“Student?” Dots even disliked the word. “Student? He only have time for books and not babies, eh?”
“But still, though, Dots,” Bernice conceded. “You can’t crucify that boy. As a student, he would have to look after his books. I heard Agaffa say once, that being a student is a funny thing, especially … ”
“Student my arse, gal! They all stop being students on a Friday night. You go down at the Little Trinidad, or the WIF Club, the Latin quarter, the Tropics and you see them looking for free woman and cheap domestic pussy, you hear?”
“That is true, too,” Bernice said. (And indeed, she could not have said otherwise). Bernice had to stop her thoughts from whirring; and she looked round to see whether Mrs. Burrmann had finished reading about unwed mothers, or whether she had heard her. When she listened, the only sound in the house, was music: the Third Movement of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. And then the music ended; and all she could hear was the rustling of the newspaper about unwed mothers, and the tolling of their doom in the glass with the ice cubes and the whiskey. The front door opened just then, and she heard Mr. Burrmann come in. He did not greet his wife, but went straight upstairs to his bedroom. Bernice followed him in her mind, his steps going up (“He walks up them steps in such a qa nmfunny way! This is the first time I really study the way he walks, and it seem like I hear them footsteps before … in a dream? Could it be in a dream?”) until they were smothered in the broadloom in his room. She returned to her thoughts and the sizzling beef steaks in the pan. “You is the next one, Mr. Burrmann!” She looked into the pan, and saw Mr. Burrmann sizzling. “I am going to cuss you stink as hell one o’ these days. You wait till the next time you having in your lawyer-friends, and you come smelling up in my damn face, telling me, Thanks Bernice dear, that was a fine repast. Fine repast, my arse! Heh-heh, that sound good, don’t it? But I serious now, I going tell you to your face, and in the presence o’ your friends, I knows it is a damn fine repast, Mr. Burrmann. But I waiting for almost three years now to see when, and if, you intend to increase my talents from ninety stinking dollars a month, to something a decent human being could live offa. A fine repast deserves a damn fine bonus, you don’t know, Mr. Burrmann? … heh-heh-heh! I bet the brute will turn red as hell, with shame!”
She finished dinner, and laid it on the table, and waited until they were well into the food before she left the kitchen to take up Estelle’s. Estelle had now stopped complaining about the “meagre” meals, and this was a little blessing which Bernice never stopped thanking God for.
“I am going out with Agatha, Bern,” she said, eating.
“Yeah?” Bernice didn’t like Agatha. She suspected her.
“We are going to the pictures. I’m meeting her at the corner.”
“Oh?” Without waiting for more information, Bernice escaped back down to her kitchen.
Mr. Burrmann never ate dinner without his jacket. Even for breakfast, he was dressed. He had got into the habit while at Trinity College; and constant use, after graduation, helped him to retain it, without second thoughts, or self-consciousness. He was a healthy man. He even looked healthy. Five feet eleven inches tall, he was six inches taller than his wife. He did not have what Bernice came to know as “the typical Jewish features”; and she felt that had he so wished, he could pass as an Italian, in summer; a very clear-skin washed-out Negro in winter. But she knew he was a Jew — in more ways than one. Mrs. Burrmann once told her, that as far as she knew, Mr. Burrmann was the first Jew ever to attend Trinity College, in the University of Toronto. He spent four undergraduate years there. He took part in everything: he wrote for the Trinity Review, and won a prize once, for poetry; he took part in plays; debated, badly; swam; boxed, and got knocked down more times than he heard the bells of third rounds; and eventually when he graduated, no one was surprised that he had gained First Class Honours in Economics. He was never too modest, nor too self-denigrating in expressing his capabilities. This caused Bernice to ignore him, most of the time. But now, she was watching him eating; watching his movements about the house; noticing his entrances and exits and his long absences. “You know something? Two times in the last two weeks, I notice that Estelle is outta this house at the same identical time as Mr. Burrmann! I wonder what the two o’ them up to? … oh hell, you going outta your mind?”) She is watching him this Friday afternoon, closely, because it is the first time she has cooked them West Indian peas-and-rice and roast pork; and she wants to know how much more liberty she can take with the seasoning and the pepper. The glowing candlesticks, like a hand of bananas turned upside down, are throwing just that much light on the food and on their faces and the wine, to make the dining room have a feeling of love and romance. But she can see tension in Mrs. Burrmann’s face; and far-away thoughts on his. Mrs. Burrmann eats with a fork only; she cuts up the meat in little bits, and pelicans them into her mouth with the fork. But with Mr. Burrmann, now, it is a fine upbringing she is seeing! She and Dots used to talk a lot, before, about the way their missies ate. Dots said it sickened her to see them eat. “You mean to tell me that a big doctor-man and a big woman with so much necklace round her neck, strangling her, and they can’t eat no better than that?”
