by Zadie Smith
In the silence that followed this rhetorical question, Monty sighed again.
‘And so this girl comes to me – into my house, this morning, without warning – to ask me to recommend to the board that she be kept in a class that she is illegally attending. She thinks because she is in my church, because she has helped with our charity work, that I will bend the rules for her. Because I am, as they say here, her “brother”? I told her I was unwilling to do that. And we see the result. A tantrum!’
‘Ah . . .’ said Kiki, and folded her arms. ‘Now, I know about this. If I’m not mistaken, my daughter’s fighting in the opposite corner.’
Monty smiled. ‘So she is. She gave an extremely impressive speech. I fear she might give me a run for my money.’
‘Oh, honey,’ said Kiki, shaking her head the way people do in church, ‘I know she will.’
Monty nodded graciously.
‘But what about your pie?’ he asked, affecting a heartbroken face. ‘I suppose this means the houses of Kipps and Belsey are once again at war.’
‘No . . . I don’t see why that should be so. All’s fair in love and . . . and academia.’
Monty smiled again. He checked his watch and rubbed a hand over his belly. ‘But unfortunately it is time, not ideology, that comes in the way of your pie and me. I must get to college. I wish we could spend the morning eating it. It was truly thoughtful of you to bring it.’
‘Oh, another time. But are you walking into town?’
‘Yes, I always walk. Are you going that way?’ Kiki nodded. ‘In which case, let us perambulate together,’ he said rolling his r magnificently. He put both hands on his knees and stood up, and, as he did, Kiki noticed the blank wall behind him.
‘Oh!’
Monty looked up at her inquiringly.
‘No, it’s just – the painting – wasn’t there a painting there? Of a woman?’
Monty turned to look at the blank space. ‘As a matter of fact there was – how did you know that?’
‘Oh, well – I spent some time with Carlene in here and she spoke about that painting. She told me how much she loved it. The woman was a goddess of some kind, wasn’t she? Like a symbol. She was so beautiful.’
‘Well,’ said Monty, turning back to face Kiki, ‘I can assure you she is still beautiful – she has simply moved location. I decided to hang her in the Black Studies Department, in my office. It’s . . . well, she’s good company,’ he said sadly. He held his forehead for a moment in his hand. Then he crossed the room and opened the door to let Kiki out.
‘You must miss your wife so much,’ said Kiki zealously. She would have been shocked to be accused of emotional vampirism here, for she meant only to show this bereaved man that she empathized, but, either way, Monty did not oblige her. He said nothing and passed Kiki her overcoat.
They left the house. Together they walked along the thin strip of sidewalk the neighbourhood’s snow shovels had collectively unearthed.
‘You know . . . I was interested in what you were saying, back there, about it being a “demoralizing philosophy”,’ said Kiki, and at the same time carefully scanned the ground before her for any black ice. ‘I mean, I certainly wasn’t done any favours in my life – nor was my mother, nor was her mother . . . and nor were my children . . . I always gave them the opposite idea, you know? Like my mamma said to me: You gotta work five times as hard as the white girl sitting next to you. And that was sure as hell true. But I feel torn . . . because I’ve always been a supporter of affirmative action, even if I personally felt uncomfortable about it sometimes – I mean, obviously my husband has been heavily involved in it. But I was interested in the way you expressed that. It makes you think about it again.’
‘Opportunity,’ announced Monty, ‘is a right – but it is not a gift. Rights are earned. And opportunity must come through the proper channels. Otherwise the system is radically devalued.’
A tree in front of them shuddered a shelf of snow from its branches on to the street. Monty held a protective arm out to stop Kiki passing. He pointed to a runnel between two ice banks, and they walked along this into the open road, only rejoining the sidewalk at the fire station.
