Jefferson Theophillis Belle, of no fixed address, unknown, labourer unskilled, spent a very long time before he convinced them that he was not a “burglourer”; and in all that time, his head was spinning from the questions and from the blows: because “You were walking around this respectable district, this time of night, with all that money on your person, and you’re not a burglourer? To buy a house, eh? That doesn’t even have a FOR SALE sign up? Who are you kidding, mack? And they gave him one final kick of warning; and with his pride injured (God blind you, cop! One o’ these days I’m going to kill me a cop! So help me God!), he woke up Brewster, to see what he thought. They should still be kicking-in your behind! Brewster said in his heart, as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Without compassion, he dropped the telephone on Jefferson; and when he got back into bed, his blanket was rising and falling from the breath of his laughter and unkind wishes—should have kicked-in your arse, boy! Brewster couldn’t wait for morning and the Paramount to talk about it.
After this, Jefferson decided to visit Rosedale in the daytime only. When paydays came, every cent went into his bank; and his balance climbed like a mountain; similarly, his hate for the Police. A week later he took out a summons against Brewster, who owed him twenty dollars from three years ago. He tried to get him arrested, but his lawyer advised otherwise; so Jefferson settled for a collection agency. The collection agency got the money back, but Jefferson gave it back to Brewster. This success convinced him further that business was more important than intellect; money more important still. He had seen Jews in the Spadina garment district; he had seen Polish immigrants in the Jewish market; he had seen their expensive automobiles going north after a beautiful day of swelling profits; and he said, Me, too! Soon I going north, tambien!
He stopped drinking at the Paramount. He stopped going to the Silver Dollar for funk, broads, rhythm, blues, and jazz. He didn’t want to see any more black people. He spent more time in his room, alone. On weekends he watched television and drank beer; and rechecked his bank book, because anybody could make a mistake, but be-Christ, they not making no mistake with my money! His actions and his movements became tense, more ordered. His disposition became rawer; and once or twice he lost his temper with his supervisor at the post office (his part-time night job) and almost lost his job; but he lost only a slice of pride apologizing.
The hate that grew in his heart because the Police presumed he was a burglar, that he could be burglarizing the house of his dreams (God blind you, Mister Policeman. I am a man too.), presuming that he, Jefferson Theophillis Belle, a black Barbadian, could only through crime possess nine hundred dollars in cash (Double-blind you, Mister Ossifer! When I am working off my arse, where are . . . ?), was systematically eating away his heart and mind. In isolation he tried to find some solace. He would tell himself jokes, and laugh aloud at his own jokes. Still, something was missing. The boisterousness of the Paramount was gone. He no longer enjoyed Saturday mornings in the Negro barber shop on Dundas, where he and others, middle-aged and cronied, would sit waiting for the chair, laughing themselves into hiccups with jokes, with the barber, about women they knew when they were younger men. He went instead north, from Baldwin Street to the Italian barber on College. The haircuts there were worse, and more expensive; and time did not improve them.
He had almost walked away from his past when, on that bright Saturday morning—“Goddamn, baby!”—the Voice picked him out, sneaking out of the Italian barber’s, brushing the hair out of his neck. He squirmed, because he recognized the voice. It came again, loud and vulgar. “I say, goddamn, baby!” Jefferson pretended he was just one of the European immigrants walking the street. And he walked on, hiding his head in invisible shame. The Voice had disappeared. He relaxed and breathed more easily. And suddenly he felt the hand on his neck, and “Goddammit! Baby, ain’t you speaking to no niggers this morning, you sweet black motherfucker?” All the eyes in the foreign-language heads turned to listen. Then in a voice that the eyes couldn’t hear, Brewster said, “Lend me a coupla bucks, baby. Races.”
Jefferson Theophillis Belle made a mental note, right then, never again to speak to black people.
