The Bigger Light

by Austin Clarke

  “Was it he? Or wasn’t it? Was it Boysie that you see? Did he see you?”

  “I don’t know. All this could be in my mind. And do you know how I happened to see him? A man had just dropped something, a plate or a bottle or a cup, and I wasn’t paying much attention, ’cause I wasn’t feeling too comfortable with this orderly-fellow. A woman in my place … but the moment I looked up, the person was gone!”

  “My God!”

  “What had me really nervous, more nervous than when I went in that place, was that, Bernice … I couldn’t get that man’s hands from all over me … whilst crossing the back-over, that man’s hand was all over my behind. And this car. A new car. Black and with windows that you could barely see a person through. In this damn car, and I swear … no, it couldn’t be! We only have the panel truck. And unless I am a blind woman, a panel truck isn’t no motto-car, but I would swear that …”

  “Don’t worry yourself. It’s only your conscience. And conscience could ride a person like hell, like if that person was a racehorse. It’s probably only your conscience, Dots. And your conscience is clear.”

  “I could have sworn blind that …”

  … animal beauty competition, listen ’bout confusion!

  “And the moment Boysie stepped in this house that night after work, he put on that blasted record ’bout floes and floes and angel’s hair, and straightaway I was frightened, ’cause I thought he had seen me.”

  “Conscience, child. You know you couldn’t do a thing like that unless he had driven you to do it.”

  “Lemme look in here again, Bernice, and check to see if Boysie really have a suit like the one I think I see that man was wearing. Because, I could swear …”

  “This is a nice car, man, a damn nice car,” the young man was saying, as he shifted his seat. “New too, eh?” Boysie was watching him closely. He wasn’t sure whether he should tell this man not to mention the car, or whether he should tell him and then bind him to silence. But he knew that he could not yet bind him to this moral silence, since he did not have anything on him. Perhaps, if he could get him to talk about Bernice, and about his intentions, perhaps if he could get him to admit to something. But this bastard is so bright, Boysie thought, it would take a great deal of cleverness and language to outwit him. However, Boysie’s common sense told him that he could have something over this young man. This man was bright. But he was hungry. He was hungry for money. And it looked as if he was hungry for woman, in the wrong way. And the way he was dressed, so extravagantly for a student, told Boysie that Bernice must be spending quite a lot of money on him. “You are real cool, Boysie!”

  “How you mean? This car? Oh Christ, man. What you expect from a old hard-stones man like me? I have been working like a slave in this country. Hard labour. Now I am reaping the rewards.”

  “You are self-employed, man. You are a capitalist. And to be self-employed in a civilization like this is the first step to liberation and self-realization.”

  “I don’t know what the arse you’re talking about, Junior, but I worked hard as shite for everything I got today! Now if you mean that I could go and come as I like, buy a bottle of Scotch and things like that, without feeling the pinch, and if that means liberation, well then … But in a way, I see eye to eye with you. One hundred per cent.”

  “Goddamn!” Boysie heard something of Henry in this exclamation. He thought the man was commenting on what he had just said. It was only after a while, when the man had actually turned his head to follow the couple, did Boysie find out what had caused the exclamation. Boysie knew then that he had him within his grasp.

  “You don’t object to that?”

  “What?”

  “The man and the woman.”

  “Hell, no!”

  “You think he’s a West Indian?”

  “No, man. That man is a’ African. The way he walking with his head high in the fucking air? I could talk straight to you, but around Bernice, well you know, I have to watch my language. After all, she’s paying my fucking bills.” He said it so crudely that Boysie knew he was learning a lot about this young man. “I am going to call you Boysie. All right?”

  “Yuh coming down to my level, now!”

  “We is men!” And the thing the young man felt he had to tell Boysie about was that he was already bored, and ashamed, to be with Bernice.

  “You believe in dreams?”

  “Dreams? What kinds?”

  “Just dreams.”

  “I thought you was thinking of wet dreams!”

  Boysie laughed, but this man’s crudeness was upsetting him. “Just dreams.” He wondered whether he should tell this young man about the dreams he had.

  “Man, I believe in life, not fantasy. And after life, money. A pity Bernice doesn’t have enough. Although she thinks she’s the richest black bitch in Toronto!” He laughed a very sneering laugh, and Boysie felt suddenly very sorry for Bernice. “Boysie, man, I believe in life, money and pussy!”

  “You’re something else!”

  “I shocked you, didn’t I?”

  “Shocked me?”

