Jamaican Holiday

"I don't want to go to Jamaica," Mrs. Gray said. "Jamaica is riddled with blacks." "There are black people there," Mr. Gray said. "Jamaica is a black island."

"This island is becoming black fast enough," Mrs. Gray said. "I don't have to fly thousands of miles to another one."

Mr. Gray broke off the ash of his cigar before he replied. "Ellie, that's racism pure and simple and you know my position on that." "Yes, I know your position, Robert, and in principle, I approve. I do. I approve of the way you've opened your office to those people. I really do. But that doesn't mean we have to spend our holiday among blacks. Everybody says you take your life in your hands with those crazy natives." The cold March wind swept across the terrace of the Park Avenue penthouse.

"I read in the Times this morning it was over eighty in Kingston," Mr. Gray said. "Ellie, you're not going to let your life be run by your bigoted bridge friends, are you?"

"My friends are not bigots," Mrs. Gray said quietly. "They're decent, ordinary people like you and me and some of them are your friends, too. And everyone says stay out of the Caribbean. Everyone says the blacks there are dangerous."

Mrs. Gray was a smallish woman, just turned 50, gently firm about many things. She had been taught in finishing school many years before that it was a sign of poor breeding to raise one's voice. Mr. Gray, a tall, spare man, four years older than his wife, had been exposed to this stillness more than anyone else.

Now he listened to the anger of the wind and sighed. As an uncommonly successful corporation lawyer, he had won many a tangled legal battle against brilliant opponents and, presently senior partner in his firm, at the peak of his career, children grown and married, life and the world opened to Ellie and him as never before, he was reduced to fighting the prejudices of his wife and her friends.

"Ellie, if you want to go to some other place than Jamaica, well and good," he said in a level, reasonable voice. "But I think that as an adult, civilized human being, you should have a more sensible reason than the obvious truth that natives live in their native land. And I didn't open the office to 'those people.' I simply engaged a total of three very promising young lawyers who, incidentally, and only incidentally, happen to be black."He puffed on his cigar and listened to the winter outside and when Mrs. Gray made no reply, he said, "They have two or three very good golf courses down there."

"Yes, golf courses," Mrs. Gray said. "And where were those people killed in the Virgin Islands? In the clubhouse of a golf course." There was no triumph in the way she said it. There was nothing but friendliness.

Mr. Gray sighed again. A tactical error. Something he rarely would have been guilty of in his professional life.

"And look what just happened in Bermuda," Mrs. Gray said. "The most civilized island of them all, I'd think. And the governor and his aide shot, just like that, walking his dog. And they even shot the dog." There was the faintest hostility in Mrs. Gray's tones at the end. She was greatly appreciative of well-bred dogs.

Mr. Gray went to a cabinet and poured a brandy. He turned and faced her. He always felt more competent on his feet. "Ellie, I simply will not submit to bigotry and prejudice. It's against everything I've believed in all my life. There are good blacks and bad blacks, just as there are good whites and bad whites."

"Given a choice," Mrs. Gray said, "I'd take my chances with the whites."

• • •

Donald Gordon sashayed toward the tables of the little open-air restaurant in Ocho Rios' Pineapple Place. He swung his ass in the tight pants as he moved. It was his way. He wore a bright shirt forested with huge palms. He was young and handsome and his hair was twisted into the tight, wormlike locks of the Ras Tafaris. He was a Ras Tafari. Well, he said he believed in it. He didn't. The real Ras Tafari nuts believed in that crazy shit of worshiping the emperor of Ethiopia, of all people, and they dreamed of going back there one day, real silly bastards wanting to leave Jamaica and live in some crazy place in Africa. Going back, they said, like they'd been there before. And the real nyamps, rubbing cow dung in their hair. Why? Who knows? Who cares? No, mon, those cats were waffly, but there was this big plantation way up in the mountains, and all over growing ganja--pot, shit, grass, marijuana to the world--and the Ras Tafaris had the connection. It was part of the religion. They were peaceful and half asleep all the time, the real ones, smoking and dreaming. Well, Donald Gordon was peaceful, too, and smoked and dreamed, but it wasn't the same dream at all. Fuck Ethiopia! He just wanted plenty of the weed and girls and rum and so he was Ras Tafari, without cow shit in his hair; he liked to smell real sweet for all his pretty little boonoonoonoos.

He surveyed the tables in the bright afternoon sun. They were filled and loud with tourists, the men with bang-bellies hanging over their belts and skinny legs sticking out of short pants, and the women, almost all of them bang-bellied themselves, like the men, wearing clothes meant for little children, and talking in that high, shrill way about the bargains they just found in the shops. The voices hurt him. They cut through the air like razors.

