The Origin of Waves

by Austin Clarke

  “Outta the fucking bed, like a motherfucker, flat on my arse – as you would say.”

  “You coulda-kill yourself.”

  “The noise woke-me-up.”

  “You take a serious fall, brother! Klein had such a fall offa the ladder.”

  “The first thing I did was to feel my head. And then my forehead, to see if I had-really fallen and hurt myself, or if I was still in the dream, and …”

  “You had-fall, brother. You had-taken a fall, running away from the horns and the horn-ing, brother! Goddamn!”

  “… and when I touched my forehead I realized I was cut, and the blood was spurting outta my forehead.”

  “Blood?”

  “Blood. And when I realize that I was cut, I get-back-into the bed, and fall again, a second time, now that I was awake. To see if I had-made a noise enough to wake up the neighbours on the left.”

  “What kind of a bed you coulda’ve fallen-out of? A bed has a certain height. So what kind of bed you screws on?”

  “This is no laughing matter. I fell outta the blasted bed, and cut my forehead. Look! Right there. Just above my eyebrows, on the left, you can still see something like a bruise. The scar it left may be the same colour as my skin.”

  “Goddamn! You really fall!”

  “But I didn’t have the nerve to get-back-into the bed, and fall for real, just to test the noise I had-made when I fell in the dream. Ever since that night, I have been trying to find the meaning to this fall.”

  “You need not look any further. You know the meaning. I told it to you.”

  “And another thing. In the dream, I never found the group I was with. I never found the woman. I didn’t go for Chinese food. So, I put some Limacol on my forehead, to stop the bleeding, and …”

  “I gave you the meaning. I do this kind o’ thing all the time, in my profession. There is only two factors you should be interested in. Number one, horn, or horning. Number two, the number of men. Namely three. You was being horned by three men, brother! It happens. It happens to the best of us! We are men, who think we’re motherfuckers. It is usually we-kind o’ men who gets horned most often. And not only by three men! We gets horned and horned and horned and horned. Take your licks. Take your medicine, brother. Join the fucking club! But you got me interested that a man your age is still carry-on with this business. What kind o’ women you like?”

  “What kind o’ question is that?”

  “There you go! I axe you a simple question, what kind o’ women do you like to foop. And you answer my question with another question. That’s a sure sign! The question frightens you. And your answer frightens you even more, because you can’t lie, and you have to confess it. That’s a sure sign. What kind o’ women you like? If you’re uncomfortable, you don’t have to answer, so I can axe the question another way. Do you like women who are short? Do you like women who are fat? Who are tall? Who have big bubbies? Who have little bubbies? Whose chests are flat? Athletic women? Middle-age women? Rich women? Poor women? Independent-minded women? European women? African women? Wessindian women? White women? Black women? Blue women? Red women? Brown women? Two-tone women? Outta that list, pick out one! Is a simple question. What kind o’ woman do you like?”

  “What kind o’ question is that?”

  “A simple question.”

  “You’re trying to analyze me.”

  “Okay. Short women?”

  “No.”

  “Fat?”

  “No.”

  “Tall?”

  “No.”

  “With big, nice breasts?”

  “No.”

  “Small breasts?”

  “No.”

  “Women with flat chests?”

  “No.”

  “Jesus Christ! What kind o’ woman do you like, then? Goddamn! Do you like women, at all?”

  “Not the ones you listed.”

  “Okay, you tell me, then. Athletic women? Women who wear jogging suits and those tight-fitting black outfits that runners wear, cyclist’s pants?”

  “No.”

  “Middle-age women?”

  “Are you analyzing me?”

  “I’m axe-ing you a goddamn simple question, brother. Like, what kind o’ woman do you like to screw? Men do it. Women, too. A simple question. A question that was first axed in the Garden o’ Eden. A question put to that stupid bastard, Adam, when Adam couldn’t make up his goddamn mind to take a piece offa Eve, or take a bite outta the apple, speaking metaphorically, of course! If the Bible could talk about fooping, and try to hide it from people, but not from me, a big able man like me, and still think I am going to believe all that shit about an apple, when I know full-well that the reference is to pussy, plain and simple …”

  “No!”

  “You don’t have to shout.”

  “No.” I say this more softly, after I see a woman raise her eyes.

