Book of Jamaica by Russell Banks

Author:Russell Banks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

I did not see how I could convince Henry A. Kissinger to respond in kind. And Terron would not hear from me that after a few hours of use the battery-powered TV would grow dim and die. Nor would he hear me tell him that the machine cost over a hundred and fifty dollars, any more than Rubber heard what I was really saying when I told him that Levi’s cost from ten to fifteen dollars in the States. Instead he had grinned with delighted amazement at how much cheaper they were than in Jamaica, where they cost at least twenty-five dollars. And when I confessed to Juke that I didn’t think I could find the kind of tape deck he wanted for less than a hundred bucks, he too was amazed at how cheap such things were in the States. Mr. Mann’s wife Devina, as always, asked only for what she knew she could get from me, a dozen cakes of Ivory soap and another five dollars for her church; and I knew I’d be able to send Terron’s woman some cloth and even some clothing for her children. It seemed that the women knew something the men generally did not, or rather, that the women’s suffering from deprivation was different from the men’s. Preferring the tiny possibility to the impossible dream, they were, therefore, more “realistic” than the men. Except for Mr. Mann, of course, who was beyond the dreamings of a young man and cared little about soap or clothing or making church contribution quotas.

In the end, to those requests for goods that I knew I would indeed purchase and mail back to Nyamkopong—Devina’s soap, Terron’s woman’s cloth, Mr. Mann’s herbal, the Colonel’s flashlight—to these I responded with a definite promise to deliver, and then with shock realized that I was not believed. They all smiled politely and thanked me in advance, but I could see in their eyes that they did not believe me. They were being polite because I was being polite. To those other requests—Rubber’s Levi’s, Terron’s TV, Juke’s tape deck, Mr. Mann’s inscribed copy of Kissinger’s speeches, and the dozen pleas for Polaroid cameras—I said only that I would try but the costs might be prohibitive; and to my surprise, this vague declaration was taken to mean that the goods would be coming within a week or two following my departure from the island. Instantly everyone concerned himself with the technical problems of mailing packages to Jamaica from the States, advising me to remove all labels and price tags to fool the customs inspectors and to be sure to wrap the articles carefully so they didn’t come undone in mailing and get stolen by someone in the post office at Whitehall.

At supper that last night in Nyamkopong, Mr. Mann had again brought up his desire for Kissinger’s book. It would help him, he said, to solve certain difficulties he was having here among the monkeys. Tightening his crisp face with anger, he pushed

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.