Authors: Austin Clarke
“She look too bad in them shorts! Eh?”
“She look bad all right, but I am not questioning that. I questioning how she could twirl her little stiff backside at me, as if she owns the street, the city and the whole o’ Canada.”
Dots got up from the window, and began stepping around the apartment, in a parody of Mrs. Gasstein, in shorts. “Looka me! oh Christ, heh-heh-heeee! Mrs. Dotstein!” Then she realized she had exhausted the performance, and she had to face an audience of reality. “This country could never be home, gal. All the black people here, living in this place, called Canada, be we foreign-born black people, or local-born Canadian black people, we are only abiding through the tender mercies o’ God and the white man, and …”
“Both o’ them is white, to boot!”
“… the landlord,” Dots concluded. “The tender mercies o’ God, the white man and the landlord. Any time gal, any time, these three gods feel like it, bram! they kick-in our behinds just like they do down in Mississippi. Don’t ever forget that.”
“But wait! Dots, have you become a Black Muslim, too?” It pleased Bernice to hear Dots talking like this.
“Commonsense, gal!” And she laughed. She got up from the window, and sat on the chesterfield. “You know what I would like right now?”
“A nice long cool drink of mauby from back home?”
“I mean a real wish, something I would
really
like.”
“To be back home, right now!”
“That ain’t no damn wish, gal.”
“A better job, then?”
“A man!” She got up and patted herself between her thighs, slapping it and looking at Bernice, who held down her head in shame. Then she walked over to Bernice, and patted Bernice high up between her thighs, and said, laughing, “Who looking after
that
for you? Take care cobwebs don’t get in there, eh?” When the laugh faded and she could see Bernice once more for the film of joyous tears in her eyes, she saw that Bernice was fanning herself with a copy of
Awake
. “I have to give it to Estelle. She really knows how to look after herself.…”
“Never mind me, darling,” Bernice said, taking the conversation off Estelle. “Never mind me. But I could tell you something interesting, in case you want to hear. Henry been coming after me, darling. Yes, Henry crawling back.…”
“Jesus Christ, no!”
“Yes.”
“No! that ain’t true, gal! What happen to Agaffa?”
Bernice insisted it was so. When Dots realized she was serious, she rushed to her, and held Bernice in her arms, close; and kissed her on her face, and swung her around playfully in a dance. “Here comes the bride, here comes the bride, da da da-daaa, da-da da da dee-da.…” And after that, Bernice went downstairs and cooked the two largest porterhouse steaks she could find for herself and Dots; and between them, they drank
a whole bottle of wine that belonged to Mrs. Burrmann. They were so happy, and so talkative and so drunk, that the moment they finished eating, they fell asleep. Bernice didn’t know where the Burrmann’s were, and she didn’t care.
For the past few weeks, Henry had been experiencing greater insecurity in his affair with Agatha. She did not point her finger of censure at him, and blame him for all her difficulties, with apartment superintendents. But she made him suffer in other ways: she would leave her telephone off the hook, and this would arouse his jealousy, even though she was always faithful to him from the time they had met; she would refuse to accompany him to the Paramount and the Pilot, having suddenly become aware that both places were beneath her respectability. She did continue seeing him (only on weekends because of the pressure of essays and seminars in her graduate course in Zoology) but each meeting contained some tension carried over from the last one. He wanted to see her more often; and he imagined that her studies were only a pretence: that when the phone was off the hook, there was really a man with her. He could not bear this, because their love had been a full, rich, turbulent combustion of love, strength and sex. There was pain too; and sorrow and sympathy: like the two nights and one day he sat beside her on the bed, holding her hand to extract the pain that crawled through her body like a meandering centipede, as the warm poultices he placed on her infected leg whizzed through her body and brought her, many times, on the brink of a death-like fainting. And that night, rushing her to the Emergency Ward of the Toronto General Hospital; and waiting like a prospective father, smoking and walking and hoping. When he took her back to her Prince
Arthur Avenue apartment, and had settled her in bed, in the bed he had himself made up with the linen he had washed at the coin laundry on Asquith Avenue, he went round the block to Palmers Drug Store, to fill the prescription. And there he met the first real challenge of his strength in love, and (as he tried not to tell himself) the real repudiation by a white woman, for his love for a white woman.…“Because, this prescription, sir, is a narcotic. Do you understand that?” He did not know that, because he had never been to school very much, and the school he attended never remembered to teach him how to read prescriptions. “This is a narcotic drug you want me to fill. Do you have the name of the doctor? His number? I have to call the doctor to see if he really prescribed this.” “Look, woman,” Henry said, not really getting the implication in this cross-examination, “this thing belongs to a woman, a friend o’ mine, and I only come to get it fixed, because she is in a blasted lot o’ pain, and …” And the white-faced, white-laced, white-smocked, white-thinking-right-is-white white woman interrupted him, and said, “I can’t just fill out this prescription because you say so. This contains narcotics, and …” Henry has forgotten now what he told that white woman; but he still can remember how he screamed and shouted and asked the entire drug store to bear him witness, and say whether he was on narcotics, because he was black. While the woman-pharmacist herself called the Emergency Ward of the hospital to check, and to get the doctor (“Jesus God, I wonder if my woman is dying … all this time this bitch calling, and my woman might be dying from pain!”) a well-dressed white man came to the counter and whispered a purchase of condoms in the pharmacist’s ears; and he saw Henry and shouted, “Shit baby! what’s happening, Henry?”; and the
pharmacist-woman, hearing the white-referee’s testimonial, dropped the telephone and filled the prescription. You goddamn motherfucker, was all that Henry could think of saying to her. And what else did he do? — nothing, nothing. Goddamn, here am I, a black son-of-a-bitch, trying for once, to be nice to a woman, and this broad is trying to kill the woman, my woman! Goddamn! But he soon forgot the scene in Palmers (he never told it to Agatha, because he didn’t think their love was strong enough to endure these malicious interruptions).
