'Membering

by Clarke, Austin;

  We had talked of other things, too: IBM Selectric typewriters as against IBM laptops; and how I had lost the first five hundred pages of The Polished Hoe and went to the grave of a depression; and now the irony of it; and children; and books; and the computer, which we, at our age and with our taste, had not much regard for; and we bid Her Majesty goodbye, remembering to bow and walk backwards; but the length of my courtesy is not imposing, for the Guards officer is there, smiling, happy that the audience went so well and so long; and he congratulates me; and he tells Colin he will see him again, sooner than he will see me, “But who knows?” Colin is walking on thin air, and I am beside him on a cloud of confusion — happy at my success, happy at my recognition, and, at the same time, like the victim, like the “old Colonial,” who cannot help but remember colonialism, and who questions the singling out of me and of my work, for this success; wondering if the success is real, if the adoration and praise is honest, when I should be wallowing in the idea and in the event and in the act, instead of being crushed by this historical burden of doubt that Empire and Commonwealth had instilled in me, and in all of us, of my generation.

  Her Majesty is not smiling in the photograph with the soldiers, published in the National Post on the 10th of November 2004.

  On the 8th of November 2005, Caryl Phillips was one of ten inter-

  nationally known authors invited to “Conversations: Writers and Readers in Dialogue: the Literature of Africa and Its Diaspora,” sponsored and organized by the Department of English, the University of Toronto. The other authors invited were, in the order they appeared, Erna Brodber, Tayeb Salih, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Lorna Goodison, Kofi Anyidoho, Austin Clarke, George Elliott Clarke, Olive Senior and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Caryl had just won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. The novel is A Distant Shore. He understood that meeting the Queen in an audience was part of the recognition of the prize. His prologue was a well-directed barb fired in my direction. He had no intention of meeting the Queen who represents all that he resents; and as a person growing up in England in the fifties and sixties, he knew what racism of the English kind was: and he proceeded to read from a paper he had written on the subject.

  I am in Willemstad, the capital of Curaçao. I have been here, once before, in 1955, coming from Caracas, Venezuela, where I spent a summer vacation with my cousin, Douglas, before coming to Toronto for university; and when the ship, the SS Antilles, a French steamer as we called it then, stopped at Port-of-Spain, up came on the gangplank behind me, to thunderous applause, which I assumed was meant for me; one of my favourite actors, Peter Ustinov, fresh from his triumph in Quo Vadis. But I remember Curaçao more than I remember Trinidad, because the humidity there could not match the humidity of Willemstad, where you could hardly breathe, and wanted cool water in any amount. And you wondered what the price of ice was, for the people born there, who had to live and work, “out in the hot-sun.”

  I am sitting beside a black man much younger than I am, on a sunny morning with the humidity of an afternoon in Guyana, or Trinidad, or even Toronto in mid-August the last few years, when our weather might well have been West Indian. It is the 31st of October, a Friday, in the year 2003. I have been in Curaçao since the fifteenth. My left arm is round the shoulders of this “brother.” To my right, are two other “fellas,” as my friend Samuel Selvon would describe these personages. Behind me, and slightly elevated because he is standing in a garden filled with ducks or swans, and where a man is playing the piano, is Louis Armstrong. The two men on my right are younger than Louis Armstrong and me, and they are dressed elegantly in white striped pants, one in a bright blue jacket, the other in red. Both have that smile, that “coon” smile, that “idiot-smile,” as my mother calls it, the “smile of Foolbert,” that smile that was associated with Louis Armstrong himself, the grin of the empty-headed, and the Negro. I am in the company of the inanimate, dead members of the garden statuary. These are objects. And I wonder why, even in their role as objets d’art, they are represented in such a servile characterization? Looking at them, from the photograph that was taken by a friend, their image mocks me, and I go back years to try to remember if in real life, in Barbados, and elsewhere in the West Indies, this sculpture’s conception of black people, even during slavery, which these men stand for, was so realistically inhuman? Louis Armstrong, in his statue, is dressed in white, resplendent and fashionable, his left hand on the microphone, and his right hand holding the characteristic large white handkerchief, and his trumpet at the same time. These statuaries are in the main garden area of the hotel. And when I leave this spot, and walk to my room, I pass a short phalanx of these men’s cousins: dressed in hats and helmets that mock their dignity, coloured or painted black; blackened to suit the Curaçao humidity, standing all at attention, as if they are waiting for orders from their master to serve the dinner, or stand guard. Against the light yellow of the walls along this narrow lane, these men scare me, and are not companions, but watchmen, observing my next act of sabotage, of dislike for their plantation-hotel world. Why would the owner, a Dutchman, name his hotel with a Dutch name, and retain this history of oppression in the figurines of these seven men who stand guard on the yellow painted wall, along the way to my hotel room?

