The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  His house was empty and quiet. Tired now, he undressed, and stood for a while, thinking of what to do. He put on his pyjamas. He got into his cot. He got out of his cot; and dressed himself in his evening formal tuxedo. It was two o’clock Saturday, A.M.! He walked up to the full-length mirror on the wall, and smiled at the reflection the wall and his imagination threw back; and he adjusted his hat in the wall; straightened his shoulders and started walking in and out of each of the thirteen rooms, smiling at women—black women, white women, blue women—and it was such a good evening, Miss Jordan . . . good evening, Bill, thanks . . . lovely party . . . Lady Hawgh-Hawgh, the name is Theophillis-Belle, engineer, structural and retired, haw-haw! . . . oh, Mr. Stein! I can now purchase four thousand shares at five . . . my solicitors will contact you, tomorrow, Monday . . . haw-haw! of course, it’s Sunday! . . . and don’t call me, I’ll call thee, hawhaw! . . . well you see, Lady Hawgh-Hawgh, I was having cocktails in the Russian Embassy, discussing the possibility of granting nuclear weapons to Barbados and other Caribbean territories, when—Brewster entered.

  Only later did JT-B notice the woman there. Brewster was saying, “Jesus God! Jesus God!” over and over. And the woman’s mouth was open, in terror and pity. Comrade, may I introduce my colleague, the African delegate from—“What the hell you playing, boy? You don’t know Brewster? I just pass you on the street!”—and his charming wife, also from . . . Africa? Brewster had to laugh. “Look you, you foolish bitch!” he said. “Take this.” The telegram fell in front of Jefferson. “Your landlady send that. She had to open it, ’cause she couldn’t find you. It’s your mother. She dead, boy!” . . . Thank you, thank you, comrade, for these tidings . . . and Jefferson Theophillis-Belle continued to walk up and down the hollow house (Brewster and the woman still staring), muttering greetings in whispers to his guests, and answering himself; and holding the telegram in his left hand, that hand resting militarily on the black cummerbund, as he bowed and walked, walked and bowed, bowed and walked . . .

  A FUNERAL

  It was about a hundred degrees in the shade. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. Clothes was sticking to your back. And the road was full o’ people going home from work.

  The long black hearse, build in the days when they was coaches, when coaches was drawn by two sweating horses, was now without horses, and had-in a six-horsepower engine. The island’s biggest, the leading undertaker, or duppy agent, was driving the hearse.

  It was a solemn afternoon. A final journey. And the hearse was decorated with white flowers and mauve flowers, and there was other flowers drawn-in, in white delicate paint, all over the glass panels of the hearse.

  The hearse was moving slow-slow over the road, like if it was a fat, sad slug. Like a dew-wirrum.

  All the roads in the capital was really crowded. Jam-packed with people. Men and women going home from work, and men who was just strolling, being as how they was unemploy, had slacken-off their pace, and stop, just to watch. Some o’ them stop their bicycles, with one foot on the ground for balance. All them-so watched and waited until the procession pass them.

  Rain had fall the night before. And first thing in the morning. So the road was clean. The air was clean and humid. The road wasn’t clean, because o’ the road-sweepers or the garbagemen, ’cause they was on strike. Um was clean mainly because of the torrents o’ rain that had fall.

  Yuh couldn’t pass at all. Um was impossible to pass. So the people decide to wait. People who had to wait and who decide to become mourners on the spot, and the other people who had nothing more better to do, all them-so join-in in the procession.

  “What a lovely funeral!” a old woman say. And straight off she make the sign of the cross. Two times on her chest. “Incidentally, who dead?”

  “A gravedigger,” a man say.

  “I hope they have one leff-back for his sake,” the old woman say.

  And you couldn’t hear anything more she say, and if she did intend to say anything else, anyhow, the crowd overpowered her words. And soon she herself was lost in the procession.

  The Member of Parlment fur Sin-James East was there among the mourners who was walking. He was dress in the same formal suit that he had-on when he was first elected an MP, at his inauguration, ten years ago. Beside him was Seabert the tailor. Seabert was wearing a new formal black suit, a twin off the pattern that the MP was wearing. But being as how Seabert was a tailor, he put-on some pretty glamorous touches on the suit, to make him and the suit look more pretty. The suit that Seabert was wearing had come from the same piece o’ material he had promise to sell to Sarge.