He found himself walking through the campus grounds again, spending long hours pondering the stern buildings; the library crammed with knowledge in print, and the building where he had seen the lines of penguins dressed in black and white, like graduate scholars. Education is a funny thing, heh-heh-heh! And I had better get a piece o’ that, too. He argued himself into a piece of education; but he held fast to the piece of property too. He visited some institutions, and took away their prospectuses to study . . . These things make me out as if I don’t know two and two is four, that the world round, that Columbus discover it in 1492, that that bastard sailed down in my islands and come back and called them Indian, hah-hah! . . . If it was me make that mistake, my boss would fire my arse, tomorrow! I am an educated man, therefore.
And he began to see himself in the diplomatic service.
He telephoned the university to see how he could become a diplomat; and after the initial silence of shock, the woman’s voice advised him to read all the histories of the world. He borrowed a book, The History of the World, from the public library on College Street, and an Atlas of the World, and he turned on the television set instead.
Mr. Jefferson Theophillis Belle was written on each of the four envelopes that brought more prospectuses. He felt inferior that nothing was written behind his name. So he wrote on each envelope, behind his name: BA, PhD, MA, MLitt, DLitt, Diploma in Diplomacy, Barbadian Ambassador to Canada. And he laughed. Then he got a basin, a new one, lit a match, and burned everything. (The last to burn was the prospectus from the Department of History in the university.) He watched all the knowledge he might have had burn and consume; and he laughed. This was on a Sunday; and he went on the couch, drinking and watching television. After a while he fell back on the couch, quite suddenly, as if the string that regulated his life was cut. The half-empty bottle of warm beer was still in his hand; the landlady passing through after bingo at her church pushed the door to say “Night-night!” and saw him on the couch. She turned off the television; she put the large “Plan of the Grounds of Ryerson” over his face; she took the bottle from his hand, and drank it off. She put two others in her coat pockets, said “Bringing them back” to the two beers, and she left.
Monday came too early. He could feel pebbles of hangover in his eyes; and the raucous shouting of his landlady: “You really tied one on last night, Mr. Jefferson Belle. You really tied one . . .” was like an enamel plate banged on stone against his temples. And then, suddenly, he came to a dead stop before his 1949 Pontiac. Somebody had scratched FACT YOU, MUCK in shaky inebriated grease on the frost of his windshield and trunk. A thing like this couldn’t happen up in Rosedale. It couldn’t. All that day, at his full-time paint factory job, and all that night at the post office, he was tense.
He soon discovered that his energy was being sapped from him. He wondered whether he should quit his night job; he had enough money now; but no, man, the house in Rosedale, man! He worked harder that night, and when he went home, he did twenty-three push-ups. And then it happened!
A FOR SALE sign appeared—on the house beside his house. This threw him into a fit, trying to decide whether to buy that house (it was empty, no furniture, and had thirteen rooms), when a letter came from home. He recognized his mother’s handwriting on the red-white-and-blue airmail envelope, and refused to open it. The tension came back. He took the letter to the light bulb, to see if he could read the news inside without opening it . . . Look, Jeff, boy! Opportunity does knock only one time in Rosedale . . . And that was it. He called the real estate agent, and arranged the purchase.
The tenseness left him. He could see himself cutting red luxuriant roses he had planted; waving his hand at a beautiful woman; calling her, and pinning a rose on her bosom; but the rose he held in his hand now was the real estate agent’s number; and when he realized
this, he tore it up. The paper petals fell without a noise. But he was now Jefferson Theophillis Belle, Esquire, Landowner and Property Owner, Public School Tax-payer (he had no children!) . . . He would give his occupation in the voters list as “Engineer, retired” . . . The letter, though, Jeff! Stop this blasted dreaming ’bout house and land and see what the Old Queen have to say, and don’t let more sorrow fall ’pon your head; and remember where you beginned from, ’cause a mother is a mother, boy, ’cause—
Dear Jeff, when you left this island I ask God to help you. Now, I want you and God to help me. I know He help you, because somebody tell me so, and still you have not send me one blind cent. But God understand. You did not know I was laid up with a great sickness? I have a new doctor now, a Bajan, who studied medicines up in Canada, where you is. He told me you can help me, because they is a lot of money in Canada. I need a operation. I feel bad to ask you, though. But, I am, Your Mother.
