Bermuda Shorts
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union BERMUDA SHORTS BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS We had a surf-and-turf vacation—a week in Bermuda as house guests of friends, then a week as cottage renters in Bethany Beach, along the...
...I bought Cuban cigars for a friend in New York...
...I walk through the arched metal detector: Lights flash, buzzers buzz...
...and they have a word for any task beneath their dignity: infradig...
...In college, I once had to write a paper on the history of Denmark and came across a choice comment on Canute in the Britannica that went something like this: "He raised the level of civilization in Denmark by sending Englishmen there...
...Yet something about it appeals to me...
...He seemed pleased...
...The book, plucked off our friends' shelf, tells me that in earlier times slaves were hanged for the most trivial infractions—stealing a master's fork, for instance, or leaving the premises without permission...
...He works hard at it—a busy idler...
...Thursday...
...1 asked our host...
...They come individually wrapped in metal tubes that I have sequestered in my jacket pockets...
...I empty my pockets of cigarettes, keys and coins: I still buzz...
...Yes...
...Some say he did it out of hubris, or cosmic chutzpah...
...That's a rottweiler...
...We have left our host and hostess by their pool and have taken a bus to Horseshoe Bay...
...I've had more sun than I bargained for...
...Our friends live near a little bay lined with black coral, where white boats are anchored...
...Harry (older son, 21) builds sand castles and watches the tide crumple them...
...We are going home...
...States of the Union BERMUDA SHORTS BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS We had a surf-and-turf vacation—a week in Bermuda as house guests of friends, then a week as cottage renters in Bethany Beach, along the Delaware shore...
...Andrew Marvell saw it all?Charles' beheading, the triumph of Cromwell, the Restoration—and lived to tell the tale...
...At one point he ruled not only his native Denmark but all of Scandinavia, Scotland and a large part of England...
...Bermuda didn"t make England rich...
...he stares long and hard at jelly fish...
...Some of Bermuda's black leaders have been trying to get the sentences reduced to life imprisonment...
...Our host is a scientist...
...eyes closed, arms extended, thumbs pointed inward like those of a sleeping baby...
...My stomach rumbles with a just-discovered hunger...
...A huge brown dog greeted us and eyed me dubiously...
...Customs has arranged a preflight inspection at the island's airport, and now we stand in line, clutching our passports, awaiting clearance...
...Below us, to our right, between the road and the ocean, is an astounding scene...
...We get through Customs—few questions, no search—only to run afoul of another line...
...Brushing the grains away, the better to read my penciled notes, I find the ravings of a man touched by the sun...
...Well, the weather is clearing up...
...They are segregated, by and large, and they remain bogged down in the service trades, while the professions and most of the good jobs are monopolized by the white minority...
...Summary justice was a spectator sport...
...She brushes the disc over my clothes: more buzzing...
...Philip (younger son, 19) throws a frisbee out to sea—aimed generally at Madrid—in such a way that it sails back to him...
...A taxi driver here told me that Customs officials enjoy confiscating these cigars—and smoking them...
...And she swims far?beyond the boats, even beyond the tiny bay...
...I like the latter version...
...Sir," she whispers, "are those cigars...
...The uniformed officials at the end of it are looking for guns and bombs...
...Nice rottweiler...
...Nevertheless, they somehow manage to carry their burdens gracefully and without a trace of servility...
...Public executions, in England as well as in Bermuda, drew large, festive crowds...
...The sandy shore here is partitioned by coral outcrops, creating a set of attractive semiprivate beaches...
...I addressed the beast tactfully...
...There were no big plantations, no factories in the field, where slaves might be worked to death...
...We choose a corner compartment, kick away a few beer cans and subside into our individual beach habits...
...Our host is perusing the local newspaper...
...Diane (wife) is supine...
...So people sitting on the Sonesta beach do not see the ocean, they see the Sonesta...
...I return to my book, Slavery in Bermuda...
...It reminds me of the posh watering holes I occasionally visited with my parents...
...I can now understand why Robert Benchley, according to his son Nathaniel, "always greeted daylight with a certain amount of resentment...
...You may pass," she says...
...Here's a letter to the editor arguing for execution in the name of fiscal prudence...
