Yesterday I read The Duppy by Anthony C. Winkler. It is a wonderfully funny look at the afterlife (“duppy” means “ghost” or “spirit” in Jamaican patois), presenting a heaven much more appealing than the vision of a judgmental Peter at the gate (as in Walter Mosely’s The Tempest Tales), or the clouds, wings, and harps pastiches usually offered up in explaining the great beyond. It is also pretty darn illuminating about life here on earth.
The only catch with the great heaven created in The Duppy is that it can only be reached via Jamaica; if you get caught dying in the United States, it’s American heaven for you, all sheep and shorn manhood (and caulked womanhood) and clamoring for pain. In Jamaican heaven, there is all the pleasure a person could want (which for the characters in the book is A LOT), along with all the beauty of island living without hurricanes, sheep, or predial larceny of mangoes or any other crop. Money really does grow on trees, not that it is needed in this Jamaican heaven where anything you want is given when asked for.
God in The Duppy is a tiny firefly thingy, having given up most of his substance to create the universe. Yet he is still powerful in upholding his three rules of heaven (rule number one: “Water shalt find its own level“, meaning thieves will hang out with thieves, and don’t have to hang out with “sanctimonious church goers” in heaven; rule number two: “Thou shalt feel good, no matter what“; and rule number three, “Thou cannot capture the Lord thy God“) but powerless in controlling what goes on earth, having given free will to people. The Americans are busy trying to run earth and have been partially successful in modeling heaven according to campaigns of the religious Right (for example, closing off sex as an avenue for pleasure in heaven); they have been less successful in their efforts to bring pain, class delineations, and commercial status to heaven, much to their chagrin: how can it be that “a crook got the same size back yard as a baptized Christian…. [and] a murderer executed on earthly Texas would brazenly walk the streets of heaven among the decent citizens like the wretch had belonged to the Dallas Chamber of Commerce“?
The real humor and appeal of The Duppy is its understanding of Jamaican life, on earth and in heaven. There are very funny bits on the drivers of minibuses, the island economy and politics, cricket, tourists, and the pursuit of pum-pum. In describing a minibus ride, Winkler gets that experience just right, not only the atmosphere (“knee and elbow jostled side by side for breathing room; nosehole found itself wedged in dangerous proximity to obnoxious battyhole and unaromatic crotch; arm, head, and limb jutted out the windows and waved like surrender flag; ironed frock and fresh pants crease melted and wrinkled in the stuffy heat from the crush of bodies, while the stale exhale and armpit exhaust made the stuffy interior stink like bat manure in a cave“) but also the driving (“tailgating, weaving recklessly, screeching around corners, and driving like he owned the road“).
The Duppy not only made me laugh out loud again and again but it also got me thinking about what it is we humans expect from both life and death, and from other humans. Why do we fall so easily into the “shouldism“, where rules dictate the way a person should act the way, with no reason other than “should”. As God explains in The Duppy “a lot of should leads to principle, and principle leads to murder.” Wars of religion, past and present, are proof of that.
Maybe the lesson of The Duppy is that God’s three rules for heaven should apply on earth as well (okay, this is “shouldism” and here comes more): people should be allowed to be who they are; pain should not be upheld as the ultimate cleanser both of body and soul, and instead the power of pleasure and of joy should prosper; and all efforts to catch and define the notion of “God” should fail. All those rules we ascribe to the divinity of God are actually derived straight out of our own neuroses: perhaps with less focus on pain and class and “shouldism“, our neuroses will fade away and our goodness will finally shine through. In The Duppy, God counsels that “there’s good in the heart of all who walk the world.” I hope so.
Grind long and prosper.