(signed) Mother.
POSTSCRIPT: House spots selling dirt-cheap now in Barbados. Think.
Love, Mother.
Don’t forget to read your Bible, Jefferson; it is God words, son.
Love, again, still, Mother.
Months later, in Rosedale, he would see the page burning; and the words would haunt him, in whispers; and he would tell himself that he should have torn up the letter only; and not the bible too. But when he had put his hands to it that day, he had no idea that it was such a fragile book . . . and he should have sent the money to his mother, sick then; dead, probably, now . . . the page, the last page before the bible cried out in the fire; and the line “Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions” . . . but life in Rosedale flourished like a red rose.
An invitation card of gold embossed print was dropped through his letterbox. He did not notice the name on the envelope which he tore up and tossed away; but he read that Miss Emilie Elizabeth Heatherington was engaged to Mr. Asquith Breighington-Kelly; and they were having a party, at Number 46—next door.
This pleased Jefferson. The next day, he joined Theophillis to Belle with a hyphen. For three days, he sunned his suit to kill the evil fragrance of camphor balls. He dressed for the party, and waited behind his curtains made of newspapers to watch the first guests arriving. Everyone was in formal wear. They came in Jaguars, in Lincolns and Cadillacs. He took off his brown suit, lit his fireplace, and spent the evening sitting on an onion crate. Long after he had return-posted his invitation in the flames, in anger and disappointment, he could still hear the merriment next door. He wondered why nobody called him.
But the fire died, and he was awakened by cramp and a dream of his mother. He puttered around his house; and he drew some parallel lines on the walls of three rooms, as bookcases; and he drew books between the lines, until he could get some real books from the Book of the Month Club. Before going to bed, he decided to change his car. He must buy a new car, because living in a district like this, and being the onliest man who does do work with his bare hands, and, and-and . . . that oil company president next door, Godblindhim! comes along, limping on the weight of his walking stick, and smells the freshness of the grass and water and roses, and looks up and smiles and says, “Evening! Have you heard when they’re coming back?” Jefferson always pretended he didn’t understand. Another time, the old oil man said, “You’re a darn fine gardener. Best these people ever had; and better than those Italians, too!” He had said this on the afternoon of the party . . . and thinking about the old man’s words, Jefferson had to look at that invitation again, to see something very important on it. But he remembered he had burned both the envelope and the invitation. He vowed never again to burn anything. There were many invitations printed in the blood of ink, and many Bibles with “Remember not the sins of my youth” printed on every page.
He traded his Pontiac for a 1965 Jaguar, automatic. It was long, sleek, and black. After this, he dressed in a three-piece suit for work, with a black briefcase. In the briefcase were old shoes, work shirt, and overalls. He would change into these in the men’s room of the East End Café, near East End Paints Ltd., where he worked as Janitor and Maintenance, General. He bought a formal morning suit and a tuxedo for evening formal occasions.
Some time after, the stick that walked out with the old oilman next door tapped and stopped and said, “When? Are they coming back?” Jefferson got mad, and told him, “Look, I own this, yuh! And the name is Jefferson Theophillis-Belle!” The man of oil stretched out his hand, grabbed JT-B’s, and said, amiably, “I’m Bill!”
Jefferson has just come home on this Friday afternoon, and is changing into his night-shift clothes (there was no danger of being caught at night) when the doorbell rings. It is his first caller. He looks at the half-eaten sandwich of peanut butter, and wonders what to do with it (the doorbell is ringing); and he can feel himself losing weight; and he wishes he had filled the prescription the doctor gave him for tension . . . He stops before the mirror he had hung in his imagination on the wall in the hall, to see if peanut butter is between his teeth . . . But it is only Bill’s wife, who came to invite him, for the second time, to the party on Saturday—when the scandalous Voice from his past entered and shrieked, “God-damn! Ain’t you one big sweet black motherfu—” and Jefferson rushed out of one room and whispered, “Christ, man! Not now! Somebody here!” But the Voice, thinking past is present, said, “Man, we was looking for you for a crap game, last Sar’day night, baby! Man, those fellas drink whiskey like water!”—and Bill’s wife came in, smiled, and said, “You’re busy, but don’t forget, Satteedee.” And she left. Jefferson jumped into a rage; but the Voice merely asked, “What I do?” And after looking through the first room, and the second, the Voice exclaimed, “But wait, Jeff! Where is the blasted furnitures, man?”