  “I know you. From somewhere. Like I’ve seen you somewhere before. The moment I met you, the minute you came in the room, I knew I knew you.”

  “I know you, too.”

  “That is a philosophical point.”

  “A point, though.”

  “Yeah, granted. You scored on that. But I was talking, philosophically. I know you, by which I mean, I know you as a type, and …”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “I was looking at a book in your place with pictures in it, before you came out of the bathroom. You had the shittings, didn’t ya?”

  “You know that too, boy?”

  “It was written on your face.” Boysie passed his hand over his face, looked curiously at his hand, saw nothing, and then smelled his hand. He looked at the young man. “That’s it! The smell. Speaking philosophically, of course, you understand …”

  “You want to know something, Lew? If I didn’t like you. If I didn’t feel that I could learn from you, and I don’t know if there is anything you could ever learn from me. But if I didn’t understand you, I would tell you right now, Get to-arse outta this car! — philosophically speaking, you understand.”

  “Of course!”

  Bernice and Dots were in the bedroom, sitting on the bed. Bernice liked the way Dots kept her bedroom. It was so bare: there were never any “women-things” in Dots’s bedroom, she felt. And it was always so tidy. A man, Bernice surmised, liked to see “women-things” in a bedroom. Bottles and curlers and lipstick and perfume and lots and lots of bottles; and there must be a smell to the bedroom, too. Why else would a man want to come into a woman’s bedroom? Bernice now looked around the bedroom. She saw the large bed, tidily made up (Dots had learned this craft during the crash training period for domestics back in Barbados; and later at the hospital, and had kept the knowledge) with a pink bedspread (“You really have something young in your soul, girl!”); a mahogany dresser with a doily on it, and on the doily was a Bible, which she knew Dots very seldom opened; another chest of drawers which she surmised was Boysie’s since it had a tie on it (“No man would dare to be untidy or even comfortable in a room like this! and he won’t dare being a man, neither!”); a large ugly television in a cream cabinet; and two pictures on the walls: one was above the head of the bed, and it said GOD BLESS OUR HOME; and the other was a picture of a palm tree on a sandy beach with very blue water. The floors were immaculately clean.

  “Well, we didn’t find that suit.” Bernice was becoming tired and bored.

  “What you think ’bout adoption?”

  “What you mean, adoption?”

  “A child.”

  “Are you adopting a child?”

  Dots got up and went to her dresser. She straightened the doily and then lifted the Bible. She flipped the pages and took out a piece of paper. It was a clipping, an advertisement for adoption. Bernice took the clipping and
read: “ ‘Jane was lying flat on her back with both legs in traction when this picture was taken.’ What ‘traction’ means?”

  “Read on, you would get it.”

  “ ’The position didn’t affect her cheerful disposition and certainly didn’t dim her sweet warm smile. But then Jane is used to splints and casts and bandages because she’s had a lot of them. The darling was born with a long-name condition called os-os-osteo …’ ”

  “Osteogenesis imperfecta!” Dots had memorized the pronunciation. “I had a hell of a time learning this word. But a intern-doctor helped me pronounce it. It means ‘brittle bones.’ ”

  It was a fairly long story about Jane. Bernice was too tired to read all of it. She wanted instead to find out what was happening to Dots.

  “But why are you doing this? There’s lots of children up for adoption. The newspapers are full o’ them. Every day, every week. Children and more children. And healthy ones at that. So why you had to pick this one?”

  “I love her eyes.”

  “You love her eyes. What about the rest of her body? You didn’t know that this child is a invaleed, a cripple? Are you thinking of bringing a invaleed child into Boysie’s home?”

  “Her eyes haunt me at night, Bernice. The fact that she’s suffering from osteogenesis, well, I see all kinds o’ diseases every day in the hospital.”

  “Okay, okay, Dots. But number one, a invaleed. Number two, the child is adopted. Number three, the child’s background. Did you consider these things?”

  “Bernice, you don’t understand. I am a nurse! Not really a registered nurse, but enough of a nurse to know what to do and how to take care o’ Jane. And you can never know how much concern, how much pain, how much love you have inside your heart until you face such pain in children.” Dots was wiping her eyes again, with the back of her hand. Her eyes were beginning to get red. “I already called about Jane.”

  “Boysie know about this?”

  Without Dots’s answering, Bernice knew she hadn’t told her husband. “First the cat. And now a blasted invaleed? Dots, are you going out of your mind?”

