Authors: Austin Clarke
She found Bernice, her maid, prostrated and crippled by grief, beside the chesterfield. Without turning, Bernice knew it was her employer, Mrs. Burrmann; and she screamed out, “Jesus Christ, Mrs. Burrmann, Mammy dead! My Mammy dead! God, You is a damn cruel God!” And Mrs. Burrmann, overcome by all this (she herself had experienced death reported to her and to her family, twice, from Europe; and she had witnessed the physical and moral fracture the news had brought with it: how her parents cried and wept and talked about those deaths and other deaths in the family, long into the night) knelt down, and reached out her hand, and rested her hand on Bernice’s shoulder. Then her hand slipped, and fell to her side, and soon she found she was holding Bernice’s hand in hers. Their bodies were very close. Bernice smelled the
Je Reviens
on Mrs. Burrmann’s body; and she smelled it
stronger and stronger, almost choking her, until she realized what was happening. Mrs. Burrmann was kissing her on her cheeks. “What are you going to do now? What are you going to do? You’ll have to go down …” Mrs. Burrmann was saying, over and over. It made Bernice plunge into new sorrow. “You will have to go home.” (Suddenly, in the midst of all this sorrow, Bernice became aware of her job, and her bank account, and of the possibility that Estelle might take away her job.) “Yes, Bernice, you will have to go home.” Bernice was about to say she had no money for the plane ticket, when Mrs. Burrmann said, “Don’t worry about the ticket, dear, I’ll fix that. Try to take it easy, Bernice. Spend a little time, and then come back.” She put her arm round Bernice. Her perfume and her lipstick and her lips were touching Bernice’s cheeks. Bernice was having short spasms, and Mrs. Burrmann said, “Come, let us pray for strength.” Mrs. Burrmann said a few short things in a language Bernice had heard spoken very seldom in the house (once in particular, during a very hectic quarrel, when Mr. Burrmann raised his voice) and when she finished, she smiled and said, “Your mother, so she’s dead. Can you bring her back with all this crying? No. But I know you feel bad. So, I think I should bring you some brandy … ”
In the heavy silence of the room, Bernice, with tears streaming down her face; and Mrs. Burrmann, with a water-stain on her cheeks, and the leaves in the wind outside: these two women joined together in grief, as they had never been united before, by love.
From the Penny Farthing, where they used to go often; but from which they had been driven, by the resurrection of Sam’s friend Jeffrey (Sam later found out that Jeffrey had spent about
ten years in jail; nine years for his part in an abortive armed robbery, and less than one year for the theft of apples which he didn’t steal, and which in particular made Sam feel very uneasy in his company), they began to seek refuge in the gloomier and more bohemian atmosphere of the Cellar Jazz Club, on Avenue Road. This place was more cosy; and agreeable too, because it had live jazz. He could touch her hand here, he could squeeze her hand here, he could even kiss her here, without being seen, without feeling conspicuous; and most of all, without being seen by black men who disapproved. Some of the musicians were black; and there were some others who sat in silence, fierce and powerful like jaguars, controlled by the beauty of the music, but who seemed to want to explode the moment the music stopped. In this stealth of gloominess, the man reached out and touched her hand. It was very soft and very cool. He held it. Then he gripped it. He tried to send little indecent messages with his fingers scratching the palm of her hand; but he tried to morse-code them in a manner of decency. Estelle thought his hands were rough. “Whatever happens, whatever … (the music was loud here) … in spite of everything, I want you to know … (the black drummer was transforming the basement club to the throbbing of Africa) … I love you …”
“I think I love you, too, man.” She did not say it as a lover would have whispered it into his ear. She was listening to the messages being sent to her directly, from the drummer. She was annoyed that Sam talked while the music was talking to her. “You know something? I think I love you.”
“Only
think
?”
“When I say ‘think,’ I mean ‘sure.’ ”
“But you said think, nevertheless.”
