The Magnificent Pompalone

The Magnificent Pompalone
Is the Western World Suffering from the Megalomania of Youth? Sounds Deadly, but It Isn't. Only the Subject is Serious—Not the Treatment
By T. S. Stribling
CHUM WONG LOO, a copra exporter in Tragarette Road down near the Carnage, told me this story one moonlit night on the savanna in Port au Spain. We were looking at an Italian villa built of Barbados chalk. It arose white, unbelievably white, in the moonlit, and was fronted by an overture of terraced gardens and an arpeggio of palms. It was in process of transformation, Loo told me, with a trace of satire in his voice. A brotherhood of monks had come into possession of it; they were changing the ballroom into a chapel, and already had removed the French landscapes and nudes with which it had been decorated and had replaced them with the fourteen stations done by a local Trinidad negro artist.
We perused this irony for several minutes with our eyes on the pallid villa and the harplike palms which were set with fireflies. Occasionally in front of us would pass Hindu or English or Syrian lovers, whispering together, oblivious, of the night in the more melting wistfulness of their own hearts. As we sat musin

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