Dottie

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  While these great events were taking place, the sisters put away whatever money could be spared. It was bound to come in useful, even if Hudson changed his mind about turning sailor. He could always use the money towards a passage to New York, for example. His interest in New York was turning into obsession, and was now mixed with his admiration for the defiance of the black movements that were sweeping across the United States: the Black Muslims, Martin Luther King, NAACP. They all filled him with pride and envy, and made him wish he was part of them. In a way he was, he said, because of his father, so it was as well he went and saw the place for himself.

  For Dottie the months of that long winter passed slowly, not because of Hudson but because her own life seemed to be going nowhere. She thought she should leave and find herself a different kind of job, but could not get herself to make the first moves. The idea of going back to school tempted her more and more as she learnt her ignorance. She wished for a man, a companion and a lover, or one or the other. She did nothing about any of these things but look on and lament as events passed her by.

  4

  Hudson seemed better when he came out. Andy, the landlord, had allowed them to keep the room at half-rent, shrugging miserably as Dottie out-manoeuvred him into submission. He could not understand why she bothered with a boy as wild as that. Hudson had been released four months early because of the transformation he had undergone in the later months of his term at Borstal. During the first few weeks of freedom, he was full of optimism and grand plans. The most important lesson he had learned in Borstal, he said, was that he never wanted to go back there. So far as he was concerned, the lesson was well-learned. He had taken an examination during the year in prison, a City and Guilds, and the teacher had told him that he had a real gift for Maths. Next year he intended to take some O levels, but for now he would go to college and try to improve his qualifications. He said O levels as if it were an unusual ritual, a secret rite for which special qualities were required. Later, he would go into electronics, he said.

  In those early weeks after his release, he talked a lot about the Maths teacher who had helped him so much, Mr Viney. The man reminded him of his foster father in some way. He said this carefully, looking away casually to make light of the subject. He was a bit common, not as refined as his foster father, more of a loud-mouth but really only pretending . . . Perhaps the comparison only came up in his mind because he was in Dover, and he had all the time to think about what had happened over the years. The time had come, though, to think about the future, he said, and he was determined he would not end up on a junk heap somewhere. Electronics, that was going to be his thing.

  Then, in no time at all, he was back with his old friends and flush with money. Almost without warning he was his old self again. He went out one morning still talking of going to college and getting a part-time job, and returned with a swagger and the old drawl in his voice. Everything happened quickly after that, because they were all familiar with the routine now. Hudson came and went as he pleased, and sometimes brought a friend round. Whenever he caught sight of the dirty Polish woman whose cats roamed the house, and with whom he shared the top landing, he chased her with raucous yells and laughter. When he caught her he tickled and felt her up crudely, spitting with disgust afterwards because of her smell. He was again the dangerous man who swerved violently between antic joy and deepest gloom. When Dottie tried to talk to him, he became angry and threatened to leave and find a place of his own. He waved his bundle of notes in her face, and boasted about how good the times were for him. If Sophie looked like approaching him with her tearful embraces or her sneering rebukes, he shouted at her, abusing her without mercy. He made a habit of pulling a knife on them as he harangued them on one grievance or another. In the end Sophie moved out completely, because she said that Jimmy had sworn that he would come round and deal with Hudson himself if he ever threatened or abused his woman again, and she did not want her own brother’s blood on her head.

  One day he announced that he was ready to go to New York. He had been out of Borstal for two months and was not yet eighteen, so he still needed someone to sign his forms for him. Dottie hunted through Sharon’s old papers for his birth certificate, and filled in the forms for his passport application. She put her name down as guardian and next of kin. He took the money that his sisters had saved for him, although he seemed to have enough of his own, and within four weeks had left, saying he would return as a millionaire. That was the last they had seen of him. Some days after he left, the police came round saying that Hudson had killed a man while drunk and driving. They had been on the case for some weeks and had just traced the incident to him. The policemen, young and fair haired, with wide red mouths that grinned with the pleasure they took in their work, reminded Dottie that the terms of Hudson’s release were a kind of parole. That lad’s going to spend the rest of his fucking life in the nick. I thought you’d like to know that, love. I don’t understand why you people didn’t stay in your own country and do your stuff there. We got enough wankers of our own, right here.

