The Origin of Waves

by Austin Clarke

  “Cobblers are black. The ants you kill with your Black Flag are black.”

  “Am I a racist?”

  “You’re goddamn, a goddamn lonely man.”

  “Am I?”

  “Cobblers and wood-ants are black.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. It don’t mean shit!”

  “Cobblers are black and ants are black? It must mean something in your profession.”

  “Women are more honest than men in relationships.”

  “Women are more honest in relationships?”

  “Not that I am a sex therapist. I won’t touch that with a ten-foot pole. But I happen to know a few things. I see it in them, all the time. Honesty. I’m not talking about fidelity, although you may have a point there. Women are more honest in relationships. It sounds like one of the Ten Commandments, doesn’t it?”

  “I remember once-upon-a-time, that …”

  “Not again! Goddamn!”

  “It was me. I was the person.”

  “Who was you?”

  “The man in the lobby. The man in the story. The man going-up in the elevator, and ringing the apartment bell. The man going-down in the elevator. The man is me.”

  “Who was the Indian?”

  “I remember, once-upon-a-time, when I was at the apartment, she was cooking cow-heel with curry, red kidney beans and rice, and it was strange because I had never seen anybody cook a cow-heel. And an Indian fellow was there. Her mother called him ‘Cousin Cyril,’ and then she called him ‘Cousin Cyril.’ And then the little boy, who was just learning to talk, called him ‘Douzen Cyllil.’ ”

  “There you go again, with the same cow-thing. Cow? Cow-heel? Cow-horn? Horn? Horning? Follow your instincts, man. Always try not to disbelieve your instincts because you happen to live in a so-called sophisticated society that is civilize. We are instincts-men. We live by our instincts. Cow-heel and cow-horns. Horning!”

  “Sitting down here this afternoon, or this evening, whichever it is now, reminds me when we used to sit-down on the beach after school, after elementary school, and after Combermere, and then later on, after Harrison College, and talk, in our cut-down trousers with the sandflies coming into our mouths and biting us, and we couldn’t even see them. Or watching the crabs crawling over the sand making noise and scratching little trails back into the sea, and how the sea would take them up and swallow them, and erase the trails. And in all that time, in all those times sitting on the beach, I never knew if those crabs could swim.”

  “I know you can’t. But crabs can swim.”

  “Once-upon-a-time, I was going to learn to swim. After I came here. It was a Canadian woman who was at Trinity with me who threatened to teach me to swim, in a swimming pool, in a public swimming pool, not in the sea. Or the Lake. But that was back in 1959 or 1960, when swimming pools in this city were restricted to white people, and black people couldn’t get a dip in them. Matter of fact, there is a lotta things I never had the urge to do, in this place and in this country. The man serving us, the barman, for instance. For years and years you would never see a black man as a waiter in a bar in this city, farthermore a barman, a bartender in a bar that was …”

  “The son of a bitch still don’t know Keats or Wordsworth! But he sure knows his Grecian urns!”

  “As if the colour of our skin was going to rub-off in the water and turn the water blackish. In 1959, I could not enter a public swimming pool and take a dip. A public swimming pool! They didn’t have signs saying ‘No Blacks Allowed nor Dogs’ when the woman was trying to get me to learn to swim. They were already taken down. But they used to have them. The restriction was written in actions and attitudes. In people’s minds. Once, though, a fellow from Grenada jumped in a pool, and the moment the splash settled, everybody was outta that pool. He wondered what happened. Nobody told him what happened. Not a thing. The only person who remained in the pool was his friend who had taken him to the pool in the first place, Max Goldstein. Max Goldstein didn’t tell him nothing, for years; but years later when the two of them were lawyers practising on Bay Street, which in Toronto is the same as Wall Street in the States, Max and him were having a drink in a bar much like this one, and Max said, ‘Fuck it! Something I had to tell you years ago when the two of us were in final year. Remember the pool I took you to on Eglinton Avenue West? It was the summer. In July. Fucking hot that afternoon. Remember? And you did a back-flip in the fucking pool? The next day, my father got a fucking letter from the fucking superintendent. Friend, you don’t know the time it took me to say this. You muddied their fucking pool with that back-flip! Fuck it! How many years since we were called to the bar? Five? Five and one spent in fucking Articling, two in Law School. Five and five’re ten. Plus one. Eleven. Plus two is thirteen. Thirteen fucking years it’s taken me to tell you this. To admit this fuckery! And here you are today, with your own fucking swimming pool in your backyard fucking bigger than that fucking community pool. Ain’t life a fucker?’ With me, it’s the same thing with golf and tennis. Tennis and golf, two things I distinguish a man from the West Indies by. Meaning that if they come to Trinity College, and start a lotta talk about going on the golf-links or the tennis courts, I know they’re full o’ shit! That they weren’t really black back in the West Indies! It used to be like that. Now, there is a change.”

  I sit and remember those early days and I try to forget the worst of them.

  He sits and sips his drink.

