Si­mon Lee

Bo­cas Lit Fest win­ner 2013 Monique Rof­fey makes a re­turn to her thin­ly-dis­guised na­tive land in her fourth nov­el, House of Ash­es, pub­lished on Ju­ly 27, the an­niver­sary of the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.

For Trinida­di­ans this "fac­tion-cum-docu­d­ra­ma" will ei­ther sink in­to the am­ne­sia of col­lec­tive de­nial, or be wel­comed as an earnest and imag­i­na­tive at­tempt to pro­vide the kind of analy­sis of the is­land's lega­cy of vi­o­lence and one of its two re­cent his­tor­i­cal flash­points, which the of­fi­cial in­quiry failed to de­liv­er, be­cause as one of the nov­el's main pro­tag­o­nists and the sole first per­son nar­ra­tor, Min­is­ter for the En­vi­ron­ment As­pa­sia Gar­land ob­serves: "An in­quiry would im­pli­cate every­one."

Read­ers out­side the Caribbean will ne­go­ti­ate a psy­cho-dra­ma/po­lit­i­cal thriller with a struc­ture suf­fo­cat­ing­ly locked down in a siege-with-hostages dy­nam­ic. But while House of Ash­es flags up oth­er es­tab­lished gen­res from dystopia to his­tor­i­cal fic­tion and a long tra­di­tion of Caribbean fic­tion of po­lit­i­cal and per­son­al vi­o­lence (Car­pen­tier's In the King­dom of this World, Ex­plo­sion in a Cathe­dral, Alex­is' Comp�re Gen­er­al Soleil, Chau­vet's Amour, Col�re, Folie, Dan­ti­cat's Farm­ing of Bones, Mar­quez's The Gen­er­al in his Labyrinth) it trans­gress­es re­gion­al and di­as­poric bound­aries.

Rof­fey in­serts her re­vi­sion­ist text in­to the post 9/11 dis­course on ter­ror­ism and ex­trem­ist fun­da­men­tal­ism and com­pounds com­plex­i­ty with such oth­er top­i­cal tropes as con­ser­va­tion, eco lit, gov­er­nance, cor­rup­tion, New Age mys­ti­cism, the psy­chopathol­o­gy of the post­colo­nial Caribbean and its man­i­fes­ta­tions in dys­func­tion­al fam­i­lies, failed par­ent­ing and the an­gry young dis­pos­sessed black man.

Rof­fey com­bines writ­ing with teach­ing cre­ative writ­ing and at times House of Ash­es reads like a se­ries of in­tense as­sign­ments, which might have ben­e­fit­ed from more rig­or­ous edit­ing.

Ash­es is un­doubt­ed­ly am­bi­tious, per­me­at­ed with more pain and de­sire to un­der­stand a home­land than C�saire's Note­book, but emo­tion­al and his­tor­i­cal prox­im­i­ty have their own lim­i­ta­tions.

C�saire wrote from Paris, while Rof­fey wrote in Trinidad, not al­ways suc­cess­ful­ly fic­tion­alised as "Sans Amen," (a pun on "land with­out men," or even more loose­ly "a god­less na­tion"?).

The de­ci­sion to re­brand may have saved her from a fat­wah and the um­brage of those who feel they've been ma­ligned but did not grant her the con­trol dis­tance be­stows.

House of Ash­es (which re­calls Hait­ian Em­per­or Hen­ri Christophe's mot­to–Je re­nais de mes cen­dres–I'm re­born from my ash­es) is prob­a­bly best read as mul­ti-text, tend­ing to­wards a meta text, a book of many tropes, some of which sit un­com­fort­ably with oth­ers.

It ex­am­ines post­colo­nial­i­ty; the fail­ures of de­coloni­sa­tion and the lega­cy of slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship; the caudil­lo or strong­man/ma­cho man charis­mat­ic leader; is­sues of pow­er, vi­o­lence, and gov­er­nance in small is­land states af­flict­ed with im­posed glob­al ne­olib­er­al eco­nom­ics and re­gion­al drug traf­fick­ing.

Oth­er re­gion­al writ­ers ad­dress­ing these con­cerns have opt­ed for al­le­go­ry (Wil­son Har­ris) or mag­i­cal re­al­ism (Mar­quez, Car­pen­tier, Alex­is) but like Lovelace (Salt), Or­lan­do Pat­ter­son (Chil­dren of Sisy­phus) or Roger Mais (Broth­er Man), Rof­fey choos­es so­cial re­al­ism, which of­ten reads like the so­cial com­men­tary mode of ca­lyp­so.