  Several weeks later, word came from a government office in London to say that Hudson was dead, drowned in the Hudson River in up-state New York. Dottie somehow found the courage to ring the number on the letter-head but was simply kept waiting in the telephone kiosk until her money ran out. She went to the office in the Mall but nobody would see her. The porter was very polite, but he insisted that she wait in the entrance hall or leave. Eventually, a silver-haired man with a flushed, distraught face came out and told her that it was impossible to offer her an interview. He advised her to write a letter, requesting the details of her brother’s death.

  The two sisters went to see Reverend Mosiah of the Sacred Church of the True Christ in Balham, the terraced-house tabernacle that Dottie had so often passed. One of the black women at Dottie’s work had told her about him, and told her that he had helped other black people with the authorities. He was a big, handsome man who spoke softly to them, as if he was afraid of scaring them away. He tried to persuade Sophie to speak to him as well, but she kept her eyes on Dottie, or, when the Pastor became insistent, dropped her eyes to the ground and waited. In the end, Reverend Mosiah turned his full attention on Dottie, observing her scrawny form with clearer eyes and seeing the checked intensity of her stillness. As she spoke of the office that had turned her away without word of the circumstances of Hudson’s death, his face became harder and angrier. He clenched his fists and visibly gnashed his teeth.

  ‘What do these people take us for?’ he asked. ‘They think because we’re black we can put up with this kind of mistreatment? My dears, we will go there tomorrow morning and demand our rights. Accept my condolences on your brother’s passing away. He has gone to a better world.’

  ‘Amen,’ Sophie cried. Her eyes were shut but her face was rapt with joy.

  The Pastor accompanied them the next day to the office in the Mall. At the office, the same man who had spoken to Dottie came out to see them. He looked angry again, but after listening to Reverend Mosiah quietly for a few moments he invited them to another room. There, briefly and properly, reading from a piece of paper in a file, he told them what he knew of Hudson’s death. He had been pulled out of the river by the police, who had found on him the papers that had enabled his identification. The autopsy revealed that he was unconscious when he fell in the water, and so it was likely that he had been attacked. The man put his piece of paper back in the file and looked up with the air of having completed his task, of having done all that was possible under the circumstances. The Pastor said they wanted to hear more. ‘The details of the autopsy are not available to us,’ the official said. ‘But you can obtain that information from the proper authorities in New York. As the next of kin, you would have a right to receive that information.’

  ‘What about the body?’ the Pastor asked, taking the negotiations more fully into his hands. ‘Can we have it brought home for burial?’

  ‘It has been disposed of.
This . . . accident took place many weeks ago. I am sorry but I can help you no further than that. You can contact the proper authorities in New York,’ the official said, shutting his file and rising.

  ‘One moment please, sir,’ the Pastor said, rising as well, but with the portentous ceremony of the holy man about to read out the Law. ‘That is no way to speak of the departure of a Christian soul. Did he receive the rites . . . ?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I cannot help you any further. Now I really must ask you to leave. It is an extraordinarily busy morning . . .’ the man said, shutting his eyes to emphasise the feeling with which his words were spoken.

  ‘You will forgive me, sir,’ Reverend Mosiah thundered, puffing his huge chest as if he would knock down the official with an indignant blast.

  Why were these men fighting over the corpse of her brother? Dottie wondered. What was it to do with them? Hudson was their corpse, but they could not think to ask them whether they cared to have his torn and decayed body back. She and Sophie were only two women, too unworldly to understand such things as the disposal of the carcase of a brother who had known no better than to destroy himself by every means available to him.

  ‘Leave him where he is,’ Dottie said, turning to Sophie for corroboration. The official was already on his way, and Reverend Mosiah was huffing himself up for a parting shot at his retreating back. He looked at Dottie as if to protest, but the look on her face stopped him. After a moment he nodded and sat down beside them. He glanced at Sophie, but she dropped her eyes. Within a moment, she touched Dottie on the arm and they stood to leave.

