Authors: Austin Clarke
“Gorr-blummuh!” Boysie exclaimed, very impressed by his friend’s technique. “That woman love you real bad, man.”
“That ain’t love, Boysie Cumberbatch, good God, man!
how much times I have to tell you there ain’t no such thing as love. That is a
re-payment
. You dig that, now!”
Bernice never liked to be by herself when travelling on the subway, or in a streetcar. She was always nervous and self-conscious, particularly when it was crowded. She would imagine that they wanted to push her under the wheels; that she was unclean; that she was some kind of interloper; that she was without rights to sit on
their
subway. All these persistent thoughts came to her, because it seemed that whenever she was by herself on a subway, or in a streetcar, the newspapers were always filled with photographs of white people beating up black people: and she could not see any physical difference between the passengers in her streetcar and those from the States, shown in the photographs. She always tried to find out what they were thinking: no one had the courage to
say
what he was thinking (her egotism would not allow the possibility that they were really thinking about their first and second mortgages). No one ever said a word to her. But she knew they
looked
it. She became self-conscious, first, one day when a pregnant white woman entered the streetcar, and not finding a seat, except the half-seat beside Bernice, decided not to sit down, although the car was rocking, and was jammed.
But riding south today, on the Eglinton-Union Station subway, with Estelle beside her, it was different. Still, she was not settled in mind: two days ago, Brigitte had told her, again, some distressing news about Boysie. She had threatened to tell Dots, but Brigitte asked her not to; assuring her that she herself could handle the problem. Ignoring her companion, Estelle, Bernice recalled (even complete with Brigitte’s accent) the shameful story of Boysie’s fornication — that was
the word Bernice used to describe his behaviour. “He is a damn fornicator. Coming now to muddy-up my waters, Dots’ waters, Estelle’s waters, every blasted black person’s waters, that stupid-foolish …” She had condemned Boysie immediately. She had given neither Boysie nor Brigitte time to check the truth of the story:
“my friend, he sees me talking to a man, and he start to threaten me. Oh my God, Bernice, never have I seen a man so cruel and so jealous. So cruel! You know my friend, the policeman? Well, he get into the car and drive down this street after the man. And when he don’t see the man, he come back and give me this
.” (Brigitte pulled down her left eyelid, although the blow had landed between the eyes. It was black-and-blue.)
“He tell me he is going to watch out, every night for this man. He say, Let me catch this coloured bastard playing round you, again, just once more, and I kill him.”
It was then that Bernice told her, “Between me and you, Brigitte. Me and you is friends for a long time now. Jesus God, what the hell you see in Boysie? You can’t find nothing better than
that
?” It was at this point that confusion started. Brigitte said,
“I don’t say it is Boysie, Bernice darlink
,” (now, Bernice was cursing Brigitte, in her heart)
“but my boyfriend, he say the man looks like Boysie. He insist it is Boysie, because he see me talking to Boysie one day when he came to see you. It isn’t Boysie. It is Henry.”
(and this almost killed Bernice: she couldn’t even think about it)
“And my friend, the policeman, he said somebody jumped him … what is jumped … jumped him? and he is sure it is Boysie. So I tell you, do warn the Boysie, for I like not the violence.…
”
It was this story which was now occupying her mind, as she travelled downtown with her sister. And although it had happened two days before, still she couldn’t stop worrying about it. She wished and she hoped the policeman would catch Boysie,
and put a few stiff lashes in his behind — although Brigitte had pointed out that it was really Henry. Still, Bernice imagined that it was Boysie; it should be Boysie. She wanted to will it so. This was the kind of confusion she had been going through since the night she sat with Dots and Boysie, keeping a wake for what she thought was Mammy’s death. After that night, her mind seemed to be eating itself away: reality and hope and wishing were becoming mixed into one; and it might have been mainly this mental condition which caused her to brag to Dots one afternoon, that she was now a landlady, the owner of the house which Mammy left in her will to her. She had willed Mammy dead. Secretly, from the time of the returned letter, she wanted Mammy dead: her disappointment that Mammy was still alive, was greater than her disappointment that Estelle had put Mammy into the Poor House. Sometimes, Estelle would find her mumbling to herself, talking about when Mammy was alive:
now, I am a big landlady, and be-Jees, I am only renting to black people, ’cause I learn my lesson, and I am going to be the biggest discriminator in the whole o’ Canada
— although the house was in Barbados. Dots noticed this transformation; and it worried her. “Boysie, you think that somebody who
knows
a person is still alive, and always talking as if that person is dead, is a person in her right mind?” Boysie didn’t know; but when she told him it was Bernice she referred to, he said, “Bernice want a stiff man. That is all Bernice want.
Man
.”
