Prospero's Daughter. Elizabeth Nunez

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ years they were given in exchange for a meager fee, and for at least one of them, a lease that would not expire until the year 2051.

      In its own way, the clergy smoothed the way for the colonial government by fanning the flames of superstition already raging in the Caribbean. To most people in this part of the world, leprosy was a curse from God, a disease of the poor and the slovenly. Even after it was renamed Hansen’s disease, after the Norwegian Armauer Hansen, who had identified it in 1874, it still bore this stigma that had its roots in the Old Testament.

      But leprosy was caused by bacteria, not God’s curse, and it was not absolutely clear that it was sufficiently contagious to warrant the isolation of those infected from the rest of the population. In eighty-two years, only two of the nuns succumbed to the disease. To the religious, of course, this was not proof that the disease was not contagious, but, rather, evidence of Divine intervention, God protecting those who had given themselves willingly to Him in His service. In the case of Sister Rose de Sainte Marie Vébert, who, in the opinion of many, deserved to be canonized, there seemed to be merit in this faith they had in God’s mercy. It was said that the disease had so ravaged her that it took both her tongue and her sight, though for eighteen years she continued to nurse the sick.

      When she died, the hand of God was evident. Another entry in a nun’s diary dated June 17, 1937, tells the story:

      The sisters kept singing hymns and canticles by her bedside to help her regain her calm when the terrible fits shook her poor body. Finally she breathed her last, gently. The sisters transported her body to the chapel. While she lay there exposed, something extraordinary happened: all traces of the awful disease disappeared from her face, and it was looking most beautiful . . .

      The sisters remained in Chacachacare for twenty-eight years. Few spoke English when they first arrived and they had to rely on hand gestures and drawings before they managed to pick up the rudiments of the language from the patients. But this was not their only challenge. There was no electricity or running water in Chacachacare, and during the war years, from 1939 to 1945, when there were constant fears of German U-boats patrolling the waters, which, after all, were British waters since Trinidad belonged to England, service between the leprosarium in Chacachacare and the mainland was often curtailed, and food was scarce. Patients, who in the past were not allowed to fish or cultivate the land, now fished and grew vegetables, and, troubling for the nuns, were also permitted to work side by side with members of the opposite sex. This liberal attitude of the colonial government posed a moral problem for the nuns. They would not be the conduit for sin, for base carnality. They had taken pains to prevent this occurrence and in this holy endeavor, the island had been their natural ally.

      Chacachacare was shaped like a horseshoe. It was fairly flat in the middle with two fingers of hilly land that curved out to the sea on either side. The nuns arranged for the doctors to be on one end of this horseshoe and for them to be on the other (the doctors being male and they female). In the middle, they put the hospital and living quarters for the patients, which were strictly segregated by gender. Men and women came into contact with each other only under the supervision of the nuns or medical personnel. But all that changed with the war. The colonial government was struggling to keep its empire intact and there was no time for Chacachacare, for enforcing laws to appease the consciences of nuns.

      But there were other considerations. There was the matter of babies born of the couplings of men and women riddled with the disease.

      Years later, the sisters would say that the most painful task they were ever called upon to do was to take these babies away from their parents and place them in the orphanage in Trinidad. The mothers were inconsolable. They cried for weeks on end. Some, refusing to eat, died within months. Those who lived to be cured often faced rejection from their children when they went to the orphanage to collect them. No, no, you are too ugly to be my mother.

      But the Chacachacare Mumsford was on his way to was a different place. There were better drugs, better treatments, and patients stayed on the colony because they chose to, because the disease had so deformed them they feared ridicule on the mainland, because they preferred to be treated at the leprosarium in Chacachacare than at the outpatient clinics in Trinidad, where they were seen as pariahs. In fact, for a brief time, between 1950 and 1952, visiting doctors performed surgeries in Chacachacare to excise and graft sagging lips, build bone nose bridges where the tissue had been eaten away, correct “claw hands,” and open eyes closed by the disease.

      There was one doctor left on the island now, the commissioner had informed Mumsford. Most of the doctors had been Europeans who had come to the colony primarily to conduct research. Once that research had produced a cure, he said (Mumsford thought with some bitterness), they left for new adventures.

      Was the remaining doctor Dr. Peter Gardner? Mumsford asked reasonably.

      Oh no, not Dr. Peter Gardner. Yes, Gardner was a medical doctor, but he was referring to the other doctor, a local man who sometimes stayed on the island and took care of the remaining patients.

      “Then what is Dr. Gardner doing there?” Mumsford asked.

      The commissioner had no answer, but to Mumsford’s second question as to the character of Dr. Gardner (“What sort of man is he?” Mumsford had asked), he was quick to respond. “A gentleman. A rare breed. A white man who is not intimidated by the goings-on on the island these days.”

      The harshness of his tone puzzled Mumsford. There it was, without the least prompting from him, the commissioner had spoken disparagingly about “goings-on,” and yet it had been impossible to draw him out to say unequivocally that he supported the Crown against the movement for independence.

      “What goings-on?” Mumsford took the chance to ask.

      “Colored people getting too big for their shoes,” the commissioner said.

      And because on that point Mumsford could agree, he didn’t press him for more, he didn’t ask, as he wanted to, if he didn’t think the people in Trinidad owed a debt to England for the progress they had made, and, if owing England, they shouldn’t be willing to remain, as the French colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe were willing to remain, a loyal Crown colony.

      The commissioner’s orders to Mumsford were to get Dr. Gardner’s deposition and to bring the alleged assailant (he could not bring himself to say rapist) back with him to Trinidad. Mumsford was not to question the English girl. In his letter, Dr. Gardner had specifically requested that no one interrogate his daughter. She was only fifteen. He did not want her involved in a scandal. He had done his part: filed the complaint and locked the savage in a pen in the back of his house. All that was left for the commissioner to do was to arrange to have the brute taken to prison.

      “Of course we cannot do that,” the commissioner said to Mumsford.

      “Cannot?” Again, a shadow of a doubt darkened Mumsford’s brow.

      “Everything will be on the QT, of course,” the commissioner said.

      “Nothing in the newspapers, or anything like that. Still, there is the matter of the law, due process. You can’t put someone in jail without some inquiry, at least the semblance of one. The monks at St. Benedict’s owe me a favor. They will keep the boy until we can lock him up.”

      How long? Mumsford wanted to know.

      “All the facts have to be gathered and corroborated.”

      “Corroborated?”

      “There has to be evidence to support the allegations. That’s your job, Mumsford. That girl Ariana has made things a little messy СКАЧАТЬ