Once, when he could stand her withdrawal no longer, he rushed over to her apartment, and banged on the door. There was no one at home. He planned and he plotted what he would say to her: the slaps he would give her; and he rehearsed them over and over, to give him courage. And then she returned, with her hands laden with large books, three hours later. He was shivering in the draughty lounge; and all he had courage to do, was to open the door for her, and say, “Goodbye, I see you’re busy as hell.”
He never got over the feeling of intellectual inferiority to her; especially when they were in the company of her university friends. She would use words, some of them technical and zoological, which she knew he could not have heard about; and she would ask him, “Have you read this absolutely great novel?”, most of which were written by Chinese and Japanese novelists. All he could say, was “Goddamn! how do you know all these things?”; promise to get the novels from the Main Public Library, as she suggested (but the Library was so badly stocked with these “great novels”!); forget about them as soon as he was outside her literary influence; and he would hate her immensely and secretly, for making him out to be a fool. With time and with hatred, he forgot completely about these “great
novels,” and their authors; and he drank more draught beer at the Paramount; and with the beer, he washed down the servings of his favourite Southern-fried chicken wings. One night, alone and sad (she had kept her promise of never returning to the LADIES AND ESCORTS of the Paramount) he commiserated with a Polish neighbour, sitting at his shiny, circular drinking table. The dust on the floor and the smoke in the noisy, many-tongued room, was irritating him. Perhaps this was why Agatha refused to return here. “Hey, man,” he asked the Polish drunkard, “you ever heard of a great Chinese cat who wrote a novel?”
“Chinese?”
The neighbour knew only one Chinese: the man behind the fish-and-chips and fried-chicken counter. There must be some terrible mistake, his manner suggested.
“There’s some great novels written in Chinese, my man. Great works of art those cats produced.”
The neighbour looked back at the man behind the counter. The man was frying chips and Southern-fried chicken wings. “You mean that man wrote one of them, sir?”
Henry looked too: at the Chinese man, half-hidden in the smoke screen of cooking smoke and cooking oil. There was also a black man at their table; and he looked too; and he said, “Shit, man! I only got time for hustling a piece o’ pussy and a quick buck from the Man, man. I gotta teach these cats how to
love
. I ain’t got time for too much education and shit like that, baby. So, I won’t know how to dig that Chinese cat, unless he cooks me some swinging Southern-fried. Education? Man, that’s the white folks’ scene.
I’m loving
, baby.”
“There’s some good works of art written by the Chinese. Great works. Goddamn!” For the rest of the night, between his dribbling beer-words, Henry would mention the Chinese
and their novels to whoever joined the Polish immigrant and himself, at the salted, salt-sprinkled table. When the waiter shouted, “Last call! Drink up!”, Henry stumbled home with a blonde woman on his arm; and throughout the turbulence of a night of hatred in bed with her, his literary inadequacy returned to him. Early next morning, when he turned over and saw who she was too close to him, he asked her, “You ever read a great Chinese novel, baby?” The blonde winked and blinked her eyes scarred by rheum and mascara, and said, “Are you crazy?” “Damn!” he said, and hustled her out, right away.
Shortly afterwards, sitting in his room he and Boysie were chatting about what Boysie termed, “life in this kiss-me-arse country.” Boysie had brought along a half bottle of rum with a Barbados label on it, but bottled in Canada, by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. This made him mad, to begin with; but they were drinking it, anyhow.
“How’s the woman situation, man?” Boysie asked.
“Goddamn!”
“Man, I didn’t think a woman could love me so bad, be-Jesus Christ! I talking ’bout Brigitte.”
“You have now begin to see life, Boysie,” said Henry, lapsing into his favourite Harlem American slang. “Dig! Those white cats hate our guts for it, baby. But their women
love
us, baby. You dig?”
