It was her guilt which built these thoughts into the mountain of her fear. Her guilt sometimes turned her into salt. Just like Lot’s wife. And this is how she described it to herself, in her Christian way of thinking. She knew she was certainly breaking one of the Commandments. But her nervousness did not permit her to name the exact one, in this moment of remorse. Was it the one about covetousness? Theft? Dishonouring?
When she first heard him, she was writing down a telephone message for his wife; and standing beside their night table, she had noticed the book, The Joy of Sex, and had wondered why it was there, and if they needed it, and used it, and why they had to use it; and she looked at the message she had written down for his wife, and at the book whose message troubled her, and could not decide if she should put the note on the cover of The Joy of Sex, and cover up the title of this suggestive book, or stick it to the telephone; and all this time, he is at the door, and she in his bedroom.
She had stood frozen. The second touch of his hand on the door reduced her to tears. Tears of guilt, of shame, of disobedience, of conflicting loyalties, and in the face of God. The message for his wife was left by a voice she had heard many times before. And it was only when she heard his steps retreating over the muffling thick carpet, and had already begun to picture him going down, with his hands dangling at his sides, walking like an ape, with his head bending forwards and backwards, as if he were sniffing out a bone that was buried and lost; picturing him with his feet which moved with no energy, desultorily, like a spring that had already unwound and lost its liveliness, only then did she crawl from under the bed.
Why did she hide when she knew he was going away from her? She was surprised that she did not bang her head against the iron bedstead. Did not get stuck in the space between the floor and the springs which caused the bed to sag, as if he and she were lying in it, reading most likely this book, The Joy of Sex. And she had struggled not to sneeze and disclose herself through the thick dust that rose to her nostrils, already clogged through hay fever, as it always was during December, January, and February, and made worse by the coldness in the house, whose temperature she always had to raise no matter how high the thermostat was already set. She could not bear a cold house. And first thing she did every morning when she arrived, even before she turned on all the radios and all the lights in the house, was raise the temperature five degrees. She had been praying that the elongated, weightless, and shapeless cottons of dust, silken and balled up, would not enter her nostrils.
What time is it? From the darkness under the bed, she can see the computer digits on the radio’s face, telling her in red that she has spent more than one hour in their bedroom. Before her escape under the bed, she had passed her hands through the deep-layered drawer that contained her silk underwear: panties, camisoles, and slips. She had run her fingers over the designer dresses that filled one closet. She had touched, had opened, had re-touched, and had sampled more than three vials of perfume and scent; and had played with a gold-painted atomizer that contained cologne, as if it was a water pistol. All of these vials were expensive, she knew; for she had seen them in the magazines which she read; in Creed’s and Holt Renfrew, where she shopped. She tried on the polka-dotted blue silk dress a second time, and was convinced that she looked much better in it than her. And with this, she possessed it in her mind; felt that it belonged to her, because she had so many, some of which seemed to be the same dress with the same design; and also because she felt it was wrong for one woman to have so many dresses, while others, many, many others, had none.
And even now, under the dark bed, with the dust tingling her sinuses and the silken balls of thread and hair making it difficult to breathe, one leg of her ashen-grey pantyhose was still on her left leg. It was the only covered leg. The pantyhose was marked from the heel to the bottom of the knee with a run that had walked sideways and lengthways at the same time. The delicate material of the pantyhose wrapped her in a tangle, and tangled her up, so desperate had she been not to be detected; and she felt as if she was handcuffed, just as they had done to poor Mr. Johnson before they shot him and blew his head apart like a watermelon falling into the road; and she was unable to extricate herself; and she could imagine how foolish she looked, tied by this silk, in case somebody, in case he came back into the bedroom, and looked down, and saw her, and discovered her. She had seen somewhere, perhaps in one of her glossy magazines, or it could have been while walking up the ravine one morning in the summer, a worm covered in this same thin silk; yes, it was while she was walking up the ravine to catch the streetcar; it was while she was walking, striding jauntily in the ravine, flowers and faces, lawns and dresses swaying in the wind, and while she herself was kissed by the redeeming freshness of warmth of life, that she had seen the worm, as if the worm were turning itself into silk right in front of her eyes, as if the silk were turning into a worm. The winter had been so long. She had smiled then, and had called it the wonders of the Lord. Now, in this mesh of the pantyhose, she did not smile. She did not think of birth, or of new life, or of resurrection. She was thinking only of escape and of extrication.
