The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  “Can one man, a policeman, be Chief Justice, Solicitor-General and the Jury, all-three, together?”

  “In some courts,” he says, “in certain other jurisdictions, and in some real cases, it does be that, when all is said and done. But I don’t need all three roles, because I will try honestly to act honestly in upholding the Law; and in view of the shortage of manpower in this Island, I am acting as Chief Justice, and the prosecuting police officer, namely with powers of the Solicitor-General, and the twelve men honest and fair, who are your peers.”

  “Twelve men? Where the women on this Jury?”

  “. . . it makes for cleaner, cheaper Jurisprudence; and the Jurisdiction of the Law.”

  “It doesn’t sound too-fair to me!”

  “It is a play-play Court, Mary-Mathilda!”

  “Call to order, then,” she says, changing her voice to suit the stern, legal manner of the Court of Grand Sessions. “Call the Court to order, Officer.”

  “You mean, ‘Court is in sessions.’”

  “Is this why they call it Grand Sessions?”

  “This is the Law, Mary-Mathilda. There is nothing play-play ’bout the Law, even although we are conducting a play-play Court. Remember that. And this is a serious case on the Docket. And that’s why it have to be tried in the Court of Grand Sessions, in the Annual Assizes.”

  “This is a murder case, then . . .”

  “We don’t have a body, or what is known in Jurisprudence as a habeas corpus. And with no habeas corpus, I not sure of the degree to give to this case.”

  “Give it the third degree.”

  “Murder in the first degree!” he says.

  “Okay,” she says. “Who begins first?”

  “I have the floor,” he says. “I’s the Solicitor-General. I going first.”

  “God go with you.”

  “Muh-Lud,” he says; and bows extravagantly, “in the midst of the presumption that a man’s home is a man’s castle, in the declared accepted and universally Christian presumption that no harm comes in a man’s way, when that said man is sitting in his den, his front-house or his verandah on a Sunday evening after eating his supper, when the candles are glowing, and the lights are low, when the breezes waltzes over the fields of sugar canes, present in its description, an English landscape that is ideal, and for its tranquilness and serenity, in this hushed moment, on a night when the vision is reduce’ by the thick, velvet blackness of having no moon shining, into the sacred atmosphere, into the pure environment of deserved peace, up crept, Muh-Lud, like a thief, like a robber of civilization, like a sinner, like a veritable Iago . . .”

  “‘Verago’? Or did I hear, ‘Iago’? As in The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice?”

  Sargeant says, in his role as Crown. “The very same, Muh-Lud . . .” he answers himself.

  “Iago, Iago . . . Iago!” the Chief Justice says; and recites:

  “‘O, Sir content you;

  I follow him, to serve my turn upon him:

  We cannot all be Masters, nor all Masters

  Cannot be truly follow’d.’”

  “And with an instrument, Muh-Lud, which as you might have gathered in my prelimary remarks, represented, if only in a symbolic way, the very uninterrupted horspitality, generosity and English dependency that the Crown is arguing for motive and motivation in this dasterly act prepetrated, Muh-Lud, with the very instrument which, when the Accused was given employment on and by the said Plantation, as shown in documents, was used by the Accused, namely a hoe . . .

  “A who?”

  “Hoe, Muh-Lud. The h is silent.”

  “Oh-ho! Ah-ho!”

  “A hoe, Muh-Lud. An agricultural instrument, implement with the sacred and indigenous oral and cultural history, like a scythe, in local parlance, a sickle, the instrument that is used in all the religious and historical portraits and portraitures, by who I am made to understand is the Renaissance artists of the European school of painters, symbolically to suggest industry, to suggest bounty and to suggest honest labour. By the sweat of thy brow, Muh-Lud, shalt thou . . .”

  “Whose brow?”

  “Not thy brow, Muh-Lud, surely. Your labour is of a more intellectual and jurisprudential nature . . . metaphorically, Muh-Lud, metaphorically speaking . . .”

  “Proceed.”

  “A hoe, Muh-Lud, a common hoe . . .”

  “Did you say whore, again? A common prostitute? Surely, the Crown are not addressing this honourable Court as a whore!”

