The most beautiful public toilet in all of T&T is tucked discreetly into the southeastern corner of the Queen's Park Savannah, across the road from Memorial Park and alongside the Carlos John Parking Lot, that paved portion of the Carnival track, where enterprising hustlers hawk everything from corn soup to crack cocaine. Immaculately maintained and beautifully painted, with manicured lawns and pretty flower beds, shrubs and plants surrounding them, the toilets have been kept in pristine condition by the simple expedient of chaining and locking the entrance gates at around 3.30 pm daily, just about the time thousands of joggers, walkers and corn soup chasers descend on the Savannah. The toilets, therefore, are open as long as they're not needed, and closed the moment they might be of use. It makes you wonder whether Trinidad's approach to public life and spaces is copied from Major Major Major Major, one of late American writer Joseph Heller's characters in his magnum opus, Catch-22, his first novel, published in 1961. Major Major stood out amongst a host of memorable characters, including Milo Minderbinder, the American mess officer/businessman who bombed his own airstrip for the Germans for cost plus 10 per cent, and protagonist Yossarian, who could not get himself grounded for insanity because his not wanting to fly dangerous missions was a perfectly sane response (but he could be grounded for insanity if he wanted to fly said dangerous missions, except that he would not then want to be grounded-the catch that gave the novel its title).
Born with the surname of Major, his father took advantage of his mother's indisposition immediately after childbirth to name his son himself. Rejecting, wrote Heller, such excellent options as Drum, Minor and C Sharp, he gave the boy the first name of Major, and then repeated it as "middle" name; and then the boy joined the army and rose to the rank of major, making him Major Major Major Major. In the novel, Major Major gave a standing direction to his clerk that no one was allowed into his office to see him until he was out of office. As soon as he went out, you could go in to see him; but he would, of course, be out. You could see him as long as he wasn't there. You could apply Heller's over-the-top satire of 50 years ago directly to modern T&T, and it would explain a lot. The recent sacking of Minister of Works Jack Warner, eg, could have come straight out of Catch-22, right down to its thin disguise as a reduction in his workload. No, writes Heller/says Kamla, Jack has not been fired, he has simply had his workload reduced. But he's not doing anything now, you say, and he was doing everything before. See how well the reduction worked, replies Kamla, we value him so highly that we won't put him to risk by giving him something to do. But he's the most active and effective Cabinet member, you say. All the more reason for him to have a rest, she replies. It's even in keeping with Catch-22 that Jack should not have been sacked for the full year he was extremely busy in FIFA, rejecting the English World Cup bid, organising meetings at the Hyatt and so on, but was fired when he resigned from the world football governing body and could no longer be said to be either in a conflict of interest position or embarrassing his party or country.
You could extend the non-logic of Catch-22 from the private public toilets to the rest of Queen's Park Savannah. Glance at Port-of-Spain's major park at any time from 3.30 pm onwards and it's jampacked. Thousands of people use it for exercise and recreation every afternoon/evening/night and, all day long, pedestrians, including children and senior citizens, cross from one side of the three-lane, one-way street to the other, to get to banks, embassies, restaurants, schools, homes and many other crucial daily destinations; so, naturally (Catch-22 naturally, ie,) no one drives slower than 80 kph around the Savannah. If the police ever did a speed trap exercise, they'd find many people driving at speeds 100 kph in excess.
And the later it gets every night, the faster people drive. If you sit sipping a coconut opposite All Saint's Church at midnight, you can hear cars speeding from as far away as Wrightson Road, a distance of about a kilometre, but the cars will cover it in a few seconds, once the traffic lights at Tragarete Road and Cipriani Boulevard allow it. Naturally-Catch-22 naturally, which is to say, highly unnaturally-speeding at night is often done to the soundtrack of extremely loud dancehall or soca music.
Any straight stretch of road anywhere in Trinidad becomes, at night, an opportunity for testing one's car's acceleration. The well-off residents of Haleland Park, one of Maraval's oldest posh neighbourhoods, are now nostalgic for those noisy old window air-conditioning units; modern split units do not drown out the sound of cars speeding along the main road. Every night, cars can reach 100 mph between the bend in the river and the bend leading to Moka Heights. Consider it a tax on the wealthy, some small payback for five centuries of exploitation; don't mind if the poor are also awakened. About the only people who are not aroused or even slightly disturbed are the police. Go to the end of the Diego Martin highway on any mid-week or weekend night. You'll find an active drag racing competition that meets all year long but, with university-age children back home for the long vacation, loud, Formula One-type racing is an almost nightly attraction. The starting point is the Four Roads police station; races end in Diamond Vale, a couple 100 metres away from the model police station, in the gates of which a woman was murdered. If you ring the police stations, though, they're blissfully unaware of it. And they have no vehicle. Of course they don't; if they did they'd be in the race themselves. The only real difference between the novel's satire and the modern Trinidadian reality can be summed up with one word added in: Catch-Tail 22.
BC Pires is a Heller of a columnist; or aims for it, anyway. Read more of his writing at www.BCraw.com