  “It’s sad, eh? You have your young man. And he fulfils some o’ the sadness in your heart. And in your body. I have only Jane. A invaleed as you call her, but to me she is a human being, a person. And even the fact that Jane is a invaleed — we can’t get away from that fact — but that brings her more closer to me … I know she would be expecting love from me … But I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” She got up from the bed, and took the clipping from Bernice, and put it back carefully between the pages of her Bible. “I says a prayer for my child, every night. For Jane.” She came back, sat beside Bernice, and sighed. “At night. In this bed. I am so lonely. And Boysie my husband could be laying down right here beside me. Imagine that. When he was out cattawoulling at night, I used to worry. But I knew he would come home sometime. I still knew that I had something hard, something alive beside me. Now? Child? The cat there on the floor keeps my company in bed. Before I found Jane. And I would put my leg out to touch Boysie. And the bad feeling I would get from touching him! Not that he gives me this bad feeling. But at nights I am so tired from working all day in that Doctor’s Hospital that nothing hard like a man could bring comfort to me. That’s where the cat comes in.” She sighed and called out, “Cat-catty-catty-cat!” The cat came obediently. She seemed relieved. She was the only one who showed the cat any love. And the cat had got accustomed to her voice. “Read this.”

  Bernice was hesitant. She thought it would be another clipping about an adopted child. It was not. She gave it back to Dots and said, “Boysie write that? You kidding!”

  “My husband is a writer, nowadays!”

  “What he know ’bout writing letters to the editor? Llewellyn is a writer. He says he is writing a book o’ poems about liberation and freedom. But I didn’t know that Boysie was doing writing too? Just like Henry, eh? I almost said I wonder what became o’ Henry, forgetting that he dead.”

  “Dead and gone!”

  “The Lord rest his soul.”

  “Life!”

  “Death, too, Dots. Don’t forget death. Lemme read this letter that Boysie write. Dear Sir, If the TTC — that’s the Toronto Transport thing, isn’t it? Thought so! — If the TTC is going to issue one dollar family fun passes, why not lower the fare for the people who have to work on Sundays and holidays, especially nurses? Hospitals can’t close down on Sundays and holidays, you know. Bertram Cumberbatch, Toronto … Hurrah, for Boysie! I like that piece where he say, ‘You know,’ right at the end. That’s talking to them like a real Bajan, eh? And the ‘nurses’-part, too.”

  “Boysie isn’t as hard sometimes as even I make out. You know, he is a strange man. And I suppose he must be going through a lot. Many times I would want to go up to Boysie, and hug him and bring him close to me and give him a good screwing in bed, like I was once able to do years back, or even just to talk to him. Bernice, you don’t know that I can’t even talk to my husband! Something’s always holding me back. I can’t talk to him, Bernice. I can’t utter one sentiment to my husband. I feel as if he feels I did something to him. And the minute I am too close to him, if I go close to him, standing up, or when we are in bed here, something goes off in me. And I suppose that something goes off in him, too. And I can’t talk to him at these times. Bernice, I can’t even talk to my own husband.”

  “Now-now-now-now, now!” Bernice was shaken “Now, dear-dear-dear-dear, there!”

  Dots’s tears were dropping on Bernice’s new dress. Bernice eased her off a little, not to save the dress, for this was friendship too deep for such a material blemish, but rather to help her wipe her face. The cat, probably attracted by the changed voice, probably mistaking the sobbing for its call, jumped into the bed and then into Dots’s lap. “Look, go to hell, you damn cat!” she said, and tossed the cat back on to the floor.

  “Meeeoooowwwwwwww!”

  “Dots!” Boysie screamed, “why don’t you feed that goddamn cat, before I drown the bastard!” He was back home.

  Boysie had been visiting the lady in Apartment 101 for some time now. He did not know he was capable of visiting a woman who had no husband and no man without wanting to seduce her, or at least to bring the question of sex into her mind. And it was this absence of the sensual which first got him worried about his virility and then about the relationship with the lady. She had called him one morning as he was going out, to tell him, confidentially, “You understand that is between yourself and me, eh, Mr. Cumberbatch,” that her son was in some trouble at school. This was the eldest son. He was fourteen, and was only in grade seven. And his teachers were treating him as if he were retarded, she said. But there was another problem which made her very sad, as she told Boysie about it. This was a remark made by the principal of the school, who said that her son was bound to be that way, “that way,” because there was no “father-figure” in the boy’s home. Mrs. James did not cry when she told this to Boysie, she just became very bitter, and with a sadness which she felt could have coloured all her future dealings with the school, if she had not tried to get over it.

