The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  “On those nights, few and far between, always having to dodge people even when it was dark, we never could risk to hold hands while we walked; or nothing so that lovers do; so the walks would take him and me through the fields, where we could hold hands; through the canes, where he would pinch my bottom, and run after me, climbing trash heaps that were like castles and hills, jumping in the trash-heaps as if they were waves in the sea, ’cause I always liked climbing; with not a word passing between us, walking in trash, up to our ankles.

  “Now and then, once in a blue moon, along that portion of the front road where few cars pass, he would tell me things about the stars, and what they mean in regards to travel, to science, to witchcraft, and in the foretelling of weather; and fortunes. And naturally, the season for planting; and for reaping. A long time ago.

  “The Star of Bethlehem is the most important star. Because it is about Jesus Christ, our Saviour. But the North Star is my favourite star. Do you know why?”

  “Isn’t the North Star only another name for the Star of Bethlehem?” he says.

  “The thing about it,” she tells him, “is its direction. The North. A compass point, as Wilberforce pointed it out to me. Columbus went East. Or is it West? He certainly end-up West, down here with us in the Wessindies, completely lost in the Carbean Sea, without knowing his arse from his you-know-what. And yet, Columbus get all this credit for discovering all o’ we, including Amurca; but according to Wilberforce, Amurca was already discovered for donkey years, by people who Columbus called Red Indians; but peopled by those people, nevertheless. What discovering did Columbus discover, when he didn’t even know his armpit from his arse!— pardon my French, Sarge! What discovery would you call these discoveries?

  “But Columbus was concern with the East. And ended-up West. In other words, from where he came from, Columbus travelled South. And discovered people that were already discovered, and that had discovered themselves, in one way or the other.

  “The South has come to mean freedom, and escape, even today, with all the blasted North-Amurcan tourisses that crowd-up the place, certain months of the year. Coming South means escape and freedom; and other things too, from the coldness of the North.

  “But the North. The real North, Percy! And the star that stands for the North, the North Star! To me, and I am not a historian, or a.Well-enough-read person to be pointing you to this point, but from listening to Wilberforce, the North Star is the star that led my ancestors, and Gran, from outta the clutches of men like Mr. Bellfeels, and point them straight-straight as a arrow, out of Canaan Land, cross the Nile River and the Sahara Desert, and up inside the Promised Land, after forty long years perishing in the desert, safe. And free.

  “Ma say that her grans on the mother and father side come from a place in Africa call Elmina; was haul-off ship in Amurca; and then was transship here to Bimshire, in transit from crossing the deserts in the forty years that it took to escape bondage.

  “And talking about Ma’s grans strikes me as strange. Because we don’t go back too far in lineages; not in this Hemisphere. I never come-across one soul in this Village who could say she have a grandmother who born here in Bimshire, to match Mr. Bellfeels bragging that he ‘have family here in Bimshire from the year 1493, A.D.’! That bastard!

  “I don’t know one coloured family, or coloured person in the whole of Bimshire, perhaps in the whole Wessindies, who could match that claim, who could lay-claim to that claim, and trace-back his ancestries to 1493! You?

  “And it seem to me, when I think of these things, that we go back, if we go back at all, only just round the blasted corner, to the first chattel house standing on the Plantation land. Rented; and beyond that, to the last slave ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean, which my son calls the Middle Passage, and which lay-anchor in the Careenage of Carlisle Bay, down in Town. Or we could go back to the forty years it take us, like the Israelites, to cross the desert, outta bondage.

  “Wilberforce argue strong that this time span of forty years isn’t accurate; not when you take into consideration the measurements of the desert; allow for sickness, and death, marriage and even childbirth; for wagons brekking-down, and the horses and mules dropping like flies in the heat of the Sahara Desert, their flight from Pharaoh’s Land should be a journey of one week. Nine days. At the most!

  “I wonder where that boy gets his ideas? Learning is a funny thing, Sarge, isn’t it? But Wilberforce allow me to understand that his calculation is based on science; something that proves this argument.

