'Membering

by Clarke, Austin;

  “I understand, sir, that you are not satisfied with my work here.”

  He took a sip of the gin and Kola Tonic, the colour of burnished gold in the glass.

  “I feel that if you did not like my work, since you came to my house in Toronto, and told me I could contribute, since I had made enough money in Canada and you came to my apartment in Austin-Texas, to ask me to take this job, you would tell me, you would be the first to tell me that something was going wrong …”

  He took a sip of the gin and Kola Tonic.

  “I am not your advisor,” he said.

  “But you came to my house in Austin-Texas, and in Toronto, and asked me to come home to be in charge of the broadcasting …”

  He took a sip of the rattling ice cubes in the glass with the gin and Kola Tonic.

  “I am not your minister. Peter Morgan is your minister.”

  “But I would have thought, sir, that you could have advised me …”

  He did not take another sip of the drink.

  I had lost all sense of judgment, of proportion, or respect, of propriety, and of self-preservation.

  I go back to Toronto, to the Kensington Market, to the Royal Suite at the Park Plaza Hotel, to the Johnson Library in Austin-Texas; to the meetings we had in Washington in his hotel, about a vicious article written in the New York Times, to which he wanted me to reply to lessen the sting of scandal hinted in the newspaper article, to the early Sunday morning meetings down in the country, in St. Lucy, when we crunched the skeleton of small birds, heads and spinal cords, Lilliputian in size but gargantuan in taste and delicacy; and ran our teeth along the symmetrical alignment of bones in the skeletons of barbaras, jacks, and flying fish; and washed them all down with rum, and jokes about other West Indian prime ministers, and slamming dominoes and dealing cards: impromptu games of five-card stud. And now, he is talking and the crystal glass with the melting gin and Kola Tonic is silent. The ice has become cold water, like the veins left in his body for I am killing him.

  “And Mr. Clarke, I would like to buy the bookshelves you put in the house, when you leave. Not that I am saying when you are to leave, I am not saying that, but when you do leave I wonder if you can leave the bookshelves. I will buy them. Janine wants to move into the house, and she likes reading …”

  Before it has come to this state of betrayal and cold realization that you cannot invest time and sincerity in a friendship with a prime minister, before I was able to see the multiple personalities in the character of this man, before I saw with equal chilliness how I had allowed myself to be a victim in the friendship, I had arranged for him to teach at Yale University as a visiting lecturer; and he was going to be made a Fellow, with full privileges, to eat in dining halls, to do research in all the libraries on campus, and to receive one thousand American dollars a month, for the three months in a term. He was excited and chest-puffingly proud of this; and became arrogant in mentioning it to members of his own Cabinet. Yale! Yale was better than the place he had been teaching at in Miami. My friend at Yale, now Master of Berkeley College, Professor Robin Winks, was enthusiastic to make these arrangements for the prime minister. Professor Winks was invited by me as my guest, at my expense, to spend two weeks in Barbados. He was going to look at the Centre for Race and Multicultural Studies on the Cave Hill Barbados campus of the University of the West Indies; graduate students in his history classes were going to come to Barbados, and write papers on the collection of books bought from Richard B. Moore, a Barbadian who owned a bookstore in Harlem and lived in Brooklyn, and cooked cou-cou and steamed flying fish every Friday night; and these papers would be left in Barbados; and an exchange of Barbadian graduate students and faculty would go up to Yale. It was a coup for Barbados.

  All I wanted from the minister of tourism, who was the minister in charge also of broadcasting, “my minister,” was a free ticket for Professor Winks, in gratitude. The Professor was bringing his son, and had paid for his son’s ticket. The house I was providing. And I had asked my maid to be the Professor’s maid during his visit. I had asked Freddie Clarke, a solicitor to rent me the house on Paradise Heights that had the swimming pool. It was more than a fair exchange. It was robbery by the Barbados government. One airplane ticket from LaGuardia in New York, to Bridgetown. The minister refused. And the prime minister, through him, told me I was “too cavalier” in the arrangements I made for the exchange of scholars.

