The Meeting Point

by Austin Clarke

  The party (which Mrs. Burrmann had called a cocktail party, but which was now being renamed a dinner and cocktail party) was now a few hours off. Bernice was still working hard, making sandwiches and other tid-bits. Mrs. Burrmann shouted above the music, asking for ice. Bernice ignored her. She refused to tell herself she had heard; but she set about preparing the ice, nevertheless. “Estelle coming in, in exactly four or five hours and I haven’t heard a word yet from that princess in there, now asking me for ice, blind her!” When she took the ice, she found Mrs. Burrmann sitting on her favourite chair, a reclining creation of teak from Yugoslavia. She held up her glass to receive the ice. Her eyes were almost closed, as if she could not hear the music with them open. Bernice was hearing the music perfectly, and she had to serve ice. But why this woman close her eyes just to listen to this music? Man, this is music to make you want to dance and jump up and throw your dress over your head … “That is a very nice tune you playing, ma’am.” This caused Mrs. Burrmann to open her eyes. She sat up too.

  “Beethovun,” she pronounced, as if it was unquestionably beyond Bernice’s comprehension to know what the music meant. “Classical music.”

  “So, that is what it is!” The triumph in her voice was the triumph of new knowledge. “I like it, though. It sound real good.”

  “Beau-ti-ful!” Mrs. Burrmann tried to impress upon Bernice the genius of this creation. “I’m never tired of hearing the power and the conflict of this very great mind.…”

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” Bernice interrupted her, “but you want to know something? I don’t see nothing like power or conflicts in this music, as you telling me you could hear. It reminds me o’ women back home reaping corn, and putting that corn on their heads, and singing all the time they putting …”

  “I am sure, Leach, that you don’t really understand this symphony, dear.”

  “… and, a moment ago, just before I bring you this water and ice, I could swear that the music was telling me ’bout winds blowing, and a storm gathering up in the clouds and the skies.…” By this time, Bernice was talking to herself, because Mrs. Burrmann had left the room. She lingered for a while, looking at the dust jacket of the record. She decided she must own this record, to play it to herself, in her apartment when it got lonely and cold at night. Going back to the kitchen, she could hear Mrs. Burrmann moving about upstairs. Once or twice, Bernice stopped her work to ponder how and why this woman could be so offensive. Satan does always find work for idle hands; and that is what she is: idle hands. She was finding it difficult to concentrate on her work: her mind was on her sister arriving; and then it settled on the letter she had received from Lonnie back home, the day before. Pay-day don’t well come before I ain’t getting all kind o’ love-letter from that bastard. He think I up here to support a man? Well, he lie in hell! Man made for supporting woman, and not the other way round, Mister Lonnie. No, darling. But she took the letter out, and sat in the chair beside the refrigerator to read. Part of her mind was on the high-heeled movements upstairs. She did not want Mrs. Burrmann to catch her sitting down in the middle of the afternoon. Lonnie’s letter was written on crisp, expensive onionskin paper; and she wondered where he had stolen it, since he never had money. Darling, sweetheart Bernice (this salutation, which she had read four times, put a sharp pang of desire in her body. She had read it, last night, just before going to bed — just the salutation; but she didn’t read more, because she knew the rest of the letter would be asking for money, and telling her how he missed her “in that certain way.” Bernice was not strong enough to read this kind of letter, while she was alone, and uncomfortable in bed, thirsty for the warmth of a man’s body next to her skin. “Lonnie, when are you going to learn how to write me a love-letter like any other man would, without asking for money in the same sentence? Heh-heh, Lonnie, you is a real case, in truth,” she said, as if she was talking to him, across all those hundreds of miles) … this is Lonnie. I writing you because Christmas soon here, and things down here in Barbados still rough as hell with me. The sugar cane crop-season was a real bitch this year, Bernice. And the estates start the season laying off mens, right and left, like flies. I only had a five weeks job this crop-season. Furthermore, a piece of sickness had me flat flat on my back the whole of last month, and I had was to give up a little picking a fellow by the name of Boulee, who uses to be a garbage collector in a donkey cart in Christ Church parish, told me about. You remember Boulee? The job he told me about was a night watchman job at a new club open by a Canadian fellow whose name I can’t call to mind right this minute, because only heavy things like money resting on my mind these days … The letter made her think of her son, Terence. Terence was left with Mammy, with strict instructions not to let Terence see his father, Lonnie. The moment the plane took off from Seawell Airport, Bernice put Barbados and Lonnie out of her future plans. But she was going to send for Terence, when he was big enough, and put him through university, if she had to beat the brains into his head. That was her plan for her son. “Hope it won’t be too long, Lord, I hope it won’t be too long before Terence grow up.” She looked at Lonnie’s letter, put it down because she had to wipe the recollections of tears out of her eyes with the tail of her apron; and just as she was about to read it again, Mrs. Burrmann crept into the kitchen (she had already seen Bernice sitting down, in the middle of the afternoon!) as silent as Putzi, her cat, who followed her now, and who followed her everywhere she went. Bernice jumped up, and in her haste forgot the letter lying open on the kitchen counter.