  There is a more pleasant vista and surroundings when I leave my room to walk to the restaurant, and the Slave Museum, and to attend the meetings, a cobblestoned pathway that is greyish blue, with walls washed in yellow, trees overhanging the fence and barrels that look as if they contain rum and molasses, and palm trees and carriage lights over doors, and I wonder which of the seven mock-men, or the other three with whom I sat many humid afternoons, had the duty to light these carriage lanterns; or sweep this laneway; or empty the garbage, both household and personal? The abiding character, the lasting personality of this hotel, Kura Hulanda — for I think that a hotel, like a person, has a personality — is its presumptuous identification with a past of slavery, and, at the same time, seeking to attract the abolitionist liberalism. The yellow walls remind me of the hot sun in the Islands. They suggest life. A good life, even if it was one that was observed from a distance, the distance of the colonized man, and the slave, the labourer working on the plantation. Kura Hulanda is a slave plantation in spite of the “artifacts” of its inhabitants, the “fellars” drawn in black wood, with faces punctuated by wide white eyeballs, stiff in their clothes, standing without a hint of life, in their historical posture, the postures of labourers. Servants. Slaves.

  Beyond the Sculpture Garden and the images of slaves, Rasta men who resemble Bob Marley, beyond the mention, in three lines, written by the Guyanese poet, Martin Carter. “I Come from the Nigger Yard.” The excerpt is three lines. But it is a mouthful of history:

  I come from the nigger yard of yesterday

  leaping from the oppressor’s hate

  and the scorn of myself.

  Martin read this portion for me, in 1965 in Georgetown, Guyana, when I interviewed him for a radio documentary for the CBC Project Series, produced by Harry J. Boyle. Martin’s exhibit, if I may call it that, is mounted against a wall, and illustrated by three examples of the irons used in the “nigger yards.” Without the three versions of the symbol of oppression and colonization, the three lines quoted from Martin Carter’s poem do not have the same frightful effect upon the mind and the body as they would if there were no illustration.

  I am thinking now, today, Tuesday, of what it means to go on this journey, bent upon digging up the past, ’membering the paths taken in that journey, over land and over sea. But wherever the journey takes me in my ’membering my passage is made easier through song. And the song could be jazz or the blues. Popular music sung by black artists, or calypso. I am listening at this moment, on this Tuesday, to Abbey Lincoln. I may, to stretch the relationship slightly, call Abbey Lincoln a friend. I met her in 1963 through Paule Marshall the novelist, who introduced me to Abbey and her husband, Max Roach, as brilliant subjects to interview for my prog
ramme about the Harlem Renaissance and the succeeding artistic enthusiasm taking over Harlem at this time. Abbey Lincoln had collaborated with Max Roach in the composition of Freedom Now Suite, which was banned at that time in Canada. They gave me a copy of the studio tape of the composition. Abbey and Max in turn introduced me to Nina Simone. Abbey cooked dinner that night; and Max had to go on a gig; so I went along with Nina Simone, Paule Marshall, and Abbey to the Apollo Theater where a friend of theirs, a woman who sang the blues, was performing.