  And behind the MP was Sarge, official in police black, with brass and silver crisscrossing his chest and back. Then Nathan, a friend of the dead man, in a black suit that had turn mauve through age and mothballs. And already Nathan was sweating-up the suit under the armpits.

  The Guvvament had organize some real strict public relations to go along with the funeral. The man that was in the coffin was a Guvvament supporter. The Guvvament had decide to make the funeral an effective funeral and a politically beneficial funeral to boot.

  Every Cabinet minister was present. The Prime Minister himself was leading the double line o’ dignitaries. He had the Guvvament pass a ordnance saying that all people at the funeral, especially the officials, was to get outta their cars or hop-off their bicycles about a half-mile to a mile from the main gate o’ the cemetery and walk on their two feet, slow-slow through the streets.

  “That way,” the Prime Minister had say at the executive meeting that morning, “we will be killing two birds with one rock-stone. We will be showing pure grief. In public. And also our concern for the small man.”

  They all laugh-out hard-hard when the Prime Minister say so.

  “Be-Christ!” he went on, laughing himself, more louder than any of the Cabinet ministers. “Be-Christ, I don’t even want to remind any o’ wunnuh in here, none o’ you. I don’t want to have to remind none o’ you. I don’t want to say um more than one time. This party is the party of the small man. It is a small-man party. And if any o’ you here present this morning, particularly one or two who I hear want to tek-over power from me and be Prime Minister, even before I resign or dead like Lionel . . . Well, lemme tell you bastards something now. If any one o’ you in here now don’t understand why we walking that last mile on foot behind Lionel coffin, that stupid bitch who couldn’t do nothing more profitable than slam a domino . . . Well, ask the present MP for Westbury North, then! Ask him. Ask him ’bout the problems we getting down there near the cemetery. We getting more political licks in the Cemetery constituency than what John dream ’bout. So! This is a political funeral. Lionel will be buried politically. Hence! We walking that last mile, outta pure politics, on foot! And be-Christ, when they drop Lionel coffin in that hole after we walkthrough Westbury North and the Cemetery constituency, I want each and every one o’ you sons o’ bitches here present to start crying. You hear me? Weep! Bawl-out with sorrow. Cry like shite! My political experience tell me that there going be more votes swinging to our man in that constituency than what John write ’bout!”

  So the Prime Minister was walking at the head o’ the Cabinet, followed by other party officials plus a detachment of the police force, walking slow-slow through the heat and humidity that you could almost cut with a knife, it was so damn hot.

  And the moment they come into view, the people went wild and start screeling.

  “Skipper! Skipper! Skipper!”

  Once or twice the Prime Minister give a nudge to the MP for Westbury North, and whisper something outta the corner of his mouth, the left-hand corner, with a cynical, sly smile covering his face.

  “What I tell you, man?”

  The MP for Westbury North say, “Remind me, Skipper, to give you a report of a rumour I hear from a friend, who hear it from a reliable confidential source. It ’bout the two fellows in the party who planning to overthrow you, and—”

  “We going break their ar
se!”

  “Lash-their-arse-at-the-polls!” the people screel out.

  The Prime Minister then take-off his rimless spectacles offa his face, and smile and mop his brown face, and smile some more with the people.

  “Skipper! Skipper! Skipper!”

  The Prime Minister skin was high brown. Like a piece o’ polished leather. He was tall-tall. Like a athlete. And had a handsome body. The people who know and people who don’t really know say that he does sleep in the beds o’ more married women than what John could count or what anybody dare to ’numerate and tally. He does move like a dancer. And today, he move like one. Like a limbo dancer. Like a cat on ashes through the thickness o’ the crowd, through the thickness o’ the smells and body odours of the crowd.

  He smelled the bodies o’ the crowd. He smelled the perspiration dripping down from them, the odours, the sweat, the perfumes, and the rum smells. The crowd was too close for comfort and for the Prime Minister’s aristocratic sense o’ things. He didn’t like smells. He didn’t like them being so close.