“I know, I know.” For a long time, Sam was quiet; and it
was good for her that the music was loud at this point, so she didn’t have to talk. “Look, Sam, I don’t know if you started out loving me, as you say, or if you started out wanting to find out something about me, and women like me, or something …” The music was loud again. He was becoming irritable. “And look,” she said, when he could hear her, “since me and you been going out all over Toronto, in coffee houses and places where they play jazz and sing folk songs, I have seen a lot o’ mixed-up couples. Black man and Chinee woman, Chinee man and white woman, white woman and black man, and at first, it looked pretty to me, because that is the way I think people on earth should live —
together
, you know? But from the last time we were out together, I suddenly got the feeling that people were looking at me,
not
at you. They know you. But the way they look at me …” Sam held his head into his coffee cup, searching it, and searching his conscience and his memory at the same time, for something to tell this woman. He wanted to say something that was different: something like, I am not like the others; I am not like them at all; Don’t you see, I am sitting with you? It was a burden which grew heavier from that afternoon when they first made love. He had worked out his excuses and explanations against the discovery of his adultery. Sometimes, he felt he would kill his wife if she so much as found out, and mentioned it; at other times, he felt he would kill himself. But deep down, he knew he would never kill himself; or his wife. He didn’t think he was made that way: although he never gave much thought to how he had to be made in order to murder or commit suicide. There were children to consider. There are always children to consider; and he knew the difficulty about this, because he had seen his mother with her children, after his father died, his mother who
was too proud and too poor to do very much about her children’s neglect.
“Sometimes, I don’t think you realize that my sister works in your house, and lives in your house, as your servant. And I live with my sister. Sometimes, I don’t think you understand what that means. You don’t. To me, and to her.”
“I know, I know.”
“Heh-heh-heh! but look at the two of us two foolish grown-ups. Sitting down here, hiding. I, from my sister; and you, from your wife. And both of us hiding from what inside here,” she said, touching the place where she thought her heart and conscience were located. “I don’t have one damn right to do anything to hurt Bernice, hear? Bernice was always like a mother to me. And I suppose you don’t have any damn right to hurt your wife, neither. But still … heh-heh! a woman is a real fool …” The waitress was upon them. Her presence was censuring. She cleaned the table with a dirty damp cloth, spending more time to look into Estelle’s face and into the man’s face, than she spent on the spots of the hard unfinished table. “You don’t have to ask me if I love you, man,” she said, when the waitress left. “You don’t have to, at all. For what we did, what we have done, is something that is either done through love, or wickedness. And I know I ain’t wicked. Are you wicked? I don’t think you should point your finger at me, and say, and ask if I love you.”
“I know, I know.”
Just then, she saw Agatha come in. She had just happened to turn, when she saw them (Agatha and Henry) paying Otto, the pipe-smoking cashier at the door, who smoked his pipe with no tobacco in it. Luckily, she was sitting at the rear, in the shadows, beside an unfinished stone pillar. The man wondered
why, suddenly, she had snuggled up to him; and why she had placed her head on his shoulder. But the feeling was a good one; and the jazz at that moment, seemed more beautiful than he had ever heard it at The Cellar.
They were all there. Bernice was packing her suitcase. (Mrs. Burrmann had called the airport, and there was an early flight reserved for her, first thing, Sunday morning. Boysie and Dots had come as soon as possible. They had told Henry, who told Agatha. And by now, the news of Mammy’s death had spread throughout the West Indian community of domestics, like typhoid fever in Reid’s Village, in 1943: everybody had been smitten.
They were all there, sitting in Bernice’s apartment, as if they were shadows in the shadows thrown by the one lamp that burned on the dressing table. Boysie, sipping the expensive brandy which Mrs. Burrmann had left to deaden some of Bernice’s hysteria and screams and grief; and Dots, talking, as if in her sleep, but talking nevertheless, though she knew no one was listening; and Bernice, placing her dresses and her underclothes on the bed, although the suitcase was already full, and although she knew she was going to attend only one funeral; not a wedding; and thinking aloud, and crying and taking a gasp-like breath, each time she remembered something new about Mammy. It was past eleven o’clock: in a few hours, it would be Sunday.
