Moses Ascending

by Sam Selvon

  ‘The realization is there, I grant you. It’s to make it work. Who is going to be captain of the ship? Who is officer number one? Who is treasurer? Who is head and who is tail?’

  ‘If you would only come to one of our meetings, you will see how we have all that organized.’

  Bob come back with the coffee.

  ‘What are you boys rapping about?’ he ask.

  ‘Black business,’ Galahad tell him. ‘You won’t know about that.’

  ‘Power to the people,’ Bob say. ‘But you are wasting your time, Galahad, you will never get Moses to join.’

  We had a coffee break, and after Bob take away the cups, Galahad change the topic and came back to the matter of my work, with the same original question.

  ‘What shit is that you writing?’

  ‘I am composing my Memoirs,’ I say stiffly, hoping that my tone would put him off.

  ‘You don’t know one fucking thing about what’s happening, Moses.’

  ‘Memoirs are personal and intimate,’ I say. ‘They don’t have to be topical nor deal with any social problems.’

  ‘That’s no fucking use,’ Galahad say. ‘Nobody ain’t going to be interested in anything you have to say. If you was writing about the scene today, and the struggle, I might of got the Party to back you. In any case, who tell you you could write?’

  ‘I am not an ignoramus like you,’ I say, beginning to loose my cool.

  ‘You think writing book is like kissing hand? You should leave that to people like Lamming and Salkey.’

  ‘Who?’

  Galahad burst out laughing. Derisively, too. ‘You never heard of them?’

  ‘I know of Accles and Pollock, but not Lamming and Salkey.’

  ‘You see what I mean? Man Moses, you are still living in the Dark Ages! You don’t even know that we have created a Black Literature, that it have writers who write some powerful books what making the whole world realize our existence and our struggle.’

  ‘So? Well, my Memoirs will create a new dimension.’

  ‘A new diversion, you mean,’ he sneer. ‘You tackling something what you don’t know one arse about. This is a big joke! How you expect to stay lock up in your room, and don’t go and investigate and do research, and take part in what is happening, and write book?’

  ‘Let me remind you that literary masterpieces have been written in garrets by candlelight, by men who shut themselves away from the distractions of the world.’

  ‘That’s a lot of shit!’

  ‘You are overstaying your welcome,’ I say coldly.

  ‘I going,’ Galahad say, getting up to go, ‘but you gone, man! I now beginning to understand why you been acting this way. You heading straight for the madhouse. This derelict that you buy, and your quasi-frontage of luxury, blow your bloody brains. The next thing I know you will be talking to yourself in the streets as you head for the Arches in Charing Cross to join the tramps and drop-outs.’

  ‘And you will have to move up to give me room,’ I sneer. ‘Bob!’

  Bob come.

  ‘Show Galahad out,’ I say.

  ‘I was thinking all the time that you had some good reason for living like a anchorite,’ Galahad say as he reach the door, ‘but I can see you are going to the dogs. Now I could only have pity on you.’

  ‘Your petty jealousy is in keeping with your character,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t darken my doorway again.’

  Galahad left me with a nasty taste in my mouth. I could withstand the slings and arrows of misfortune, but when it come to my penmanship, you are treading on dangerous ground. I turn the pages of my manuscript blindly, just to feel the parchment and remind myself that there are finer things in life besides black people. It was hopeless to try and continue in my present fury. I lock up the manuscript in the bottom drawer of the sideboard, where I always keep it, and put the key in my pocket. I was in such a rage that I didn’t even know when I was doing all that, I just find myself heading for the door.

  ‘Have you finished working?’ Bob ask.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I am going out for a breath of fresh air. Don’t forget to put a hot water bottle in my bed.’

  I went out and just start to walk aimlessly down the Uxbridge road.

  ‘That bastard,’ I mutter, ‘you could never get a word of encouragement from a black man when you aspire to the arts or philosophy or anything above the low level they set themselves.’

  And walking along in a blind despair talking to myself, I suddenly realize I was doing the selfsame thing that Galahad divine for me.

