The steps of this cathedral in Toronto are easy to climb. He can climb them without raising his shoes too high. And he can enter this one. And he knows he can enter this one without shoes on his feet, for he had seen hippies doing that during the summer months. “A man who ain’ accustom to shoes don’t walk-’bout without shoes, like how these young Northamericans does do, yuh! That is a different story altogether, yuh!” He was at the main portico, and he could hear people inside. There were actually people inside this cathedral talking! Now, back home in Barbados, you couldn’t talk in a church. Not talk, you had was to whisper in the white man church back there, boy! Whisper, so you won’t wake up the holy spirits and the deads that was buried inside the walls of the cathedral-church, man. You couldn’t do that. Talk? In the white man church, godblindyou, and let a police come and throw a couple o’ bull-pistle lashes in your arse, and then lockup your arse for talking in the presence o’ God? Man, there wasn’t nobody, nobody at all, you hear me? nofuckingbody ignorant enough to talk even in a church, a ordinary church then, not to mention in that big cathedral that we have back there on Roebuck Street, or Crumpton Street, or is it in Bush Hall … anyhow, no man would be such a gorilliphant to have talk’ even on the doorstep o’ that big powerful cathedral, with the choirs dressed so pretty in their crimpson robes with them ruffs looking so pretty just like a fresh white sugarcake, or like goat-milk from Mammy sheeps, and with the organiss parading ‘pon that blasted organ like if he is king self, and the Lord Bishship that man with the fat red face and the big belly, rolling-off them words offa his tongue in the prettiest Kings and Queens English and Latin from the Classicks, so blasted sweet that everybody who ever heard him, and those who didn’t have the privilege to have hear’ him, but only hear’ ’bout him through hearing and talking, man, that Lord Bishship from up in England could talk more prettier than the six o’clock news ‘pon the BBC radio! That was a Lord Bishship! And that was a cathedral!
But inside this cathedral there are people moving about, and just as Boysie took off his hat, to acknowledge his lesser mortality in the powerful hanging walls of banners and church regalia, before he could get accustomed to this heavenly gloom, this majesty, this strange-smelling presence, the organ was roaring from a cavern below him, deep down into the church basement and belly, and then climbing the walls with the banners and other things hanging on them like ivy, rising, rising until his head started to spin.
So he sat down. This was too powerful to take while standing. Besides, he had always been ordered to sit in a cathedral. Only God was powerful enough, he was told, or his representative the vicar or the Lord Bishop, to stand up in a cathedral. “Boy, always remember, if it is the last thing outta all the decencies that I drive in your damn hard head, always remember to humble yourself in the presence o’ God, the Lord Jesus Christ.” He smiled. He could see the face of the lady in Apartment 101, and the face, from a distance, of the strange woman from the subway; and he could see his mother’s face, in that one smile. They all smiled alike. His mother: what is she doing now? He caught himself. His mind was straying again. His mother had died even before he left Barbados.
“Mendelsunn!”
He had to remember he was in a church, more than in a church, a cathedral. The organ was playing Mendelssohn. His eyes were opened by the music and the power inside it, by the surroundings, and he could see clearly that there was a wedding. The organ was playing the Wedding March. And he knew it, and it became very clear to him, the meaning of things in this context. He also remembered that he had not turned off his record player. But he was happy here. He even made a promise to himself, to come to church here one of these Sundays. But he was not too serious about this. He knew he would never come. He liked the music. The young couple of Canadian bride and Italian bridegroom came cautiously down the aisle towards him, carefully not treading upon the dress hem nor veil nor marching out of time to this very slow waltz whose time might or might not capsize their lives the moment they got outside the door, into the car, covered with artificial flowers, the loud horn blowing, the homemade wine and the liquor flowing like Niagara Falls, and then eventually with the bridegroom too drunk to drive for better and the worse of his promises and oaths to the same Niagara Falls, to find out with this ironical legitimacy whether she was in fact intact, a virgin, as her parents said she was … and he was left alone, for hours afterwards, in the cathedral to ponder on these things, with the organist giving him a recital of various kinds of organ music, as if it was a command performance. And when it was all finished, when he was washed by the blood of the music, with the Iamb, from one of the hanging church banners now within his heart, his body cleaned-out and rinsed by the music, like Sunday castor oil, before he could decide to rise and put (as he had promised to do, in the fulfilled acknowledgement of the concert) a dollar into the Poor Box, the organist emerged from the darkness that is so common in temples, and when he got close to him, he said, himself bathed in the perspiration of the music, “Good afternoon!”
