Coconut Dreams

  first edition

  Copyright © 2019 by Derek Mascarenhas

  all rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  The production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Book*hug Press also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.

  Book*hug Press acknowledges the land on which it operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

  library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

  Title: Coconut dreams / stories by Derek Mascarenhas.

  Names: Mascarenhas, Derek, [date]—author.

  Description: Short stories.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190076720 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190076739

  ISBN 9781771664813 (softcover)

  ISBN 9781771664820 (HTML)

  ISBN 9781771664837 (PDF)

  ISBN 9781771664844 (Kindle)

  Classification: LCC PS8626.A795 C64 2019 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  For my family.

  Contents

  The Call of the Bell

  1994

  Carriers

  Birds of a Feather

  1995

  Picking Trilliums

  When the Good Shines a Little Brighter

  Two Islands

  1996

  Small Things

  So Far Away

  Fallen Leaves

  1997

  One Hundred Steps

  Private Property

  1998

  Learn to Care

  1999

  Snapshots

  Grand Opening

  2000

  The Elephant in the Mountain

  1996

  Hold It Like a Butterfly

  2006

  Coconut Dreams

  Acknowledgements:

  About the Author

  Colophon

  The Call of the Bell

  May 25, 1946

  Felix Pinto’s birth in a cemetery was never forgotten by the village of Colvale. Mysteries, like tragedies, are long remembered.

  Felix’s mother, Rosetta, attended the funeral of her former elementary school teacher that morning. While she was trying, and failing, to squeeze her pregnant belly into her best black outfits, Felix’s father, Miguel, wearing dark slacks and a dress shirt, suggested she stay home and rest. “Even the monkeys stop running on the roofs in this heat.”

  “I’m not a monkey, and I don’t intend to run on any roof.” Rosetta finally pulled a brown dress down over her belly; fifteen days overdue, she was rounder than she’d ever been with her two previous pregnancies.

  “You should stay and rest.”

  “Miguel, I’ve known Mr. Lopez since I was a girl. The least I can do is attend the service.”

  The house was quiet. Rosetta and Miguel’s two sons had already returned to Bombay to get ready for school. The boys’ Nunna had accompanied them, so Rosetta wouldn’t have to make such a long journey so close to the baby’s arrival.

  “At least let us try to catch a ride at the road, then.”

  Rosetta nodded. It wasn’t far to the church, but she knew Miguel wanted to feel useful. He fixed machines in the cotton mills. He needed to fix things, but not all of life’s problems could be solved with the same mechanical exactitude.

  On their way to the main road they saw a bullock cart approaching. The cartload of coconuts was pulled by two giant oxen with coats, eyes, and wet noses the same jet-black colour; their white horns curved skyward.

  Miguel waved the driver down.

  “I’m heading to the Mapusa market, but I can drop you at the church on the way,” the driver said, and gestured to the back. “As long as your husband is okay sitting on the coconuts, Madam, you can join me up front.”

  As the driver helped Rosetta into the passenger seat, she noticed the sinewy muscles in his forearms, concluding that he must also climb the coconut trees himself.

  With Rosetta up front and Miguel settled atop the many green, football-sized fruits, the driver gave the oxen a tap on their rears with a thin bamboo stick; the cart rolled through the humid air, the oxen’s heads bobbing and dust billowing behind them.

  The cemetery was adjacent to the tall stone church built by the Portuguese. The church, painted a bright seashell-white, stood in sharp contrast to the jade palms and indigo river behind it, and the ground of tiny, red xencare. These small stones had been rounded by rain on their journey down from the high hills.

  Rosetta and Miguel thanked the driver as he got back on his cart. Miguel asked him if he was taking the hill path to Mapusa, pointing to a dirt trail that started at the cemetery and led straight up the hill to a lone, empty house at the top. Rosetta’s brother claimed that the house was haunted, though most houses that stayed empty for long were conferred that status.

  “It’s the fastest route. I need to let the oxen drink by the river first, though.” The driver gave another tap on the oxen’s rear, but one of the animals groaned and bucked, nudging a single coconut off the cart. It hit the ground with a thud. Miguel picked it up and handed it back to the driver, who smiled, embarrassed, at the animal’s disobedience.

  “Good luck at the market,” Rosetta said, as they waved goodbye.

  Miguel led Rosetta by the hand to the crowd gathering outside the church. “So many people,” he said.

  “He was well-liked.”

  Mr. Lopez’s quiet kindness had been his way of conveying an innate belief in every student’s potential. It was what brought most of his graduates back to visit him years later. Rosetta had gone back to ask Mr. Lopez’s advice many times herself.

  The bell tower chimed every few seconds to let everyone know the service was starting. Shielding her eyes from the sun, Rosetta could see the silhouette of the bell operator up in the tower swinging the bell’s rope. She had heard his signal the night before: the prolonged gap he’d left between each of the three chimes had indicated that someone from the village had died.