DOTS:
Sitting down here this sad evening, I can’t get my mind to travel back over that salt water and land mass, at all. I can’t get this mind o’ mine to take in this sudden, sudden tragedy which now have this poor girl, packing suitcase and valise, black dress and hat, to follow her sweet mother, Mammy, to
the grave in. It is as if something blocking the path o’ my mind, and my mind can’t take up the picture o’ grief, from the negative of that grief, because all I can see before my two eyes, is clouds and clouds. Boysie, pass that thing you drinking here, and let me taste a sip, please … The picture of remembering, of remembering back to things and happenings and memories in that damn island, is like a tragedy itself. Mammy gone. That is one fact. Mammy gone and I feel it is my own-own mother who is dead, the difference being that my mother was dead a damn long time ago, even before I born. But sitting down here in Forest Hill, gives this tragedy a damn funny sperspective, as my missy, Mrs. Hunter, would say. This blow of Mammy’s death hit me in two ways. It hit me hard hard because I know Bernice here, poor soul, now packing and spending money ’pon plane ticket, when she should be banking that same money ‘gainst a rainy day. And second, it hit me hard ’cause I know that death does do some strange things to a man’s thinking, and cause him to wish the wrong thing, and say the wrong thing, and say that death should have hit the next person … Christ! I know three people living today that this death should have hit: my missy, Mrs. Hunter, who ain’t worth shit, she is number one; number two is the man who blow-up that church down South with them four tiny beautiful little Negro children and caused them to go to their death; and number three, is anybody like Hitler. A man always wishes death to hit a person, anybody, somebody you don’t like, but it shouldn’t hit a person you like, or you know. That is the three sperspectives through which I see this death. (Just then, the music from downstairs, in Mrs. Burrmann’s sitting room, came up to help them think of mournful things. It was the Fourth Movement from Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. Dots listened; and she
looked at Bernice, who understood what she heard. Boysie was busy sipping the brandy.) Boysie, you remember? Boysie, stop drinking a minute, and tell me if you remember, or call to mind, how the news o’ Lottie’s death hit us, as we was relaxing in Dr. Hunter’ basement, drinking two beers? You remember when the news o’ Lottie’s death came, it came in such a strange manner and fashion, that I had to open my mouth wide and say, “Jesus Christ! It isn’t, couldn’t be true. Lottie not dead.” I couldn’t believe it was the same Lottie who I had rested my eyes on that very morning, walking ‘cross Sherbourne Street going up by Bloor Street, Jesus God, not the same Lottie, flourishing at ten o’clock and cut down at ten-past-ten, the same day. Not the same Lottie? But death came, and
bram
! it take Lottie with it. That is death, Boysie. If you have ears to hear, and if that brandy hasn’t start doing something to your hearing and vision, that is what I want you to know concerning death. Death came and take Lottie as she was standing up at the bus stop, waiting for a streetcar. And all Lottie did, according to them two evening papers, the
Telegram
and the
Star
, all Lottie was guilty of, was that Lottie held out her hand, and
pointed
, and then crossed the road going through them crosswalk-things that the city put there to save human beings, pedestrians, from cars. That was Lottie’s crime. But death is a blind man who can’t see at all, and didn’t went to school. And Lottie didn’t get half-way ’cross that blasted crosswalk-thing, before this big, big transport truck didn’t come and
brugh-guh-dung-dung
! licked Lottie ’gainst a streetcar coming one way and a lorry going the next. Lottie’s two hand cut off
cleanclean
as if they was cut off with a carving knife. Lottie’s head severed clean as a whistle from Lottie’s body, and the blood! Jesus Christ Almighty! the blood in that Bloor Street road, was red
and thick and enough to make twenty dogs puke. That was Lottie’s death. That is the manner in which death came to Lottie. And be-Christ, that Bloor Street road was full with people, white people, and not one o’ them bitches didn’t even as much as run to the telephone box opposite the drug store, and call a ambulance, or a hospital or the police, even though Lottie was down there on that cold road and streetcar tracks, panting and splattering-’bout, like a blasted whale. And as I sitting down here, this evening o’ sorrow, Boysie, I ask you, Boysie please,
please
be careful with the traffics in this place, ’cause this place is a heartless, cruel place. Please be careful where, and how you driving that damn old trap-heap, you calls a mottor car. Take care, Boysie. Take care. You don’t know how, or when, or in what manner death is going to strike. The onliest thing you know, in regards o’ death, is that death
bound
and ’bliged to hit one day. And one thing I ask you. As long as you driving that mottor car in this country, please,
please
do not hit a white person with it.
