The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  “After he raped you? Are you crazy? Number two, you are going to report this, this assault, to the police. That’s what you’re going to do. You are in no shape to, you’re in no shape to, to, to . . .”

  “A sin, Gerts. A sin, yes. Fornication, yes. Perhaps, adultery. But not that, Gerts. I’m not a vic—What you call it? Victim? I’m not any damn victim, Gerts.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “I’m no victim, Gerts. Don’t call me a victim.”

  “God, May.”

  “It was something in that Indian blanket.”

  “These things do happen,” Gertrude said. “Every day. On television. And in real life.” She drained her glass. She took up her friend’s handbag. And made ready to have her leave. “These things happen.” And saying this, Gertrude made the first gesture of friendship since they had entered the bar. She reached out her hands, and placed them over May’s, and tapped May’s hands with her own; and then started rubbing them, sideways and upwards and downwards. May continued crying. The tears dropped on the edge of her glass; and when she saw that, she moved the glass to evade the water. But she had moved her face also, and one long drop kissed the surface of the rich brown liquid. The tears continued without effort, without her trying to stop them. And she did nothing to wipe them away. And they started to fall on Gertrude’s fingers, and she too, caught up now in the soft, sad passion of the moment, allowed the tears to fall on her hands. “We’re going to fix that fucking bastard!”

  AN EASTER

  CAROL

  Suddenly, I could hear my mother’s voice licking-down the small room in which I slept. “Get up get up get up! Boy, you too lazy! You think the morning waiting on you? Get up and get! The sun almost halfway up in the sky, and you in there, still sleeping? This is Easter morning! Blessed Easter. The Lord rise-up outta Hell long long time, so you get up too! . . . And don’t forget to clean out the pigpens and the sheep pens, ’cause yesterday morning you didn’t clean the pigpens proper, and you left back all my precious milk inside them sheeps’ breasts. Come, boy! Half the morning gone already! So get up!”

  She had hardly taken a breath in all this time. I listened to the beautiful mountains and valleys of her surging voice; and I laughed inside my heart. I was already awake. I had been awake for about three hours. I could not sleep. For all night I could smell the fresh delicious smells seeping under my door from the kitchen: the roasted pork, the great cakes, the sponges, the bananas, the golden apples, the rum and the sweet drinks; and the new coats of varnish and polish and paint on all the ancient furniture in our house. This was Easter in our house.

  Everything was cleansed. Even the pigs were given a bath, a clean, white, resurrection coat of freshness; and the front of the house was sprinkled with white marl, because there was never any snow in our village. Everything was new, was clean, was virginal. My new clothes had been bought months before; and my mother had pressed them many times over, and had hooked them on a hanger onto a nail, high in the heavens of the ceiling in her bedroom—where they could be seen, but not touched. And every chance I got, I would watch them: the seams in the short grey flannel trousers, keener than a new Gillette razor; the Sea Island cotton shirt, pressed without a wrinkle or blemish, and rich and creamy as milk from our sheep; my cork hat, white as snow (although no one in Barbados had ever seen snow, except in pictures in a book, or on the foreign Christmas cards which trickled into the village from America and England), and stiff with blanco; and my shoes, like two mounds of pitch, black and shining, Lord-Lord-Lord! like nobody’s business. And the tie. My mother never trusted her fingers to tie my tie; and she never trusted mine, neither. So I always wore ties ready-tied, and with an elastic band round the neck. All my ties had a thick savage stripe in them. This was my Easter outfit: new and clean, from my underwear out.

  I would be wearing it to church this morning, at five o’clock: my first day as a choirboy of the Cathedral. No achievement of mine in my eight years had had so great an effect upon my mother. Not even when, at seven, I had successfully fought off five girls, all sisters, with a thick piece of sugar cane; not even when I won the long-distance race at the church outing; not even when she and my stepfather came home tired as dogs from the fields, one afternoon, to find that I had cooked a meal for them (a meal which I wanted to stand out as a single landmark of my love), and which they interpreted as a boast, with the result that I had cooked their meals every day since then . . . “Jesus Christ, boy! You heard me say morning here? Well, get up!” And then I heard her opening the window of her bedroom, and talking to the darkness outside. “Lavignia! Lavignia? You sleeping too? What time that clock o’ yourn saying, darling? This blasted boychild I have in here still sleeping, thinking that the morning waiting ’pon him . . . The sun all up in the skies already! What time it saying? . . . Thanks.” And she closed the window with a bang, and suddenly I could hear Lavignia’s voice no more. And the barking of the dogs stopped; and the cackling of the hens ceased, as if someone had shot them dead.