  “Yes! The North. Guided by a star pointing to the North. To the land of real, true-true freedom. Namely, Canada!

  “And when I went up to Buffalo that time, with Mr. Bellfeels, looking for second-hand machineries for the Factory, as the machineries here was always brekking-down, I happened to look across the lake, the Superior Lake, I think they call it, and I saw the beauty of Canada, the white fields of snow, the white trees covered in white snow, and the houses, and the heads of the people, those who didn’t have-on fur hats, white. All that snow symbolize to me the freedom that my ancestors, Ma’s gran-parents, were seeking when they followed that North Star in their journey from out the clutches of Amurcan slaveholders and owners and drivers like Mr. Lawrence Burkhart, into Canaan Land.

  “Do you remember that there used to be a passenger bus line in this Island, by the name of the North Star?”

  “The Lone Star Bus Line, you mean,” he corrects her.

  “Yes! My mistake. But much of a muchness. The name is close-enough for you to grasp my meaning. In the eighteen-hundreds, if not centuries before that, the people who were disembarked and put-off on the shores of Amurca, those who had endurance, all of them who could, embarked and got-on on a underground railroad, travelling by foot in whatever weather they slipped out of captivity in, in winter, storm, deluge and summer; and from Pharaoh’s clutches; dodging and escaping and outwitting wolves and hound dogs and guns, state troopers, bounty-hunters and Kloo-Klux-Klans, bloodhounds like the Alsatians the Nazzies employed in the War, that we see in BBC newsreels, at the movies; and walking practically barefoot, in the deepness of winter and snow; and not taking the kind of transportation, like a Greyhound Bus Line, that I see in Buffalo! Nor a motor-car! Not even a Model T. To say nothing of a plane! They had planes then?”

  “Planes existed in the First Whirl War.”

  “Imagine, just imagine a man with a bag, with fried chicken in it, a slice of watermelon, no change of clothes, hardly a penny to raise ransom, or pay a tribute, with a hand-roll cigarette in his mout’, and walking from the town of Waycross-Georgia, or Miami-Florida, straight up to Canada, following the North Star, putting all his trust in astronomy, since he couldn’t put his hand on a road map . . . They had road maps in those days?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” he tells her.

  “Is there any wonder that the black race produce such great runners, and athletes? It must reside in what Wilberforce calls the genes. Isn’t that something?”

  “Maps didn’t exist, to my knowledge.”

  “Isn’t that something, then?”

  “They had maps that a person could draw from memory of having travelled that route before. But not maps in the sense that you could go in Cave Shepherd & Sons, and ask for a map o’ Englund, and the clerkess hand you one. Maps didn’t exist in that sense.”

  “Isn’t that something?”

  “Maps didn’t exist, to my knowledge.”

  “But you have given me something very precious, Percy. Precious as having a map to show the escape routes and passages and byways for flight out from under Pharaoh’s hand. You have on this night given-me-back confidence in myself. And some of my dignity. I used to be a woman who could move mountains, not blowing my own horn.

  “Mr. Bellfeels knew that. He let me try my hands at certain things in the running of this Plantation. Little things. Things like telling him which labourers was reliable, which was troublemakers. I will never take that from him, bastard that he is st
ill.

  “You also gave-me-back my disposition, my disposition to even out things.

  “But I want you, Sargeant, to show me no favours. After we get up from layingdown in this trash heap, I want you to tell me straight, what I have to do; and what I have to say to the authorities, in the best way, to get this thing over-with.”

  “I already gave you a hint.”

  “A hint is not advice, or a solution. I am waiting on you to take down my Statement, word for word, in full, showing the motive, the motivation and the intention.

  “I wish you had-learn Pitman’s Shorthand, though. That way, what I tell you, and what they report Monday morning in the Bimshire Daily Herald, will be my words and nothing but my words. And not like the words the authorities in Northampton put in Nat Turner mouth to say, and then say that his own words condemn him.”

  “Who is Nat Turner? He used to live ’bout-here? Was he one of the ‘bastards’?”

  “A man from a place in Amurca, called Southampton. You don’t remember hearing or reading about Nat Turner?

