BC Pires

The ded­i­ca­tion to Bar­bara Jenk­ins' ex­cep­tion­al short sto­ry col­lec­tion, Sic Tran­sit Wag­on, to be for­mal­ly launched at this week's NGC Bo­cas Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val, ends with, "Bet­ter late than nev­er"; and well it might: Jenk­ins turned 71 last year.

Be­cause of her age alone, her first book may well be her last book; which might well be a great loss to the lit­er­a­ture of Trinidad, the West In­dies and the world.

As im­pres­sive as Sic Tran­sit Wag­on is–and it is huge­ly im­pres­sive on every front–the pru­dent re­view­er would not make fi­nal pro­nounce­ments about Jenk­ins, even on its very ob­vi­ous strengths. The re­al abil­i­ty of most writ­ers can on­ly be prop­er­ly judged by their sec­ond or lat­er books–even if that test would de­clare the tal­ents of Os­car Wilde, Harp­er Lee and Ralph El­li­son to be in­de­ter­minable, since they "on­ly" wrote The Pic­ture of Do­ri­an Gray, To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and In­vis­i­ble Man. To use an­oth­er NGC Lit Fest name as an ex­am­ple, Marabou Stork Night­mares (and Glue, and Crime, and so on) con­firmed Irvine Welsh to be the ma­jor tal­ent that Trainspot­ting promised, and Moses As­cend­ing and John­son and the Cas­cadu­ra proved Sam Selvon was, all along, do­ing far, far more than set­ting down his kicksy Not­ting Hill pard­ners' ad­ven­tures in The Lone­ly Lon­don­ers. Bar­bara Jenk­ins' next book, then–and it is my fer­vent hope that there will be an­oth­er one, and soon–will de­ter­mine whether she is as good a writer as her short sto­ries promise.

It is a mea­sure of Jenk­ins' abil­i­ty that it is eas­i­er to tab­u­late the flaws in her book than its achieve­ments be­cause, with the ex­cep­tion of on­ly three sto­ries–Gold Bracelets, Mon­ty & Mar­i­lyn and The Tal­is­man–every word writ­ten in Sic Tran­sit Wag­on is as close to per­fect as writ­ing gets.

In the first two sto­ries alone, the beau­ti­ful­ly ti­tled Cur­tains and It's Cher­ry Pink and Ap­ple Blos­som White, Jenk­ins' ob­vi­ous mul­ti­ple strengths re­veal just how weak every oth­er as­pi­rant Bel­mont mem­oirist re­al­ly has been so far. Where oth­ers have done lit­tle more than ap­peal shame­less­ly to group nos­tal­gia, Jenk­ins has recre­at­ed the world from which they came with a stag­ger­ing econ­o­my of words. Di­a­logue writ­ten in Port-of-Spain di­alect, eg, the reg­u­lar stum­bling block of the am­a­teur, is used spar­ing­ly, pow­er­ful­ly and al­most al­ways per­fect­ly to the ear.

Even sharp­er than her ear, though, is Jenk­ins' eye. In the first pages, she por­trays the back of every­one's grand­moth­er's dress "with its print­ed yel­low flow­ers on leafy green vines peep­ing through the wo­ven cane of her rock­ing chair, her long grey plait swing­ing from side to side over the back of the chair as she rocked back and forth, back and forth. The rock­ers went squeak, bump, squeak, bump, against the hard ma­hogany floor with a rhythm so reg­u­lar that, even if I closed my eyes, I could tell when the next squeak, the next bump, was com­ing."

This is as de­light­ful as writ­ing gets: the read­er recog­nis­es, as the words un­fold, his own mem­o­ry in that of the writer, and fic­tion be­comes doc­u­men­tary. Jenk­ins man­ages this kind of trick time and again. A list of goods set out in It's Cher­ry Pink recre­ates, in the mind of any­one who's "made mes­sage" for their moth­er, a trip to the neigh­bour­hood "Chi­nee" shop: "Nes­tle's con­densed milk, Fry's co­coa pow­der, bars of yel­low Sun­light soap for wash­ing clothes and a sin­gle-cup sa­chet of Nes­tle in­stant cof­fee, just in case..."

Sic Tran­sit Wag­on–the book's ti­tle is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of Jenk­ins' gift for com­pos­ing head­lines that a news­pa­per ed­i­tor might en­vy–proves, clear­ly and ir­refutably, that Bar­bara Jenk­ins has a writer's ear and eye. Her next book will show whether she can sus­tain the writer's heart to com­plete the tri­fec­ta–and make a thor­ough­bred of her.

Even the weak­er sto­ries in this book, though, are strong, and would not grate on most ears at all. The pru­dent re­view­er–and the ea­ger fu­ture read­er–how­ev­er, might wor­ry about what these three chinks in the ar­mour might por­tend. The au­thor in­for­ma­tion at the end of the book con­firms what the read­er sus­pects from the start: most of the sto­ries are drawn from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence, as the best fic­tion al­most al­ways is, in one way or the oth­er; what is un­cer­tain, from this first book, is how much of the nec­es­sary in­ven­tion is in­ject­ed in­to the ma­te­r­i­al to make the sto­ries tru­ly fic­tion­al and, er­go, gen­uine­ly uni­ver­sal. Have the flaws in the sto­ries arisen out of the writer's in­ex­pe­ri­ence, or her in­abil­i­ty? Is she in­vent­ing sto­ries that will be new to all who read them, or dis­guis­ing well and mere­ly set­ting down the re­al events of her own past?

If, in both cas­es, it is the for­mer, Jenk­ins' next book will con­firm her as a gen­uine­ly im­por­tant writer; if it is the lat­ter, the next book may nev­er emerge; a true worst case sce­nario, and all the more rea­son to cel­e­brate a pow­er­ful, pos­i­tive and beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten de­but.

Sic Tran­sit Wag­on

Au­thor: Bar­bara Jenk­ins

Peepal Tree Press

Sic Tran­sit Wag­on and Oth­er Sto­ries will be launched at the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, Old Fire Sta­tion, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, from 1.30�2.30 pm on April 28.