Both the Pe­ru­vian Var­gas Llosa, in Feast of the Goat, and Hait­ian Ed­widge Dan­ti­cat, in Farm­ing of the Bones, suc­cess­ful­ly fic­tion­alise spe­cif­ic vi­o­lent his­tor­i­cal events in the Caribbean: the 1962 as­sas­si­na­tion of Do­mini­can despot Rafael Tru­jil­lo and the 1937 mas­sacre of Haitians or­dered by the same "El Chi­vo" Tru­jil­lo.

The suc­cess of both these nov­els may be par­tial­ly at­trib­uted to his­tor­i­cal and even ge­o­graph­i­cal dis­tance from the sub­ject, even though for Dan­ti­cat the 1939 mas­sacre may have been as per­son­al­ly painful as the 1990 Trinidad at­tempt­ed coup was for Rof­fey.

An­oth­er ex­am­ple of analysing a spe­cif­ic vi­o­lent event, this time non-fic­tion­al­ly, is VS Naipaul's es­say on the Mur­ders at Christi­na Gar­dens, in his Gueril­las col­lec­tion. Naipaul who gave the in­valu­able ad­vice to writ­ers: "write about one thing," is able to dis­pas­sion­ate­ly ex­am­ine the pyschopathol­o­gy of Michael X, the Tri­ni-born Black Pow­er British acolyte of Mal­colm X, who was even­tu­al­ly hanged for the mur­der of young Eng­lish so­cialite Gale Ben­son on the out­skirts of Ari­ma in 1972.

Naipaul al­lows the in­fa­mous Ab­dul Ma­lik to hoist him­self by his own petard, not by re­count­ing what he said so much, as by his ac­tions.

The point here be­ing that lim­it­ed fo­cus, and show­ing rather than telling, even if the telling is done by char­ac­ters, reg­is­ters far more sub­lim­i­nal­ly than what of­ten reads like di­dac­ti­cism in some of Rof­fey's di­a­logues.

The first five sec­tions of House of Ash­es are con­struct­ed around re­al events in the 1990 coup, al­though Rof­fey be­gins her re­con­struc­tion on a Wednes­day af­ter­noon (rather than the his­tor­i­cal Fri­day) and con­cludes with the Mon­day morn­ing sur­ren­der of in­sur­gents and the re­lease of hostages from the fic­tion­alised House of Pow­er, in the City of Silk.

The nar­ra­tive is dri­ven by three main char­ac­ters. First there's the book­ish, asth­mat­ic na�ve Ash­es; a man of prayer liv­ing in the shad­ow of his tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary broth­er Riv­er, a ca­su­al­ty, or mar­tyr of the failed Black Pow­er in­sur­rec­tion of the ear­ly 1970s.

Ash­es fan­cies him­self as a spir­i­tu­al war­rior of the same lin­eage as his com­ic book hero the Phan­tom, along with Bud­dha, Christ and even Franz Fanon, all of whom like "Fat Clay" of Cu­ba "might have picked up a gun," in the ser­vice of so­cial jus­tice.

Ash­es is af­flict­ed with the same pyscho­so­mat­ic wound to his groin as the Fish­er King in the leg­end of Par­si­fal and the Holy Grail, the wound sym­bol­is­ing in west­ern mythol­o­gy the same dam­aged or emas­cu­lat­ed mas­culin­i­ty posit­ed by Fanon, which is cen­tral to cur­rent dis­course about failed/dam­aged mas­culin­i­ty in the con­tem­po­rary Caribbean.

What works as an al­le­gor­i­cal mo­tif in leg­end, ap­pears in­con­gru­ous in a re­al­ist text and while it demon­strates Rof­fey's com­mit­ment to grap­pling with one of the ma­jor be­hav­iour­al as­pects of con­flict­ed Caribbean mas­culin­i­ty, for some read­ers this may be too much au­tho­r­i­al in­tru­sion.

The wound does work how­ev­er, in link­ing Ash­es in his mid-life cri­sis with the pu­bes­cent cri­sis of an­oth­er pro­tag­o­nist, the 14-year-old street wise but woe­ful­ly ig­no­rant, Joseph "Breeze" Green, one of many aban­doned, ne­glect­ed men/chil­dren res­cued and in­doc­tri­nat­ed by "The Leader"–a man of God whose mis­sion is to re­store the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty de­nied un­der slav­ery and colo­nial­ism, re­move those in pow­er who con­tin­ue the op­pres­sion and ush­er in a new so­ci­ety.

In recre­at­ing the claus­tro­pho­bic hor­ror, un­planned dev­as­ta­tion and need­less blood­shed of the storm­ing and sub­se­quent siege of the House of Pow­er, Rof­fey is at her best, jux­ta­pos­ing the mil­i­taris­tic pos­tur­ing (boys play­ing at war and rev­o­lu­tion) with the grim re­al­i­ty of in­no­cents caught in cross­fire, in­clud­ing a preg­nant clerk.