‘But,’ protested Kiki, ‘isn’t the whole point that here, in America – I mean I accept the situation is different in Europe – but here, in this country, that our opportunities have been severely retarded, backed up or however you want to put it, by a legacy of stolen rights – and to put that right, some allowances, concessions and support are what’s needed? It’s a matter of redressing the balance – because we all know it’s been unbalanced a damn long time. In my mamma’s neighbourhood, you could still see a segregated bus in 1973. And that’s true. This stuff is close. It’s recent.’
‘As long as we encourage a culture of victimhood,’ said Monty, with the rhythmic smoothness of self-quotation, ‘we will continue to raise victims. And so the cycle of underachievement continues.’
‘Well,’ said Kiki, holding on to a fence-post so she could hop heavily over a big puddle, ‘I don’t know . . . I just think it stinks of a kind of, well, a kind of self-hatred when we’ve got black folks arguing against opportunities for black folks. I mean – we don’t need to be arguing among ourselves at this point. There’s a war on! We got black kids dying on the front line on the other side of the world, and they’re in that army ’cos they think college has got nothing to offer them. I mean, that’s the reality here.’
Monty shook his head and smiled. ‘Mrs Belsey – are you informing me that I am to let unqualified students into my classes to prevent them from joining the United States Army?’
‘Call me Kiki – well, OK, maybe that’s not the argument I want to pursue – but this self-hatred. When I look at Condoleezza, and Co-lin – God! I want to be sick – I see this rabid need to separate themselves away from the rest of us – it’s like “We got the opportunity and now the quota’s full and thank you very much, adios.” It’s that right-wing black self-hatred – I’m sorry if I offend you by saying that, but I mean . . . isn’t that a part of it? I’m not even talking politics now, I’m talking about a kind of, of, of psychology.’
They had reached the top of Wellington Hill and now heard the various church bells ring in the midday. Laid out beneath them, tucked up in its bed of snow, was one of the most peaceful, affluent, well-educated and pretty towns in America.
‘Kiki, if there’s one thing I understand about you liberals, it’s how much you like to be told a fairytale. You complain about creation myths – but you have a dozen of your own. Liberals never believe that conservatives are motivated by moral convictions as profoundly held as those you liberals profess yourselves to hold. You choose to believe that conservatives are motivated by a deep self-hatred, by some form of . . . psychological flaw. But, my dear, that’s the most comforting fairytale of them all!’
9
Zora Belsey’s real talent was not for poetry but persistence. She could dispatch three letters in an afternoon, all to the same recipient. She was the master of redial. She compiled petitions and issued ultimatums. When the city of Wellington served Zora with (in her opinion) an undeserved parking ticket, it was not Zora but the city – five months and thirty phone calls later – which backed down.
In cyberspace, Zora’s powers of perseverance found their truest expression. Two weeks had passed since the faculty meeting, and in that time Claire Malcolm had received thirty-three – no, thirty-four – e-mails from Zora Belsey. Claire knew this because she had just got Liddy Cantalino to print them all out. Now she shuffled them into a neat pile on her desk and waited. At exactly two o’clock, there came a knock on her door.
‘Come in!’
Erskine’s long umbrella entered the room and rapped twice upon the floor. Erskine followed, in a blue shirt paired with a green jacket, the combination of which did strange things to Claire’s vision.
‘Hi, Ersk – thanks so much for coming. I know this is not your problem at all. But I really appreciate
your input.’
‘At your service,’ said Erskine, and bowed.
Claire threaded her fingers together. ‘Basically, I just need back-up – I’m being lobbied by Zora Belsey to help this kid stay in class, and I’m willing to lend my voice, but ultimately I’m powerless here, really – but she simply won’t take my word for it.’
‘Are these they?’ asked Erskine, reaching for the printouts on the desk and then sitting down. ‘The collected letters of Zora Belsey.’
‘She’s driving me crazy. She’s totally obsessed with this issue – and, I mean, I’m behind her. Imagine what it would be like to be against her.’
‘Imagine,’ said Erskine. He took his reading glasses from his top pocket.