  During the next week or two I keep thinking about what Galahad say. The man really upset my applecart. I have weathered many a storm in Brit’n, and men will tell you that in my own way I am as much part of the London landscape as little Eros with his bow and arrow in Piccadilly, or one-eye Nelson with his column in Trafalgar Square, not counting colour. I have been mentor and mediator, antagonist and protagonist, father and mother too, a man for all seasons and reasons. There are those who will remember that if it wasn’t for me, Galahad would of catch his royal arse in Brit’n. It was me who put him on his feet, share my basement room with him, console him in his distresses and lend him twelve and a half new pence when he was broke – in those days it was two-and-six, before they decimalize the currency. I have chronicled those colourful days in another tome, and it is not my wont to hark back to what is done and finish with. But I can’t help remembering how I was good to him, and for him to turn around and insult my work was a hard thing to bear. I wouldn’t of minded if he did call me a black bastard, or if he refuse to serve me in the pub, or even piss on me like them pigs piss on that poor African chap up in Leeds, and cause him to jump in the river Aire and drown himself. At least, so one story goes…

  I try to put down a few words, but I couldn’t write anything. I just sit down there, morose and dejected. Bob must of thought that I was going through one of those periods when the inspiration wouldn’t come, that we scribes know so well, for he was very discreet and did not make a nuisance of himself. But in truth I was brooding. Suppose, just suppose, that there was an element of truth in what Galahad say? Suppose when I finish, and ready to present my Memoirs, nobody want to read them? Suppose he was right, and I should start to write about Black Power, and ESN schools, and the new breed of English what are taking over the country? And what about all them Pakis and Indians who swim across the Channel and sneak ashore, or hide in them big trucks what come from the Continent?

  I could feel a stirring of my mental processes, I could feel a tickle and a tingle in my thoughts. In this selfsame house dwelt two Pakis who might provide the very impetus I so sorely needed to get back to my opus! Men of mystery and topicality, men in the news and views, for it is a well-established fact that when the communication media tired lambasting the Blacks and the Paddies, they take a lag in Paki arse. Naturally the whole structure of my work would have to be drastically altered if I was to incorporate these other aspects. I mulled, I mooned, I went into a brown study, wondering if I could kill two books with one pen, as it were. It might appear to you that I waste a lot of time hemming and hawing before going into action, but you must remember that scribes does take years to produce a book, but meantime their minds are working assiduously on plot, dialogue, continuity and other technical points. Thus, I was already seeing Messrs Faizull and Farouk as them two Indian chaps from Trinidad who kidnap that woman from the News of the World and create a sensation. Maybe my two boys could come up with something even bigger! Maybe they would provide enough drama and intrigue not only for a book but for TV and the films!

  I dash down the stairs on a wave of inspiration, and knock at their door.

  ‘Open up,’ I say briskly. ‘This is your landlord speaking.’

  I was lucky this time. One of them open the door.

  ‘Yes?’ he say.

  I didn’t have any cut-and-dried plan in mind how to approach him. ‘I just want to make sure you boys are comfortable,’ I say. ‘Everythi
ng all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he say.

  ‘I’d like to have a look around,’ I say.

  ‘Sure,’ he say, and move out of the way to let me pass.

  Everything look usual to me. In fact, it was reminiscent of the days when I myself had to live in cramp-up quarters like this. How the both of them manage to move around without colliding called for great navigational skill.

  ‘You are…?’ I ask.

  ‘Faizull.’

  ‘And Farouk?’

  ‘Working.’

  It didn’t look like I was getting very far with my boy and these monosyllable replies.

  ‘I don’t know any Pakis,’ I say conversationally, ‘although there are a lot in the country. Have you been here long?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You like the people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A lot of interesting things must happen to chaps like you,’ I venture.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘let’s start from the beginning. How did you arrive in Brit’n?’

  ‘By boat.’

  ‘Ah.’ I made a mental note. ‘Via the Continent?’

  ‘What’re all these questions for? You working for the police or something?’

  ‘Those pigs!’ I say scornfully, looking around as if I want a place to spit.