There was one incident in her life which bothered her very much; and which up until now, she had been unable to face; an incident contributing to her great fear of being alone on a crowded subway. It was when a child, a small child, raised its eyes from its mother’s and saw Bernice opposite, and said, slightly too loud for it to be a secret, “Mummy!
Look!”
Nobody
but that child knew he was awed and impressed by Bernice’s beauty. But Bernice, because she was Bernice, hated everybody in the subway coach, and everybody was white. The child in the subway was curious. His mother was embarrassed. The passengers nearby, were embarrassed, because they saw that Bernice was embarrassed. Each time the child said, “Look!” his Mummy called him darling, and said, “That is not
nice
,” and would laugh as if she was contradicting herself. “That is not nice, darling.” When the train eventually reached the station at College Street, Bernice rushed out, pushing her way through the embarking and disembarking innocent crowd; and she hogged her way up the cement steps to the exit.
(Looka you-all move outta my blasted way, before I lick-down every damn one o’ you. You-all think you own the earth! Move, move move move, move! I am in a damn hurry!)
and entered Eaton’s College Street store. She asked four times for the ladies’ washroom; rambled four times; eventually found it; entered it; bolted the door behind her; shut out all the white noises, all the white people in the world; sat on the clean, detergent-smelling toilet bowl (which was white) with the cover still pulled down, and covered and woolly; and she cried for fifteen minutes.
On this subway trip, Estelle is thinking of Sam. She feels she wants to tell somebody she is pregnant. She feels, one minute, she must keep the child (after all, look who his father is? A big lawyer!) the next minute, she wants to get rid of the child. (“Me? Bring a fatherless child in this world?”) And she thinks that if anybody finds out, if Bernice, if Dots, if Boysie, if Henry — not Agatha whom she thinks is more understanding. “I think she told me once that she had a little trouble herself, too, and that she had to …” — this may cause Sam’s family to
be destroyed; his career may be, too. It does not really matter to Estelle that she is pregnant by a married man. It does not matter that her sister is this man’s domestic. It does not matter that she has to return to Barbados, with this burden in her luggage.…
“You see the nice, smooth-skin thing that Estelle gave birth to? Darling, that child is the prettiest, sweetest baby I ever seen! It too pretty! and it got a nice complexion too; and it isn’t no worthliss Bajan like the rest o’ we. It is a big Canadian, and almost white, at that!” …
Estelle does not see it as a burden, because the people back home do not see it as a burden. What matters is that Sam does not love her. Sam has used her. She has used Sam too, but she thinks that is different. She is not sure he loves her; ever loved her. She decides to keep her secret, within her throbbing womb. But she is terrified.…
Suppose his wife was to come upstairs one morning, and decide to get on ignorant, and shout and screel and bring the police and Bernice! Oh Christ, what would I do? …
because she thinks Mrs. Burrmann smells a rat, because one night, creeping in late after leaving him in the car, a few doors down the street, just as she put on the night latch and turned, there was Mrs. Burrmann, face to face.…“Oh, Estelle,” she said. “I’d like to speak with you for a minute.” Estelle was stiff with fear. And this caused Mrs. Burrmann to say,
“If you
don’t mind.” It didn’t make Estelle feel any better; only more resentful. But in a sense, she was glad that the confrontation had come, at last, for she had been uneasy a long time. She followed her into the sitting-room, rehearsing in her mind, all the defences she was going to put to Mrs. Burrmann. She was going to tell her:
your husband came to the apartment, I didn’t call him; your husband started it first, I didn’t call him; your husband forced me, I didn’t call him; your husband loves me, I didn’t hate him
.… But all Mrs.
Burrmann said, was “Sit down, please, Estelle.” She turned up the record player, and it was the
Shepherd’s Hymn
from Beethoven’s Sixth. Estelle knew, from the tone of the music, that the tone of the meeting would not be quarrelsome. “Tell me, Estelle, oh … you would like a drink, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, please.”
“I see you’ve been having a rather
interesting
time, here.” Estelle didn’t like the use of “interesting.” The knock-out blow was sure to follow quickly.
“Yes, please.”
“You know, sometimes at night, I see you coming in.” Estelle was preparing her defence again. “But don’t you think you are out rather late, for a woman … alone?”
“No, please.”
“I’m probably too sensitive to these sort of things,” she said, giving her the drink of whiskey and water. “I spend so much of my time alone. That is why I saw you tonight, and have seen you many other nights. I was going to call you before, when I see you coming in, late, and invite you in for a drink and a chat about your country, but I thought …”
“That’s all right, ma’am.”
Mrs. Burrmann was watching her closely, peering at her through the crystal glass. “You see, my husband works very hard, many times late at night.…”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“… and that is why I spend so much time by myself, alone.” She paused. Estelle could see she was staring at her, through her glass. It was this pause that got Estelle completely mixed-up.