“You was seeing money at that table,” Bernice told her. “Not manners.” But Bernice felt superior to Dots, because her “people” had better table manners than the Hunters of Rosedale. It was soon after this that she stole a glance at Mr. Burrmann, at dinner, in the large dining room. She watched him as he brought up the knife to fork, holding the fork down; and place that food, with the knife on the fork, man; and with your back straight as a sergeant-major on parade, Lord! bring that fork now up to your lips, man … open them lips (“Haii!”) close them lips over the fork (“Look at that man!”) chew now (“God, that is really a man sitting down there, a gentleman!”) without all the bones in your face looking as if they going collapse and fall apart. (“You is a man and a half!”) She fed the children, and she put them to bed. Mrs. Burrmann went upstairs soon afterwards. Bernice was still cleaning up the kitchen, when she heard the first signs of a threatening quarrel. It was nothing new. They had always quarrelled; and sometimes they had come to blows. (The first time she witnessed it, she asked Dots to bear testimony: “Well, be-Christ, child,” she whispered on the phone in the kitchen, while the fight raged above her head, “I thought only worthless black men uses to beat their wives!” Dots laughed, and said, “Gal, you aren’t no true-true Muslim, in truth!”) Now, she was wondering what the children were thinking; what they did when they heard their parents fighting.
Mrs. Burrmann was saying, “To me, Sam, you’re a man in absentia.” Bernice felt cheated: it seemed as if they were deliberately using a language they knew she couldn’t understand. Then she heard them coming down the stairs. “Take me into your life, for once. For once.” His voice, though not coming down the stairs, was still loud.
“You know what you are? Or would you like me to tell you what you are?”
“You’re either going to take me into your life, Sam, or I want you to stop moseying round in mine. Quit sneaking behind me. I’m a woman, and I have needs and I won’t sit around here all day all night, if my husband can’t fulfil those needs.” She was standing now, talking back up the stairs. “I’ll have to find a man who …”
“You little, rich, over-educated bitch!”
“I don’t bloody-well want you …” She was coming down fast, for he was behind her. “I don’t want you bloody-well compartmentalizing me.” She brushed past Bernice, who could not move fast enough from the bottom of the stairs where she was eavesdropping. When the front door slammed, Bernice put all the blame on Mr. Burrmann. “You big bastard,” she called him. “If I was she, if I was in her place, be-Christ, a saucepan o’ hot water would be in your damn face, right now. Imagine you, treating such a nice, decent girl like her, the way you treats her. All you men want is a whore in bed, that’s all.” But still the words used in the quarrel were bothering her. She couldn�
�t understand many of them. To her, it was a stupid way to quarrel: you either told your man, Go to hell! Kiss my backside, man! or Stop fucking up my life, man, you hear? Or I kill yuh! “I must say, though,” she conceded, “that these white tribes have a damn funny way of doing almost everything.” One night Mrs. Burrmann broke three crystal water glasses, in a rage. Mr. Burrmann re-ordered them from Birks the next day (an action which completely confused Bernice; since they were thrown at his head) and Bernice happened to see that each glass cost thirty-five dollars. “Such a blasted waste o’ money, womankind and time, I tell you, Dots.”