  ‘If it’s anything to do with the rent,’ Faizull say, ‘you’ll have to wait until Farouk comes back. He attends to that.’

  ‘I am talent scouting for the BBC,’ I say. ‘I am looking for interesting subjects who could appear on This Is Your Life.’

  ‘That’s an ITV programme,’ he say.

  ‘I am a freelance,’ I explain. I was forgetting that these days every manjack looks at television, like drinking a glass of water or putting on a shirt.

  ‘You’d better see Farouk about that,’ Faizull say. ‘Nothing interesting ever happens to me. I just go to work, and come home to sleep and eat, like everybody else.’

  ‘That Is Your Life?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he say.

  ‘You Pakis must have it rough just as we West Indians.’ I tried again. ‘Haven’t you ever been addressed as a black bastard?’

  ‘No,’ he say.

  ‘No skinhead ever bash you?’

  ‘No,’ he say. ‘I live a very ordinary life. I just go to work, and come home to eat and sleep.’

  ‘All the same,’ I persist, ‘you must hold certain views about the present conditions in Brit’n. What do you think of Black Power, for instance? Are you affiliated with any party?’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me all these questions,’ Faizull say. ‘I can’t help you. I just go to work, and come home.’

  I was getting desperate. ‘Maybe you know of somebody who might qualify for a programme,’ I say. ‘You have no friends down in Southall?’

  ‘Look,’ he say, ‘Farouk might be able to help you. Do you want me to send him to see you when he returns?’

  I could feel all my inspiration draining away like perspiration. This was proving to be a very dissatisfactory interview. I wonder how them other writers does find out things from people if all of them noncommittal as my boy? How the arse I was to make my Memoirs topical and gripping if chaps won’t loosen up and spill the beans? I could imagine that Master Farouk might turn out to be even more taciturn than Faizull.

  ‘What sort of guy is Farouk?’ I ask. ‘Is his life as interesting as yours?’

  ‘He will be back later,’ Faizull say. ‘You can ask him yourself.’

  I decided to make one last effort. ‘Boy,’ I say warmly, ‘if I tell you about the things that happen to me in this country! White man spit on me, they lock me up in jail and throw away the key, they refuse to give me any work. I have some harrowing and terrifying experiences. How about you?’

  ‘You are the one who should go on This Is Your Life,’ he say.

  I went back upstairs and open a can of beer. I wasn’t beaten, I was only taking a break, planning various avenues of research, and plotting some strategy and stratagems of how to go about this new enterprise.

  A few days later, I was seated near the rear window which overlook the back of the house, mulling over a fresh chapter, when I hear a bleat.

  Now, you don’t hear a bleat in London. You hear traffics, and all the other various sounds of milling humanity, but you don’t hear a bleat, nor a moo, nor a neigh, or even a bark, as the dogs is so well-trained. So when I hear this bleat, I really didn’t believe. But I hear it again.

  Bob was sitting across the room looking at a Spiderman comic.

  ‘Bob,’ I say, ‘do you hear anything?’

  ‘Like what?’ he ask.

  ‘Come over here,’ I say, ‘and listen.’

  Bob come and both of we listen. We hear it again.

  ‘It sounds like a moo,’ Bob say.

  ‘Oh no. It’s a bleat,’ I say.

  ‘Well, an animal of some sort,’ he compromise. ‘But I have never heard a bleat in London.’

  ‘Nor me,’ I say.

  Bob lean against the glasspane and look down into the backyard.

  ‘Hello!’ he say. ‘There’s something down there in the bush.’

  I look. I have not described the backyard before because it really shame me. It is like a junkyard and a piece of jungle in one. It is a dumping ground for old rusty bedspring and break-up furniture and old cookers and a miscellany of other jetsam and flotsam, not only from present occupants but what left from the previous tenants. I try to get Bob to clean it up once, and hire a skip to take it away, but he never got around to it. That’s the junkyard part I just tell you about. The jungle part, well, a miscellaneous wild variety of flora and fauna was running riot behind there: if I had Tarzan as a tenant it would of been ideal for him.