He started to sing Yellow Bird, accompanying himself by running a little stick up and down a notched bamboo tube, and he sashayed over to a table where two couples were sitting and he put a big smile on his face, showing twice as many teeth in his mouth as belonged there. "Greetings, greetings, to our honored visitors," he sang, putting the words in place of the real words of the song. "And how do you like our beautiful island in the sun?"

Too much, he saw. Their faces were pink from the sun and would get red and maybe worse. Real nyamps.

The two men, both of whom had cameras dangling from their necks like the gear of an elite corps, looked at each other and then at the women. The ladies, who had been speaking at the same time, stopped in midsentence.

They were brand-new in Jamaica, Donald could see from their pink skins and their uncertainty. "Can I introduce you to some of our choice local craftwork? Something to take back to your friends from Jamaica." He worked the stick up and down and hummed. "Look!" he said suddenly, delighted to see them almost jump. He whipped something out of his shirt pocket. "A cigarette holder carved out of bamboo. Two dollars and fifty cents, American."

The four Americans, all in their middle years, who had been in the act of eating sandwiches and drinking beer and Cokes, did not answer. They were not accustomed to having strangers sit down at a table unasked. They didn't quite know how to handle this situation. Nearby, of course, were the tourist guides, government people, natty in khaki uniforms and pith helmets, so there was no real danger. It was just disturbing.

Donald turned to the man nearest him. "Cat got your tongue, mon?" he asked pleasantly.

The man, the fatter of the two, the one who was going to have the most trouble from the sunburn, swallowed what he had in his mouth and said, "Too much."

"What is too much, mon?" Donald asked.

"Too much for that cigarette holder."

"Too much, mon? You say too much? Why you say that?"

The man glanced at the tourist guides nearby. "Now, I don't have to explain that, do I?"

"What you pay for that sandwich you eating, mon?" Donald asked, leaning even closer.

"One dollar ten," the man said automatically.

"Jamaican?"

"Yes."

"And you don't think that too much, mon?"

"That's my business," the man said, wondering whether there had been sufficient provocation to call upon authority.

Donald waved the cigarette holder. "And this my business, mon," he said fiercely. He was having fun. He knew he probably had no sale with these people, but he was having fun. He hadn't missed the glances toward the uniformed guides. That never worried him. He had never caused trouble in his life and the guides all knew that.

"We don't want anything," one of the women said. She was a normally pale, blondey kind of woman and she appeared at the moment to have contracted some subtle tropical skin disease.

"But you ain't seen all I got, my lady," Donald said. He reached into his other shirt pocket and took out another bamboo tube, slightly larger in circumference than the notched tube but shorter. He put the tube on the table. Then he raised the bamboo quickly and inside was the tiny carving of a black man with a gigantic phallus that leaped out when the tube was raised. Donald slid the tube down fast and grinned. "Now black man not so bad, hey, my lady?" he asked.

"Now, just a minute." The other man spoke up.

Donald raised and lowered the bamboo. He looked at the tourists with a wild, fierce grin that challenged them to take action against him in his own land. This was real fun. "Black man get better all the time, yes, my ladies?" What the hell, if he couldn't make a sale, might as well have a laugh.

The fatter man looked around nervously and saw the waiter and signaled for the check.

"You want nothing, ladies and gentlemen?" Donald asked in his most dangerous way. "Not my music scraper? Not my cigarette holder?" He lifted and lowered the bamboo and the black phallus sprang out and then vanished. "Not my little black man? You sure, my lady?" He turned his attention to the woman on his (continued on page 164) Jamaican Holiday (continued from page 148) left. Her blushing had filled in between the patches.

The fat man paid the bill and the four persons gathered their baskets and big hats and packages and walked away. They had no dignity, Donald thought. But how could they have dignity in that kind of clothing?

He sat back in his chair. He'd had a fair day and he really didn't have to peddle anything else. He felt good. Across the road were the huts of the basketmakers. Cars moved slowly down the road. It was nice and hot and the palm fronds were ruffling and making their sounds and he could see birds and hear birds he could not see. He could understand why people wanted to come to his country. It was a good place.

• • •

"Ellie," Mr. Gray said, "you'll find people talking against people everywhere. One of the men in the office just returned from Paris. You ought to hear what he has to say about the French."

"There you are."

"There I am what?"

"One has a right to like or dislike. Your friend dislikes the French. I dislike blacks."

"But once you submit to that kind of philosophy, you can cut yourself off from the entire world," Mr. Gray said. "Some people hate the English and others hate Italians and Russians and Germans and, Lord knows, enough people hate us. If we kept away from every place people hated, we'd never leave this apartment."

"Sophistry, Robert. Save it for the courtroom."

"I refuse to be influenced by racism," Mr. Gray said. Had that been sophistry? Was he losing his touch?

