Smyth Fortune

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-84523-520-8
Verlag: Peepal Tree Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

Eddie Wade has recently returned from the US oilfields. He is determined to sink his own well and make his fortune in the 1920s Trinidad oil-rush. His sights are set on Sonny Chatterjee's failing cocoa estate, Kushi, where the ground is so full of oil you can put a stick in the ground and see it bubble up. When a fortuitous meeting with businessman Tito Fernandez brings Eddie the investor he desperately needs, the three men enter into a partnership. A friendship between Tito and Eddie begins that will change their lives forever, not least when the oil starts gushing. But their partnership also brings Eddie into contact with Ada, Tito's beautiful wife, and as much as they try, they cannot avoid the attraction they feel for each other. Fortune, based on true events, catches Trinidad at a moment of historical change whose consequences reverberate down to present concerns with climate change and environmental destruction. As a story of love and ambition, its focus is on individuals so enmeshed in their desires that they blindly enter the territory of classic Greek tragedy where actions always have consequences.

Amanda Smyth is Irish Trinidadian, and author of three novels. Fortune (2021) was shortlisted for the James Taitt Black Prize, and Black Rock, won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger. An Oprah Winfrey Summer Read, and Waterstones New Voice, she has been nominated for an NAACP award and shortlisted for McKitterick Prize. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in New Writing, London Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, Harvard Review and BBC Radio 4.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smyth, Amanda

Leseproben

ONE

Somewhere between Gasparillo and Chaguanas on the Southern Main Road, Eddie felt the engine slipping and gasping as if catching its breath and every now and then he heard a pop-pop and he hoped it would hold out, at least until he got to Strong Man. But there it was, broken down with smoke gushing out of it. He knew it wasn’t gasoline and he knew he had water. The fan belt, maybe, or even the piston rings. No point looking under the bonnet until it cooled down.

He lit a cigarette, wondered how he could get a message to his uncle. A white sun punctured the sky, and there was a hard glare; some clouds low over the central hills. Not a good time to be stranded. No matter, somebody would come along at some point. He’d passed at least two cars heading this way, a buffalo cart full of coconuts and he’d almost stopped the old Indian man because his mouth was claggy, and then thought better of it. The cart would catch up eventually, unless the man had turned off the road already.

Glad of his hat, Eddie rolled down his sleeves and walked a little up the bank. A samaan tree offered some shade and from here he could see the direction he’d come from and think what to do. The land around was crispy and dry, hills scarred with black marks and drifts of pale smoke. He’d seen it too often, a bottle thrown, a careless cigarette, and next thing the whole hill was roasting like a side of meat. He spotted a brown dog with its belly bloated poking out of the grass. Just yesterday he’d hit a stray when it ran out into Coffee Street. He got out to check the bumper – surprised to find it there and hollering, its back leg jerking uncontrollably. Two children were playing marbles on the side of the road so he gave them each five cents for a soda and when they’d gone, not wanting it to suffer, he drove over the dog and crushed its head.

Eddie finished up his cigarette, and went back to the truck. He lifted up the bonnet and peered inside; nothing looked out of the ordinary. He checked the sky and saw vultures floating high like black stars. It occurred to him, it could actually be hours before anyone came by; he might as well set off on foot. He made his way down the other side and the road was blurred. From his hip flask he took a gulp of warm rum and it swooshed easily down his parched throat. He put his bag on his back, checked his watch and set out towards the capital. He’d be there by nightfall if he was lucky.

As he walked along the edge of the cane fields, his face poured with sweat, his feet were hot and swollen in his cracked boots. Cicadas were clacking and droning, a loud, unnatural, mechanical sound, as if something mighty was about to explode. And the thought came to him: none of this mattered, the heat, his thirst, the broken-down truck; what mattered was his meeting this morning with Sonny Chatterjee. He could hardly believe what he’d seen.

Over the years, rumours of black puddles appearing on the land had drawn oil men to Sonny Chatterjee’s estate. Buried deep in South Trinidad, Kushi was a cocoa plantation of fifty acres; it had belonged in the Chatterjee family since 1905. Seen pooling at the foot of a tree, swirling on the skin of the Godineau river, there was talk of oil running free like honey along the path to Sonny’s door. But Sonny Chatterjee had a reputation as a difficult and ignorant man. So far, no one had persuaded him to let them test the land, let alone drill on it.

Eddie had been watching it for a while now. The first time he turned up, Chatterjee shooed him away.

A week later, Eddie came back with a crate of pineapples.

‘You again?’

Chatterjee’s eyes were bleary from sleep.

‘Yes sir, there are things to talk about.’

‘I just wake up. You can’t see that?’

‘It won’t take long. But if you’d prefer, I’ll come back another time.’ Eddie left the crate on the ground, and went back to his truck.