  Boysie was faced with the problem of going to the boy’s school to see the principal. He had never entered a school in Toronto before; and he did not know what to expect. As a matter of fact, he felt that Mrs. James had trapped him into going with her, and had seduced him into going, by some implied feeling that he was now the “father-figure” in her home. She did not mean this, of course; but Boysie, being very sensitive about these things, felt this was the interpretation of his accompanying her to the boy’s teacher and principal.

  The meeting with the principal went surprisingly well. Boysie had entered the office with the feeling that the school was wrong and that Mrs. James was right. He made sure he wore his best three-piece suit; perhaps his appearance might make him look like a lawyer. The least he could appear, and be mistaken to be, was a very important person, a man in his position. It turned out that the principal
was very understanding: “Mr. Cumberbatch, as an immigrant myself, I know what these children under my care go through. I couldn’t speak English until I was nine years old, and I suffered taunts from the kids in my class. All I am trying to have Mrs. James do, Mr. Cumberbatch, is to make sure that the boy does his homework. I did not even tell her before meeting you here with her that the boy has been absent from school without an excuse from his parent.” Mrs. James did not like the principal’s attitude, but she did not say so to his face. She said so afterwards, as they were walking through the snow. But she could say no more than this. The boy’s record did not bear out her words, because Boysie helped him do his homework one night, and the boy was very backward, indeed. But Boysie did not like having to be depended upon to be the boy’s “uncle,” and he would refuse, later on, to allow himself to be sucked into this manless home. But all the time he saw himself being sucked in, nevertheless.

  That was how he found himself taking the boy on Saturday afternoon to the Colonial Tavern to listen to a jazz group. When he picked the boy up he was excited. He pretended that the boy was his own son, and he felt the boy did look like his son; but the nearer they got to the Colonial, the more nervous Boysie became: he was taking on a responsibility he was not sure he could cope with. They reached the place, and he chose a seat upstairs for them, overlooking the bandstand. Boysie ordered a Scotch for himself and a glass of orange juice for the boy. He was more confused about ordering for the boy than he had imagined. This was the first time he had taken a boy out. And he had almost told the waitress, “Two Scotches with water.” But as the jazz began, the more relaxed he saw the boy becoming, and he wished that this boy was really his son. If he had a son, if this boy was his son, he would be taking him to this jazz place every Saturday to hear the matinee concerts; he would take him to the O’Keefe Centre where the big international stars came to perform; he would take him to the Ontario Science Centre where they had all kinds of scientific things, for boys and girls and grown-ups, too; he would take him on a bus tour of Toronto, and show him Casa Loma, where “some madman build a castle, man, and put in a million bedrooms and one toilet, or something like that.” Boysie started to dream about the son he was going to make out of this boy. But his son would be bright, he would be beautiful, and he would be a killer with the girls, all those pretty Canadian girls; well, his son would be the Casanova of Ontario Street. And the jazz became even better, and the dreams more fulfilling, and the boy sitting beside him, his eyes focussed on the black musicians below, dressed in their ritual and their music, their eyes a bit red from the lack of sleep or from too much playing, held his lips apart and sucked in the music with the orange drink. “But my son would know how to drink in a more proper way from a straw, though,” Boysie said to himself. He waited to see if the boy would continue to slurp through his straw; and when he didn’t, when he put the glass down at the right time, and wiped his lips with the napkin, and made a comment on the music, and how pleased he was to be taken out, Boysie felt sorry that he had judged the boy so harshly and then rejoiced that he was with the boy. He was treating the boy harshly because the boy had been accustomed to being treated harshly: by his teacher, by his principal, and by his mother. His teacher had told him, “You will never learn.” And the principal had told him, “Anybody like you, who lives in a low-rental project like that one on Ontario Street, well, what can I expect from you?” And his mother had told him, many more times, “You are just like your damn father.” But when she was told what the teacher and the principal had said, she had screamed and had called the teacher and the principal racists. Soon after that, she herself had occasion to tell the boy, “Boy, you will never be nothing! You are going to turn-out the same as your bloody father! That’s what you will be!” It was the boy who told Boysie this; “My own old lady, Mr. Cumbatch, eh, Mr. Cumbatch?” And Boysie had tried to cheer him up, and had told him of things his own mother had said to him when he was a child; “it isn’t anything, man. Your mother loves you. She only said those things because she was vexed with you.”