by John Metcalf
“Yeah, man,” said another voice.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” said a girl’s voice.
Lifting his head, Blind Foxy John sang unaccompanied, Blind Foxy John done gone
Blind Foxy John done gone
He’s from the County Farm
They didn’t know his name
They didn’t know his name
He had a long chain on . . .
The song was not American; its cadences went back to the beginnings of slavery, to a past that conjured Africa. At the end of each line, David heard the rows of picks falling on stone, the thunk of the biting axes, the grunts of the chained convicts as they swung to the leader’s chant.
The nag of recognition drew to certainty. He knew where he had heard Blind Foxy John’s stories before. On a record. And Blind Foxy John hadn’t been telling them; those men were long dead.
He remembered devouring what books there were then, when he was fourteen and fifteen, remembered the badly printed bulletins and discographies from all the fanatical jazz societies, the prized records pirated from America, the endless evenings and weekends listening to the music America ignored. It was one of Tony’s records, one his uncle had brought back from New York. A Lomax record. A field recording made in the forties of old lifers in a southern pen.
“The bloody old fraud!” said David. “He’s getting all this stuff from records.”
“Shss!” said a voice.
“What do you mean?” said Susan.
“You’ll see,” said David. “He’ll tell a story about a man called Mr. White who gave all the animals born black to the Negroes. I know this stuff. I remember now.”
“Shss!” said voices.
“Shss, yourself!” said David.
The blues run ended in a chord.
“And I’ve known, uh, it was a nigra and a white well, it was right at railroad crossing, you know, just as you get in town like where you cross the railroad tracks? The white man was telling the nigra what he wanted him to do – and it was a nigra was comin’ driving a wagon with a grey mule and a black mule to the wagon, see. So this nigra drove up to the crossing . . .”
“He’s going to have to call the grey mule ‘Mister’,” said David.
“. . . the mules was tryin’ to pull over and he kept saying ‘Get up, giddup.’ The white man holler up there, ask him, ‘Hey,’ says, ‘Do you know that’s a white mule you talkin’ to?’ He says, ‘Oh yes, sir! Giddup, Mister Mule!’”
Through the laughter, David said, “This is disgraceful!”
“How did you know?” said Susan.
“It’s a record for Christ’s sake! I told you.”
“And I’m minded they was a kind of tobacco called Prince Albert Tobacco. That were all down through Arkansas, down Goulds, Dumas, . . . and you didn’t say, ‘Gimme a can of Prince Albert.’ You know that? You know what you say?”
“Yes,” called David. “I do know. You said, ‘Gimme a can of MISTER Prince Albert’ because he was a white man. And I know because I heard it on the same record you did and you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
Keep quiet!
“What the brother say?” said Blind Foxy John.
“You’re a bloody fraud!” shouted David.
Throw him out!
Shame!
“David! Come on! We’d better go.”
“He’s getting it all from a record!”
The uproar rose. The lights were turned up.
He’s drunk! Get him out!
Turning in the direction of the voice, David shouted, “I am not drunk! It’s a 1947 Alan Lomax record!”
“PLEASE,” bellowed Bearded Arnold from the doorway. “PLEASE.”
“Come on, David!”
He pushed back his chair and stood up.
“You don’t insult a man that’s worked in the cotton!” yelled Bongo, also getting to his feet.
“Shut up, Pimples!” called Susan.
“The nearest he’s been to cotton,” yelled David, “is his undershirt !”
“PLEASE!” yelled Arnold.
“You’d better better blow, man,” said Bongo.
“What happened to your trousers?” said David.
“We don’t need racists here,” said Bongo.
“You’re lucky you’re wearing a drum,” said David.
His upper arm was grasped; glass shattered as he turned; he found his face inches from that of Bearded Arnold.
“My squirrel’s broken,” said David.
“You’ll feel better,” said Arnold, “in the fresh air.”
A few late night window-shoppers. Couples. University students in lettered jackets. It was not as cold as it had been earlier because the gusting winds had dropped. David felt immensely tired and could not keep from yawning as they walked along. His legs felt leaden. Susan’s leather coat creaked. The taste of the root beer lingered; he thought it one of the most truly disgusting things he’d ever tasted. And made from the root of what was beyond his imagination. They turned off Ste. Catherine up Mansfield and stopped to peer into the windows of Mr. Heinemann’s bookshop.
“I wouldn’t mind that,” said David, pointing to a facsimile of the Quarto Hamlet.
“I’d rather have a paperback,” said Susan.
Within the curve of McGill University gates, they stopped to light cigarettes and then propped themselves against the low wall watching the procession of cars along Sherbrooke, the yellow beacons of taxis gliding towards them along the night. Susan pulled up the deep collar of her coat.
“You look like a spy. A beautiful spy,” said David.
A couple walked past.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Why?”
“You don’t seem to be saying much.”
She shrugged.
A bus roared past dragging coldness after it.
