The White Man in the Tree and Other Stories - Softcover

Kurlansky, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671036068 ISBN 13: 9780671036065

Publisher: Washington Square Press, 2001

Synopsis

The White Man in the Tree is a comedy of cultural misunderstandings set in the Caribbean, New York, and Paris, a novella and eight stories about people who, because of their differences, misjudge each other. Whether it is a sophisticated European filmmaker, an ambitious young black Haitian woman, a promising politician obsessed with women's feet, or a fish-out-of-water rabbi in search of a kosher chicken in Curaçao, each of Kurlansky's characters engages us with impulses and interactions that are by turns comic, insightful, and poignant. The White Man in the Tree is an affectionate portrait of a unique society, where Europe, America, Africa, and Asia meet Latin America.

About this title

About the Author:

Mark Kurlansky is the author of The Basque History of the World; the New York Times bestseller Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World; A Chosen Few: The Resurrection of European Jewry; and A Continent of Islands: Searching for the Caribbean Destiny. During the past twenty years he has spent a great deal of time in the Caribbean, including seven years as the Chicago Tribune's Caribbean correspondent, and has written numerous works of short fiction and journalism about the region. He lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One

PART ONE: THE WHITE MAN DECLARES HIS LOVE

Something startled Palle as he floated into the numbness of his afternoon's tropical snooze up on the breezy gallery where the damaging rays of sun just missed his toes. He opened his eyes.

Then he heard it again. A car horn. It was Simpson at the gate. Palle would wait a minute. Someone would open it. He gazed past the drooping white wooden gingerbread to the palm fronds. Beyond that was the sky, a wet, brown tropical sky that looked as if it wanted to perspire raindrops. But a faint fuzzy white sun held its place and the rain would not come. He could see little segments of dark blue ocean. Port-au-Prince was out there too. It would be there when he wanted it. Not this afternoon. Too hot.

The horn droned a long note. Palle realized he would have to do something. So he stood up, causing the white wicker chair to creak. He walked to the white wooden banister so that they could see him, the white man, standing up.

Little Jean-Jean appeared from somewhere below, running down the driveway to the gate. Terrible to run like that in this heat, Palle thought. Palle had not asked him to run. He didn't even like to see it. Jean-Jean struggled with the meager weight his small boy's body offered and slowly managed to slide the black steel door open.

Simpson drove his car into the shade of the well-gardened little circle and, getting out, shouted through the red hibiscus, as though reading Palle's mind, "Don't even bother to stand up. It's too hot."

"Come on up," Palle shouted down gratefully. Simpson, seersucker drooping creaseless from his bony frame, stepped up to the porch, maneuvered around the comic Liautaud iron sculpture that greeted him, walked across the polished dark wood floor to the staircase with the big colored glass balls on each banister post, climbed the carpeted stairs, stopped to admire the Bigaud, went right past the huge green brush strokes of the Philippe-Auguste, and by the time he was out on the gallery, Faustin was standing there holding a tray with two sweaty coral-colored drinks.

Palle settled deeper into his wicker seat. "Faustin, is this the new punch recipe?"

"Mais oui," declared Faustin, plunging his voice a perfect octave between the first and second word.

"Not the rum punch we had before last week?"

Again the same octave. "Mais non."

"Ah, that's good. That's very good," said Palle contentedly, with such absolute faith in his world that he was in no hurry to test it with a sip. The concoction would be dry, sour, cold, perfect.

"And how's life at the consulate?"

"Not like this," said Simpson, sipping his rum punch. "So what is happening, Palle? I have a feeling my big favor was no favor at all."

"Yes, that's right," said Palle, smiling pleasantly. "A complete disaster. Maybe it has ruined my life." He chuckled slightly at the idea of ruin.

"So what happened to...What was her name?"

"Lanuwobi," Palle said, savoring the syllables as though recalling something erotic.

"Wonderful name. I couldn't figure out what it meant."

"Doesn't mean anything."

"Neither does 'Simpson.'"