• • •

After a while, Donald got up. He knew his staying there might inhibit tourists from sitting down and he didn't want to do anything to hurt business. The man and woman who owned the restaurant were friends. He walked with his little ass swing and rubbed the stick up and down the bamboo and hummed and ended up at another table and sat down. There were just two people there, a young man and woman.

"Good afternoon, my lady," Donald said in his fruitiest voice. "Greetings, mon. Would you like to acquire some genuine Jamaican souvenirs?"

The man looked at Donald and smiled. "No."

"Why not, mon?" Donald was ferociously aggrieved.

"You charge too much and don't ask me how much I paid for this sandwich, Donald."

"Or how much I paid for my shirt," the woman said.

Donald, taken aback, frowned and then he grinned and slapped the table hard with the palm of his hand. "Mr. Best."

"Close," the man said.

"West. That's it, West! Mr. and Mrs. Richard West. Hey, good to see you back in Jamaica! Hey, that very good."

The man held out his hand and Donald grabbed it. He took the woman's hand and kissed her fingers.

"Welcome," he said, in a brand-new voice.

"How've you been, you old horse thief?" the man asked.

"No change, Mr. West, no change. How's Detroit?"

"Same. Dirty and hot and cold."

"Why don't you move down here, Mrs. West?"

"Maybe, one day," she said. "I'd like to."

"We would like that, too," Donald said.

"Have a beer, Donald?" Mr. West asked.

"No, thanks, mon."

"Come on. It's hot."

"Please, Donald," Mrs. West said. She was slim and pretty.

"OK," Donald said. "I don't like nobody buy me nothing."

"I know all about that," Mr. West said.

"But I break my rule, mon, it got to be good break. No beer, mon. I want rum."

"Great," Mr. West said heartily. He called a waiter and gave the order.

"How's your mother, Donald?" Mrs. West asked.

Donald had forgotten. He had met the Wests the winter before and had talked to them often here at the restaurant and once he met them at the Little Pub and they had eaten together and had talked a lot, but he'd forgotten he told them about his family. "She the same, mon," he said. "She sixty, maybe more, she work like twenty."

"What about you?" Mrs. West asked. "Have you settled down and gotten yourself married to one of those--what did you call them? Boonoonoos?"

"Don't short-money me, Mrs. West," Donald said. "Boonoonoonoos. No, I not married yet. I am poor mon. I have no job. I have no trade. I have no work." Donald was very sad. "Summertime nothing to do. Winter I try make living. Sell beautiful Jamaican works of art. But I sell so cheap I make no money, not even to live on."

"My God," Mrs. West said, rolling her eyes.

"My God is right," Mr. West said. "You're a thief, Donald. Anything you sell we can buy right across the road for half."

"You dead wrong, Mr. West," Donald said earnestly. "One third!" He burst into laughter and then a big John Crow soared by overhead, scarcely moving its wings, and Donald watched the black buzzard and his laughter went away with it. "When I was boy, there was no school for me. Kids today, better. Schools. More come. Someday boys and girls are smart and can read and get good jobs and get married proper and have nice homes and not have to go round making nyamps of themselves for tourists."

"Knock it off. Donald, before I burst into tears," Mr. West said. "Christ, nobody has a better life than you. You have a marvelous life. I'd trade with you any day."

The waiter appeared then with the big rum drink and Donald raised the glass. "Good health, my lady. Good health, Mr. West." He drank deeply.

"How's the season been?" Mr. West asked.

Donald set the glass carefully on the table. "More people, but they different."

"Different? How?" Mrs. West asked.

"They afraid."

"Of blacks?"

"Yes, Mrs. West. And never used to be that way."

"You sense that?" she asked.

"I smell it a mile off." Donald said.

• • •

When Mr. and Mrs. Gray stepped out of the BOAC jet at Palisadoes Airport a little after nine o'clock in the evening, Mr. Gray took a deep breath. "Smell that air, Ellie." It was 30 degrees and sleeting when they left New York. "Smell that balmy air."

"I still say----" Mrs. Gray started to still say.

"Remember our agreement," Mr. Gray said. "You promised to retain an open mind."

"I still don't know why you insisted on coming here to Kingston, since we're going to Ocho Rios. We should have gone to Montego Bay like everybody else."

"You'd like to forget we worked that out," Mr. Gray said. "We agreed it would be interesting and informative to drive around the island before we settled in at Ocho Rios."

"You agreed," Mrs. Gray said. "You agreed with yourself."

They passed through customs and immigration quickly enough, although Mrs. Gray remarked later she thought the immigration woman a little more officious than necessary, and also a blacker black than she had ever seen before.

