The Origin of Waves

by Austin Clarke

  “Which one you think sent us the drinks?” the woman in the silver hose asks her friends. I hear her whisper.

  “The one with the cigar.”

  “I think it’s the other one,” the third one says.

  “We’ll order them a round, too.”

  “Not yet. Too soon. Would make it look as if we are …”

  “Well, we’ll do it just as we are ready to leave.”

  “That’s better!”

  I do not know if they have exchanged more remarks then these, for I have only heard the beginning, and we do not pay any more attention to them. They have reknitted their own circle of conversation and talk, and are like three islands close in a sea of blue warm water, lapping at the shore and leaving smiling waves as their teeth show, as their laughter ebbs like the retreating waves amongst them.

  “Lemme tell you something,” John says, striking the third match to light his cigar, “as I was about to. And tell it to you in the form of questions.” He sips his new powerful martini, rests his cigar in the ashtray, and raises a thumb of approval in Buddy’s direction. “When you are with a woman, does she always come?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Don’t you ask her? Doesn’t she tell you? Don’t you listen to her breathing? You don’t look into her eyes?”

  “I do it with my eyes closed.”

  “You don’t feel her body collapse? You don’t know? You does-be sleeping whilst your’re fooping? But for you to say you don’t know …”

  “Me and sex was never happily married. To me, it is something like a need.”

  “But call it what you like,” John says, trying once more with his cigar, “I can’t say that every-time that my woman puts that weight on me, that when she rolls off, she is the most satisfied woman in the whirl. So, you and me are the same. But if you see what I’m saying, you may not be the only man in this bar this evening that have that kind o’ problem. What about the way you does-do it? In the dark? Or with lights on? Do you light candles? Drink wine? Put on soft music? Rub your tongue over her toes? How you does-do it? Are you a bang-bang man? After you tell me, I going-tell you how I operates.”

  “That is what I am talking about. There is something that frightens me about sex. I don’t know what is the right time to begin; and sometimes I think she is not ready to begin, and I have to wait for the right moment. I am cat-spraddled beginning-wise and sex-wise, and my tom-pigeon can’t make a move. Sometimes the bare idea of having sex scares me. And I feel nervous and start to tremble. And to get it over and conquer my feeling of fright, I want to rush up to her, strip-off all her clothes, muzzle her mouth against any rejection or complaint, and jump-on, and bang-bang! Jump off; wash-off myself, put-back-on my clothes, light a cigarette, and slip through the door.”

  “Goddamn!”

  “Sometimes, I hate sex. Really hate sex and find it dirty, physically dirty. Not only from what the Bible says about fornication and covetousness, but normal sex.”

  “Goddamn!”

  “And as we are sitting down here this evening, passing through my mind is all the women, nice women, beautiful women, bright women, intelligent women, women that I have loved, but never told them that I love them. Most of them are dead and I still love them. As I sit down here, drinking with you, I can see each one of them. They all slipped through my fingers. Lost occasions and lost opportunity. And I am left with the feeling of loss. Of death. Of loss. Loss.”

  “Goddamn! And you never sought help?”

  “I was never able to talk these things to a woman, and say, ‘Darling, I confess that I can’t come, and make you happy. So, darling, you could help me to come? Darling, I am a man who can’t foop. It is only in my mind, this fooping-thing.’ You really expect a man like me to low-rate myself, fall on my two knees in prostration before a woman, and admit my weakness in bed to the same woman?”

  “Goddamn! Therapy can’t help you, brother! Sex-therapy can’t move you from your position! You’re gone, brother, gone! A goner for those ideas you just expressed. And you was going-through these things, these afflictions, all these years, and never had anybody, till I came along, to talk-them-over with? Goddamn!”

