these reckless young people...’
Judge Chanderband gave poor Aubrey a withering look and proceeded to tear his arguments to shreds, pointing out that those charged were all adults, and highly intelligent and educated adults at that, and must take full responsibility for their behaviour since the same would be expected of a bunch of vagrants off the street whose entire lives might be ‘chaos and confusion’. Sir Rupert’s generosity might have been misguided, but could never be blamed for the criminal acts committed by this group of delinquents who certainly knew that what they were doing was wrong... If, my dear Mr. Chase, that kind of crippled argument is the best you can do in defence of these boys, I suggest that it would be better if you said nothing... I understand that there’s a teacher who would like to say something on their behalf?...’ [As I recall it, both judge Chanderband and Aubrey Chase were laughing during this entire exchange, and that contributed to our perception that the entire proceedings were not to be taken seriously]
At this point Willow spoke, supposedly on our behalf, but he began by tearing into us, saying how disappointed he and the other masters were in us and that he felt it as a personal failure. He outlined our past academic achievements as well as the expectations the school had of each of us in the exams, concluding in each case with a version of the following: ‘Of course all that’s now up in the air; it’s anybody’s guess what he will achieve in the exams if he is capable of deviating so widely from the kind of behaviour we had every right to expect of him...’ In fact it was a brilliant performance: he seemed at various points angry, deeply disappointed, shocked and saddened almost to the point of tears by what we had done, while saying at the same time what we were capable of doing and how great a contribution we could have been expected to make to our newly independent country, if only we had not spoiled everything that night by ‘behaving worse than a class of unsupervised second-formers.’ Then, having stolen much of the judge’s thunder, he even managed to suggest what might be imposed on us by way of punishment.
‘I do not plead for them to be excused or pardoned. What they did deserves punishment, and I’m sure, My Lord, that you will not hesitate to impose it; for my part, whatever you do decide on in the way of punishment, I would wish, if possible to add to that the kind of punishment that will force them to realize some of the potential that they seem to have abandoned or negated in one night of drunken recklessness. I know what they are capable of: they are all bright, creative individuals with wonderful imaginations and, instead of defiling their new country by their actions, I’d like to see them being forced to help build it up in an important area, such as it’s creative literature. I’d make each of them write a short story for or about their country and will not consider their debt to their country discharged until the collection of stories (which I feel could be a wonderful collection if they take it seriously) is published and available to their fellow Guyanese...’
Well, we were all in deep shock. [No argument here, Willow’s performance was the one genuine moment of the ‘trial’ and we were all amazed and filled with shame and remorse by what he said; I’ve often thought that those who hastened to write their stories, did so for the English master and not for the judge or the so called court sentence.] The Judge then tried to crush us with sarcasm and anger, but his fulminations were negated by the fact that we were still reeling from Willow’s tirade and, in any case, judge Chanderband just couldn’t match, in our minds, the sense of our unjust defilement of the confidence placed in us by our English master. He ‘sentenced’ us each to two weeks in prison and suspended the sentences for two years on condition that we keep the peace and avoid further trouble and that we each write a short story within that time that could be collected and published in an anthology of nine Guyanese short stories. He said that I, as head boy and leader of the gang, must undertake to collect and edit the stories. [Actually he tried to get Willow to do it, but the teacher insisted that the entire project should be undertaken by the students themselves and it was he who suggested that Victor be made responsible for collecting and editing the stories.] Willow said it should be eleven and not nine short stories, since Mac and Smallie were members of gang and it was ‘accidental’ that they were absent when the mischief took place. The judge replied that he had no objection to the two extra stories, although he could not impose this on the other two as part of a sentence.
That is the origin of this project, therefore, and of my responsibility as editor. Thus far only two stories have been submitted and I am working on my own... [I now think that Victor needed to believe, or to pretend to believe, in the sentences in order to continue collecting the stories; to several of us it was clear that there was no genuine court case, and Hilary told us that Aubrey Chase admitted as much, a few months after. Besides, Nunc overheard his mother telling someone on the phone: ‘Anyway, my dear, we got Ronnie Chanderband to put the fear of God into them in what they think is a real court case – suspended sentences and all...’ When it became my task to extract the remaining stories and revisions from members of the gang after all the years, I did not pretend that it was in order to fulfil a long forgotten sentence, but rather to honour the memory of our leader Victor Nunes, now presumed dead, and to make some contribution to the literature of Guyana, a country which most of us have abandoned and which seems in worse shape now than it was at independence.]
Victor Nunes/Mark McWatt
UNCLE UMBERTO’S SLIPPERS
by Dominic Calistro
Uncle Umberto was my father’s eldest brother and he was well known for two things: the stories he told about ghosts and strange things that happened to him, and his slippers, which were remarkable because of their size. Uncle Umberto had the most enormous feet and could never get them into any shoe that a store would sell. When I was a small boy I remember him trying to wear the ubiquitous rubber flip-flops that we all wore. Uncle Umberto would wear the largest size he could find, but when he stood in them nothing could be seen of the soles, for his large feet completely covered them – only the two tight and straining coloured straps could be seen, emerging from beneath the calloused edges of his flat feet and disappearing between his toes. They never lasted very long and the story goes that Aunt Teresa, his wife, used to buy six pairs at a time, trying to get them all of the same colour so people would not realize how quickly Uncle Umberto’s feet could destroy a pair.
But all that was before Uncle Umberto got his famous slippers. It is said that, on a rare trip to the city, Uncle Umberto stood a whole day by a leather craft stall in the big market and watched a Rasta man make slippers out of bits of car tire and lengths of rawhide strap. When he came home from this trip, Uncle set about making his own unique pair of slippers. It seems that no car tire was wide enough for the sole, so uncle went foraging in the yard of the Public Works Depot in the town and came up with a Firestone truck tire that seemed in fairly good shape, with lots of deeply grooved treads on it – he claimed he ‘signalled’ to the watchman that he was taking it and the watchman waved him through the gate. This he cut up for the soles of his slippers. Because they had to be so long they did not sit flat on the floor, but curled up somewhat at heel and toe, keeping the curved shape of the tire – this was of course when they did not contain Uncle’s vast feet. Each of these soles had three thick, parallel strips of rawhide curving across the front and these kept Uncle Umberto’s feet in the slippers. There were no straps around the heel. Uncle made these slippers to last the rest of his life: they were twenty-two inches long, eight inches wide and nearly two inches thick. The grooves in the treads on the sole were one and a quarter inches deep when I measured them about four years before he died – when I was twelve, and beginning to get interested in my family and its wonderful characters and oddities.
The other detail to be mentioned about the slippers is that Uncle Umberto took the trouble to cut or drill his initials into the thick soles, carving H.I.C., Humberto Ignatius Calistro – the central ‘I’ being about twice the height of the other two letters (he always wrote his name with the ‘H’, but was unreasonably upset if anyone dared to pronounce it. To be on the safe side, we children decided to abandon the H even in the written form of his name, and he seemed quite happy with this). These incised initials always struck me as being completely unnecessary, if their purpose was to indicate ownership, for there could never be another such pair of quarry barges masquerading as footwear anywhere