The Bigger Light

by Austin Clarke

  He was thinking: she would leave the apartment to go to work; and he would assume that after she left the house, she went straight to work; and when she came in, he expected that she would have come straight from work. He had found himself living in this routine of expectation with her. It was the same with meals and other things she did around the apartment. He expected she would cook. Would wash. Would clean. He was surprised to see that she did not clean under the bed. How many other things had he taken for granted in his routine life with her? She left to go to work. She came home. He accepted that. She came and went. But suppose there was a surprise in this too! “I wonder if I should follow her once of these mornings, just to see if she really goes to work,” he said. But it was really not necessary. And then he thought some more about it, and realized that he had been living with this woman for so many years and he did not know very much about her. He did not know how much money she made. He did not know what she had for lunch. He did not know where she ate her lunch. And with whom. And for the past few months, he did not know what was the colour of her panties, he had been so far from her. And caught suddenly in this trap of speculation, he went out into the living room to see whether she had changed, to see if grey hair was already showing in her head, to see whether she was putting on weight. He had never thought of these things before. All of a sudden, he wanted to look at his wife. And he wanted to learn to know her again.

  In the living room there was no one. “Man, I must be dreaming!” It was impossible for her to be here and not make her natural sound. He searched inside the cupboards, in the small kitchen, and in the bedroom, although he had just come from there. And Dots was nowhere to be seen. Had he talked so long? Had he really been talking such a long time, trying to impress her with this new language, and she was not even there to hear what it was all about? All this change in him: and she had scorned him, and despised him so much that she could leave without making her sound, without listening to him? What other things about his wife had he neglected to watch? Could the new language be clouding his perception?

  The apartment became very quiet, and he grew frightened for the stillness. Her sound had left the place. It struck him that if she was dead, if she was really dead, and he had wished her dead many times before, even this afternoon, and last night too, if she were dead, he realized that it would be a shock just like this, that the place would be so quiet, too quiet for him to spawn any further use of this knowledge. Not that he could not deal with the lack of her. For he remembered wishing her dead when he was talking. But he had made her dead according to the specifications of his own ability to face that kind of death.

  He could not endure the way the apartment was quiet without her. And so he put on a record to play. He did it absentmindedly. When the volume rose, he was hearing: floes and floes of angel’s hair … and ice cream castles everywhere … The apartment door was unlocked, and he heard her voice say, “That’s what I’ve been telling you, wasn’t I?” Her perfect English: someone must be there. “Didn’t I tell you this very minute, not one minute ago, coming up in the elevator …”

  Bernice was standing beside her. Feathered canyons everywhere … they rain and snow on everyone …

  “Come down from the clouds and say How-d’ to Bernice, please, Boysie!” He was not sure whether it was Dots or Bernice who had spoken.

  Bernice always brought freshness into their apartment. She was still working as a domestic, for a rich family, the Breighington-Kellys of Rosedale. And the conditions of her work were such that she did not wish to change her job, or her occupation. Whereas Dots had left the domestic service for the hospital as a means of ensuring her independence, and her social status, Bernice continued to use her status as a domestic, and the large savings account that went along with it in the Royal Bank of Canada (“Naturally, darling!”), as the measurement of her independence. She had saved quite a lot of money. Nobody, not even her own sister, Estelle, knew how much. She was very secretive in these matters. The amount of money she had spent on Estelle during her problems with work and to assist her with her child was forgotten now. Bernice had turned over a new leaf, so to speak. Estelle was still living with her in a two-bedroom apartment, but she had permitted the bonds of blood to be uncut, so that she ceased to interfere in Estelle’s life. She seldom talked about Estelle to Dots. And Dots recognized this silence as a sign that everything was going well.

  “Under control, child.”

  “Well, gal, I wish I could say the same ’bout my life!” Dots sighed dejectedly. Bernice understood. Boysie was in the bedroom, or the bathroom. “You looking good, though. This is the one you tell me about?”

  “Costs too much, though.”

  “Nobody else is going to take care o’ you, hear. And who you going leave your money for, when you dead?”

  “But a hundred dollars? For one winter coat?”

  “It is yours.”

  “Yuh know something? I couldn’ help thinking that if I was still working for Mistress Burrmann up in Forest Hill, I won’t have to spend a hundred dollars on one winter coat. On no winter coat, if yuh axe me! Mistress Burrmann wouldda given me one of her old ones!” And they both laughed heartily. Recalling the days when the condition of their employment carried with it such gifts and hand-me-downs always made them laugh. But they could laugh now because they had both passed through that stage.

  “Sometimes, I wonder if I made the right move.”

  “You not happy, Dots?”

  “I don’t think in terms of happy or not happy, child. What is being happy? In my life, I find myself with the things that should make a person happy. But something like it happened to the arrangement o’ these things in my life. Especially, the thing I have inside there!”

