It took ages for him to wake, and, when he did, he had to remind himself to open his eyes slowly. Last Good Friday, he'd opened his eyes wide the moment he realised he was awake and it had almost blinded him, the sudden confrontation of the harsh reality of his existence. Where he used to spring out of bed raring to go, he now limped into consciousness, slightly resentful of the duty that called him into action.
In the past, when everyone had believed in him fervently and his popularity had spread worldwide, he hardly even needed sleep. When things were good, life had been like one long Carnival weekend, with Bunji and David and Machel playing every fete, and free VVVIP tickets piled up on his desk like confetti. At his best, he'd lived better than Donald Trump at his most lavish. Once, he'd owned homes in every major world city and would choose where he would physically spend Easter weekend, though, of course, he would be any and everywhere on Easter Sunday itself. At the peak of his popularity, he'd had a penthouse in Tokyo, the little Nipponese falling for anything that came from America in those distant days, before manga and anime reversed the domination of the imagination the same way Toyota and Honda had brought about the economic reversal from Ford and Chevrolet.
Ten years ago, with his career in what he now saw was an irreversible decline, he had moved from the USA to Trinidad, and had been received like royalty; but three years ago, his star fading fast, he'd had to give up his big house at the top of the hill overlooking old Goodwood Park; sadly, he realised he was lucky to even have this little hole in Woodbrook, with the cocaine sprangers doing their business in the empty lot next door all year round, and every man in Port-of-Spain Carnival peeing on his outside wall on Jouve morning; sometimes, waking up on Easter weekend, he could still smell the stale human urine. Nowadays, he spent almost all his time asleep. Even if he did wake up during Lent, he didn't bother to get out of bed, just lay there, hoping to drift back into sleep and be spared the pain of consciousness of his position for that much longer. He sighed and his chest hurt like he'd smoked three packs of cigarettes the night before. Not for the first time, he wondered whether it would be better to simply fade away altogether, to never again have to make the effort to stem the flow of idiocy. On the morning news from the house next door, he heard the voice of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, saying nothing, as all Trini prime ministers did, but very sweetly in her case. He didn't know whether to cuss or laugh. What had happened, he wondered, to make Trinidadians believe in her ahead of him? Her legend was mighty, now, and her hold over Port-of-Spain was as firm as his was tenuous.
And then he realised he was lucky to have any following at all, and should be grateful to superficial, superstitious Port-of-Spain, where anyone could be anything they had the gumption to declare themselves to be: a dunce here was invariably an intellectual, the only champions of the poor were their exploiters, trustees were wholly untrustworthy and clowns held all the serious jobs. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry, for a moment, and then he heard another news sound bite, the former prime minister and former leader of the opposition, Basdeo Panday, declaring, in his best Oxonian accent, his fervent support for Patrick Manning, who also was a former-everything and was heading swiftly to being a next-to-nothing; and he chuckled: as long as those two were around, he thought, he would not be at the bottom of the heap.
But he was nowhere near the top. Jesus Christ was the biggest legend of them all, today. Allah, Buddha, Jehovah, the entire Hindu pantheon, Middle Earth and its hobbits, wizards, goblins, elves and orcs, all that Japanese manga, Huckleberry Finn and Hercule Poirot, Hansel and Gretel, Adam & Eve and the Wimpy Kid and his Diary all vanished in Jesus' spotlight; Jesus ran things until next Tuesday.
He sighed deeply, afraid to even look for the basket that should be at the bottom of his bed. Holding his breath, he opened his eyes fully and his heart beat fast with joy: it was there. He felt better at once, stronger immediately. Still, the disappointed wonder lingered: how could his legend fade so swiftly when people would go on believing so unquestioningly in far more ridiculous propositions than the one he relied upon for his existence and meaning? Virgin birth? Oh, come on! A father forcing his own son to accept an unjust, violent, cruel death, supposedly to redeem sinners the father could just as easily forgive without making his own son suffer? A winged horse taking a man around Paradise in one night? Wasn't that just too close to Santa Claus and the flying reindeer? But even that thought hurt, because Santa Claus believers ran into the hundreds of millions, if not billions; and the same people who rejected him outright happily believed that a middle-aged man who had sex with a child had done a glorious thing. He pushed his own doubts away. As unlikely as his story was, there were still those who believed in him in Trinidad, the last place on Earth where people believed any lie they told themselves, or one another, so long as they derived a benefit. He sat up, grabbed the basket and hopped out of bed.
The Easter Bunny had chocolate eggs to share.
BC Pires firmly believes a
male rabbit can lay chocolate
eggs. Read more of his writing
at www.BCraw.com