CCLE: A Personal Journal (Conclusion)
By Ruel Johnson
Guyana Chronicle
August 17, 2003
Sunday, June 22nd
(Mediterranean or Continental, sir?)
Amazingly, I am awake at 8:00 am. My bags have been packed since the night before. Larcenously, I add an extra towel and face rag that I have already put up. I take a shower that’s no different from all the rest I’ve taken since I’ve been here.
I call Stella and arrange for her to pick me up at around 11:00. I call down to the hotel and arrange to settle up my accounts at the front desk. I get a call from Pauline Melville who says to meet her in half an hour, after she’s finished in the hotel lobby.
I watch television for about half an hour and then I go down to the lobby. When I don’t see Pauline there, I ask at the front desk for her. I am directed to one of the hotel’s restaurants and she is there seated with Jan Carew and his wife, Joy. Pauline apologises for my having to wait. They invite me to pull up a chair but I am underdressed for this place. Also I have only set aside money for a small sandwich and a Coke, not a full breakfast at this place. When the waiter buzzes around, I gently shoo him away.
I speak briefly with the trio, Jan joking about how at 83 years old someone finally took it upon themselves to award him. I collect Joy Carew’s card and head out to the Alfresco. I change my mind and pick up something from the nearby Subway instead. I head back upstairs and call Pauline’s room. She says to meet her in the lobby in 10 minutes.
(Are you awake?)
In the lobby, I greet Pauline. We sit and chat and offer our regrets that we haven’t had time to do it before. I question her about a Wapishiana phrase that she had used a few days back at the opening ceremony of the CCLE. She writes it down for me,
Poco da’ana - Are you awake?
She tells me that she has read the manuscript that I had lent her. She is impressed with the stories. She then takes issue with a story called Salvation. She says that my representation of Amerindians in the piece is an inauthentic portrait. She says that it is far too text-bookish. I concur but tell her that was what I was I going for. The conversation changes and changes again from her occasional visits to Guyana, to her friendship with Salman Rushdie, to my writing and publishing plans…
When we are finished talking she does the unbelievable and gives me her mailing address. She is adamant that I do not give it away. She explains to me that she has always shied away from the public eye. As a writer, she needs to see people. She says that when she walks into a room, and people recognise her, they start ‘reacting’ to her.
She offers me a sound-bite:
“The more people look at you, the less you get to see.”
I think about my anonymous days at Campsite, no other adornment than the clothes on my back, no other accolade but the pen in my hand, no one pointing and smiling and asking. It seems as if years have passed since that time and now.
(The marathon dancer)
I pack my bags and quite unceremoniously leave my hotel room: the two double beds, the desk, the television, the bathrobe, the window, and the tortuous shower. I check to make sure that I have the card-key and head towards the elevator.
I inform one of the neatly dressed people at the front desk that I have checked out and I am no longer to be referred to as “Mr. Johnson”. I gave an extremely conservative estimate of the stuff that I have eaten from my snack basket and after he deducts this from my account, I still have about $13 left. I leave it.
I sit down in on a lounge chair in the lobby of the hotel and wait for Stella. A group of young men, who happen to look grungier than I do, walk in.
A while after a young woman comes in. She looks around the huge lobby. After a while she comes over to me and sits down. She asks if I’m now checking in. I tell her that I’m now checking out.
Fifteen minutes later I know that she a Nuyorican as equally new to Toronto as I am. She is here for a friend’s wedding reception, due to be held at the Metropolitan. I learn that despite her youthful appearance, she is a 30 year old opera singer and a veteran marathon runner.
Now that I am no longer a guest of the Metropolitan, her presence keeps me from feeling like a pariah in the gilded, paneled lobby. Five minutes after, she leaves to change, Stella comes.
(Killing time)
I spend the rest of the day either at Michael and Stella’s place or out shopping.
In a grocery store I stock up on different types of preserved meats and chocolate chip cookies.
In a Popeye’s outlet, we order too much chicken. The clerk specially wraps a large portion of it up, because Stella has mistakenly told her that it was for my trip to “South America.”
In an adult video and novelty store, the usually conservative Michael and I take our time to “browse” around. The elderly Chinese proprietor/cashier keeps a casual eye on us. After a while, we hear Stella honking impatiently from the car.
Driving back to their place through a Jamaican neighbourhood, Michael and I start joking about the prevalence of hair and nail shops in the area. Stella chides us for being prejudiced and defends the area by pointing out that there is an excellent food shop, which she and Michael used to frequent. Michael concurs.
Me and Peter…
We spend the afternoon talking, eating and drinking a few beers. One of their friends whom we met at the bar the previous night has come over to study.
Michael asks me about the contacts I’ve made. I tell him about my filled card-holders and my meeting with people like Earl Lovelace, Pauline, Eintou, Paul Keens-Douglas, Peter Jailall, Ken and others. All in all it’s been a good three days.
(Do not go gentle into that good night)
At about 8:00 o’clock, Mohamed comes by and picks me up and drops me to the airport. There I meet Eintou again. Eintou is having some trouble with checking in. As the polite but inept young check-in clerk fumbles around trying to find out what went wrong, the usually sweet Eintou flies into a poetic rage. In a loud, but surprisingly not raucous, voice she lets loose her tongue in some rapid Trini. I begin to act as mediator between a heated Eintou and an increasingly nervous young man.
She threatens to shut down BWIA whenever she does get back to Port-of-Spain. She tells the pale young man that she will get all the poets together and write letters and march and close the already beleaguered airline for its treatment of her. After a while, a tall, slightly overweight and very painted older woman comes up. In a Trini accent, she finds out the problem and issues Eintou with a ticket and boarding pass.
Monday, June 23rd
(Retour a pays natal)
I sleep for most of the flight back. It is morning when the plane lands briefly in Barbados, before moving on to Trinidad.
I say goodbye to Eintou in Trinidad. I hang around Piarco, eating, trying unsuccessfully to call home, and playing some arcade games.
At about one o’clock I check in and soon enough I am on my way to Guyana. I chew a stick of gum furiously to avoid the usual maddening ear ache I’ve experienced on previous flights.
After passing through immigration, I decline the offers of some taxi drivers to give me a lift home. I spot a bus that is making a special arrangement with a few passengers to carry them home for one-fifth of the usual taxi’s price. Three minutes after I hop in, I see my father’s car pull up.
I apologise to the driver and get out. It rains for a while on the drive home.
Tuesday, June 24th
(Five, four, three, two, one…)
I launch Ariadne & Other Stories.