In the Jaguar, speeding out of Rosedale, the Voice was silent. “You ask me what you do?” Jefferson said at last. “But it is more as if I should ask myself, what I do?” The Voice took a long pull on his cigarette, and said, “Baby, you made your bed. Now, goddamn, lie down in it!” And he slapped Jefferson goodbye, and said, “Let me off here. I want to get blind drunk tonight.”
They were opposite the Paramount. Jefferson had forgotten the landmarks on this street; he had forgotten the smoke and vapour from the Southern-fried chicken wings fried in fat, in haste, by the Chinaman whose face never showed a change in emotion; and in forgetting all these, he had forgotten to have time, in Rosedale, to enjoy himself . . . A party of rich, educated people of Holt Renfrew tastes; he, always, ill at ease: “Now, Mr. Theophillis-Belle, as a P.Eng., structural, I ask you, what do you consider to be the structural aesthetics of our new City Hall?”
In less champagned-and-whiskied company his answer, which showed his ignorance—“That?”—might not have brought cheers. And the Jewish jokes and Polish jokes, and he, Structural and Jefferson and Engineer, dreading every moment, in case the jokes change into negro jokes; or walking beneath a crystal chandelier and praying he won’t touch it, and break it, and have to offer (out of courtesy) to replace it (and finding that he had to!); and standing before the mirror on Bill’s wall, and suddenly seeing that he was not, after all, the fairest reflection of them all; and running out through the door . . . Jefferson turned off the car lights, and sat thinking; and Brewster appeared from nowhere with a white woman on his arm, sauntering to the LADIES AND ESCORTS entrance.
Since he has been living in Rosedale, Jefferson has not taken a woman—nor black nor white nor blue—up his front steps.
He blew his horn. Brewster looked back. The woman looked too, and said, “Piss off!” He closed the car door. He started the car.
He drove beside the Paramount, hoping to see Brewster. But only a drunk came out; and when he saw Jefferson he raised his hand, and coughed and vomited on the gravel beside the LADIES AND ESCORTS . . . Well, he might turn west for Baldwin Street, to see his ex-landlady, to see if the house is still there, or if the city or Teperman Wreckers have . . . But he turned east, for the
post office. That night, he forgot to notice the letters addressed to Rosedale; he spent his time thinking of formal parties. All of a sudden he had a very disturbing vision which destroyed his joy in formal suits: instead of being at Bill’s party, dressed and formal as an undertaker, he saw himself in a funeral parlour, laid out, tidy and dead, prepared for burial, with his hands clasped on the visible cummerbund; and on the cummerbund, his gold ring and his pocket watch.
Jefferson wondered who would dress him for his coffin; would the person remember to include both formal suits (he was thinking evil of Brewster)? Who would get his life insurance on his death? And his life savings, $300 and descending because of the new Jaguar, and the formal suits and the new curtains, and the True-Form mattress he had ordered yesterday from Eaton’s, because the canvas cot was leaving marks and pains in his back . . . his hands trembling with the letters in them, for twenty-three minutes; and before he knew it, the supervisor was there. “Come with me!”
Ten minutes later, three hours before his shift should have ended, he still could not understand why he hadn’t killed the supervisor; why he had stood like a fool, silent, without explaining that he was a man under doctor’s prescriptions, for tension; and why, goddammit! he hadn’t flatten his arse with a right! or smash-in his false teeth, because I’ve been on this post office job more than four years, even before that bastard . . . But he was entering tranquility and Rosedale now, and the only person he saw on the road was a black man: a black man, in my Rosedale, at this time? And then he saw her, close as a leech, walking beside him.
The Austin Clarke Library Page 73
