Authors: Austin Clarke
His last legitimate deposit in this bank account, had been posted months before, in August. It was fifteen dollars. Since then, there were no more; and there was no work. He was living on unemployment cheques. As a man of slightly over fifty,
it was extremely difficult to find a job: employers were thinking that before they would get one week’s decent honest back-breaking work out of Henry, they would have to put him on their pension plan. He felt the civil service commission had discriminated against him; as it had against Boysie. One summer morning, a few years ago (“Shit, man! that was in 1961, man!”) Henry took a streetcar to the head office, and he filled out an application form. He was interviewed by a very old white-haired, dentured and dainty woman, who smiled a lot with him, and said (after the interview), “Thank you, sir. We’ll call you.” Henry was still waiting for the call; sometimes, he and Boysie would joke about it.
When he had first shown this bank book to Boysie, long ago, Boysie’s eyes popped out. “Gorblummuh! man, I didn’t know a black man could have so much money!”
He took up the other bank books, and totalled his fortune. It came to five dollars and fourteen cents. The banks were scattered all over the city; the nearest one requiring at least, twenty cents for a one-way streetcar journey. He searched in his pockets, under and inside the cushions in the old, stained chesterfield, under the bed and in the corners, near the milk bottles which sometimes, in stress, saved him the creaking climb to the bathroom. He looked again, and at the bottom of one bottle, he saw a nickle. “Was I peeing nickles, baby?” But he took it out nevertheless. “Money, money, I gotta have money!” His woman, Agatha, was coming to see him; and he needed money, in case she wanted to go out. She might want to go to the Plaza Room or The Roof, or the Twenty-Two, but that
cost goddamn bread, baby
. It had always been very embarrassing for him to enter a crowded bank, with lunch-time pay-cheque people, and he, standing there before the bland blonde teller;
and the line of jogging Friday-spending Friday-withdrawing people with mists and vapour in their mouths, in a hurry to get back outside in the biting snow and winter; and he, having to wait long until the teller tells the accountant who tells the teller something again; and then the accountant searching for the account, probably lost now, because his favourite bank had just instituted its new IBM Banking System; and then the card, found at last! Henry, gritting his teeth and his modesty, as the teller tells him, in a tone as if she is telling the world, “Are you withdrawing the whole forty-four cents, Mr. White?” And he, answering in a pin voice, “How much would keep the account open?” This happened once — and the last time! — in his favourite bank, the Bank of Montreal, at the corner of St. George Street and Bloor, in the heart of money and the university. “Well, sir,” the fortune-teller tells him, “it usually takes a dollar.…” Behind me on that cold damn day (he tells himself for the benefit of his memory, and because he can laugh at himself now) I see this big cat, tanned and looking groovy, although it is still the middle o’ winter; and he’s impatient as hell, and he pushes this cheque through the hole, and Christ! when my eyes rest on it, goddamn! EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS, EXACT, I see stamped in that cheque. And I didn’t and still don’t, think that was fair, because this is the way I look at it: why should one cat have so much fucking bread? And from that day, I decided to make my own deposits at home, and have some bread too, ’cause I can’t get a job and work for it honest!
But Boysie, who had heard the story before, had his own impressions of Henry: he, Henry White, a well-dressed-always-in-black, black man, as usual in a three-piece suit, although unemploy’, pin-striked and striped, trouser-cuffed, waistcoat and watch-chain, enough to hang a cow, with a gold watch-chain
that don’t have no watch attach to it, because there ain’t no blasted watch (“McTamney’s the pawnbroker people keeping the watch for me, for a while, man.”) and walking ’bout the place like if he owns the whole o’ Toronto.
On the afternoon, when the teller came back to the counter, to talk to Henry, Henry was already running out of the bank, without the money. The teller, ignoring the man with the large cheque, tiptoed and shouted, “Oh, Mr. White.
Mr. White!”
But Henry wasn’t looking back. Just as he reached the cluttered door, a small African gentleman, a student, dressed in a long heavy over-sized overcoat, grey peaked cap and red earmuffs, with the colours of his college to complete the impression the affliction of winter was having upon him, entered. Everybody in the bank was now looking towards the door. The teller was shouting, “Oh,
Mr. White
!” And the gentleman from Africa, thinking there was some mistake, made two short glances, one to his right and one to his left, and still unable to see why the teller was calling
him
Mr. White, gripped his heavy, learned, book bag, and ran out. “Goddamn,” Henry said now, remembering all this, as if it had happened yesterday. “One hundred and fourteen thousand dollars, and I don’t own one fucking cent of it!”