  5

  The Reverend Mosiah of the Sacred Church of the True Christ in Balham arranged a memorial service for Hudson. Jimmy and the other friends Sophie had made turned out in a big crowd. Mike Butler sent a wreath but did not attend himself. He did not want to intrude, he said. Some of Hudson’s old friends turned up, swaggering in with deeply sullen looks. The bulk of the congregation was made up of Reverend Mosiah’s habitual flock.

  The day of the service would have been only three weeks after Hudson’s eighteenth birthday, and the Reverend made much of this, lamenting the loss of the young sapling cut down in the prime of its youth. His voice rose and quavered in the cramped church as he begged the Almighty to keep watch on their loved one, embarked on his return journey to his Maker when he was still so young and so cruelly unfulfilled. He called on everyone present to bear witness in the sight of God to the cruelties and oppression visited on black people in modern and ancient times, and to pray for God’s vengeance on the Evil Ones.

  Forgive them, Lord, one of the congregation cried, and the chant of mercy was taken up by others. Hudson’s friends cried out their disagreement. The Pastor shut his eyes tightly then lowered his head over clasped hands, seeking guidance. After several seconds of silent communion, Pastor Mosiah looked up. The Lord’s will be done, he cried in a voice of wrath. He called for a hymn and the congregation cried Amen before they burst into song. Tears streamed down faces that were already wet with sweat, hands clapped as bodies swayed against each other in the high flood of their lamentation. Dottie felt herself distanced from such excess. She found herself thinking of Dr Murray, who had fallen dead those years ago only a few dozen feet from where they sat. What he would have made of them, if he had seen this bumbling, clumsy mourning! But perhaps it was her, she thought. It was her own fault that she could not find any comfort in this display, that she had grown too cold inside to be touched by the warmth these kind people were offering her. Sophie was weeping in someone’s arms. A hand pressed on Dottie’s shoulder, and she thought that she had no choice but to shake her body as if racked with sobbing.

  Forty days later, and about three weeks into the New Year, Sylvanus Olympio, President of the Republic of Togo, was killed in his palace. He was murdered by officers of his own army, and became the first civilian head of state in black Africa to fall victim to a military coup. He was fated to be the first of many. Idle armies across the continent were soon to undertake a whole string of coups, at first led by colonels, then majors, lieutenants and even privates. On the same day as Sylvanus Olympio’s murder, Sophie told Dottie that she was pregnant. Dottie laughed bitterly after Sophie had gone. How much effort they put into the stupid lives they lived!

  Coup and Counter-coup

  1

  The euphoria that Sophie felt at her pregnancy did not begin to diminish until her fifth month. By then she was swollen to a cumbersome size, and was persuaded that it would be best for her to move back to Balham. The early months, with their discomforts and inner upheavals, were worse than anything she had expected. There really was morning sickness, with vomiting and nausea as rumour and lore had promised! Her guts erupted from the other end as well, making her wonder if there was something wrong with her pregnancy, if the bubblings in her abdomen meant her body was reluctant to play host to the creature which had implanted itself in there. Despite these tortures, the expectation of motherhood made her burst into laughter whenever she talked about it, or whenever Jimmy teased her with thoughts of her own, live plaything. She had started a new job in the New Year, working in the kitchens of a large office block in Waterloo. It was better than the dirty work she had been doing in Victoria Station, better paid and more pleasant. Most of the people she worked with were white. Without thought she saw this as an indication that it was decent work and an advance on her previous job, where the workforce was mostly black and brown. She felt she had been fortunate, and she was determined not to let her pregnancy get in the way. She would work for as long as she could, not only because she wanted to impress her employer with her application and reliability, but because Jimmy said they needed the money.

