Theory

by Dionne Brand

  As I said, I think that Odalys married me as an experiment. She married me to see if she could convert me. She wanted me to be her acolyte, her cheval. She married me as a test of her faith. Her Babalao, who officiated at our wedding, was not impressed by my skeptical looks and told Odalys that while he couldn’t prevent her from her path, our union would be full of difficulty. I knew that Odalys was smarter than this Babalao. She considered herself Iyalaoo, anyway—mother of divinations. Now I believe that I was one of Odalys’ Nkisis: her Nkisi of academic theories. Around her apartment above the garage stood several fierce wooden figures, with nails and blades buried in their bodies. They signified power. The spirits could be released from, or contained in, these figures at Odalys’ will. I can’t help but think that I had a place among these figures and was at the will of Odalys. Though, as with these spirits, Odalys didn’t always have full control.

  I don’t know how I came to leave Odalys. It is one mystery too many, I suppose. But no, in truth it is Odalys who left me. One night I noticed a certain odour on Odalys’ sheets. I couldn’t immediately quantify it, since the garage below Odalys’ apartment had infected the floorboards above with many smells. This was an odour Odalys never noticed but I had trouble getting used to. I couldn’t offer my own apartment for our sleeping, since all of it by now was taken over by paper, even the walls. And in any case, Odalys felt she was in harm’s way without the presence of her Nkisis guarding her palace. I remarked on this new odour to Odalys, and she said I was always finding fault. I lay back under the sheets and watched Odalys fall asleep unbothered. The odour—of soldering metals mixed with an unknown substance—seemed to envelop the bedroom. The next evening, on my arrival, I noticed a new Nkisi standing in one of the shadows of Odalys’ rooms. It struck me immediately as more aggressive that the rest, and there was a sly look to it; a thorough covering of nails and shanks adorned its body. It seemed prepared to fling them all at me. I said to Odalys, “That’s new”—pointing to the Nkisi. “It’s been there all the time,” Odalys answered. She said this with sarcasm, as if I never noticed anything about her. I kept quiet but I felt as though another person were in the room with us. And again, there was the strange odour of the sheets. After two more nights of these aggressions, “Odalys,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Marat was here earlier.”

  “Marat?” I said, “Who is Marat? Marat!”

  “You know Marat,” Odalys said, indignant. “Marat from downstairs.” Marat, the mechanic! The alliteration made me ever more angry.

  “A mechanic, the mechanic!” I sputtered at Odalys. Odalys shrugged, and the nail-prickled Nkisi stood closer. I had once made a joke about this man Marat, with his perpetual wrench and his dirty hands—something about the Marquis de Sade, his namesake.

  “Well, who’s the bourgeois now?” Odalys said.

  I rose to leave the room and the Nkisi stood in my way.

  “You’re leaving, then?” Odalys said.

  “Yes,” I said meekly. There was a pause and then the Nkisi seemed to move as if on Odalys’ command. I took my things, my bag with the chapter I’d rewritten at the library, and left. I never went back to Affinity Street. I didn’t want to see what Odalys was doing with the mechanic. She didn’t call and I didn’t expect her to come to my Augean apartment, ever. A mechanic. Odalys preferred a mechanic to an intellectual. I could see the practicality in it. After all, what can I fix? Not a damn thing. My angle on the world didn’t see Marat. I am vain in reference to myself, too vain to see what is in front of me. All this time, I’d been focused on arguing with Odalys’ metaphysical world—and her material world escaped me. I saw Marat but I didn’t calculate him. I didn’t place him in my equation. He was, to me, mere atmosphere. And yes, I have to reconcile myself to Odalys’ accusation that I am bourgeois. I was not. I wasn’t, I protest, so insulted by Marat’s status as a mechanic. I admit mechanics do a lot in the world. My outburst was without legitimate foundation, and all I have to say in my defence here is…okay, I realize immediately that what I have to say is bogus. Nevertheless, Odalys, what about my light? That’s what I will say to her if I ever see her again. What about my light?

