Yes, they come to Nelson Street down in Town, in droves, both during the height of the War and in the hushed safety of Armistice; and then, the quiet of peacetime. Pre-War, and post-War. Yes. He knows about Donnas. But the larger name, Ma-donna. My-deardonna. Muh-dear-donna. Muh-donna. Ma-donna. Perhaps, in a foreign language, Madonna means something different. He surmises that this could be a European name for the Virgin Mary.
The name is foreign. But the features of the person with the foreign name are local, are native, are peculiar to this Island of Bimshire. Are Bimshirean. He knows women, black and white, and those mixed with black blood and with white blood, who could be this woman’s mother, or sister, or aunt, or child, so strong is the resemblance.
Head of the Madonna.
He likes Head of the Madonna. He likes the native women whom this Head of the Madonna reminds him of: he has seen her walking in Town, coming from Cave Shepherd & Sons, Haberdasheries, after she has purchased her vial of Eau de Cologne No. 4711; and he has seen her changing from dress to sporting whites, quick, in fumbling speed, frantic; in a rush to evade his eyes, as he passes behind the green-painted CHANGING ROOM: LADIES ONLY sign at the Garrison Savannah Lawn Tennis Club; and he sees this face, part of Head of the Madonna, as the face of the woman playing tennis, as she tosses her head backwards in a sharp violent movement, to settle her straying hair, and keep it out of her eyes, before she serves, from blinding her from seeing the returned ball coming at her from across the net, like a bullet; and when her hair is controlled, he sees the face in Head of the Madonna, calm, controlled, confident and beautiful, as she begins tying her long brown hair into a bun, into a knot, in this same shape shown in these European colours on this shimmering painting, rectangled in the dark brown mahogany frame that he is looking at, that Mr. Waldrond made. She and this woman are the same Madonna.
When he moves a little to his right, he is still face-to-face with the head of Head of the Madonna. Her eyes are following him. He has seen eyes like these. Eyes that follow him, eyes of a thief, a shoplifter, working amongst the thick crowds of Easter and Christmas shoppers in Cave Shepherd & Sons, Haberdasheries, down in Town. He sees eyes that give off this compelling dare, this occular defiance, this attaching glare, this magnetized stare, this piercing, convicting stare, whenever on his beat he passes along Nelson Street in Town, when the Careenage in Carlisle Bay is filled with ships that fly the Union Jack; during the War; and then, afterwards, in peacetime, when English tourisses replaced the English sailors.
He moves to his left, and the stare remains as piercing and focused upon him. He moves to the right, and the eyes are pinned upon him, still.
The stare of the head of Head of the Madonna frightens him.
He is glad that Mary Gertrude Mathilda is now holding his arm, his left arm, her hand resting just under the three silver stripes under the large silver-and-red Imperial Crown, resplendent in what it stands for, “a Crown-Sargeant” in the Royal Bimshire Constabulary Police Force; and she moves him, just as when she was still gliding him through the words and riffs of “A Tisket, a Tasket”; and they stand, with her hand still touching his arm, in front of another picture. Pietà—the Madonna with the dead Christ.
The person who drew this picture has a foreign name, too. A man named Sebastiano del Piombo. He too comes from Away, overseas; from Europe. But this name is not so foreign to Sargeant’s ears as the other two. He knows many black boys living in this Island named Sebastian. The o at the end is merely for style, he feels, to distinguish between a black boy playing cricket on the beach at the Crane Beach Hotel and another boy from Away, overseas, from Europe, who is playing tennis at Wimbleton, Rumbleton . . . or cricket, probably in a Test Match, at Lord’s; or probably playing soccer in Estrada di Vicenza-Italy; or in Sydney-Australia . . .
What game could a white European boy of this same age be playing at? Not cricket. What would this European Sebastiano be playing at? Swords. Duelling with swords. Playing to be a soldier, like St. George. Learning to fight and to kill, and to spill blood, just as they . . . Sebastiano’s father and Sebastiano’s uncle did years ago in their history of cruel culture . . . in this very Island of Bimshire, and in Trinidad farther to the south, and in Demerara buried amongst bush and jungle and drenched with rivers and waterfalls; and in Brazil, in the Argentyne, in the Canal Zone of Panama where men and women drowned in mud and escavations; and all of South America. A game of blood.