She did not know how long she would have to remain in this ridiculous imprisonment. How long it would take before the coast was clear; before she could descend into the quiet house, like a tomb with its dead head within it; dead even when he and she were at home; how long before she could complete her domestic tasks of the day, and run down to George Brown to register. Or stop in on her friend Gertrude, who worked at a bookstore on Yonge Street near Bloor.
The roast beef looked ugly while she was washing it with lime juice and salt; and slapping it as she seasoned it with herbs he liked to taste in his food; strange for a man born where he was born in this cold and raised in Toronto, that she secretly held the belief he was not white, entirely; and the potatoes which he wanted boiled and then baked until their edges were brown with a golden crispiness; this enticement for food that he had, and which made her mouth water at its appearance; and the green peas from a can, like beads from a string that had collapsed into a mound; and the rice. Plain Uncle Ben’s long-grain, which she was instructed to cook without salt, without parsley flakes; “I can’t stand those damn green things!” she said one night, when the white-and-green mound of steaming substance was placed before her, as she sat like a princess in her blue polka-dotted silk dress—the same one she had tried on in the bedroom a few minutes ago—and was on her way to the opera. How long ago? Months now, maybe. But it could be years. Time was playing such tricks with her memory, since she had left; with overnight bag, all her credit cards, the joint chequing account empty; and the shining Mercedes-Benz, which he had just got washed at Davenport and Park Road; and gone.
The house was quiet. It had been quiet all the time. She listened in this silence for music, for the television noise, for movement in his room with all those books, and all she could hear, or all she thought she heard, was her own heart beating.
And then she did a strange thing. She tightened her grip on the house slipper she was wearing, and on the right leg of the pantyhose; and with the other hand on the hosed left leg, she crawled from under the bed; and she raised her head, in the same way she raised her head when she was in church, when she claimed she saw the face of God, daring, ambitious, secure, and charged with Christian righteousness and arrogance, and she traipsed down the stairs, as if nothing had happened. And as she moved, she indeed wondered if anything had happened, and if it was not all her fruitful imagination. She made more noise, going down, than she had ever done. She made more noise than anyone who lived here had ever done. She ignored consequences and detection. She ignored termination. She forgot ambition and educational advancement. And she went down with arrogance, in innocence, in her laughable impromptu attire.
When she reached the kitchen, the house was still empty; empty as it had been all day; empty as it is any day in August when they were away at the cottage.
She was safe now, and sinful; and she moved about the k
itchen as if she owned the world. She had placed the pantyhose in her large hip pocket. She had passed the Afro comb through her hair that was like steel and was black. She had run cold water, from the restroom off the dining room, all over her face. She was a new woman.
She served his dinner. There was no noise. Her place had been set. He did not ask for her. He did not look at the knives and forks, soup spoon and dessert spoon and spoon for sweetening coffee, that were placed at the other end of the oval mahogany table. He sat at his end of the table, about four feet from the place setting. She did not hear his chewing. She did not hear his drinking, wine or water. She did not hear the chime, the tinkle, the slight pat of glass, cutlery, and napkin ring.
But she felt naked. His eyes moved with the rhythm of her body. She touched her bottom once when she returned to the kitchen, to make sure she had clothes under the housedress she wore when she served. She could feel in her tension, in her opposition to him, his hand on her waist. She could feel his fingers on her legs.
There was no noise. He made no noise when he ate. And he said nothing to her when he was in the house. Never. But she felt he was assaulting her, in this silence, with the roar and violence of his eyes.