She stood up and pulled down the skirts of her coat. Looking about on the pavement near David’s feet, she said, “Where’s the squirrel?”
Back in the A&W sitting on the counter. Staring up with its dusty little eyes at the sign which saidThe Hamburgers That AM Burgers.
“No, let’s leave it there,” he said.
The picture grew elegiac in his mind. The plastic orange bobbing on the surface of the tank of orange liquid. The plastictopped mushroom stools. Fluorescent acres of white plastic table tops. The sticky, squidgy containers of ketchup and mustard. And on the clean and gleaming counter, the squirrel sitting like a reproach.
Susan flicked her cigarette-end across the pavement onto the road where it showered sparks. The wind of a passing car trundled it out towards the crown of the road.
“Are you going to make application here?” he said.
“McGill? Hadn’t thought about it.”
“You’d better start doing some work soon, you know. It’s not long now to the matrics.”
“I suppose it isn’t,” she said.
“It’s Easter holidays next week and then there’ll be about two weeks in April and then the whole of May. And exams start on the second of June. Or the fourth, maybe. So that’s only seven or eight weeks.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Think you’ll pass?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, don’t you think . . .”
“O.K. There’s seven or eight weeks. O.K. Don’t start on about it again.”
“I’m not ‘starting on’ but it’s pretty important.”
“It might be important to you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shrugged and pushed her hands deep into her pockets.
“What’s it matter!” she said. “I expect I’ll be dead by the time I’m twenty-one or so anyway.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I just feel I will be, that’s all.”
“But why should you be? You haven’t got a disease or something, have you?”
“It’s just something I feel.”
“Well that doesn’t make much sense.”
“I’m sorry my feelings don’t make sense to you.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”
He looked at her profile as she studied the roof of the Three-Minute-Carwash opposite.
“Susan?”
“What?”
“What are we quarreling about?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just don’t like being pushed.”
They were silent.
“But don’t you think university’d be interesting?”
“No.”
“But why? I’m not trying to push. I just want to know. O.K.? I mean, you read a lot anyway. You like books.”
“If I was doing just the things I liked the way you did in England maybe I would like it. I don’t know. But it isn’t like that here. I’m not interested in science and sociology and French and I don’t want to sit in classes of three hundred doing crap like Freshman Composition.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have to put up with it for long, would you?”
“I don’t want to put up with it at all.”
A group of people walked past talking loudly. One of the men stared at them.
“O.K.,” said David, when they had passed. “Here’s the lowest common denominator, then. You need the bit of paper you get at the end. What sort of job can you get without a degree?”
“All sorts of jobs.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t give a shit. I’d rather be a secretary or work in Eaton’s. I’d exchange a piece of my time for money – and that’s all. And then they can’t touch me.”
“Oh, yes!” said David. “Oh, yes, I can just see it. Especially you. Have you ever worked in a factory? Or behind a counter? Or in a restaurant?”
“No.”
“Well, I have. And I don’t think you’d like it. You’re just being romantic.”
“Maybe. I don’t expect to like it. And if being ‘realistic’ means like most people I’d rather be romantic.”
“Look, Susan. I’m really not trying to quarrel. Honestly. I just want to know how you feel, that’s all. I mean, a minute ago you said ‘They can’t touch me.’ What did you mean by that?”
“I meant that I know who I am. I don’t want to go to university or have a ‘career’ because it makes you into a different kind of person.”
“How?”
“Well think of English. That’s all that interests me, anyway. Literature’s about feelings. And reading a lot of boring old crap kills that. It changes you.”
“Now just wait . . .”
“Look, I was born on Drolet in the east end, right? And I’m not going to let anyone turn me into a nice middle-class McGill girl who knows all about Shakespeare’s fucking will or some bunch of horseshit.”
“I don’t think it need mean that,” said David.
“Well you don’t think very much then, do you?”
David sighed.
“And don’t sigh at me.”
“Well,” said David, “it’s your life.”
“You’re damn right it is!” she said.
David shook his head.
“Look at what comes out the other end,” she said. “If it meant anything to them, would they be the kind of people they are? Would they kiss ass to work for Sun Life and IBM and go into teaching?”
“Well, you can’t . . .”
“I’m not cashing in my feelings for a piece of paper!” she said.
“What about me?” said David, turning to her. “I’ve been to a university and I teach.”
“Well, I think it’s different in England somehow – and you’re you – you’re special.”
“Thank you kindly,” he said, bobbing a curtsy.
“I’m trying to talk to you, David. Stop fooling around. I don’t feel like it.”
“O.K.,” he said “But you can’t expect not to change, can you?”
“No, of course not. But I’m going to become more me. I’m not going to have me changed to fit in with them.”
“Well . . . I don’t know . . . I mean, are people really that much changed by going to university or doing an interesting job? Distorted by it?”
