The Meeting Point

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by Austin Clarke


  “Goddamn.”

  “You understand now, what I wants outta this life?”

  “Goddamn!” he repeated, and then hung up, with the promise to listen for Boysie, later. Henry went back to his day-dreaming. He had reached a stage in life, at which it was easier to lie in bed all day, and dream; a stage at which he was becoming so weak from the exhaustion of thinking, that he could not see much difference between the day and the night: both were nightmares. He was experiencing something like a suspension of time; and he would spend the days, and the nights too (when he wasn’t out with Agatha) waiting; waiting as if he was waiting for somebody or some event, like an enemy, or a detective (he had not forgotten the night on Marina Boulevard when he struck that policeman) or a bailiff — who came often, and wasn’t let in. In these moods, he would think of Agatha. Agatha, in some way, put him into these moods. Sometimes, before she arrived, he would pull himself out of these apathies, and prepare himself for the long walk through the university grounds, through Queen’s Park, Victoria College grounds, Charles Street and then to the Pilot, to spend the night drinking; or it would be the Paramount (with, or without — recently without — Agatha). He was thinking of his life now; and he asked himself the same questions he had just asked Boysie: “Henry, who are you? What are you?” He looked round the untidy room, at the three large photographs of Agatha, each inscribed, Forever; and he told himself, aloud, so that he could hear his own answer, “You ain’t no goddamn celebrity, baby! You ain’t no Sammy, Davis, and you sure ain’t no goddamn Harry Belafonte, neither; and you ain’t no goddamn heavyweight.…” The phone rang. It was Boysie.

  “If Dots call,” he said, “tell her I gone down by Jees-and-Ages, playing some dominoes, hear? But I really going up by Brigitte — just in case.”

  For a while Henry just listened. He despised him for doing this; but it was a strange ambivalent hostility. “Look, Boysie,” he said. “What you think of Bernice? What you think about me and Bernice getting together?”

  “Bernice?”

  “I am having second thoughts ’bout Bernice, man. She is my people.”

  “And what about Agaffa?” Boysie asked.

  “Never mind.” But the doubts had already set in, to eat away at his decision to spend his life (if it came to that, voluntarily, or by force of circumstance) with Agatha. Recently, comparing Bernice with Agatha, he was unable to decide on one of them; he was unable to break off one relationship and embark on the other. Why can’t there be some nice goddamn black chicks in this town? Goddamn! Man, I know I don’t, and can’t love Bernice; and I know I can’t ever love Agatha, because I don’t have that pain in my heart for either Agatha or Bernice. It is only sympathy, baby, sympathy. Not the kind o’ pain that love is, baby. Because, pain is love. And love is pain. And I don’t have to be no goddamn postgraduate at no goddamn university, to know pain from love, and love from pain, and when love is pain and pain is love, goddamn! “And that motherfucker, Agatha, always telling me, ‘I love you, Henry, God, how I love you.…’ ”

  Somebody was pounding at his room door. The aggressiveness in the knocking pushed away the suspension of time. He cursed the landlady, who he thought it was (“Goddamn rent again, baby!”) — and who it was. She handed him a letter, sent SPECIAL DELIVERY. When he took it, he remembered the summons Boysie had received earlier today. It was time for Agatha to come. But he was still going to read her letter, which called him, My dear Henry, I am sorry indeed … He skipped that page, and began again at the fifth page, the final page, mid-way in which she was saying that although I am guilty of having fooled you into believing this could work out; and having fooled myself into feeling so, too, through rationalizing my guilt feelings, I must tell you the truth now. A friend of mine in social work at the university with me, has helped me to work out my problem. I shall not see you again. It is bad for me. But I shall always love you. And I hope that you will not hate me, but love me, even though I have done this cruel thing to you. But you were always the stronger vessel, and I, the weaker. Forever, Agatha. Goodbye, Henry.