  I searched around in the semi-darkness for my home-clothes: the ragged cap, now too old for me to remember its original colour or shape; next, the shirt, patched expertly in many places and looking like the quilted robe of Joseph; and then, the trousers, my stepfather’s, which were never reduced to fit me, and which warbled about my legs like an old man’s underwear, wet in the sea. And then I rolled the crocus bags and the straw mattress from the floor, took them under my arms and went into the backyard to hand them over to the sun, to dry. I had wet my bed again. It was the kind of wetting I did not wish my mother to see, since it might have terrified her to think that I was growing up. But she found it out, nevertheless. “You pissing-pissing-pissing! Looka boy, you don’t know you old to be pissing? You not ’shamed?” I was glad it was only three o’clock; that none of the girls in the village was awake; that nobody could hear her reproaching me for this behaviour. There must have been something about this morning, this Easter morning, which held her silent and crippled in awe. For she did not strike me with the backhand slap which she had perfected with such habit and such speed and accuracy that it landed, always, in the same fat spot of my face.

  Again, the pigs and the sheep were on my mother’s side: they had filled their pens with mountains of their droppings. And all the time I was cleaning the pens and washing the pigs I wondered if it was like this in Bethlehem, in that stable where Christ was born; if that stable smelled half as dirty as this; if God had purposely made that the birthplace of our Saviour, in order to remind him, always, to be humble. Or if it was to give him an inferiority complex. And I was glad I was not born in a stable.

  The pigs smelled evil. After the pigs, the sheep. Rank-rankrank sheep, whose perfume would have taken a soap factory of scrubbing to wipe off. And then I began to think of my first day in the Cathedral’s choir: this morning when Christ was supposed to have come out of a grave somewhere in a country so far from my little village; and I was going to walk up the aisle of the beautiful church, up to the sacred chancel, and send my voice prancing all over the church, in a solo, in praise of Easter. And all the boys in my village and in the choir would envy me. Particularly Henry, who was only my substitute, and who—“Them pigs clean yet? You tending to the sheeps? Yesterday morning the sheeps had my milk left back in their bubbies! And you forget to sweep the yard. Boy, you think you is a man, because you is this big cathedral choirboy? But lemme tell you something. Your backside ain’t so big that I can’t put a proper tarring in it, this bright blessed Easter morning, eh!” I could feel the sting of the whip in the threat of her voice. And I knew she meant it. So I hurried through my work, making sure that in my eagerness to wear the rich linen ruff, the crimson cassock, and the pearly white surplice, I did not become inefficient. The sun pretended it was going to come up above the tops of the sugar canes. But when I paused and waited for it, it changed its mind, and continued to give only a golden glow over the entire village.

  My work was done. And I boun
ded into the house.

  “You don’t intend to bathe? You intends to go into the white people church smelling like a pigpen? Looka boy, get outta my eyesight, and go to the standpipe, and get a clean bucket o’ fresh water and cleanse yourself with, you hear?”

  Who would argue with a woman like this? Who would dare?

  Across the pitchlake stretch of the road the canes were grumbling and shaking their fists in my face. I imagined monsters coming out of them. Only last week a man had been lambasted by the Man in the canes. My head was swollen with monsters coming at me. I heard a rustling in the canes. And I dropped the bucket.

  And when I stopped running, I was beside our paling. My dog, Rover, came panting at my side: again he had frightened me. And I wanted to kick him dead. But I only kicked him once; and was glad that he could not talk.

  Holding on to his collar, I went back across the road to recapture my bucket and get the water. A few malicious windows with heads in them, and kerosene lamps beside the heads, were open. And I walked in the valley of the shadow of the canes this time (my guardian-angel dog beside me!), so they would not see me.