It was now three o’clock. Boysie hadn’t come, Agatha hadn’t come. So, he unpacked the five cardboard boxes, rearranged their contents in the room, and said, “Blind you, Miss Diamond, try and get me out!”
As the summer established its decision to remain summer, Bernice realized she had never enjoyed herself like this, in all her time in Canada. She and Estelle had spent most of this particular afternoon, walking through most of the department
stores, through Eaton’s and Simpson’s, and through some of the small exclusive shops; and had tried on very expensive clothes (even corsets) which they had no intention (nor money) to buy. Now, they were pausing from their window-shopping, window-hopping spree, to sit on two stools in the rock-’n’-roll bar. Before going in, Bernice looked left and right, and then laughed and said, “Lemme check if my pastor, or a member of my congregation can see me going into this den of iniquity, darling!” But she went in merrily: she was at home, characteristic as the lemon rind on the mouths of the hastily washed glasses. Five young men with hair as long and as curled as a woman’s, were singing
I Love You, Yeah Yeah Yeah!
as if they meant it personally, for both Bernice and Estelle. And Bernice, thinking that they meant it, and wanting them to mean it, threw a kiss for one of them — no one in particular: just the first one to see it — and all five saw it, and returned it. “This is living, child! Something to drink now, Ess, darling.” After the set of songs, the five female-looking young men came over to them, and bought two rounds of drinks for them, and talked and laughed about a “real crazy-old time we had where you chicks are from.” They hadn’t asked where Bernice and Estelle were from. But they had had their crazy old time in Nassau last summer. Bernice was never so happy before. “Christ, look! Estelle, you know something? I am moving down here, man! The life is downtown, man, down here. Forest Hill and the Jews up in there, stifling my arse, man, heh-heh-heh!” And Estelle, more surprised than in agreement, agreed. “Look, let we pass round by Henry now, and find out ’bout renting rooms down here. Let we drop in at the WIF Club where I promise to take you ever so long ago, and eat some
good
West Indian curried chicken, gal.
Let we live it up
the whole
day, ’cause today is Thursday, my day, Berniceday! Today is Berniceday, not Thursday, no more!”
Walking along Yonge Street, going north to College, they came next to a large display window with very large photographs of celebrities. Bernice thought she recognized the face of a black woman. “Christ! I didn’t know she is one o’ them, too!” But Estelle could not appreciate it; so they continued walking. “Look, take this,” Bernice said, folding her hand over a crisp ten-dollar bill, and then folding her hand into Estelle’s, and with her other hand, closing Estelle’s hand. “This is a ten dollar. You are big woman. Lick it out, child. Lick it out! and buy whatever the hell you want to lick it out on, ’cause this is summer, and we having a
ball
!” Estelle was speechless. “The WIF Club next! WIF Club, look out, ’cause here we come!” They got on the streetcar for the WIF Club; then Bernice held over, so the woman behind wouldn’t hear, and said, in Estelle’s ears (making Estelle slightly annoyed because Bernice’s breath was hot against her ear) “Look, Estelle, I vex vex as hell that I have allowed myself, a young woman like me, not even forty years yet, to stick myself up there in Forest Hill with all them rich Jewish people, and pine-away my soul, work my fingers to the bone, till I come like some, some-some-some … Christ! it is no wonder that I was thinking like a Black Muslim, whilst I was up there, all that time!”
“But Bernice! Are you going outta your mind, or something?”
“Yes, I mad as the devil in hell, gal! I am a mad-woman, today. I
living
!”
“Sure! The people in this streetcar must be thinking so, too.”
“Well, let them think so.” She turned round, and opened
her mouth to talk, when Estelle, fearing greater embarrassment, nudged her in the ribs. Bernice held closer and said, “Heh-heh!” a smothered cackle coming from the back of her throat. “But I learn something today, uh-huhm! I learn something good good today. I learn that if a black person don’t come out from that place called Forest Hill, once in a while, God in heaven knows that she would turn into a real first-class Black Muslim. I telling you what I know. But child,
today is my day
!”