  “You asked me questions about legs and breasts; about feet, teeth, hips, dress, weight, sex and having-sex, colours in a woman’s dress and her body, about lingeries and things. It’s like holding a book in my hand and reading it. I can’t face the pages. I know that this book has-in things I should know. But this book remains unopened. Shut tight. Like Klein. I can’t open this book at all. Can’t dare. Can’t get the courage. I am a lost case. Lost cause. I feel lost. I am a lost case. Cause. And I only hope that you would never repeat these things to anybody … I wonder, if I had-remained back home, if I would be facing these sex-things, and if these sex-problems are caused by immigrating to Toronto? You have any therapy-books on the subject? But I would only go home to relax and to dead …”

  The shadows cast by the Tiffany lamps are like kisses on the faces of the men and the women in the bar; and the odour of alcohol and the almost acrid smell of cigarettes, the pungency of John’s cigars, sear the eye; and with the film that gathers over the eyes, the light renders the picture of the bar like a painting drawn with watercolours of snow and cloud, mist and vapour. John’s cigars come from Cuba. They are illegal in America.

  And unknown to us, for we are not paying attention, melodies are being played by a machine that is out of sight, in a corner, perhaps hidden in the lights in the ceiling, or under the carpet under our feet; and this music that has a different character from the one we knew back in those Hit Parade days, seems nevertheless right and proper, in this ticking by of talk and time; and it wraps us, John and me, in a comfort thick as our blood, and we feel we are warm again in the sea water we used to sit in, up to our waists, measuring our safety from the waves that could trick us into deeper adventure, and throw us back again upon the sand, bloated like my uncle’s body.

  John is talking again. “I miss my thrildren. I miss them real bad, especially at a time like this. The first nine of my ten thrildren I never really seen growing up. But this last one, that’s here with me, I intend to be with him every day of my goddamn life. I promise him that much.” He stops talking and just stares into his glass. Then he says, “You know something? I can go for a year, twelve months, without missing them, and then, wham!, at this time, near Christmas, I miss them like hell. I don’t miss their mothers. But I do miss my thrildren. Hommany did I tell you I have?”

  “Two in France, and three in Italy, and …”

  “I said I have ten. Nine, plus this one, Rashid, my last, the apple of my old age. I gave him a real African name, purposely. Rashid! I don’t really know what it means. But he is Rashid. Every Christmas, wherever they are, they must get in touch with me, and their mothers, too. And every three years it’s our reunion-time, when we get together and sit in the backyard round this big picnic table and eat like hogs. My thrildren take after me, food-wise, both the boys and the girls. That’s one sure way I know they’re all mine, and that their mothers didn’t play a … didn’t horn me. From their appetites. And you know something. I always said I prefer to clothe them than feed them! But I am glad I have the means to afford these reunions, and to take care of all those thrildren. Did I tell you I have three in France and two in Italy?”

  “You said two in France, and three in Italy,” I say. There have been so many children mentioned in this long afternoon. “Two in France.”

  “Your memory is better than mine. I said ten, didn’t I?”

  “Ten.”

  “Ten of the best! Nine, plus one.”

  “But why ten? Why not eight, or nine?”

  “Just ten? I wasn’t counting whilst I was fooping to have them, if you see what I’m saying.”

  “But ten?” I am thinking how safe I feel, and how safe John feels in this strange place, in this strange bar, with these men and women, none of whom we know, none of whom knows us, and yet
their friendliness shines in their smiles each time our eyes meet theirs; and the safety and the comfort and the barman, Buddy from Nova Scotia, are almost like the boys and girls we grew up with, giving me this false sense of safety and comfort, provided by the light from the fake Tiffany lamps; and I continue to feel I am warm again, as if I am on that beach with the sand the colour of the silent pink conch-shell; and I think of the sea and how I measured its cruelty by the drifting in of parts of a fishing boat, and a broken mast and an oar, and I see again the sun turning yellow, or gold, and the green sea changing its roughness in the distance and becoming like an endless sheet of glass that takes in the colour of the sun going down; and I see the broken oar and then a sail, and how it drifts out and out and out into the same waves which bring only death and fishermen’s rewards, bloated bodies and dead fish. Swim-out! Swim-out, man, and get the tire! “You remember what you told me that afternoon when …?”

  “When I told you, swim-out, swim-out, it never had-occurred to me, although in a way I had to know it, that you couldn’t swim. How much do you have?”

  “Have of what?”

  “Thrildren.”

  “None.”

  “Even outside-thrildren?”

  “None.”

  “You have an empty life.”

  “Sometimes, it hits me hard.”

  “Every man should have at least two thrildren. A boy and a girl.”

  “Or five boys and five girls.”

  “Goddamn!”

  “Sometimes, I think I would like to relive my life, and sometimes, I am satisfied; but not always.”

  “I was an only child, like you was; but I always say I wanted a big family, after seeing all the fun that thrildren of big families in our village had, and even though I didn’t plan to have a big family with four women, I still sort-of wanted one, if you see what I’m saying. I sure’s hell never imagine I would have three wives who wasn’t from the Wessindies, and that they would be pure Europeans! I’d be walking down a street and see a man with a black woman, or a black wife, and something would happen to me, something that I can’t explain or express in words, if you see what I’m saying; something that I know right here in my guts, but can’t put into words. And I feel I would like to place myself in that man’s shoes, and try to feel what it is like to be walking down the street beside a black woman, beside a black wife. But I’m destined with a white woman, for a wife. I am gonna tell you something. Where a man lives, so-too does he foop, and so-too does he have to goddamn sleep. If you see what I’m saying. I’ll be sixty-three or sixty-five goddamn years old this year, depending on how you look at it, give-or-take a year, and I just emerge from my third divorce. My third, or my fourth divorce? Sometimes, I can’t remember the number. Nor the right number o’ thrildren that I have. My fourth, man. You’re looking at a man who been dee-vorced four times. Goddamn! Emotionally, I am still reeling from those break-ups. You never get over a dee-vorce. Never. You lie about getting-over it, and pretend you are free. Free at last, free at last! Bullshit! One breaks you up, the second destroys you, and this third cuts you into two pieces. And to go through it four times, goddamn! You’re nothing but a quarter of the man you started out as. Your balls’re cut into four pieces. All my wives was kind women. Decent women. The fourth wife took me for all I had, or she took me for all she thought I had. But she was still a kind woman. Before her came the Eye-talian opera singer.”

  “What did she sing?”

  “She was Eye-talian, but she wasn’t really an opera singer in the sense that she sang operas and arias, like that Southern woman, like Leontyne Price, who, incidentally, lives in the South. Or, Callas. If you see what I’m saying. She wasn’t … really … a singer in that sense. She sang around the house. She sang when she was in the shower. And she was big. You know me and women with weight! But to me. She was an opera singer. I just call her that. I call her the opera singer because of the avoirdupois. To me, she was a beautiful woman, like an opera singer. And after this la-dolce-vita lady, Dolly or Dolores, I am trying now to make a life with a lady from Durm-North Carolina, a lady by the name of Wilhelmina. Part German. Part Dutch. Part Austrian. Part French. And part Jewish. She tells me this whenever I watch Jesse Jackson and the question of black and white is raised, that her background is German-Dutch-Austrian-French and Jewish, when I tell her mine is black. Goddamn! All those parts! Life just got to be so many goddamn parts, and hyphens, when people can’t get together. Come closer. Hold over. Lemme let you in on a secret. Two hundred. And thirty pounds,” he whispers. “Two hundred and three-zero pounds …”

  “Is she here with you? Where’s she now?”

  “Durm. North Carolina.”

  “Goddamn!” I say, and he laughs.

  “You’re beginning to talk like an Amurcan, from the South. Where is she? Well, let’s say she’s here with me, and she’s not here, if you see what I’m saying. In her heart, in her heart of hearts, she’s here, but her spirit, her life-force, is back in Durm.”

  “Her life-force?”

  “Morally.”

  “But, in other words, she’s here with you.”

  “Goddamn! I wish I could say more.”

  “I don’t need to know more.”

  “How did we get-onto this? My asking you if you have a woman? Or thrildren?”