Bernice came to visit, and she brought along her young man. She had promised to do so. Boysie did not know they were coming, probably had not remembered, but Dots did. So when she went to answer, and let them in, Boysie took the opportunity to go to the bathroom. He had diarrhoea. After work last night, he had found himself in a bar on the main street in the city, where they had a rhythm and blues band from America; and he had gone in for his drink after work, to help take the taste of work out of his system, and had remained long past the time he would normally have spent. He was comfortable in all the noise and the laughter; and the West Indian men and the black Canadians, and some few men from America, judging from their antics when they walked and from their speech, had not troubled him at all. He was at peace within all this noise. He could not give the reasons for this new inner security, but his happiness held him there drinking until the place closed. And he had had to breathe in deeply, and actually tell himself he was not drunk. The diarrhoea this morning had addled that enjoyment. The buzzer was pressed again. He was rushing into the bathroom again and closing the door. And when he got his trousers down, and had seated himself in the most comfortable position on the toilet bowl which Dots had covered with some imitation fur material that was white; and when he had taken a deep breath to control the thunder and the brown geyser (“Shit! I hate to have these runnings! And with strangers around!”), Dots was answering the door. Boysie closed the bathroom door more firmly. He reached over and grabbed the can of air freshener. Just then, he had forgotten to hold his breath, and the explosion occurred, and in his panic, he heard his wife outside shouting, “Come in, come in, come in, man. Come in!” She was covering up the evidence.
Boysie could not even relax in the bathroom. “I have to shit with a can o’ air freshener in my blasted hand!”
“How you?” Bernice’s voice came through the bathroom. If he could hear them out there, could they also hear him in here? So he tried to keep quiet, and pass the time and the Scotches and the chili con carne which he had eaten from an all-night stand on Yonge Street, and the gas that was in his system, hoping that Dots outside with the guests would anticipate each explosion and each eruption of the brown geysers inside his system, and raise her voice again to cover the evidence of sound. And then he broke out laughing. “Imagine me, in my own blasted apartment, and I can’t shit as I like for fear that people out there hear me! Jesus Christ!” But he held on more firmly to the air freshener and to his self-control. Sound was one thing, he knew, but smell was another. “… and I thought you would like to meet …” He hadn’t quite heard the young man’s name, because the toilet bowl held the echo.
“You forget that I met …” That was Dots’s voice. He couldn’t mistake that voice anywhere. Dots’s voice was a trained voice.
“Oh, that’s right! I forget that you meet him already …” Boysie became alert. Where had she met him, this young man, before? But he had to concentrate on his business, and get outside to greet his guests, and he ha
d to be careful that he had wiped properly, because “this kind of thing always bothers me to do clean …”
Bernice looked good. She was wearing another new dress. It was new to Dots. And to the young man, who had hinted to Bernice that she should wear her styles a few years younger. This one was too young. It was a short black dress, fitting almost too close about the waist, and bringing out the uneven bulges and form of her hips. If you looked closely, you could see the outline of her panties beneath the material. The sleeves were long, and the neckline was cut low, low enough for the eyes to wonder and the hand to wander, mentally, about what was contained deeper down. Her shoes were in the latest style, with thick soles; and Dots saw that her pantihose were charcoal grey, and when she reached down to pick up Bernice’s scarf which had fallen as she took off her spring coat (although spring was not yet here, but the day was pleasant in its temperature and disposition), that Bernice’s calves were still firm, and that the blue veins were hardly visible.
