Authors: Austin Clarke
Mrs. Burrmann put down the paper, and the tragedy of those thousands of Canadians, unknown, unfortunate, unwed, and unwanted mothers, faded from Bernice’s mind, just as the steam of the kettle disappeared and then died. It is hell, though, she thought. If I had a sister, and she found herself in them circumstances, with no man to father her child, and it was for one o’ them worthless bastards in this country, white
or
black, Japanee or Chinee, be-Jesus Christ! and I turn my eyes above to You, I would have to get a half day from You to search for that brute, and when I find him, so-help-me-God,
bram
! (She actually slapped her hand on the kitchen counter. Mrs. Burrmann called her name. “It’s only me, ma’am. I here, talking-over a few things with God.”) “I think I would
kill
that bastard. The sorrow and the sufferation and the unhappiness to bring into a girl’s life!” (Bernice remembered the case of the Jamaican girl, twenty-three years old who was working as a
domestic; and she found herself in the family way; and the man didn’t stand up, nor own up and say that it was his; and the only help that girl got was the gossip from the West Indian women who spread the story through the whole of Toronto, as if it was the gospel. The gossip reached her employer; and then it reached the people at the Immigration Office; and then the girl was deported.) “A poor single woman in
this
country, with a child that don’t have a father? And a two-tone child, at that? Lord, Lord, Lord!” The terror and the tragedy were real, and she was shivering as if she were living through them. “And with all this hospital thing nowadays that you hearing ’bout: blue cross, physicians-and-services, group benefits to pay. This is the first country I ever live in where I hear you have to pay
hard cash
in order to bring a little innocent mortal into this blasted world. They make you pay through your hat, too! You pays to enter them hospital gates. You pays to lay down in that bed. You pays a certain kind o’ cash to lay down in a certain bed. You pays to lay down in a certain bed, in a certain ward. You pays again to lay down in a certain bed, in a certain ward, in a certain place o’ that hospital. You pays to get a certain kind o’ treatment from the nurses. And there is a certain kind o’ nurse you have to get before you could even think ’bout paying out ordinary cash. You pays the doctor. If he happens to be your family doctor —
well
! If he happen to be somebody-else family doctor —
then
! You pays the delivering surgeon. You pays the drugs people. You pays the man who knock you out with the smelling salts thing, the anaesthesia-man. You pays for the birth certificate. And be-Christ, when you dead, somebody telling you you still have to pay for deading! Why it is so, like this, in Toronto?” (And there was another case: Bernice was remembering everything now. A
Trinidadian girl … with a nice skin and nice features and nice long hair; and she had a good brain, too. God-love-a-duck! and Satan stepped right in and put the wrong man in that girl’s pants. That man took that nice, young girl, and give her a child; kept coming back for more; fooling-up that angel till she was four months and almost showing; and the moment she stepped into maternity clothes that her missy bought for her from Holt Renfrew, that bastard run like a rabbit.) Dots was present when Bernice heard the story over the gossiphone. “Gal, that man run like he was running from a fire that had wings on it.”
“And all he had to say is, he is a student.”
“Student?” Dots even disliked the word. “Student? He only have time for books and not babies, eh?”
“But still, though, Dots,” Bernice conceded. “You can’t crucify that boy. As a student, he would have to look after his books. I heard Agaffa say once, that being a student is a funny thing, especially … ”
“Student my arse, gal! They all stop being students on a Friday night. You go down at the Little Trinidad, or the WIF Club, the Latin quarter, the Tropics and you see them looking for free woman and cheap domestic pussy, you hear?”