“That is true.” Boysie smacked his lips noisily, and closed his eyes against the punch of the rum. He was drinking his from a tea cup with a chipped rim. Henry was drinking his with ice and water, because he was “no goddamn native like you, Boysie, but a Canadian.” He was wearing a tie and a seersucker jacket, while Boysie was dressed casually, in a short-sleeved calypso shirt. “What you just say is true, yuh. I wish I
had a woman like Agatha. How she looks after you, man! gorblummuh, all Dots does do is read
Hush
and
Flash
. But Agaffa, does take you to the O’Keefe and to concerts. Man, I can’t understand why the black women in this place refuse to take a leaf outta the white women’s book. You understand what I mean?”
“White woman was invented for black man. That is what I know. Goddamn, man, I been through so much white pants in my time in this town, Boysie, baby, that I don’t even remember there’s a colour problem here. Shit, man, as far as this cat is concerned, there
ain’t no colour problem
. Because, dig! when you come down to the level o’ undressing a woman, that thing is all the same colour and formation, baby. You dig?”
“Heh-heh-heh!” Nothing tickled Boysie more than woman-talk.
“Let the Man worry ’bout discrimination, baby. You dig? ’Cause I’m getting my due, dig?”
“But you really think a woman like Brigitte could love a man like me?”
“Baby, you better learn there ain’t no such thing as love in this. What the hell you talking ’bout love, for? Love? It is hate, baby. You dig? Hate:
h-a-t-e
! Dig! They love you,
not
because they love you, but because they
sympathize
with you, you dig? And I ain’t outrightly saying there ain’t no love between a black cat and a white chick, dig.” Henry was in command: he was enjoying the impact he was having upon Boysie. Nothing was more precious to Boysie than women. And he was always entranced when Henry used his Harlem American slang. The intonations of the voice did something beautiful and powerful to him. “They love
you
. And you hate
them.”
“Is that true, though?”
“Well, dig again, baby. Dig this. I’ll tell you something ’bout me and my chick, Agatha. Man, one night it was hell in this bed. I’m thinking of all those black people lynched and killed, all those black cats, murdered and slain, all those black chicks raped and dehumanized, demortalized,
de
-whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it, and dig! man, I’m
driving
and
driving
, baby. It was driving, driving, driving. Hell broke loose, baby. I’m thinking of going down to the Civil Service Commission on St. Clair, and the Man there telling me, No jobs, buddy; so you dig? Down at the Unemployment Insurance Commission and the Man there telling me there ain’t no jobs. Down at Eatons during one Christmas rush period, and the Man there telling me, there ain’t no jobs. I’m thinking of the Man, you dig? The Man. The Man. The Man. No jobs. No jobs. No jobs. That’s what the hell I’m thinking of, baby. And I’m driving like I’m
crazy
. And the broad, she’s
bawling
. You dig? Wailing! Man, she’s yelling her little head off, Love me, baby, she says,
love me
! But me, baby? I’m thinking how I got this goddamn Man by his balls, man you dig me, you dig what I’m doing to this Man? I’m punching him in his arse with all my goddamn hate, baby. I’m driving. Man, I am so cool and hip to that chick, that I know I ain’t going stop driving till I kill her. And shit, baby, you think she was thinking about my driving, or feeling my driving? You think that chick was hip to what I was thinking of the Man? Goddamn, baby,
she
was thinking I
was loving her
. But, man, I was
re-paying
! I was re-paying
her
for what her brothers do to
my
sister, you dig? There ain’t no such thing as love, baby. It a re-payment. A final goddamn re-payment.” Boysie was overcome. “Dig,” Henry commanded him; and went to the telephone. “I’m going to show you now, how stupid these broads is. Look man, I’m going to
call up Agatha and you will hear how crazy this chick is behind me … so, dig!” Boysie did not recover from this devastating comment on his love for Brigitte. It was insulting. It was humiliating. But it was instructive. He was not convinced, however, that Henry himself believed all he had said. Boysie just loved. He hoped that Brigitte just loved too. There was nothing else in it, that he could think of. But he had to confess that Henry was among white women much longer than he was. Henry was on the telephone now. And Boysie, forever mesmerized by his friend’s personality, rested his chipped tea cup of rum on the floor, and listened attentively. He even repeated under his breath, some of the phrases Henry was using to Agatha. Gotta see how these going go over ’pon Brigitte, man, he promised. “Hi, baby!” Henry said, louder than necessary. The slang and the alcohol in his acquired vocabulary, were making him poetic. “Ain’t you never going to come over and give you daddy some loving, honey? … I’m here all by my lonesome, puffing and pining for you, baby. Just pining my old self, waiting for you.…” He put his hand over the mouth-piece. “Come here, you arse-hole, and learn a lesson from a pro.” Boysie came and stood beside Henry. Henry removed his hand, and said, “Baby, I want you to tell me how much you love me. Tell your daddy-o.… What you say? I know already how much you love me? …” He shrugged his shoulders at Boysie; Boysie took the wink and the hint, and went back to his rum which was waiting for him, in the tea cup. “Well, baby, I’ll be seeing you, later tonight.” Henry then put down the phone. He had dialled his own number.