‘She’s got this enormous petition going that the students are signing – she wants me to overturn the rules of this university overnight – but I can’t create a place for this kid at Wellington! I really enjoy having him in my class, but if Kipps gets the board to rule against discretionaries, what can I do? My hands are tied. And I just feel like I never stop working at the moment – I’ve got unmarked papers coming out of my ears, I owe my publishers three different books now – I’m conducting my marriage through e-mail, I just –’
‘Shhhh, shhhh,’ said Erskine and laid his hand over Claire’s. His skin was very dry and puffy and warm. ‘Claire – leave it with me, will you please? I know Zora Belsey well – I have known her since she was a small girl. She loves to make a fuss, but she is rarely very attached to the fuss she makes. I will deal with this.’
‘Would you? You’re a darling! I’m just so exhausted.’
‘I must say, I do rather like these subject titles she uses,’ said Erskine whimsically. ‘Very dramatic. Re: Forty Acres and a Mule. Re: Fighting for the Right to Participate. Re: Can Our Colleges Purchase Talent? Well: is the young man very talented?’
Claire scrunched up her little freckled nose. ‘Well, yes. I mean – he’s completely untutored, but – no, yes, he is. He’s extremely charismatic, very good-looking. Very good-looking. Carl’s a rapper, really – he’s a very good rapper – and he is talented – he’s enthusiastic. He’s great to teach. Erskine, please – is there anything you can do here? Something you can find this kid to do on campus?’
‘I have it. Let’s give him tenure!’
They both laughed, but Claire’s laugh slid to a whimper. She propped her elbow on the desk and rested her face in her hand.
‘I just don’t want to kick him back out on to the street. I really don’t. We both know the likelihood is that next month the board is going to vote against discretionaries and then he’ll be out on his ass. But if he had something else to do that . . . I know I probably should never have accepted him into the class in the first place, but now I’ve made this undertaking and I’m feeling like I’ve bitten off more . . .’ Claire’s phone started to ring. She held up her index finger in front of her face and took the call.
‘Can I . . . ?’ mouthed Erskine, standing and holding the printouts up in the air. Claire nodded. Erskine waved goodbye with his umbrella.
Erskine’s great talent – aside from his encyclopedic knowledge of African literature – lay in making people feel far more important than they actually were. He had many techniques. You might receive an urgent message from Erskine’s secretary on your voicemail, which arrived simultaneously with an e-mail and a handwritten note in your college box. He might take you aside at a party and share with you an intimate story from his childhood that, as a recently arrived female graduate from UCLA, you could not know had already been intimately shared with every other female student in the department. He was skilled in the diverse arts of false flattery, empty deference and the appearance of respectful attention. It might seem, when Erskine praised you or did you a professional favour, that it was you who were benefiting. And you might indeed benefit. But, in almost every case, Erskine was benefiting more. Putting you forward for the great honour of speaking at the Baltimore conference simply saved Erskine from having to attend the Baltimore conference. Mentioning your name in connection with the editorship of the anthology meant that Erskine himself was free of one more promise he had made to his publisher, which, due to other commitments, he was unable to fulfil. But where is the harm in this? You are happy and Erskine is happy! Thus did Erskine run his academic life at Wellington. Occasionally, however, Erskine came across difficult souls whom he could not make happy. Mere praise did not pacify their tempers or ease their dislike and suspicion of him. In these cases, Erskine had an ace up his sleeve. When someone was determined to destroy his peace and well-being, when they refused to either like him or to allow him to live the quiet life he most desired, when they were, as in the case of Carl Thomas, giving someone a headache who was in turn giving Erskine a headache, in situations like this, Erskine, in his capacity as Assistant Director of the Black Studies Department, simply gave them a job. He created a job where before there had been only floor space. Chief Librarian of the African-American Music Library had been one such invented post. Hip-Hop Archivist was a natural progression.