  “So, you don’t like middle-age women! What about rich women, women with bread?”

  “Too high a price to pay.”

  “Poor women?”

  “No.”

  “Independent-minded women?”

  “Too independent.”

  “Are you a chauvinist?”

  “Just a man who is looking for the right woman. No.”

  “What about a nice European woman?”

  “Makes no difference to me.”

  “I could put you on to one o’ my ex-wives.”

  “No parlez-vous women, please!”

  “African?”

  “Never met one.”

  “Never met one? Or never had one? You should try going-back-home, brother! Try-out your roots, if you see what I’m saying.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not talking about African Canadians or African Americans. I mean the real African woman. The real McCoy!”

  “Six o’ one and half-dozen of the other!”

  “You’re in deep trouble, brother. In deep shit! Try the Wessindian woman, then.”

  “No. No no no no no!”

  “Five-times, no?”

  “No.”

  “White women?”

  “Makes no difference to me.”

  “Black women?”

  “Makes no difference to me.”

  “But these things have to make a difference to a man. These things are important. Particularly as you live abroad, in a foreign country.”

  “Makes no fucking difference to me!”

  “With pun intended, or not intended?”

  “Pun, or no fucking pun, makes no difference to me. And you’re getting me vexed, now.”

  “Blue women?”

  “You mean women who have the blues? A woman who is depressed all the time, or a woman who is not happy, a woman … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be …”

  “Evasive. You’re goddamn evasive. By the manner of your saying all these no’s, I already got your answer, you bastard! This happens as the result of living alone, or by yourself, all these years. So, there’s no point axe-ing you about a red woman, or a brown woman. You don’t seem to like women.”

  “I don’t like men, either.”

  “You are laying-down in bed one o’ these nights, especially late at night, like round two o’clock in the morning. And you wish you had someone beside you. Someone, anyone, beside you. And you push-out your hand, outta custom, to touch that body, that lovely warm body. Because you must have had a body beside you once. So, you had a body beside you once, and you miss that body, miss the warmth if nothing else, just keeping you warm in these blasted North Amurcan winters that are so cold. And you wish-back to when you were younger. Thirty-five, thirty-nine, or even forty-nine perhaps. And you wish your life had-taken another path and you have a woman beside you; and having reach your age, fifty, sixty, seventy? You wish you were still young, a younger man with more punch, vim and vigour, and that you could handle something round twenty-one years of age, and even check out certain things that they say make a man young? When I say young, I don’t
mean age. I mean vim-and-vigour. Don’t you have any o’ these fantasies? Or wishes or dreams that don’t involve falling and that contain horns and cows? Don’t you ever dream of pussy? What you had? What you didn’t had? Missed-opportunities? Put on your three-piece suit. Leave your wood-ants behind, and walk-out into the sunlight, brother! Walkout into your favourite Yonge Street sunlight from the Lake right-back-up to your house. And as you walk, admire the chicks! Don’t cost nothing. Don’t cause nothing, either! And it’s more better than playing with yourself. But you won’t do this. So, you would put on your three-piece suit and leave the goddamn wood-ants and walk the streets from the Lake right-back-up to your house, and do nothing else?”

  “What is interesting about this conversation …”

  “You’re talking like an essay, an academic paper, not like a man!”

  “What is so interesting about this conversation, do you realize why this conversation is so interesting? I think that you and me are trying to answer questions which we would have asked each other if we had both remained in the same place. And if we had-lived in the same place, and seeing each other every day, some o’ these questions we are now asking, we would know without asking them. It is like living alone, as you said. I don’t mean not having a woman, or having a family. I mean living alone without anything like an anchor to tie-you-down, or anchor-you-back to your real first living. With no friends you grew up with, only strangers, people you meet after you come here, strangers who, because of something in this place and in this time, turn into friends. But not the real friends you grew up with, in the island.”

  “You’re talking like a goddamn textbook!”

