es the paradoxical and practical reality for the reader:Pariag ... felt touched that they had recognized him ... Yet, it pained him that they had recognized him just at that moment when he was drawing away; and this pain brought a tallness to his walk, so that he was at that time both closer to them and farther from them. It would be across this distance and with this closeness that they would view each other henceforth (p. 155).Even Fisheye will eventually stop pressuring "two shilling" from Pariag whenever Pariag passes by him. But when a young fellar says to him, "I didn't know he was your friend," Fisheye responds: "Get the f-- out of here, who say he is my friend" (p. 155)?Of course Fisheye's retort contradicts what he unconsciously feels inside, but it is indicative of that seemingly unattainable goal of not only Trinidad and Tobago, but of all nations - "Indian, Chinee, white, black, rich, poor" (p. 163) - that Pariag redefines, thinking of Miss Cleothilda and her All o'we is one: "No. We didn't have to melt into one. I woulda be me for my own self. A beginning...' (p. 224). And Lovelace's vision in The Dragon Can't Dance provides just that: a microcosmic beginning, ringing challenging, all-too-relevant truths about humanity from a world of self-contradictions, through a lucid poetry of paradox. To borrow Lovelace's own words about Miss Cleothilda, his is arguably a novel of "audacious and pious grandeur" (p. 147)....
