The Bigger Light (21 page)

“This is happiness,” Mrs. James told him, when the last child was somewhere behind the whispering partition from the living room. “This is the happiness that every woman asks for. Not that she expect every day to be a happy day. God know that most o’ my life I have been unhappy. But at times like this, Berr-tramm, I am happy I watched you cooking that meal for my family, and I have to confess that I wished you were my husband. I actually wished that you were my husband. And that I was Mistress Cumberbatch. I don’t mean that I am taking you away from your wife. I don’t even mean that I want you and me to be … well, you know what I mean. But standing there handing you all that pepper and hot things, which we never eat in our meals, I said to myself, This man could be my husband any day! And still, as happens in life, I know that the minute you are my husband and I am your wife, things will take on a different meaning, a different picture. That is life. And that is what I mean by telling you thanks, thanks very much for bringing this little happiness into my home, what little it is. You see what I mean, now?”

She had looked very beautiful when she said that. She was the woman he had seen that first day when he brought her the pork chops, about which she never said one word afterwards (not even if she had eaten them, had thrown them out, or had liked the idea of his first gifts), and her hair was tidy and she was wearing a new dress, and without making it obvious, without making him feel uncomfortable, she had mixed five Scotches for him, while he was cooking, and the children were dressed for the occasion. That is all he knew, the children were wearing different clothes; he could not pinpoint the difference
in their appearance, but they looked quite smart and clean, and he wished that he was in his home and that she was his wife, and that they were his children, so that when she said all that about the exchange of fortune and place and husband and wife, it took him quite by surprise, as if she had been reading his thoughts. For he had just said the same thing to himself, that it would have been a good thing if he could have exchanged her, in the presence of time and circumstance, for Dots, and miraculously replaced the goddamn cat by all these happy children, and live in a ready-made bliss. “But Dots so rass-hole miserable these days she must be experiencing her mini-pause!” And with Mrs. James’s explanation of the sentiment and the rush of feeling in which she had clothed her feelings, and the beauty in her face, in addition to the closeness of his legs against hers, and not one thought of seducing her in his mind or in the groins of his desire (he had not made love to his wife now for more than five nights, because she was either sleeping when he came in, or pretending to be, or she had left by the time he awoke), he wondered whether it was not he who was going through this pause in his anatomy which had caused this forbidding of hand and muscle from asking Mrs. James the question. It was bigger things he was involved with in their relationship, and he had always hoped that these bigger things would show him the light he had been searching for all these years. This bigger light.

It had come when he least expected it. For instance, he had driven one morning, alone in the purring automobile, secure and feeling the rewards of his position of material comfort, right up to the International Airport, and had parked in the upstairs parking area, got out, taken the elevator, and going down had helped an older person with her bags, and had stood up for more than thirty minutes near the cigar counter,
watching the redcaps and the throngs of West Indians pressing their faces against the expectant glass that cut them off, for a while longer, from their friends and relations coming into the country, some as bona fide immigrants, others as scamps and criminals and pimps and “unwanted persons,” as the government had begun to regard them. And Boysie had watched them, these young men and young women, in their loud dress, their colours out of all kilter, out of all perspective even if there were militant blacks among them, and he had watched them as people coming into
his
country. For he was here first. He was settled, he was a taxpayer, which he was quick to point out, in any matter of civic importance, and in some of no great importance, and he was a man who had written letters to the editors of all the newspapers and of the leading women’s journal in the country; had had them published, with his name under them. He was a man in a certain position, and he could therefore behave like any other Canadian citizen. “That’s the next thing I am going to do. Send for my Canadian citizenship. Not even Dots will know.”

He had watched them and had felt secure with them in the country. They were not making any less noise as they waited for their friends and relations. They were not dressed any more suitably for the harsh Canadian winter. They were still talking loudly, and gesticulating and prancing up and down, and saying things to each other in loud voices which should have been secrets, or half-secrets, but which they said without regard for the ears of the neighbouring Canadians also waiting for friends and relations; but they suspected that the Canadians could not understand their language. And some of the Canadians, in their faces and in their attitudes, moving a little farther away to allow an energetic West Indian to jump up above the heads of the others to see if “oh God, I see him,
I see heem! He here! Oh God, Dresser arrive, boys! Dresser in Canada!” or to toss a cigarette to a friend nearby. They were the same as ever, and he loved them. He understood also why he should not like them, for they were really too noisy and unnecessarily loud and prone to display. “Jesus Christ, you see that young fellow there! the way he walking in them brown and red shoes, as if he is the only son of a bitch who ever wore shoes, and I know back where he come from, he never seen shoes!” And he understood why he should like them, because they were the same as he was: “I just making a damn lotta money in this country, but basically them and me is the same thing. I could pretend that I am a different man, whiching I am, but deep-down, if ever I should need a glass of water, in an emergency, who is the first person to come?” He thought about this for a while, and the facts of his history stuck in his conscience, and he had to admit that on all those occasions when he needed that glass of water, the first person who came running was
not
a West Indian. He should control his new emotions and sentiments about West Indians and remember that he was a
Barbadian
. He had said this before; he should stick to it always. He thought of those “friends-in-need,” and among them were the Canadian young fellow, his friend Mr. MacIntosh, and, and … “But still, our people have less money than the others,” he rationalized.