A taxi took the Grays to the Morgan's Harbour Beach Club, where Mr. Gray had booked, and in a little while they had changed out of their heavy winter clothing into light cottons. They went to the outdoor bar overlooking the water and had rum drinks and looked at the lights of Kingston across the harbor.

"Isn't this wonderful, Ellie?" Mr. Gray asked.

"It's not bad."

"Can you imagine what it's like in New York right now?"

"I prefer not to."

Mr. Gray took that as a form of (continued on page 218) Jamaican Holiday (continued from page 164) concession and, to mark the occasion, he ordered two more rum drinks.

• • •

"Maybe I go to the States," Donald said mournfully. "Then I go on welfare."

"Not worth it, Donald," Mr. West said.

"You come down here and live, mon, I work for you," Donald said, cheering at the idea. "You pay me good money and I find nice Jamaica girl and marry fit and proper."

"Good idea," Mr. West said. "Be even better if we became partners. Both go around selling souvenirs." He started to sing Yellow Bird in a passable Jamaican accent.

Donald roared. He thought that was so funny he allowed Mr. West to buy him another drink. There were good whites as well as bad, he thought.

• • •

Turning a sharp bend in the road, Mr. Gray saw a huge truck bearing down on him. The truck was straddling the line in the middle of the road and gave no indication of yielding. Mr. Gray was forced half onto the shoulder to give the truck room to pass. He was conscious of a large black face looking down at him from the truck's cab. As the truck continued on, it let go a long wail like the death cry of a banshee.

"Did you see that?" Mr. Gray demanded for about the tenth time, and it was still not yet midmorning.

"How could I not?"

"He didn't give me an inch. And you couldn't see it, but he looked down as he passed as though it were a great joke." He discovered to his dismay that the words black bastard were on the tip of his tongue.

The car, an English-built Ford, had been delivered to them at the hotel. The man from the rental agency was quite young, he seemed still in his teens, and he addressed Mr. Gray with easy affability and he rolled his eyes and grinned when Mr. Gray first discovered that the steering wheel was on the right side. Mr. Gray had somehow forgotten to learn that driving was on the left in Jamaica. The young Jamaican rapidly gave Mr. Gray whatever details he considered necessary for the operation of the vehicle, but he talked so rapidly and his accent was so pronounced that Mr. Gray got only about half of it. He did not, in front of his wife, want to ask the young man to repeat what appeared to be simple basics. Then the young man, still full of native laughter, but quite firm, made Mr. Gray drive the car around and around in the parking area of the hotel to emphasize the side of the road that had to be followed.

"Don't you get dreamy, mon," the young man said. "You get dreamy, you get all sassed by the beautiful trees and birds and water and people, you get dreamy and you start to drift over to the side of the road you used to, you get killed, mon."

Mr. Gray, embarrassed to be driving around like a novice while many of the hotel employees watched with pleasure, kept repeating he understood. Satisfied at last, the young man let Mr. Gray sign the contract. It took a little time, because the young man had no machine to take Mr. Gray's credit card and the hotel had none, either. The card had to be copied, very slowly and carefully. After that, the car was loaded and the young man asked to be driven to the airport building where the rental office was located. The young man watched him carefully as he moved along the unfamiliar side of the road and he made Mr. Gray nervous, so that he more than once forgot to stay on the proper side. Each time, the young man arched his back as though he had been stabbed. Mr. Gray gave him a tip at the airport and was glad to be rid of him and, from then on, he had no trouble at all keeping in the left lane.

The road along the sea approaching Ocho Rios from the east was marked on the map in a solid red line, while other Jamaican roads were thin black lines and even pale parallel lines. That had encouraged Mr. Gray. He discovered that road descriptions were a question of semantics, or perhaps relativity. The broad red line was narrow, rutty and filled with hostile trucks. Still, the weather was indescribable and they drove with all four windows open and the country was richly colored and after a little while, Mr. Gray relaxed and discovered he was enjoying himself. Mrs. Gray was not as happy. The very small size of the car was no problem as far as her comfort was concerned, but it made her feel defenseless.

They came, early on, to their first town. It looked to the Grays like some refugee camp. In the main street through which the highway ran, there were perhaps 300 or 400 people standing around with, apparently, nothing to do. The buildings they saw were in faded pastels and some of them seemed ready to collapse and as they slowed down to get through without accident, they were aware of a disagreeable smell.

Mr. Gray was looking about him with such interest he did not see the uniformed woman. Mrs. Gray touched him and he looked ahead and saw the woman holding up her hand to stop him so that school children could cross the road. He jammed on his brakes and felt sweat break out on his neck. He lit a cigarette. He had practically given up cigarettes, but he felt he needed them on this drive.

"They're so black," Mrs. Gray said, as the children, all in identical blue uniforms, trooped obediently in line across the street.