  “You are asking a lotta questions, but they are questions I can’t answer. There are questions that can only be answered in an island. Or like Klein, questions that can be answered only in a room with books. They are questions I already answer when I am sitting down in a chair, and, as you said, putting people, real people from my imagination, in the other chairs in the same room, and talking to them like Klein talks to his books. This is not the same thing as talking to yourself. But in a way, it is the same thing. Certainly, it is safer. I have asked myself all these questions already that you are asking me now. And when I ask myself these questions, I can give any answer I wish, because nobody can hear my answers, or question me about my answers, or laugh at my answers, or disagree with them. I know what it means not to have somebody to talk with, or somebody to lie down beside; and I know what it is to be always walking the street out there on Yonge, and to see people and things and have to ask yourself the question, and have to answer-back yourself. As the song says, about walking along lonely streets, watching people passing by and not seeing you, even though you raise a gesturing hand; but nothing happens. This happens to old people when they get old in a city that is young like this city. And suppose I ask the wrong question? Suppose I ask the right question? Suppose the wrong woman smiled? You give yourself the wrong answer. If you and me had-come to this country together, all these questions you’re asking me, you wouldn’t have to ask me. You would know the answers. And I would know the answers. It is the time that separates me and you, that has us now, in this concentrated time, pressed against the two walls of our experience.”

  “What kind o’ shite are you talking to me? What kind o’ textbook bullshit is this? What kind o’ bed was it, if I might axe you a normal question? What kind o’ bed it was?”

  “It is like a big piece of something, guts or spirit, is taken out of my body, something like a heart, my heart. But the only difference is that if it is a piece, even just a little piece of my heart, I wouldn’t be here with you now, in this bar talking this way. The bed you asked me about?”

  “What kind o’ bed you goddamn fall-out-of?”

  “Just a bed. An ordinary bed. You could buy one at any store. But my bed has an iron spring. I had a friend once, a woman, who had to move in a hurry. One Friday night, she had planned to slip through the second-floor window with her bags, before the landlord came home, and jump onto the roof of the garage, and then onto the ground to escape, without paying the rent; and as the iron bedstead with the iron springs couldn’t fit into her bags or through the window, she left it for me to keep for her, until she found a place, or found the rent. She hasn’t told me if she found a place so far; so I’m still keeping it for her. I sleep on an iron bedstead owned by an escaped tenant, you might call it that. So, with a normal mattress and a normal box spring, plus the iron bedstead, I now have a bed that is abnormally high, that reaches me almost to my hips, or my waist …”

  “How tall are you, now?”

  “Five-eleven and a half. Or six.”

  “Then the bed is three, three-and-a-half, four!”

  “So, until I can give-her-back the iron bedstead with the iron springs, I have to keep it and sleep in it, even if I fall out of it again, as it is so high off the floor. But I am telling you about a need. That is what I am really telling you. About a need. I have a need. But I don’t really know what the need is.”

  “You don’t have no goddamn need! What need? All you need is a woman. A woman to give you a good, regular foop, even if it is only once a month! Even if you can’t really foop, or foop-her-back! Goddamn, it’s my profession to know these things and deal with these things, and tell people the plain truth about these things. And you’re talking like a goddamn North Amurcan, with your goddamn needs. You are not talking like a Wessindian. Your needs, goddammit? You ain’t have no needs, no more needs than the next person, than any one o’ these bastards in this bar with us, no more than anybody else! Need is not your problem. Your goddamn problem is sexual deprivation, or sexual loneliness, if you see what I’m saying. And in your case, I will break my cardinal rule when I am giving people advice and therapy and professional advice, and say this. I will break all my rules, and say to you: a man suffering from sexual and sociological loneliness … that in your case … your problem is not a simple case of just needing a woman. Listen to my words. All. You. Need. Is. Companionship. Since you have no sexual drive, and you can’t foop. You understand me? All. You. Goddamn need. Is. Female companionship. A foopless relationship. One that don’t include sex. But have you ever thought of a dog? Or a cat? Or a durabel? You know what those are? You sure-as-hell can’t call wood-ants companions, or pets! You don’t kill pets with cans o’ Black Flag! So, it makes more sense to me for you to talk to a goddamn dog, and I hate the bastards, than to be killing ants whiching you can’t talk to. And then to start dreaming and falling-out of a goddamn bed that you’re keeping for some hippie-woman who skipped town without paying her rent! Did you have an affair with this woman? In my professional opinion, you did. At least, could. Hence the dream with the horns and horning in it; and then falling-out of the goddamn bed owned by this woman. I am laughing. I can’t help laughing. You never looked at it that way?”