This new awareness about “our people” had first been mentioned to him by Mrs. James. But Boysie was not disposed to giving her too much credence for her ideas, and he was not the person who had known the arguments and the language with which to contradict her; still he knew, through common sense, that people like Mrs. James, poor people, tended to want to stick together and scream and cry for help together more than people in his position.

“I really think that a man in your position, and with the kind heart you have, and which you have shown me and my family, ought to join some organization, Mr. Cumberbatch.”

What organization? He had lived happily just cleaning offices on a contract. He had enough to eat and drink. And the only problem he had was Dots. But he could fix Dots. He could either get drunk one of these nights and come home and kick in her arse; or he could throw her out of the house (“I paying the blasted rent for this apartment now, woman! You done supporting me. I am a man!”); or he could continue to ignore her, and hope that she eventually would become crazy and stop persecuting him in her silent warfare of the mind.

“There are a lot of people, our people (“And who the fuck is
our people
, tell me? You mean Barbadians? You are a Canadian-born, but I am a Barbadian?”) who could benefit from a man in your position. Even an old magazine. Lots of youngsters do not even have as much as a magazine to read, or a man to take them to a movie. I am lucky, but I always think of the more unluckier than me. A man in your position should think very serious about contributing your free time to a social organization.”

Boysie had kept very far from organizations. His life had been patterned on demand and supply, but more on demand. He always wanted things. For years, during his struggle in this country, he had heard nothing from an organization, and no organization ever heard about him. He had never thought that there were organizations existing for the purpose of helping people like he was, years ago. And because of this experience, he had said years ago to Henry that he was strictly a man who needed nothing but one break, “Just give me
one
kiss-me-arse break” (this he had said exactly five years ago to Henry) “and leave the fucking rest to me.” But nowadays he would tell
people like the Canadian young fellow, and Dots, and he had occasion to tell the same thing to Mrs. James, “I am a laissez-faire type o’ man. I don’t believe in begging. I do not believe in asking nobody for nothing. I don’t even believe in credit cards and crediting. Cash. Cash on the line. And I do not believe in organizations, particularly black organizations.”

Mrs. James had not stopped there: she begged him and she bugged him to go with her, some night, to a place named the Home Service Association, to attend a meeting.

“What kind of meeting?”

“A meeting.”

“You have to tell me what kind. I am frightened for black people, yuh know.”

“Just a meeting. You will come.”

“We will see.”

It terrified Boysie very much that he was falling into the wrong company. Never in his life in this country had he thought about organizations. He knew, actually, only a small part of the city: from home to work, with stops along the way to visit some of the bars. But beyond that he knew very little of the physical outline of a country in which he had been living for so long. The idea of visiting the organization and attending a meeting fascinated him nevertheless, but at the same time it scared him, for he was letting himself in for all kinds of strange goings-on. Nobody was going to brand him as a Black Power advocate, or a Black Militant. He was a businessman. And he had to make a living, buy a house, and move away from this slum, to the suburbs, from this blasted place on Ontario Street which seemed to be the final resting place on earth for the aged, the prostitute and the wino. He had broadened his light of living by reading and by observing and by talking with such persons as Mr. MacIntosh and the
Canadian young fellow and with Llewellyn. He had substantiated all this knowledge by writing letters to the editors of newspapers, and by watching television, particularly one American station from Buffalo and primarily the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Actually, he knew very little about the country of his adoption. The walk along Church Street had shown him that. But he knew that Church Street was there, in the same way that he knew that Dots was there, in bed after eleven o’clock every night during the week, and out of bed, like a grasshopper (“Dots, sometimes, you know what you remind me of? A goddamn grasshopper!”), each morning after seven o’clock, except on Saturdays and Sundays, when she got up from lying beside his snoring, aching and very sexually hungry body by nine (“As if she is going to work even on the fucking weekend!”); and even if she was not there, one of these nights, or mornings, even if she did not cook the meals and leave them in the oven or in the refrigerator, he knew she was there, in the spirit. For she was not a revolutionary. And she did not believe in women’s liberation. But suppose she was! Suppose every night when he was at work, Dots was out working on a different job, doing other work, doing other things? Suppose she had decided that he would no longer find her lying in the bed, on her right side! Suppose …