Please
, Boysie! Don’t even
touch
their mottor car, then, with the one you driving. ’Cause, I saying something now, in the presence o’ you Bernice, and in the hearing o’ you, Boysie; something I had buried deep down inside o’ me; and it is only Lottie’s death that cause me now to call it to mind. More than four years ago, this thing happened, and when it happen, all I could do was to run straight up in Rosedale and lock myself in my quarters, and sit down and shake my head. I think I even dropped a tear or two, too. The unbelief! It is this. I was walking home one night. It was early, man. Ten o’clock didn’t even gone, then. A mottor car came screeling round Sherbourne. He ain’t watching no traffics, nor no lights. A next mottor car, with a coloured man driving, was coming up Bloor, driving like if he is a gentleman, and as if
the car cost gold. And I had just turned ’way my face to blow my nose in a Kleenex, when I hear this big report,
blam
! The man who screeled outta Sherbourne ran right into the car with the coloured man. Well, both cars stopped now, naturally. The white man get out. He start crying, begging the coloured gentleman pardon; he sorry; he say he going to pay to fix the car. Everybody in the street … by this time, there is twenty to forty o’ we onlookers looking on. Everybody, including the man in the screeling car, say the coloured man isn’t to blame. Everybody putting the blame where it belongst. And that is on the white man. Well, the police come. Kreeeeeeeeeennnnnn! sirens! the police jumped outta the cruiser, and grabbed the coloured gentleman. Start calling that gentleman nigger-this and nigger-that; black bastard, where-the-hell-you-come-from? and then they hold him ’gainst he police car, and started searching him like how you see they do in the movies, and be-Christ, they put
all the blame
’pon that coloured man.
Not one
, you hear me, not one o’ them white people, including the man in the screeling car, didn’t as much as say, Boo! — meaning that what they saw with their eyes wasn’t what the police say the coloured man do. Not one blasted white person outta twenty-one to forty-one, could find his tongue. And that is what I mean when I say, Careful, Boysie, this country ain’t your country. And the police, the white people and the papers reminds you it is not your place of birth nor belonging, neither. If you, Boysie, was that coloured man that the police dragged-off so … and I watched the papers weeks after, to see who will get the blame, ’cause I was smart enough to take down both mottor car licence … be-Christ! and I still watching to see the justice the police intend to give that coloured man … if you was that man, Boysie, I would
kill …
(Bernice
had stopped packing, to stand and listen. Her terror for the police had unhinged all her control; and made her mouth hang loose. Boysie, struck by this secret burden and concern of his wife, had stopped drinking) … although you ain’t worth shit, sometimes, Boysie, by-God, I am not such a fool not to know that you won’t be worth
nothing
, if you was dead. That is what I mean by death, Boysie. Bernice, that is the way I see this thing, from three or four sperspectives, as Mrs. Hunter would put it, and in the three or four ways it happen to you. It happen to you, and I may be next. Me, or Boysie, here. Death. It sure to come. Death, death … that is death …