  Sometimes, working late at night in his office or driving home from the residence of one of his ministers who was overseas on Guvvament business, he would get sad, sad even to the point o’ depression, when he compare his life o’ graciousness, champagne and strawberries, Epsom Darby, and night life at Cambridge University to the poor-arse country with people who smell, who had no hope, who indulge in crime, a country with financial problems, when he could be cocking-up his two feet still in Hampstead or in Piccadilly Circus. The budget o’ the country was never balance since he became Prime Minister. The budget could never be balance.

  But now he remembered where he was, so he merely jerk his nostril in disgust. The smell of the people disappear. And immediately after, he start to smile.

  “Lick-in their arse at the polls, Skipper! Mash-them-up! Paint their arse black and blue on voting day, Skipper!” the people went on shouting, falling in love with their leader.

  He put-back-on his spectacles on his face, and he look more younger and more powerful than when he wasn’t wearing glasses.

  All like now-so, the procession reach ’round the last corner before entering in the main gate o’ the cemetery. There was a sidewalk in this part of the walk. So the crowd grow more louder, more longer, and more larger. Space, or the lack o’ space, now turn into tension and quarrelling. And the smell o’ the poor people plus the smell o’ the mayflower trees overhanging the cemetery, and the bougainvillea vines that was crawling over some neglected graves, these smells was mixed up and was turn into a real strong nauseating sensation.

  “You walking with your gun?” the Prime Minister say to the MP for Westbury North in a whisper, outta the corner of his mouth. The left-hand corner. “I don’t like this crowd, yuh. I don’t like these people. And I know blasted well that these bitches don’t like me. You have-on your gun in your holster? Just in case?”

  “But, Skipper, you knows me! You knows full well that I sleeps with my wompuh in my hand! How you mean?”

  “Well, I feel better, then.”

  The main gate was so close that it look as if it had feet and was coming to meet them. They was people like peas, like sand, in the procession all like now-so. So they had to force and push themselves through the narrow iron gates as if they was catching a passenger bus that was the last bus for the night. It take ’bout a hour to a hour and a half before all the official mourners plus the police plus the security guards plus all the people who had join the cortege could squeeze through the main gate.

  The Guvvament had tell the Cemetery Board and the gravediggers that was off-duty to come to work, and that the minute after the last person who look like a real mourner step through the gate, to close the blasted gate.

  And this happen like clockwork. Pretty-pretty this directive of the Guvvament was directed. This guvvament was a real efficient guvvament. Everything work. Political murders; firings from guvvament posts; the hiring o’ girlfriends, kip-misses, and chossels to high guvvament positions; the slot machines whiching the people branded one-hand bandits; plus the thiefing and mispropriation o’ guvvament funds; all these things-so work like if the Mafia was running the country and not ordinary, common politicians. Every-fucking-thing work. Most unlike the things that the previous guvvament did try to do; and that guvvament was a democratic guvvament.

  The Prime Minister had personally ordered some members of his security force to pose as mourners and walk in the middle of the crowd. He didn’t want to take no chances with the people. So one hundred of the roughest, one hundred of the most loyal members of the Security Force was assign to this funeral.

  Reporters and cameramen from the radio station and from the three newspapers was all over the place. The Guvvament had plan to put the funeral on the radio news that night as the first item. Naturally, the Prime Minister would be on the front pages of all three morning newspapers.

  So when enough of the people had reach the grave, the Dean, dress like damnation in black, from head to foot, black covering his black body, and with his tortoiseshell spectacles shining in the dying light, whiching was fighting its way to come through the large, thick leaves of the almond trees shimmering all round the graveside, then and only then did the Very Rendable Dean begin the Order of the Burial of the Dead.

  At seven o’clock the morning before, the Prime Minister had telephone the Lord Bishop of the country to tell him that he want he, His Lordship, to officiate. In addition to the Very Rendable Dean. But the Lord Bishop, who wasn’t sick, said in a weak voice, “Excellency, I sorry-sorry, sir. I have a migraine that killing me, Excellency. As you know from the last time you see me, I been under doctor’s care. For two weeks now, going ’pon three. And I even had to cancel all my church app’intments, and . . . and . . .”

