'Membering

by Clarke, Austin;

  Suddenly the news left Barbados and came to the United States, in the vacationing warmth of Florida, where men and women retiring from careers and from scandal always appear. And it was no different for The Dipper (Errol Barrow, as he is known), who all of a sudden exchanged the discussions in a Cabinet room for the argument of practical politics in a graduate students seminar. They say he was brilliant. The heavy showers back in the Island which could spoil an early morning of shooting small birds and then skinning them and then eating them in one or two mouthfuls of sweet crunching bones and skeletons and little flesh, washed down with rum punch made from Mount Gay Premium twenty-five-year-old rum, freshened by fresh limes, squeezed also over the baked birds, to clean the mind and erase the blemish of the past of stress and anxiety over West Indian “Governaunce,” to use the English word used by the Old Boy, still wanting to be an English earl. Earl Old Boy of Sin-Joseph — the Parish in the Island where he was born.

  I was a professor on a one-year contract, in the Black Studies Program at the University of Texas, at Austin. The telephone call had come from a man named Bernth Lindfors, one last-minute night, because “George Lamming, who was appointed, cannot come, and we wonder if, with this late notice, hope you don’t mind if you could come and take up the appointment?”; and when I asked him where he calling from, and he said, “The University of Texas, at Austin …”

  “Austin? Is there a town named Austin?”

  “Austin-Texas.”

  “Well, if they can name a town after my name, then I’ll come …”

  You could bathe in the swimming pool of the apartment building built round the rectangle of the pool; and you could walk a quarter-mile up a slope and enter the “all-night” grocery store, and come back home to the townhouse-apartment, connected to all the other townhouse apartments of two and a half bedrooms each, on two floors, with furniture left there by the builders, “rented furnished, sir,” the real estate agent said, “so you, as a professor won’t have to waste your time looking for furniture, for we’ve thought of everything to make your life in Austin, comfortable, Austin. I hear your name is Austin. This will be a good, happy place for you for the year!” And you could walk through the aisles in the grocery, and feel you were walking through rows of flower gardens in a luscious tropical garden back in the Island. And I changed my habit of shopping and shopped only at night now, in the thick Texas humidity, and in my basket were the same items time after time: lamb chops; North Carolina sweet potatoes; fresh peanuts in the shell, also from North Carolina; fresh pecans; small, round beets; large beefsteak tomatoes; Brussels sprouts; virgin olive oil; long grain basmati rice; a Virginia ham, pepper-coated, made in Smithfield; pork rind and salted pork parts with which to season the rice; canned peaches cut into halves; sour cream to serve on the peaches; champagne and red and white wines for the cooking. One night I bought a lobster; and, after that, changed my shopping, substituting the lamb chops for racks of lamb. Going up the slope, from the lake from the river that flowed behind the furnished townhouse, and not looking back to see the vista and how beautiful my Texan surroundings were, my full concentration seemed to be, at this time, for this long year, on food. This was before the introduction of cooking shows on television. I cannot remember whether I had a television. I had a Mercedes-Benz, bottle-green in colour, automatic gearshift, a 250S, which I had bought the year before in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, when I taught at Duke University. This Mercedes-Benz I used for the visits to my mother, who lived in Brooklyn at the time; filled with 8-track cassettes, filled with the music of Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Sam and Dave, Johnny Mathis, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Barry White, Otis Redding, Jimmy Witherspoon, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Errol Garner, Billy Eckstein, Rufus Harley (a man who played jazz on Scottish bagpipes), B.B. King, Sam Cooke, Sonny Rawlins, J.J. Johnson, Elvin Jones, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Ahmad Jamal, George Shearing, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Lloyd, Keith Jarrett. And one track of a song, “She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,” by a British group, named the Beatles, which I never listened to, and which was given to me on my birthday one hot July in Texas, by a young beautiful white woman, the best student in my seminar on creative writing. Driving to Brooklyn from Austin, Texas, was an exciting journey, passing through all those Southern towns, and one-pump gas stations, things that appeared almost daily with different disastrous associations in the newspaper and on television, charting the progress of the slow pace of racial integration in the entire country of America, not only as northerners, — including Canadians — thought was the case; but the excitement ended the moment I reached New York, and parked the Mercedes-Benz. And to reach New York, and hear some of the jazz musicians recorded on 8-tracks in the boxes that held the tapes, either in person in Greenwich Village, or through the German speakers in the Benz, life was beautiful. And this excitement turned to fear, and the fear of loss, the minute the Benz was parked and locked up in the laneway beside my mother’s house on Avenue A in Brooklyn, or even inside the locked chain-linked gate behind the house, beside the dog, under the watchful window with the light that came on to frighten the thief, when any motion was close enough to turn the security light on. The dog was still sleeping when I walked through the back door. And to hate to open the eyes the next morning, to see that the glass on the driver’s side was broken, or the entire glass taken out, in the darkness the security light did not pierce.