  My outburst was a coarse and illegitimate refutation of all I stand for, all I care about. It caused me pain. What happens when we reproduce the backward ideas we abhor? When they spill from us like so much bilgy sediment? I retreated to my apartment to think about this. Not even Gramsci could save me. A mechanic! I hear the outburst ringing in my ears to this day. It seems the “anachronistic” and “fossilized” conceptions of the world were all too evident in my being. Knowing better hadn’t prevented that concept from leaking into my own life. One course would be to apologize to the mechanic, if not to Odalys. Odalys didn’t deserve an apology, but Marat, despite not having a clue about my judgments—and perhaps because he had no clue—deserved my apology. I decided that if I felt bound to do anything, it would be that. This secondary pain, the pain of my personal betrayal of my ideas, was excruciating to me. And it stood in for the pain of Odalys.

  I had discovered Odalys’ infidelity through the odour of soldering metals. I put it in those words so that I could give the whole episode a poetry. Once I did this, I felt no rage against Odalys. But isn’t poetry one of those anachronistic and fossilized conceptions of the world and life? Or isn’t poetry the conduit through which anachronistic and fossilized conceptions of the world and life are transmitted? Possibly, but it will do, I told myself, as a way of positioning Odalys and me for the time being. For months before our denouement Odalys had been encouraging me to concentrate more fully on my dissertation, suggesting I stay at my place and bring it to a conclusion. I had never suspected a thing. I took her concern as kindness. We’d been talking about going to Colombia. It was my suggestion that Odalys visit her country, go to her village anew. So yes, I had been talking about going to Colombia. I’d been trying to persuade Odalys. Knowing and feeling are two separate things, and sometimes the complete opposite of each other. I’d said to Odalys that I would finish the thesis and apply for a research project that would enable us to travel. Mathematics, as I said, is not my strong suit—but I see now that this is when Odalys probably decided to be rid of me. I took her encouragement to mean support for my dissertation, and enthusiasm about Colombia. But again I’m trying to find reason where none exists. Odalys had probably been seeing Marat all along. I beg to say that it was not that I objected to another lover, no—I live in the world for god’s sake—but I did not want to be surprised by one. Odalys should have stated her preferences at the outset. Marat. I hate his name. I hate how domestic it’s become on my tongue. I don’t even know this man, and he wasn’t hated before, not by me anyway, until Odalys came between him and me. Now Marat settled like a bitter milk in my stomach.

  Why had Odalys brought this into my life? I’d been nothing but good to Odalys. Sure, my thesis took up most of my time but I thought Odalys had understood this from the beginning. Here I am again, navel-gazing about what I realize I call wrongly “Odalys’ discontent.” Odalys was not discontented with me; she was, I must admit finally, beyond me. She had finished whatever it was she’d been doing with me. This I understand now. I must still question: Why introduce this element of hurt called “Marat”? Why not merely tell me that we were at an end? This cruelty, as I will call it, I found unforgivable. Yet I wanted to forgive Odalys, since I loved Odalys. I, however, could not find my way there. And I remain confounded by the mysterious Nkisi who blocked my way out of Odalys’ bedroom. I’m not a person who believes in these things, but I’m a person who trusts my own experiences. The Nkisi was fearsome—a being prepared to deploy all of the pain it had ingested, the nails and axe blades and screws and glass and mirrors. If Odalys’ cruelty had unleashed the Nkisi, I have no doubt I would’ve suffered more than this. I wish Marat luck, but perhaps he is a spirit of iron and steel forged in his mechanic’s shop, perhaps he is a faithful of Ogun. Still, I have to return to this point: I didn�
��t expect cruelty from someone who looked into my face and told me how she cherished the light she saw there. I simply did not. Can we never trust anyone? The repetitive structure that I attempt to perform into visibility occurs in a fantasmatic space where we need to examine what is at stake in particular reproductions. In States of Fantasy, Jacqueline Rose argues that fantasy is not in opposition to social reality but is actually a precondition of it.*3

