In this City

by Austin Clarke

  “You hear?”

  “’Bout the dog?”

  “No, man! Not one dog, was three. I hear it was three. Maybe four.”

  “What a thing, eh?”

  “This city does this to women.”

  “Appears the only thing that stop her from killing the owners of the six dogs was that . . .”

  “My God! Only God could save her now.”

  “Providing her soul in order for that salvation.”

  “We have to pray for she, man!”

  And give it their own broad interpretation of sorrow, misfortune, wickedness and damnation.

  She lay for three days and three nights still dressed in her light blue hospital uniform, and did not even change her underwear, did not bathe and did not brush her teeth, as she changed her position on the sheets getting warm and sweaty from her body, as if she had a fever, and was coming out of it, with the fever’s heat pouring into the cotton of the sheets; and she lay on her back, deliberately, because looking into the ceiling of the basement bedroom, she was at the same time looking into the heavens, to God, where she knew her release and her absolution would come from, and was, at the same time, giving the pain in her left side an ease. In the three days, and the three nights which were longer, she knew by heart every formation of cobwebs, every spot on the ceiling where the sun touched it, at the exact time of day, she could remember the reflection there when a car passed, and the larger reflection when a truck lumbered by in the thick snow; and she knew and learned to live with the shadows, which she accepted as ghost and spirits, frolicking about on the ceiling. She got to know the movements of the bastards next door: learned their habits, could hear the toilet flushing and hear the slam of the cover, and know whether it was a man or a woman doing his business; and she could almost see, so sharp was her concentration, the man and the woman as they came down the stairs, as they shouted to each other, as they prepared their daily routine of reprimand and abuse. And of course, she heard no dog barking.

  And she knew what hour the postman came; something as small as this, as ordinary, which she had never know for the five years since she was working in the hospital. The postman came between eleven-thirty and twelve-thirty. Not more punctual than that, since his time was measured not in footsteps but in the number of bills he delivered. And she got to know how many people knocked on her basement door, and some on the window, and then stood for the time of decency, and then in disgust pushed paper and brochures, and other material which she had no use for, through the letter box. And she knew for the first time, that any of these unseen people could have broken into her home while she was working on the ward.

  And in the three days, moving from the bed only to visit the bathroom to pee and to “number two,” she read her Bible. Parts in it which she thought she had grasped through her intelligence, through her love of literature, and because of her critical mind: the parting of the sea; the flight of the Israelites which she compared to her own plight in this city, on the hospital ward and in this basement and beginning back in Barbados; how many people spoke as if they were Israelites, and most of them had never seen a Jew; the covetousness of King David and the beauty and sexuality of Bath-sheba; and her own favourite passage in the whole Bible, the story of Jonah in the belly of the whale.

  She was close to this miracle, this example of the power of God. For she had been born on an island, and whales and sharks and barracudas thronged the waters, and came close enough to shore for her to see them, and witness, that Good Friday morning at two o’clock, a shark bites a fisherman’s foot, clean, clean, off; and the salt in it could not soften the pain, nor clot the blood. The fins and the gaping mouths, and the big humps on their backs, and the fountain of water rising majestically to the heavens, from the back . . . was it the back, or the mouth, or the side? . . . of the whale. And she realized that it was not a whale at all, for there were no whales off Barbados; and she was confusing her memory of her school books in Standard Seven with something else. It was sharks. She had seen sharks. Their fins, and their cavernous mouths. In the sea. And on the land, dead. And when they got on the land, it was for dinner: fried shark steaks with lots of black pepper in the channels cut into the pink flesh, with fresh thyme and fresh parsley and fresh eschalots and fresh red pepper rubbed into the flesh; with a deep covering of floor and dropped into the buck pot, and fried until they became golden and tender and with juice oozing from them. She knew sharks. But it was the whale and Jonah . . .

