But John had been talking while I was wandering, giving me his history, which after all is what the drinking was for.
“Paris was cold, and I spoke no French, she didn’t learn Barbadian. We went home twice on holiday though. She spend her time at the Alliance Fransays, and I in the rum shop around the corner from the beach where you and me used to sit and look at the sea. Ten children. But not from one woman. I have two from the parley-vous lady. Monique and Faye. Forty and thirty-nine. After I left France, I spent a time in Italy, I got married and had three of the prettiest bambinos. Roberto, Ricardo and Umberto. Thirty-three, thirty-two and thirty-one. A sociologist, a psychiatrist and an anthropologist. In that order. Professors at the University of Rome. I been making geniuses. Got fed up with Rome and Italian women, and seeing that I am an Anglican, the Pope was no help. Never picked up Italian in the ten years I was in Rome drinking scotch and eating spaghetti and watching Fellini movies. My wife, God bless her soul, was fluent in English and French. Then it was to the deep South. The South is the best place for an ’ombre like me to live. Was practising in a firm of corporation lawyers. Made more money, but got lonely as hell. Those southern nights. And the smell. Patchouli and magnolia. Jesus Christ, pardner, and the food! Have you seen American mommas, and wonder why they are so goddamn big? It remind me of Barbados, though I never go back to the West Indies, and be-Christ, barring the time I took the parley-vous lady there to meet my mother, who was dying, I tell you, goddamn, next time you see or hear that I gone back to the West Indies, it is in a goddamn box, six foot long. But never mind that! In the South, the mommas remind me of that calypso by Lord Kitchener. Sugar bum-bum. Listen to me. Man, listen to me, man! When they walk, and they start to shake, and you see all that goddamn sweetness. Goddamn!”
He shook his head the way we had seen Mohammed Ali shake his head when a hard punch from Fraser landed. He shook his to clear his senses, to extricate himself from reminiscences. “Goddamn!” he said, and I found it easy to picture him deep in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina or Georgia. And I could do this because in all the time we had been drinking, he had talked in his native, broad, flat Barbadian accent, remembering the taste of that life. “Goddamn! You hear of lil men liking big women? You heard them stories of these lil men coming on strong, and these big goddamn American women sitting down on them. I mean sitting on them. A man be one hundred and fifty pounds, goddamn. And this American momma be two hundred and seventy pounds, naked, jack! Goddamn! Well, it ain’t no goddamn fairy tale. It be the goddamn truth!”
I was laughing so loudly that some women fresh from work looked in our direction, stared, did something with their mouths, and spoke. I heard the word, “Americans!” But I knew the term stood for something else, unmentionable, spoken with flat venom, distaste, utter disapproval. I had thought, for years, certainly in the last ten, to pull up stakes, put my bank balance in my pocket, and drive slowly down South, as I did not intend any longer to stomach the discreet disdain of so many Canadian women and men. But life in this city was easy, and good, and I had made money, discreetly on the side. From the stock market and from the race track, which is the same damn thing. They both have tote boards with shimmering computer lights and numerals. And men at both boards are always shouting, and cheating. I had made good; I was good; I’m good, as Canadians say, discreetly.
The waiter, smiling, as he had been listening all the time to our talk, was standing between us. The round shining table was cluttered. My cigarettes and his cigars were on it; and the ash from the two had overflowed the small square ashtray. And the more the waiter changed the ashtray, the quicker it seemed, we piled it high.
“Now, this is what I want done this time. If you don’t mind,” John was saying to the waiter. His speech had taken on a friendly slur. He was drunk. The waiter thought he was merry. “If you don’t mind me saying so. I don’t wish to tell you how to do your job. I been a waiter myself, and I’ll be goddamn mad if some son-of-a-bitch comes in my bar and tell me how to do my job. But this time, this time, I want to ask you to do me a lil favour. A lil favour. When you make the next two double martinis, pass the vermouth bottle, unopen, over the glass mouth. Measure-off two drops, two drops of Chivas in each glass, and after you pour-off the ice, filler-up, joe! Filler-up! I here talking to this son-of-a-bitch who I haven’t rested my two goddamn eyes on, in forty…. No, fifty. Half-a-goddamn-century! Me and him born in Barbados. Been to the same school. This son-of-a-bitch came here. And I been travelling the world. We met on the street. A minute ago, I coming through the snow like a snow-removal, and this goodamn son-of-a-bitch, my ace-boon-coon, clogging up the white-people thoroughfare! Goddamn! Where you from?”
“Nova Scotia,” the waiter said.
“Coulda sworn you had West Indian in you!”
“Grandmother.”
“Goddamn! Pour yourself a drink, fella. Goddamn! Ain’t this a bitch? We taking over North America, if y’all not careful.” He glanced at the three women just off from work. They were chatting and giggling. As soon as he had said that, as soon as Buddy had agreed to follow his instructions about making the martinis, our third straight double, we forgot about the women and the snow outside and the winter that was still falling.