It is through the con­scious­ness of first per­son nar­ra­tor As­pa­sia Gar­land, the ide­al­is­tic, un­cor­rupt­ed yet po­lit­i­cal­ly na�ve Min­is­ter for the En­vi­ron­ment, moth­er of two, for­mer Green­peace ac­tivist and pro­tec­tor of tur­tles, that Rof­fey at­tempts to sift through the nexus of vi­o­lence and dis­pos­ses­sion.

The Stock­holm syn­drome of cap­tor and cap­tive bond­ing is made cred­i­ble in Gar­land's un­easy re­la­tion­ship with Breeze, who shifts from ini­tial shal­low prej­u­dice and anger ("street crooks, crim­i­nals, half-baked rad­i­cals...from 1970) to em­pa­thy: "this all had to do with a very per­son­al abuse of pow­er; it start­ed at home, with bad fa­ther­ing, bad moth­er­ing, with a lack of love."

Gar­land al­so ad­mits to cul­pa­bil­i­ty: "Our gov­ern­ment had over­looked many things" and is even able to con­cep­tu­alise the Leader's achieve­ment; "Maybe the Leader had led them back to some­thing good, to an an­cient faith...to an orig­i­nal tra­di­tion of wis­dom." But lat­er Gar­land dis­miss­es this old style caudil­lo, the strong­man of Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can pol­i­tics: "he had...noth­ing new to say to a small New World na­tion which need­ed ideas as it emerged from un­der the claus­tro­pho­bia of colo­nial­ism.

Sans Amen need­ed new, for­ward think­ing men and women...There was no room...for these an­ti­quat­ed Caribbean ma­cho-men, these Fa­ther-Lead­ers."

Just as she had giv­en Er­ic Williams a role in her ear­li­er Trinidad nov­el, Woman on a Green Bi­cy­cle, Rof­fey brings ANR Robin­son back to life as an im­por­tant play­er in the House of Pow­er siege. His dig­ni­ty, courage and colo­nial val­ues, in con­trast to the bar­bar­i­ty of his cap­tors, do not how­ev­er ab­solve him from be­ing just as dis­con­nect­ed from the re­al­i­ties of the two na­tions he sup­pos­ed­ly serves, or the in­ter­nal machi­na­tions of his own par­ty and a cor­rup­tion buried in the very foun­da­tion of the House of Pow­er along with the Amerindi­an bones, as his neme­sis the Leader.

For a self-pro­claimed fem­i­nist it's hard­ly sur­pris­ing that Rof­fey's strongest char­ac­ters are women. The fig­ure of Mrs Cyn­thia Gon­za­les, the clean­ing la­dy (or obeah woman) who re­duces the blus­ter­ing gun­men to shame­faced boys ("Yuh mash up mih car­pet...Where are your man­ners and where is your re­spect for civil­i­sa­tion?) and who re­fus­es to leave her wound­ed Prime Min­is­ter, is tru­ly mem­o­rable. Her­self the one time vic­tim of an abu­sive hus­band she, like Christophene in Rhys' Wide Sar­gas­so Sea, re­fus­es to al­low any man to op­press her, stand­ing as sym­bol of Caribbean ma­tri­archy with a long tra­di­tion in our lit­er­a­ture.

There is much in this long nov­el, pos­si­bly too much for a sin­gle text to em­brace, to prompt read­ers to con­sid­er uni­ver­sal is­sues of pow­er, in­equal­i­ty and "the chain of vi­o­lence...which stretch­es across the world". Lo­cal­ly, it fo­cus­es our at­ten­tion on dis­tant and re­cent his­to­ry and the prob­lems which have not been ad­dressed since 1990, which have re­coiled with the vengeance we all live with, or die by, right now.

House of Ash­es­by Monique Rof­fey

Pub­lish­er: Si­mon and Schus­ter

Ash­es is un­doubt­ed­ly am­bi­tious, per­me­at­ed with more pain and de­sire to un­der­stand a home­land than C�saire's Note­book, but emo­tion­al and his­tor­i­cal prox­im­i­ty have their own lim­i­ta­tions. C�saire wrote from Paris, while Rof­fey wrote in Trinidad, not al­ways suc­cess­ful­ly fic­tion­alised as "Sans Amen," (a pun on "land with­out men," or even more loose­ly "a god­less na­tion"?). The de­ci­sion to re­brand may have saved her from a fat­wah and the um­brage of those who feel they've been ma­ligned but did not grant her the con­trol dis­tance be­stows.?

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