Recently, there seemed to be always fights in the house. On another occasion, just as she passed their room, she hear them talking, warming up for their quarrel. He was using his lawyer’s voice, as if talking to a jury. “I must tell you, Rachel, I must tell you, from the bottom of my heart, that it pains me even more than it can ever pain you, that you can’t ever seem to carry a child in your womb without goddamn losing it, or doing some damn crazy thing to it. Every man needs a son. I need a son. And that seems to be the simple reason why this is not working out. It is as simple as that.” Bernice lingered outside their door, and soon, she too was crying. She didn’t know why she was always crying and feeling sorry for Mrs. Burrmann, whenever she heard him talking to her. But in these times, Bernice always forgot the amount of drink which seemed to keep Mrs. Burrmann almost half-dead sometimes; she forgot that one party in particular, when she saw the man kissing Mrs. Burrmann as if he was Mr. Burrmann; she forgot the hard words Mrs. Burrmann had very often used to her. When, however, she had a too busy day in the kitchen, she would remember that night; and more, too: the many times, late at night, when Mrs. Burrmann left in her car, and how, sometimes, she would come back very late and very drunk; and how, many times, Mr. Burrmann had to go out in his pyjamas and housecoat and move the car from straddling Marina Boulevard before the neighbours woke up. And once, Bernice remembered, she saw her parking the car in the metal telephone pole opposite the garage gate. When Bernice thought of these things, she criticized her for being so hurtful to Mr. Burrmann. Then, she really loved Mr. Burrmann. Still, she wondered who was to blame. In her judgement, a marriage going sour like this one, had one blame. One person was responsible for its ruin; one thing; one action.
And Bernice would always remember the night when she herself first made love in Canada, with the student-man; creeping down the stairs with the man’s smell in her thighs and his arms round her throbbing waist, to let him out like a woman letting out a dog or a cat, that night when she heard tears in Mrs. Burrmann’s voice, saying, “But Sam, I am a woman. I am a … the unhappiness you talk so much about, in our marriage, lies …” (Bernice was finding it difficult to hear each word) “ … right here!” She thought she heard a muffled sound, like somebody banging a bed. “ … it is here! here, here, here!” The banging stopped shortly after. On the way back upstairs, Bernice wondered whether the children were having a pillow fight; or whether it was Mrs. Burrmann banging her mattress. “She couldn’t be saying that. A young man and a young woman, and she saying that?” She thought about it for a long while; but she couldn’t make up her mind about it; she hadn’t been concentrating because her own body was still throbbing from love.
Beethoven was coming to her where she was working. It was a Wednesday afternoon; and in her mind, she was putting in order the things she had to do the next day. She had to go to the bank. She thought of her low wages again, and wished that something would happen to make somebody say something about a raise soon. But she wasn’t going to complain now. Estelle was living in the house. She would wait until Estelle went back to Barbados. “Three years, it is three years I been slaving for that princess in there!” She had waited so long; and still defeat followed upon defeat: Estelle’s visa extended three more months; and her utter failure to get a room in which to banish her. “Lord, sometimes I have to wonder who the hell side you are on! You hailing for me, or you hailing for Estelle?” She brushed aside this unsavoury thought, and went back to her raise. “I have to get that raise. If Brigitte herself thinks it is unfair, well it must be unfair, in truth!” She thought next of Mammy. Wonder what Mammy doing right now? She glanced at the electric clock on the wall, over the sink, and it said a quarter to six. “Since seven forty-five I been standing up on these two blasted foots!” “She hurried up drying the dishes; and she put some of the initialled cutlery into the drawer without wiping them. “They could tarnish. I need that raise.” Mammy came back into her thoughts, and she looked at the clock again, and wondered what time it was back in Barbados. At this time, a moment before dusk, she knew Mammy would already have brought in her grass-stuffed mattress, from the clothes line and from the sun, and would be shaking it out, and cursing because she never owned a store-bought, spring-and-cotton-stuffed mattress; and soon she would be lying down, in the front bedroom of her small house, fifty yards from the evening waves. Probably dreaming, too. “Poor, sweet, Mammy.” Estelle didn’t say much about Mammy; she never wrote Mammy once. Bernice had written a letter last month, telling Mammy about the hard times she had with Estelle, and she had sent the letter to Mammy’s house in the village. Now, she had write another letter to Mammy, this one, within