“So, what you think o’ me, after all these goddamn years? You think I change? You haven’t change much to me. Not really. A little grey, that’s all. From that day on the beach. The same cool motherfucker! Eh, Timmy? But in a way you have change. A little. But I can’t figure it out. And you walk that same street, what’s its name, at the same time every day, and you telling me you’re not going anywhere, or looking for chicks? Do you visit the girlie-shops, then? They have striptease joints here? Men our age, when we reach a certain age, and can’t get it up no more, all we do, all we can do, is look. Looking don’t cost nothing, man. And it don’t kill. Or a little watching to remind you to remember when you was a strong man and could do it. It happens to the best of us. I think this is what you do, on your walks. You can confide in me, your oldest friend, and a man on the brink of sexual disaster of being able-only to look. Looking don’t cost a penny. So, who is the Chinese chick? In your mind, or a real chick? So, where the hell you go, when you’re walking that street outside there, is your business. Just be honest, brother!”
“You used to like to talk with an English accent at Combermere School. It got worse at Harrison College. I remember your English accent. You still have a little of it.”
“You remember some real strange things!”
“I remember every thing. The day you had the cobbler in your foot, the day you lost your voice singing “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” the first time you came first, the day you made sergeant in the Cadet Corps, the day your uncle left on the ship for the States …”
“I remember your uncle’s funeral, too. I remember the inner tube floating out. I remember trying to talk like an Englishman. Chermadene. And how you got a kiss before me. I remember dropping my accent when I got to university in England. Remember the boat I leff on. You remember the boat I leff on? And the well-wishes on the Pier Head that night? The S.S. Antilles? But I dropped the accent. Now, the only accent I use and like to hear, apart from Bajan, is the way Southerners talk. I would do anything to talk like a real Southerner.”
“You sound like a black American.”
“Like an African Amurcan, that’s the new word for it. We dropped the goddamn hyphen in AfroAmurcan.”
“Why didn’t you learn French? Or German? Or even Eye-talian?”
“Was all that goddamn parlez-vous food. German? I didn’t like that language. And with the Eye-talian, I didn’t have to learn that, knowing already Latin and a little Spanish. Besides, you don’t really have to know the language, if you know the woman … if you see what I’m saying! Remember? So, where did you go to university?”
“Trinity.”
“You were so close to me, and didn’t try to track-me-down? Trinity, Dublin? What a lovely place! Chermadene went to Trinity, too. I bumped into her in France.”
“What is Chermadene doing?”
“It was a summer in France. She is who told me you were in Trinity. She went home and went into politics and law. I hear she is now the Governor General.”
“Chermadene? The girl with the two braids?”
“Her Excellency!”
“Jesus Christ! We should have married Chermadene!”
“Both o’ we? She never got married, though. But imagine, you were so close to me!”
“Trinity College, Toronto.”
“Not Dublin? Well, you can’t say you went to Trinity, if you don’t mean Trinity, Dublin! I thought you were talking about the real Trinity.”
“The real Trinity?”
“Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The real Trinity,” John says, and makes the sign of the Cross – this is the third time he has crossed himself – and he adds, anticipating that I am about to ask him why, “Something you pick up in Catholic countries, from Catholic women. I enjoyed London. How was your Trinity?”
“The only time in this country that I really enjoyed myself. Not every day. But three years outta forty-something. One-fifteenth of my life here. The only ones that I want to remember. I met the Chinese woman in those first three years, and ever since then …”
“Is she the same person in the snapshot? So, she’s still alive then? How come she looks so young, like a child? She looks like twenty-two.”
“She’s sixteen. But she has no age …”
“She can’t be! She’s a child. You’re into kiddy-porn, robbing the fucking cradle …”
“In the picture.”
“You’re still robbing the cradle.”
“To me, she is the same person in the snapshot, and in my mind.”
“Wait a cotton-picking minute! You confusing me. You are confusing someone who is dead with someone who is still living? In my profession, this is a goddamn serious thing, man. Are you sure you talking about a living person? My question about where you go, and now this Chinese girl, is the same thing, in my profession.”
“Let me tell you a story,” I say. “It was at University. In Trinity. And the college was empty, emptying-out at this time, dead at this particular time, a Friday. On Fridays, every Friday, all of us students from the West Indies and who were not born here, and who didn’t know anybody in the city, or in the University were like living deads. There was not even a person to sit down with and drink a rum. When we looked forward to the coming of Friday evenings and the stillness of Friday nights, meaning nothing more than just that, that dead peace and quiet, that deep, deep loneliness, some of us, big men, used to cry. It was another weekend filled only with studying and studies. There were no women. Women were out of the question. There were no West Indian women on the campus, and certainly no black Canadian women, so at this time on a Friday evening, panic came with dusk. There I was, far from home, when, if I was back home, at that time o’ day, I would be sitting on the beach, or going to a picnic. And perhaps … not perhaps, for-sure I would be seeing some lovely girls walking up and down the beach. My room at the college was not the same as my home back home. I would be, at that time on a Friday evening, I would be lifting a crystal glass in the short arc and space from the table to my waist, then to my head, to my mouth and lips. The college was like a graveyard on Friday evenings. And then, all of a sudden, I was resurrected one Friday night. On that night in question … as I remember it … and remembering it now, years after, is like it was last night. I find that I live the past as if it is the present. They mean the same to me. At my age, I prefer the past. So, what I’m telling you … the story I am telling you about last night is really the same story as that Friday night, years and years ago. Understand? They’re mixed into one.” John has stopped drinking, to listen. “It was like a night of pure fantasy. But a night of poetry, and a landscape which, when my eyes touched it, buried me by its prospect in the dales and hills and undulations and certain cervices and secretions of its topography. All this was secret previously and hidden against any exploring I could have made, until last night. Fantasy and poetry. But I tell you that, when I surveyed the scene, I had to get down on my knees before God and ask Him for five minutes and mercy. I told Him, ‘Lord, do not take this cup from me. Do not take it outta my hands until I have sipped the sweetness and the juices, down to the dregs …’ ”
“Dregs?” John says, his eyes riveted on the story. “God-damn!”
“It was like Sodom and Gomorrah. It was like Daniel in the lion’s den, Ananias and Saphira, Adam and Eve. And the three red apples, Macintoshes they call them here. It was like Jonah in the belly of the whale. The seas parted, like the seas that rise-up and tumbled-over the bow of Galilee that tossed my uncle overboard. Those seas of that night’s story were filled with sharks that kill, the seas that washed-him-in, big, bloated, and bulgeous …”
“Goddamn!”
“… and as I tell you this story now, I was like a child that was starved of seeing food. I was seeing food for the first time. It was like seeing the great cricketer, Sir Frank “Tai” Worrell, a member of the three fierce W’s. It was like seeing “Tai” late-cutting to backward-gulley so fine and so delicate that you almost missed the stroke an
d missed the ball if you had-looked too late. That, as you remember, is the definition and derivation of a real late-cut!”
“Goddamn!”
“Man, when I tell you that last night was like a song by Roberta Flack about the Reverend Doctor Lee, was …”
“Goddamn!”
“Reverend Doctor Lee was kneeling-down in front of the body of the sister in the church, facing that kind of temptation that only Satan could-have-contrived and created … Lang was that kind of sweet temptress!”
“Goddamn!” John says, cutting into my narrative with his exclamations of wonder, in a hissing-like sound, so that his voice would not travel to the other customers in the warm, dim, sweet-smelling bar. The bar is now filled with shopping bags and large parcels, gifts wrapped and bowed in the yuletide of the dying afternoon. All these women have those gifts lying at their feet.
“It was that kind o’ temptation that only Lucifer could confer to ole Rev-and-Doc Lee. To Reverend Doctor Lee. Words I have do not contain fullness nor nuance of meaning to clothe that experience that I experienced last night with Lang. She was beautiful last night. Although she’s dead, as I said. That landscape that I was lying-down on. With her back flat to the mattress, her two legs like two pieces of sweet sugar cane. Her bubbies, those breasts, my God! Those luscious breasts, Lord have His mercy! And sudden-so, I started to think that children and infants and babies are the luckiest sons-o’-bitches in the world, in the whole world. They can feed and suck on the nipples of breasts and bubbies, at their beck and call. Lang was shy about that. But at the first sign of a scream, babies are afforded these nice, fat, juicy bubbies in their mouths, as a natural gift of birth.”