  I called Professor Winks, even before I left Barbados for home, and told him that I could no longer be the negotiator between Yale and the Barbados government. He advised me to call the whole thing off. “Authors and prime ministers!” he said. And nothing else.

  I informed the prime minister — now Mr. Barrow to me — that the “deal” was off. He made no comment. It was like a nod of the head, in a conversation.

  I am back home. In Toronto. It is 1977. The prime minister is no longer prime minister. He is Mr. Barrow. Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. I am a Progressive-Conservative candidate for the Ontario riding of York South, in the provincial elections; and if I should win, and I am confident that this will be the judgment, I am sure I shall be a member of William Davis’s Cabinet. But I do not win. Donald Macdonald, then leader of the New Democratic Party, takes the seat with remarkable ease, and plurality. I come second. With the questionable distinction of having got the most votes any Progressive-Conservative candidate has ever got, in the history of elections. And the highest, up until the last elections in 2004!

  Things back in Barbados are bleak. One day, to be prime minister: the next day, to be Leader of the Opposition, is best described in Bible terms: “thriving today, tomorrow to be dead.” The prime minister was dead. A dead fish in the sea floating amongst swimming sharks and attacking barracudas. And he was lonely.

  My book, The Prime Minister, is published in 1976. The prime minister of Barbados now is Mr. G.M. “Tom” Adams. He mistakes that The Prime Minister refers to him. Political events and fortune have overturned the context. The novel, set during the reign of one “monarch,” is published when that monarch is no longer ruling, and his successor — the same kind of monarch: “six o’ one, half-dozen o’ the next” — assumes not only the crown and sceptre, but also the personality and persona of the other. The temperament of ruling is the same.

  The Prime Minister is, I must admit, a vindictive book. But it is not unfair. It is taken out of context. And it is banned. And the author, though not officially banned also, is encouraged not to visit Barbados, and this is said in a language that is filled with the nuance of deceit and nuance that characterizes Barbadian language, that is spoken with foreboding. But I do not mind. The book is selling well, in spite of scorching, negative reviews. The book is smuggled into Barbados and sold at great profit; and everybody reads it, not through interest in its literary value, but to try to “detect” the real person in the society from the “fiction” of their character in the novel. But whether the author has written a note that “any similarity of the characters of this book, with persons in real life, is purely accidental, and is not intended,” the public disregard this, and pick out their neighbours from amongst the “fictional characters.”

  But my mind is on politics; and becoming a minister of government. Perhaps, minister of education. Or, minister of multiculturalism. Or, minister of the black diaspora. Or, the black minister.

  I lose weight, canvassing. Climbing stairs, going up to the penthouse in apartment buildings and working down to the ground floor, stuffing pamphlets into mailboxes, and finding some of my campaign material placed in less conspicuous places, in the garbage chutes, or on the floor, or in the lobby; and in turn retaliating; for this is a kind of war; and losing house through the enormity of debt; and losing face, when the West Indians are insulted that I would run for the “conservatives”; and losing patience. But mainly, losing weight, and having to take my suits and trousers to a tailor who specializes in reducing the sizes of waists and shoulders and thighs, and paying him alm
ost the same amount of money for this reduction as for a brand-new suit; and then there is the voice from the past on the phone. The voice of the former “Priminister.”

  “This is Dipper Barrow.”

  “Oh, Prime Minister!”

  “I didn’t know you were a conservative?”

  “I am a conservative when I am in Canada, and when I am in Barbados I am a member of the Democratic Labour Party.”

  “Good luck in the elections.”

  “Thank you, Prime Minister.”

  For me, once a prime minister, always a prime minister.

  Pleasantries were exchanged. He wanted to know how I was. He went back to the election campaign. He wished me luck, again. And then he came to the point.

  “That visit to Yale that you were arranging … you think you can still arrange it?”