  “I thought you wasn’t coming back!” my mother shouted. “It is four o’clock. You not riding that bicycle outta this house today, bright Easter morning. You walking to church, ’cause I slave-andslave on them clothes o’ yourn, and no damn bicycle seat and bicycle spokes ain’t going mash-up my labour, you hear me?” It meant walking two miles, two miles of canes, two miles of Men in the canes. In all that distance I would pass only ten houses, until I approached the square in which the Cathedral was built. I would pass only ten street lamps, which seemed to have been burning since the day the island was discovered, and which were never repaired, and which seemed ready to go out any minute. I would be alone in all that time, all that terrible distance, with only the brightly lit church in my heart and the rich beautiful music in my ears.

  You not riding that bicycle outta this house today. No passenger buses ran in my part of the island on Easter morning. At least, not at five o’clock. And the villagers were so poor that only one family was rich enough to own a broken-down car. But that family was not a church-going Christian-minded family, and I could not hope for a lift. I was the only one in my village who belonged to the Church of England. My mother, who was brought up in that church, had recently started to attend the Church of the Nazarene because she felt its services were more like a part of her life, were more emotional, more exciting, more tragic and more happy: something like that holy day when “them twelve mens gathered up in that room upstairs, and talked in twelve different complete language and dialect, Christ, like nobody’s business!” There, she could stand up in her small congregation, and open her heart to God, and to them, and tell the whole world that yesterday, God stepped in and Satan stepped out, Amen! and I was brought through, pretty and clean. There, she could testify how God helped her when I didn’t know where the hell I could get six cents from to buy flour and lard oil to make bakes for my child. There, she could clap her hands and stomp her feet till the floorboards creaked with emotion, and jump up in the air and praise God. And for all that, feel as if God was indeed listening. But in the Church of England she was regimented to a sit-and-stand exercise of dull religious drilling. And she always complained to Lavignia that she did not understand one word of what the parson was talking about. He used words that simple, common, poor people could not understand. And never, never “have I see anybody stand up in the Church o’ England, and say Amen, Halleluliah to God!” It was such a strange church to her.

  My mother then began the careful ceremony of dressing me. My hair was ripped by the horse-comb, which, this morning, seemed too fine-toothed to plough the tough roots of my rebellious hair. And each time the plough stuck, my mother cursed and said she didn’t understand why the hell I couldn’t have good black people’s hair like everybody else. After the combing came the greasing. My hair would shine like the stars in the heavens. Then the talcum powder under my arms, and the bay rum to make me smell “nice and proper.” And the new silk vest, with the price tag still on it. And then the underwear. And all these things she dressed me in, suspicious always that I would destroy them. At eight years of age, she did not think that I was fit to dress myself on an Easter morning, to venture unto the powerful Church of England’s God.

  On went the three-quarter grey stockings, with a rim of blue and black. When I reached under the bed for my shoes, I heard her warning voice breaking my eardrums: “No-no-no! You is not mashing-up them shoes! You are putting on them shoes, last thing! I want them shoes to return back inside this house without one bruise, you hear me, boy? If I see a mark on them, one mark—well, God help you!”

  And she meant it. I had suffered because of this, many times before. And all I was guilty of was that I had walked in them. But she had examined the shoes, and had decided that I had not walked in them “properly.” This time she would take no chances.

  My shirt was the next piece of vestment in this robing. I was made to stand like a piece of wallaba tree trunk, still, not breathing, while she threaded the shirt through my arms and buttoned every button herself. I could smell the richness of the cotton, and feel its warmth on my washed body. The ready-tied tie went on next. And then the trousers. Carefully I put one leg through, and then the other, making sure not to touch the trousers themselves. She pushed the shirt gently into my trousers, and snapped the buckle.

  Only my shoes remained! But I knew what to expect. For weeks she had made me drill about the house, walking on old newspapers so that the soles would not be soiled, stretching the shoes, which she always bought too small. I could never understand why. And even though she insisted that my feet were too big for my size, that “big shoes don’t look nice ’pon a small boy’s foot,” I couldn’t really imagine she would purposely force me into these undersized shoes just for the sake of her belief.