  “Most humbly, Muh-Lud, in sorest estate, do the Crown tender apologies for the misapprehension of the term used to describe the instrument used in this, in this, this brutal, dasterdly crime. Referring to the hoe.”

  “And who now is the whore?”

  “The r is still silent, Muh-Lud.”

  “Who else is silent, may I ask Crown?”

  “Referring to the weapon used, Muh-Lud.”

  “Proceed.”

  “Muh-Lud would have read in Kinnergarden class at the Ursuline Convent, and later at the Lodge School where Muh-Lud was educated, of the speculative sayings, of the local rumour surrounding the shape of the seeds of the fruits from a certain tamarind tree, located on the property of the Plantation owned by Mr. Darnley Alexander Randall Bellfeels, namely that these tamarind seeds are all, each and every one, in the shape of the head of a man allegedly whipped to death by an ancestor of the Bellfeels family. But this is pure folklore, speculation, Muh-Lud . . .”

  “Indeed! Indeed! As a boy growing up in Bimshire, during the long vacation of 1902, which I spent on the Plantation in question, referred to by Crown, we lads, the two Bellfeels, the father and uncle deceased, of the Bellfeels referred to earlier, to-wit, Bellfeels still in the quick, and I climbed the said tamarind tree, and devoured, with brown sugar from the Factory added, the fruits of this tree just introduced into evidence. Tambrin-balls we called them in the local jargon, as natives of Bimshire use the term. Despising the English pronunciation tam-mar-rin balls . . .

  “Indeed! Tambrin-balls, indeed! Clerk, show the Crown the object at the end of my watch chain . . .”

  (Clerk of the Court takes a watch from the hands of the Lord Chief Justice, and crosses the Court, to the right of the Chief Justice, and hands the watch to the Crown, who admires it. The members of the Jury, all men, all white, all from the administrative levels of other sugar-cane plantations in the Island, lean forward to catch a glimpse of the beautiful gold watch with a matching chain . . .)

  “Do the Crown see the ornament on the chain?”

  “Muh-Lud.”

  “And are the Crown aware of the origin of the said ornament?”

  “Muh-Lud.”

  “And what, may I ask, is the origin?”

  “The seed of a tambrin-fruit, Muh-Lud, the ornament is a tambrin-seed.”

  “Proceed.”

  (Crown hands the heavy gold watch back to the Clerk, who gives it to the Lord Chief Justice, who replaces it back into the buttonhole on his black waistcoat, the tamarind seed hanging outside, over the waistcoat, glittering in the light coming through the tall glass windows. The watch is inside the pocket.)

  “May I proceed, Muh-Lud?”

  “Proceed.”

  “Muh-Lud, it is the Crown’s position that this crime outstrips any case in history, in any jurisdiction where Law rules, where civilization based upon the democratic principles of the British Empire reigns; where fair play exists, in CommaLaw and in Statue Law; Muh-Lud, it is hard for the Crown to cite a single case, not one precedence where there is the expression of such vile brutality and violence, coming against the tide of long historical, practised generosity.

  “Muh-Lud, this crime makes the beast of the Defendent. This crime has incensed the Defendant’s kinsmen and kinswomen. And this crime has plagued the Defendant with flies . . . fleas . . . flies. Muh-Lud, from this Sunday forth, beginning with that Sunday night when the deed was done, the Crown cries out, ‘Thieves, thieves, look to your house . . .”

>   “‘What is the reason of this terrible Summons?’” the Lord Chief Justice continues. “‘What is the matter there?’

  “Ah, Shakespeare! I remember it.Well. I had to learn it by heart, ‘by rote,’ to use the proper term. Othello, Act One, Scene One, lines eighty-nine and ninety. In the Variorum Edition, of course. . . .”

  “Muh-Lud?”

  “The Moore of Venice. Act One.”

  “May I proceed, Muh-Lud?”

  “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice.”

  “Thanks, Muh-Lud. The Crown will show, from witnesses . . .”

  “There isn’t any witnesses, Muh-Lord,” Mary-Mathilda screams, in one of her roles, the role of Counsel for the Defence. “Nobody didn’t there! Nobody wasn’t there, I mean. Nobody but me couldn’t see nothing that happened that night, and therefore bear witness.”