  The Lord Bishop was a secret supporter of the opposition party.

  But before he could complete his excuses and apologies and entreaties, the Prime Minister had slam-down the telephone a long time. “I waiting on His Lordship. He may know about Sodom and Gomorrah, but I have a file on his arse concerning sodomy and Gomorrah. I waiting on that son of a bitch!”

  So they had to settle for the Dean only.

  But the Dean did already behaving as if he did already the Lord Bishop of the country. And one night he utter a wish ’bout his ambition loud enough and in the well-chosen hearing o’ some Cabinet ministers, who laughed-out and remind him whilst laughing that the Lord Bishop was not even born in the country, so anything could happen one o’ these dark nights.

  And the night that Lionel’s murder was announce on the radio news, the Dean say to his wife, “But why it couldn’t be the Bishop? Instead o’ that fool, Lionel?”

  Lionel had get stabbed during a argument over a game o’ dominoes. The fellow who stab him say that Lionel had hide the key card, the very card he did need to beat Lionel and win the tournament. But the Bishop, as far as the Dean did know, didn’t play dominoes!

  Lionel, before he dead, was also the Deputy Head Gravedigger at the Westbury Cemetery. The Very Rendable Dean really like big, pretty ceremonies. Official receptions, pompous gatherings, military parades, and social events did always bring out the best in his civilize nature and properness, and proprieties concerning food. And at all these functions, he uses to behave as if he was already His Lordship.

  So on this solemn occasion, he begin to use a voice that was really suited and fittable to the sombreness and the sadness of the hot afternoon. And not even the stickiness of his surplice and the stickiness in the weather did bother or take away from his standing and stature, dress-off as he was, like damnation, in heavy, long black.

  He start speaking ’bout love. ’Bout family. ’Bout the family of love. ’Bout the family of the people. ’Bout the family of politicians. ’Bout politics and ’bout power.

  The last thing he mention was the dead. Poor Lionel laying-down in front o’ him in a mahogany coffin! But the Dean was talking real sweet when he mention something whic
hing he called “the politics o’ love.”

  The Prime Minister had already know what the Dean did intend to say in the eulogy. Um was the Prime Minister himself who had tell the Dean what to say. They did discuss it in detail over some rum and sodas, and from the notes whiching the Prime Minister had write and had take to the Dean office.

  Now the real poetry start to roll-off the Dean mouth:

  “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live . . .”

  The Dean tongue move-over the words and make them sound real pretty, like pure honey. He had a real Oxford accent too. But the play-play English accent wasn’t strong enough still to muzzle the broad, flat flavour of his native speech.

  “The Dean could preach too-sweet!” the MP for Sin-James East say to Seabert the tailor, in Seabert’s ear.

  Seabert had recently join the Party, and did seeking a seat in the constituency where he and Nathan was living.

  “Too sweet, in truth!” the MP say.

  “Like a new zipper in a pair o’ new khaki pants!” Seabert say.

  “Like Frère Pilgrim cane juice!” the MP say. “With a drop o’ rum in it!”

  Seabert start to smile, so overpowered he was by the prospect o’ power.

  “Sweet for days!” he say.

  And at this point, the Prime Minister tek-out his handkerchief from outta his breast pocket, tek-off his rimless spectacles, and start to wipe his two eyes. He then held down his head and give everybody the impression, by the posture o’ sadness, that he was serious. All the people see him doing so. A cameraman see him. And caught him. And thinking that the Prime Minister was weeping for the dead, he pop-off a flash in the Prime Minister face.

  The flash from the camera light up the total immediate surroundings. It would make a real nice front-page picture, the Prime Minister say.

  “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand . . .”

  Right then, all o’ Lionel family start to cry. His woman from who he had two thrildren and with who he uses to live, she start-on ’pon one loud crying. His next woman, from who he had one son and with who he didn’t used to live, she too was crying. His three sisters, one of who had come in from Brooklyn, New York; his mother and his father; the members of the Darrells Road Domino Players team, all o’ them dress-off in black, with handkerchiefs jutting-out outta their pocket, handkerchiefs mek outta white dots on black silk squares—Jesus Christ, everybody start crying now.