  Can you imagine the effect these three beautiful powerful talented women had upon me? I do not remember much about that night at the Apollo Theater, except that I had a lot of fun. I do not even remember the name of their friend, the woman who sang the blues. But I remember the laughter, and the happiness and the enjoyment. Abbey was wearing an Afro. She had been fired from gigs in downtown New York supper clubs because the Afro was regarded by white managers and owners to be too aggressive and symbolic of violence and of cultural nationalism. Abbey covered her Afro under a wig, until she could no longer stomach that compromise and “went natural.” Not many women and men who were entertainers had that courage, in those days of the 1960s.

  I sometimes marvel at the endurance of black men and women who are in the arts, at their ability to stomach this insult to their persons, this devaluation of their talent, to suit a white appearance of acceptability, and still are able to remain creative. And more than that, are still able to remain alive. To me, this makes their art more valuable.

  And so, listening to Abbey Lincoln today, and yesterday, and tomorrow, I remember the chilling interpretation she took with her voice, the scream of a woman in torture, her child taken from her, her man emasculated, and lynched, in her presence as the Southern (and Northerner, too) white man stands unmoved by his own violence. African Now Suite is the precursor of what I am listening to, at this moment — her CD, Wholly Earth, and the cut, “Another World”:

  Within some walls of stone,

  another world is

  waiting for its own.

  Another World,

  another time,

  another World.

  This song, “Another World,” is haunting and it makes me sad, and it makes me happy at the same time; and when it is not her plaintive voice and the dramatic delivery of word and voice, and emphasis, it is the meaning of the words. “Within some walls of stone” makes me imagine the chains and irons hanging on “those walls of stone,” which are walls built in castles in African towns and in plantations in the West Indies.

  You would question my sanity therefore, if I admitted that I have been listening to one song for twelve hours now, non-stop, from nine o’clock this morning, until now, nine o’clock this evening. And I listened to it six hours, last night.

  What is the solace I find in this kind of music? What is the cultural connection?

  It was probably that night at the Apollo Theater, in 1963, summer, a beautifully humid night in which your clothes were sticking to your skin, but in a soothing manner, for there was music in the air; and it was that first night that I saw Nina Simone in the famous fishnet jumpsuit, which her admirers said was worn without panties and other underwear. Nina’s fishnet is on some album covers; and it is a white outfit. Here now, I am, admiring Abbey Lincoln — (I have her name written on a cassette tape, as “Abby Lincoln”; and I could have sworn that this was the spelling I saw on other record albums). But nonetheless, I am talking about beauty and style here; and I was touched to see that Abbey has chosen a fishnet for a shawl, which is brown matching the brownish-red long dress, a robe, she wears, conscious of Africa as she has always been; and the fishnet is wrapped round her body, and the image and the symbol and the myths and the meaning are all obvious. Abbey Lincoln is a beautiful woman, with a compelling voice, frighteningly real, especially when it is exercised in the Freedom Now Suite and on some songs in Wholly Earth. But more than the stature, there is the voice. Plaintive and punishing to the soul in a cry for freedom; the personification of determination to choose “another world.”

