Mr. Potter (3 page)
Authors: Jamaica Kincaid
And Mr. Potter left the Weizengers, that is, Dr. Weizenger and his wife May (for that was her name, May); he left their presence, he left their house and walked out to the car, Mr. Shoul's car, for Mr. Potter was not yet driving his own car, and he opened the door and he sat in the driver's seat and he turned the car's key so that the engine would start the car, making it ready for driving, and then he looked over his shoulder, but only figuratively, for he did not really wish to look backward, and to himself he wondered about the people he had just left behind, Dr. Weizenger and his wife who was also his nurse, her name was May, and when wondering about them then, or at any time, the words to come out of his mouth were, “Eh, eh!” and then, “Eh, eh!” a continuing series of those words, those sounds, “Eh, eh!” “Eh, eh!” And when he got into the car, he placed his right foot on that thing called the accelerator (the car he was driving was made in the United States of America) and he went forward out into the small part of the world that was Antigua, and he drove past the cemetery and he drove past many churches through which all the dead passed on their way to the cemetery, and
as he drove he could see the great sea of the Caribbean on one side of the road and the great ocean that was the Atlantic on the other and events great or small did not enter his mind, nothing entered his mind, his mind was already filled up with Mr. Potter.
as he drove he could see the great sea of the Caribbean on one side of the road and the great ocean that was the Atlantic on the other and events great or small did not enter his mind, nothing entered his mind, his mind was already filled up with Mr. Potter.
A
nd Mr. Potter turned his back and walked out of the room in which he had been standing with Dr. Weizenger, Zoltan was his name and his wife was named May, and Zoltan and May, that is, Dr. Weizenger and his nurse, were now all alone, and when they were alone they were Zoltan and May and only when they were not alone were they Dr. Weizenger and his nurse Mrs. Weizenger. And May smiled, not to anyone, not to herself, she only smiled, and this was from a habit developed as a child, for when she had been a child her world was grim, she said her parents had been killed sometimes, had abandoned her sometimes, one way or the other she had no parents, and she only felt the loss of the arm posts of such a thing, called a mother and a father, in the first moments of being alone in a new situation, and
her husband being with her at that moment, just after Mr. Potter had walked out of the room, did not make enough of a difference: Nurse May, Mrs. Weizenger, was alone. And she said, “Zoltan?” and Dr. Weizenger did not answer and she did not want him to do so. And May looked down at her feet, she wore shoes that were made of a very good leather from the skin of a cow who had been born and raised and then killed with care in the English countryside and how nice the cow's skin now looked after it had been made into something pleasing (a pair of shoes), and into something that offered protection (a pair of shoes), and into something to cause envy (a pair of shoes); a pair of shoes did not come easily to Mr. Potter. And looking down at her feet, her eyes went across the floor and up the thin wall and the wall stopped some distance from the ceiling and May wondered what was the point of that, but it had a good reason, everything in the world had a good reason to back it up, and the room might have swirled and its entire contents spun around, caught up in the violence of a sudden turn in the world's events, and inside that would be May and all her life right up to the moment she met Zoltan, and her life even after she became Mrs. Weizenger.
nd Mr. Potter turned his back and walked out of the room in which he had been standing with Dr. Weizenger, Zoltan was his name and his wife was named May, and Zoltan and May, that is, Dr. Weizenger and his nurse, were now all alone, and when they were alone they were Zoltan and May and only when they were not alone were they Dr. Weizenger and his nurse Mrs. Weizenger. And May smiled, not to anyone, not to herself, she only smiled, and this was from a habit developed as a child, for when she had been a child her world was grim, she said her parents had been killed sometimes, had abandoned her sometimes, one way or the other she had no parents, and she only felt the loss of the arm posts of such a thing, called a mother and a father, in the first moments of being alone in a new situation, and
her husband being with her at that moment, just after Mr. Potter had walked out of the room, did not make enough of a difference: Nurse May, Mrs. Weizenger, was alone. And she said, “Zoltan?” and Dr. Weizenger did not answer and she did not want him to do so. And May looked down at her feet, she wore shoes that were made of a very good leather from the skin of a cow who had been born and raised and then killed with care in the English countryside and how nice the cow's skin now looked after it had been made into something pleasing (a pair of shoes), and into something that offered protection (a pair of shoes), and into something to cause envy (a pair of shoes); a pair of shoes did not come easily to Mr. Potter. And looking down at her feet, her eyes went across the floor and up the thin wall and the wall stopped some distance from the ceiling and May wondered what was the point of that, but it had a good reason, everything in the world had a good reason to back it up, and the room might have swirled and its entire contents spun around, caught up in the violence of a sudden turn in the world's events, and inside that would be May and all her life right up to the moment she met Zoltan, and her life even after she became Mrs. Weizenger.