The pleasant shadows cast by the lamps, the odour of alcohol, of cigarettes and the pungency of cigars from Cuba, and the low unknown melodies being played by a machine we could not see, wrapped us in a comfort not so different from the warmth of the seawater we used to sit so close to, having the wind dry our bodies and our cut-down khaki pants.
“Children. I love my children. Won’t forget them for hell. The mothers’re something else again. I won’t say they’re all bitches, and I won’t say they’re all ladies. They did good things for me. They was goddamn good to me, when you come to think of it. And a man have to be goddamn honest in these things, at least once in his goddamn life. But my children. Which number was I at?”
“Two in France. And three in Italy.”
“And I said I have ten. Every Christmas, wherever they are, goddamn, they gotta haul their arse and come wherever I am, with their mothers too. I insist on that. And we sit round this goddamn big table and eat like hogs. My children take after me. They boys and the girls. They can damn well eat. That they got from me. And once a year, the whole goddamn posse gets together in a place one o’ the children decide, and we bring the grans, and have another goddamn ball. Is the only way to live. And I glad I am a man who could afford it. I say three in France, two in Italy?”
“Two in France. Three in Italy.”
“You’re goddamn right. And I said I have ten, no?”
“How’d you do it?”
“I was an only child like you. But I always say I want a big family. Didn’t plan it with four women. And sure’s hell didn’t know all these goddamn wives would be non-West Indian. I’m sixty-six goddamn years. This year. August twenty-second. To be exact. I just been through my fourth divorce. Bitch took me for a loop. But she was kind. After the Italian opera singer.”
“What did she sing?”
“She was Italian. Sure, she wasn’t no goddamn opera singer. I calls her that. To me, she was a’ opera singer. Now after la-dolce-vita, her name was Dolly, I try to make a life with a lady from Alabama, Wilhemina. Part German. Part Dutch. Part Austrian. Part French. And part Jewish. Life’s just got to be parts, and more parts. Goddamn! Two hundred and seventy pounds of parts in her panties. A physicist. And love having children? Love having children? What a woman. I worships the ground that woman walk on.”
“Where’s she now?”
“Alabama. From her, I had four children. Every goddamn one turned out wrong. Bad. Terrible. The environment. Three boys and a girl. Age from twenty-eight to nineteen. Dope. Fast cars. Needles. Drinking. You think I been a bad influence? Tell me, man. Look me in the goddamn face, and tell me if, by having so many children, and four wives, I been a bad model for four goddamn delinquents that I gave birth to, with my wife?”
&n
bsp; “And the tenth?”
He drank off the martini in two gulps. He beckoned Buddy over. He took out his cigar case, a huge crocodile case, and extracted a cigar. It said Monte Cristo. He took out his cigar clipper. He passed the match in a circular motion at the tip. He made short, almost silent puffs on the cigar. It was like the firing of a gun with a silencer attached to it. The tip glaring red. And he took a large draw, held the smoke, savoring its taste and its power as it went through his system. He closed his eyes for a moment. And when he opened them, the smoke shrouded my sight and then the cloud passed, and all that was left was the aroma of the expensive cigars. I wished I could smoke cigars.
“Don’t ask,” he said. “I’m not gonna tell you about this one, scion of my old age. Goddamn beautiful girl. Me and her mother aren’t married. But I’m thinking of it. For goddamn sure. But I been yakking and yakking about me. You married?”
“No.”
“Goddamn! You lucky son-of-a-bitch! How come no Canadian hauled your arse in a church in holy matrimony?”
“Too busy making money.”
“You look good. Not a day upside of forty. And you dress well. One reason I’m here, to get me a good new cashmere top coat, in the same cut as yours. Stand up. No, stand up, lemme see how it hang. Good. That’s the cut I’m looking for. Those tailors in America don’t know one fuck about cut and drape and hang. So, you not married! Ever?”
“No, never.”
“Doing well?”
“Can’t complain.”
“Car? House?”
“Benz in a garage round the corner. And a little place in Rosedale.”
“What’s Rosedale? A project? Community housing?”
“In a way, you could say so. But the joints in Rosedale cost half million to….”
“Goddamn! And me and you, sitting on a goddamn beach, in make-believe bathing trunks. Fifty goddamn years ago, and looking out into the goddamn sea! What did you see when you looked out in the sea? What did you see in the sea? What did you see?”
“Ships!”
“Ships,” he said, and the way he said it, told me he was travelling back over all that time, perhaps not in a ship, but with the same movement. “I saw three ships, come sailing in….”
“Come sailing in, come sailing in,” I continued.
And we laughed loudly, and two women in the now nearly empty room looked around and they looked unsober, and they laughed, and smiled with us.
“Ship sail,” he said.
“Sail fast,” I said.
“How many men on deck?” he said.
“Ten!” I said.
