'Membering

by Clarke, Austin;

  So, it must be the idea of home, and the meaning of home that is the significance of the six dollars. I am not boasting of typical immigrant conquering of the odds, for I did not picture myself as a disadvantaged foreigner seeking either employment or refuge. So, it really does not matter what the size of my wallet was in 1955 and in 1976, for it was not the size of the wallet at entry, and the size of the bank account five or twenty years later, that would verify and describe my success. My success was more simple: the escape from the country where I was born, to the pleasure, the relaxation, the sight of the lights of houses and streets and the headlights of cars, so similar to the cold, blood-freezing glow of Christmas trees and their lights, that warms the heart. And when the plane was losing altitude deliberately to land, and I was almost level with the Christmas-tree lights, although it was in August, I remember the words of my friend, Bill McMurtry, on the roof of the Park Plaza Hotel, ten months before: “You can’t go back home again.”

  It was therefore this confirmation, through disappointment and failure in the country where I was born, that settled the ambivalence that Barbados was home and Canada was home, that caused me to enter politics and seek a seat in the Ontario Legislature, and by so doing, declare in terms more realistic than metaphorical, that I had become, not Canadian, but a Canadian.

  It was years before 1976, in the bar of the Four Seasons Hotel — across the street from the CBC building when it was on Jarvis Street, No. 354, exactly where the new building to house the National Ballet of Canada is now up — that I was having drinks, ironically with Bill McMurtry and some other friends, among whom was Larry Zolf, in those days suggesting through columns in the Telegram and the Star newspapers, that he ought to be made a senator — a plea, and an ambition not yet realized, through the lack of intelligence and class of the governments in power, at those times of desire and self-promotion; but it was Bill McMurtry who first raised the question: “Why don’t you stop rabble-rousing and run for mayor?” It was a dare. Not to keep me silent, to seal my lips, to stuff my radical pronouncements with balled-up pages of the newspaper, or with a ball of cloth stuffed into my mouth to keep me silent. It was his suggestion that I should, perhaps through popularity or notoriety, jump into the mayoralty race now raging; and be a “role model” to the voiceless black population, both the native black community, and the immigrant West Indian community.

  I took up the dare. And a remarkable development happened right then and there, in our presence. I called the Toronto Star newspaper, and told them, “I am Austin Clarke, and I am entering the mayoralty race.”

  Before I had left the Four Seasons Hotel, my entry into the race for mayor of Toronto was broadcast on the six o’clock television news. I had no idea the Star would take me seriously. But it said something more serious than this dare, than this entering municipal politics. It said that something historical was happening, even although I was not mindful of this at the time. But it showed, upon reflection, and in the few weeks I remained in the race, that others thought it was a “good thing” for a black man to enter municipal politics in Toronto, in Ontario, in Canada. And it made me into some kind of “model,” into some kind of madman, into some kind of “uppity” West Indian, into some kind of a symbol.

  When I got home that evening, the woman I was married to was angry, was puzzled, was nonplussed, was stunned that something happening, something that embraced and included her, against her knowledge and her will, against her history — for she was born in Canada, of Jamaican parents, father a railroad porter, mother a former domestic servant who had come to Toronto to study the Bible and become a missionary in Africa, something dramatic and at the same time, something humorous was being played out in her quiet, private, and very conservative home. This was one more case of “craziness” from a man she had married, perhaps against her better judgment, the first stroke of madness being his decision to be a writer; and now this, running in a mayoralty election when never before in the history of Toronto, of Ontario, of Canada, and in the history of Negro-Canadians, no one had shown such craziness as to think that white Canadians would vote for a Negro man, would want a Negro to be his mayor.

  “All the damn newspapers and television stations. Calling here, knocking down my door. Wanting interviews. And you didn’t even call to warn me. You’re running for mayor. And you don’t tell me you are running for mayor! When you decide to run for mayor?”

  It was a question I could not answer. I did not decide to run for mayor. A dare decided that for me.

  I had just started to teach at Yale University, and I was kind of commuting, coming home about two or three times a month; and I would have to be a commuting mayoralty candidate. My heart was not in it. I regretted that I had been so romantic to take up the dare. I regretted entering the race, now that I knew that Professor Stephen Clarkson was a serious candidate, and that my presence in the campaign might divide his support.

  The good thing about my “running for mayor” in 1969 is that it convinced, soon afterwards, many black Canadians to enter politics: working in various capacities, in campaigns, being candidates and canvassers; and not only for municipal office, but for provincial legislatures and the federal House of Commons. The Honourable Lincoln Alexander, a former minister in the federal government, formerly lieutenant governor of Ontario, and the Honourable Leonard Braithwaite, the first member of the Ontario Legislature for the Liberals, are the two important leaders in this trend for black citizens to take their place, rightfully, in Canadian politics. We must not however, forget Rosemary Brown and the Honourable Howard McCurdy, both of whom were members of the New Democratic Party.