He got up from the table, and threw one last glance in her direction, as she stood at the sink. He wished he could thank her for her efficiency, for her company, for looking after him now that he was alone. He looked at her, and straightaway, his mind was on his work. In the small mirror above the two-basined sink, she saw his eyes, and then his face, as he moved along the carpet which did not reproduce his weight, or the thoughts which she felt were running through his body. He had already dismissed her from his mind.
She turned the lamps in the dining room off. She closed the door. She did not feel safer. She took the served dinner off the mahogany table. She scraped the roast beef, the potatoes, the green marbles of canned peas, everything into the large tin garbage pail. He did not approve of leftovers. She left the plates and knives and forks and crystal glasses of her place setting, on the rectangular mat that showed the buildings of Parliament painted on them in the colors of moss and brick and granite, where they were. And then she left, after locking the door two times, after opening it two times, to be sure. She dropped her pass-key into her handbag. She stood on the slab of granite on the front doorstep, and she broke into tears. She sighed deeply, pulled herself together, and took the steady climb out of the ravine, on her way to the corner of Bloor and Yonge to take the subway going west to Bathurst Street.
Time was out of joint. She could feel the presence again in the house. She could feel it heavy and plain and hiding somewhere inside this mansion. Perhaps, it was ghosts; or spirits. But she did not believe in ghosts. Not she, a Christian-minded woman as she was. But she was going to find it: find the cause, or the presence, and its hiding place; and if the cause was in the form of a living person, or a dead body, she was going to seek it out and then try to master it.
She went upstairs to the second floor, and looked into each room off the flight of the banister that swung to her right in a wide, polished swath, walking slowly and with deliberate bravery, running her palm over the banister, as if she was wiping and polishing it with her yellow chamois cloth. On the third floor, inside the master bedroom, she looked around, trying to determine if anyone had entered it since she had left the evening before; trying to seek some clue to meet the heavy and oppressing presence she could not see, but which she knew was following her even as she perused the house.
Everything was in order. Each item and article, clothes and lotions in vials, and books, including The Joy of Sex, had remained as she had left them, yesterday.
So, she retraced her steps, all the time finding company in the rhythm and blues on the three radios on the first floor playing loud. After turning on all the lights in the house, and raising the thermostat the moment she entered, she changed the stations on the three radios from classical music to her favourite Buffalo station, WBLK. The rhythm and blues made her happy and relaxed, and appeased her spirit and helped her to face the long day of work, with peace and patience. Now, however, this music was adding to her anxiety and discomfiture. She turned each radio off.
The house was like death without the music. She endured this silence. But she left all the lights on. She was safe and comfortable with all the lights on. The late winter sunlight, which had no heat to it, was still bright; and the lights hardly added to the illumination in the rooms.
She went into the library to see if the Indian blanket she had thrown over his body last night, dead in his sleep immediately after he had eaten the roast beef dinner, was still there. Perhaps, it is this, this Indian blanket, taking on and inhabiting all the spirits and the ghosts of those tribes. Those tribes, those men whom she saw standing at the corner of Bloor and Spadina, old men, some old before they are young; defeated warriors, with faces the same as she had looked upon in her elementary schoolbooks back in Barbados, identical in the fierceness with what her own history book in Standard Seven showed her; but without their spears and tomahawks.
The Indian blanket was on the floor of the library. In a bundle. In a way that said it had been thrown off the body, during the night. In a way a child would toss its covering off its body, no longer cold. She took it up, and held it against her body, and folded it while holding it against her body; perhaps bear, or fox, or caribou, or seal. She didn’t know much about these things. Her friend Gertrude would know. Gertrude worked in a bookstore. Gertrude read most of the books in the bookstore. The Indian blanket felt odd, as if the animal from which it was made was still alive.
