The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  Well, they poured Calvin on ’pon the Air Canada, next morning, nine sharp, drunk as a flying fish. Good thing Calvin mother did pack the fry dolphin steak, a bottle o’ cod liver oil, in case the bowels do a thing and give trouble in that cold ungodly climate, as she call Canada; and she pack some Phensic for headache, just in case; she pack some miraculous bush, for medicine, “’cause they ain’ have doctor no place under the sun who know the goodness in this mirac’lous-bush tea as we does, so you tek it along with you, son; you going up in that strange savage place, and you far from me, and I ain’ near enough no more to run to you and rub your face with a lime and some Limacol, and tie it up with oil leaves and candle grease . . .”; and she put in half-dozen limes and two bottle o’ Limacol; man, is a good-good thing that Calvin mother had the presence o’ mind to pack these things for Calvin whilst Calvin was walking ’bout Broad Street in Bridgetown like if he was one o’ them Canadian tourisses. Calvin mother do a real good job, and when she done pack the things, and she inspect the clothes that Calvin carrying ’way, she tie-up the two valises with a strong piece o’ string, although they had brand-new locks ’pon them. “Good!” is the last thing she say to Calvin, as she was holding them over the kitchen door, whilst Willy was revving up the hired car and blowing the horn—which of course Calvin pay for, the hired car, I mean—plus dropping a ten-dollar bill inside Willy hand for old times sake. “Go ’long in the name o’ the Lord, and make yuh fortune, son.” A tear or two drop outta she eye too; but she was glad-glad in she heart that she boychild was leffing Barbados. “Too much foreigners and tourisses and crooks living here with we now, son. Canada more brighter than here.” Calvin get vex-vex when he see the water in his mother eye, and he was embarrass as hell, ’cause he always use to brag how nothing he do, or don’t do, could make his mother belly burn she. Good thing Willy had the car motor revving, ’cause Calvin get in such a state over the tears and heartbreak on the part of his mother that he almost forget that deep-down he is a Christian-minded man and say a bad word, whiching, as he did know full-well, God would be vex as hell with him for. The motor car was making good time, moving like hell going up the airport road, and everybody Calvin know, and everybody that he barely know in the twenty-nine years he born and living in Barbados, he hold half of his body out through the car window, and yell out, “Boy, I going this morning! Canada, in your arse!” All the people who see and hear, wave back and grin their teet’, if they could hear from the distance and through the speed; and some o’ them say, “Bless.” If everybody in Barbados, down Broad Street, at the airport, didn’ know that Calvin pulling out for Canada at quarter to nine that morning, by nine o’clock the whole world did know. Friend or no friend, every time he see a face, or a hand, he saying, “Well, I won’t be seeing you for a while, man. I going up.” And they did all know what he meant, ’cause it was a time when all the young boys and young girls was pulling outta the island and going to Amurca and Britain, although Britain begin to tighten up things for the fellas because o’ Enoch Powell; and some o’ them start running up in Canada. And they was more Air Canada planes all ’bout Seawell Airport in Barbados in them days . . . you would have think that Barbados did own Air Canada. But is the other way ’round. Anyhow, drunk as Calvin was when he step ’pon that plane, and the white lady smile at him and say, “Good morning, sir”—first time in Calvin life a white woman ever call him that, that way—well, Calvin know long time that he make the right move. “Canada nice,” he say in his heart; and he end it up with, “Praise God.” Canada now gone straight to Calvin head, long time and with a kind o’ power, that when the airplane start up Calvin imagine that he own the whole blasted plane along with the white ladies who tell him, “Good morning, sir”; he feel that the plane is the big motor car he intend to own one year after he land ’pon Canadian soil. The plane making time fast-fast, and Calvin drink rum after rum till he went fast asleep and didn’ even know the plane landing in Toronto. The white lady come close to him, and tap him soft-soft ’pon his new tropical suit and say, “Sir?” like if she asking some important question, when all she want is to wake up Calvin outta the white people plane. Well, Calvin wake up. He stretch like how he uses to stretch when he wake up in his bed in his mother house. He yawn so hard that the white lady move back a step or two, after she see the pink inside his mouth and the black and blue gums running all ’round them white pearly teets. Calvin eyes red-red as a cherry from lack o’ sleep and too much rum drinking, and the body tired like how it uses to get tired and wrap-up like a old motor-car fender. But is Canada, old man! And in a jiffy, before the white lady get to the front o’ the plane to put down the last glass, Calvin looking out through the window.

  “Toronto in your arse!” he went to say to himself, but it come out too loud, as if he was saying it to Willy and the boys who didn’ think he was really going to come through. “Toronto in your arse, man!”

  The plane touch down, and the first man outta the plane is—well, no need to tell you who it was. Calfuckingvin! And he pass through the Customs like if he was born in Toronto. The white man didn’ even ask him a question. Something like it was wrong, ’cause Calvin did know as far away as in Barbados that the Immigration and Customs men in Toronto is the roughest in the world, when they see a black face in front o’ them. But this white gentleman must have been down in the islands recently, ’cause all he tell Calvin was, “Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me! You’re a Bajan!” For years after, Calvin wondering how the hell this white man know so much ’bout black people.

  Before the first week come and gone, Calvin take up pen and paper and send off a little thing to Willy and the boys: . . . and I am going to tell you something, this place is the greatest place for a working man to live. I hear some things bout this place, but I isn’t a man to complain, because while I know I am a man, and I won’t take no shit from no Canadian, white, black, or red, I still have another piece of knowledge, namely that says that I didn’t born here. So I controls myself to suit, and make the white man money. The car only a couple of months off. I see one already that I got my two eyes on. And if God willing, by the next two months, DV, I sitting down in the drivers seat. The car I got my eyes on is a red one, with white tires. The steering wheel as you know is on the left hand side, and we drives on the right hand side of the road up here, not like back in Barbados where you drive on the left hand. Next week, I taking out my licents. I not found a church I like yet, mainly because I see some strange things happening up here in churches. You don’t know, man, Willy, but black people can’t or don’t go in the same church as white people. God must be have two different colours then. One for black people and one for white people. And a next thing. There is some fellas up here from the islands who talking a lot of shite bout Black Power, and I hear that one of them is a Barbadian. But I am one man who don’t want to hear no shit bout Black Power. I am here working for a living and a motor car, and if my mother herself come in my way and be an obstacle against me getting them two things, a living and a motor car, I would kill her first by-Christ . . . Calvin was going to write more: about the room he was renting for twenty dollars a week, which a white fella tell him was pure robbery, because the white fella was paying ten dollars for a more larger room on the ground floor in the same house; and he didn’ write Willy ’bout the car-wash job he got the next day down Spadina Avenue, working for a dollar a hour, and when the first three hours pass he felt he been working for three days, the work was so hard; he didn’ tell Willy that a certain kind of white people in Canada didn’ sit too close to him on the streetcar, that they didn’ speak to him on the street . . . lots o’ things he didn’ worry to tell Willy, cause he did-want Willy to think that to the boys back home he was really a king, a champion, for emigrading to Canada.

  Willy send back a post card with a mauby woman on the colour side selling mauby, and on the writing side, in his scribbly handwriting, As man! But be-Christ, Calvin didn’ care what they do, he was here for two purposes: one, living;
and number two, motor car. “If they touch my motor car, now, well, that would be something else” . . . and Calvin work hard, man; Calvin work more harder than when he was washing-off cars back in Barbados. The money was good too. Sal’ry and tips. From the two car-wash jobs he uses to clear a hundred dollars a week, and that is two hundred back home, and not even Dipper does make that kind o’ money, and he is the fucking prime minister! The third job, Calvin land like a dream: night watchman with a big-big important company which put him in a big-big important uniform and thing; big leather belt like what he uses to envy the officers in the Volunteer Force back home wearing ’pon the Queen’s Birthday parade on the Garrison Savannah; shoes the company people even provide; and the only thing that was missing, according to what Calvin figure out some months afterwards, was that the holster at his side, join-on to the leather belt, didn’ have-in no blasted gun. He tell it to a next Barbadian on the job that he make friends with, and the Bajan just laugh and say, “They think you going shoot your blasted self, boy!” But Calvin did already become Canadianified enough to know that the only people he see wearing them uniforms with guns in the leather holster was white people; and he know he wasn’ Canadianified so much that he did turn white overnight. “Once it don’t stop me from getting that Galaxie!”