  “Once upon a time, there was a fellow I know, from Barbados; and this fellow had this woman, and he used to work in the States, and he would come home every-other Friday night by plane, from New York to Toronto International, and go straight from the airport down into the suburbs where the woman lived, up in Scarborough; and he would tell the woman when he was coming because he didn’t want to have to pay all that money, travelling back and forth, and arrive and find out that she had gone out to a bingo game, or to a West Indian club like Cutty’s Hideaway where they dance to calypso and reggae, and spend his money on plane fare for nothing, even though Cutty’s Hideaway on Danforth Avenue is not so far from her place in Scarborough. So, he made it his practice to call her the day before he was to leave La Guardia and tell her the time his plane was arriving in Toronto; but he wasn’t really putting her on her guard, or in case, or leaving himself open for a disappointment, because she lived with her mother, and she had a small son, who …”

  “For him?”

  “What you mean?”

  “Did she have the goddamn child for the Barbadian man you’re telling about?”
>
  “No. Well, yes. No, and yes. She said the boy was his, but he didn’t think it was his, after he added up the days and the nights and the times, and when she became pregnant and told him she was carrying the child. But he liked the boy, and supported him. He always brought a gift for her and the boy, chocolates, a stuffed animal, a ladies’ nail-file case and a bottle of brandy for the grandmother. So, on this particular night, it was minus thirty-five, and he arrived with his bags, three bags, even though he was only spending two nights out of the weekend, a leather briefcase, a leather suit-bag, and a leather duffel-type …”

  “He liked leather!”

  “… and he remembered putting the bags in the trunk of the taxi and when he took them out to carry them into the lobby of the apartment, they were so much heavier; but he remembered putting the bags down in the lobby of the apartment building, in the small lobby you come to just before you actually enter the building itself. He rang the buzzer on the panel just above a radiator, because they had radiators in those days, and he rings and rings and no answer, and he rings again, but the plane had-arrived at nine-thirty from La Guardia, earlier than it was due to arrive, and it took him a half-hour to come from the airport to Scarborough in all that snow, to the apartment in the taxi, so he rang but he didn’t think anything of it. But he still rang the buzzer again, and all the time he is ringing the buzzer he is trying to remember if he is ringing the right number, because she had called him to say she was moving to a larger apartment in the same building, and he is wondering if the number he is ringing is the right number, not only to the apartment, but if he is at the right apartment building. So he takes up his three bags, getting heavier now through his disappointment and the cold in the outer lobby, and holding them and slipping on the ice and getting his trousers covered in the deep snow. He went to a pay-phone and checked the number and the address. He was ringing the right buzzer. So, he comes back to the lobby, and rang the number some more, but still there was no answer – this is after he had-tried the number on the telephone. All this time, in and out, are people coming and going. One time he sees the same three people. Two women and a man, who had come out and passed him hours ago, going back in, and he is still there ringing the buzzer, in the lobby, wearing a black winter coat, a three-piece suit, boots, and scarf, ringing the goddamn buzzer, as you would say. And then an idea strikes him. Supposing, he says to himself, she isn’t home? Supposing she has moved? People, especially West Indians, can pick themselves up and move suddenly, for no reason. Supposing she is in Guyana, and he has not remembered that she called him and told him she was going to Guyana to visit her sisters and her aunt. ’Cause remember, her mother lives with her and her son, in the apartment. And she may need a vacation. And this fellow with the three heavy bags is supposing and supposing and supposing. But his mind would not let him start supposing the obvious thing. His mind is only coming so close to it, and then shying away from the real supposing. So he hit on an idea. Another idea. He studied the panel of buzzers, checking the names he does not know, even including hers. She never put her real name on the panel. He checks the panel of buzzers with the names beside them, looking for the number to the superintendent’s apartment. When he rings the buzzer to the superintendent’s apartment, a recording comes on. ‘The superintendent of this building is on duty between the hours of seven and ten on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. On Fridays, the superintendent is off-duty at eight. For emergencies, call the police.’ It is midnight, or later. The superintendent is off-duty, and the man is standing-up in the outer lobby where there is no heat, tired as a horse, with his ears plugged-up from the flying, and ringing the buzzer and the woman won’t answer …”