"What did you expect?"

"I know, but they're so black."

"They seem friendly enough."

"They don't look particularly friendly to me. Look over there. My God, look at the men with those knives!"

There were perhaps a dozen men, all of them naked from the waist up, all of them large and heavily muscled, all of them glistening with sweat, and all of them holding knives about the length and breadth of a medieval short sword.

"Those are machetes," Mr. Gray said. "They use them in the sugar fields."

"They look like they want to use them on us."

"You've simply got to stop thinking that way, Ellie."

"I'd hate to see a black man swinging a knife like that in New York," Mrs. Gray said with no relevance to anyone but herself.

"That's just it. We're not in New York. Those knives are just things they use in their work. Look, one of them is smiling at us."

"Can you in all truth describe that as a smile?" Mrs. Gray asked. "I would say that was the expression on the face of the executioner just before he lopped off Mary Stuart's head."

The uniformed woman indicated they could proceed and she looked at Mr. Gray with open hostility as he passed her, undoubtedly, he reasoned, because he had had to stop so short. As they drove out of town, Mr. Gray glanced in the rear-vision mirror. He saw the men watching him leave, the machetes dangling from their hands.

They drove through a long stretch of reasonably smooth highway and there were sudden, stunning views of the sea and the water was of colors that made Mrs. Gray cry out. The day became bright and very hot and after a while they were hungry, but although they passed through village after village, all like the first, with hundreds of idle people spending the day staring, they could see no place to eat.

"Just as well," Mrs. Gray said. "I wouldn't leave the car alone with all our things in it. These people are all natural thieves. Everybody knows that. They are totally amoral. Everybody knows that. Robert, you are smoking too much."

As though to support her thesis of the lack of Jamaican morals, they passed another sign advertising government-run birth-control clinics. This particular sign showed a very despondent young girl, perhaps 12, looking down sadly. The legend read: You don't have to get pregnant.

"You get the message, Robert?" Mrs. Gray asked. "They're in effect telling children to fornicate as much as they please, only don't have babies."

"Not much different with the pill," Mr. Gray said.

Mrs. Gray let that go by. "Unfortunately, those signs probably do no good at all. I would imagine very few people here can read, especially promiscuous young girls."

It was getting on toward noon and, having got off to a very early start, breakfast was long, long ago. Mr. Gray had calculated as he had pored over the map that morning that they would reach Port Antonio well in time for lunch, but he had not reckoned with the roads.

"Robert, look out!" Mrs. Gray screamed.

Mr. Gray's first reaction was shock at hearing his wife lose control, but then he saw immediately that she had cause. Coming out of another of the innumerable curves in the road, he saw that half the highway had collapsed into the sea and that all traffic was using the half of the road that remained. Mr. Gray looked down at the abyss on his right and knew instantly how foolish that was. He drove slowly along the narrow stretch and was about halfway through when a truck came along and from its manner and from past experience, Mr. Gray knew it was not about to back up for him. The truck came to a stop about ten feet ahead of Mr. Gray and the driver leaned out and waved for Mr. Gray to do the backing up. Another man leaned out of the other side of the cab and made the same demand.

"You have the right of way," Mrs. Gray said, still in a very loud voice. "It's our side of the road."

"It's anybody's side at the moment," Mr. Gray said. He leaned out of the open window and looked back and slowly reversed the direction of the car, trying hard not to think of the 30-foot drop into the water.

It took him ten minutes to get back to where the road was still intact. The truck followed him closely, seeming at times to be trying to push him backward. The driver kept waving his hand for Mr. Gray to hurry up. When Mr. Gray finally backed onto the two-laned section of the highway, the truck roared past and instead of acknowledging Mr. Gray's courtesy, the driver merely glared.

"I've never seen a face that black in my entire life," Mrs. Gray said, as though that explained everything.

"Didn't notice," her husband said, lighting another cigarette. "Perhaps because I'm called Gray."

Mrs. Gray studied her husband as he again began to cross the narrow, singlelaned section of the road. She saw him pulling on the cigarette. She saw the new beads of sweat on his forehead. He must be very shaken, she thought, to have permitted himself a remark like that.

• • •

When it was almost two in the afternoon, Mrs. Gray, who had not spoken for some time, suddenly said, "Do you realize we have not seen one white person all day? My God, Robert, where on this earth are we?"

"Just entering Port Antonio," Mr. Gray was pleased to be able to report. "And there, Ellie, is a white face."

"Him?" Mrs. Gray looked at the man. He was bearded and his hair hung down to his waist and he wore shorts and no shirt and his feet were bare. He had a haversack on his back.

"And there," Mr. Gray went on triumphantly, pointing. "And there. And more over there. Now, do you feel better?"