  Today, without taking credit for this impressive increase in political activity, and their successes in it, of black candidates, I am happy that my first assault upon the previously all-white reservation of elective politics, though short-lived, provided the impetus for this new political interest, and renders it now almost as a natural consequence in the life of every black man living in Canada.

  We can learn a lesson from the South Asians, who put themselves up as candidates for office.

  “The seas were calm as only Caribbean seas can be calm, and the sun was pouring down on us, and we wished the sails could shade the sun from our eyes, and from our backs; and especially the stupid Canadian boy who I’d hired to sail the blasted boat, this fellow spends all his time smoking; smoking grass, but it was the sun more than the smoke from the blasted pot he was smoking, trying to be in the shade on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, and we were far out to sea you know, Old Boy, far-far out, bypassing Barbados, for why were we troubling ourselves by sailing into Barbados waters; but it was the sun pouring down, and the deck of this boat we were sailing on, cutting through the water like a cutlass mashing up a green water coconut, how it does hit the skin clean, making the wound almost hard to see, the blade is so damn sharp; and how it goes through the soft coconut no more than a half-inch thick, clean-clean was this sun pouring down on our backs in the Caribbean Sea; and all of a sudden I am watching this blasted Canadian boy, who playing he is a captain with knowledge and know-how of ships and compasses, but the blasted boy not watching the quadrant or what you call it, he not watching for the horizon, or watching out for other boats in the Caribbean sea, in the area where we sailing — not to Barbados, as I tell you, but mainly because we didn’t have any business with Barbados, we were not doing business with Barbados. We were bound for Dominica, that little poor-arse country that Eugenia rules over, whiching I can’s understand how anybody in his right mind would see any profit in our sailing the blasted boat in the direction of Dominica, which a country that can’t buy a blasted sweetbread, father-less the kind o’ ‘things’ we were carrying on board, ‘things’ that I don’t need to tell you, in clearer terms, what they consisted of, and don’t listen to the press in these parts, the West Indian press, a pack o’ fools and inventors of news, don’t know what the hell they print or get their news from, America feeding them propaganda, Britain feeding t
hem outdated intelligence. If they want to know real intelligence, they have to go and work in the Middle East, in Iran and Iraq. And even the Gulf States, the Saw-dees, and them-so; but the Caribbean as a source of news and intelligence? And don’t mention the Nation newspaper, one of the worst rags of journalism in the world, if you really want to know.

  “I have to go back to the sun pouring down on us, sailing in the clearest waters imaginable, and the sun burning my back, although I had on a broad-brimmed straw hat to shield my back from the sun, and in addition to the sun you have to contend with the salt in the waves, ’cause even although the seas were calm for the most part, a wave once in a while, would lash the blasted deck of the sailboat, and splatter-you-up like hell, so you had to be careful, while the blasted Canadian boy, laying-down flat on his back, looking up to God or the heavens, or the clouds, and the whitest clouds you ever saw, you saw right there in waters off Grenada, which as I said, was never our destination. I don’t know where the hell they got their news from, and if it wasn’t for the blasted Canadian boy falling asleep after smoking so much dope, we would have accomplished our mission, got the money, deposited it in a certain bank, gone back to Britain in a private jet, and forgotten about the West Indies!

  “But you hear what you hear. And you read what you read. And you make your own theory, and draw your own conclusions, and spoil my reputation. And I was born in the West Indies. I tell you the blasted Canadian boy was smoking grass. And he fell asleep at the tiller. And the blasted boat drifted off course. And all of a sudden. Coming down from the clouds and the mists that started to gather, coming down like the sun, although it was night now, and the sun was not shining.

  “Coming through the clouds was a Coast Guard. A coast guard boat. With guns. With megaphones and loudspeakers. Announcing my name.

  “How they know my name? How they know that a man with my name was aboard? How they knew my latitude? And my longitude? And arrested me. For planning to invade Dominica. There are worse bastards in power down in the West Indies. I know all of them. I deal with all of them. I talk with all of them. I do business with all of them. I lend money to all of them.

  “When I got those negatives showing all those Cabinet ministers and high-ranking judges and famous barristers-at-law, in their sex parties, and the editors of the magazine in question called me from New York, I knew what I had to do. I had to protect the government. I could let that Trinidadian bastard bring down a legitimate government. And embarrass a prime minister. It cost me money. But what is money if it can’t be put to use? To good use? And to bad use? Money made in those circumstances, and off those countries, is money you have to invest in the protection of certain governments.

  “I am a man of peace. I am a right-winger. But still a man of peace. I know how the world powers look at right-wingers like me. They welcome me. They protect me. They protect me because they know I will not conspire to bring down their democratically elected government. I know these governments. And I know these leaders.”