  For some time lying there, facing the ceiling, his hands under his head, and knitted together, he pretended he didn’t give a damn: after all Agatha was just another rich broad looking for kicks; just another Forest Hill kid, rich and young and bored; or a Rosedale kid, just like those goddamn weird kids up in the village. “Shit, baby, you ain’t never going to make this cat weep, and break up, oh no, baby!” But he had to look at her four photographs, and at the face which was really a beautiful face; and at the boast she had written on the face of each photograph, each one taken in a different season of year and love: Forever. He looked at the clock ticking like a bomb, and it showed him the time of day, and the time of happier days when Agatha would be sitting on the dirty bed in that very room, right here, look man! right here where I’m sitting now! and would be drinking tea or coffee or wine from his chipped tea-cups; or sitting combing the evidence (of having lied to him in his bed) out of her long brown hair; and suddenly, he wished and willed her present, but all he got was her perfume, the perfume of her perfume, the perfume of her body, the perfume of her body after sex … and the things that came to his mind (as her body came to his senses) were little things, the happy things, the joyful things, such as the night when they walked through Queen’s Park when the snow hid the ground for seven inches; and they held hands, he an old man, sedate and a bit embarrassed to be seen so gay and happy, holding hands and playing in the snow; and she, young, flighty and flirty, gay and giggling, deep as the snow, in love with him. Then she said, picking a line from somewhere, “Bet people’ll think they’ve been hippos! What would you do if you saw two hippos?” Before he could say anything sensible (if indeed he had anything sensible in mind to say: not having been exposed to hippos before — only hippies) she threw a snowball right into his face, and turned him into a checkerboard. And the two of them stood like gigantic icicles in the middle of the park bound by snow, kissing. He tried to put this out of his mind, by going to his drawer to search for the leaflet which he had received a long time ago, from the Canadian Anti-Apartheid Association. He had thrown it into a drawer, or somewhere, because he was happy then, and he had his woman beside him. But now, he was searching for it. He remembered vaguely, that it asked him to march. March with us on … a certain date! He couldn’t remember the date: perhaps the day of Mars and March had passed. But when he pulled out the first envelope, it contained the remnants of a red rose she had stolen from a garden in residential Lowther Avenue, last summer. (“With this rose, I thee dub, my lover, forever,” she had said.) He was remembering that now. He reached into the back of the drawer and searched; and eventually, out came the leaflet to march. “Goddammit! I shouldda been marching a long time!” But he had a few days in which to decide. He thought of the march, and he thought of Agatha. He tore up the leaflet; and he held the rose in his hand, and he cried. “Goddammit, that’s a great woman, my woman, and I love her, ’cause I’m feeling that goddamn pain.…” Losing her was too much for him.

  When Estelle heard what the man said, she asked him to repeat it. He repeated it; and still she refused to believe she was hearing properly. “Is that what I mean to you?” She had already sensed it. “Is that all I mean to you, Sam?” Dishonesty and a sense of the dramatic were becoming characteristic now that she knew she was carrying his child. Sam disowned the child. “Are you kidding?” he shouted, when she told him. He was refusing to be honest. He had found out he wasn’t really impotent. She had found out that she was just a woman, another cheap woman. Yet, had she been back home and this had happened, she would have chosen to keep his child as the forceful weapon to remind him of his past. “Is that all I mean to you, Sam?” There were tears now. But she could have told him a long time ago, all that she meant to him. Her own grandfather had told her grandmother what she meant to him. Why should it be any different for her? He had just told her she should have the child (“ … if you’re telling me the truth, if, if you’re telli
ng me the child is mine, well all right. But a man is never sure a child a woman say is his, is his.” Estelle got so mad, she screamed, “Christ, man! a woman knows! A woman knows!” And when he found that he was blundering, and didn’t have the courage to say he was unfair to her, he said, “How the hell do I know it isn’t Boysie or, or what that other one’s name is, Henry, or somebody like them. It could be one of your own people!”), but perhaps, she should give it up for adoption. It was easy, he said. Many women do it; they sign the paper and the child is adopted, and it goes into a rich, loving home, perhaps the child even gets a university education. “A child like yours, a child with a strike against it to begin with, a coloured child, must have a home, must have at least one chance in life.…” He said it all depended on her, since it was her child. “You would have to decide, Estelle.”