“Goddamn!” John is twisting in his chair. I can see his sensual discomfiture in his wriggling.
“I really and truly asked God for five minutes. Out of my whole life. And then, I had to request of Him five more minutes. The cup of Lang is a gift that was placed at my lips containing too much responsibility. And a challenge. And when the second reprieve had run-out, I saw Lang strong and more beautiful. And I had to face my weakness, and my failing. I could not accommodate the burden it caused me. The burden of that fear of sterility. God, please lend me another five! It was an epic journey like in the poem Paradise Regained …
“Goddamn!” John says. “More like Pardise Lost!”
“I saw paradise last night. And I saw Paradise Lost. I had struggled to hold on to it, as it was moving away from me. Life and Lang. Moving out of reach, like a wave in the receding sea. My experience in this journey is limited. Fantasy and poetry. I had to use imagination. I bite it. I eat it. But I lost it. And then, I regained it. But Lang is stronger, so I lost it. And then, it was morning. Morning came as a relief. A night of pain from a toothache or a pain in the stomach, morning always saves you. Things look more real in daylight. And when morning broke, Jesus Christ, Paradise was Regained for the second time …”
“Goddamn!”
“I was fagged-out. The bed was soaking-wet. I had been suffering from a fever of impotent sexual journeying. An old man. The water poured off my body. The parameters, the location, the environment, the circumstance, and the atmosphere itself, the meaning of the journey undertaken on that bed remained untouched, and it passed my understanding. Lang remained untouched and unconvinced. Goddamn! Man, it was still pretty. As beautiful and new an experience as a new shilling. Fantasy and poetry.”
“Goddamn!” John says.
He says this as if he himself is going through the exertion of the narrative, as if he himself has endured the details of my journey over the landscape of the story.
“Are you dreaming this story for my benefit? Like, where are you coming from? She’s dead, man! She’s dead!”
“All during this time, I could not concentrate on anything else. It is only smells that I was smelling, scents that I was scenting, juices I was tasting, spasms I’m spas-madizing and feeling, vibrations I vibrating, vibrations, pillow, mattress and springs, the experience that I experienced last night. I remember antique furniture all of a sudden. For no reason. I remember old, expensive plate with flowers painted round the rim, in gold and blue. I remember crystal and silver and lace. I remember champagne. I remember white wine. I remember paisley. I remember silk from India or China or from worms and cotton in the island. I remember brassieres. I remember lace. I remember the leather in her boots. I remember a bath towel thick as a steak from Bigliardi’s on Church Street. I remember a white cotton dress that hangs from her body. I remember coffee from the hills of Kenya, and the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, perked and jerked. I remember the flash of a red pair of underwear that was transparent, that you could see through, delicate as the web a spider is spinning, lace that you could punch with your eyes and see through from here, all the length, all the time to the coming of an orgasm. I remember her eyes were as thin as a slit of glee pressed tight in anticipation, and full of tears. I remember the beauty of her skin. I remember a tattoo on her left bubbie, her left breast. And I remember the tattoo high on her thigh, near to her … her, and seeing that it would have to have been shaved for a tattoo to have been placed so delicately and precariously there, and I touched the tattoo and I touched there, like a man grasping the straw of his surviving rescuer. The first tattoo and the second tattoo were both of red roses with two leaves of green, each. I remember the dunlopillo, the foam-rubber mattress of her vibrating bed. I remember incense. Tisiang Tsang incense from Beijing, China. I remember hearing my name called-out in chilling, plaintive, forcing screams of someone drowning, like how my uncle was drowning, someone going-down, down, down, in a voice that hasn’t much strength left in it from the struggle of surviving, a voice not too loud, because breath and life are at a premium. I remember the depths of desperation and desolation. And the heights of righteousness. I remember, I remember, I remember.”
“Goddamn! God-damn! God-damn!”
“I remember yesterday, as clear as if it is happening now. Here. Last night is tonight. Now. But. There. Last night. It was like a trough of glory and damnation.”
“Goddamn!”
