Too young to know what he had done; not knowing what he had done; not knowing what the policeman in the cruiser had done; not knowing the exact shape of his fate this time, but wise enough to know that he was going to have some fate, BJ paced and paced. And then, perhaps because of his Black Muslim sense of destiny, he stopped walking up and down. He decided not to worry. “Let the motherfuckers come!” he said, but within his heart he was calmed by the small square space, and by his history. And then he worked it out in detail, and with a logic he was capable of, but which, in the circumstances of the steel surrounding him in the four smells of impatience and of no restraint, the smell of vomit and old urine, in the circumstances of an unclear head, he had permitted to elude and overwhelm him. But when he had worked out his plan, he lit a cigarette, all that they had left him, and in his mind, for his mind was clean and not touched by circumstances, he took out the long-playing record, could see his fingers ease it out of the jacket, and put it on his stereo, and remained standing, listening to the words of Malcolm X’s speech, The Ballot or the Bullet. He was asleep, standing, before the introduction of Malcolm X had finished. And he was stirred from his reverie by the opening of the door, and walked out into the dark cold parking lot, to his car now buried and made invisible by the falling snow. Marco was somewhere else: in another cell, held until his parents could come down from North York to sign him out. Two men walked beside him. They were not in uniform. He recognized his car, for the snow had not touched the letters BLUE on the licence plate. And he made the gesture to go to it, even though he did not have the keys. And he was corrected. “We’re going for a little drive . . .” And he was put into the back of the cruiser. Left alone, to himself, behind the plastic protector thick as brick, strong as steel, and with his two hands free. The blue unmarked cruiser drove off in the white pouring quiet.
From the top of the street, near Bathurst, she could see the red lights. They were whirring. They scared her each time so much just to see them, that they gave her the impression they were making great noise, and that the red lights were silencers of that noise. She could see the four police cruisers parked in the middle of the road, and one at the side. She could see the large, red, ugly vehicle of the fire department. She could see a smaller, but equally ugly white-painted ambulance. And from the distance she was, turning into the smaller street where she lived, she could see the road filled with people. People were leaving doors open and running and passing her as she walked, heading in the direction of the spinning red lights on top of the police cruisers and the fire department truck and the ambulance. She had never witnessed a fire of this bigness in this city before, and so she walked as fast as she could, in the deep sliding snow, to reach the sight.
The road became more crowded when another police vehicle, a small panel-type truck marked Tactical Squad, forced itself into the road from the other end of the street. She was sure now that someone was holding someone hostage. She had watched many of these scenes every day on the soap opera shows in the mansion down in the ravine where she worked. And tickled by the transformation of a movie into a slice of her real life, she tried to hasten her stride, but without success, for the snow was too deep. She felt the excitement the spinning red lights gave off, the curiosity of staring at these kinds of lights on a highway ahead of you, and she passed each house from one end to the next now as long as a block, her blood quickening, and not once through her mind passed the thought of “Who’s sick?” and she did not once consider her neighbours nor the landlord in this absent thought of compassion. It was the excitement she was heading to. People, she could see them now, people were being kept back behind a ribbon of yellow plastic, and one policeman stood guarding the yellow plastic ribbon, which measured the area round one house, and disappeared out of sight, perhaps down a lane or the thin unwalkable space between two houses. And this ribbon reminded her of birthday parties back home, and on Christmas morning, and once, when she was no longer a child, taken by her mother to an opening of something where they had a long ribbon like this before the entrance. On that occasion, the vicar of her church but the ribbon with scissors. Her excitement was now in her blood, and with her blood hot, she was no longer recognizing things, and landmarks and the shape of the uneven concrete steps the landlord had incorrectly built to save money, and that caused her to slip even in the summer. She was forcing herself against these strangers to reach the entrance. And she could see the splotches and the drying small pools, the spots, taking some time to be registered in her excitement as blood. She could see the blood on the steps and blood along the narrow lane, and the lane became difficult to see, as it went beside the house on the left. A dog walked out as if it was drunk. And when it vomited, what came out was like grape juice.
She could see policemen inside the room, collecting things, some of which they were already bringing out. And she could see the attendants from the ambulance arranging something heavy on to a stretcher. She could see the clothes being brought out. She could see the stereo equipment, speakers, CD player, amplifier. And the books. And the small Bible. She wondered who lived here. She could see the books. Books always interested him. And then she realized she was thinking of her son. He always had his head inside a book. And one book she saw was the Holy Qur’an. She wondered if this was the wrong address.