He is sitting in the living room, thinking of going downstairs to Apartment 101. But Mrs. James has gone for the welfare cheque which will feed her and her children for two good, stomach-filled days, or below the poverty-line for the week which the government says it will have to feed her.

He has just listened to the song about floes and floes and he gets tired of this, so he turns to Mendelssohn, and as he listens, he remembers what Llewellyn said about classical music.
He thinks too of the day he sat in the cathedral and listened to the organist playing this same piece, and he tells himself that he understands it now. It means peace and tranquillity to him, and he listens to it as loudly as the machine will allow without vibrating.

The strange woman has not yet passed. And he is waiting for her head to appear, clothed in its usual white beret, and then see her body (he had forgotten that the first time he saw her, he had noticed that her chest was flat, as if she was not a woman), and then her entire brown coat, and the white boots or the brown boots, and always the white shopping bag from the exclusive shops along Bloor Street West. He was fully dressed: in his light brown double-breasted suit with the faintest of stripes; a suit that had a slight sheen to its conservative material; and he was wearing a silk tie of a matching brown. His feet felt comfortable and soft, and the bunions he had accumulated, and which had embarrassed him in years past because of the way they hurt when he walked, were now painless, and were relaxed in a pair of dark brown shoes, so brown that sometimes they looked red. And in his silk stockings. He was standing by the window which looked out on the other buildings, and which afforded him enough space and perspective through which to see her.

Mendelssohn was coming to his Wedding March; and he thought fleetingly of Mrs. James and of his boyish daydreams of being her husband; and just as quickly, Dots came through his mind, and as she paused in it, he recollected the nights and the days of making love to her, how her body was so soft and her behind was so firm for a woman her age; and Mrs. James came back, and with her, her image and the fat the fat the fat slobby tumbling of her behind, and he stopped thinking about her. The woman from the subway, not yet in sight, was in his
mind. He felt himself falling asleep while standing. He was always tired; it was not really exhaustion from the expenditure of strength, if he could put words to it, not that, but a weakness of the body and the mind to go further towards seeing the light he yearned to see. And he knew, he could just feel that he was falling asleep, through the lack of activity. He sometimes wished that for some reason, perhaps a lingering flirtatiousness in his wife (he was always ready), that Dots would come home from the hospital at eleven o’clock in the morning, which hour was the most unhappiest of his days alone, and which contained the most impossible dreams, impossible to believe and to interpret, and would surprise him, and grab him and throw him in bed, and would say, if she would only talk to him, “Come let me screw you! You look as if you need some loving” (for he was now powerless to talk to her, except to criticize her, or to call her a bitch, in his mind, they had grown so far apart, through his being by himself: “That’s what it is! being by myself. I spend too much time by myself”), and would make love and then go back to work. But Dots’s mind was always on her work, and she was becoming very ambitious about being a registered nurse. She was grumbling recently about being not educated enough to become a registered nurse, for “if I was only a RN, Lord, what wonders I would perform! I would work miracles,” by which she meant that she would put more money into her bank account. He changed the record. He put on his other favourite tune,
Milestones
by Miles Davis. This was a tune, this
Milestones
, which had so much in it that he promised himself many times to have Llewellyn explain it to him. By chance, in his recent confused mental state, he had found himself once, making love to his wife while the tune was on the radio; and he had wished that he was the man to have been able to say, “Wait a minute, Dots, we have to screw to
music. I know just the piece for you!” Not for him, too? He was leaving himself out of everything here of late; and leaving himself out of every criticism: this was the way he was seeing things; for he was the only inhabitant of the world he chose to live in. He could not find the real explanation for this attitude either; he knew it was not selfishness, he knew he was not just “miserable as shite!” which was Dots’s diagnosis; and he was sure it was not what Henry would have called “your fucking mini-pause, ’cause don’t forget, Boysie, and you’s my goddamn friend, but a man does go through a minipause, too!” No, it was not that, it was not either of them; he told himself so.