  “I can arrange it, Prime Minister. But I can’t promise you’ll get the same money, because …”

  “Money is no problem. I’ll go for nothing. I just want to get out of Barbados …”

  Weeks later, and I am defeated at the polls, and I am relieved of the pressure of canvassing and campaigning, and keeping the hours of craziness, and having always to be on guard about what I say, when I hear from my friend Professor Robin Winks, that the visit to Yale has been approved: “He will get a little something as fee, there will be his suite, and full library privileges. We will do this for Mr. Barrow. And how do you feel after your campaign? Incidentally, Austin, we will need a letter of recommendation from you, for Mr. Barrow, before Mr. Barrow can take up his Visiting Fellowship … as soon as possible.”

  The publication of The Prime Minister, and the notoriety it gathered round it, like a piece of iron in the sea, when the salt in the water corrodes and rusts it and its shape is crippled like the limbs of an old man, this novel declared a “roman à clef” brought to the surface, a lot of men and women who now aligned themselves with the conservative party of Barbados, the Barbados Labour Party. The irony in Barbados politics is that both main political parties have the word “labour” in them, although everyone knows that the BLP is a conservative party, whose members were, years ago, white planters and businessmen, and a few black barristers-at-law, principle amongst whom was Grantley Adams, the father of Tom Adams.

  One of the most important men now arraigned against the fallen government of the Democratic Labour Party is the Old Boy. He is now in Toronto. Without access to his mercantile bank, out of reach of the dynamite-wired princely wealth buried in a certain place in St. John. Sometimes, perhaps he has forgotten where he buried it, probably in the dark of the darkest night, it is in St. Thomas. At other times, as if to confound persons and thieves and former ministers he says, openly, that the loot is buried in St. John. St. John is the location of Codrington College, named after a slave owner, Codrington College, affiliated to Durham University in England, where you go to become a priest in the Anglican church or to read for a degree in the classics, St. John is the seat the former prime minister still holds. Perhaps it was in this St. John constituency that the treasure was buried. The Old Boy is now installed in a mansion in Toronto’s upper-class residential neighbourhood. Behaving like the earl he wants to be, reading the rules and regulations of heraldry and the peerage; and offering titles to me, today a dukedom, the day after; and picking out members of the Cabinet in the new government — he is a member of Dipper Barrow’s party, the DLP — men he had given money to, men he has given assistance to, men he has given secrets to, to boost their confidence. He behaves like the leader of a government-in-exile; and indeed, there is a document written by someone, a disgruntled former official in the Barrow government, entitled “Private & Confidential: Eyes Only — The Establishing of a Government-in-Exile.” People living inside and outside of Barbados want to overthrow the legitimate government of the day. There are also rumblings of political discontent and political terrorism and political treachery in Trinidad, where Black Power raised its head and almost secured a foothold; and there is Grenada, where the government of Sir Eric Gairy was overthrown by Maurice Bishop, a London-trained barrister-at-law. I saw his list of persons in Barbados, and a few names of politicians in Trinidad, Jamaica and in Guyana, who were “traitors” to black people. The Old Boy was a staunch supporter of Black People, and black people throughout the world.

  That Sunday when he asked me to help him find a place for his two purebred dogs, beloved by him in greater affection than he would love his “daughter,” I took him, in the company of a real-estate broker I knew, through some streets where there were basement apartments for rent, for he wanted a “place to keep a dog.” But he had something else in mind. He wanted a house suitable for a peer of the realm. We visited Forest Hill, we drove through the cold Sunday afternoon, and visited homes in Cabbagetown and, on a whim, I suggested Rosedale. The real-estate broker knew of three houses for sale in this distinctive area. And then we found the house on Crescent Road, recently vacated by the owners, who moved within the same neighbourhood, leaving behind, like an abandoned chair, a room full of books to be taken by the real-estate agent, by the new owners, by men who rambled into the house to sleep on the floor; by homeless men. A mansion for his dogs. The Old Boy was adamant that this was the place he was looking for. He did not even go through each room. It was the way the mansion looked, and the size of the building. He must have lived in one of these mansions in London.

  “It’s the address, old boy!” he told me, as we went to the office of the real-estate agent, on the penthouse floor of a building that housed a branch of the Salvation Army, near the popular restaurant at the time, Fenton’s.