Blood. And swords. And trees trampled. And no knowledge of, and less liking for the local, native horticulture, the native vegetation, the native forestry. And not enough willow trees in their crunching, destructive path, from which, he has been made to understand, the very best, effectively functional, longest-lasting cricket bats are made.
“It is strange, you know. Very strange.”
It takes him a while to realize that it is the woman holding him by the arm, just below the insignia of his rank and status and Imperial Crown, who is talking to him. It is Mary Gertrude Mathilda, and not Pietà; or Madonna.
His mind is still on the games taught to Sebastiano the European kid when he was growing up Away, overseas, in Europe; in Portugal, in Holland, in Spain and in Liverpool-Englund; at the same time and age as the barefoot boy born in this Island of Bimshire, drenched in sunlight and painted green in sugar canes, and beautified by the native horticulture, the native vegetation, the native forestry, flowers and the green fields growing, young yams and sweet potatoes and the pastures of Khus-Khus grass now brown and ripe for sickles and for sheep, and the majestic glory of the tall casuarina trees that reach and, in his imagination, surpass the dizzying height of the deep blue skies; the colour of sand on the beaches the tinge of the conch shell . . . all this majesty, all this beauty, wasted for years, for childhoods, before this moment, when he faces a painting drawn by a man with a European name . . . all this Island majesty . . .
“It is my boy, Wilberforce,” she is telling him, “who first introduce me to these things. Showing me this European Culture, as he say they call it over-there. But when I look at these drawings, these things, they only are pictures, to me. I don’t see no European Culture in them. Meaning that by the seeing of something European in them, that they are superior to what I see in my own backyard, when I look at the cane fields and the breadfruit trees around me, by virtue of the fact, because they come from Europe? I don’t see the superiority Wilberforce say they have in them; or over us. I see Bimshire. When I look at them, I see the Island of Bimshire, in which I was bred-and-born, in all their colours, Blue Period and Red Period, and all their Schools. I see the Island of Bimshire. Plain and simple. I see this Village. Flagstaff Village. I see the Plantation. I see the Plantation Main House, the biggest, most powerful house on the face of this earth, this Island. This Plantation. I see this Great House, in which I happen to live. And I see my own life. And I see the other houses of an in-between size and importance to the Plantation Main House and this Great House where we are; and the houses that house the labourers.
“Take this one, this Pietà drawing. What you think Pietà stands for?”
“Is a woman’s name?”
“No.”
“A man?”
“You serious, Sargeant?”
“I am serious, Miss Mary-Mathilda. Let me think . . . Pietà, Peeeta . . . Pee-ate-ah, Pee-aa, Pee-ate-her. Pietà. Not a man. Not a woman. I have heard this word, this name, before. Don’t we have this name in one o’ the carols and songs we sings in Church on special occasions, on festivals, and certain liturgies? Not a woman’s name...Well, Jesus Christ! . . . pardon my French, Mary-Mathilda. . . Pietà could only mean one thing! Pity!”
“Course! And the reason it take you so long is because pity is written in a foreign language! And we are educated to believe that anything from Over-and-Away is either more difficult to imitate or is superior to anything we have in this Island.”
“Imagine! Pity is the real meaning!”
“And if you see this picture as a example for pi
ty that people in the outside-world make so much fuss over, I ask you, as a educated man, you don’t see more better examples of pity right here in this Island? This Sunday evening? In this village? In this Atmosphere . . .”
“You mean, Hemisphere?”
“Thanks. Hemisphere,” she says. And then there is silence. The two of them seem to lose interest in the paintings; as if they were never on the wall of the front-house.
“Clotelle,” she says after a while. “I am remembering Clotelle. Who comes into my mind, all of a sudden. If somebody had-had the time and the paint and the colours and the right time o’ day, and if the rain wasn’t falling so hard the last few days, and if the person doing the painting had the inclination, such a person, with a touch o’ talent, couldda drawn a more authentic picture of Pity, which would be a close-up image of Clotelle’s face. And Clotelle’s body. And Clotelle’s life.
“Even before the tragedy.”
“Even before the tragedy.”
“Before Clotelle was found tie-up, and henging from the tamarind tree.”
