The Ascent of Man
‘Look! Look!’ cried Ishmael Samad. He was pointing at the sky above the mangroves, where the last remnants of daylight were disappearing into the swamp. I caught a glimpse of what seemed to be red confetti thrown up from the trees. It was a flock of scarlet ibis. The game warden, a local schoolteacher, proudly told us that a small colony of the birds, hitherto only found in the Caroni swamp on the west of the island, had recently established itself in the mangrove forest.
It was dark now, and the oil rigs glittered in the ocean like casinos. In the sky at the horizon, the glows from more distant drilling platforms showed like a series of small dawns. Presently, about fifty yards away, we noticed a blob in the water that could have been a boulder washed by the surf. Imperceptibly but steadily, like the minute hand of a clock, the object moved out on to the beach. We did not approach it — a turtle can be disturbed into retreating to the water. Looking through Ishmael’s binoculars, I could see the creature paddling its flippers and schlepping itself uphill over the damp, packed sand. Finally, the leatherback reached the higher part of the beach. She began moving in a circle, flinging away the soft sand in a kind of breaststroke, and then wriggled her body down into the depression she had made for herself. Then she began to dig with her rear feet. Now we approached. She was immense. Her carapace — leathery and ridged and oval — looked like the keel of an upturned boat. The turtle’s rear flippers dug and dug until there was a hole about one foot wide and two feet deep. Then the eggs began to drop from the rear of her belly. They fell steadily, soft glistening white spheres like snooker balls. She laid about a hundred in all. Then she buried them with sand flipped by her rear legs, occasionally panting and sighing, revolving and splashing in the sand until the eggs were hidden from predators. Ishmael Samad softly patted her enormous head, with its beaked bill and lachrymose eyes.
She lugged herself back down towards the sea. The moon was out now, and the clouds dispersed by the breeze. She entered the luminous foam and slowly swam out, ready to eat jellyfish. It had taken her an hour or so.
Opponents of capital punishment often argue their case pragmatically: for example, that the death penalty has no real deterrent effect; that because guilt can rarely be established with total certainty, innocent people are sent to their deaths. But the fundamental position of many of them is that no matter how terrible the offence, or conclusive the evidence, or pardonable the urge for retribution, it is wrong to execute a human being. Why this should be so is almost beyond persuasive articulation: but not, I realized as I walked up the beach towards the mangroves, beyond revelation.
I left Trinidad at the end of June. A few days later — on July 9, 1999 — Ramnath Harrilal was sentenced to a further five years in prison. On July 28, 1999 a mechanic named Anthony Briggs was hanged in Port-of-Spain, but as I write, in October 2000, there have been no further hangings in Trinidad and Tobago. However, the Attorney-General of Trinidad is again promoting the idea of a Caribbean Court of Appeal which would replace the Privy Council in London and so prevent condemned prisoners from challenging, delaying and consequently escaping their executions. The Attorney-General is also gearing up for the forthcoming elections. Preparing to contest the Attorney-General’s parliamentary seat is the Turtle Man, Ishmael Samad.