  “When we were talking about the family ties between Plantation and Plantation, and between owners living in this Island and those living in Amurca, in places like Waycross, Charleston-South-Carolina; and the City of Lynchburg, we end up always talking about Southampton. Not Southampton-England, although they are related, like Trafalgar Square in Bimshire is named after the Trafalgar Square up in Englund, the Mother Country.

  “We talk about Southampton and we always end up talking about Mr. Nat Turner, who led the insurrection that burn down Southampton Plantation, where he worked; and a few other Plantations as..Well, surrounding; and lick-off the heads of his owners; and likewise a few other Plantation owners heads he chop-off. In particular, the drivers. And a handful of the wives, and the girl-thrildren. Yes. Mr. Nat Turner, whose Statement is the name of a book, Wilberforce say.

  “The authorities sent a Mr. Thomas R. Gray, a authority, to take Mr. Nat Turner Statement, but Mr. Gray had no understanding of the way Nat Turner speak; and Mr. Gray didn’t care, since he was a authority, cause it didn’t take no skin offa his teet, so he take-down Nat Turner words without understanding the language Nat was talking to him in; but being a authority, he put his own words in Nat Turner mouth; and in so doing, produced a authentic confession, not paying no mind that he altered Nat’s sweet, nice Southern Negro twang, that I heard those coloured ladies speaking on the train going North, into a Statement he call The Confessions of Nat Turner, the leader of the late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, as fully and voluntarily made to. And had it printed, and published in 1831.”

  “I following you.”

  “The year my great-gran born!”

  “I following you.”

  “Yes. The authority from the authorities say that Nat acknowledge the Statement ‘authentic.’ But he altered that sweet Negro language.”

  “He could do that and get away with it?”

  “Because he is a authority.”

  “I following yuh.”

  “The full date of the publication is the Fiff o’ November, 1831 . . .”

  “The Fiff o’ November? Guy Fawkes Day? That is a day of real fireworks. How Nat Turner know about Guy Fawkes Day?”

  “No master, nor overseer, no driver nor ordinary inhabitant of Waycross, of Jerusalem-Southampton, Charleston or Lynchburg and no Mr. Thomas R. Gray, authority or no authority, ever entered into a ordinary conversation with a man like Mr. Nat Turner, or Golbourne father . . . or even with you . . . to exchange common pleasantries or courtesies.

  “There wasn’t no ‘Good morning, Mr. Nat. How you and the wife and the thrildren? Things all right with you, and them? Your roof leaking? I not working you too hard, is I? Okay,.Well look wha’ I gonna do for you. Ahm gonna slice-off a few working hours, without penalty, tha’s what Ahm gonna do. Now, boy, the hours you accustom working, five in the morning till six in the evening, all that gonna change from today. You gonna begin at ten o’clock sharp instead, hear? Just like me and the overseer. And you gonna knock-off at three in the afternoon, so’s you can go fishing . . .’

  “You think there was any such dialogue with a authority? No, man!

  “You see now, why I worship Wilberforce for his brain.”

  “I didn’t know you know so much about history, and astrology,” he says. “Morning is coming, though.”

  “Yes. Let it come. Morning soon here, as they say.”

  “I have to get back to the station. And report in. Constable must be snoring by now. And go home and have my morning tea. And I have to write a report, before the Commissioner come round on his rounds. He doesn’t know nothing, at least not from me, ’bout this accident, which is what I calling it.

  “The Commissioner don’t have no evidence of this accident, this incident. And I intend to keep it that way. I keeping it from him, until we, me and you, figure out something . . .”

  “Morning breaking, soon. A new day coming. But I don’t want favours, Sargeant, because of what we almost went through . . .”

  “What we almost went through?” he asks.

  “That is separate from anything . . .”

  “Was above and beyond.”

  “That could have been a big mistake. Not that I am blaming you for anything. I will forget it, anyhow.”

  “Forget everything?”