  “This is a play-play Court,” Sargeant reminds her.

  “Not from the things you were saying about me! And the way you were talking-so in favour of Mr. Bellfeels, I had to wonder about the justice of this Court. Jesus-God, Sarge! Suppose it wasn’t a mock-sport Court! Jesus Christ, man! I would have gone! Send-way to His Majesty’s Glandairy Prison, for life. Loss-away behind bars, facing the gallows. If not henged immediately . . .”

  “This is what real Crowns and Solicitor-Generals and Officers of the Crown does-do; have to do, in cases heard in what we call a Mute Court. We are only practising. We are in Mute Court.”

  “Proceed then, under those conditions,” she says.

  “Muh-Lud, the Crown intend to call Ma, the Defendent’s mother, Gran, the Defendent’s grandmother, and Gran-Gran, the Defendent’s great-grandmother; and boys who grew up with the Defendent, to show the irascible temperriment and character the Defendent have, and moreover, had from youth; namely, and to wit, Pounce, who was a’ apprentice gardener; Golbourne, who went into the joiner and cabinet-maker trade, also as a’ apprentice; and Manny of unknown employment, seeing that his father, Manny the First, had money and was his own man; and consequently as a result, Manny the Second didn’t have to lift a straw, nor find work; also, the Crown intend to call the Vicar of Sin-Davids Anglican Church, Revern Dowd, and the Headmaster of Harsun College, and the Commadant of the Bimshire Aquatic Club . . . the Commadore I think the proper term is, I’ve just been inform . . . Revern Dowd who was aforemention’ above . . . and the Manager-owner of the Crane Beach Hotel. These latter shall show, Muh-Lud, and it ain’t really necessary for them to show, with all the evidence we got against the Defendent; and their evidence bearing the heaviness along with the burden of this tragedy, the exemplary character, the affectionate dispositions, the generosity of spirit and of pocket, of the, of the . . . man, the late gentleman . . .”

  “Muh-Lord, I asking for a step-out, not a step-out. I asking for a recess, man,” she says. “I axeing that we adjourn. I mean, recess.”

  “Please rise.”

  “Court adjourn,” Sargeant says. “Recess, I mean.”

  “Couldn’t be soon-enough!” she says. “You do-me-in, good! You show your true colours to me. Is something I do? Or say? Or didn’t do? You do-me-in real good!”

  “Is a play-play Court, Mary-Mathilda.”

  “Play-play, my arse!” she says. “I was Mary-G to you a minute ago!”

  “To me, you’s always Mary-G, Mary-Mathilda!”

  “You change fast.”

  “Is a play-play Court, Mary-Mathilda.”

  “You did-me-in! But I suppose His Lordship have to go to the lavatory. To relieve himself. And the Juries, too. To fire a pee, and refresh themselves. A glass of ice water, in the canteen. And a shot o’ rum, in Chambers,” she says. “And I have to pass water myself.”

  “Lunch,” Sargeant says.

  “Already? So-soon? In real time, it is not even breakfast-yet. But morning coming.”

  “Breakfast, then,” he concedes.

  “My God! How can a person, if he want to, get comfortable in the strangest of places! I don’t want to leave this cane field,” she says. “But, before I do get up from this makeshift bed, almost as comfortable as the Simmons in my bedroom, I want to show you the stars.

  “Over there, where you can barely see the light getting ready to break, to your left, is Orion.

  “Orion. In astrology books, they say that Orion came from the urine of three people, two men and one woman. But I don’t know if I believe in all that urine-business.

  “If you look good and hard, you will see the Big Dipper. Some people refer to it as the Great Bear. And once again, something I could never explain is why all these stars in the zodiacs were originally people, like me and you. When they got tired living on the earth, of being killed, or poisoned, they all went up in the heavens, and became stars. And change their names from earthly names into heavenly names.

  “I can’t remember what-else Wilberforce say is the relationship between the Big Dipper and the Lil Dipper, his relative; and who was father, and who son . . .”

  “The Big Dipper had a son?” he asks her.

  He has already decided that he will give this information, in turn, to Gertrude, next time they lie in this same cane field, on another bed of trash.

