Night Calypso by Lawrence Scott Read Free Book Online

course.’ Then, the infirmarian re-entered the room. He respected his patient’s confidence and left.
     
    Sister Thérèse stood at the window before returning to her cell. She stared out onto the convent’s garden with the nun’s cemetery. It was one of the first places she had been taken when she first arrived, in order to see the grave of Sister Matilde, who had been one of the original sisters. She remembered being moved to tears on seeing the name inscribed on the pitted stone over the grave: Sister Mathilde Le Clercq. Born, Clermont Ferrand, France, 1850. Died, El Caracol, 1935. Was this to be her own future? she had asked herself, learning that Sister Matilde was one of the few nuns who had eventually succumbed to the disease. Had she, Thérèse, herself, escaped one danger only to be exposed to another?

Saint Damian’s
    Theo had kept Vincent awake again with another tale. He was exhausted after another week of his crazed calypso. He did not know how he was going to continue to care for the boy. He did not want to believe in possession. What had Father Dominic landed him in? What had he taken on? The boy was wrecked by his tale. He needed to tell his story. He had had to lift him from the floor and take him to his bed last night. In the morning, Vincent knelt beside him. ‘Theo, come boy, is time to get up. Remember, we going to Saint Damian’s today.’ Vincent did not want the boy out of his sight.
    After breakfast, they waited on the jetty for Jonah. They watched the put-putting pirogue come round the point. Jonah looked surprised. ‘Like we have an extra passenger today, Doc.’
    Vincent looked at Jonah. ‘He’s shy.’ He spoke under his breath. ‘You take a seat in the bow, Theo.’ He sat in the middle.
    Jonah crouched in the stern with his hand on the tiller. The pirogue cut out from the jetty.
    Vincent watched the dark green mirror of the bay crack and ripple away from the sides of the pirogue. Far above them, a frigate bird soared, a cross in the sky. On the other side of the wide Chac Chac Bay, Vincent could see that the nuns’ launch was leaving from their jetty at Embarcadère Corbeau.
    The tiny, black specks in the far blue above were vultures. When some dead thing in the bush, or on the shore, alerted them, they spiralled down, turkey buzzards, intent on the dead.
    The nuns’ launch,
Maria Concepción
, sat deep in the water, churning away at the
callaloo
of green, the Orinoco’s stain. The squat bow ploughed ahead, not like the pirogue’s chevron, raised inflight, now that Jonah had it at full throttle. The speed did not last. The engine spluttered and had to be started again. A whiff of gasoline from the motor mixed with the salt air.
    Jonah stood now, firmly balanced, with a hand on the tiller, the engine racing again. ‘We go beat them today, Doc!’ It was his little game to reach the Saint Damian’s jetty before the nuns.
    Vincent held onto his Panama. He smiled at Jonah’s enthusiasm. ‘Take it easy, Jonah. Mind, Theo,’ he called out.
    â€˜We go reach, Doc. Hold tight, boy.’
    Would Sister Thérèse be on the launch today? She had had something to tell Vincent.
They’ll kill my father
. Her words echoed even now from the nuns’ infirmary a week ago. He still saw her cuts and bruises, the wound on her ankle. She should be in today for him to take the stitches out. He had been missing her, his best nurse, all this week on the wards. The enclosure of the convent had folded about her. ‘She’s resting, Doctor,’ were Mother Superior’s words when he asked why he had not seen her.
    Theo was staring resolutely ahead. A flotilla of pelicans, disturbed by the pirogue’s roar, rose from the choppy waves, then plunged as suddenly back into the sea. Vincent leant over and touched his shoulder. ‘Look.’ Theo winced.
    Vincent looked back at Jonah. He was beaming, braced by the