It was true, Mrs. Gray saw. After all those black towns and villages, there were white people in Port Antonio. She could not look at them enough. It seemed they had emerged from a journey of weeks, months, not hours.

"And there," Mr. Gray said in final triumph, "is a restaurant."

• • •

Walking slowly along the highway just to the east of Plantation Inn, Donald Gordon saw the small British Ford turn off the road and start up the hill. It was after sunset. One day may be he would own a little car, Donald thought, since twilight was a time for dreaming. Then he would not get to a girl's house foot weary and tired.

"Are you sure this is the right road?" Mrs. Gray asked.

"The sign said Dunton Manor."

"I don't know why we have to live way up in the hills. We came here to be on the beach."

"Nothing else available, and we have beach privileges."

The road wound in spasms. They passed through a small village. In the dusk the faces were lost. They looked like bright, moving clothing with no heads.

"You ought to blow your horn on these curves," Mrs. Gray said when they came to another hairpin turn.

"Ellie, I'm driving, and so far I've done pretty well."

A bus swung round the curve and Mr. Gray had to scramble off the road to let it pass. Mrs. Gray said nothing. At the next curve, Mr. Gray sounded his horn. That seemed to attract the attention of everybody in the second village, just around the bend. This village had a bar and men were drinking beer and women were lounging around and children scampered like dwarfed ghosts. As Mr. Gray slowed down, a man danced into the road waving a beer bottle and he stopped directly in the path of Mr. Gray's car. Mr. Gray jammed on his brakes and Mrs. Gray made a faint sound. The man stood in the glare of the car's headlights, twisting his body back and forth in a kind of grotesque dance, and then he capered away, laughing uproariously, and the other people laughed and clapped their hands.

"That idiot," Mr. Gray said. "I almost ran him down." He thought about what the other people might have done if he had. He shuddered.

"Keep going," Mrs. Gray said as her husband sat there. Her voice edged toward hysteria. "My God, Robert, do we have to go through this kind of thing every time we go up and down this hill?"

Mr. Gray put his foot down on the accelerator and at that same moment there was a sudden, shattering thumping on the roof of the car. Mrs. Gray screamed and Mr. Gray braked. He looked out, his heart pounding. The man with the bottle in one hand was slapping the roof with his other hand. He was still laughing and so were the other people.

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Mr. Gray got moving again. After a moment he said, "It was just high-jinks, Ellie. These are happy people."

"So are our own blacks, I understand," Mrs. Gray said. "When they're not out mugging."

They came at last to a sign that indicated they had reached their destination. Mr. Gray turned into the private road with the sense of having at last found safety, as, he thought, pioneers in covered wagons must have felt when they got inside the gates of a fort. The headlights disclosed a small apartment complex and Mr. Gray brought the car to a stop.

"Well, we're here, Ellie," he said, trying valiantly to get some joy in his voice. When Mrs. Gray made no reply, he got out of the car and walked round to her side and opened her door. "Smell this air," he said as he helped her out. "Perfume." He could feel her hand trembling.

Mrs. Gray obediently took a deep breath and then she screamed.

A black man emerged from the dark. He looked enormous. Mr. Gray stiffened. He looked quickly to see if the man had a machete.

"Good evening," the man said politely. "I'm Rusty. I'm here to help you unload."

• • •

"You've got to admit it, Ellie, this is a little paradise," Mr. Gray said.

They had just finished breakfast on the terrace. Mr. Gray lit a cigar. Below them was a golf course and even at this early hour, they could see players and their caddies. The sun had risen early and pure and the sky was untainted. Directly in front of the terrace was a large flame tree and tiny fork-tailed doctorbirds were dipping their long beaks in the nectar of the bursting orange-red flowers and as they whirled around, the sun brought light to their iridescent breasts so they looked like floating jewels. There were angel's-trumpet trees with their great flowers hanging upside down and oleander and bougainvillaea and Rusty was at work watering and he waved to them as lie passed.

"It's funny," Mrs. Gray said. She had not slept well and she looked tired.

"What's funny?" Mr. Gray puffed gently on his cigar and took in the view and sipped the superb Jamaican coffee.

"You know, the things you usually hate to listen to, the things that usually disturb you, loud radios, people talking, cars pulling in and out. I was so happy to hear all those things last night. They had a party somewhere in the building going on half the night. I loved every sound of it."

"It's all going to work out just fine," Mr. Gray said. "Now, you just give the girl an idea of what we want for dinner and then we'll take off for the beach."

Mr. Gray tinkled the little table bell and when the young girl who was to be their cook and housekeeper came out, Mrs. Gray questioned her about her abilities and was pleased with what she heard. The girl, a light-skinned Jamaican with a shy face, said that the traditional first meal in Jamaica was chicken, prepared in the native manner. Mr. and Mrs. Gray agreed to that.