  “Boysie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Again?”

  “Again, child.”

  “But why Wessindian men can’t do with only one woman?”

  “Them? Them, child?”

  “Boysie fornicating, again, eh?” Bernice smiled when she said it. It was a new word she had learned. “I catch that word offa the woman I works for. She told me yesterday that her own husband fornicating. I had to find out what the blasted word meant, even before I could laugh, or be serious.”

  “Not Boysie. It is something more deeper, worse than that.”

  “What could be worse than that? What?”

  “Bernice, my husband doing some funny things. Funny funny things.”

  “Like what?”

  “You believe in psychiatrists, Bernice? I hear a lotta people at the hospital talking ’bout them. Almost everybody who comes into the clinic goes to one. Or is advised to go to one! But being I am a Wessindian, I never really put too much truck in one o’ them.”

  “My people goes to one. He has his own one. And she has hers. But they call them shrinks! How you like that word?”

  “All this time you here and I haven’ ask you to sit down, and have a seat. Take a seat, girl. And look, I stanning up here with your coat in my hand, all this time …” She put the coat down; then she said, “I am really getting doatish and forgetful. Do you know that this afternoon Boysie was talking to me, and I forget he was talking to me, although I was stanning up in front of him, probably listening too. And before that, I went into the bathroom and I was in there for almost five minutes, and still I didn’t know why the hell I was in there! It was then that I went downstairs and waited for you!”

  They laughed like they used to do when they both worked as domestics. It was a long time since they had laughed together. Boysie came out of the bedroom, and they stopped laughing.

  “How, Boys?”

  “Not bad, Bernice.”

  “You very quiet these days. Don’t even call. Don’t come round, don’t do nothing. Only killing yourself with that cleaning work, eh?” She patted him on his shoulder. “Oh, Estelle say thanks for the birthday present for the little boy.”

  “Well, no …” Boysie resented Bernice. She was talking now,
it seemed to him, as if her job and her new circumstances were more important and impressive than his, as if she was somebody special. Dots had given him this same impression just as she started working as a nurse’s aide. She had passed all her exams. She knew that Boysie had never passed an exam in all his life, had probably never taken an exam — except his driver’s exam. His life in this country had never called upon him to sit any exam of any type. Her careless comment at that time had hurt him so much that he vowed to improve himself with education. It was then that he got to like reading the newspapers and experimenting with the new language. Now Bernice went on to talk about a party she was at last night. Boysie tried not to listen, but he was in a way jealous of her happiness, and his resentment of her was not a very serious one. She had attracted him sexually many years ago, and he had been rejected by her. This memory came sometimes into their minds, and made them both violent to one another. He could not allow himself to be envious of her. He wanted his life to be hard, organized, clean in its aspirations: the ability to see clearly what was going on around him.

  “Child, the music was so good! They played Aretha Franklin and calypsoes the whole night! I danced every dance. And with every man I could find.” The noise again, Boysie observed. The noise and the parties and the drinking and the dancing. He wanted to change himself out of that suit of clothes. “The three o’ we used to have those very nice times right in this very apartment.”

  “The same thing I was telling Boysie. He been tekking me lately to some place where all they do is drink and sit down and listen to a woman singing about clouds!” Dots laughed sensuously and sneeringly. Bernice knew it was directed at Boysie. “Blasted clouds!”

  “Clouds? You making sport!” And then Bernice laughed too.

  “Clouds, I tell you.”

  “Them things up in the sky?” She exploded now, and slapped Boysie on his legs. “Boy, you going crazy? I don’t even remember ever seeing a cloud in the whole sky in Toronto. You, Dots?”

  “My husband’s head up in the clouds.”

  “That’s the song you was telling me about?” The song was now playing. Bernice listened to the words, and smiled. “Floes and floes of angel’s hair …” She sang along with the music. “I listen to this every day. My lady plays it almost every day. It must be her favourite, too.” She hummed along with the music when she didn’t know the lyrics. “I still don’t like the kind o’ music they call rock, though.”

  “What rock got to do with it?”

  “I just telling you that I do not like rock music. I wonder if by rock, they mean like a rock-stone or rock, like in a rocking-chair? I don’t see neither of the two o’ them things in this rock music.”

  “I am talking about clouds, Bernice. And you telling me about rock music.”

  “Anything that is not jazz music, or blues, or calypsoes, child, is rock to me! My lady that I works for holds the same opinion. She is a very nice person, and I agree with everything that she says. She’s very nice that way.” Bernice considered the matter settled, that Dots didn’t have an opinion to combat her knowledge, and she settled herself in the chair, and said, “I went shopping yesterday. You should see the things I bought on my charge card! I bought a nice maxi-nightgown such as I see in a fashion book. Mauve.”