Never in his life had Carl had a job like this one. The pay was basic admin wage (Carl had been paid a similar amount to file papers in a lawyer’s office and to answer calls on the desk of a black radio station). That wasn’t the point. He was being hired because he knew about this subject, this thing called hip-hop, and knew much more about it than the average Joe – more maybe than anyone else in this university. He had a skill, and this job required his particular skill. He was an archivist. And when his pay cheques came to his mother’s apartment in Roxbury they came in Wellington envelopes printed with the Wellington crest. These Carl’s mother left in conspicuous spots around their kitchen for guests to see. And he didn’t even have to wear a suit. In fact, the more casual he looked, the better everybody in the department seemed to like it. His workplace was a closed-off corridor at the back of the Black Studies Department with three small rooms leading from it. In one of these rooms was a circular desk, and this he shared with a Ms Elisha Park, the Chief Librarian of the Music Library. She was a little fat black girl, a graduate student from a third-rate college way down South, whom Erskine had met on one of his book tours. Like Carl, she felt a mixture of awe and resentment faced with the grandeur of Wellington, and together they formed a gang of two, always steeled for the contempt of the students and faculty, but equally appreciative when ‘they’ treated ‘us’ kindly. They worked well together, both quietly industrious, each on their own computer, although, while Elisha beavered away at her ‘context cards’ – earnest vignettes of black music history that were to be filed next to the CDs and records themselves – Carl barely ever used his computer for anything except Googling. Useful Googling – part of his job was to research new releases and buy them in if he thought the archive should include them. He had a certain amount to spend each month. Buying records he loved was now part of his job. Within one week of being thus employed he’d already spent the greater part of his budget for the month. Elisha didn’t bawl him out, though. She was a calm, patient boss and, like most of the women Carl had come across in his life, was always trying to help him out, covering for him when he messed up. She kindly fiddled the figures a little and told him to be more careful next month. It was amazing. Carl’s other task was to photocopy, alphabetize and file the covers from the older part of the archive, the 45s. There were some classics in there. Five guys with big afros in tiny pink shorts, hugging themselves, posing by a Cadillac that was being driven by a monkey in shades. Classics. When Carl’s boys from the neighbourhood got to hear about Carl’s new job, they couldn’t believe it. Money for buying records! Getting paid to listen to music! Dog, you stealing they dollars from under they noses! Damn, that’s sweet! Carl surprised himself by getting a little pissed at this kind of congratulation. Everybody kept telling him what a great gig he had, getting paid for doing nothing. But it wasn’t nothing. Professor Erskine Jegede himself had written Carl a welcome letter that
said he was part of the effort to ‘make a public record of our shared aural culture for future generations’. Now: how is that nothing?
The job was three days a week. Well, that was what he was expected to do, but actually he came in every day of the week. Sometimes Elisha looked at him a little worriedly – there just wasn’t enough work for him to fill five days. That is, he could photocopy the backlog of album covers for the next six months, but this had begun to seem pointless work, work they were giving him because they didn’t think him capable of anything more. In fact, he had all kinds of ideas on how to improve the archive, how to make it more student-friendly. He wanted to get it set up like the big record stores, where you can walk in, pick up a pair of earphones and have access to hundreds of different songs – except in Carl’s archive, the earphones would be attached to computer equipment that automatically displayed the research articles that Elisha wrote and collated about the music in the archive.
‘That sounds expensive,’ said Elisha, upon hearing this plan.
‘OK, sure, but somebody please tell me what the point of a library resource is if you can’t even access the resources? Ain’t nobody gonna borrow the old records – most kids don’t even know what a record player is any more.’
‘Still sounds expensive.’
Carl tried to get a meeting with Erskine to discuss his ideas, but the brother was never available, and when Carl bumped into him by chance in a hallway, Erskine appeared confused as to who Carl even was, and suggested he address all queries to the librarian – what was her name? Oh, yes, Elisha Park. When Carl retold this story to Elisha, she took off her glasses and said something to Carl that resonated deeply with him, something he grasped and held to his heart like a lyric.