  The crowd parted to let Rosetta through. She gave them a funeral-appropriate half-smile. In spite of this, her dimples still showed. Everyone’s eyes were on her belly, a bulging jackfruit ready to drop.

  Miguel helped Rosetta to a seat near the back of the church after a few parishioners made room. She was thankful to sit once again; a short distance felt like a marathon in the day’s sweltering heat.

  Once everyone was sitting, Father Constantine stepped up to the pulpit. His bushy grey eyebrows rested above thick rectangular glasses, and he rushed through the mass as if it were community announcements.

  As he spoke, Rosetta eyed the closed coffin of simple, unvarnished wood at the front of the church. She had heard that the only thing included with the body of their beloved schoolteacher was his iron walking stick, and pictured it now, folded in his hands.

  After the mass concluded, Father Constantine led a procession of pallbearers outside. Rosetta let the rest of the congregation exit first, before she followed with Miguel. She f
elt the blazing sun as soon as she got outside and took her time walking past the stone statue of St. Francis of Assisi—painted the same seashell-white as the church—to the shade offered by the cemetery walls and trees. Mr. Lopez had once told Rosetta and the rest of her class—to prevent them from cutting through the cemetery—that those walls weren’t built to keep people out but to keep spirits in.

  Rosetta’s friend Nina intercepted her halfway.

  “Have you seen Noah?” she whispered, sweat on her forehead and worry in her eyes. “He normally works late, and if he doesn’t come home he stays at his brother’s, so I wasn’t worried. But I just saw his brother in the church and he said Noah didn’t come over last night.”

  “Maybe he’s still at his office?” Miguel suggested.

  “I hope so. I’ll go check as soon as the service is over.”

  Miguel, Rosetta, and Nina joined the crowd gathered around the grave. The muggy air was heavy, absent the mercy of even the faintest breeze. Rosetta could feel the sweat under her arms and breasts. She shifted her weight in discomfort but couldn’t get comfortable; Miguel stepped behind her, letting her lean back into him.

  As Father Constantine flicked the coffin with holy water from a silver aspergillum, he mumbled Latin prayers that Rosetta and most of the village didn’t understand. Before the coffin was lowered into the ground, he called for a final moment of silence. During this time at funerals, the silence was often broken by a murmur, sniffle, or sob. Occasionally, mourners were so overcome with emotion that they wailed and cried; rarely, someone would actually faint. But today, when the quiet was interrupted, it was not by one of the mourners.

  A cry for help came from above.

  The voice seemed to emanate from the top of a tall palm tree beside the cemetery. And within its fronds, Rosetta saw a waving arm.

  The voice shouted, “Nina!”

  Nina raised a hand to her forehead to block the sun. “Noah? How did you get up there?”

  “I don’t know. Help me get down.”

  A woman from the crowd hollered, “Why don’t you climb down?”

  “I don’t know how. I need help.”

  “Fetch Diego,” someone else suggested, “he’ll handle this.”

  Rosetta felt the baby move, followed by Miguel giving her hand a squeeze and then releasing it. “I’ll go run and get the boys by the river,” he offered.

  Rosetta thought maybe it was a mistake to let him go, but he returned with three boys and a coiled rope, which one of the boys put around his waist before they climbed up the tree, one then the next in tandem. The boys hugged the tree and curved their feet around the trunk, shimmying up half body lengths at a time. Once up top, they tied the rope around Noah’s waist and began to lower him to the ground as if he were a cluster of tender coconuts.

  Rosetta watched from below. The boys had the same sinewy strength in their limbs that she had noticed in the bullock-cart driver. Noah’s body, dangling like a tea bag on a string, was comparatively short and pudgy, and his limbs flailed like those of a caught insect.

  Nina ran over and hugged Noah. Disoriented, he asked for water. A clay jug was fetched from the church, and as Noah drank and regained his composure, Diego rode up on his white horse. He had broad shoulders, a thin moustache, and wore the khaki-coloured uniform of the Portuguese officials, complete with black leather boots, navy blue blazer, and matching hat, brimmed on only the left side.

  Diego nodded to Father Constantine, who stood impatiently beside the grave, Bible in hand.

  From atop his horse, Diego addressed Noah. “So I hear you got stuck in a tree. How did that happen?”

  “I don’t know. Last I remember I was on my way home.”

  “But how does that get you up a tree?”

  “Arrey, I told you, I don’t know.” He shook his head from side to side. “I woke up, and I was up there.”

  The crowd murmured nervously. Nina made the sign of the cross, and the act spread to others around her.

  Diego turned to Father Constantine. “We can discuss this later. For now, Father, please continue the service.”

  Father Constantine made a show of clearing his throat, and took his time opening the Bible to the exact place he’d left off.

  As the last of the flowers were placed on top of the grave, Rosetta felt an overwhelming wave of heat and exhaustion. With tears flowing down her cheeks, she felt it: a sudden warmth.