  “I have travelled through the jungles of Brazil, near the Guyana border, providing safe conduct to a man who wasted all the blasted Latin and Greek he learned at Harrison College. No country in the Caribbean wanted to give him refuge and a place to live. And the money he left with soon ran out, and what could the blasted fool do? I gave this man safe conduct through the bush and jungles bordering Guyana until we could hide him and then put him on a private jet for Brooklyn. As you know, he went into the Church, not the Anglican Church, but some Pentecostal mission hall, giving sermons partly in Barbadian dialect, and partly in Latin. In Pig-Latin, if you ask me. Snakes, agoutis, which we ate for food, crocodiles, which we avoided, mosquitoes as big as house flies, the smell and stench of dead animals, bloated bellies, eyes eaten out, flies buzzing like confetti tossed on wedding guests, but black, and the humidity of the British Guyana nights. I know them all. I saved them all. And I can topple them all. But I am a nationalist. I am a loyal Barbadian. I will never invade my own country.

  “But going back to the negatives which I had to buy and pay for, in American currency, in hard cold cash, in American ‘smackeroons,’ cash on the line; in hard cold cash. And when I got those negatives, what you think I did with them? Toss them out through a porthole while crossing the Bermuda Triangle? No! They are buried in the same place as the gold bars, and wired for security in case some blasted politician or newspaper editor feels brave enough to meddle with my treasure.

  “But I have to conclude my story about the blasted Canadian boy who fell asleep on the job, smoking marijuana when he should be looking after the tiller, and charting the journey in the sailing boat, a really wonderful boat that one of my arms-dealer friends loaned us, to carry our assignment, and to be stopped by a blasted Coast Guard boat and charged with bearing arms, bearing weapons, charged for treachery, charged for being a revolutionary with intent to overthrow a Caribbean nation, with a planned invasion of Barbados, my own native land. Would I do such a stupid blasted thing? For who would I shoot, who would I put in my sights while I am carrying out this revolution, and who would I kill first, to seize power as a consequence, do they think I am so stupid, a man like trained in England and in the best brigades and intelligence armies, to be now arrested like a common thief? A fowl-cock thief?”

  “They placed me in solitary confinement. But my people heard. And before the first month was over, they sent a private Lear jet and took me to an undisclosed destination, you will understand, Old Boy, that I cannot tell you the name of the country in which the destination lay, nor the man who flew the jet, nor the safe house where I was taken to, to recover from the torture those West Indian bastards put me through. But I am tough. In this business of weapons and transferring cash and gold bars from one country to the next, you have to be tough.

  “And this is why I love this dog as if she is my daughter …”

  Today is a Friday that I am telling you these things as I ’member them.

  ’Membering. It is also a Friday. Late at night. I am convinced of his affection and loyalty to dogs. I do not have a dog. I do not like dogs. I do not have a dog. I do not like dogs, but I appreciate in this final chapter of remembering the loyalty he extends to his pets. At this end, very late at night, in his Rosedale mansion, I listen to his explanation of his life. He has been convincing us of his beliefs in being a right-winger and although he demonstrated his love for his country of birth, proudly reminding me of his loyalty to his country of birth. I see in the irony in his embracing these views of loyalty as a black man living in England at the time of racial convulsing, this kind of nationality in an England transfixed by racial discrimination.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyrighted material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions. The following are listed in alphabetical order:

  “I Come from the Nigger Yard,” Martin Carter, University of Hunger: Collected Poems & Selected Prose , ed. Gemma Robinson (Hexham, UK: Bloodaxe Books, 2006). www.bloodaxebooks.com.

  Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (New York: Bantam Classics, 1982).

  “We Are the Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot, Poems 1909–1925 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932).

  Paul Jacobs, Saul Landau, with Eve Pell, To Serve the Devil (New York: Vintage, 1971), xxi.

  Excerpt from OF A FIRE ON THE MOON by Norman Mailer. Copyright © 1969, 1970 by Norman Mailer, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

  Ian McEwan, Amsterdam (New York: Anchor Books, 1998).

  Richard Outram, “Ophelia Illumined,” used with permission of the Literary Estate of Richard Outram.

  Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River (New York: Vintage, 1995).

  Dylan Thomas, “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” used with permission of Orion Children’s Books.

  By Dylan Thomas, from A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES, copyright ©1954 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New D
irections Publishing Corp.

  The Polished Hoe

  Winner of the 2002 Scotiabank Giller Prize and of the 2003 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize: Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean)

  When an elderly Bimshire village woman calls the police to confess to a murder, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings together elements of the African diaspora in one epic sweep. Set on the post-colonial West Indian island of Bimshire in 1952, The Polished Hoe unravels over the course of twenty-four hours, but spans the lifetime of one woman and the collective experience of a society informed by slavery. As the novel opens, Mary Mathilda is giving confession to Sargeant, a police officer she has known all her life. The man she claims to have murdered is Mr. Belfeels, the village plantation owner for whom she has worked for more than thirty years. Mary has also been Mr. Belfeels’ mistress for most of that time and is the mother of his only son, Wilberforce, a successful doctor. What transpires through Mary’s words and recollections is a deep meditation about the power of memory and the indomitable strength of the human spirit. Infused with Joycean overtones, this is a literary masterpiece that evokes the sensuality of the tropics and the tragic richness of Island culture.