Letter from Trinidad by Anthony Vahni Capildeo

PN Review 210, March - April 2013

London. A plush hall. Tiers of poets and other businesspersons. A voice from on high: 'A book can be marketed exactly like a smoothie.' Oxford. 'Meet me in the bookshop's second-hand department. We can grab a coffee. I've already done my shopping, in the children's section.' Consider the winter of bookshops in Britain? Well, for now, here is a different story. I fly...

Christmastime transforms Trinidad, my other island, where Hanukkah remains cryptic, the solstice alternative is little known, and Catholics and Hindus unite in their love of twinkly lights and lavish giftwrap. The wet-bright December sky thickens alcoholically, like ponche de crême.

Christmas Eve in Joan Dayal's Paper Based Bookshop at the Hotel Normandie in Port of Spain: how does this work?

Everything has its language; and O Reader conversant with Planograms, Reader aware that Footfall (people) may increase where the Shop Floor exploits the Pinball Effect (sidetracking customers into a maze of undreamt purchases), Reader innocent of the Bum-Brush Effect (can an unsmall person, carrying an unsmall bag, browse the aisles without fear of contact?), Reader with Retail Awareness, how account for the liveliness, the ease, in Joan's tiny, overcrowded bookstore?

Miraculously, everyone who enters wants to buy new books, preferably hardcover. Nobody leaves empty-handed. In fact, these customers, or visitors, make demands and declarations, lamenting that their desires exceed their means. An architect's wife, in a minatory tone, asks Joan whether the book on the Carib wars that was reviewed is still in print. Joan knows it is, and where copies are shelved; she has probably read it. The distinguished writer Earl Lovelace (my generation 'did him for O levels') manifests, typically white-clad, with a young relative who is looking for the Divine Comedy, specifically not an e-text but a book she can hold. Joan doesn't have this. The pair exit, promising to return for other books; Joan will wait for them and keep the shop open. 'Trinidadians read a lot more now,' says Joan; her customers usually arrive wanting 'something special'.

Perhaps the magic resides in the theatricality of the Paper Based Bookshop's setting: visitors are transformed, threshold-crossers. You drive past the armed guard, park your car, and stroll up wide stairs. Ahead, a hardwood staircase to the upper galleries shelters a piano, and bears a dahlia-filled terracotta vase ample enough for an emperor. To the right: a restaurant and some artisan boutiques. To the left: a tiled awning overhanging the bookshop's showcase, which angles round to the doorway; stands of bright wrapping paper and newspapers. You step in gingerly. The real purchasers, men, women, and children, surge. A lady shouts gleefully, 'There are two kinds of people in shops this hour: last minute, and fellas for their outside woman.' She greets the world: 'Bye everybody. Hi everyone.'

Perhaps the magic results from the determination to make things work. Twenty-five years ago, Joan Dayal was a housewife, a former teacher, with two children and a broken marriage. The Hotel Normandie was being redesigned by a few individuals; with little beyond her alimony, Joan took on its bookshop. In those days, her rolls of bright wrapping paper helped make the shop look full. Joan started negotiating with the representatives of Caribbean-interest foreign publishers of the time: Longman, Heinemann, Macmillan. Trinidad's Paria Publishing concentrated on high-quality non-fiction, so Joan also took a chance on self-published local authors of fiction and poetry.

Did people want Caribbean books then? 'People didn't know these books were available.' Joan gradually began working with Trinidad's universities, setting out stall at their events; and with newspaper suppliers, ending her early-morning chore of buying copies for sale. Paper Based, with its one display table and clever almost-but-not-quite nooks, sells Granta under the counter, near to bridal magazines and biscuits; a noir anthology faces a wall of didactic and fantastic children's books; on the general fiction shelf, Alejo Carpentier and Lionel Shriver are companions. Now more people buy poetry than before, and a lot of Trinidadians are writing poetry; but poetry mostly sells at readings, or if it is by Walcott, or on the school curriculum. A wholemeal smell breathes from cardboard boxes tucked away everywhere; some near the ceiling are labelled in felt-tip Create Dangerously - Edwidge Danticat.

Our tea and sandwich lunch is at a café table outside the doorway. A waitress from the restaurant opposite graciously comes over, resting trays on the glass square covering the spring-green tablecloth's noon-blue sprigs; no health-and-safety quibbles when we want hot water. Joan's budget has never run to regular advertising: 'A lot of people still don't know where the shop is... It's only now that people know where I am.' Still, there is a living sense of the human makers of Paper Based and the Normandie. The energy of the first artists' shops drew the public. Trinidad's current artists and writers help out with the bookshop's social media presence.

Since the 1990s, Joan has hosted launches and performances, initially financing them herself. Teatime events are ticketed to support the literary occasion, not to imbue the bookshop with a lounge flavour. Joan describes these activities quietly, elfin in her leaf-coloured jumper - Trinidad's December, breezes and mosquitoes, can bring chills. She recalls the crowd - standing, sitting, investing the staircase - at the bookshop's twenty-fifth anniversary reading. I do not recall other audiences elsewhere, the bird-on-a-wire sparseness. Nor question how she never questions her aim of bringing work and audience together.

After these hours, what should I, can I, remember? The apparent Caribbean seasonal trend for serious non-fiction (natural science, microhistories), produced with heavy beauty, resembling coffee-table books only as vintage single-estate chocolate resembles cocoa powder. English an archipelagic language: authors of multi-tongued, variously plumaged culture. Customers pitching tents of silence or pitching into our century's conversations: bankers' iniquity; gendered gifts. Eyes, minds, dwelling with the books. The ocean-going question: do these names carry? C.L.R. James, Julian Kenny, Richard ffrench... Recycled copper wire angels, modestly above head level; a minimalist Christmas tree, its miniature gold star.

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Anthony Vahni Capildeo FRSL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Capildeo's eight books and eight pamphlets include Like a Tree, Walking (Carcanet, November 2021) and The Dusty Angel (Oystercatcher, 2021). Their interests include plurilingualism, traditional masquerade, and multidisciplinary collaboration. They are Writer in Residence and Professor at the University of York, a Visiting Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and an Honorary Student of Christ Church, Oxford.

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