The Grays left the house just a little before 11. The villages on the way down were almost deserted and didn't at all seem as menacing as they had the evening before. Mr. Gray now was quite accustomed to driving on the left. He felt the warmth of the sun. He felt very good this morning and he was pleased to see that Mrs. Gray was losing that bleak look.

• • •

Mr. Gray, in bathing trunks, waited outside the ladies' dressing room at the beach club. There were already many men, women and children on the beach, which was a lovely place, dotted with shade trees. He looked at the water with its multiple shades of blue. He saw that a reef had built up about 50 yards offshore and had made the water a placid lagoon in which children were splashing and laughing and playing. Beyond the reef lie could see people snorkeling and when they stood up, he saw that the water remained shallow for a long distance.

"This is lovely," Mrs. Gray said.

He turned with a start. He had not heard her come out. "Now, remember," he said as they walked onto the beach, "you must be very careful of this tropical sun. No more than fifteen minutes on each side to start." He laughed. "Tropical sun. I wonder what the people in New York are doing today."

There was a small canteen on the beach and the man in charge of it arranged two chaise longues for them close to one of the shade trees, so that they could get out of the sun when they wanted to. They baked for a few minutes and then Mr. Gray could contain himself no longer and he got up and went into the water. A moment later, Mrs. Gray joined him. The water was exactly right, not too hot or cold, and the Grays dipped and swam and when they looked at each other, they beamed.

As they walked back to their beach chairs, Mrs. Gray, watching four attractive young people playing shuffleboard, said, "You were quite right this morning, Robert. This place is a small paradise."

Mr. Gray looked at her and smiled. There was nothing in the world he more wanted to hear.

They moved the chairs under the tree and stretched out again and presently Mr. Gray was dozing peacefully. He was wakened when he heard his wife call his name. He sat up and looked at what she was staring at.

A tall, slender, extravagantly beautiful young white woman was coming onto the beach accompanied by two black men. The men seemed an endless expanse of blackness, interrupted only briefly by the skimpiest of trunks, hardly more than jockstraps. The men were heavily muscled and walked like cats. Their hair was twisted in tiny locks and was bleached blond and the tiny, tight, yellow locks gave their faces a shocking abnormality.

"They allow blacks here," Mrs. Gray said as a statement.

"How could they not?" Mr. Gray was fascinated and repelled by the men's hair.

"Look at their hair," Mrs. Gray said.

"Not so loud, Ellie."

"They're those people. We were warned about them. That crazy sect."

"Ras Tafari. They're not crazy, Ellie. They're a religious group."

"They murder and smoke marijuana and rob," Mrs. Gray whispered. "I know all about them."

"From your bridge friends?"

"Let's get out of here."

"Now, Ellie...."

The two men were performing a kind of ritual, a dance, a happy movement, a gentle swaying of their torsos, waving their arms sinuously. The ravishing white woman looked at them with love.

"If you don't take me away from here immediately, I'll leave by myself," Mrs. Gray said. She was already on her feet.

• • •

There was the usual afternoon crowd at Pineapple Place. Mr. and Mrs. Gray had popped in and out of some of the duty-free shops and had seen things they thought they would order delivered to their plane when they departed. They had, since leaving the beach, acquired broad-brimmed straw hats, and Mrs. Gray appeared to have recovered from her attack of nerves. The owner of the shop where they bought the hats had pressed a cold rum drink into Mr. Gray's hand and, although Mr. Gray seldom drank before evening, he did not want to be rude. He drank the drink, which was surprisingly good, and which made him feel, when they left the shop and got back into the sun, a little lightheaded. So much so that when they sat down at a table in the open-air restaurant, he ordered another rum drink. He ignored Mrs. Gray's questioning, warning looks.

Presently they ordered sandwiches and Mr. Gray tasted and approved the local beer and had a second bottle. He looked around and liked what he saw.

"Well, you can't say there aren't a lot of white faces around here, Ellie," he said.

"Thank God for small blessings," Mrs. Gray said.

The rum and beer brought Mr. Gray to a philosophical turn of mind. "You must judge this island in a proper frame of reference."

"Please don't get started on frame of reference," Mrs. Gray said. "I know you are famous for your frames of reference, but please don't get started on it here." Mrs. Gray, despite herself, thought again about those hideous men on the beach and she shivered in the sunlight.

"It's the only fair way to assess anything," Mr. Gray said.

"Just don't get started on it here, Robert." She started to take another bite of her sandwich and then stopped. "My God, Robert, look at him. And he seems to be coming over here."