“That is true, too,” Bernice said. (And indeed, she could not have said otherwise). Bernice had to stop her thoughts from whirring; and she looked round to see whether Mrs. Burrmann had finished reading about unwed mothers, or whether she had heard her. When she listened, the only sound in the house, was music: the Third Movement of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. And then the music ended; and all she could hear was the rustling of the newspaper about unwed mothers, and the tolling of their doom in the glass with the ice cubes and the
whiskey. The front door opened just then, and she heard Mr. Burrmann come in. He did not greet his wife, but went straight upstairs to his bedroom. Bernice followed him in her mind, his steps going up (“He walks up them steps in such a qa nmfunny way! This is the first time I really study the way he walks, and it seem like I hear them footsteps before … in a dream? Could it be in a dream?”) until they were smothered in the broadloom in his room. She returned to her thoughts and the sizzling beef steaks in the pan. “You is the next one, Mr. Burrmann!” She looked into the pan, and saw Mr. Burrmann sizzling. “I am going to cuss you stink as hell one o’ these days. You wait till the next time you having in your lawyer-friends, and you come smelling up in my damn face, telling me, Thanks Bernice dear, that was a
fine
repast. Fine repast, my arse! Heh-heh, that sound good, don’t it? But I serious now, I going tell you to your face, and in the presence o’ your friends, I knows it is a damn fine repast, Mr. Burrmann. But I waiting for almost three years now to see when, and if, you intend to increase my talents from ninety stinking dollars a month, to something a decent human being could live offa. A fine repast deserves a damn fine bonus, you don’t know, Mr. Burrmann? … heh-heh-heh! I bet the brute will turn red as hell, with shame!”
She finished dinner, and laid it on the table, and waited until they were well into the food before she left the kitchen to take up Estelle’s. Estelle had now stopped complaining about the “meagre” meals, and this was a little blessing which Bernice never stopped thanking God for.
“I am going out with Agatha, Bern,” she said, eating.
“Yeah?” Bernice didn’t like Agatha. She suspected her.
“We are going to the pictures. I’m meeting her at the corner.”
“Oh?” Without waiting for more information, Bernice escaped back down to her kitchen.
Mr. Burrmann never ate dinner without his jacket. Even for breakfast, he was dressed. He had got into the habit while at Trinity College; and constant use, after graduation, helped him to retain it, without second thoughts, or self-consciousness. He was a healthy man. He even looked healthy. Five feet eleven inches tall, he was six inches taller than his wife. He did not have what Bernice came to know as “the typical Jewish features”; and she felt that had he so wished, he could pass as an Italian, in summer; a very clear-skin washed-out Negro in winter. But she knew he was a Jew — in more ways than one. Mrs. Burrmann once told her, that as far as she knew, Mr. Burrmann was the first Jew ever to attend Trinity College, in the University of Toronto. He spent four undergraduate years there. He took part in everything: he wrote for the
Trinity Review
, and won a prize once, for poetry; he took part in plays; debated, badly; swam; boxed, and got knocked down more times than he heard the bells of third rounds; and eventually when he graduated, no one was surprised that he had gained First Class Honours in Economics. He was never too modest, nor too self-denigrating in expressing his capabilities. This caused Bernice to ignore him, most of the time. But now, she was watching him eating; watching his movements about the house; noticing his entrances and exits and his long absences. “You know something? Two times in the last two weeks, I notice that Estelle is outta this house at the same identical time as Mr. Burrmann! I wonder what the two o’ them up to? … oh hell, you going outta your mind?”) She is watching him this Friday afternoon, closely, because it is the first time she has cooked them West Indian peas-and-rice and roast pork;
and she wants to know how much more liberty she can take with the seasoning and the pepper. The glowing candlesticks, like a hand of bananas turned upside down, are throwing just that much light on the food and on their faces and the wine, to make the dining room have a feeling of love and romance. But she can see tension in Mrs. Burrmann’s face; and far-away thoughts on his. Mrs. Burrmann eats with a fork only; she cuts up the meat in little bits, and pelicans them into her mouth with the fork. But with Mr. Burrmann, now, it is a fine upbringing she is seeing! She and Dots used to talk a lot, before, about the way their missies ate. Dots said it sickened her to see them eat. “You mean to tell me that a big doctor-man and a big woman with so much necklace round her neck, strangling her, and they can’t eat no better than that?”