And Dr. Weizenger heard his name “Zoltan” as his wife now called it out, only he thought she said “Samuel,” the name he had been called when he was a boy in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and he remembered
the peace of being himself, the peace of being an ordinary human being, in a position to grant the right to exist or the right to make disappear (this would be an insect, children are always allowed to have power over such things), in a position to judge beauty or its opposite (this would be the color of the noonday sky, children everywhere are allowed to have the power to judge such things); and when he had been a boy in a city in that prosperous place called Europe (and Mr. Potter knew the planet Mars as well as he knew the place called Europe), there were streets and in the streets were little houses placed tightly together, intimately, so intimately that this intimacy produced its opposite, and Dr. Weizenger did not know the names of the people who lived next to him. Dr. Weizenger went to a school, and he had a friend, he had many friends but now he could not remember their names, only the shape of their noses and the shape of their mouths and the color of their eyes and those things: the shape of their noses, the shape of their mouths, the color of their eyes was all that was left; everything else receded as if he was on a train (he had been on many trains, leaving to return, leaving, never to return) and it was pulling away from the platform of the train station, pulling away from a place that had been a destination and now was a place of departure. But this place now with Mr. Potter was a stationary place, Mr. Potter and all he came from had made it so, they
had been there for centuries, Mr. Potter and all he came from would not go away; the shape of their noses, the shape of their mouths, the color of their eyes would not go away. And Potter, thought Dr. Weizenger, the name of the man who had just driven them to their new destination, was a name so low, named after the service he offered, a potter, a man named after the sweat of his brow, so thought Dr. Weizenger; but “Zoltan,” came May's voice, the voice of his nurse, the word that was his name, said by his wife.
the peace of being himself, the peace of being an ordinary human being, in a position to grant the right to exist or the right to make disappear (this would be an insect, children are always allowed to have power over such things), in a position to judge beauty or its opposite (this would be the color of the noonday sky, children everywhere are allowed to have the power to judge such things); and when he had been a boy in a city in that prosperous place called Europe (and Mr. Potter knew the planet Mars as well as he knew the place called Europe), there were streets and in the streets were little houses placed tightly together, intimately, so intimately that this intimacy produced its opposite, and Dr. Weizenger did not know the names of the people who lived next to him. Dr. Weizenger went to a school, and he had a friend, he had many friends but now he could not remember their names, only the shape of their noses and the shape of their mouths and the color of their eyes and those things: the shape of their noses, the shape of their mouths, the color of their eyes was all that was left; everything else receded as if he was on a train (he had been on many trains, leaving to return, leaving, never to return) and it was pulling away from the platform of the train station, pulling away from a place that had been a destination and now was a place of departure. But this place now with Mr. Potter was a stationary place, Mr. Potter and all he came from had made it so, they
had been there for centuries, Mr. Potter and all he came from would not go away; the shape of their noses, the shape of their mouths, the color of their eyes would not go away. And Potter, thought Dr. Weizenger, the name of the man who had just driven them to their new destination, was a name so low, named after the service he offered, a potter, a man named after the sweat of his brow, so thought Dr. Weizenger; but “Zoltan,” came May's voice, the voice of his nurse, the word that was his name, said by his wife.