This bitch looking more younger than me! This young man must be good for her. “Come in, come in, come in, and have a seat,” Dots said, with both their coats in her hands, showing the man to a seat. “So, how Lew is, today?”
“Fine, thank you,” the young man said, not quite at ease. He had watched Dots closely as he came in, and he had stolen a glance at Bernice, and in the comparison, he was a bit uneasy that he was going with a woman so old. For even although Bernice was taking great care to look younger, and was wearing her hair in the natural style, which though it was almost completely grey, still gave her a youthful look, he still was not unaware that he was taking his grandmother to bed. His own grandmother had been fifty when he left Jamaica ten years ago. Age meant something to him. But Dots, as he saw her, must be somewhere in her thirties … his mind was wandering.
“This boy always studying,” Dots said.
“Oh,” he said, and tried not to look as if his attention was straying. He glanced around the room, took in the furniture, and liked the standard of living of his woman’s friends. He could be comfortable in this home.
“We are going to a concert later on,” Bernice was saying. Dots felt she was behaving like a girl in love. “We are going to hear the Toronto Symphony play. Lew says that they are playing a very good symphony this evening, and he wants me to hear it.”
“You living good, girl! You living!”
“I don’t know if you are versed in classical music,” the young man began; and Dots said to herself, Looka this young bastard! “But the concert is pure Haydn.”
“Hiding?” Dots said, ready to burst out laughing. Boysie inside the bathroom had heard the young man, and he liked him for his preference in music: he and this young man could have something to talk about. Boysie, too, was on the verge of another explosion. “Hiding?” Dots asked again, waiting for the correct moment to pull off this joke which was an old one among them. All except this young man. “Hiding?” she said; and when the moment never came, she added lamely, “Hiding from who?”
And they all three of them burst out into a laughter that shattered their souls and their bodies of any pretence. The young man, who was now at ease, uttered a curse just below his breath, the joke was so good. And inside the bathroom, Boysie, who was laughing, felt the time was opportune for his own explosion into the toilet bowl. And he did just that, and felt relieved, and certain now that he had come to the end of his panic. They were laughing outside. He regained dominion over his kingdom.
“Where Boysie?” Bernice asked.
He did not hear Dots’s answer. He was pulling up his trousers.
“Estelle says she sorry she couldn’ come. But as soon as she gets Mbelolo off, she coming, she says.”
They had changed their minds about christening Estelle’s son “Boy,” which was Boysie’s choice (but not a serious one); and instead they had spent weeks searching through a book on African names, until they came up with, and decided upon, “Mbelolo.” Mr. Burrmann, the child’s father, was with them during the search for names, and it was he who actually chose this one. Nobody could remember what “Mbelolo” meant, but they liked the name nevertheless.
“Today is visiting day, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Mr. Burrmann comes as regular as the postman. The way how that man looks after his son! And after Estelle! And the things he does for Mbelolo. Sometimes, I have to ask for forgiveness for all the things I said in the past against Mr. Burrmann.”
“Well, that happened a long time ago. Still, I can’t stomach his wife, Mistress Burrmann.” Boysie was listening. It was the first time he had heard such compassion from his wife. He was alarmed to witness it. For Estelle had got pregnant from Mr. Burrmann, and Mr. Burrmann had treated Estelle a little roughly before he had been able to face the responsibility of his action. Boysie was the only one in their group who had tried to understand Mr. Burrmann’s reservations; and the others gave him hell for it. Dots was outspoken in her condemnation. Mr. Burrmann, she said, was nothing more than a blasted criminal. Boysie listened now to hear what more she would say about Bernice’s former employer. She surprised him so much lately about her views on things which, although they never discussed them, were yet matters of great importance to her. “Estelle loves Mr. Burrmann, he takes care of her and looks after his son, and I don’t see nothing, anything, wrong with that.” She appealed to the young man for support. The young man nodded. “How old Mbelolo is now?”