  It was Jimmy who suggested, once she began to grow large, that she had best move back in with her sister. She laughed at him, because he looked so comically worried, telling him that she was a long way off yet, and was not likely to burst out with the baby just like that. He laughed too, conceding that men were notoriously panicky about such things, probably worse than the pregnant women themselves. He would still be happier, though, if she moved in with her sister, who would know how to look after her if something happened. He would miss climbing up her mountainous belly whenever he wanted to enter her, but he would have to learn to live without that for a while. Motherhood was a serious business, and it was better to have another woman around during the later stages. He knew nothing . . . less than nothing. Hadn’t he done his best? And it was not that he minded, but just in case . . . Look what happened the other night when her back seized up. Suppose it happened again? Also, he had been offered a month’s work in Loughborough, on a building site. In her condition she really should not be alone.

  Sophie resisted at first, thinking she could cope or that Jimmy would change his mind about Loughborough. Once Jimmy went off on his contract job, and she suddenly began to grow at a spurt, she felt the time had come to give in. Dottie responded readily enough and insisted that Sophie move in with her. It was depressing to stay on in Jimmy’s room on her own, Sophie said. She found movement difficult, and doing things for herself was a vexation at times. Her guts felt knotted up, as if part of her had turned to stone and had rolled itself round her insides. She had thought that being with child would be a happy time, but that was not how it was turning out. ‘Oh take no notice of me, Sis. It’s not as bad as that. You know I just like grumbling,’ she said to Dottie when she felt she had gone too far and was beginning to lose her sister’s sympathy. Worse was to come, as Sophie well knew, and the thought of swelling even further, and carrying an even heavier lump round her middle, filled her with panic sometimes. She had a dream in which she swelled and swelled, and eventually burst, she told Dottie.

  Jimmy called in when he was in London. His manner was more sure with them. He laughed more easily, and once reached to squeeze Sophie’s breast without waiting for Dottie to look the other way. Sophie smiled and slightly inclined the other breast towards him, offering i
t to him, but he chuckled and turned away. Then the two of them burst into laughter, exchanging meaningful looks. When Dottie spoke to her about not letting him take advantage of her, Sophie dropped her eyes and made no protest. In the end, when she had to offer some defence, she would only say that he was fine.

  ‘How fine? He treats you like a little thing he can play with,’ Dottie persisted. But Sophie’s face became set, and she muttered to herself: a good man’s hard to find. She said the words as if they were lines from a song, and sometimes varied them, finding different cadences as she toyed with them. Dottie wondered if she was making fun of her.

  In Jimmy’s absence and at a time of such trials, Sophie found consolation in God and his servant the Reverend Mosiah, who went into raptures over Sophie’s pregnancy. At first he scolded her for her sinful ways, but after his pastoral duty was fulfilled he rhapsodised the Lord’s wisdom in offering Sophie an irrefutable sign of her election. Praise the Lord, Sophie cried. Since the memorial service for Hudson, she had become a devoted member of the congregation of the Sacred Church of the True Christ. Her devotion to the Reverend Mosiah was almost complete, held back only by the awe she felt in his presence. Her gratitude for the manner in which he had championed their cause contained no reservations. She even forced Dottie into feeling some guilt that she did not go to the services as well.

  Sunday became a time of minor guerrilla wars between the two sisters. While one tried to impose a solemn air about her doings, humming sacred songs while she dressed in her church finery, the other did her best to subvert this. Sophie would burst into My Lord, or shut her eyes in a fervent prayer, which would be a signal for Dottie to start cleaning a window or to announce that she was going down the hall to the bathroom. Dottie knew that Sophie prayed for her. At night, when they lay in the dark waiting to go to sleep, Sophie’s muttered devotions became longer and longer, and Dottie heard her name frequently mentioned. If she was not worried about Sophie’s sensitivities, she would have burst out laughing. She watched with some surprise as Sophie transformed herself. She dressed like other members of the congregation, wearing longer gowns and elderly styles. Lord and Jesus littered her speech, and every wish or hope that she uttered was followed by a small prayer and the ejaculation of an Amen. To someone who did not know her better, Sophie’s behaviour might have looked like a parody, Dottie thought. She just could not believe that it would last.