  But I inhaled deeply. I rested my hand on her shoulder as she commanded me, balanced myself on one leg, and got ready for the punishment and torture. The shoe was too small. But that was not the point. It looked nice! My toes went in. I could feel a savage sting against my instep. The heel refused to go in. And as I touched the back of the shoe, to see what would happen, my mother shrieked, “Good Christ, boy! Don’t step on the back o’ the shoe! You want to throw my money down the drain? You are mashing it up. And suppose I have to take them back . . .”

  But I knew she would never take them back. Intransigence would never permit her pride the blow of taking them even to Woody, the shoemaker across the road, for a stretching. I would have to make my feet get smaller. “Come-come, eat this little food.” I pulled a chair from the table, and was preparing to sit down, when I heard her voice again, “Good Jesus Christ, boy, I didn’t tell you to sit down and eat! Not in them trousers that I slave-and-slave so hard over to press and make look nice for you, like if you is somebody decent. Stand up! Stand up and eat. It can’t kill yuh; it can’t kill yuh!” And so I had to stand up and eat the little food: about two pints of green tea, warm and thick and rich with sheep’s milk; a loaf of bread as big as a house, and a wedge of roasted pork, enough for two persons; and a banana. My mother believed in bananas. “They make your skin nice and smooth,” she would say.

  I soon felt the heavy load in my belly; and I felt good. I would wear any shoe now. Even a size seven instead of a ten. “Come-come!” she said, “Belch! Belch! You belch good and proper, whilst you home, ’cause I don’t want to hear that you belch-out, or break wind, in the white people church, or in the public road, like if you don’t have no manners, hear?” And I granted her her belch. A smothered, respectable belch, which, although it did not satisfy her, yet made her say nothing, since it assured her that I had already belched at home.

  Now, the shoes! My hand was resting on her fat shoulders. I was balancing all my weight on my left foot. My right foot was said to be slightly larger than my left foot—although she never told me why. I knew the shoe would never fit. But
I was not such a fool as to tell her. “Put yuh weight on your instep, boy, do! Don’t put all yuh weight on the whole shoe, ’cause the shoe won’t go on then.”

  Exasperated, she grabbed my foot and forced it into the pincers of the shoe, while I remained silent, and in agony. “Hold there! Don’t move!” she commanded. And she left me. Coming back with the large pot-spoon which we used as a shoehorn, she said, “Push! Push hard! But don’t mash-down the instep. Push hard, boy, like you have life!” The more I pushed, the smaller the shoe became. My face changed from black to blue to purple. Still my judgement warned me not to comment on my pain, and certainly not on the smallness of the shoe. She would never believe. “Push! You pushing, or you standing up there with your face like some ram-goat own?”

  At last, through some miracle, the foot went in. Never to come out again! Lord have mercy, I prayed in my heart, as the pain whizzed through my body. And when the other shoe was rammed on, I was sweating. The perspiration was changing my Sea Island cotton shirt into plastic. And she noticed it, and wanted to know why I was sweating. “You intend to sweat-up this clean shirt that I just put-on on your back, boy?” And I tried hard to stop sweating; tried very hard, as if to stop it I had only to turn off a faucet. “Walk off and lemme see how the shoes look on your foot, boy!” I held my breath, pushed my chest out, and asked God for strength. The shoes crucified me. I would never be able to walk on the smooth marble in the Cathedral. But I wanted to be at church this Easter morning. This was my Easter morning.

  “Okay! You ready now.” And she dusted my handkerchief with some Evening in Paris perfume, tucked it into my shirt breast pocket, and secured it with a gold-coloured small safety pin, which I was permitted to wear only to funerals and weddings. “Now, turn round and let me see you. Christ, boy, you look real good! You look just like the manager of the plantation’s son. Just like a little doctor. Now, I want you to grow up fast, and be a doctor, hear?” And I knew that if I did not answer yes, she would want to know why. “Yes,” I said, wishing that I was already grown up, and thousands of miles from there.