  Miguel mistook Rosetta’s tears for mourning and handed her his handkerchief, which Rosetta twisted in her hands. Water began running down her legs as the crowd filtered out of the cemetery. They were anxious to get out of the sun and properly gossip about how Noah had really ended up in that tree—a prank, or maybe even a malicious spirit.

  Miguel put an arm around Rosetta but pulled away upon noticing the wet spot on her brown dress.

  Rosetta felt a pain much sharper than she had in her previous pregnancies, and dropped to the ground. Miguel called her name, gripping her shoulders in panic. He helped her lean against the gravestone beside Mr. Lopez’s grave, then ran for help, shouting to the crowd now outside the cemetery walls.

  Through the cemetery entrance, Rosetta watched as Miguel was intercepted by a hard and heavy green coconut rolling down the hill to Mapusa, tripping him and sending him to the ground. Rosetta cried after him, and for a moment he lay there. Then a low rumbling noise followed. A landslide of coconuts was coming down the hill toward the crowd.

  As the first coconuts began rolling underfoot, Diego’s horse rose up on its hind legs and kicked its two front legs in the air, throwing him to the ground. A wave of coconuts followed and knocked people over; those who kept their feet collided in the scramble to dodge the tropical avalanche.

  When it was over, and the final coconut had gone bouncing off into the churchyard, everyone had been felled except Rosetta, protected by the cemetery wall. She watched as some people got to their feet. Others remained on the ground, moaning and clutching their legs where the coconuts had struck.

  The bullock-cart driver came running down the hill, out of breath. He put both hands on his head when he saw the scene outside the cemetery.

  “What happened? Are these your coconuts?” Diego asked him.

  “Yes, but it wasn’t my fault. I was on my way to Mapusa, but when I approached the house at the top”—he pointed up to the hill, still trying to catch his breath—“I saw a pineapple fall down from the zamblam tree out front.”

  “Pineapples don’t grow on trees,” Diego said.

  “That’s why I stopped. But the oxen startled. The cart tipped backwards. And all my coconuts were sent rolling down the hill. I was lucky I wasn’t crushed!”

  Rosetta felt a sharp pain and cried out. A few yards away, Miguel had regained his sense. “Rosetta is in labour,” he cried. “We have to help her!”

  He arrived with a few villagers to discover Rosetta panting, blood flowing between her legs. “We need to go to the hospital,” Miguel said, but Rosetta shook her head. No time. The baby was coming.

  An older woman who used to be a midwife was hurried over. She ordered others nearby to run and fetch hot water, a clean cloth and a knife, and a tincture from the Ayurvedic doctor for the pain.

  The next moments were a blur for Rosetta: calm voices trying to coach her, waves of pain, panic, fluids, and contractions; it felt as if the life itself were flowing out from her.

  The xencare on the ground were stained a darker red as Felix Pinto let out his first cry: piercing, high-pitched, and unnatural amongst the graves.

  Normally, the birth of a child in Goa brought sweets and celebrations. Firecrackers would be lit shortly after the birth to announce the occasion: three firecrackers for a boy and two for a girl. Instead, at his wife’s bedside in the hospital, still holding her limp and lifeless hand, Miguel listened to the slow ringing of the church bell, the long spaces
between each toll signalling another death.

  Time passed, and the village of Colvale’s feelings about that day gradually shifted from grief to superstition. Rumours spread of a new noise in the night at the top of the hill to Mapusa: a rare metal twang, like an iron rod reverberating off stone. Some said Mr. Lopez had been too busy watching the events of that day and missed his chance to ascend to heaven. Legend also grew about the house at the top of the hill. How it had sat empty for many years. How, because the owners had cheated the labourers who had built it, when they died, their souls were forced to stay in the house instead of moving on to the next world.

  A detour in the path to Mapusa was built through the trees to skirt the house, but other things were not so easily avoided.

  May 17, 1958

  The church bell chimed for the evening angelus, and Clara said to Felix Pinto, “Time to go.”

  The two friends sat beneath a zamblam tree on the edge of the forest. Although the tree was an infant compared to the centurion it would one day become, berry-like fruit filled its branches and scattered on the ground below.

  “Are you getting scared?” Felix tossed one last sweet and mildly sour zamblam into his mouth. His hands and teeth were stained by the juicy purple flesh.

  “No,” said Clara. But she marked her page in her Enid Blyton book and stood.

  “It’s just a silly saying,” Felix said. The rhyme used to scare children popped into his head: In the afternoon between twelve and three, the ghosts come out under the zamblam tree.

  “I know,” Clara said.

  Felix wasn’t fully convinced; Clara was two years younger than him and more likely to believe in ghosts, but he said, “Chalo. Let’s go, then.” He got up and returned his slingshot to his front pocket. He pointed to the road where a bullock cart, stacked high with hay, rolled along. “There’s our ride home!”

  Sneaking up behind the cart so the driver couldn’t see them over his high load of hay, Felix first lifted himself up, then helped Clara.

  They leaned back against the hay, watching the rolling hillside planted with cashew trees; the cash crop carpeted the hills green.