  They had talked in Bernice’s apartment, while she was at church, and Mrs. Burrmann had taken the children out. Sam had worried about her being pregnant for a long time, but he had decided that when she told him, he would not be kind to her; he would be cruel, and make her hate him, and make her kill the child. He did not feel he really cared for her: never did. But he was still worried. She sat watching him, hating him; and he sat watching her, hating her, hating himself for having got mixed up with her. Time however, had become a complete circle: it had begun here in this same room; and here it ended. It had begun on a Sunday morning; and now, on this Sunday morning, it ended. “You have to get rid of the child. There’s no question about that,” he said. Estelle was expressionless. She was not crying, she was not angry, she was not sulking. She just looked at him. “I don’t want people to be talking about …” and he decided it was unwise to finish what he was going to say.

  He had begun by talking about his summer plans so as to evade the real problem on his mind. Mrs. Burrmann, he said, had decided on Mexico; the children were going on the Monday, to Camp Kipawawa, and he was thinking of going to some northern Ontario resort area to fish. But he hadn’t included her in his plans (though, to be honest, she didn’t expect it); and it was then that the real discussion started.

  “I never thought I would come to this, to be here, sitting in front of the man who put me in all this trouble, all this damn trouble.… Look, you forget that I came up here on a vacation? … and do you want to know something else? If I thought it would do something bad, something bad bad bad, to you, I would kill this blasted child in my womb. But that isn’t bad enough for you!”

  “Okay, okay,” was all he said, and all he could say. And to change the conversation, he told her he had arranged with a friend at the Bedford Road immigration office to help her take out landed immigrant’s papers. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” That was the last word he said to her. That was the last time he saw her. That was the moment when the house suddenly became as quiet, and as silent as a sea without a wave.

  Time was no longer time. Bernice did not now belong to time. Time had no dominion over her; for she was time. A good, summer afternoon time. Time had changed her in such a short time, that her own sister could not understand what was happening. It was a new Bernice. It was a summer Bernice. And time was long and heavy with Estelle.

  “I have a plan for you, Estelle,” Bernice said. They were walking along College Street, near the Toronto General Hospital. She was thinking of a job in the hospital for Estelle. She thought of Priscilla who had attended Estelle’s welcoming party. “I made up my mind to help you. You are staying with me, ’cause I need company. But before you go and do the wrong thing, listen to me. I am going to figure out a way to make you a immigrant, if it means changing your name from Shepherd to Estelle Leach. As a matter of fact, from this afternoon, I am calling you Leach. Don’t forget that. ’Cause today, I claim you as a sister.” Estelle remained very quiet. She had already laid her plans to remain. Sam was going to work on his friend in the immigration office; now, Bernice was coming out with a similar idea.

  “You know something?” Estelle said. “I wouldn’t mind being a nurse, at all.”

  “You are going to be a nurse!”

  “I always wanted to be a nurse.”

  “Gal — as Dots would say — you is almost that right now!”

  And they passed the ugly, silent hospital. It was proud and self-centred, hiding within its dirty brown brick, all the mysteries of diseases, and the curses and the cures of those diseases, which in a short time, Estelle would be learning about. Just as they reached the corner, a long double line of people was marching towards them. Some were carrying placards; some just walking; a few black persons (mostly women) were walking and holding down their heads as if they thought they should not be seen; and all of them were mumbling a song which had a very bad and lugubrious melodic line. Estelle could see the placards saying: CANADA IS NOT ALABAMA and END RACE PREJUDICE NOW and BLACK EQUALS WHITE and NEGROES ARE PEOPLE. Estelle hurried on to see better. The leaders came into full view: a Jewish man, wearing a pair of glasses that had one eye-lens darkened, holding hands with a black woman. And there was a tall black man, proud as a prince, and he too was wearing glasses, dark glasses. The line passed and passed, until they were opposite about five black men; and when the men saw Estelle and Bernice (who was visibly upset and annoyed) they stopped singing, shut their mouths, and hastily looked the other way. Bernice walked off, as the lights changed; and she pulled Estelle behind her, saying, “Come woman, we don’t have the whole day, standing up watching a bunch o’ black people walking ’bout the place, making themselves look more foolish.”

