The Stone-Cutter

His mother had told him not to climb up that hill any more. There were some good-for-nothing rough youths whose parents did not care what they did or where they went, who were frequently seen up there; and they were known to have molested other children in that vicinity. They were teen-agers who never read a book and stayed away from school whenever they wished to or on the slightest pretext. They obviously had no family life, as they used bad language and were seen smoking hashish and injecting themselves with a variety of drugs. Their parents, who were either at work or simply did not care, had no control over them. Why have children if you were not going to nurture them and guide them? His mother did not want him to get mixed up with a crowd of boys like that. She had always been careful about the children that Oscar spent his hours away from home with because she knew what bad influences could have on a young person at an impressionable age. A young mind was easy to mold. It was peer pressure that was having such a profound effect on these lads. How would Oscar end up when she would no longer be alive to tell him what to do? Those lads were certainly not what she had in mind for him. Oscar was sensitive, loved classical music, read good books and enjoyed the arts. He had the talents necessary for an intellectual life. She did not want to see his life ruined by those uneducated boorish loafers who had never contemplated what they were going to do with their wasteful lives. They never thought about tomorrow. Well, she had other ideas for Oscar, and that is why Oscar did so well at school.

                                  Yet Oscar did climb the hill contrary to his mother’s instructions. He really was not a child who disobeyed his mother, nor was he someone who wanted to spend his time with this gang of ruffians. In fact, he was afraid of them and disliked them, and wanted to have nothing to do with them. Yet he was drawn to the hill-top for other reasons. He had seen the stone-cutter there one day, and he had loved to watch him working and liked talking to him. He was attracted to going there as often as possible. He would bypass those ruffians and he would run straight to the stone-cutter. There he would be safe, and that, he felt, was the place where he wanted to be. He would answer Oscar’s questions and explain what he was doing, without talking too much. He had an enormous interest in whatever the stone -cutter had to say, and while he was there he felt almost as though he were in a house of prayer; it was like a religious experience. It was as though Bogaai – that is what he said his name was – had an enormous spell over him. When Bogaai spoke, and his words were sparse, he did so not with a Jamaican accent like everyone else, but with a rather guttural sound, and he seemed to accentuate the wrong syllables. Oscar looked upon him as though he were a holy man; he was like Moses on top of Mount Sinai. He had said that he came from Java and had landed here on the northern coast of Jamaica some time ago while he was a seaman on a Dutch steamer in the days when Java was under Dutch rule. But he was tired of sailing and had wanted to settle down; so he “jumped ship” and never returned. He was as black as the other Jamaicans, but he had an alien demeanor and apart from speaking strangely, appeared to be aloof. It was so obvious that he was of different vintage. He said that Dutch was the language that he spoke as a child, and it was the language in which he thought and, he admitted, cursed.