  “Your mother was a riot,” he says at last. “Your mother was something else! You ran through my gate once, in the backyard one Friday evening after school, with your legs marked-up and your shirt tear-up, after your mother had-dropped some of the stiffest licks in your ass! Remember? You wanted to be like one o’ those boys who were lay-by early from school, at two in the afternoon instead of three when school normally lay-by, so they could go down to the Garrison Savannah Tennis Club and feel tennis balls. Remember? Perhaps that is why you don’t like tennis. And after you left the island, and was here studying, it took a man like the Great Dipper Barrow, Errol Walton Barrow, when he became the first Prime Minister, that the first official thing he did was to check some musty files in the old Colonial Secretary’s office, the Col-Sec office, and find out that the Garrison Savannah Tennis Club was a public facility, just like the public swimming pool you was talking about. The Savannah was renting the premises from the Guvvament for one dollar a year. One dollar! Goddamn! And your mother, just like my Old Lady, was a woman uneducated in a formal sense, but really educated better than us, in the real sense. My Old Lady …” He takes a large white handkerchief, folded into quarters, from the top pocket in his jacket, lets it fall to its full size, and wipes his eyes. When he takes the handkerchief opened with a slight fling of his hand, from his face, I can see that his eyes are filled with tears. “I didn’t see her being lowered in the goddamn grave. I did not get the message in time to lift her goddamn head. My goddamn Old Lady, a queen!”

  I keep my martini glass in my hand, without tasting the powerful, clear liquid in it, while he allows the tears to come into his eyes and fall into his glass and fall on his expensive custom-made suit. Some men close to us watch, and hold their heads down, sensing the moment of passion, knowing of some powerful emotion in their own lives, which was so full and uncontrollable that they themselves had done this same thing in public. But shedding tears in a bar? And a man doing it? And not even sitting beside a woman, to make this expression more understandable, or rationalizing? Or as a camouflage?

  “Only once before this, only once, have I done this in public. Cried like a goddamn baby. Couldn’t help myself. Years ago. At a funeral. At Gloria’s funeral. Gloria was a woman from Barbados who for some reason found herself in France when I was still married to Hyacinthe, my parlez-vous wife, and was a gradual-student. Met her at a Wessindian club where they played calypsos that were bad and old by the time they reached Paris-France. Looked good, too! Gloria was a big woman, with big eyes, with big
legs, with big hips, with big bubbies, with a goddamn big heart. Had a man. Not a very good man. Would invite me and some other students to her apartment for real down-home cooking. Her favourite was cou-cou and tin-salmon, canned salmon. And coconut bread. You know, I would go to her apartment by bus and train, all hours of the night and in all kinds o’ weather, and sometimes there would be the two of us. Just Gloria and me. And as I said, this woman with big hips and big bubbies and big eyes and lips was looking so good! And it never crossed my mind to axe her for a piece, although I knew that she woulda give me a piece, if I had-just axed, in the right way. With me and Gloria it was just a matter of companionship …”

  “The companionship you were telling me to have with a woman?”

  “That kind o’ companionship.”

  “To me, that kind of companionship is reserved for a man and a woman who are old, and who have retired from fooping, so they hold hands in front of the television and chew their gums, or play patience. It is an honourable estate.”

  “But guess what happened?”

  “Companionship, for me, is just before you die, and having a woman to check …”

  “And later on, after years and years, guess what happened?”

  “She offered you a piece!”

  “It was one summer afternoon, and me and some other Wessindians was in her backyard, and we were playing dominoes and really having a good time now that summer was here at last, reminding us of back home, and drinking some rum that her mother had-send from Barbados. And the conversation turned to family and relatives and family trees; and how, back home, a man could be your family and drop dead and you would never know it until after he is six-feet-deep, dead as shite, because the place, the whole o’ Barbados, is so incestuous and close-mouth about it. And Gloria start tracking-back her family, second-cousins to third-cousins and fourth-cousins, back back back, ripping-off the bark from the family tree, and Jesus Christ! Me and Gloria was related! Me and Gloria was first-cousins! Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that if I had-axed Gloria for a piece that evening when I was in her apartment, what I woulda done? Just me and her. After eating and after I had doze-off and slept most of the night, I wake up the next morning and see Gloria there on the floor sleeping in a nightgown. I could see-through the nightgown that had a tear in it. Transparent as if she had just come-outta the sea. I was sleeping on her couch. ‘Man, you does-snore like a blasted horse! Two horses!’ is what Gloria tell me when she wake up. And she made breakfast. Three fried eggs each, six pieces o’ bacon, toast, two thick slices o’ coconut bread, and some of the roast-pork from the night before. The bacon was fried too hard, though. It was burnt. And as we’re eating and talking and joking, and Gloria is sitting in front of me in her see-through nightgown … it was pink. Gloria liked pink. Anything pink. There’s Gloria, sitting in front o’ me in her nightgown, and one bubbie, her left breast, drooping-over the top. And I sitting down and watching that bubbie making little jumps whenever she move her arm to reach over for another strip o’ over-fried bacon; or use a knife to cut-off a slice o’ coconut bread. And I see that nipple get a little more black and start to look funny like how pores does-get bigger, and as if the pores where the milk comes out, or used to come out, for Gloria at this time was a woman who-stopped having thrildren … her two thrildren were already grown men … that bubbie start to get a little stiff. And the black circle round it get blacker. And I could almost see the blood pumping into the veins in her bubbie. And all I did was to continue sitting and eating the three fried eggs and the eight pieces o’ dried bacon. I had two of hers. And then, the moment she got up and went in the bathroom, the man who was her boyfriend arrive. And the three o’ we played dominoes again, till past midnight. But suppose I had-axe Gloria for a piece? And you know something? I was much younger then, in my early-twenties, or late-twenties. I could not tell you, in sexual terms, what the thing with the pores in her bubbie was telling me! I did not know the meaning of it.”