  “It is just like in the South,” Estelle said, a little sad she had to leave the marching. “I remember now that I saw coloured people marching like this, on television.…”

  “Child, they been marching down South, up South, up North, all over the States. Whenever you open a newspaper, whenever the summer come, whenever you turn on the damn television, all you seeing these days is a lot o’ stupid black people marching ’bout the place.” She made a wicked rasping noise with her lips, to show her disgust. “Black people praying, kneeling down all over the street, won’t let traffics pass, making trouble. Praying and kneeling down, and when they tired doing them two things, they getting beat up all over the damn place. Christ! it sickens me to my stomach to see what this blasted world o’ black people is coming to.” She shook her head, from side to side, to show how despondent she was with this aspect of life. “And these niggers in Canada! Well, they don’t know how lucky they are!”

  “I think you are wrong, Bernice. I think you are wrong, wrong, wrong.” Bernice gave her a cruel glance. “Now, if I was a person living in Canada, and if I knew about this marching-thing, I would be in it. God! and I would be in front, too, leading! Just like that lovely black woman at the head, hooking up with that Jew man, as if she is the Queen o’ Tonga, be-Jees, and singing loud loud, too!”

  “You, too?”

  “Christ, yes! I am a Muslim, you didn’t know that?”

  “But this is Canada, dear, not America. You and me, we is West Indians, not American Negroes. We are not in that mess. Leave that damn foolishness to them, you hear? ’cause we grow up in a place, the West Indies, where nobody don’t worry over things like colour, and where you aren’t condemn because you are blacker than the next person, and …”

  “Woman, what the arse are you saying, at all?” When she realized how she had spoken to Bernice, she was trembling. But she was now fed up with Bernice’s dishonesty. “Look, be-Christ! Bernice you is, are, my sister. But I am saying you are wrong.” And she decided to end the conversation there. Bernice said nothing else.

  They walked on, both of them pretending to be friends, while each one knew the other was cursing her. “Sickening,” Bernice said, at last sitting down in the WIF Club, grateful for the relief from seeing the marchers, and from walking. On the way, they heard the bells ringing in the tower of the university. They stopped to listen: Bernice shaking her head, sadly; and Estelle amazed. But they left the bells and the melody behind t
hem. Men and women were laughing in the WIF Club; patting one another on the back, and saying, “What happ’ning, man? Oh hell, I can’t see you these days, man!” and a friend would say, with a smile, “Christ, man! things rough man, things rough!” And while they were there, a tall Jamaican entered, and shouted, “Rass, Small Island!” greeting a small, toughly put-together Barbadian man, who seemed to have forgotten how to smile. Turning to the other four men sitting at the bar, drinking, he added, “Baje, here, is a hell of a skins-man, eh! I see him hustling a blonde skins last night, man!”

  Bernice took her mind off the merriment of the men, to comment about the marchers, “Blasted stupid black people walking ’bout the white man road, with signs! They don’t know how to look for work? Every one o’ we seeing hell in this place, but we ain’t making trouble.… Mr. Geary, how, boy?” Mr. Geary came over, smiled, patted her on her shoulder, and wished her the best. “Can’t complain, boy,” she told him. “And how things?” He said, “Betwixt and between,” and then moved back into the curry and the steam and the ackee and cod fish that spurted and sputtered beautifully out of the kitchen.

 

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