“Dead.”
“Yes, dead. Before they tek-she-down.”
“‘Who tie-she-up
And feck-she-up,
Could tek-she-down!’”
Sargeant closes his eyes while Mary-Mathilda sings the calypso.
“Dead,” he says.
“So, Europe can’t teach we nothing about Pity! Even if they call it by a different name, ‘pee-a-tuh’!”
“Pee,” Sargeant says, intent upon finding the meaning of the word from its root and deconstruction. “Pee. Pee . . . ate . . . ah. Pee-ate-ah? Or, pee-ate-her?”
“Or, even piety! You ever thought of piety? It could, in its foreignlanguage meaning, stand more for piety than for pity.”
“I think I prefer piety to pity.”
“Me too.”
“Pee-ate-her. And piety.”
“You see the man layingdown there on that white sheet? And you see how he is dressed? With nothing more covering his nakedess than a bare piece o’cloth? My Wilberforce calls it a lion-cloth.”
“A lion-cloth?”
“Did I say a lion-cloth? What am I saying? I mean loin! Loin as in a piece o’ pork . . . pork-loin, loin-pork that Manny would cut for you on a Saturday, when he kills a pig.”
“Oh!”
“With nothing more covering his nakedness than a loincloth? And you see the woman there, praying? Wonder what she is praying for? But whatever it is that she is calling-on on God for, I had to tell Wilberforce when he was introducing me to this Pietà-thing and European Culture, that it is always the role, the turn and responsibility of the woman to do the praying. Regardless to what she is praying for. The man do the action: the woman has to pray to correct that action. And regardless to where the woman come from.”
“But this woman has a resemblance to you, though, Miss Mary-Mathilda! She features you.”
“Do I look so white to you?”
“Not from the point o’ view of colour and complexion. I mean from the point o’ view of manners and attitudes. And the praying; and the way her body look as she is praying.”
“You see the shawl she is wearing on her head?”
“Perhaps it is the shawl that make me say she look like you, although I never really saw you wearing a shawl over your head, nor praying. Sometimes, on Sundays in Church, from my seat in the Choir up in the chancel, I would catch a glimpse of you in your pew, but from that distance I could not tell if you was praying, or not . . .”
“What a funny thing to say! But you already noticed the shawl on this poor woman’s head. But what puzzled me and Wilberforce is what is this woman doing sitting on a cloud, when she is supposed to be praying? And, to-boot, what is she doing, sitting on a black cloud? A cloud that is almost touching the ground. Is this what they mean by European Culture?”
“Sitting on a black cloud that is touching the ground! That is somthing, now that you mention it!”
“Many nights, particular those nights when Wilberforce isn’t out drinking and dancing, either at the Marine Hotel or the Aquatic Club, or down at the Savannah Tennis Club where he plays tennis with his doctor-friends, for, as you know, the various committees are always holding social-hops, those informal dances; and parties;..Well, on Fridays and Saturday nights when Wilberforce stays home, he and me spend the time right here. And he tells me things that he witnessed and observed in the outside-world. And always, as sure as a cent, he wants me to believe that the things he sees, and have observe in that outside-world, are better than anything we could ever see in this Island.
“I was born-and-raise here. Wilberforce was educated as.Well as born-and-raise here. You would think that a young man like him would have more love and loyalty in his birthright. Is that the word for it? In his roots. In his origins. In his birthplace!
“And when he talks to me so, about being educated through travelling, and the education it brings, I always have to remind Wilberforce that education is not the same thing as learning.
“A person could be.Well-educated. Educated to the hilt. To the very heights. Like Wilberforce himself. Educated at Harrison College. Educated up in Englund, first at Oxford doing Philosophy, Politics and Economics; then Law. Then, educated at Cambridge University, over-and-above-that. Wilberforce studied Laws for two years first; at Oxford; then turn-round and went to Cambridge and the Imperial College of London, to take up Tropical Medicines, for a further four years, because . . . listen to this! . . . in the Laws concerning Criminalities, all you do in the briefs they give you is to defend murderers; and murderers don’t have the money to pay you when you don’t got-them-off. No money to retain a good barster-at-Law that Wilberforce would have become.
“But he could afford to waste all those years studying, for three reasons. Number one, his father Mr. Bellfeels had the money to throw-way on him. Number two, Wilberforce is the only son Mr. Bellfeels have. And number three, I drove it in Wilberforce head that learning, learn-ning, not merely education but learn-ning, will deliver him from whatever chains and shackles Mankind or Life, or all-two-both, have in store for him, or have conspired to place in his path.
“Get your education first, I tell Wilberforce, even before you start thinking of breeding woman. Or considering marrieding one o’ the young-girls round-here.
“But what did my words of wisdom fall on? The bare ground. A rock-stone. On arid, barren soil.
“At least, he ain’t breed one o’ them, yet! I knock on wood.
“Sometimes, though, when I look at Wilberforce, I have to wonder if, with all the book-learning his father paid for, Wilberforce isn’t still one of the single most stupidest men walking this earth! Stupider even than Mr. Bellfeels, then. And nobody never accuse Mr. Bellfeels of having tummuch sense!
“Stupid still, with all that English education.
“But it is learning, I tell him. Learning. Give me a learned man anytime.
“Mr. Bellfeels was kind of a educated man. Semi-educated. And therefore, semi-literate. I hope that Wilberforce, my only surviving child, hasn’ inherited those genes from Mr. Bellfeels, in this regards. Even though Wilberforce is a doctor, ’cause these things, like genes, could be delayed, you know what I mean? Buried . . . but not dead.”
She leads Sargeant to a chair. It is the tall, straight-backed mahogany chair with a cane bottom and with a heart carved into the design in its back, the chair he had been sitting in before.
She leads him to this chair as if she is exhausted, worn out by her talking.
She draws a white lace handkerchief from her left sleeve, and it comes out slow, tantalizingly slow, and beautiful as a snake made of cloth. She passes the handkerchief across her brow, and the smell of her perfume wafts to his nostrils.
He closes his eyes, and breathes in the fragrance. Deep.
In this moment, she is more beautiful to his eyes. And the years that have rolled by so fast, and which had pitched him at such an untouchable distance from her: only seeing her at ch
urch, on first Sundays in the month, for Communion; only seeing her, from a distance, in her vegetable garden at the back of this Great House; only seeing her at the annual Church outings, in later years, at the Crane Beach Hotel, but surrounded always by all the children who lived in the Plantation grounds, in the estates, and in Hastings District, including the two daughters of Mr. Bellfeels, Miss Euralie and Miss Emonie; and those of the Solicitor-General, greying now, and made Lord Chief Justice; and the children of the two leading barristers-at-Law in the Island; she was never alone, for him to talk to.
In all those years that he saw her, she was unapproachable.
And now, he and she, alone in this parlour of the Great House, are really very unhappy, uncomfortable and on edge, in their privacy and closeness; and even without the presence of her son, Wilberforce, they still feel and behave as if they are chaperoned; and not alone. Yes.
Yes. It is difficult for them, especially for Sargeant, to relax: he is aware of her son’s presence in the room. Her boy, her son, the apple of her eye, Wilberforce, “my boy-child,” she calls him; “Mr. Bellfeels the Doctor,” the Village calls him; or “Tilda boy,” to the Vicar and to his closest friends—Wilberforce, Sargeant’s doctor.
Always in those years, after that first Easter Monday bank holiday, at the Church outing, at the Crane Beach Hotel, when he saw her from a distance, she had remained beautiful, and desirable. Sometimes, the distance was a few feet, as she walked up the aisle on Sundays, with Wilberforce beside her.
Sometimes, the distance was even shorter, more painful, more dramatic, when she sat near the aisle, in the next row of seats occupied by the Plantation Main House; at the annual cricket match between the Village First Eleven and the Plantation’s team, she would sit beside Wilberforce, not far from the men who ran the Village and the Plantation and the Church and the haberdasheries, and the private clubs in the Island. At other times, still, that distance was the one row of seats, at the annual Gymkhana of the Bimshire Volunteer Regiment and Brigade, performed on the Garrison Savannah Pasture, near the green fence of the Tennis Club, on the other side of the iron cannons, guns now relics, brought over by ship from the fields of the Boer War as symbols of English bravery and military supremacy.
The Austin Clarke Library Page 19