  For the next months, after the breakup with Odalys, I stayed in my apartment with my papers. I barely went out except to buy potatoes or vegetables or milk. I wish that I found alcohol interesting. It might have helped. This apartment full of its failed paper was all I could love. Luckily it was July and I didn’t have to TA. In truth, money was running low. I lived on very little and prayed that the landlord wouldn’t raise the rent too much come the fall. Without Odalys, I was reduced to thinking of these domestic things. My thesis, qua thesis, was a pleasure to me. Anyone would think that I found it difficult. Well, I did find it difficult—but not only difficult. Sometimes I would lie on the floor among my books and among the reams of paper I’d produced and I would feel a purity. A breathless purity. There was something missing, and this something put a small pall over my pleasures, but nevertheless I could count on my thesis to lift me out. There were no blockages in my way now, I reasoned. Bertolt Auer was dead, Odalys had left me; nothing stood in my way. I’d written the thesis several times over, I merely had to collect the viable parts into a whole that was acceptable to me. Josie Ligna had often said that I didn’t understand the administrative aspects of writing a thesis, that I thought it involved pursuing an idea and breaking new ground in thinking, but that really it was all about pacifying the committee and waiting until after to bring any originality to the work itself. She was right, but still I insisted on pressing for originality in the first place. Of course, that is why I haven’t had the right approvals signed and the whole matter expedited. I refuse to compromise with idiots. My father always said…Well, what’s the point of repeating what he said. Odalys has left me.

  The light over the mechanic’s shop keeps blinking Open, Open, Open, inside an oval turned horizontal. Above, in Odalys’ apartment window, stands something I’d never noticed before, a Chinese statue—red and celebratory. There’s a Russian doll, too, the kind that obviously iterates itself small and smaller. A mass of plastic flowers, in a huge jar, leans in the left corner of the window frame. I’d never noticed any of this before. The window is packed; a yellowing vine winds its way around and falls dead at the top of the frame. I miss these details; details that end with me wondering what I saw in the first place. My observations are less acute with people than with books.

  I sometimes stand across the road looking at Odalys’ window at night. Does she see me there, dressed in paper, dressed in the cuts on my fingers from turning pages?

  *1 C. Sharpe/Teoria

  *2 C. Sharpe/Teoria

  *3 Sharpe/Teoria

  Look, as I said at the start, this is all in the past tense because soon I will hit my fortieth birthday and I decided to make an assessment before going any further. I have been “All But Dissertation” for quite a while, labouring under the title I chose at least eight years ago, “A Conceptual Analysis of the Racially Constructed.” You see what I mean. This title took me several years to solidify. I had a great deal of difficulty bringing Bertolt Auer and my then committee around to its efficacy. So much is involved in coming up with a title and a thesis proposal. And as you can imagine, not everyone on the committee could put aside their locations within that title long enough to approve it, let alone want to be part of its execution. What passes for academic argument is so indebted to, yet obscure from, the world as it is and the bodies we live in. There are so many tensions in academia, so many conflictual forces; the academy is a policing institute. It disguises itself with intellectual intention, but it’s both superficially and profoundly engaged in the surveillance of intellectual output and ultimately the administration of thought punishment. You’ll ask, therefore, why I’m involved in it. That is an easy question to answer. It’s reflexive on my part. I blame my father, as his messages were clear from the beginning: make something of myself and don’t waste his time or money. When I got to the PhD stage, he was wretched. He said I was wasting my time and should do an MBA, like my brother, and start a business. Capital was all he could see being produced by learning. I’d never admit it to him, but he is correct. This is the true purpose of the academy, to produce layers of managers of capital in one way or another, to carry out and extend the pedagogy of capital.

  Sometimes I go around the city and I feel overwhelmed by its inability to free me of the very thing it’s supposed to free me of, stasis. I feel tied like a butterfly to a child’s string. The skyscrapers don’t lift me off the earth the way they’re supposed to do. The cars don’t speed me away as they promise. The large tractor-trailers crush me on the highway. They crush my spirit with their cargoes of beef and milk. There are so many dead insects like me in their wheel wells.

  I haven’t said much about the state of the world in these pages, only about my interior world, which is a parody and also a reflection of the real world. My interior world is, Yara might say, an insult to the real world where real people are living and fighting for a real life as I bemoan an incomplete dissertation and failed love affairs. But I’m convinced that people in the real world whose lives are insulted by my moping are also having lousy love affairs that can’t be sourced as the reason for how badly life is going. Life is going badly because of where you were born, or whom you were born to, and in between, living from one end of it to the other, we have lousy love affairs. My complaining is inappropriate because of where I was born and whom I was born to. I wasn’t born into any bad situation—no teenaged mother, no drunken father, no lecherous uncle, no hard times. Just conformity. Regular, stultifying conformity. I wasn’t born into wealth, either. Simply ordinariness. I was born to people who hovered in ordinariness, propping up the rotting system with their desires for wealth and their contempt for people who live in poverty. I’d thought that I could wrench myself out of that dynamic. I thought we all could. But I’m thinking too much, and everyone is going along wherever they are. I have to point out that if the lousy love affair is consistent across these conditions, it must mean that there is another system underlying them, a system that remains untouched by other changes and must therefore be at the root of our unhappiness or disease. Again Gramsci comes to mind.