And Dr. Weizenger heard his wife's voice and said to himself, Let a minute pass before I make a response to that, and then he said to himself, Let a second pass before I make a response to that. He told himself, silently, that he would allow a pause before he would make a response to this voice coming from this person who was in the same room with him: his entire world as it had been constituted in the past, the past before he came to Antigua, the past that took place before the hurried exit from one place to the next, their names prominent on atlases made after the sixteenth century: Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, Shanghai; and houses and streets and rivers and quays and boats and embarkments and arrivals and endless days of rain and never-ending days of sunshine, and milk teeming with cream and then none of that, and conversations about the possibility of the end of the world
and then days of the world ending again and again, and within the very days themselves were ends, as if the day did not constitute and define a limitation. And his wife said his name again, “Zoltan,” she said, but he heard her say “Samuel” and before him he saw the miracle that he had been, Samuel, a boy whose hair was a pleasing color (it was black), a boy whose eyes had been a pleasing color (they were black), a boy whose presence had made his mother and father happy, but just now he could not remember their faces, the faces of his mother and father, he could only remember their presence, he had had them, that thing, a mother and a father, only now they were lost, like a turn in the road (only the road was his own life), or like a horizon (only the horizon was his own life), they had just vanished, as if they had never been there at all, as if they had not given him that name, Samuel, as if he had not been their only child, they had just vanished into darkness, yes darkness! a vast darkness had descended over many things he had known, not a darkness like the night, and not a darkness that was the opposite of the light in which he was now standing, not a darkness that was the opposite of the light into which Mr. Potter had temporarily disappeared, more like the darkness from which Mr. Potter and all he came from had originated.
and then days of the world ending again and again, and within the very days themselves were ends, as if the day did not constitute and define a limitation. And his wife said his name again, “Zoltan,” she said, but he heard her say “Samuel” and before him he saw the miracle that he had been, Samuel, a boy whose hair was a pleasing color (it was black), a boy whose eyes had been a pleasing color (they were black), a boy whose presence had made his mother and father happy, but just now he could not remember their faces, the faces of his mother and father, he could only remember their presence, he had had them, that thing, a mother and a father, only now they were lost, like a turn in the road (only the road was his own life), or like a horizon (only the horizon was his own life), they had just vanished, as if they had never been there at all, as if they had not given him that name, Samuel, as if he had not been their only child, they had just vanished into darkness, yes darkness! a vast darkness had descended over many things he had known, not a darkness like the night, and not a darkness that was the opposite of the light in which he was now standing, not a darkness that was the opposite of the light into which Mr. Potter had temporarily disappeared, more like the darkness from which Mr. Potter and all he came from had originated.
Into the middle of the bright sunlight at midday Mr. Potter drove Mr. Shoul's car, leaving Dr.
Weizenger and his wife behind, and when they were no longer in his sight, when he had come some distance from them (a mile or so and a mile was quite a distance to Mr. Potter) they vanished entirely from his thoughts and he became absorbed by the uneven road; its surface was coarse, the thick coating of asphalt no longer lay smooth like the icing on a cake (or something like that), and the road itself was a series of twists and turns and every inch of this road, every foot, every yard, every mile held a danger of the sudden drop off a precipice, a turn in the road so sharply rounded that it might not be a turn at all, it might be the end of the road itself. And Mr. Potter held the steering wheel in his hands, sometimes even caressing it as if it were something to which he could administer pleasure, and the steering wheel itself, from the look of it, from the feel of it, was meant to recall the hard protective shell that was the back of a turtle, but Mr. Potter only held the steering wheel in his two hands and the feel of it was familiar and then again the feel of it was not familiar and it remained a steering wheel; and the Weizengers with their complications involving the world that was beyond the horizon did not now exist, and he drove along the road almost in a stupor and said nothing to himself and sang nothing to himself and thought nothing to himself. Mr. Potter drove along and nothing crossed his mind and the world was blank and the world remained blank.
Weizenger and his wife behind, and when they were no longer in his sight, when he had come some distance from them (a mile or so and a mile was quite a distance to Mr. Potter) they vanished entirely from his thoughts and he became absorbed by the uneven road; its surface was coarse, the thick coating of asphalt no longer lay smooth like the icing on a cake (or something like that), and the road itself was a series of twists and turns and every inch of this road, every foot, every yard, every mile held a danger of the sudden drop off a precipice, a turn in the road so sharply rounded that it might not be a turn at all, it might be the end of the road itself. And Mr. Potter held the steering wheel in his hands, sometimes even caressing it as if it were something to which he could administer pleasure, and the steering wheel itself, from the look of it, from the feel of it, was meant to recall the hard protective shell that was the back of a turtle, but Mr. Potter only held the steering wheel in his two hands and the feel of it was familiar and then again the feel of it was not familiar and it remained a steering wheel; and the Weizengers with their complications involving the world that was beyond the horizon did not now exist, and he drove along the road almost in a stupor and said nothing to himself and sang nothing to himself and thought nothing to himself. Mr. Potter drove along and nothing crossed his mind and the world was blank and the world remained blank.