"It came to her mother in a dream. Her mother was pregnant with Lanuwobi and she was sleeping, and the phrase 'La-nu-wo-bi' came to her in her sleep." Palle sipped. The startling acid of fruit juices seemed the only thing in the world that was cool, the only thing with a hard, crisp edge on a moist and heavy planet. Then, slowly, he gave in to the rum, dark and syrupy as the weather. He felt like dreaming. "I suppose I met her because I needed a haircut. Well, it was back when I was staying in the hotel, and there were two of them at the desk, and I always said, 'I need one of you to cut my hair.' They laughed a little. And then one night Lanuwobi said, 'I'll cut it,' and she came to my room and, oh, she was very, very nice."

Palle's eyes were closed and he was smiling.

Simpson finished his punch and put it on the white table and Faustin noiselessly reappeared, replaced it with a full one, and vanished.

"I think we should have one more punch," said Palle reflectively, "and then we should switch to these new rum sours -- yes, that will be very good. So she was the receptionist. And she has a very nice voice. You know, answering the phone and so forth. Very sweet. I was there for a long period doing that film. Did you see my Haiti film?"

"No. You should get a copy for the embassy."

"And then at some point I needed a haircut. And I thought it would be nice to have this haircut done by -- I had two choices. I had a little problem deciding. At that time we were just flirting. Lanuwobi was very flirtatious. But then there was another girl who was also very flirtatious, Mona. You might remember her. She was small and a waitress."

"Do you often do this haircut thing?"

"No, no. This is new. This was a new idea. And she said yes she would do that. But then I was waiting to see if that would happen. The next night she said that she had bought a pair of scissors. Then it all took place in room eleven. The suite, you know. And that was really the beginning of this affair. I persuaded her to stay for the night, and this was really the beginning. She did a nice haircut, I think..."

Palle started remembering those days, sneaking around the hotel like happily worried teenagers. The hotel manager, a drowsy-eyed, light-skinned young patrician, did not approve. It wasn't that she was half Palle's age -- the manager's wife was even younger -- but his employees were not supposed to be sleeping with the customers. Not being a man of great principles, the manager had compensated by making up a few. Hotel employees should not sleep with guests in the rooms.

At the time, the army was out shooting at night. You could hear the dull crack of gunfire echoing off the mountains -- sometimes single pops, sometimes rhythmic bursts. Sometimes bodies were found the next morning. Flies would find them first, later journalists. In the afternoon they would be taken away. Staff on night shift were allowed to spend the night in the hotel because it was too dangerous to try to go home in the dark. Palle could never explain to Simpson -- unless he had experienced it, which was hard to say -- the romance of lying in bed holding a woman and feeling so completely alive while somewhere out there was death, and the dangerous popping noise could be heard coming through the shutters with the still night air and the croak of tree frogs.

Lanuwobi lived with her mother downtown. What a remarkable scene. He would have liked to have filmed it. The white man going downtown in his white four-wheel drive to pick up his girlfriend, down there where the air was full of steam and rot. Her mother had a small food store not much bigger than a large closet. Lanuwobi's dark turquoise-colored bedroom was only slightly larger than her bed. What always stayed in Palle's mind, aside from the terrible smell from the grayish slime in the concrete sewer ditch that ran along the edge of the house with boards to step over it, was the huge television that no one ever watched because the house did not have electricity. They also had two large radios, only one of which could operate with batteries. It somehow seemed important to have these things even though, after eight P.M., Lanuwobi and her mother were alone in darkness in the little house and went to sleep until the orange dawn.

"I think from the very beginning our relationship was malvue. Tolerated but not good."

You visited the home?"

"Yes," said Palle, thinking again about the television.

"You went there for dinner?"

"No! Never. I would never eat there. This was a small place. Low middle class. But they had servants, of course. What a fantastically complicated system. There is another class that is servants for them. But it was in

About this edition

• Publisher: Washington Square Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0671036068
• ISBN 13: 9780671036065
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336