  This cold November morning is the third time they have broken into the Benz. All of the 8-tracks have been stolen. The thief is careful; tidy. He has left the mark of his carefulness behind. It is expressed in the three boxes that he has left behind. Closed. On this third break-in of the Benz, parked always “close to the house so the thieves would think we watching them,” all the other 8-tracks were taken out. The Beatles tape is left back. It is as if the thief was scornful of the juxtaposition of jazz and rhythm and blues so close to rock and roll. And the handwriting on the piece of paper, torn out from my own notebook that lay on the front seat, to hold notes of direction from the Deep South to the North of Brooklyn and integration, and in scratchy handwriting, set down in the haste of burglary, with the one word.

  Mutthurfucker!

  “You think the thief was telling you something?”

  It is only a mother who could think of this, and ask a question to make you think of her question.

  “You think you should keep more of the Beatles in your car, when you are travelling up from the South, again?”

  The reputation of the Prime Minister Errol Barrow was known outside of Barbados. I had no trouble discussing his invitation to give a guest lecture and the conditions of the visit to the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, including the red carpet that was to be stretched from the plane in the small airport to the door of the terminal entering the VIP Lounge. And the fee, five times the usual “honorarium” pittance that universities get away with, “with murder,” my mother explains their “damn cheapness, inviting big people and paying them peanuts,” the fee that the prime minister was offered, without negotiation, caused him to accept the invitation as an honour, and as a “good thing to get away from Miami for a while.”

  It was not a departmental lecture, but a university lecture in the sense that students and faculty from all departments were invited; and, as it turned out, did in fact attend. The lecture was to be one hour; and if the prime minister wished, he could take questions. The topic, of his own choosing, was not announced before the lecture, and when he was approaching forty minutes, and was entering into the sixtieth minute, I went back in memory to his campaign speeches when he was in an election, when we would stand for three hours, and follow his words, remembering that he was a brilliant defence lawyer, when he was the Leader of the Opposition, when it was in his interest to talk longer than anybody else in the House of Assembly. Here now, he was on a campaign swing; and his audience was students listening to every word that fell fro
m his lips, in a convocation hall, since no lecture room was large enough — in anticipation — in this university in the Deep South, in 1975, still close enough to the civil rights movement, for memory of bloodshed and brutality and injustice to be fresh enough in the mind.

  When it was over, when the questions from the audience were answered, it was ten-thirty, still too early for a prime minister to be going to bed. He was known as “a night hawk”; but it was the first time I was a host of a prime minister, and a university campus is not the most sophisticated atmosphere in which to provide suitable entertainment for a head of government. So, I tried the easy way out of my obligations.

  “If it wasn’t so late, Prime Minister,” I said, “I would take you to my apartment, with a few graduate students, and have a drink, and if it wasn’t so late, perhaps prepare a snack …”

  “You know that I don’t go to bed early!”

  “I have some lamb chops, but they’re frozen …”

  There were four graduate students, members of my creative writing seminar; and they were eager to continue the question and answer part of the lecture; and they needed a drink; and as students, always hungry, and already acquainted with my cooking — I’d had them over to the apartment many times, they were urging me, suggesting that there were three cars available to take us to the apartment beside the river …

  “It’s a lake, sir.”

  “It’s a river!”

  “Lake!”

  “River!”

  We stopped at the all-night grocery, and got some more lamb chops, and champagne, and when we got to the apartment, with the water in the swimming pool placid as a sheet of smooth ice, it was as if we were back in the Island, preparing for a party with tourists.

  “You don’t have to thaw out meat before you cook it. Lamb chops and steak can be put into the oven, frozen. It improves the taste, and you can control it better, if you want rare, or medium rare …”

  Years later, when he had appointed me the general manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), in Barbados, there were many occasions at which I was at his table, formal and informal; at the official residence, and at the private retreat down in the country, where we ate small birds, no bigger than a small fist which you put into your mouth, and crunched the delicious taste of bones and head, and tender meat; and there were occasions when the roasted pork with the crackling like a sheet of gold on the white meat of the pig reared and grown by him, Saturday nights of the local delicacy of black pudding and souse, washed down with the strong glasses of Tanqueray gin and Kola Tonic.

  But before Barbados and CBC, there was the appointment as cultural attaché at the Barbados Embassy in Washington, D.C. It was during the administration of Richard Nixon, president of America, during the Watergate scandal, during a time when diplomats, at the ambassadorial level were being snatched from their offices, from their chauffeur-driven cars, from their guarded residences and chancelleries, in an epidemic of diplomatic kidnappings. The prime minister said to me, “Tom, I want you to go up to Washington, perhaps two days a week, or on weekends, and become my cultural attaché. And about salary, you don’t need any more money. You’re working here at the university. Perhaps, an honorarium. What about a hundred dollars a day?” I took the appointment out of respect and love for the prime minister, out of a sense of nationalism, out of stupidity, and for the year I was in the employment of the embassy, my salary was less than that of the chauffeur, Forde, a retired policeman from the Royal Barbados Police Constabulary.

  The Barbados diplomatic corps, consisting of ambassador; counsellor; first and second secretary; and myself, cultural attaché. Those who had diplomatic immunity developed the contention that there was no difference in the “prestige” and “status” of Barbados, a tiny, poor country and that of Canada; and with this argument, a “private and confidential — eyes only” was sent by diplomatic pouch to The Right Honourable Prime Minister, Privy Counsellor, at government headquarters. The note respectfully inquired of the prime minister the procedure to be followed, in case His Excellency the Ambassador was kidnapped in the brewing spate of diplomatic kidnappings now boiling up in Washington, D.C.

