Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan

The ebb and flow of life con­tin­ues un­abat­ed de­spite the mi­nor mis­eries or ma­jor rev­e­la­tions that mark a hu­man ex­is­tence. This mes­sage is thread­ed, with vary­ing de­grees of sub­tle­ty and per­sis­tence, through­out all the sto­ries of Lawrence Scott's new col­lec­tion, Leav­ing by Plane Swim­ming back Un­der­wa­ter (Pa­pil­lote Press, 2015).

The ti­tle of the over­all work in­di­cates a sea change, a re­con­nais­sance of one's in­di­vid­ual for­tunes, set against the back­drop of a full and ex­am­ined his­to­ry. Scott brings the nar­ra­tives of his char­ac­ters' per­son­al and col­lec­tive his­to­ries to the page in ways that demon­strate a sen­si­tive affin­i­ty to the rhythms of nat­ur­al speech, and the mer­ci­ful in­dif­fer­ence of na­ture it­self.

The splen­dour and fear­some majesty of the nat­ur­al world is nev­er far from the main set­ting of these sto­ries. Scott may oc­ca­sion­al­ly turn his pro­tag­o­nists in­ward, fac­ing the sti­fling clam­our of busy main streets in San Fer­nan­do or Port-of-Spain. De­spite this, the au­tho­r­i­al gaze re­minds the read­er fre­quent­ly of the pres­ence of mar­itime winds, the slope of moun­tains, and the over­all po­si­tion of Trinidad in the arch­i­pel­ag­ic chain.

Nor do the sto­ries re­strict them­selves to Trinidad, though the bulk of them are set here. In Ash on Guavas, a young Montser­ra­t­ian girl sees the won­der and po­et­ic scope of the Caribbean through her school­teacher's ge­og­ra­phy les­son: "See the rosary of is­lands, the splin­tered arc. See each moun­tain peak; an in­di­go, green ser­ra­tion which runs along the rum of the new world basin." It is to these car­to­graph­ic in­struc­tions that the girl cleaves when an un­fore­seen nat­ur­al calami­ty shakes the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al foun­da­tions of her known world.

In oth­er sto­ries, Scott presents Na­ture as im­placa­ble, un­chang­ing ex­cept in its se­ries of rev­o­lu­tions and sov­er­eign in its do­min­ion over man, whether por­trayed in a nur­tur­ing or de­struc­tive light.

Pierre and Guil­laume, boys bur­geon­ing in­to their un­cer­tain sex­u­al­i­ty in the mul­ti­ple-per­spec­tive nar­ra­tive of Tales Told Un­der the San Fer­nan­do Hill, con­duct their in­nocu­ous but not in­no­cent games in an Edenic gar­den of a great house. They reg­is­ter the changes in their bod­ies and hearts while "the sea­son was just it­self chang­ing its dress... and the pouis and im­mortelles had dropped their dress­es to the ground where the yel­low and or­ange petals ringed the trees."

Re­splen­dent yet im­par­tial, the gar­den wit­ness­es mul­ti­ple de­sires un­fold­ing and con­verg­ing be­neath its trees and shady walks. Scott frames the en­coun­ters in this sto­ry to cre­ate a di­choto­my be­tween the flesh's bid­d­a­ble weak­ness and a nat­ur­al at­mos­phere that keeps vig­il silent­ly.

This du­al­i­ty, be­tween the nat­ur­al world and man's thwart­ed, com­pli­cat­ed de­sire with­in it, is per­haps nowhere more ev­i­dent than in the col­lec­tion's ti­tle sto­ry, Leav­ing by Plane Swim­ming back Un­der­wa­ter. A first per­son rem­i­nis­cence of a young man's life, steeped deep in Ro­man Catholic re­li­gious train­ing, it re­flects lusts that are both spir­i­tu­al and car­nal, call­ing up par­al­lels be­tween op­po­site states of ar­dour.

The nar­ra­tor finds suc­cour in the warmth of the wilder­ness: "I be­came a builder of shrines, grot­tos in the moun­tains, im­i­tat­ing Lour­des and Fa­ti­ma and my in­tense wish was that if I knelt long enough at these shrines alone in the for­est, an­oth­er vi­sion would come, some­thing more last­ing."

Though he toys with the idea of his own apos­ta­sy, it is the very wilder­ness he clings to that de­feats him, at the sto­ry's close, and so­lid­i­fies his ac­cep­tance of a monas­tic and con­tem­pla­tive fate.

The dan­ger of a col­lec­tion that bears so many nu­anced in­ter­ro­ga­tions of a spir­i­tu­al life, a so­journ­er's re­grets and a re­gion's as­sem­bled guilt is that much of it gets lost in the quiet­ness of its ap­proach. The work is well writ­ten, but not bold­ly de­clar­a­tive: while this will stymie many read­ers at­tuned to more ob­vi­ous satir­i­cal and the­atri­cal flour­ish­es, it will en­dear those avoid­ing high dra­ma in their tellings. Even if the coun­try is a pan­tomime, Scott's prose sug­gests, the re­count­ing of its trav­es­ties can still be en­forced with a cer­tain sleight of hand.

One or two of the sto­ries suc­cumb to a dis­cor­dant sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, but through­out the col­lec­tion, the nar­ra­tives re­main fo­cused, de­liv­er­ing deep cuts with great skill. Leav­ing by Plane Swim­ming back Un­der­wa­ter is, in this way, sur­gi­cal­ly pre­cise, de­liv­er­ing grief, grace and re­demp­tion to fic­tion's op­er­at­ing ta­ble.