  This reminds me of my earliest love affair with my childhood friend, Iolanta. Iolanta was my dearest friend when I was growing up. She lived in a house with her sister, Myrtle, and brother, Earl, and their mother and father, Mrs. Williams-Torrance and Mr. Torrance, a block away from my house. We went to Yorkview School together. We walked hand in hand all the way home to Holcolm Road, where Iolanta lived, and Edithvale Drive, where I lived. Sometimes we would walk each other back and forth between houses, Iolanta saying “I’ll drop you back” when we arrived at her house, and me saying “I’ll drop you back” when we arrived at mine. This went on until one day when Iolanta was about thirteen she became quite ill and had to stay at home. From then on, I only saw Iolanta on Saturdays when I could visit and when Iolanta’s parents allowed it. I would bring Iolanta news about this and that, about games and about the new middle school I attended and the new teachers. Iolanta was sad at not being able to go to school anymore. I didn’t know what disease Iolanta had. My brother, Wendell, said it was leukemia. Somewhere along Iolanta’s illness, Mrs. Williams-Torrance and Mr. Torrance stopped all my visits. Then I would pass by Iolanta’s house and stop at her window and call out to her. Iolanta’s window was on the second floor, decorated with a dream catcher, and Iolanta would hang out the window waiting for me every morning and every afternoon. When I arrived I would reach out my arms as if hugging Iolanta, and she would reach out her arms to me. That fall and winter, I would throw Iolanta gum or chocolates or whatever sweets I could find
. I became expert at this because if Iolanta’s window were to be broken we would both be in trouble. Each morning and every afternoon we would talk like this. In the end, Mrs. Williams-Torrance found out about our talks and put them to an end also. Nevertheless I would pass by and call out Iolanta’s name at her window. “Iolanta, Iolanta!” I would sing. No one would appear but I’m a faithful person, I have always been. Even after Iolanta’s funeral I still walked by, calling her name.

  This part of my life I never refer to. It is only here in these pages that I’ve attempted to write some of the details. The Williams-Torrances moved away, I suppose because that sad house proved too much for them, but I didn’t stop passing by—not until much later, and with regret, and involuntarily. When I left the neighbourhood it was to dismiss my father and his ways, his overbearing voice urging uplift, and to break with my brother, who transformed into my father when he arrived at the age of twenty-five or so. But Iolanta I mourned well into my twenties. There’s a small seam in my brain that contains Iolanta leaning out the window. This image, I think, both beckons and stops me from completing my work. But let me not make excuses or wallow in a long-gone possibility, or be seduced by my indolence, or attach significance to a random albeit formative experience. Who’s to say it was formative anyway? In hindsight, I realize I’ve told that story about a time when days were interminable, so it seems more significant than it is. So much has happened in between, how could it still register as I’ve told it? Yet I know it accounts for my melancholy, because I now hear, summoned by the memory, Mercedes Sosa singing Melancolidad…This is why the senses cannot be thoroughly trusted. I could use this incident as the reason that my thesis isn’t yet completed; I could attribute my thesis’ incompleteness to the incompleteness of my love affair with Iolanta—or, further, the impossibility of that love, since Iolanta’s illness intervened and made a separation. This would be fair, I think. Yet, and still—wasn’t it the melancholy of the situation that energized the love I felt for Iolanta? Wasn’t the melancholy, therefore, the loved thing between Iolanta and me? But I resent that interpretation. Our affections were intense before the melancholy. We played jacks fiercely, we ate pink bubble gum fiercely, we ran to school and back fiercely and we wandered about fiercely, investigating streets and sidewalks, muddy slush and snow. So no, it wasn’t melancholy; melancholy came between us.