...Diane pronounces the scene un-surpassably ugly, and she is certainly right...
...Most of us are slouched around the livingroom, reading...
...What kind of dog is that...
...Their names are poetry: Hibiscus, morning glory, ice flower, poinsettia...
...Good dog," I said...
...The woman places her hand over my heart and squeezes...
...the place was too small, the soil too thin...
...Friday...
...Although the Spanish navigator, Juan de Bermu-dez, discovered it (in 1515), the English settled it...
...The result seems to have been less soul-destruction...
...Bermuda's 33,000 blacks?0 percent of the population—appear less self-conscious about race, less ethnic, than other blacks in this hemisphere...
...One pays many dollars for this privilege...
...Still, compared to its draconian 'counterpart in the West Indies and the United States, Bermuda slavery was a piece of cake...
...When we arrive at the little bay, he wades in...
...Something similar might have been said of Bermuda...
...She swims the way she writes, with firm, methodical strokes, making a smooth progression through the ripples...
...True, families were separated, but not as frequently as in the American South and never by more than 20 miles—the entire length of the Bermuda archipelago...
...Mo-peds, bicycles and shiny black taxis whiz past...
...A lesser poet of the same period, Edmund Waller, was even more rhapsodic: "What fruits they have, and how heaven smiles/ Upon those late-discovered isles...
...On vacations such as this one I have learned to take little or no reading with me, and rely instead on local resources, on the lisant du pays, if you will...
...resorts offering tennis and shuffleboard and badminton, where waiters in striped pants served tall, iced drinks at tables by the sea, where potted palms fluttered deferentially, and where gorgeously tanned blondes sashayed across the terrace in bright yellow shifts with matching sandals...
...Those places were monuments to hedonism, sybaritic beyond surmise, and the Sonesta, down there in that magenta gulley, is their authentic heir...
...It is raining, and I am secretly pleased...
...The green little island struck a deep chord in the English imagination, some Edenic yearning for a simpler world, one that would be free of clashing dogmas and warring kings...
...Worse luck, someone suggests a dip in the bay...
...I am a shade anxious...
...I had hoped to gather weighty intelligence from both places, to bring you news of social trends and political struggles, but all I succeeded in gathering were a few purple oleander petals?sweetly perfumed and deadly poisonous...
...It is time, I tell my family, to go...
...The debate hasn't been very edifying," says our host...
...Sunday...
...my forehead is peeling...
...Our hostess is a writer and social researcher...
...Monday...
...it suggests a limited monarchy, the rudiments of parliamentary government...
...The Sonesta Hotel, a long white curve against the blue water, spans the entrance to the bay...
...A scientist's total concentration...
...It's cheaper to hang them than to feed and clothe them for another 40 years...
...There's a big debate going on about capital punishment," he informs us...
...He brings order to the Bermuda landscape by calling off the names of the flowers and trees we pass...
...To reach it we had to duck through an oleander hedge and traverse a neighbor's wide yard...
...In his Bermudas the new inhabitants sing a song of relief and self-congratula-tion: What should we do but sing His praise, That led us through the watery maze Unto an isle so long unknown, And yet far kinder than our own...
...The pages of my Bermuda notebook are still flecked with sand and smeared with suntan lotion, the grit and grease of summer maunder-ings...
...An astonishing sight: Phil playing catch with an invisible sea-god, one with a pretty good arm...
...Why did he command the tide to recede...
...In those days nobody questioned the efficacy of capital punishment...
...I sit on a towel, gazing at white-caps and thinking about King Canute...
...The four of us walk along a high road by the sea...
...Of course, Canute was powerful...
...Sir," says a woman holding a metal disc, "stand over here, please...
...Then the lid was again clamped on...
...Like Plymouth, however, it provided a haven for English dissidents in a time of religious strife and much bloodshed...
...During the brief Carter-Cuba thaw, travelers were allowed to bring Havana cigars into the U.S.A...
...Two black men have been convicted of separate murders—in one, the colonial Governor was killed—and are scheduled shortly to be hanged...
...I rehearse my speech: "Good dog, nice rottweiler...
...He examines shells...
...Wednesday...
...Others claim he did it to prove to his worshipful subjects that he was not omnipotent...
Vol. 60 • July 1977 • No. 15