It was summer. It was lovely. The men were bright in shirts that had almost all the colours of the rainbow in them; and in tans, too; and some of them looked coloured, if you were not careful to look a second time. Bernice was playing a game with herself, trying to spot which man and which woman had black blood in their veins. The women, frilled and light in clouds of petticoats that seem to blow kisses; and in dresses of kites in the wind, in the eyes of the men and the stares of the men; their dresses of sky-blue, white, pink (which was fashionable this summer) cream, Jacob-coloured, exposing that upper burnished tint where the sun and a man’s lips touched the breasts when they were bathing in the sun … summer!
“God, sometimes, I really like this place!”
“Is the summer, Estelle, dear. Summer, girl. You don’t understand this is summer? Girl, I would be a fool, Bernice Leach would be a thorough fool to say she is thinking ’bout going back to Barbados when it is summer in Toronto. And you ain’t see nothing yet. Wait till it is something they call
Indian
summer. Well, that summer is even ten times more better than the white people summer! Indian summer.”
“The buildings, though! The buildings is the thing I can’t stop admiring, in this place. And that place, what the name
is now? … yes, the City Hall. Those two big powerful things going up in the skies as if they want to knock down the whole skies … and down in Eaton’s, when I didn’t think I was ever going to stop going up in that elevator. Lord, I had a funny feeling, like the feeling you get when you are flying in an airplane … and it pleased my heart to see some of our girls working there! Those coloured girls really looked nice, working there.”
“And didn’t you see
that
one? A real nice jet-black girl? Not one o’ them wishy-washy ones who are passing, or wishing they could pass for something white; but a real pure-pure black girl, working in the Bank of Nova Scotia, downtown? Well, I tell you something, I intend to change my account from the Bank o’ Canada, if they don’t smarten up and employ a black person in their bank. Because this is the modern times. And if a black person isn’t good enough to work in their bank, be-Christ,
my
black money isn’t good enough to bank in their bank, neither. How yuh like me, child?” The streetcar rumbled on and rambled on, with Bernice pondering the wisdom of changing her account to another, integrated bank; and Estelle, admiring the people and the buildings.
“You know something?” she said, when the streetcar was less noisy. “I think I now understand what Sam was saying, when …”
“Which Sam?” Bernice snapped, apparently not completely engrossed in the plan to change her bank. “You couldn’t be meaning the Sam Burrmann, that cheap bastard, I works for, up in Forest Hill, who won’t raise my pay.…” And she laughed, because she felt it was preposterous for Estelle to be referring to that Sam Burrmann.
“But did I say Sam?”
“Sam, hell! Forget Sam, girl — whichever Sam you mean.”
She held Estelle by the arm, as they got off the streetcar. When they reached the bar in the WIF Club, Bernice greeted one of the owners, “Geary, honey? How, man?”
“So-so,” he said, shrugging. “Betwixt and between.”
“Me, too,” she said, resting her hand on his shoulder. Then to Estelle, she said, “You want to try another one o’ them drinks we had at that place on Yonge Street? … one o’ them … what the hell the bartender-fellar call’ it?”
“D’Aquiris.”
“D’Aqua-what? D’Aquarri? … oh-hell!”
When the telephone call came, at five o’clock, it was Boysie. “Goddamn, man!” Henry was vexed. “Are you a man or a boy, Boysie Cumberbatch?” He was using his best Harlem American idiom. He was shouting so loudly, that he hardly heard Boysie’s voice complaining … “and they take the damn car, man. They take the car. This morning.…” Again, Henry said, “Goddamn!” the way he thought a born Harlemite would say it, stressing the last syllable.
“Man, I didn’t know they could come into your place, and take up your car, in this country, man,” Boysie was lamenting. “That vehicle is mine. I paying for it.” He lapsed into a long paragraph of his choicest abuses, in which he did not repeat one phrase. When Boysie was feeling good, he could curse for five minutes without using the same word twice: this afternoon, he was in top form. “Be-Jesus Christ!” he said, with the usual faint trace of a smile in his voice, “first thing this morning, before I even rubbed the blasted booby outta my kiss-me-arse eyes, the bailiff-man knocking down the door. Dots run out in her nightgown, just a housecoat on, wearing no panties, ’cause she had just got outta bed, and I thinking it is
a detective or a police looking for me concerning what I told you ’bout Brigitte.…”