  “I just this minute sit down here, ma’am, to rest my poor foots,” she said.

  Mrs. Burrmann ignored her. “I was dreaming,” she said. She seemed as if she was still in the dream. Bernice saw the lines from the pillow case, and from her fingers, etched into her face. These marks looked like wounds that did not cut deeply enough into the flesh to draw blood. “I was dreaming about a little boy.” She returned to the dream which was not too clear in its imagery. “Now, let’s see … this little boy, now that I think of it … I can’t for anything remember who he looked like … but this little boy, with a big head … I remember that … and big eyes … you know that little boy across the street … Mrs. Gasstein’s … what’s his name …? anyways, that little bastard wanted to make love to me …! ha-hah …” (Bernice went back in her mind, to this afternoon, when Wise Guy was in her kitchen: eeny-meeny-miney, moe! catch a dolphin … heh-heh-hehhh! … Well, what a terrible experience that would have been for that little boy …) Mrs. Burrmann then stretched her arms horizontal; and made her body look like a crucifix. The cat curled itself round her ankles. A sadness came over her face. “What a strange thing! I can’t remember the dream.”

  “Leach.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do you believe in dreams, Leach?”

  “Me, Mrs. Burrmann? Believe in dreams?”

  “Do you, really?”

  “Well, to tell the truth, ma’am, my whole life is one big never-ending dream.”

  Mrs. Burrmann either did not understand the meaning of Bernice’s words; or she was not concerned about them. She took up the cat, Putzi, and held it to her face. Putzi, black and sleek and sneaky, cuddled up like a naughty child in the spoiling hands of a doting parent; closed its eyes, because it was secure; and listened to Beethoven. Bernice saw the cat open its eyes and put its long pink tongue out, and plant a kiss with its tongue like a pink snake, right on Mrs. Burrmann’s mouth. Jesus Christ! this blasted woman and that cat! That cat will surely give her the tizzick, as good as a cent! I am sure that this woman believe in black magic and witchcraft. But the cat re-coiled itself into a black ball, in Mrs. Burrmann’s hands. Mrs. Burrmann told it, “Putziputziputzi, darling, mother’s gonna feed thee, eh, Putziputzi, eh? you’re a sweet person … (God blind her and that black cat in my kitchen! She must be sleeping with that blasted black cat, or something just as bad!) … eh, Putziputzi?” She was talking to Putzi, as if she had forgotten that he was a cat. She then put Put
zi down; and the cat, transformed from a person into a cat again, transformed itself into a horse-shoe token of goodluck, and curled itself against Bernice’s fat ankles. “Putzi loves you, too, Bernice,” Mrs. Burrmann said. (“Blind you, cat! if she wasn’t here, I would throw you right in a tub o’ hot water! Now, get to hell from offa me, cat! I don’t like cats.) Bernice smiled with the cat; and waited until Mrs. Burrmann had looked off, before she jabbed it with her toe.

  “Putziputzi,” she said, imitating Mrs. Burrmann.

  “I’m going out now.”

  “But wait, missis. And what about the party?”

  “Forget the party, I’m going out.”

  “Forget the party? But you mean to tell me, Mrs. Burrmann, that you had me stretched-out in this kitchen from the time I wake up this morning, till now, past five o’clock, and just like that, you telling me forget the party?”

  “Forget the party,” she said, and she took Putzi from the kitchen counter where he was eating some of the sandwiches, and put him on the floor, and called him after her, “Come Putziputziputzi, darling, come come, Putziputziputzi.…” The cat went to her like a black worm; it looked up into her eyes; aimed with its eyes and tensed its body, and then sprang into Mrs. Burrmann’s arms. “Honey!” She was still speaking to the cat.