  Ambassadors from large, powerful nations had been kidnapped, and enormous sums of money in cash were demanded; and some were indeed paid. One can imagine the jocularity of the Right Honourable Gentleman as he opened the “eyes-only” note, perhaps during a full day of prime ministerial appointments; or perhaps, down in the country on a Sunday morning, crunching the brittle delicious bones of a baked bird; even, perhaps, drinking a refreshing glass of Tanqueray gin and Kola Tonic, the Gentleman’s jocularity can only be imagined, in the bemused company of Cabinet members. Certainly, one is justified in this speculation.

  The prime minister, with a Barbadian apprehension of Barbadian arrogance and the prejudice bound by class and to a lesser extent, also by education — throwing intelligence and common sense to the wind, replied as was his duty, and diplomatic responsibility to do.

  “Let us hope and pray,” the letter, sent in the diplomatic pouch, under the confidential seal, and with EYES ONLY stamped on the red, white, and blue airmail envelope, “that they do not ask for more than twenty dollars, Barbadian — (BDS) $20.00 — otherwise, he gone through the eddoes!”

  The matter of kidnapping and the anxiety manufactured in the heat of the epidemic spreading through Washington D.C., was never brought up again. But before this decision was made, to the disappointment of some, as I listened to them at luncheon in a nearby Indian restaurant, eating Saag Gosht and basmati rice, and drinking Heineken beer, arguing and speculating and hoping that the amount of money for their ransom to be paid by the Barbados government, for their release, would reflect their importance, and be comparable to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in American currency that was being paid, almost every week, for diplomats from the “developed” countries. But after the receipt of the prime minister’s note, advising caution and respecting modesty, the arguments of personal worth, and national embarrassment by the kidnapping, all this evaporated in the humidity of egotism.

  Back home! Barbados. I am now at the radio and television station. It is in the Pine. It is 1975. I grew up about one mile from where I am now. It is a Friday morning. I am at work. The members of my staff are shocked that I would come to work on the first day of my appointment as general manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation. The chief announcer, a woman, expresses her shock. “But, Mr. Clarke, you’re the general manager! We didn’t expect you to come to work on the first day …”

  But there are things to do. Behaviour to be corrected. Behaviour, sanctified by years and years of incompetence and disregard of the station’s customers, to be changed, and improved upon. I feel I have been appointed to this job to “Barbadianize the station” — putting the emphasis on news, current affairs features, sports, and especially education, in a Barbadian context, so that the image of Barbados, in music and in social behaviour, would be the focus of broadcasting. And the first item on my schedule is to cut down on the time senior staff takes for lunch — three hours, instead of the regulated time of one hour. This behaviour is typical in a colony: senior staff take the liberty and assume the privilege of taking three-hour lunches because they feel that senior staff can behave in this way, a way that expressed their superiority to the other staff, in particular the non-skilled staff, and their self-importance.

  On the first day, I am leaving my office to be driven into Town, by my chauffeur — I cannot drive because I do not know the way— to have a business lunch. I come out of my office, near the entrance, and I see a white Barbadian sitting on a chair, waiting to see someone in the advertisement department; and I recognize him; we were at Harrison College together, years ago. I greet him and he greets me, “Oh Christ, Tom! Welcome back home!” I am having lunch at Brown Sugar restaurant, a favourite place for the upper middle-class Barbadian to eat. But more compelling than this status is that the food is excellent. It is “Bajan food
.” Souse; split pea soup, complete with pig tails and flour dumplings; cou-cou and steamed flying fish; roast pork; dried peas and rice; yellow split peas and rice; and cassava pone — and many other Bajan delicacies.

  I am having lunch with Harold Hoyte, the managing editor of the Barbados Nation newspaper, an enterprising daily started by him, a middle-class Barbadian, and run almost entirely by black Barbadians, to compete with the conservative, older daily the Barbados Advocate. When I was at the embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1972, the board of the Nation newspaper, seeking investors, approached me for that financial support, but I was in no position to invest. Another ironical bit of history common to me and Harold Hoyte is that when he was in Toronto studying journalism at Ryerson, he was the first important editor of Contrast, a black weekly that specialized in reminding the Canadian black community of the existence of racism, especially the “racial profiling” rampant throughout the country, and in Toronto in particular; and when Harold had to return to Barbados, at the conclusion of his studies, I was asked to act as editor until the newspaper could find a permanent replacement.

  So, Harold and I had a lot to talk about in this historic reunion. Also present was Eddie Rochester, who went through Combermere School for Boys with me; and then I met him, a second secretary, at the embassy in Washington, D.C., when I was the cultural attaché. Eddie was on holiday. As it would turn out, Harold Hoyte, whom I considered to be a friend, turned out to be my most effective detractor, writing articles which compromised me, encouraging his staff to write columns that assaulted my character, all in the name of “the freedom of the press.”