“That little girl I not been telling you about. That’s why I’m here. I was just at the Sick Kids Hospital.” He didn’t say anymore. And I didn’t ask.
The snow was still coming down and it seemed that a white sheet had been drawn against the window, preventing us from looking outside, from seeing the darkness. I thought of the mock battles we used to play in John’s house, games sent to him by his father who spent all his life in America working on a ship, and when he came off, refused to come home. But he sent toys and pens and shoes which were brogues and heavy, and too large for John’s feet, and shirts that lumberjacks wore. And none of these things John could take to school, or wear, for the headmaster said they were “Loud, and damn American.”
“Children?” he asked me.
“No children.”
“Are you a goddamn homosexual, then?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. And gave off a laugh. He was not relieved.
“You queer?” He was not smiling. The cigar was stuffed into his mouth, and his lips were tight around it, and smoke was coming out, it seemed, from his eyes even.
“I had a bad experience. She was Chinese. Very bright, and intelligent and lovely in a way. She was a law student from Shanghai.”
“You been Shanghaied! You been took?”
“She was a translator before she was a law student. And she didn’t study law in China but here at a small university. I met her five years ago when she was still a child, really. But she was beautiful and very bright, something like a computer mind and we used to walk to the Chinese market, and, this is what I was waiting for, after a few flings, and….”
“Chinese women’re something else again, if you know what I mean! What’s her name?”
“We had just bought the house in Rosedale, and she was in the last month of her law-thing, and was to be called to the Bar. We took a trip to China where we bought a lotta things, including rings. And she stayed behind and I was in the backyard in my garden, chasing squirrels from eating the goddamn tomatoes, when the telephone went. And I chased two more of those goddamn tree rats. The neighbour feeds them peanuts. So, I walk in the house through the French doors and took up my scotch on the way to the study, and sat down, and….”
“So!”
“I never got up from that chair for hours. Five years ago, on the ninth of July, to be exact. So, I walk this street out there, Yonge Street, as I used to leave the house which is just alongside the ravine, and walk up Yonge and meet her anywhere, on the way home. Five years every day, including Sundays. And sometimes, with the number of Chinese living now in this city, sometimes, I think I see her, and that the telephone message I got on the ninth of July five years ago, was just a joke, a prank someone played on me. But I was standing over her coffin, and I saw her in the coffin, I saw her face, and it was still beautiful, and her hair like a….”
“Don’t,” John said. “Buddy!” and Buddy came over. He removed the piled ashtrays, and said, “Same again?”
“No. Two brandies. Best in the house. You got some Spanish brandy?”
“Not another woman since. Not even an occasional woman, for company, or….”
“And all the time you’re listening to me, shouting off my goddamn mouth!” he tapped his Monte Cristo on the edge of the cluttered ashtray, and looked me in the eye. “About the Sick Kids Hospital, that’s where my daughter is. Intensive care.”
Buddy brought the brandy. John lit a match and applied it to the glass. I drank mine off, in one gulp.
The snow had now completely isolated us from the sidewalk. There was no one else in the bar. Only Buddy polishing glasses, moving a bottle an inch, placing it an inch farther one way or the other, waves of bottles in the mirror. The music was not playing. And all we could hear was the passing of cars, the sound of slush and skids, and it sounded like the water that lapped our feet when we sat in the sun on the sand, beside the old conch shell the fishermen had used to summon villagers and to summon death.
“I didn’t mean to suggest you was a homosexual, or anything.”
“It never crossed my mind.”
“We leave the cradle, man, and our mothers feed us Cream of Wheat to make us men and we have different paths, and we go here and we go there, have women, wives, girlfriends, but we never leave the place we’re born. We never grow up, really. And it took me all the travel I been travelling to understand, we start out on a beach, two barefoot boys, looking out into the goddamn sea, and seeing things. Perhaps, we shouldn’t have looked so hard. Perhaps, we should still be there on that beach, sitting on the sand, looking out at the ships and fishing boats.”
“When Lee died, the first thing that came, the first thing that came into my mind, was that afternoon you and I were sitting on the beach. I sat at home in a chair, a grown man in my shoes, wondering, wondering why life would want to lick me down in Rosedale, and Rosedale, it’s become nothing, nothing like that day on the beach, sitting on the sand beside you, and I ask myself why couldn’t I see on that day, and at that time, that I’d meet this woman and have happiness for such a goddamn short space o’ time? The loss is a long way to go for, a long way.”
“Let’s close this goddamn joint!”
“It is closed, man.”
“Goddamn! And you still don’t know how to swim!”
Questions for Discussion and Essays
Austin Clarke is the wi
nner 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, and most recently, the culinary memoir, Love and Sweet Food.
1. What is the common theme of all the short stories?
2. How do you explain the meaning of the elevator, in “In an Elevator”?
3. Does the ride in the elevator upwards suggest the man’s failure?
There Are No Elders Page 15