  “That animal!” Bernice spat into the kitchen sink, as she said it; and then she ran hot water over the substance. She sat down as soon as Mrs. Burrmann went upstairs. The letter from Lonnie was still on her mind, and she wanted to remember what home was like … remember, at this present moment, because things resting heavy on my mind. Things real tough as I said, down here in this island, although we got the deep water harbour that Grantley Adams promised to the people since Adam was a boy in short pants. Christmas soon come, and I want to go to church five o’clock Christmas morning, at the Cathedral, because the news is that the new bishop of the island coming to preach there, and everybody say he is a good preacher who does preach long long sermons. I want you to try to get me in Canada one of these days, Bernice, because you will remember that the night before you left, we was talking about that. You remember? And the nice time we had behind Mammy’s paling, when I really thought you was my woman, and would help me out in the time of need? Well, that time come now. Cuthbert the tailor fellar, since he went up in the States and in Canada and all over the outside world, he now come back down here in Barbados, charging everybody something he named luxury tax, and if you don’t put that luxury tax inside Cuthbert hand, he not touching your suit at all.… “Not one blasted word that man ain’t say ’bout Terence! I don’t know if Terence sick, if Terence playing truant from school, if Terence walking ’bout with his backside at the door, if his pants wants mending, nothing at all he ain’t write.…”

  “I run all the way up here, Bernice, gal,” Dots was saying. She was still panting and sweating. She bent her head forward, and wiped the back of her neck, and her forehead, with the hem of her dress. “It so blasted cold, and I sweating like a mule, hah-hah!” Dots had waited very patiently, and somewhat peeved, to see the attention Bernice had given her winter coat: pulling out the sleeves and putting it on a hanger in her clothes cupboard. It didn’t make sense to Dots, to waste time on the coat, which had been given her by Mrs. Hunter, her employer. “Well, what gone wrong with you, this time, gal?”

  “Estelle.”

  “She’s not coming anymore?”

  “The quicker I leave Mrs. Burrmann,” Bernice said, already worked up, “the sooner I leave, the more better for me, and the better for her.”

  “Yes, gal. I understand. But I ask you ’bout Estelle.”

  “I think I hate that woman so much, that …” she paused, and then said, “that I could have kill her this afternoon.” This was what she wanted to say at first, but she didn’t think Dots would have appreciated it. She needed Dots: in times like this, when there was no other person on whom to lean for support.

  “But I don’t see it as a matter of hate, or hating, gal. Nor like, nor liking. I see it as a attitude. Gal, attitudes is things that don’t stand up for excuses like hate or love.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Bernice said. “I was much better off in Barbados, and … (Dots was thinking: like hell you was! you, like the rest o’ we, if you didn’t come up here, and if Canada didn’t rescue you, you would still be as poor as a bird’s arse) … though we didn’t have these modern conveniences, things wasn’t as bad.”

  “Give every man his due, gal. Give every bastard his due, and the world would be a better place and everybody would be happy.”

  Bernice went to the window, to look out, perhaps to see if the answer was written on the house where Brigitte worked. She didn’t see an answer there. After all, Dots was right: she was as poor as a bird’s arse, back in Barbados; and still, she couldn’t afford to let a stranger know that. (Dots was thinking; anybody would think this retired whore was really something back home. The way she carries on! “The work too hard,” “the missy too bad,” “she don’t have any money,” “the pay too small,” good Jesus Christ, Bernice, you was not the Queen o’ Barbados.) Bernice said, “Child, it is at this window, looking out almost every night, that I think I could see the meaning of the whole world.” Dots went to the window, not to look out, but to be near Bernice. She peered through the mists of warm breath blown against the window pane, out into the snow-banks, and she saw snow, and not the world, as Bernice boasted.

  “Snow, gal,” Dots said. “Snow, and more snow. Snow climbing up outta the sidewalk, and up on the houses like a thief climbing through a window.”

  This made Bernice mad. She thought Dots was regarding her as a mad woman. “It mean more to me. Dots, it mean and connote more to me than mere icicles and snow. In it, I can see that princess down there, and the way she tries to ride me and ill-treat me.” Dots disregarded her. She was thinking of her husband, Boysie: what that damn man up to now, I wonder. I wonder if Boysie really down there at Henry’s place, playing dominoes as he say he left home to play? Or if he is after some white woman, now?