“Four, going ‘pon five,” Bernice reminded her. “And suppose you see him! Bright? Child, that boy is so bright? Bright isn’t the word, then. His father have him going to the Toronto French School, and already he tell me, the boy’s name is down on some private school’s list. I think the name he mention’ was Upper Canada College.”
“Well well well, if it isn’t Bernice!” Boysie was standing in the middle of the room. His face was washed, his shirt pushed too tidily and tightly into his trousers, he was feeling relieved and very expansive in his greeting. “And who is this young gentleman who likes classical music so good?”
“Where was you? Listening to people’s conversation?” Bernice teased him.
“Emptying his guts, that’s what,” Dots said from the kitchen. Boysie waited to see whether she was saying it in a teasing manner, or whether she had already begun her practice of “bad-talking” him in front of strangers. He was not sure which way she had said it. But he made a point to be watchful. “Gal, all this man been doing all morning is running from the kitchen to the toilet!”
“Pleased to meet you,” the young man said.
“You too!” Boysie said, sizing him up. “The name is Boysie.”
“This is my young man, Boysie.” The young man winced in his heart. “Boysie, this is Llewellyn Prescott that I was telling …”
“I know, I know. Llewellyn, pleased to meet you. My name is Bertram. But around here, they call me Boysie.”
“Don’t let that man fool you!” Dots said, bringing the drinks. “From the time I know this man, he was Boysie. What is so bad about the name, Boysie?”
“Well, you know, Missis Cumberbatch …”
“Call me Dots! I not ashamed o’ Dots!”
“Well, all right, Dots, but I still have to call you Missis Cumberbatch, as a sign of respect, seeing you are older …”
“Old?” Dots was screaming now. Months before, she was able to make a joke about this too; but with Bernice sporting this young man all over Toronto, and with her own private grief over getting old before she had accomplished what she wanted in life, and with Boysie now outstripping her … “Old? Looka, boy, who the hell are you calling old?” And very wickedly, she patted herself on her backside, and came very close to him as she did it, patting herself again and again, the sound of her hand on her fat body, making a noise which was like whiplashes on Boysie’s sensibilities. “You call that old?”
“Oh my God,” Boysie said in his heart. “Something is happening to this woman.”
“You were telling me something very importan
t, Llewellyn.”
“Yes, I was going to say that, that … I was going to say that in my own opinion, it is extremely important that a person determines what name he wants himself to be called by, by which he wants himself to be called. There are great psychological reasons for that.” Bernice was looking very proud at her man. Dots, who felt she had got the worse in the exchange, merely handed the young man the drink, and chose a seat opposite him. Boysie was paying attention. “Thanks, for the drink. The whole question about names is that it is the first stage of self-determination. For you see, if you could be called by any name which anybody wants to call you by, by which anybody wants to call you, then you see that you are not free, in a very delicate sense of the term.”
“Oh God,” Boysie said in his heart, “he is a gorilliphant.” This is the kind of talk he wanted to hear a long time ago. Could this young man also explain the new language he was seeking to understand and master? Could he also explain, in those same psychological terms, exactly the meaning of the strange woman with the brown winter coat?
“Yuh know something, the way you just put that tells me you are a damn bright man.”
“Didn’t I tell you so, Dots?” Bernice said. Dots was left out of the conversation.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said.
“I am sorry, Missis Cumberbatch, if you feel that I have slighted you,” the young man began, speaking in the way Boysie himself wished he himself could use language, with that amount of ease, as if the words were completely in his command. His wife’s efforts to speak properly in strange company were actually not very successful, he realized, since her words did not come out as naturally as this young man’s. Perhaps you had to have a lot of education to put your words, and the thoughts those words had to convey, in the way this young man was doing.
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