  What Bob saw, and what I see, was a sheep munching at some scrubby grass that manage to defy the environment and thrive. It was tethered to a rusty car door, and it did finish the grass nearby and was straining to reach further, that’s why it was bleating.

  The sight was unusual, to put it mildly.

  ‘What that sheep doing down there, Bob?’ I ask.

  ‘Search me,’ he say. ‘Do you think it escaped from the zoo?’

  ‘And found its way to Shepherd’s Bush, eh?’ I say facetiously, but the witticism was lost on Bob.

  Now, I know it had a chap in the market what keep live chickens in coops, and you pick which one you want to buy and he slaughter it on the spot for you. But I didn’t know nothing about sheeps. Sheeps wasn’t in my scheme of things at all, and it present a conundrum.

  As we was speculating, we see Faizull come out with a pan of water and put it down near the sheep.

  ‘You want me to find out what’s going on?’ Bob ask anxiously, probably remembering how I had told him to keep on his toes.

  I wasn’t sure. I was adding two and two together rapidly in my mind and making five. The sight of Faizull minding sheep in my backyard was very intriguing. I feel as if I was on the track of something pertinent at last, because, just the day before, I did read in the newspapers about some Pakis in the Black Country slaughtering animals in their back gardens, and how the English people rise in arms against this barbaric custom.

  So what I tell Bob is no, I decide to play it cool, and see what Faizull was up to.

  The next evening me and Bob spy again, and see the sheep still there.

  ‘I think Faizull is starving the poor animal,’ Bob say.

  ‘It ain’t have much to feed on down there,’ I admit.

  ‘Couldn’t he give it some Kit-E-Kat or some Lassie?’ Bob was really getting anxious about the situation: you know what English people are like when it comes to animals. I used to wish I was a dog when I first come to Brit’n. ‘Aren’t you going to do anything about it, Moses?’ he went on.

  ‘Cool it,’ I say. ‘I want to see how this develops.’

  ‘You ought to report him to the RSPCA,’ Bob say. ‘If you don’t, I wi
ll. How can they keep a lamb? We are not a farm. I could understand if it were a dog or a cat. And even so, I don’t allow the tenants to keep pets.’

  Faizull come out with a pan of water, and while the sheep was drinking he was feeling it all over as if he wanted to see how fat it was getting.

  ‘Why is he doing that?’ Bob ask.

  I didn’t want to voice my suspicions lest Bob fly off the handle.

  ‘I think I’ll have a word with him,’ I say.

  I went downstairs and went outside and joined Faizull. When he see me he look startled.

  ‘That’s a nice sheep,’ I say, wanting to put him at ease, lest he get the wind up and spoil the chapter I was anticipating.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘On a farm.’

  ‘You don’t see people keeping sheep in London.’

  ‘It belongs to Farouk.’

  ‘You should have a proper pen.’

  ‘I know you have rules about not keeping pets. But we’ll get rid of it over the weekend.’

  ‘You’re going to sell it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Give it away?’

  ‘No. Listen Moses,’ he say, ‘you don’t have any objections if we slaughter it out here?’

  ‘Good gracious,’ I say, ‘you mean kill it? Why?’

  ‘It’s a religious feast-day on Sunday,’ he explain.

  ‘Couldn’t you get a leg o’ mutton from the butcher’s?’

  Faizull shake his head. ‘We don’t eat English meat. This has to be specially slaughtered. There are certain rites to be observed.’

  ‘I see, I see,’ I say, but at the same time look regretful. ‘I’m afraid it’s out of the question.’

  ‘If you allow me to do it, you can see for yourself on Sunday morning.’

  He was playing right into my hands, but I didn’t want to appear too willing unless I could get him to talk more freely and make my research easy.

  I frown. ‘This is very unusual. What will the neighbours say?’

  ‘You can have the neck,’ he say.

  I laugh. ‘There was a time when I might of been grateful for that, but I only eat chump chops or fillet now.’

  ‘All right,’ he say grudgingly.