it’s
worth,” said the Saint. Something more personal was troubling him: it
was absurd, impossible within the established limits of chro nology
and space, but … “Do you know the name of this black commissar?”
he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Farnham said. “His
background is a bit different from your Johnny’s. You probably know his name. It’s
Mark Cuffee.”
3
Mr. Mark Cuffee’s career, in many respects,
could have been cited as a shining example of the achievement pos sible to
the emancipated negro; and Mr. Cuffee himself had scathing epithets with which
to describe those who did not regard it with unqualified admiration.
His father had left the Maroon country to
work in a rum
distillery soon after Mark was born, and in due course worked himself up to the rank of foreman. With visions of still higher employment in mind for
his son, he sent the boy to school in
Kingston, where he proved to be such
a brilliant student that at seventeen he won a scholarship to Oxford. With a benevolent Sugar In dustries Association supplying the necessary extra funds, he went to England, where he not only won
his degree in Law with first-class
honors, but also had time to represent his University both as an oarsman and a cricketer, and to give a performance in the title
role of an OUDS production of Othello which earned such critical acclaim that he continued it
professionally for a six-weeks run
in London.
After this brief triumph, knowing full well
the narrow limit to the number of starring parts available to a col ored
actor, no matter how talented, Mr. Cuffee with ap parent good philosophy
turned his histrionic talents back to the Bar. He was a clever lawyer and a
born vir tuoso in court; and since for a while he continued to
play cricket for an exclusive amateur club, he had a social entree
which in England opens all doors to distinguished adepts of the
national game, provided they do not play it for money.
Thus far, his record was entirely
praiseworthy, and all the auspices pointed to a successful and
illustrious future.
It is not known at exactly what moment Mr.
Cuffee decided to turn his back on his good omens and seek other
goals. One obvious milestone is the occasion when he became a
Socialist candidate for Parliament in the first post-war
election, and was soundly defeated in spite of the general
Conservative debacle. Others would date it from the time when
a notoriously unconventional peeress, with whom the gossips had
frequently linked his name, quite gracefully declined to marry him.
At any rate, within a short space of both these events, he re signed
from his cricket club, dropped most of his society friends, and soon
afterwards went on a visit to Moscow, where he stayed for more than a year.
When he returned he wrote some articles in
praise of the Soviet system for one of the pinker weeklies, and became a
vitriolic public speaker against anything he could call reactionary, bourgeois,
capitalist, warmon gering, or, as a convenient synonym for all sins, Ameri can. Few
of his former legal clients came back to him, but he was regularly retained for
the defense of Com munist spies and agitators, and in many other cases which
could be disguised as humanitarian and used as sounding-boards for
diatribes against anything that con travened the current interests of the
Politburo. Although he by no means starved, he did the dirty work of his new masters and endured the inevitable public obloquy for several years,
with the strange uncomplaining patience of a dedicated party
member, until at last the infinitely elaborate card files in the Kremlin brought forth his name as the perfect instrument for a certain task,
and he found himself back in the
wild hills of Jamaica where he had spent his boyhood.
He stood near the gate of the village of
Accompong, watching a jeep bumping up the winding rocky road which the
Government has built from the nearest mar ket town to the
Maroon territory, a town with the mag nificent name of
worth,” said the Saint. Something more personal was troubling him: it
was absurd, impossible within the established limits of chro nology
and space, but … “Do you know the name of this black commissar?”
he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Farnham said. “His
background is a bit different from your Johnny’s. You probably know his name. It’s
Mark Cuffee.”
3
Mr. Mark Cuffee’s career, in many respects,
could have been cited as a shining example of the achievement pos sible to
the emancipated negro; and Mr. Cuffee himself had scathing epithets with which
to describe those who did not regard it with unqualified admiration.
His father had left the Maroon country to
work in a rum
distillery soon after Mark was born, and in due course worked himself up to the rank of foreman. With visions of still higher employment in mind for
his son, he sent the boy to school in
Kingston, where he proved to be such
a brilliant student that at seventeen he won a scholarship to Oxford. With a benevolent Sugar In dustries Association supplying the necessary extra funds, he went to England, where he not only won
his degree in Law with first-class
honors, but also had time to represent his University both as an oarsman and a cricketer, and to give a performance in the title
role of an OUDS production of Othello which earned such critical acclaim that he continued it
professionally for a six-weeks run
in London.
After this brief triumph, knowing full well
the narrow limit to the number of starring parts available to a col ored
actor, no matter how talented, Mr. Cuffee with ap parent good philosophy
turned his histrionic talents back to the Bar. He was a clever lawyer and a
born vir tuoso in court; and since for a while he continued to
play cricket for an exclusive amateur club, he had a social entree
which in England opens all doors to distinguished adepts of the
national game, provided they do not play it for money.
Thus far, his record was entirely
praiseworthy, and all the auspices pointed to a successful and
illustrious future.
It is not known at exactly what moment Mr.
Cuffee decided to turn his back on his good omens and seek other
goals. One obvious milestone is the occasion when he became a
Socialist candidate for Parliament in the first post-war
election, and was soundly defeated in spite of the general
Conservative debacle. Others would date it from the time when
a notoriously unconventional peeress, with whom the gossips had
frequently linked his name, quite gracefully declined to marry him.
At any rate, within a short space of both these events, he re signed
from his cricket club, dropped most of his society friends, and soon
afterwards went on a visit to Moscow, where he stayed for more than a year.
When he returned he wrote some articles in
praise of the Soviet system for one of the pinker weeklies, and became a
vitriolic public speaker against anything he could call reactionary, bourgeois,
capitalist, warmon gering, or, as a convenient synonym for all sins, Ameri can. Few
of his former legal clients came back to him, but he was regularly retained for
the defense of Com munist spies and agitators, and in many other cases which
could be disguised as humanitarian and used as sounding-boards for
diatribes against anything that con travened the current interests of the
Politburo. Although he by no means starved, he did the dirty work of his new masters and endured the inevitable public obloquy for several years,
with the strange uncomplaining patience of a dedicated party
member, until at last the infinitely elaborate card files in the Kremlin brought forth his name as the perfect instrument for a certain task,
and he found himself back in the
wild hills of Jamaica where he had spent his boyhood.
He stood near the gate of the village of
Accompong, watching a jeep bumping up the winding rocky road which the
Government has built from the nearest mar ket town to the
Maroon territory, a town with the mag nificent name of
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