A couple weeks later he returned. ‘I knew your father, Madoo,’ Eddie said, as he walked towards Chatterjee, sitting outside the house in his white dhoti. It was late afternoon. ‘My uncle owns Mon Repos.’

Chatterjee narrowed his eyes. ‘Which Madoo?’

‘Old man Madoo with the short foot.’

Eddie hadn’t forgotten the sight of Madoo’s crooked figure on horseback; one leg longer than the other, a birth defect. Some years ago, Eddie had heard that Madoo was electrocuted by a falling cable outside a pharmacy in San Fernando.

‘Your uncle own Mon Repos?’

‘I used to see your father when I was a boy, riding through fields of citrus shouting orders.’

‘That’s him,’ Chatterjee said. ‘He like to play boss,’ and he told Eddie how his father sailed from Calcutta to Trinidad on the Golden Fleece, then after years of working at Mon Repos, traded his return passage to India for $5, and a piece of land. He planted cocoa trees. He’d offered loans to the villagers with high interest rates. He’d made a small fortune.

Chatterjee put out his arms, ‘Bhap come here with nothing; he make all this.’

Eddie told Chatterjee how, like him, he’d lost his father; how it turned him quickly into a man.

‘When your father pass, you can’t stand in the shade.’

‘Yes,’ Chatterjee said. ‘You must walk in the hot sun.’

Eddie called in to see Chatterjee every couple of weeks. He made the excuse that he was visiting his uncle nearby. He brought oranges, or mangoes, or bananas; whatever was falling off the trees. Chatterjee didn’t thank him but he took what he brought. At first they stood by the truck and smoked a cigarette. Then after he had visited a few times, Eddie was invited to sit in the porch with the broken-down wall, where a warm breeze blew. They never ventured beyond here; the rest of the estate was out of bounds. Eddie was desperate to see it.

While they talked, Sita brought tea or juice, and she looked at Eddie from the sides of her eyes. She wore her hair in a plait, and her face was set, as if she had eaten something sour.

Eddie was sure that Chatterjee knew why he was there. Once he said, ‘If you come for oil, you may as well leave right now.’

Eddie kept quiet.

Chatterjee seemed exhausted; dark rings under his bloodshot eyes. He was only thirty-seven, but he looked twenty years older. Everything at Kushi looked tired. Walls needed paint, the yard was full of junk and there were buckets everywhere ready to catch rain when it fell.

Eddie asked, ‘You have water?’

‘We have tanks but no pump.’

Then Chatterjee told Eddie about the strange mushrooms he’d found clinging to the branches of his cocoa trees. He’d lopped off the diseased branches, cut away the rotten pods.

‘From Brazil to these islands, millions of cocoa trees are dying. It’s not just Kushi, Sonny. The whole of Trinidad is the same thing.’

‘They say put oil, sprinkle flour. Scorch the trunk until it black and they fall off. I try all that. I get on my knees and pray.’

Eddie wanted to tell Chatterjee: forget cocoa, it’s finished, but he figured Chatterjee wasn’t ready to hear it. He’d wait.

Then the moment came when Chatterjee asked Eddie what was inside the bag he always carried. Eddie opened up the cowhide satchel. He brought out a folder with papers, documents, photographs.

‘This, sir,’ Eddie said, picking through them, ‘is Beaumont, Texas. And this is where I once leased a piece of land, this land here with nothing on it.’ The photograph showed about an acre of grass and a small shed. Eddie was standing next to it alongside another man, their eyes squinting in the sun. ‘My partner, Michael Callaghan.’ There was another photograph of this same land with a tall structure, and a metal pick.

‘This cable tool, here, goes into the ground.’ Then, ‘This is what happened.’ Eddie held up the photograph.

Chatterjee leaned in, pointed to the black mark on the image.

‘That’s oil coming out of the ground. It’s called a gusher.’

Eddie had cuttings of newspapers showing pictures of cars, trucks.

‘It’s the future, Sonny.’

Chatterjee looked away at the early blue light sifting through the leaves of the immortelle. Mist hung in the bush giving the place a dreamy look.

‘Cocoa’s in serious trouble,’ Eddie told him. ‘You might save some of these trees, but chances are they’ll take years to produce. You have something much more valuable and you’re sitting right on it.’

‘So they tell me,’ Chatterjee said, lolling his head. ‘Apex, Texaco, Leaseholds, all of them. They say I could make a few dollars.’

‘I’m not talking about a few dollars. I’m talking plenty money.’ Eddie held his hand high from the ground.

‘Money to send your children abroad to study, buy yourself a new car; fix up your house. Buy your wife a diamond ring or a herd of cows. Pay a doctor when you need one. Apex won’t tell you how much money is under your feet because they want it for themselves.’

All the while Chatterjee looked into the darkness.

‘You understand? You’re not dealing with a person; you’re...