  “It is like a person who needs to satisfy herself, and after having herself satisfied, right at the moment of satisfaction, at the point of,.Well . . . what I want to say is that,.Well . . . after a man bring a woman, the man might not know that the woman doesn’t have any more use for him. It is so. Not that this is my philosophy. But the woman out-outs the man. Extinguish.”

  “There is a family of stinging bees that Manny tell me about that does do that to the man-bees. Sting-them-to-death.”

  “The queen bee,” she says.

  “There is women and there is women. Some women, if you don’t mind me talking straight to you, but there is women who, according to Manny, regardless to-what they do, and how they do it, could always come out of it, whatever it is, clean, and untouch. I not saying, Mary-Mathilda, that you is this type o’ woman, ’cause I don’t know you that-good, I only making a point. For argument sake. And then, alternatively on the other hand, there is the other kind of woman, who . . .”

  “Which kind is me?” she says. “Which category you put me in?”

  He is uncertain about the way she wants him to take this.

  “You is the kind o’ woman that . . .” he begins. But he cannot continue to tell her the truth that lies in his mind; but he completes his comparison, nevertheless, using her as his model, but only in his thoughts . . . You is the kind o’ woman who have already travel beyond this trash heap, a journey that didn’t last too long; and though you is the one who bring me here, who choose this spot to come to, in the cane field . . . I don’t know if you want to be the same as me, simple and low-down and nasty, to make me believe that you are on the same level, in making me take you in a cane field; I know, though, that you’s still the kind o’ woman who could, and will, wipe-off the trash from offa your dress, could get up from this trash heap anytime, and with a flick o’ your wrist, brush-off the last speck o’ cane trash, wet from the dew falling on it, clean-clean-clean from off your white cotton dress. The minute you leave this cane field, you become Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda again. Miss Bellfeels. Wilberforce mother. The lady who lives in the Great House . . . I not so foolish not to know this . . . “But supposing, Mary-Mathilda, supposing. Supposing, for argument sake. That I have feelings for you. What I mean is, supposing, supposing that I could be having certain feelings for you?”

  “The feelings that King David had for Bathsheba? Or Romeo for Juliet? Or Caesar for Cleopatra? Which of these three couples you are imagining the two of us, me and you, to be?”

  “I only know David and Bathsheba. You-yourself introduce them to me, in a story.”

  “They are all the same. They’re Eur
opean stories, about European love. They are different from stories of love that originate here in Bimshire and the Wessindies, or stories that come from the Amurcan South. Only the names are changed, depending on language. Romeo and Juliet in Eyetalian is the same as David and Bathsheba in the language of the Hebrews. I just don’t want you to have the idea that . . .”

  “But supposing,” he says. “Supposing right now, you tell me how you feel, and I was to tell you how I feel. In the morning, a bright new day, we can start fresh. A new day, a new dawn.”

  “Like playing house? Like when we were thrildren? Yes, why not play house? I will be the father. You mind playing the mother?”

  “House? Why house?”

  “Because.”

  “What?”

  “Or we could play Court. A game is a game, isn’t it? Or is this game of house, really a game of Court?.Well-yes! Let us play Court. I am in the box. I am the Defendant. And I demand disclosures, as you call it. I demand disclosures from you.

  “You be the Chief Justice.”

  “Sir Gerald Chester Jones-Kirton, KC?” he says.

  “Yes, Sir Gerald, Lord Chief Justice.”

  “My God!”

  “But who will be defending me? Who my Learned Counsel, or my barster-at-Law will be, to defend me?”

  “Why don’t you play the Defendant and the Defending barster-at-Law, at the same time, to save time and legal resources?”

  “Can I be both? And who you will be, then?”

  “Lord Chief Justice, Sir Gerald Chester Jones-Kirton, King’s Counsel. And while I at it, I may as.Well play the Solicitor-General, too. And the Juries. I may as.Well be all three. For the same reason. To save costs, and time.

  “If this Court of Grand Sessions, a play-play Court, is to be.Well constituted, in accordance with the Jurisprudence of Law, I have to be them-three. ’Cause time is money. To save time is to make money. And vice versa. And since good justice is swift justice, it is better to save time. Quod a-rat demonstrandum!”