  For “another time is here.” But this “time” I am in London, in 2003, taken around to sign books and to book parties in a taxi and hired cars, and following me like a shadow, or a detective, is the image of a black man dressed like an infant, with a white bonnet ending in a flowing bow and two strings tied under his chin; naked from the neck to the waist, wearing what looks like a pair of white diapers. The black man’s hands form a rough triangle, holding up a sign on which is printed: WHAT’S YOUR GUILTY SECRET? The man is encased in a telephone box that is made to look like a coffin, so the man is not only standing up in the telephone box, he is lying on his back, with his eyes open, and a pacifier — which looks like spittle on his white thick lips — is in his mouth. The other writing on the coffin, reading from the top to the top of the black man’s head, is WINNER OF BEST MUSICAL. JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA. And at the very bottom, is CAMBRIDGE THEATRE. I spent about a week trying to remember my camera to take a photo of this advertisement; and I would see the ad, in places like Soho and Covent Garden, and I would not have my camera with me and vice versa. But I was determined to take the picture. And worrying about my opportunity, and talking about my obsession with this advertisement, all the people with whom I talked about it, my publisher, my agent, the taxi drivers, none of them could see any irony, any insult, any compromise in its publication. This indifference to the true meaning of the sign, the meaning below the first layer of comprehension, reminded me of years before, in London, in Maida Vale, famous as the location of murders and mysteries in film, and in books, at the home of my editor, David Burnett of Heinemann, I came upon a large billboard advertising tea. The image used to seduce the English into purchasing and drinking this tea, was a golliwog. A face similar to the face of the man advertising the Jerry Springer opera. Round face, large red lips, bulging eyes with enlarged whites, and the hair done in what came to be the dread-lock image. To me, coming from Toronto, in 1965, this was an insult. David and I would walk out from Maida Vale and stand at the bus stop. Above our heads was the golliwog. A week went by, and David had not looked up to see the golliwog. It was part of the landscape to which he was accustomed. And it had taken me about a week to get the confidence to bring it to his attention, when I was certain that he had not noticed it. In the same way as we do not notice the details of things and people who make up the landscape on which we trundle every day. The Notting Hill Riots were still on our conscience and our consciousness, a stain on the character of the English, a contradiction in behaviour of the true Commonwealth. It seems to us as if Caliban had ventured into Prospero’s streets and was punished, dehumanized, for his uppitiness. And to demonstrate the English displeasure at this intrusion, black people were called “wogs.” Here now, “in another world, in another time,” is the same wog: in 1965, a female wog, and in 2004, a male wog; one advertising a special tea; the other, a special opera. It is ironic to me that the opera the wog is advertising, is an American production. American wogs come from the nigger yards of yesterday — and of today.

  But that morning in 1965, when I brought the huge billboard to David’s attention, he sincerely had not “noticed it” before. David is a good man. A bright man. An educated man. A man of honour. I trust David. And during my two weeks in London promoting The Polished Hoe, I made a point to seek him out, spending four weeks, from Toronto, tracking him down. You go to such lengths to contact a real friend. David and I had dinner at the Royal Over-Seas League house where I was staying. I did not bring up the advertisement of the Jerry Springer opera. David was a shadow of his former ebullient self; an assured Cambridge University graduate in English Literature, with a career in publishing; and now, from his lips, he has “given up on women, given up on sensuality.” He was living apart from his wife. He mentioned her by name, once; and that chapter, that entire life, was hermetically sealed. I did not consider it prudent to pry. But I was saddened by his disposition; and the claret which he chose tasted
flat, as if its true body had been squeezed out of it. I looked silently and with fear, at my own life as I sipped the wine, and I wondered what turn of luck, what love that turned into disaster, what failure and rejection of a book, what “experience” I could have to cause me to be so intellectual and sexually monastic. David never struck me as being religious, sticking to dogma and ritual, of any denomination.

  He no longer needed a telephone. I found this out in the difficulty my English agent had in tracking him down. He was now living the life of a man he had read so many times as an editor of fiction. He was now a fiction man. A man of fiction. Which of his authors he had chosen to pattern his later life after his novel; and when he was reading that particular novel, did he have already his plans for “retirement” drawn, to be followed as he had followed the development of the character in the novel?

  I could choose, and did not like, any of my male characters that I would follow out of the book, off the page, and into my everyday life. Had David chosen a character from Compton Mackenzie? From Olivia Manning? From Helen MacInnes? Or Anthony Burgess? There was something of the deliberate dismissal of passion, similar to Hamlet’s nihilism, in his gait. All that was left was his good manners; and manner.

  David had been vindicated: he had taken me on as a writer of promise in 1964. This was now 2003. I had won the 2003 Commonwealth Literary Prize for Best Book. Olivia Manning had written this blurb, about my first novel, The Survivors of the Crossing, published in 1964, on the jacket of my second novel, in 1965, Amongst Thistles and Thorns: