The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  “That calypso was therefore something like a history, or like a myth. I got that word, myth, from Wilberforce. We were building-up a myth over Clotelle. It is something like a shrine, then. Yes?

  “That is the word! Maybe that is the word!

  “But whether-or-not, you know what I mean. Clotelle is a local shrine, a myth.

  “‘The Ride of the Valkyries,’ played on that piano by Wilberforce, all these years that I have sit and listened to him playing it, is the same thing. A shrine. Or a myth. Yes.

  “The least it is, is a story about Europeans from that part of the world, just north of the Eyetalian mountains, the Eyetalian Alps. The Dollaramites. I am smart-enough to know that.

  “It tells me what a cruel race o’ people they were. With all the killing they executed over the ages. Both there. And down-here. There first. Then, with Columbus and all o’ them, Drake, Hawkins, Newton, Bligh and Lord Horatio Nelson, turned their affection to down-here. The only exception, so far, in present times, is Winston Churchill, the leader of the Allieds . . . and we still have to watch him.

  “The killings by Europeans appears plain-plain-plain in their music. . . .

  “I wish, though, and I would give anything to find out, that I could know the name of the man who compose this piece o’ music, ‘The Ride of the Valkyries.’ And what was-going-through his mind when he was putting those notes, breves and semi-breves, quavers and semi-quavers, ’pon paper. What he was thinking?”

  “That is easy, Miss Mary. The name of the composer is written-down on the front page of the music-sheet.”

  “Really?”

  “Always. You know where the music-sheet to ‘The Valkyries’ is?”

  “Well, you know something? Perhaps this is why. There is no music-sheet. There never was a music-sheet.”

  “There-gotta-be!”

  “When Wilberforce was learning the piano, the music-sheets were the property of his teacher, Miss Smith; and when the lesson done, Miss Smith took-up the music-sheets, put them inside her leather portfolio and gone! And that, ironically, is what made Wilberforce into such a good piano player. He had to memorize every note by heart.”

  “With that kind o’ memory for music, Mr.Wilberforce should have take-up the concert stage! That is how the most brilliant piano players in the world, like Artur Rubinstein, become stars on the international concert stage. That is what virtuosos are made out of!

  “Wilberforce took up the next best thing. So far as memory and memorization is concerned.”

  “What that is?”

  “Tropical Medicines!”

  “Course! Though I never look at it that way. But I suppose now that you make me think of it, that it take even more greater memory and memorizing to be a doctor. To have to remember all the various parts inside of a human body; all the proscriptions you have to write; all the insides, the lungs, the heart, the liver, the spleens, the veins, the blood, and the various calesterols contained in the blood . . .

  “I watches him and I pay attention when he tends to other patients, when I’m in his Surgery, or in the Casualty at the hospital, with a suspect. And sometimes watching Mr. Wilberforce, I does-wish I was a doctor. But I didn’t even went to high school, although I took private lessons after school, to get into Combermere.”

  “Wilberforce tell me that Mr. Edwards, the teacher you had at Sin-Davids Elementary, tried his very best with you, with private tuitions in Latin and History, for the scholarship-exam, the bursary, to get-you-in Combermere School for Boys free. Wilberforce tell me what a hard struggle Mr. Edwards had with you with Latin. But you were very good in History. Is a pity you didn’t come twenty-fourth, ’stead-of twenty-fiff, just one more, and you would have had a scholarship. Free high-school education, to prepare you for one of the professions. Wilberforce say your teacher tried his best with you. Wilberforce was much more younger than you when the same teacher, Mr. Edwards, gave him private tuitions. But Wilberforce was always bright for his age.”

  “History I could take. But not the Latin.”

  “Latin is a hard language.”

  “Latin is a old, dead language. The language the Romans and, later, the Eyetalians used to speak. I could never understand why a dead language had to be so hard to learn.”

  “The people who used to speak it are now dead . . .”

  “My teacher, Mr. Edwards, used to tell me that wasn’t it funny that the people who spake those dead languages are the people we still worship today, as being the people who civilized the whole world! Dead people.

  “Dead people could civilize any world? You mekking sport! Miss Mary, I used to think, before Mr. Edwards showed me this strange thing about human nature and human civilization, that if the people of a certain part of the world who had a certain civilization die-off, therefore the civilization that they had would consequently dead with them, too. That don’t make sense to you? It mekking sense to me. But it was my elementary schoolteacher, Mr. Edwards, who-first made me understand that certain civilizations live on and on, even after all the people of those civilizations was dead. Like the Latin and Greek civilizations.

  “But one afternoon, years later, soon after Mr.Wilberforce had just come back from studying up in Oxford, Mr. Edwards was reminding me of those pre-historic, ancient times . . .”

  “And Cambridge! Don’t leff-out Cambridge. Wilberforce studied both in Oxford and Cambridge. Mr. Bellfeels see to that.”

  “. . . and at Cambridge, when he was telling me and Mr. Edwards about his time up in Englund, and about the British Empire, because the year I took the scholarship exam, one of the questions in the General Knowledge Examination paper was, What are the things that the British Empire, meaning in other words Englund, what are the natural resources of Englund?..Well, Miss Mary, I’m not ashame to tell you . . .”

  “I know. Wilberforce came in, laughing-his-head-off!”

  “I didn’t know I was such a fool to have-give the British Empire so much credit and so much know-how in the lines of their ownership of natural resources from which they were producing products.”

  “Exports,” she says.

  “Exports? What do you mean by exports?”

  “You were mixing-up exports with products.”

  “Mr. Edwards axe me one day, ‘Percy, name one thing that Englund produces.’

  “‘One thing?’ I axe him.

  “‘One thing.’

  “‘Iron, sir,’ I tell Mr. Edwards. ‘Englund produces iron.’

  “‘Good, Percy,’ he tell me. ‘Name another product that Englund produces.’”

  “I heard all about it,” she says. “Not that Mr. Edwards was bringing tales outta school!”

  “At the time, Miss Mary, it wasn’t no laughing matter.”

  She goes to the Victrola grammaphone, and searches in the box which holds the records, for one to play.

  “‘Frenesi,’” she says.

  “Artie Shaw!” he says. “And his orchestra!”

  “Big-band music, boy!” she says. “The times I danced to ‘Frenesi’! But you were telling me about the things that Englund produces.”

  “Yes. All those things that I had-come across, with ‘Made in Englund,’ and ‘Mannifactured in Englund,’ and ‘English-made’ stamp on them. Consequently I conclude as a result that from English natural resources, they were mannifactured into English products, native to Englund. And I gave him examples: chocolates; tea biscuits by McVitie & Price, makers of the finest quality biscuits, in Edinburgh and London and in Manchester . . . and teas, like Red Rose Tea, and Typhoo Tea; and candies. All these things I said were grown up in Englund and mannifactured in Englund, as natural resources.”

  “Red Rose Tea?” she says. “Isn’t that Canadian?”

  “Still the British Empire!”

  “The things we read in the Illustrated London News!”

  “And other magazines.”

  “Those magazines are like Nazzi-time!”

  “The Windsor Chair.”

  �
�And William Kent bureaux.”

  “And Louis the Sixteen cabinets.”

  “They’re French.”

  “In name only. But they are mannifactured in Englund.”

  “And Sheraton chairs. I have one in this front-house. You see it, there, under the window that looks out on the North Field?

  “That chair is my favourite chair. The chair in which I sit and do my studying in, where I listen to the sounds of the night . . . crickets and blind-bats flying through the house when they get lost, smelling the flowers . . .my studying chair.”

  “And Brown Windsor Soap.”

  “A Roberts Original.”

  “Why do we know all these things?”

  “From books the people in Englund make us read in school.”

  “But the question about English mannifactures didn’t turn up on the General Knowledge paper. I left the exam room early after that, from nervousness and my palms sweating,” Sargeant says. “Do you remember Bronnley fine English soaps? My mother used to steal it from the hotel where she was a servant. I grew up bathing in Bronnley fine English soap, in a wallaba tub of cold water, six o’clock every morning, with mint leaves thrown into the water. The smell of Bronnley would cling to me all day. Anyway, I left the examination room early, from nervousness and my two palms sweating, and therefore didn’t obtain a Vestry so I could attend Combermere School for Boys free. Consequently-hence, my lack o’ secondary education. And not being able to be a doctor, or a barster-at-Law. But I still make Crown-Sargeant!”

  “We’re talking too much, Percy. Why we don’t listen to some music, to take our mind off the circumstances? My nerves need settling. Let me play-over ‘Frenesi,’ for you. I even love the name of this song! ‘Frenesi.’ It must be a word from the Spanish language. You think so? Or is it from the Eyetalian language? Which you think?”

  “Spanish. But it could be from the Eyetalian.”

  “Much of a muchness.”

  “I bet you that ‘Frenesi,’ whether it is Spanish or Eyetalian, have the same meaning. I bet you.”

  “How we would know whether you win, or me?”

  “Wilberforce.”

  “Yes, Wilberforce would know.”

  “Wilberforce knows everything.”

  “Yes. Wilberforce. He knows anything.”

  “Wilberforce should know!” she says. “Never a minute without his head inside a book.”

  She says it in such a way as to let Sargeant understand that everyone else in the Village is aware that her son knows everything, or almost everything, about anything . . .

  “Let we listen to ‘Frenesi’ a second time, then.”

  “‘Frenesi’ by Artie Shaw. Big-band music, boy! The best music you could ever dance to and listen to! Artie Shaw! Once upon a time, there was no big-band orchestra music more sweeter to listen to than Artie Shaw. Not even Duke Ellington. But the thing with Duke Ellington, and him not regarded as a more better big-band musicianer than Artie Shaw, was the simple fact that they never played much Duke Ellington music on the radio; and we never get the chance to hear nothing-much by Duke Ellington. But when the first records was heard, either through somebody coming back from the War, or from cutting canes in Florida, or even from the Panama Canal, that was the moment we start hearing Duke Ellington. Real swing-band music! And Duke Ellington became the true-true king of Swing.

  “But for a time there, it look as if Artie Shaw would rule the waves forever. With ‘Frenesi.’”

  “It was the foreign name! People in this Island are lovers of foreign names, and foreign things, and foreign places. As such, you would agree that ‘Frenesi’ is a prettier name than ‘Take the A Train’! Although when you hear Duke Ellington music, versus Artie Shaw, it is a horse of a different colour.”

  “Chalk-and-cheese!”

  “So, let we listen to the music, then,” she says. “But Sargeant,” she adds, “you play the piano, so why you don’t play ‘Frenesi’ for me? Or any other piece of big-band dance music. ‘Frenesi’ was the rave when we used to go to dances. Although you and me never went to the same dance. Nor never danced together.

  “You and me went together mainly to Church outings and picnics. You went with the men, to the ‘brams,’ mainly where men mostly congregate. Like the Shed, in Queen’s Park. Constable say that you really like to play the piano for your bosom-friends on a Friday night. Isn’t that the piano I hear your daughter send-down from Amurca, by boat?”

  “The first girl!”

  “Ruby, then!”

  “Ruby, the first-daughter.”

  “In domestic work, isn’t she?”

  “Domestic work.”

  “You ever see the mother?”

  “The mother left for Demerara sixteen months after Ruby born.”

  “And never looked back?”

  “Never look backwards to see what happen to her own thrildren.”

  “And the second child?”

  “passaway.”

  “Lord-have-His-mercy . . . may she rest . . .”

  “. . . in peace . . .”

  “Domestic work up in Brooklyn, eh?”

  “Engineering is what they calls it by, in Brooklyn. Domestic engineering.”

  “Domestic engineer.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “‘Whatsoever things are pure

  Whatsoever things are lovely . . .’”

  “Is that from the Bible?” he asks.

  “She’s a treasure!” she says.

  “That piano must keep you company better than any woman. And please you, too.”

  “I tickles the ivories, now and then! And learn to bang-out a few things . . . mostly popular pieces. I hear a tune on the radio, or listen to it on a grammaphone record, and the next thing I know, I start picking, and picking, and quick-so, I learn the tune. Not all the parts, mind you. Just the bottom line. The basic melody. Until when the postman pass and deliver the sheet-music, or the songbook that I happen to axe Ruby to send-down for me, come.”

  “The Thirties! The years of the best dance music!” she says. “Though ‘Frenesi’ came out in 1940.”

  “A year after ‘Moonlight Serenade,’ then.”

  “By the same Artie Shaw.”

  “No! No, Miss Mary! I sorry, but I have to disagree. ‘Frenesi’ did, in-true-and-in-fact, come out in 1940. But in 1939, the year before 1940, it wasn’t Artie Shaw who compose ‘Moonlight Serenade.’ It was Glenn Miller.”

  “Didn’t he give us ‘In the Mood’?”

  “Yes. But he also gave we ‘Moonlight Sonata’ . . . I mean, ‘Serenade.’ It was in 1940 that again Artie Shaw gave we ‘Stardust.’”

  “‘Frenesi’?”

  “Nineteen forty.”

  “‘I Can’t Get Started’?”

  “Thirty-seven!”

  “Who by?”

  “Bunny Berigan and His Orchestra.”

  “‘Dipsy Doodle’?”

  “Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra.”

  “Year?”

  “I can’t remember the year.”

  “Yuh slipping.”

  “The mind, Miss Mary, the mind.”

  “And ‘Moonlight Sonata’ . . . ‘Moonlight Serenade,’ as you said?”

  “Nineteen thirty-nine!”

  “And Glenn Miller and His Orchestra?”

  “We covered everything, far’s the big bands. With one exception.”

  “Who?”

  “Duke Ellington!”

  “No! Don’t let we forget Count Basie! And Billy Eckstine! And Cab Calloway! And the one-and-only Louis Jourdan! And Fat Swaller!”

  “And Les Brown?”

  “Yes. Les Brown. And his Band of Renown! A funny name for a big band.”

  “‘Stardust’! Still my favourite. ’Specially when I hear Nat King Cole sing it. Is a hard tune to learn how to play. All them changes, and the flats and the minor keys. But I pick and pick till I mastered it, though.”

  “We’ll turn off the gra
mmaphone, and listen to you play ‘Stardust.’ I can do even better than that. I can give you the sheet-music . . .”

  She chooses the chair with the high back, a kind of rocking chair made from mahogany, with its back covered in a piece of brocade cloth, with flowers in its pattern. This brocade is draped over the back, covering it like a man’s jacket, tight-fitting, following the outline of the back of the chair, which is as strong and defined as a man’s chest. The chair is close to the window. Sargeant follows her with his eyes, as she chooses her place. And behind her head, through the opened window, he can imagine the canes, now clothed in a dark, dark green hue. The light that this Sunday evening gives them unwillingly, and sparingly, is not good to see in; but he can still imagine that he can see the sugar-cane fields around him, wide as the sea; and the waves of the canes; and although there is no wind and no breeze at this moment, he imagines them moving, as they do in the daytime; and their white silk arrows, silk even in the night light, but white only in the light of a hot sunny day, touching the tops of the canes that surround him in their cruel, skin-cutting fierceness, just like the sea, on that afternoon years ago: around four o’clock when the sun is fiercest, when he slipped from the side, when he was sitting on the gunwale of the fishing boat HMS Barracuda that belonged to Manny’s father, too far out in the sea, fishing for kingfish, when he dropped fast and definite into the churning waves, and disappeared, in the twinkling of an eye, before Manny’s eyes, and before Manny’s father’s unbelieving eyes. “Jesus Christ, the boy gone! Percy? Percy, you gone? Man-overboard! Jesus Christ! Man overboard! Quick, Manny! Quick-quick!” And they tossed the anchor overboard after him because they had no inner tube which served as a lifesaver; and Sargeant’s weight, heavy for his age, was making him sink faster than the makeshift anchor Manny’s father had fashioned out of the rim of the wheel of the tire of a motorcar, could sink; down-down like the anchor of HMS Barracuda itself into the green slimy sea . . . Looking at this thick dark greenness now, he feels safer, more comfortable; at ease now, as if he is used to the tranquility of this house, as if he is a regular visitor to this Great House, and the big houses on the Plantation estate, and the Plantation Main House, as if he is, at last, getting even with Mr. Bellfeels; dispossessing him.