She took up the crystal Scotch glass, and the empty soda siphon. The decanter was empty. On her way to take these into the kitchen, she noticed the door to the basement ajar. And lights on. Terror gripped her again. Someone was in the house. A man. An intruder. A brute-beast. One of those varmints roaming Toronto in cars and assaulting women in stairwells of hard, cold sex. Rapist. A thief, perhaps.
She tiptoes the rest of the way, crawling to the kitchen, her blood hot with fear and with the violence she knows she could be facing. And she drops the blanket on the clean countertop, and is about to rest the crystal glass in the sink, when it drops. The shattering glass is like sirens. The sound is like a cry of rape. A cry against rape. She cannot move. Her mind is in a hurry, confused, filled with decisions, not one of which she can make. She listens for the crash of the crystal to end, as if she is about to count the number of pieces which the Stuart crystal will dissolve itself into; but the glass is not broken. And she thinks this is an omen. It is her imagination which told her it was broken. Still, the danger lurks. Still, the presence, now transformed into a person, a rapist, a thief, remains.
She reaches for the large iron saucepan on the pegboard above the stove. But this proves too heavy and unwieldy. She chooses the large frying pan. Also of iron. And she crosses herself two times. Gertrude had told her how to make the sign of the cross, as Catholics do. She thinks of calling Gertrude to alert her, but she does not. And she never, in spite of promise, got around to taking down the Rape Crisis Centre of Toronto telephone number. But why couldn’t it have been she who had left the basement door open?
And she creeps along the floor, suppressing what noise her footsteps make, through caution, no noise coming from the radio to distract her attention and her deadly intent and the deadly blow she is going to deliver, and not breathing, just in case. She should have called Gertrude. Is the Rape Crisis Centre of Toronto 911? Or 767?
When she reaches the open door to the basement, she moves her hand instinctively to the brass panel for the light switch. The switch answers her touch. And below her, through the agaped door, the entire basement is bathed in the pure whiteness of light. She stops at the head of the stairs. She inhales. She hefts the iron frying pan. She can deliver a deadly blow with it.
And then she goes down. Step by step. For the first time realizing how noisy these steps are. Somebody had forgotten, after all the
se years, to line them with broadloom. Soft creak after soft creak. And still no sound from below in the bright light that blares and screams out her terror.
She reaches the bottom step. She closes her eyes quickly; opens them again, quickly, to get accustomed to the fluorescence. Still, there is no sound.
And then, she sees it. The T-shaped form made by the light, on the floor. Coming from the same closet she had stumbled upon last week. The faint yellow of the stroke from the left side of the door, going rightwards across the top of the door. She hefts the frying pan. She is holding it firmly; and by God, whoever it is, he got to come clean! The bastard going-have to kill me, or I kill he! The iron frying pan is weightless in her hand.
And she creeps silent, step after silent step, the frying pan raised and ready, her eyes staring, and seeing blood, her body, and the pan and her steps in a tense synchronized oneness; staring at the weak light forcing itself out of the half-open door; and clearer now, brighter now in her control of the threat and how she is going to master it, she sees that the shape of the light that comes out from the closet is not a T at all. It is an inverted L. And she moves as a yacht would move silent over swift water; and when she comes face to face with the door, she didn’t know she could get there so fast and with such stealth; and she raises the iron frying pan ready, and at the same time, with her left hand, she flings the door outwards, and screams, “Thief!”
She finds herself standing over him.
He is sitting on a box marked CONFIDENTIAL. His head in his hands. Bent down in a stooped posture of complete dejection.
He was facing her. But he was not looking at her. His eyes were not looking at her. His eyes were not open. But he was awake and alert. And then he opened his eyes, and remained sitting and staring at her, as if he had been sleeping, dead to the world. And she stood there, full with her former pity for him, and with a new tormenting and strange desire, like a feeling of love for someone who has never known love, all the time with the iron frying pan in her hand, but now at her side, her own eyes staring back in bewilderment and wonder. But most of all, with pity and with a great strange love.
The Austin Clarke Library Page 53