the regions of her mind; and she hoped it would fly through the air, and get to Mammy right now, and ease some of the painful things she had written in the earlier letter. Dear Mammy, I love you so much; and we are so far from one another. What I wrote to you four or five weeks gone, concerning Estelle … (“But Mammy always used to answer back quickly. It is almost four months that I haven’t heard a word outta Mammy. Christ, I wonder if it is the money that didn’t get posted to Mammy, that have Mammy … ”) the things I wrote to you about Estelle, well they are not so bad now. Estelle made a complete somersault in regards to her behaviour to me. I think she likes Canada. And if God work out things the right way, mayhaps, I will even begin to take out papers for Estelle’s landed immigrancy … (“Over my dead body, blind you! All you want is man? Always saying you going out with that Agaffa? But one o’ these days, I am going to see who the real Agaffa is!”) … But do you know what I been thinking recently, Mammy? I was thinking that it would do you the world of good to come up here, on a vacation. The little journey in a plane would not kill you, although I know what you think about planes and things that fly. But I am dying to see you. Sometimes I think I will never see you again, in the flesh. However, God understand. In a few minutes, I am going to send down the plane ticket for you. You come up here, and rest your old bones, Your loving daughter, Bernice. She felt happier now that she had communicated with Mammy. And in the same spirit, she decided to drop a line to Lonnie; just to inquire how he was, what he was up to these days; and whether he had visited Terence recently. But before she put the pen to the paper of her imagination, she pondered the wisdom of bringing an old woman like Mammy in all this cold weather; whether she should withdraw the money for the ticket, tomorrow, and whether she should send the ticket for Lonnie. (“No! I am going to borrow the money from Mrs. Burrmann. She would respect me more, and treat me better, because she would want her money back, heh-heh!”) But Lonnie, are you a man, too? Every little piece of woman in this place, Canada, have a man going out every morning in the cold, from eight till five, providing for her. And it only you West Indian men who sitting down on your behinds, begging women for money. Lonnie, you don’t know that behaviour is gone out of fashion? And Lonnie, you should be ashame. But then, how the hell would you know when and when not to be ashame? But let me tell you this … She wasn’t satisfied with the way this letter was going, so she destroyed it; and the paper petals floated and dropped finally to the bottom of her consciousness, like heavy feathers.
She was almost finished drying, when a chill went through her entire body. Once before she had had a similar spasm; and then a fierce thought; something more than a thought, a kind of vision, in which she saw her father, Pappy, dead. And before she reached home, she had heard Estelle screaming, an
d the whole village gathered at the front door. Pappy had been washed in, at low tide, drowned. When Bernice told them she had seen it in a vision, at five o’clock (the same time Pappy was first seen, like a bundle of old rags on the shore) they called her superstitious, an obeah woman. Now, she was having that kind of vision; but she laughed it off, as they had laughed at her, once before. In this vision, she saw Mammy dead. “Looka me, dreaming damn foolishness! It must be the hard work and the cold weather.” She slammed the last cupboard door shut; switched off the lights, and got ready to go up to her room. The time was nine o’clock. Before she moved, she looked right and left, and then hastily and stealthily dropped the greaseproof paper parcel into her bosom. And then she smiled. It contained about a pound of Mrs. Burrmann’s favourite mild Canadian Cheddar cheese. The cheese had hardly settled itself between her warm, sweaty breasts, when Mrs. Burrmann appeared, smiling.
“Well, well, well!” she said, still smiling.
“Oh God, ma’am, you frighten me.” Mrs. Burrmann patted her on her shoulder. “Man, I nearly catch a heart-affection.”
“You said that so dramatically, Bern.” She handed her her wages, in the customary manilla envelope; and also an air-mail letter. “Tomorrow is Thursday.”
“The whole day, ma’am.”
“You needn’t come down. I won’t be here for breakfast, and Mr. Burrmann, well …”
“I understand what you going through, soul …”
“That’s all right,” Mrs. Burrmann said, interrupting; and cutting off further sympathy from Bernice. “Mr. Burrmann won’t be eating here tonight, he’s gone back to the office. It must have been a long day for you, today, Bernice.” (In her heart Bernice asked, “Woman, you think only today was a long day for me?”) Mrs. Burrmann rested her hand on Bernice’s shoulder again, very affectionately. It was a gesture of sincere appreciation. “Don’t open the brown envelope till you get to your room. There’s a surprise in it for you. And have a good night, Bernice.”
The Meeting Point Page 20