  “Both,” I say. “How many children …?”

  “From the woman from Durm-North Carolina, I have one child. A boy-child. Who turned out wrong. Named after an African. Rashid. I blame the Amurcan environment. Outta the ten thrildren born to me all over the whirl, to have the tenth turn out like this pisses me off, and saddens me. Make me saddened. But I am not blaming anybody. And I won’t blame God. But I axe myself. I axe myself if I have done something wrong. If I been a bad influence or something, having these thrildren and getting divorce, and leaving my thrildren in four parts, quarters. And at this age! To be now starting over, with a new slate? You think I been a bad influence? You think I’m begging for trouble? Look me in my goddamn face. And tell me. If, by having ten thrildren, nine straight thrildren from three legal wives, and this tenth bastard from a’ outside-woman, am I the right role-model for this goddamn delinquent that I helped to born? Look me in my face!”

  “You have nine-other good ones.”

  “I have nine others, yes. I have nine others. But this one is special.” He drinks off the martini. He beckons Buddy over. His fingers are shaking. He takes out his cigar case, a huge crocodile-leather case, and extracts a cigar. The label round the cigar says Monte Cristo. He takes the label off, and wears it as if it is a ring, on his little finger. He takes out his cigar clipper. He clips off the end and he places the cigar into his mouth. He passes the match bearing the name of the bar in a slow circular motion at the tip of the cigar. He makes short, almost silent puffs on the cigar, and to me it is like the firing of a gun with a silencer attached to it. The tip is glaring red. And then, he takes a long draw on the cigar, holds the smoke in his lungs, savouring its taste and its power and strength as it goes through his system, and then he shoots it out. The smoke covers me and, for a moment, I cannot see the three women sitting close to our table. His eyes, for that moment, are hidden from me.

  “Don’t axe,” he says. “I not gonna tell you as much about this one, the scion of my old age. Goddamn beautiful boy. But he came out wrong. Me and his mother aren’t married, as I say, but I’m thinking of it, for goddamn sure! I love weddings.”

  “The fourth hanging.”

  “For-goddamn-sure! The fourth henging, when I walk up the aisle with this one. Or the fifth? You ever walk-up the aisle? Other than as a choirboy? You say you haven’t been married-off, yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Goddamn. You are a lucky son of a bitch, if you see what I’m saying. How come no Canadian woman haven’t hauled your ass up the aisle? How come?” He puffs his cigar, his jaw becomes swollen with smoke and he has the attitude of a man who holds a large cigar in his mouth, and he continues to ho
ld the smoke, and then he jets it out straight into my face; and says, “Wouldn’t be AIDS or sickness of that sort, now, would it be? Naw! Not at your age! … If you see what I’m saying …”

  “Too busy.”

  “You don’t have confidence in holy matrimony, or what?”

  “In money.”

  “Root of all evil. Not only the root, but from my experiences, the square-root of all evil. The square-root,” he says. He is tired. His face becomes a face of thick hanging jowls under his chin. I become concerned that he is aging in front of my eyes. I think of his young wife and his young son. I want to ask him if he is here to get an operation for an old man’s disease. But I remember he said Sick Children’s Hospital, many times, in reference only. It’s the child.

  “What is wrong with your son?” I ask him.

  “One reason I’m glad I’m here,” he says, “apart from the Sick Kids Hospital, is to get me a cashmere topcoat, with the same cut as yours. Stannup. Just for a minute, and let me see how your coat hangs.” I stand up, feeling a little stupid. “I can’t find me a good tailor in the States. The fashion magazines are turning men into women, if you see what I’m saying.”

  “Unisex,” I say. And I sit down.

  “No difference,” he says. He is tired, and getting older from the drink.

  “Why are you here?” I say. For a while, he does not answer. “For an operation? Prostate? Ulcers?”

  “What did you do, when you worked? Were you fired? Injured? Are you in compensation?” he says. And then he says, “Major, something major. With the little one, my tenth child.”