THE TEXTURE OF FICTION
(2007)
“It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination.”
— Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I would like to offer you a rosary of stories in no particular order or scheme – all of them true, and about the place where I am from. I am from the Caribbean which is, incidentally, a much better thing to say than this other thing that has become popular: I am from the islands. “The islands” seem to me a phrase robbed of any geo-political or historical substance, a shell of a term offered so that the hearer, if not from our quaint and nebulous island (whether it be St Kitts, the Philippines, or Hawaii) can throw imaginary garlands of hibiscuses around our necks, imbuing us with all kinds of exotic baggage, and license and forgiveness. So I am from the Caribbean, and if you are not from there then the stories I tell you now might not make immediate sense. Or you might think I’m lying, or perhaps exaggerating. Sometimes Caribbean logic is its own.
In 2005 there was a woman who was killed twice – the second time at her own funeral. On the first occasion of her death it had been of natural causes. At her funeral the family gathered in large numbers, dressed in black or purple, with hymns in their mouths. But in the middle of tears and slow organ music, there was the sudden explosion of gunshots. Not a gun-salute; a gang war had broken out in the community around them, and then a bullet entered the church. I narrate this slowly, as if the bullet had politely opened the church door, took off its hat, apologized for interrupting and stated the nature of his business. Obviously this was not the case. It rudely shattered through the stained glass window, splintered through the closed coffin, and found its way into the heart of the dead woman, as if being an agent of death it was drawn immediately to the one life that wasn’t. Surprisingly, no one seemed thankful for the dead woman’s heroic act – how in pulling the bullet into herself she had likely been someone’s salvation. Instead the mourners complained at the injustice of the gang, their insensitivity towards the corpse – that being dead already there was no need for the bullet to make it unambiguous – and how the handsome coffin they had spent good money on was now ruined.
Recently, in my own country, we had a plague of baby c