  Work, work, work; a occasional postcard to Willy, ’cause envelopes was costing too much all of a sudden, and postage stamps was going up too; no pleasure for Calvin: he went down by the Tropics Club where they does-play calypsos and dance, one time; and he never went back ’cause the ugly Grenadian fellow at the door ask him for three dollars to come in, and he curse the fellow stink and leff. But the bank account was mounting and climbing like a woman belly when she is in the family way. Quick-quick so, Calvin have a thousand dollars ’pon the bank. Fellas who get to know Calvin and who Calvin won’t ’sociate with because “’sociating does cost money, boy!”—them fellas so, who here donkey years, still borrowing money to help pay their rent; fellas gambling like hell, throwing dice every Friday night right into Monday morning early, missing work and getting fired from work; fellas playing poker and betting—“Forty dollars more for these two fours, in your rass, sah! I raise!”—them brand o’ Trinidadian, Bajan, Jamaician, Grenadian, and thing, them so can’t understand at-all how Calvin just land and he get rich so fast. “I bet all-yuh Calvin selling pussy!” one fella say. A next bad-minded fella say, “He peddling his arse to white boys down Church Street.” And a third fella who did just bet fifty dollars ’pon a pair o’ deuces, and had get broke at the poker game, say quick-quick before the words fall-out o’ the other fella mouth, “I going peddle my ass too, then! Bread is bread.” Calvin start slacking up on the first car-wash work, and he humming as he shine the white people car, he skinning his teet’ in the shine and he smiling, and the white people thinking he smiling ’cause he like the work and he like them, ’cause his hands never tarried whilst he was car-dreaming, and they would drop a little dollar bill ’pon Calvin as a tip, and a regular twenty-five-cent piece, and Calvin meantime continue pinching ’pon the groceries, eating a lotta pig’s feet and chicken necks and salt fish—“I gotta write Willy and tell him ’bout the brand o’ salt fish in this place. Willy was right!”—Calvin won’t spend thirty cents ’pon a beer on a sinner; only time he even reading is when he clean out a car in the car wash and the car happen to have a used newspaper inside it, or a throw-away paperback book. But Calvin decide long time that he didn’ come here for eddication. He come for a living and a motor car. A new one too! And he intend to get both. And by the look o’ things, be-Christ, both almost within his grasp. Only now waiting to see the right model o’ motor car, with the right interior colour inside it, and the right mileage and thing. The motor car must have the right colour o’ tires, right colour o’ gear shift, and in the handle too; and it have to have-in radio; and he see a fella in the car wash with a thing inside his Cadillac, and Calvin gone crazy over Cadillacs until he walk down by Bay Street and College and price the price of a old one. He bawl for murder. “Better stick to the Galaxie, boy!” he tell himself; and he do that. But he really like the thing inside the white man Cadillac and he ask the man one morning what it was, and the man tell Calvin. Now Calvin must have red Galaxie, with not more than 20,000 miles on the register, black upholstery, red gearshift, radio—AM and FM, and a tellyfone . . . Them last three things is what the man had inside his Cadillac.

  Calvin working even on a Sunday, bank holidays ain’ touching Calvin, and the Old Queen back home, who send a occasional letter asking Calvin to remember the house rent and the poor box in the Nazarene Church where he was a testifying brother, preaching and thing, and also to remember “who birthed you”—well, Calvin tell the Old Queen, his own-own mother, in a letter: Things hard up here, Ma. Don’t let nobody fool you that because a man emigrade to Canada, that it mean that he elevate. That isn’t true. But I am sending this Canadian money order for five dollars, which is ten dollars back home, and I hope that next week I would find myself in a nice job, and then I am going to send you a little something more, more regular. Your loving son, Calvin. P. S. Pray for me. Calvin start thinking that maybe the Old Queen had a bad mind for him; he start one long stewpsing, and the fellas at work even had to ask him if he sick or something; he even stop laughing and chumming around with the Canadians at work; he refuse to play Frisbee and throw the ball in the other fellas’ mittens; he even stop begging the German fella for a lift home after work. Calvin start getting ingrown like a toenail: pressure in Calvin arse. The studyation take a hold o’ him and one weekend it capsize him in bed, Friday night, Saturday morning and Saturday night, Sunday, and right into Monday morning, half-hour before he is to leff for work. Landlady couldn’ even come in and change the filthy linens and bedsheets. But Calvin make sure he went to work that Monday. “Can’t lose that money now, boy!”

  Willy was the next joker at this time o’ hardship and studyation. Willy send a letter registered and thing, in a real pretty envelope with the colours o’ the Union Jack, to Calvin, saying in part, . . . and if it isn’t asking too much, Calvin, I wonder if you can see your way in sending me down a piece of change. I am thinking bout emigrading too, because Barbados is at a standstill for people like me, people who don’t have no high school education, no big kind of skills and no kiss-me-arse godfather in a big job in the civil service. My kind of man in Barbados is loss. I hope I am not imposing when I ask you if you could see your way in lending me the passage money, one way only, and I am going to open a new bank account with it and take a picture of it and show it to the Canadian Immigration people down here, because another fellow promise to do the same thing for me with the return part of the passage money. The Canadian High Commission place in Trinidad giving the fellows a hard time. But we smarter than any number of Canadian Immigration people they send down here. So I asking this favour for old times sake, because, not that I hard on you, but I don’t want to remind you of the time when you had the accident with the motor car that didn’t belongst to you, and you was in hospital, and you know who help you out, so . . . Calvin get in a bad-bad mood straightaway, thinking that everybody back home think he is a millionaire, everybody back there getting on like crabs, willing to pull him down the moment he come up for air: “Be-Christ, but not me!” And in that frame o’ mind Calvin take up a piece o’ stationery he borrow from a Jamaician fella who had a job in the Toronto General Hospital, and a envelope to match, with the hospital name on both, and he ask a next fella who had a typewriter to write this letter back to Willy: Dear Willy, I have been laid up in this hospital for two months now. I am getting a friend who is in the hospital too, but who is not confine to bed, but who can barely walk around, to post this letter to you for me. Things really bad, man . . . “because all my friends back home think I is a arse or something; they see me emigrade to this place and they think that I get rich overnight, or that I don’t work hard as shite for my money. But that ain’ true!”