She could see the policemen inside the room, at the back near the door to her kitchen, walking round the small space, nervous and silent. The street outside was silent too. No one was talking. But she could hear their anger and their resentment and their hatred. She was beginning to learn how to listen to this kind of silence.
And then, there was a sound. A sound very similar to surprise, or to shock, or even to the satisfaction that what you are about to see is the shock, but that you are not prepared for it.
They were bringing a body out. Two ambulance attendants carried the stretcher which had wheels like a bier of a coffin, but which had to lifted part of the journey – the short journey from the back of the house, down the two short cement steps which the landlord had not got around to fixing properly, a little way to the right of the rear door, and to the ambulance after going through the thin lane, down two more steps and up the three steps of the basement apartment front door. As they lifted it up the steps, the wind, which was cold and strong, blew the cloth off the body of the corpse. A cry went through the people. It was a young man. A boy, still with his mother’s features. No more than sixteen or seventeen or eighteen. A black youth, with a close-trimmed haircut, with Zeds for patterns and an X for style, dressed in a black woollen jersey, black slacks, white socks and black shoes that could, if he was alive, help him to jump against gravity, like a basketball star. Or Michael Jordan. And when the wind had taken the blanket on it short wild curtsey to the wind and to the night, the people made that sound again, like a gigantic taking in of wind.
She could see it too, And she saw the head, and it was out of shape from something that had hit it. Disfigured. And the blood was covering the face. And the stretcher was covered in thick blood. And the black clothes the youth was dressed in were red now, more than black. The blood seemed to have its own unkind and disfiguring disposition, and it seemed to drip and mark the journey from the room at the back of the basement apartment through the room itself, through the small backyard, through the lane and out into the cold wind. It looked as if a cannon had struck the head, and the head had exploded and had been cut into pieces, like a watermelon that had slipped out of the hand. To her, it seemed as if the brains of the young man were coming through his mouth, as if his eyes were lost against the impact of the bullet. To her, it looked like a watermelon that was smashed by the wheels of a car.
It was too much. It was too cold. It was too brutal. It was too cruel. And there was too much blood. Worse than the American soap opera she had watched earlier the afternoon of this Friday night, down in the ravine.
“BJ! BJ Fuck!”
It was somebody screaming. She did not know the voice. She looked ar
ound, in this crowd of people only one of whom she knew, her landlord, and then she saw the owner of the voice. It was a young man. There were tears in the young man’s eyes. He was dressed in a black jogging suit, black Adidas, and white athletic socks, and he seemed to have something wrong with his right hand or his right side, for he was doing something with his body which made it shake, as if he had a nervous habit, like a tick, hitting his right hand against his right thigh. He looked Portuguese to her. She did not know him. “BJ! BJ! Fuck!”
Questions for Discussion and Essays
Austin Clarke is the winner of the 2002 Giller Prize, the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize, and the 16th Annual Trillium Prize for The Polished Hoe, which was also long-listed for the 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He is the winner of the 1999 W.O. Mitchell Prize, awarded each year to a Canadian writer who has not only produced an outstanding body of work, but has been an outstanding mentor among young writers. He is the author of nine novels and six short-story collection, including Choosing His Coffin: The Best Stories of Austin Clarke, Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack, The Prime Minister, the culinary memoir, Love and Sweet Food, and, most recently, his new novel, More.
1. How important is a sense of “origin” (familial, regional, cultural, racial) in the stories of In This City? When are “origins” threatening or comforting, “facts” that are naked and inescapable, or “stories” that are freely imaginable?
2. In “Gift-Wrapped,” the narrator uses a notably lucid voice, but in parts of stories such as “Initiation,” “Trying to Kill Herself,” and “A Short Drive,” the narrator explores much more complex and tangled language. Why is this? What can you say about the stylistic choices that the narrator makes in different stories, and at different moments in the plot?
3. Clarke has developed a reputation for a sensitive and humourous use of dialect or vernacular in much of his fiction. Comment upon the use of dialect in stories such as “Initiation” or “I’m Running for My Life.”
4. Is In This City about Toronto specifically – its specific neighbourhoods or demographics, for instance – or else about “the city,” broadly speaking? How “translatable” is the collection as a portrait of modern urban life?