“You was seeing money at that table,” Bernice told her. “Not manners.” But Bernice felt superior to Dots, because her “people” had better table manners than the Hunters of Rosedale. It was soon after this that she stole a glance at Mr. Burrmann, at dinner, in the large dining room. She watched him as he brought up the knife to fork, holding the fork
down
; and place that food, with the knife on the fork, man; and with your back straight as a sergeant-major on parade, Lord! bring that fork now up to your lips, man … open them lips (“Haii!”) close them lips over the fork (“Look at that man!”) chew now (“God, that is really a man sitting down there, a gentleman!”) without all the bones in your face looking as if they going collapse and fall apart. (“You is a man and a half!”) She fed the children, and she put them to bed. Mrs. Burrmann went upstairs soon afterwards. Bernice was still cleaning up the kitchen, when she heard the first signs of a threatening quarrel. It was nothing new. They had always quarrelled; and sometimes they
had come to blows. (The first time she witnessed it, she asked Dots to bear testimony: “Well, be-Christ, child,” she whispered on the phone in the kitchen, while the fight raged above her head, “I thought only worthless black men uses to beat their wives!” Dots laughed, and said, “Gal, you aren’t no true-true Muslim, in truth!”) Now, she was wondering what the children were thinking; what they did when they heard their parents fighting.
Mrs. Burrmann was saying, “To me, Sam, you’re a man
in absentia
.” Bernice felt cheated: it seemed as if they were deliberately using a language they knew she couldn’t understand. Then she heard them coming down the stairs. “Take me into your life, for once. For once.” His voice, though not coming down the stairs, was still loud.
“You know what you are? Or would you like me to tell you what you are?”
“You’re either going to take me into your life, Sam, or I want you to stop moseying round in mine. Quit sneaking behind me. I’m a woman, and I have needs and I won’t sit around here all day all night, if my husband can’t fulfil those needs.” She was standing now, talking back up the stairs. “I’ll have to find a man who …”
“You little, rich, over-educated bitch!”
“I don’t bloody-well want you …” She was coming down fast, for he was behind her. “I don’t want you bloody-well compartmentalizing me.” She brushed past Bernice, who could not move fast enough from the bottom of the stairs where she was eavesdropping. When the front door slammed, Bernice put all the blame on Mr. Burrmann. “You big bastard,” she called him. “If I was she, if I was in her place, be-Christ, a saucepan o’ hot water would be in your damn face,
right now. Imagine you, treating such a nice, decent girl like her, the way you treats her. All you men want is a whore in bed, that’s all.” But still the words used in the quarrel were bothering her. She couldn’t understand many of them. To her, it was a stupid way to quarrel: you either told your man,
Go to hell! Kiss my backside, man!
or
Stop fucking up my life, man, you hear? Or I kill yuh!
“I must say, though,” she conceded, “that these white tribes have a damn funny way of doing almost everything.” One night Mrs. Burrmann broke three crystal water glasses, in a rage. Mr. Burrmann re-ordered them from Birks the next day (an action which completely confused Bernice; since they were thrown at his head) and Bernice happened to see that each glass cost thirty-five dollars. “Such a blasted waste o’ money, womankind and time, I tell you, Dots.”
Recently, there seemed to be always fights in the house. On another occasion, just as she passed their room, she hear them talking, warming up for their quarrel. He was using his lawyer’s voice, as if talking to a jury. “I must tell you, Rachel, I must tell you, from the bottom of my heart, that it pains me even more than it can ever pain you, that you can’t ever seem to carry a child in your womb without goddamn losing it, or doing some damn crazy thing to it. Every man needs a son. I need a son. And that seems to be the simple reason why this is not working out. It is as simple as that.” Bernice lingered outside their door, and soon, she too was crying. She didn’t know why she was always crying and feeling sorry for Mrs. Burrmann, whenever she heard him talking to her. But in these times, Bernice always forgot the amount of drink which seemed to keep Mrs. Burrmann almost half-dead sometimes; she forgot that one party in particular, when she saw the man
kissing Mrs. Burrmann as if he was Mr. Burrmann; she forgot the hard words Mrs. Burrmann had very often used to her. When, however, she had a too busy day in the kitchen, she would remember that night; and more, too: the many times, late at night, when Mrs. Burrmann left in her car, and how, sometimes, she would come back very late and very drunk; and how, many times, Mr. Burrmann had to go out in his pyjamas and housecoat and move the car from straddling Marina Boulevard before the neighbours woke up. And once, Bernice remembered, she saw her parking the car in the metal telephone pole opposite the garage gate. When Bernice thought of these things, she criticized her for being so hurtful to Mr. Burrmann. Then, she really loved Mr. Burrmann. Still, she wondered who was to blame. In her judgement, a marriage going sour like this one, had one blame. One person was responsible for its ruin; one thing; one action.