  “What meaning? The nipples or the black circles round the bubbies?”

  “The flesh was willing, man! The flesh was willing! But I did not have that knowledge.”

  “The spirit was willing.”

  “But the flesh was weak. Now, on another Saturday, she had-just called me, to invite me up to her new condominium, ’cause she had-made a hit offa a lottery ticket. Millions o’ francs she win, and had-bought this condominium in the suburbs just outside o’ Paris. Me and Hyacinthe was still living in a room in Paris. Gloria always said, ‘Tummuch blasted Wessindians living now in Paris, and they malicious as shite and I don’t want none o’ those bastards to know my business!’ So she moved to the suburbs just outside Paris, a lovely place with all the modern conveniencies, balcony, and a spare room for guesses, in a three-bedroom condominium. So she called me to invite me up to christen the place, ’cause she was cooking cou-cou and canned salmon the day. She called me at three o’clock the afternoon. The cou-cou was to be ready for five o’clock. I was still in my one-room apartment trying to do some work, with Hyacinthe in my ass, ‘Beaucoup years you graduate? I wait longtemps for you to graduate, oui?’ when the telephone rang. ‘Gloria dead,’ the voice say. Gloria dead? ‘She dead. She just dead.’ ”

  He takes his handkerchief from his jacket pocket a second time. This time, there are no tears. He sticks the handkerchief, after folding it back into quarters, into his pocket again, leaving its four corners like church spires in full view in the pocket. “Gloria dead. The day after. I found out. She was turning the meal-corn to make the cou-cou when she dropped-fucking-dead! Don’t you think that is a goddamn shame, a goddamn loss, a goddamn shock? So, now, I am at the funeral. At the service. In one of the biggest churches in Paris; and all the years that I know Gloria, I never heard Gloria talk nothing ’bout going to church, or talk nothing about church, although she knew every hymn in Hymns Ancient & Modern, by heart. And another thing I find out about Gloria, after she dead. Gloria had-paid for her grave and a tombstone five years before she really died. The things you learn afterwards about a person, no matter how close you is to that person in the flesh. But when the person dead, all these things you learn about the person, for the first time. Gloria had-buy a plot to bury herself in. Five years before! And whilst we would be slamming the doms on a Friday night, right into Saturday evening, we would be singing hymns, especially if a fellow or a girl was about to get beaten six-love; and it would be Gloria who knew the words, and the number of the hymn in the hymnbook. Gloria would sing the first four words in ‘The Day Thou Gavest,’ and that meant that somebody was in danger of getting a six-love in their ass …” And we laugh. We can see the barman pouring a little extra gin in our martinis, and heading in our direction. And John, in a soft voice, still retaining a touch of the timbre and a trace of his training as a chorister in the Cathedral Church, begins to sing the hymn which to us back in the island is the hymn sung always at funerals … “The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended; The darkness falls at Thy behest; To Thee our morning hymns ascended, Their praise shall sanctify our rest.”

  “Hymn four-seventy-seven,” I tell him.

  “How many times you and me sang this hymn? In school, when there was nobody dead? In the choir at funerals, when we got two shillings for singing? At Services-of-Songs, when fishermen gather inside a rum-shop, or in somebody’s front-house? On a Sunday? We sang almost every hymn in the hymnbook. And at the first sign o’ trouble, my Old Lady and yours always sing this hymn … The day Thou gavest, Lord …”

  “How many hymns are in the hymnbook? You ever counted them? How many you know?”

  “Seven, eight hundred? And I’m not gonna axe the goddamn barman this time, neither!”

  And we laugh. And the barman is coming in our direction, to our table, as if he is reading our minds or hearing our conversation from behind the bar, bearing on his tray a jug of martini. And we laugh, and he laughs and says, “You two on vacation?” and we say nothing, but continue laughing, and he pours the clear, power
ful liquid into two new, large, chilled martini glasses, through a strainer, places very delicately two green, juicy olives on a stick with the emblem of the bar on them into each glass, wipes the rings from the oval, black, shiny table, and is leaving when John says, “You a Baptiss?”

  “Nope.” he says. I detect an accent.

  “Catholic?” John asks.

  “Do I look like one?”

  “Church of England!” I say.

  “I am a Protestant. Guess that makes me something like Church-of-Fengland, too! I’ll buy that!”

  “Would you by chance happen to know how many hymns there are in the hymnbook that the Anglicans use, or the Protestants? The book called Hymns Ancient & Modern?”