  The two women were quiet now; silent, through the agreement of close friendship: Bernice, standing beside the window and Dots, sitting on a chair, looking into her lap to see if she could see there, the image of the white woman her husband was in bed with. Dots would look up; or pass gas, and then say, “Excuse, gal”; and Bernice would make another biting observation about her life in Canada. “Estelle coming in tonight, and up till now, she down there, hasn’t pick her teeth to me, saying Bernice, or Leach as she like to call me, go and meet Estelle.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Not one word.”

  “That is life!” She paused to allow the snow to fall, in silence. Then she added, “Estelle coming. But where she going live? With you?”

  “She not staying at the Royal York Hotel! I lives here! So my sister going to stay here, and get some o’ them benefits!”

  “Now you talking like a lady, with sense, gal.” Dots burst out laughing. “Don’t forget you have something on Mrs. Burrmann that you could use as blackmail. You have her, coming and going.” Bernice started laughing too, but the suggestion of blackmail made her serious. “What’s wrong with you, gal? You are Lady Bernice, now! You could milk her, with a stiff piece o’ blackmail, till she really turn white.”

  “Not blackmail, though.” Bernice was cautious, and very moral about this. “Oh God no, Dots. Mrs. Burrmann is bad, but she isn’t so bad. And blackmail ain’t a Christian-minded thing, neither.”

  “You too damn stupid.”

  Here, conversation stopped. Music was playing. Bernice smiled, and leaned her head to listen. Bernice looked at the letter from Mammy, reading it to herself, all the time making facial expressions in comment, as the letter pleased, or displeased her. Bernice wondered why Mammy’s letter, dated a week earlier than Lonnie’s, had reached Toronto a day later. (“Lord!” said Dots, making a comment on her boredom, her misery in Bernice’s company and her general mental
state.) The letter told Bernice, Dear Bernice, love, I have received the money which you posted to me in March last … it was now March again.… And I have been reposing myself at the front window, at which you used to sit, in the evening, waiting for the postman to knock. I remember that you used to sit down there, and sing those beautiful songs which you learned at the Fontabelle Christian Mission Church in Christ. And everytime I see Berry, the postman, pass across on his bicycle, my heart gives a shudder, and tears sometimes come to my eyes, because I know then that you have not sent me anything.… “A year pass already?” she asked the letter.

  “What you say, gal?” asked Dots, coming awake.

  “I talking to myself, child.” Dots apparently went back to her dreaming; and Bernice to the letter. She threatened to let Mammy sit down at that window till the undertaker removed her, before she would send another penny to her. You have not remembered me. You have forsaken your own mother. Don’t you know that you left a child behind you? I mean Terence. And Terence has been sick every day for the past month.… It saddened Bernice very much to think of home, and of Terence. She must withdraw some money tomorrow from her bank, and send it for Terence. But she couldn’t help remember that poor as Mammy was, she still raised two daughters, Estelle and herself; and that she sent them to school, and to church, plus Sunday school every Sunday. Mammy did her best to make them the two “most decent girl children in this village”; and she went further and sent Estelle to high school, which at that time was very expensive. Bernice had already decided that school didn’t like her: but it was really the other way round — she hadn’t the brains to pass the entrance examination; and she started to work at the Marine Hotel, as a housekeeper. She remembered the small, one-room leaking house; and the flattened skillets that once contained butter from Australia (which butter neither she nor Mammy could afford to eat) which Mammy nailed on the roof as shingles to keep out the sun and the rain and the wind; this house — like many others of the fifty in the village, lodged on loose coral stones — was their mansion, their castle which hid the penury from the eyes of the other poor villagers. The worst thing she remembered about Barbados, and home and the village, was the closet which always had cockroaches infesting and infecting it; with its oval hole in the middle of the seat like the hole in a coffin; and the ten-gallon galvanized bucket underneath (“What that bucket used to have in it, Bernice?”) catching everything that dropped: filth, excrement, the blood, the rags-and-the-blood; and once upon a time, something that came from Bernice’s womb, or belly or stomach (and Mammy never called it by its name) which had to be got rid of, because Mammy said so, because Bernice was too young for that … and although Terence has been sick, that no-good man you found yourself with, I mean Lonnie; Lonnie does not even come round and say, Take this, to Terence, meaning a six-cent piece. At this point, Dots came alive, to ask what time it was.