Between the Bank and the Gutter, Louis Lee Sing’s most recent novel, makes a statement about the weakness of the capitalist economic, social and political systems and the fallout effect: a human flotsam gathered outside a major commercial bank on Independence Square; the bank itself is symbolic of our travel (or travail) through colonial rule and political independence and then back again.
The “street dwellers” comprise a squalid and smelly human heap on the pavement between the bank and the gutter. Always with their backs against the wall of the bank, they are never able to face the financial institution of the times. Among them are the drug addicts, youth men trapped by “the lady with the white powder”; those estranged from a society in which they failed to cope; and those who have fallen through the cracks (crack cocaine perhaps), and those rejected by the society to the north and returned “home” to feeling a sense of anomie.
Lee Sing, obviously writing about his experiences as a mayor of Port-of-Spain and his attempts to remove the homeless from the city’s sidewalks, encounters opposition from the human rights and legal advocates and even those citizens who acquire a twinge of conscience, feeling guilty that they bear in part and/or in whole responsibility for the homelessness.
Stimulated by the legal contentions of those beyond the gutter, the street dwellers gain confidence and arrive at a place where they realise their own rights, notwithstanding the mayor’s concern for their denial of the rights of those living in civil society to freely walk the pavement.
“Madame,” says the articulate Koon Koon, spokesperson for the street dwellers, to the magistrate when, after a late-night round-up, the street dwellers are piled high in the courts to answer why they live in vagrancy: “Ah on the streets because ah choose to be on the street.” The mouthpiece of the group flows into his argument about their affirmation to be there: “Ah have business on the street, and ah believe the city police damn farse to pick me up and detain me, and further, they lock me up for being about meh business … dey know how to abuse little people.”
The magistrate, representative of civil society, obviously unable to deal with the logic of the street dweller, knocks her gavel in surrender as she orders him out of her court. Of defining interest, the former mayor, now author, finds it necessary to make a political, economic and social point that amongst the street dwellers, there is only one Indian, “Harry,” who eventually takes the lead to represent his colleagues marooned on the streets.
It’s important here for the reader to note the significance of the street being taken over by non-Indians, the historical reality being that a mere 60-plus years ago, the street dwellers consisted mainly of Indians, those who had left the plantations and drifted into the city and hired themselves out for one task or the other. A clear backward step for the non-Indians.
“Black people always raise a hand for each other during slavery. Not now,” observes a youth on the pavement. “Not now, not Black nor any other race lifts a finger to assist a Black man,” preaches the young street dweller. In that vein, the author follows through with observations of the incapacity of the State to do what is required to deal with not merely the problems of the street dwellers but a government crippled by its inability to do something decisively to solve the problems thrown up by the society and the politics.
Even those who have robbed the Treasury continue to be free to do so again, is the claim. The degradation of the city does not stop at the pavement, but the human waste is splattered on the walls of critical financial institutions. Out of the office and obviously reflecting on his efforts, the former mayor catches a glimpse of one of the known street dwellers through a windowpane and seeks to reach out, perhaps for reflective conversation.
The dweller, however, wants no attempt at reconciliation to appease what may have been a guilty conscience, so he loses himself in the passing parade. At the end of his term and his efforts to clear the street, the mayor concludes on his efforts as being “to have been feeble and inadequate in the context of the work needed to be done.”
A very interesting change comes over the author; he begins to see the street dwellers in human terms, people with lives and the reasons for them being on the street. He captures a touching relationship between two of the main characters, Harry, the lone Indian who becomes a lawyer to the street dwellers, and Uncle Ulric, who dies after being trapped in a mausoleum of the rich of the society.
It’s a novel of the times, essentially about the incapacity of the people of the society, the Government, the financial institutions to have the courage and capacity to do what’s required to successfully clear the pavement of the street dwellers and to end, even slow, the human fallout. Take a read and draw your own conclusions.
Tony Rakhal-Fraser—freelance journalist, former reporter/current affairs programme host and news director at TTT, programme producer/current affairs director at Radio Trinidad, correspondent for the BBC Caribbean Service and the Associated Press; graduate of UWI, CARIMAC, Mona, and St Augustine–Institute of International Relations.