  “Big Dipper and Little Dipper,” she tells him. She places her right hand on his stomach, and leaves it there. “I wish I could remember what Wilberforce say is the Latin names for the two Dippers.”

  The stars seem to remain bright, as she points with her left hand, and shows him the beautiful constellations, the figurations of those heavenly bodies, which appear in the distance, simply as sparks from starlights that she and he used to buy from Manny’s father’s shop, before it was the Harlem Bar & Grill, and was just a shop that sold salt fish and flour and box matches and cigarettes and “bombs” which she and Sargeant, Pounce and Golbourne threw against a wall, or against the stone foundation of somebody’s house, on the night of the Fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Day, and then covered their ears with their hands, waiting for the explosion. Boooomm! Yes. And burning starlights.

  She can see plainly, the sparkles coming from the starlights, like a fountain of water illuminated, burning too fast, and then its stars disintegrating into the hot, black stems of wire; and she can smell the smouldering pieces of wire; and feel the heat; and feel the sadness for the disappearing “stars”; and she throws her wire now black into the gutter; or if they are home, dips the wire into a tot of water, and hear it fizz. Ffffzzzzzz! And watch the starlight die.

  “Nor can I remember, so I could tell you, the distance one constellation is from the other. But they are not as close as they look with the naked eye, to us.

  “But if you look over there. There! There, by the top of the breadfruit tree, with its leaves just touching the tip of the first star in the group. If you look good, without blinking your eyes too much, you will see stars that form the shape of a saucepan. I call it the Saucepan. I don’t call-to-mind the real name. Nor the name in Latin. Ask Wilberforce.

  “And all I try, as I lie here studying, I can’t remember what he told me is the proper name for the Saucepan.

  “You want to hear something, though? You sure you won’t be shocked? Mr. Bellfeels, still only the Bookkeeper at the time, used to swear by the stars. I think I told you this before.

  “Am I making you uncomfortable talking about Mr. Bellfeels? Under the present circumstances, I should be concealing any reference to him. Imagine! Here I am, in a field of canes, lying down on the trash, beside a policeman sent to take my Statement. This is more ironical than my constant mention of that son-of-a-bitch.

  “Strange, eh? Strange. Strange. Strange. Nobody would believe it.

  “And that is why I can be here. Nobody would ever believe it. That I was here. Not only because there’s no witnesses, as they are not, but because nobody could imagine I would spend a night in a cane field. With you. So, it hasn’t happened. And in a way, before I brought you through the underground tunnel, I must have known this . . .

  “I even dar
e you, Sargeant, that when you leave the House, after we get back, and I make you a little green tea, I dare you to go and wake up Manny, and tell Manny that you just come from spenning the night with me, in a cane field. I dare you to even tell Manny that me and you was . . . were what you call it . . . having carnal knowledge, then! As you-yourself been hoping to . . .

  “Or your Constable. Or even Wilberforce. Or if you were not still so scared of Mr. Bellfeels, Mr. Bellfeels. No. Nobody will believe the truth.”

  “You think I so stupid as to try!” he says. “To-besides, this is between the two o’ we. Our business. What I would wash my dirty linens out-in-public, for . . . I didn’t mean to put it the way it sound, but . . .”

  “There is nothing between us, Sargeant! Perhaps it is your business. But not our business.”

  “I get what you saying,” he says, “though I can’t agree.”

  “False oaths and evidence.”

  “False oats and evidence?”

  “That is a threat?” she says. “People will only believe what they want to believe.

  “And the play-play Court that we conducted for my benefit, in imagination and in play-play conjecture, but with the harshest words a Solicitor-General could dream of using, there still was a, a . . . a doubt.”

  “I didn’t know you knew the stars.”

  “You changing the subject?”

  “Am I?”

  “You are changing the subject.”

  “But I still-didn’t-know you know the stars.”

  “Just something I picked up. Nobody would believe that I was with you, in a cane field, the same cane field, incidentally, I know is where you take Gertrude, to show her the stars.”

  “Which Gertrude?”

  “My Gertrude.”

  “Gertrude isn’t interested in astronomy. She don’t know nothing about the stars.”

  “She doesn’t. That’s true. You didn’t teach her good. She asked me about The Three Sisters. I thought she was talking about the Solicitor-General’s three girl-thrildren.”