  She read the passage two times each morning before the time when she would just lie and do absolutely nothing, not even think, although she could not prevent her mind turning, just lying there, and allowing the life to remain in her body and leave it, as she wanted it to do, if it was God’s wish and judgement; for she had no more interest in life. And after this time, perhaps in the hiatus of meditation, perhaps in a kind of half death, or half sleep, she would read the passage two times more, and wait for night to come, meaning the darkness from outside, to come into the bedroom which remained in its on darkness, because in the three days and three night she did not turn the lights on.

  She experienced and worshipped the independence she had, for if she was not free, if there was someone in the basement with her, if she still had him bothering out her life, or if her child had lived, she could not subject herself so completely to this thinking. In the midst of the darkness there was light, and the light is that she could be here, on the bed, waiting for the sign, the sign to end this heavy burden, this indolent motionless, this seemingly interminable waiting.

  The telephone would ring at the same hour each morning. Lee? At the time that someone who expected her to be at a certain place, and did not see her arrive, and had given her the period of speculation, and then had called. Ruby? The same time every morning, and every night. And then, after the first day, the telephone would ring every half hour. It seemed to her, lying on her back and listening to it, sometimes urging it to ring to let her know there was someone out in the city, alive; at other times, willing it to stop ringing, as it seemed that the person calling was transferring her anxiety into the high, piercing and disturbing ring of the instrument. It seemed sometimes as if the telephone’s ringing was its eyes, and that it could see her there. It was so persistent sometimes. Yes, those half-hour trials were obviously Millicent trying to reach her, trying to understand what was happening to her, wondering if she had killed herself.

  “Kill myself?”

  People never cared for you: friends, husband, wife, children, relations, and, of course, your hospital and your head nurse, when you were a part of the order of things, and were where you were supposed to be at the specified hour. But when you did not turn up, and were not heard from, the first thing they wondered was, “I wonder if she killed herself?” Even before they wondered if she was sick. Or broke. Or had money for bus fare.

  “Me?”

  On the first day, which began three hours or so after she had flung the dog’s body out to hit the hard frozen cement steps, counting from that time, it was painful, it was terrifying, it was full of darkness. The weight was sitting full upon her. The heaviness of the act, growing with time, with the silence of the dog; and the blame and the guilt; and the feeling that caused her body to go numb, that the entire world saw her in that act, that nothing else about her counted, that if there was a question, “Who is this woman?” the answer would be, “She is the one who committed murder.” It was so encompassing. So amplified. So total.

  And it was easy in a way, for the weight rendered her incapable of undressing, or preparing for bed, for reading her Bible, for making dinner. And for calling anybody on her Solo. They would all have to respect her privacy. She was so dead in spirit the first day that the lights were left on; and the Journal became a white, speckled, shimmering screen; and the radio played on the same Buffalo station throughout the night and into the next day, all day. And the first few calls at the appointed time when normally she and Millicent would be setting the world righ
t with gossip and laughter and woman-talk, were long.

  It was very hard, and sad.

  On the second day, things became worse. She could feel her body get heavy, and hot, as if she was carrying a temperature; but she knew it was the burden of her deed. The deed was raw now. Exposed. At its height of infection. And painful. There was no cure, save waiting for the scab that brought on the healing to form, and spread. And the body outside the basement door to begin to swell.

  It was on the second day that she read Jonah, the first chapter. She read it so often she knew it by heart, all the commas and semicolons. It was on this day that she began to notice the regulation of the postman’s visit, the dropping of advertising materials through her letter box, the routine of the noise and footsteps and the growling between man and woman coming through the tin wall that divided her from next door. Above her head, she could make out no definition in their lives: it was one heavy thud as if they walked in winter boots. And she knew, would bet her bottom dollar on it, that all the calls that came, persistent and long, were from Millicent.