  The real-estate agent serves chilled white wine and cheese and white seedless grapes; and I partake of this in quantity not recommended in books of etiquette; and I glance over by the window where the Old Boy and his “daughter” are standing in over a large leather, old fashioned box-like valise, with noisy double locks. I have just taken a glass of white wine to his “daughter” and some grapes. The Old Boy does not drink. “Can’t do what I do and drink alcohol, too. A touch of cognac at nights, before bed, well …” I had seen the label of the bottle he bought from the Vintages Store, and was impressed by his taste. He asks me to wait a moment. He has just unlocked the vault of a valise. Exposed are plateaux and hills of money. English pounds. American dollars. Barbadian dollars. “Help me count the money for the down payment, old boy.”

  To buy a house in Toronto, you ask for the selling price, and if you agree to it, you deposit at least, 10 percent of that price. You have your lawyers search the property, checking against liens, outstanding taxes, whether the house is a house, and things like that. And after one month, or two, or even three…depending upon the agreed time for the closing, you will then pay the required amount, taking the mortgage into consideration. The house the Old Boy decided on, was very expensive. In the value of the house in the current market of that time, was about five hundred thousand. The Old Boy suggested a deposit of thirty thousand. He paid in American dollars. In hard, cold cash. And he did not ask to be paid the difference in the exchange between American dollars and Canadian dollars. The real estate agent pocketed the exchange. She had never had such a deal. But the Old Boy, whether deliberate or through ignorance, had confused a “down payment” for a “deposit.”

  To make a long story short, as the saying goes, the Old Boy lived in the Rosedale mansion for about two years. He moved out of my life, and went to another residence, a townhouse near the Lake. And he would have languished there, for it was not a place like the Rosedale mansion with its sophisticated environment, where he could have mixed with his neighbours and visited their boardrooms, with tales of adventure and daring, and the making of millions of dollars, where he could have regaled them about trans-oceanic journeys on sailing boats which were stopped by the coast guard of islands, who accused him of “invading” their peaceful sleepy kingdoms who put him in jail for months, until his contacts overseas, in Canada and in England sent a private jet to
take him “home” to London … where it was the barking of the pup, now a loving fully-grown dog, that woke him up, on his release back in London, so that he might take his prescriptions of medicine; and stay alive …

  “This dog saved my life,” he used to say, “that’s why I love him”; that’s why he bought steaks from the Rosedale grocery store and rice from Loblaws and cooked the two of them together, and fed them to the two dogs, the brother and the sister, the one who had barked opportunely, and saved his life. The dogs were eating better than many Rosedale families. “This dog saved my life. She barked in my ear until she woke me up, so I could take my tablets …” He rubs his right hand, palm down roughly over the shining golden pelt of the she-dog, then roughens up the dog’s ears, then, like a quiet vacuum cleaner he passes the same hand, palm down still, over the cocked spine of the dog, as if he intend to soothe it to sleep. And then he slaps it on its backside. The dog turns her head, acknowledges the act of love, and slurps its long pink tongue over her master’s face, over his mouth and eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I have left home two times. The first time on the September 25, 1955. I arrived in Toronto with six dollars — in three denominations — in my pocket. Two American dollars, one Canadian dollar, and three Barbadian dollars. On my second time leaving home, I arrived with six dollars. All six were Canadian dollars. I have read of immigrants who boast about their hard work and their success measured against the small amount of money they came with, and the vast amount of wealth they accumulated in five or ten years, to show not only their conquering the odds of such quick success, but to illustrate their love of hard work. I have always felt that such boasting is out of place. And there is no one correct way of measuring success in a new country of immigration. I mention the six dollars in my pocket in 1955, and the six dollars in 1976 that I arrived with, at the same airport. It does not measure anything but coincidence, for I did not come at the first time as an immigrant, but as a student; and the second coming was as a returning citizen. What then is the significance of the six dollars? Even though in the first case the currency was from three different countries; and at the second departure from home, twenty-one years later, the six dollars were the currency of Canada, my new home.