything happened. As he had said the previous evening, he was going to take Jamal out for a drive, to keep Jamal out of the way. And it was only now—sitting in his car—that he gave his final orders. Not to all of them, but only to Abbott. He called Abbott over to the car.

Abbott went and said, “Oh, God, Michael, you don’t have to do this. Spare the woman.” Malik said he didn’t want to hear any more of “that old talk from last night.” “He sat behind the wheel pulling his beard and watching me. He told me that Steve Yeates would drive up in the jeep; he will bring the woman Halé out. I was to tell her when she saw the hole, if she got suspicious, that it was for stuff to be decomposed, or words to that effect. He told me I was to grab that woman and take her into the hole. When I had her I was to tell her what the hole was for: to tell her it was for Jamal.” As for the killing itself, that was to be done by Kidogo. “He told me Kidogo had his orders. He said that if I did anything to endanger the safety of the men around that hole, or his family or himself, by not obeying, I would die. What he was telling me was I would die that morning with the knowledge that my mother would be dead also, because that was where he was heading with Jamal.” Abbott prepared to obey.
“He also told me, as I was walking off, to remind Kidogo that the heart is on the left side. He wants the heart.”

Malik drove away, and Abbott passed on his instructions: Kidogo was to do the killing, and Kidogo had to remember that the heart was below the left breast. The four men began to dig furiously. Kidogo was in charge, and he told them to burn themselves up, one man digging at a time, as hard and as fast as he could, until he could dig no more. Chadee, the salesman, suffered; Abbott helped him. It was Abbott, in fact, in his particular frenzy, who did most of the digging. When they had been digging for some time, Steve Yeates came with the jeep. He was about to take Benson to the farm, and he wanted a watch. Chadee lent him his; and Kidogo and Steve Yeates synchronized the watches before Steve Yeates left.

When the hole, which was about four feet square, was four feet deep, Kidogo said they had dug enough. Kidogo rested. He gave his cutlass to the boy Parmassar and asked Parmassar to sharpen it. Parmassar sharpened the cutlass and gave it back to Kidogo.

At seven-fifteen the jeep came reversing down the road. Steve Yeates was driving, and Benson was with him. The jeep stopped; Yeates got out and told Benson to come out, too, and see how hard the boys had been working. She got out of the jeep. She was in a light African-style gown; the boy Parmassar remembered that it had short sleeves. She said, “Good morning,” and the men around the hole said, “Good morning.”

Abbott said, “Come and see what we are doing.” She walked nearer the hole. She said, “What is it for?” Abbott said, “It is to put fresh matter to be decomposed. Come and look. Do you like it?” She said, “Yes. But why?” Abbott didn’t say, “It is for Jamal.” He forgot that. He said, “It is for you.” He held his right hand over her mouth, twisted her left hand behind her with his left hand, and jumped with her into the shallow hole. Kidogo jumped in at once with his sharpened cutlass and began to use it on her, cutting through the African gown, aiming at the heart. She fought back hard; she kicked. She called out to Steve Yeates, “Steve, Steve, what have I done to deserve this?” He remained leaning against the jeep, watching.

And Kidogo, after all, didn’t know how to use a cutlass to kill. He just slashed and stabbed, inflicting superficial cuts; and Benson was asking him why, speaking “intimately” to him, as it sounded to Abbott, who was struggling to hold the frantic woman. Abbott’s own thoughts were far away. He was thinking of his mother: she would ask Malik and Jamal in,
when they got to the house in Montrose Village, and they just had to tell her that he, Abbott, was ill, and she would get into Malik’s car and be brought to Arima. Kidogo was still using the cutlass on Benson. He was like a madman, and with the three of them in that small hole Abbott began to fear that he might himself be killed. In his panic and confusion he called out, stupidly,
“Somebody help! Somebody do something!” And
when Chadee looked he saw a great cut on the left elbow Benson had raised to protect herself against Kidogo’s cutlass. It was her first serious wound.

Steve Yeates, still beside the jeep, looked at Chadee and at Parmassar. Then he went to the hole and took away the cutlass from Kidogo. There were now four of them in the hole. But Yeates didn’t need much room. With his left hand he placed the sharpened point of the cutlass at the base of Benson’s throat; with his right hand he hit the haft hard. It was a simple, lucid action, the most lucid since Abbott had taken Benson into the hole; but of all the men there Yeates was the one with the purest hate. The broad blade went in six inches, and Benson made a gurgling noise. She fell and began to “beat about” in the hole. Yeates and Kidogo and Abbott got out of the hole. It would have been about seven-thirty.

Kidogo called, “Cover!” Benson’s feet were still beating about. Chadee began to pull manure from the manure heap into the hole. Yeates, lucid as ever, stopped Chadee. It would look strange if the manure heap was disturbed, he said. Better to go to the farm and get a fresh load. He and Yeates went in the jeep. When they came back they found Benson already buried in her hole, and they dumped the manure to one side.