  The light-blue uniform became creased, and stuck between her thighs. Four of the buttons down its front were off, ripped off as she turned in her sleep, and as she changed positions, in the fits of depression during the day. Her brassiere remained fastened at the back, and her breasts were sometimes in the cup, and sometimes both of them were squeezed out. Mostly it was one that had slipped out. And her hair, which she normally wore combed out and reaching her ears, with two braid on each side of her face, and worked into a hairstyle like a diadem of ebony, sparkled by beads of red, black and green, was now uncombed, flat at the back where the weight of her head had matted it, and at the sides, when she slept on her right or on her left. But at the top, it stood as if it was hair of wire. She did not worry about her appearance because she did not look at herself in the looking glass above the toilet bowl, nor into the one over her bureau, in these first two days of her retreat.

  She could feel herself getting weaker; getting smaller and thinner, and at the same time, getting stronger because her heart had less to work with. Always, from the morning of the second day, there was a taste of mild bitterness in her mouth. A dryness. As if sandpaper was being passed over the bridge of her mouth. And in all this, she remained calm, punishing herself, expiating her body and hoping that her mind would be cleansed also, and that she would not go mad alone in this basement, and was not able to prove she was not mad.

  On the third day, she panicked. Suppose, she thought. Just suppose. Suppose her body could no longer take this punishment, and she stopped breathing; suppose her mind could no longer with-stand the torment, and her mind snapped, and she became mad, insane, gone off the head. If any of these things happened, there was no one in the whole world, meaning no one in this city, who could find her. Who would come and rescue her? And put her into the ambulance? And if she died, no one to notify anybody. There was no mother now, in Barbados. Her father had died a long time ago. And there were no cousins, third or fourth even, and removed. Her only known relation was a second cousin living somewhere in Brooklyn or New York. “Why have I lived like this? Cut off, cut off, cut off!”

  More than once, as these fears broke in upon her concentration on the Bible, she thought of eating her pride, if she had strength to do so, breaking her fast of penitence and absolution, and calling Millicent, or Lee, or Ruby, and telling them where she was, where she lived.

  Strange, how in more than three years, in this close, sincere friendship with Millicent; in two with Lee, and one with Ruby, she had not given any of them her address. Is there somewhere she could be found, traced and tracked down through her telephone number? And Millicent, with whom she spent so much time on the Solo every night, and with whom she could express the most personal and intimate fears, aspirations and things, and never once, not once did Millicent express the desire to visit her and see where she lived. And of course, neither did she. If something should happen to her, Millicent wouldn’t know how to find her.

  Twice, on the second day, she had lifted the receiver and dialed Millicent at work, and had dropped the receiver when she heard Millicent’s voice.

  On the evening of the third day, which was the ending of the third night, she felt the full force of her withdrawal. Three days and three nights. She did not miss the biblical significance in the number. Three days were given to reply to some legal matters; men took three days to make certain decisions; and three, she always said, was a “damn female number.” So, on the third day . . . What did God, in the creating of the world, finish doing on the third day? The Bible doesn’t say nothing about a third day! . . . on the evening of the third day, she had read Jonah, chapters two and three. She felt something was happening to her. She was no longer borne down by the act. And the act did not, like her mouth, taste so bitter. Not that she had driven it from her mind, nor forgiven herself. It was no longer the totality of her thinking and her living, though she would be the last person to define her time spent beneath the three thick blankets, as living. It was not that. She could feel the lifting from her soul of the heaviness. Yes, her soul. And she was starting to feel the lightness of expiation. But she was not strong enough physically to take off her dress; did not want to; was not strong enough to use her toothbrush; was not strong enough to go to the bathroom and take her bath; not that she did not smell herself, and turned up her own nostrils as she smelled the accumulation of smells, the funkiness, as her second cousin in Brooklyn or New York would say. That kind of energy did not come to her. But she began to sin.

  The day thou gavest, Lord

  Is ending

  The darkness falls

  At thy behest . . .