5. What can you say about intercultural or interracial relationships in the collection? What about the relationships between people who are together “West Indian,” or “black” but, in fact, possess very different backgrounds and experiences?
6. How are gender differences depicted in the collection? Are there, in the various stories, consistent differences between women’s and men’s choices and their ability to get something accomplished?
7. How is sexuality and physical intimacy depicted in the collection? When and how are moments of bodily feeling and satisfaction represented, and what, if anything, does this say about the presumed “pleasures” of city life?
8. What role does music play in Clarke’s stories? What can you say about the specific music that is cited, and its relationship to specific plot lines or character psychologies? (e.g. What is John Coltrane doing in “Initiation,” “A Short Drive,” and “Sometimes a Motherless Child.” What do you know about the song “Sometimes a Motherless Child” itself?)
9. Comment upon the generational rifts that are articulated in stories such as “Gift-Wrapped,” “Initiation,” “Letter of the Law of Black,” and “Sometimes a Motherless Child.”
10. Have you read some of Clarke’s other books? If so, what comes to mind when reading In This City? Do you see continuity or differences between Clarke’s books?
Related Reading
Novels
The Survivors of the Crossing.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1964.
The Meeting Point.
Toronto: Macmillan, 1967. (Republished Toronto: Vintage, 1998)
Storm of Fortune.
Boston: Little Brown, 1973. (Republished Toronto: Vintage, 1998)
The Bigger Light.
Boston: Little Brown, 1975. (Republished Toronto: Vintage, 1998)
The Prime Minister.
Don Mills, Ont.: General Publishing, 1977. Toronto: Exile Editions, 1994.
Proud Empires.
London: Gollancz, 1988.
The Origin of Waves.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1997.
The Question.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1999.
The Polished Hoe.
Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2002.
More.
Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2008
Short Stories
Amongst Thistles and Thorns.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1965.
When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks.
Toronto: Anansi, 1971.
When Women Rule.
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985.
Nine Men Who Laughed.
Toronto: Penguin, 1986.
In This City.
Toronto: Exile Editions, 1992. (Republished Toronto: Exile, 2008)
There Are No Elders.
Toronto: Exile Editions, 1993.
Memoirs
Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack: A Memoir.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1980. (Republished Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2005)
Public Enemies: Police Violence and Black Youth.
Toronto: HarperCollins, 1992.
A Passage Back Home: A Personal Reminiscence of Samuel Selvon.
Toronto: Exile Editions, 1994.
Pigtails ’n’ Breadfruit: The Rituals of Slave Food, A Barbadian Memoir.
Toronto: Random House, 1999. University of Toronto Press, 2001.
Resources on Clarke’s Work
The Austin Clarke Reader. (Ed. Barry Callaghan.)
Toronto: Exile Editions, 1996.
Choosing His Coffin: The Best Stories of Austin Clarke.
Toronto: T. Allen Publishers, 2003.
Austin C. Clarke: A Biography. (Author, Stella Algoo Baksh.)
Toronto: ECW, 1994.
Of Interest on the Web
1. www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm?author_number=907
A “visitor’s site” to browse a biography of Austin Clarke, read book summaries, excerpts and reviews, at BookBrowse.com.
2. www.library.mcmaster.ca/archives/findaids/index.html
The McMaster University archives Web site. Direct Clarke link:
library.mcmaster.ca/archives/findaids/fonds/c/clarke-a.htm
3. www.thomas-allen.com
Austin Clarke’s publisher website
Review - There Are No Elders – Exile Classics Series Five
by Austin Clarke
Exile Editions, issued 2007
Review by Tony O’Brien
September 2, 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 36 – Metapsychology online reviews)
How many of this year’s crop of collections of short stories will be republished in fifteen years? Not many. A short story that reaches beyond its time is a rare thing. There Are No Elders was first published in 1993, and Exile Editions have done readers like myself a huge service by reissuing this collection. The book is a collection of eight stories, all focused on different aspects of life as experienced by West Indian immigrants to Toronto. It would be a mistake though, to say that the book is only about one ethnic group and the dilemmas encountered by those finding themselves in a culturally alien world. Clarke is a skilful crafter of fiction. His characters, situations and dialog reach beyond their particular circumstances and exert a universal appeal. That probably accounts for the longevity of these stories, as much as their appeal.
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