  “What about a drink, Bernice?” Boysie was making one for himself. Bernice nodded.

  “Yuh telling me ’bout the nightgown, gal.”

  “Scotch, please Boysie. On the rocks. I drinks strictly on the rocks. I got myself some shoes, too. You know the new ones, with the thick soles, well, them. As I was in the store, I decided to spend a few dollars on myself, and before I left that place, my charge plate was heavy to the tune o’ three hundred dollars. Thanks, Boysie. I almost buy-out the whole blasted store. Got myself some new dresses for the fall, too.” She was wearing a new dress now. It was new in style. Dots thought she herself was the one who set the styles and fashions between them; but now Bernice was taking over; and Dots watched her and looked at the dress, and complimented her, but she did not feel happy about it. Bernice moved about in the chair, fixing things on the dress to attract attention. “Child, guess what I bought yesterday, too. A hair dryer. You must come and see my place. I changed it right around …” (Boysie was thinking of his bed, and what he found underneath it yesterday; and he was looking around as Bernice talked to see whether his own living quarters were just as well furnished as Bernice’s. Dots had not yet thrown out the plastic flowers which she kept in a shiny gold-looking vase on the coffee table; and there was one in the bedroom too; and another one on the dining area table. Boysie hated plastic flowers. He had never seen plastic flowers in any of the offices he cleaned, and they were merely offices, and not even homes. Once he bought a pot of flowers — he did not know the name of the flowers, but he liked them, liked their full strong colour of red — and brought it home, and in two days it died because Dots did not water it, was not accustomed to watering the plastic flowers; and she seemed to be glad that it had died, that it was no longer competing with her plastic flowers, which she cleaned and shone and rubbed down like an athlete getting his muscles polished after a very hard race; and when she threw it out, with the flower pot, the three vases of plastic flowers became uglier in his mind.) “There’s a lovely florist near where I living and I got him to fix me a lovely bunch of red roses, and child, you should see how one simple thing like fresh and real flowers could light up a person’s life! I watch Estelle sit down and look at that bunch o’ roses for almost half day last Friday. As if she was remembering something. You know what I mean? It wasn’t no simple thing like watching a movie, which you know is here today and gone tomorrow. Not that. Estelle was watching those red roses on my glass-top Italian modern coffee table as if she was looking into a mirror or a crystal ball that contained her fortune. And I got to tell you something, Dots. I was stanning up in the kitchen watching the steaks we had for supper, and I got a glimpse o’ her face, and so help me God, I have never see my sister’s face light up so pretty, and contain so much meaning, just by watching a simple thing like roses …” (Boysie liked roses too; and he first came to like them when Henry wrote a poem that talked about roses. Estelle had asked him to read that poem, the day Henry’s death was reported in the newspaper. The poem was printed beside his photograph, too. Boysie remembered that he used to be a gardener back in Barbados, working from seven in the morning till six at night, at the Marine Hotel; and it was his job to keep the roses red and blooming; and in all that time he never thought he could pick one rose and give it to his mother, or to his woman; and he never liked roses then, for that reason. He hated roses, then. But it was Henry who brought him back to roses. Henry’s poem went something like, But was it really time that killed the rose of our love, was it time, and was it time to die, is it time, this rose? Time has no power over roses or something-or-the-other … He was trying to remember it well, this poem about the roses; and he remembered clearly that it was Estelle who had asked him that Saturday morning when they looked into the newspaper and saw Henry’s photograph, it was …)

  “Estelle remembered the poem, then.”

  “What you say, Boysie?”

  “Time has no power over roses …”

  “Bernice, I ask you. What the hell is this man saying? Do you know? ’cause I can’t mek head nor tail …”

  “You haven’t make the drink for me yet, Boysie?”

  And that was another thing. Orders. Orders orders and more orders. He had never given anybody an order in his life. In the large rose gardens of the Marine Hotel back in Barbados, there was no gardener below him, and he could not give orders to the roses. He was the head gardener. But there was no assistant gardener. And for weeks he wondered why that was the arrangement. Once he tried to give orders to the roses: one flower bed had refused to grow and blossom, and he yelled at it, and said, “Kiss my arse, then, if you don’t want to grow! Water won’t mek you grow, well tek this, then!”, and it was his foot, trampling the rose
garden; and the night watchman who lingered about the premises during the day because he was in love with the head cook, a woman, saw him and reported him to the day manager who fired Boysie on the spot, right in the middle of the rose garden. “I order you to leave this premises, and never come back. That is an order!” Boysie got another job at the Hastings Hotel, in the tourist district of the island; and although he was hired as Chief Gardener, there still was no one for him to give orders to, because he was the only gardener employed by the hotel. So he gave orders to himself, and this time he did not step into the garden beds, he merely stopped watering them as often as he used to water them at the Marine Hotel. It was a step downwards.