Susan turned round and stared through the railings across the lawns towards the library. Three windows on the top floor were lighted. She started to scrape a pencil-stub on the rough stone of the wall.
“My sister,” she said. “She used to be an O.K. person. I really used to like her. But it’s all changed now.”
“How do you mean?”
“She used to read a lot – give me books. She used to see all the movies. We used to go to the Tête de l’Art and the Showbar and the Casa Loma and she used to go to New York on weekends to hear Miles and Monk at the Vanguard – she really used to care. And she was going around with a poet – well, he used to write anyway. And at home she always stood up for me when they started. But now she’s working, she’s different. Since she quit school. Two years and she’s a different person. She’s always having her hair done and ironing blouses and Mr. Courteney said this, Mr. Courteney said that, the girls were saying, I went on an errand to Mr. Courteney’s house.... Shit!”
“Well not wearing jeans to work or something isn’t . . .”
“It’s that job at COXM. Since she’s been there . . . she stayed up all one night at home writing Dentaflor on balloons with a magic marker because the printer had let them down and as a reward they let her go up in the COXM helicopter and release them over Fairview Shopping Centre. How about that!”
“O.K. but . . .”
“No! She was thrilled. Don’t you understand? And now it’s always, ‘Yes, Susan. Don’t sit like that.’ As if she hadn’t seen a crotch before. ‘Really, Susan! Don’t be vulgar.’ And this is the strangest – really weird – she pretends she doesn’t screw anymore. Oh, Jesus – and the guy she’s going around with! A real prick. A guy about forty with a pot-belly – an industrial fucking chemicals salesman.”
She threw the pencil-stub over the railings and turned round to stare at him.
“Why?” she said. “How can you have liked Coltrane and Miles and Sonny Rollins and become like that?”
David shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Got a cigarette?” she said.
The matches kept wavering out.
“I’m freezing,” she said.
“That is, of course,” he said, “arguing from only one case.”
“Oh, bullshit!” she said. “Bullshit! You’re always trying to avoid the point with words!”
They were silent. David smoked intently.
“You always say you want to write – ” he said at length. “You’ve got to study other writers to do that.”
“There’s libraries and bookshops.”
“And nobody can help you?”
“Not in there,” she said, turning to look through the railings again.
“Well, whatever you say, I think you need some kind of perspective. A sort of – I don’t know – I don’t want to sound pompous – but a sense of the – tradition.”
“I’ll buy a Penguin,” she said.
“I think you’re making a big mistake.”
She shrugged.
“If I am, I can go to nightschool, can’t I?” she said. “Or the Pig Farm or something.”
“The what?”
“Macdonald College.”
“Oh. I suppose so.”
“I’d better go,” she said. “We’re not enjoying ourselves any more.”
“No, don’t go. Don’t be silly. We’re only discussing something.”
“No, we’re not,” she said.
She walked over to the curb and waved down an approaching cab.
“We’re not enjoying ourselves and we’re not discussing anything, David,” she said as she got into the back seat. “You shouldn’t lie to yourself.”
As he closed the door, something perverse made him say, “Remember. There’s only eight weeks.”
>
One foot on the deserted pavement, one foot in the gutter, David limped rhythmically westward. It seemed to fit his mood.
He had watched the taxi until its tail lights had merged into traffic, hoping that she might wave, turn to look at him.
Susan.
Quite, quite wrong, of course. Wilful. Moody. Perhaps her period was approaching. He felt quite sober, the drinks faded leaving him withdrawn, sodden with fatigue. Hot grit behind the eyes.
Yes, a sense of the tradition. She would discover the need for discipline – that necessary humility in the face of those who were truly great. He found himself staring down the vistas of English Literature at all the monuments of unaging intellect which had constituted his education. The Battle of Maldon, The Vision of Caedmon, The Dream of the Rood, The Nightmare of Nignog, Cynewulf and the Three Little Pigs, Gammer Gurton’s Grotty Needle.
Yes, that was it! Alliteration!
Swooning Swinburne
Tedious Tennyson
Past the Van Horne house with its graceful conservatory. All threatened with demolition. Barbarism not unexpected from people blunted by hamburger and ravaged by root beer.
Balls-Aching Addison
Suckholing Steele
Past the Ritz Carlton, black and gold, splendidly English.
SHITTY “Spectator”
The Dominion Gallery
(All Paintings! European Artists!
Regular $300 Now Only $125.
Including Frame!)
Jumbo Johnson
Brown-nose Boswell
Approaching his favourite Montreal shop, limping down the three shallow steps to its lighted window.
The Petit Musée.
It was while he was gazing into the window at the objects – Persian miniatures, Pre-Columbian figurines, flintlocks, Bambara carvings, armour, coins, a tiny faience ushabti, a Ming vase, a necklace from an Egyptian tomb, a Dogon ancestor figure – gazing and trying to realize some drifting, unformed, disturbing comparison between the display and his university education that he first became aware of the man.