“I tell you that it was a jewel. From now-on, I may not live, may not be alive for one more day, and don’t want to be, to be able to tell my testimony of confession to anybody else but you …”
“Goddamn!”
“I was fagged-out.”
“You was fucked, brother!”
“I can’t remember when I started-out on this journey. And I can’t remember when it came to its end. I can’t remember anything more. Perhaps what I just described to you is a dream or a fantasy. Dreams and fantasy at my age are the same as fact. Something like being able to make an imagination come true, like wanting to be with the woman from China. Perhaps what I just narrated is nothing more than what my mother calls a “friction” of my imagination. I use it to light the loneliness I live with. The boredom. Nothing so good in real life has ever happened to me. Not even in a dream.”
“Ain’t no dream, brother. You was fucked!”
“It is a dream. Take it as a dream.”
“Dream, my black ass! You was fucked, brother. Goddamn!”
“It could be a dream.”
Outside, on the white street, the darkness of night is falling. The lights in the bar are now visible in the changing light. The sharp, bright, blinding reflection of the snow outside is now turned into the soft, short, glowing movement of flames from matches and cigarette lighters. Voices are soft. The sound of drinks, glass and ice and bottles placed on tables, is as decorous as white wine served in crystal and placed on a mat on a table-top, on the silent, almost noiseless linen tablecloth. A woman gives off a giggle, remembering perhaps a happy moment in the long day at the office, which has ended just a few moments ago. A man speaks in a voice as seductive as his hand which passes stealthily over the colours in her winter shawl. She removes the hand travelling like a spider. The blood-warming colours of her shawl and the comfort in the bar are disturbed, but only for a moment, when a
man and a woman enter, and the door is left open. Outside is the evening. Time has changed through the passing of hours, how many hours I do not know, and John is not interested; but it is still sharp and bright and blinding on Yonge Street, the streetlamps hit against the undying whiteness.
“This Cutty Sark ain’t doing nothing for me,” John says. “What’s the time? Why don’t we try something else?”
“Gin,” I say.
“Martinis?”
The lights make all the faces in the bar visible now. There are women who sit together in groups of three and four, taking drinks that are thick and white, and some that have slivers of fruits, cartwheels of orange and lemon and lime, and they remind me of the trials with drink at this time of year that are not resorted to when January comes, and of the avalanches of food, and the desperation of figure and form that must be squeezed into dresses of black and red and green, which had been gift-wrapped in the best intentions of gold and silver paper, now that the holidays are spent. Men, who do not have the same obsession, drink fast. They throw the other caution, si vous buvez, ne prenez pas le volant, to the cold winds. They ignore the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, and the police, disregarding in one gulp and puff the bold-typed mortal scare on two sides of their Player’s and Dunhills – Cigarettes cause cancer. La cigarette cause le cancer– and they send out clouds of smoke from their lips, and these float in the reddish, warm light while they cough. All this is taking me back to the beach, when we two men, young boys then, sat un-smoking on the sand the colour of the conch-shell, ignorant that a cigarette in French is feminine, and the cancer it causes is masculine. We sat, then, looking into those clouds above the green sea, seeing forms and imagining shapes in them that quench our anxiety for departure. Our plans were as loosely shaped as those clouds, and these puffs of cigarette smoke floating above and around us. I think of years ago, but in this country, when I was in the same shape as John with no money, and the Gas and Electricity people turned their services off; and of that one time, one week before Christmas when I had to dress in suit and long-sleeved sweater, winter coat, scarf, gloves, and Russian-bear winter hat, two pairs of ugly grey construction socks with red bands around their tops, stomping from one room to the next. I walked up and down like a soldier marching in shivering fear on a battlefield in a similar theatre of war to those that Napoleon fought in and lost. After this exhaustion, I remained colder than if I had been outside in the glistening street with vapours of clouds spewing from my mouth. In this room, in this bar, the softness of the lights and Christmas on our breaths warm me and join me again, after all these years, to that afternoon when the two of us sat on the sand and the warm sea water cleaned the grains of conch-shell sand from between our toes, and we looked at the whiter clouds playing over the green fortune-telling sea, up into the blue skies. I see things now as if for the first time. The lights come alive and I can see them now, although they have been burning the whole time.
The Origin of Waves Page 7