“Well, Mrs. Burrmann, I am a bit tired now, you know, so I think …”
“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Burrmann said, getting up; still holding her drink. She touched Estelle on her elbow, and walked with her to the stairs leading up to Bernice’s apartment. She was very pleasant, very graceful, very aristocratic. Estelle was confused by this formidable opposition. “You see, Estelle, I am still stronger than you, although you are so young … and beautiful, I might add. Me, well, I’ve been knocking around for a long time. Built up quite a resistance, too.” When Estelle reached the foot of the stairs, and said goodnight, Mrs. Burrmann remained to see her go up. “I hope we’ll have a drink and a chat, another time, soon.” (Exactly five seconds later, Mr. Burrmann entered through the front door.)
On this afternoon trip with Bernice, in the middle of summer, she was still thinking of Mrs. Burrmann’s words:
I am still stronger than you
; and she decided that Mrs. Burrmann knew all about her affair with her husband; and probably about her pregnancy, too.
“Estelle, you can’t imagine,” Bernice was saying, “you have no idea how lonely I feels sometimes when I am in a crowded subway train! It is something I can’t explain to you, really, or to none o’ these people sitting down here with me. I think a man would have to be in my shoes for him to understand the feeling and the sensation I talking about.”
“I think I am beginning to get that same feeling, myself, Bernice.” But she was thinking of Mrs. Burrmann’s words; and of Sam, who hadn’t contacted her for about four days.
Henry had been waiting for five hours for Boysie to come. He was in a morose mood. It was now one in the afternoon; Boysie had promised to arrive at eight, to help Henry move his belongings in the old Chevrolet. For five hours now, the
landlady had been clunking up and down the shaking stairs. She would clunk down, open Henry’s door, look in, say “Oh!” in a short aggressive tone, as if he had startled her, sexually; and then she would clunk back up the stairs, muttering all the time, in her shaking retreat, “I have that room to clean, Mr. White. I have to clean that room, Mr. White.
Cardboard boxes, previously used to ship Tide, for washing whiter than white; a Modess box which had no motto on it, and which neglected to advertise its contents; a Kleenex box; an Uncle Ben’s Rice box, and a flat six-container box marked O’Keefe Ale, were in the room with Henry. These five boxes contained his possessions — except his ten suits. They were arranged like the turrets of a fort, all round him. The landlady had earlier ripped off the sheets and the pillowcases from the bed. He was sitting on the stained, lipsticklicked bed, soiled by day-dreams and night-dreams, dry-dreams and wet-dreams; and beside him, were five bank books from five commercial banks in metropolitan Toronto: the Bank of Montreal, the Bank of Nova Scotia, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the Royal Bank of Canada and the Toronto-Dominion Bank. There was also a book from the National Trust Company. (He had opened an account there, to impress Agatha; and to reap the benefits of four and one-half per cent interest, as against three from the commercial banks. He had deposited twenty dollars when he opened this account; but “circumstances beyond my control” forced him to withdraw nineteen dollars, a day later — unknown to Agatha — and that had left one hundred cents, trusting and entrusted to keep his trust account open!) He picked up one bank book, and studied it. It was his favourite: the dark, wine-coloured book with the motto — “
My
Bank, to 5,000,000 Canadians!” — (he felt like
a red-blooded Canadian himself) from the Bank of Montreal. Agitation gripped him. He snatched up the book from the Trust Company. He looked at his one hundred cents balance. He looked at the date it was posted. He had only six months to keep this account open with one hundred cents. He felt so sick, the time had expired, that he spat on the floor, on Miss Diamond’s ringed and smudged congoleum floor. The greenish gloyish paste made a soft slapping noise, and for a moment, it seemed to stare at him. Henry glared back at it; and shut it from his mind, by wiping his foot on it. In the process, quite accidentally, he made a cross. “Goddamn!” The cross frightened him; but he had been frightened already by the colour and thickness of the sputum (both made alarming meaning about his strength and his health); so he eradicated the cross, by wiping his foot at the four points. “Gottdamn!” — he had made a
swastika
. “Control yourself, baby! You’re going shit crazy!” He pulled a cardboard box over it, and hid it. Studying the wine-coloured book again, he smiled. Fourteen thousand dollars and twenty-three cents was the balance. He smiled again, took out his Papermate ball point pen, and as smoothly as butter, wrote in
another
naught, making the total one hundred and forty thousand dollars. And twenty-three cents. “Damn! one little nought, and I multiply this balance
ten times!
Crazy!” He thought for a while, whether he should also increase it from twenty-three cents, to two hundred and thirty cents. But that didn’t make sense. “Goddamn! that ain’t sense, in dollars and cents,
or
in sense!”