Mr. Gray, amiable from alcohol and tropical ambience, looked up from under the wide brim of his hat to see a slender black man in a bright shirt and tight pants weaving among the tables in a kind of dance in their general direction. He was singing softly and accompanying himself by scraping a stick up and down a piece of serrated bamboo.

"Look at his hair," Mrs. Gray said in a voice she might have used in pointing out the Devil's tail. "He's another one."

• • •

Donald Gordon was in a very joyful mood that day. He had had a fantastic night with a new little girl and he had unloaded a large amount of junk to tourists that morning and he saw the crowd at the restaurant and anticipated more sales and, best of all, he could see at one of the tables his friends, the Wests, who waved to him as he approached.

He early on picked out the middle-aged couple sitting at one of the tables. He liked what he saw. The woman was dressed properly for her age and the man was wearing slacks and had no camera--all this endeared them to Donald. He sashayed over to their table and sat down.

"Hey, you with the big hats," he said in a manner of singing. "You think you in Mexico?" He laughed at his own humor and then he said, "Greetings and welcome to Jamaica. I have some very special things to show you." He did not, for the moment. Instead, he started to sing Yellow Bird, scraping the stick up and down.

Mrs. Gray sat transfixed, her sandwich still in her fingers. She might have been caught in the act of eating by some invisible agent of petrifaction, doomed to remain in that fossilized state forever.

"Would you lovely Americans like to buy this native musical instrument?" Donald asked, holding up the notched bamboo.

Mrs. Gray wanted to tell her husband to get the check, but her throat was paralyzed.

"No, thank you," Mr. Gray said to Donald.

"How about this cigarette holder? Only two dollars and fifty cents, American."

"No, thank you," Mr. Gray said. The black man's face seemed to move slightly in and out of focus and he blinked his eyes and felt he had had too much sun.

"Robert," Mrs. Gray said. She didn't quite say it. She almost got it out.

Donald took a fatter piece of bamboo out of his pocket and set it on the table. He raised and lowered it swiftly. Mrs. Gray screamed. She screamed inside. No sound emerged.

"Now black man not look so bad, hey?" Donald chortled.

"No, thank you," Mr. Gray said for the third time, disgusted and deeply offended by what he had just seen and heard. Could he, dare he ask a native of the country to leave?

"Why not?" Donald demanded, widening his eyes madly.

An answer came automatically to Mr. Gray's lips. "It's too expensive," he said, although the black man had named no price for the revolting little gadget.

"Expensive!" Donald exploded. "How much you pay for that crazy hat, mon?"

"Three dollars," Mr. Gray said, why, he didn't know.

"Three dollars! And that ain't expensive, mon?" Donald raised the bamboo and the absurd phallus shot out. He let the monstrosity remain exposed longer than usual, because he could see that the American lady was profoundly shocked. "You getting to like black man better and better, my lady?" he inquired.

"Stop that," Mr. Gray said. The loudness of his voice caught him by surprise. He glanced around to see if anyone had noticed.

"Expensive? What you pay for that sandwich, mon?" Donald asked, jiggling the bamboo up and down, so that the phallus popped in and out, quivering on its spring.

"Stop that," Mr. Gray repeated, gripping the tabletop.

Donald, feeling just fine, raised and lowered the bamboo. He knew it often made women gasp, but he also knew they secretly loved the thrill it gave them.

"Stop that!" Mr. Gray no longer cared who heard him. "Stop that!"

"Hey, mon, you crazy?" Donald raised and lowered the bamboo and peered at Mr. Gray with interest.

"Stop that filthy display! Get out of here!" Mr. Gray shouted.

"You get out of here, mon," Donald said, vastly pleased with the way things were going. "I live here." He raised and lowered the bamboo.

"Get the hell out of here!" Mr. Gray lurched to his feet and reached out for the neck of the beer bottle. "Get the hell out of here, you goddamned nigger!"

His fingers closed on the bottle and he cocked his arm and there was the scraping of a chair and a hand grabbed Mr. Gray's wrist. Mr. Gray tried to free himself, but the hand held him fast.

"Have you lost your mind, mister?" an American voice asked.

After a moment or two, Mr. Gray went slack. Donald, who had not moved from his chair, slowly got to his feet and nodded to his friend, Mr. West, who still was gripping Mr. Gray's wrist. Donald collected his souvenirs and walked away. He shook his head as two of the tourist guides rushed to help him. He shook his head and waved them back wearily. He stepped down into the road and walked away. He walked heavily, like an old man.

Mr. West released Mr. Gray and Mr. Gray sank back into his seat. He looked around as though he were coming out of unconsciousness. His head ached and he pressed his fingers to his temples. He saw that everybody was staring at him. He saw that his wife was staring at him. He wanted to know why he had done what he had done. He wanted to ask Mrs. Gray. He wanted to ask anyone.