  My God! I am singing a burial hymn! Don’t let my time come, not yet. I don’t want to die in this city. So, she went back to reading Jonah. The Bible, like her light-blue hospital uniform, was rumpled, its leaves turned into dog-ears, its black leather cover coming apart from the body of the leaves, trimmed in gold; she had slept on it for her pillow; and the gold itself became tarnished and fading, as she rolled over it in her sleep, trampling it; using it sometimes as her pillow and her backrest; and in her hysteria the second day and night, kicking it with her feet, while she struggled and broke down the palisades of a nightmare.

  The whole of the first day and night she studied Jonah, all seventeen verses of the first chapter. She pictured herself as Jonah; and imagined herself in the ship and in the cabin and in the bowels of trouble.

  The whole of the second day she had studied Chapter two, all ten verses, until she knew them by heart, including the previous seventeen. She was certain now that she, like Jonah, was a castout, a castaway, an outcast.

  And the third chapter, with its ten verses which seemed to have been written with her in mind, gave her the most trouble to read and digest, for its message of supplication was one that was too close to her act.

  She disregarded the fourth chapter. She had found what she wanted in the first three, especially in Chapter two, the first three verses. There was something about these verses that touched her, something that made her own act bigger in importance, as if it was being immortalized, as if it was accorded the notoriety of being in a book of records. And it was, perhaps more so, that she was human in her faith in the Bible; was human in her Christian belief, for here was a sinner, a man who had done the wrong thing according to God, and who was punished, and had repented openly, to his God. She felt as if she had come to the end of her three-day wearing of sackcloth and ashes.

  It was surprising when it happened. That she had seen the light; and had satisfied herself through her spirit, that she had spent the proper amount of time, and in the proper attitude, going over and over, in and out, every iota as she said, of the act. And it happened because she knew it could only happen with the help of the Bible. It was surprising how the words came to her. And she knew all along that the word would come from no other source.

  “And Jonah said,” she said to the Bible, he
r eyes now tired and weary, hardly able to focus on the fine print, “Jonah said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice . . .”

  She was in a fish’s belly. The basement where she had been lying, flat on her back, was like the bowels of the sea, she could feel the encirclement there, the hollowness there, the darkness there; and the rumbling of the furnace, like the organs in a stomach digesting and resisting matter. And she felt during that time that she was lost in darkness. Not one item, not one article to which she was so accustomed, before it happened, nothing, not even her teddy bear, her lotions, her hallowed Christmas card with the snow and the message about Mr. Johnson on it, none of these things could hold her attention, to remind her that she was not lost, that she was not in the belly of hell. And she put the Bible aside and got up and went into the bathroom and turned the water on in the tub, and touched it for the correct heat, and poured the remaining liquid from the Limacol into it, and went back to her collection of bottles with pills and took up her bottle of Hennessy; for she was bright enough, was educated enough to understand the metaphor of belly, of hell, and of belly of fish; but she was determined in her torment, which at times it seemed she enjoyed if she was asked about it by Millicent, or if Mr. Johnson was alive and had asked her, that she enjoyed suffering; but still she knew that the belly was her lot. She poured a large glass that had flowers painted on to it body full of the Hennessy, and she unscrewed the cap of the bottle of pills, and held her head back just a little, and tossed in one pill, and took one mouthful, large enough to wash the pill down. She did this four times. Each toss of the head was the swallowing of two pills. She was not sure, as she did not read the label, if they were aspirins or something more potent. But there was no taste. There was no fear. There was no dread. There was, judging from her attitude, no premeditation, either. She had come from under the three thick blankets which had swallowed her in a different kind of hell and belly, renouncing all her objects in the bedroom, did not see them now, and had remained under the darkness of the blankets, covered from head to foot, with the Bible sometimes between her thighs, sometimes under her foot, and at other times under her body, as if it was a hot water bottle, as she remained buried this way; and now, she could feel the passing of time and of life, and the meaning of the Hennessy with the pills; and she got into the warm water as if she were taking a soak in the sea early in the morning when it is fresh and peaceful and has no wave or movement, dressed in her clothes which became heavy and helped the weight of the brandy to lower her down; and was convinced at the first going down that she was in the belly of a wave in the sea.