Mr. Potter, while driving Mr. Shoul's car, was passing through villages named John Hughes, Urlings, Newfield, Barnes Hill, Seatons, Swetes, Freetown, and each village was an entire history unto itself, each village a mouthful of pain, each village inhabited by individual human beings with stories so similar and stories so different; and Mr. Potter, while driving Mr. Shoul's car through these villages, each with their scene after scene of pain, withheld himself from the world around him; some of these villages were in the Parish of St. Paul, the parish in which he was born on the seventh of January, nineteen hundred and twenty-two, and as he drove through the parish in which he was born he withheld himself from the world around him. And through the village of Bolans he entered the Parish of St. Mary and he left the Parish of St. Mary through the village of Emanuel and he made his way up Market Street to Mr. Shoul's garage. And all that time Mr. Potter withheld himself from the world and so when he entered the world of Mr. Shoul and Mr. Shoul's garage which housed the other three cars, also owned by Mr. Shoul, but not the drivers of those cars, men, were not owned by Mr. Shoulâfor Mr. Shoul was not allowed to own men thenâMr. Potter still withheld himself from the world.
Mr. Potter was born on the seventh day of January in nineteen hundred and twenty-two in the village of English Harbour in the Parish of St. Paul. His
mother's name was Elfrida Robinson and his father's name was Nathaniel Potter. And Nathaniel was the father of eleven children with eight altogether different mothers and Mr. Potter was the last of Nathaniel's children to be born, so by that time Nathaniel Potter greeted Mr. Potter's arrival in the world not with a feeling of happiness or a feeling of unhappiness, not with resignation or with the impulse to revolt against the burden of having another person who needed support of one kind or another, not even with indifference. Nathaniel Potter withheld himself from the world of Mr. Potter, my father, the man who could not read and write and so made someone who could do both, read and write, and so made someone who would always be in love with that, reading and writing. But Nathaniel was a fisherman and he cast his fishnet on Mondays and Thursdays and he went to check his pots on Tuesdays and Fridays and on Wednesdays he mended his fishnets, on Saturdays he counted all the money he had made for the week just past through selling fish and on Sundays, his wife (for he had a wife, only she was not Mr. Potter's mother) made him a dinner of goat stew. But on Saturdays, when counting the money he had made all week, he could see that the money always remained the same, week after week, year in and year out, the money remained the same, but the number of his children did not remain so, the same.
mother's name was Elfrida Robinson and his father's name was Nathaniel Potter. And Nathaniel was the father of eleven children with eight altogether different mothers and Mr. Potter was the last of Nathaniel's children to be born, so by that time Nathaniel Potter greeted Mr. Potter's arrival in the world not with a feeling of happiness or a feeling of unhappiness, not with resignation or with the impulse to revolt against the burden of having another person who needed support of one kind or another, not even with indifference. Nathaniel Potter withheld himself from the world of Mr. Potter, my father, the man who could not read and write and so made someone who could do both, read and write, and so made someone who would always be in love with that, reading and writing. But Nathaniel was a fisherman and he cast his fishnet on Mondays and Thursdays and he went to check his pots on Tuesdays and Fridays and on Wednesdays he mended his fishnets, on Saturdays he counted all the money he had made for the week just past through selling fish and on Sundays, his wife (for he had a wife, only she was not Mr. Potter's mother) made him a dinner of goat stew. But on Saturdays, when counting the money he had made all week, he could see that the money always remained the same, week after week, year in and year out, the money remained the same, but the number of his children did not remain so, the same.
The open sky, stretching from the little village called English Harbour to way out beyond the horizon, was familiar to Nathaniel Potter, and this sky was a blue unimaginable to people who had never seen it before; the eminence that was the sun, traveling such a vast distance, reaching the village of English Harbour as harshness of light and temperature, if you were overly familiar with it, or as a blessing of light and temperature, if you were not familiar with it at all; the water that made up the ocean (it was the Atlantic) and the water that made up the sea (it was the Caribbean) flowed gently and calmly as if it were a domesticated body of water cast large. But the beautiful sky (and it was beautiful) and the beautiful days (for they were that, beautiful) and the beautiful bodies of water (and they were that, beautiful) and all of the beauty of the sky and all of the beauty of the land and all of the beauty of the water were so much a part of Nathaniel Potter, it was as if he had been asked to consider his hands or his eyes or his feet; his life would be not imaginable without them. So too would his life be unimaginable without that water, that land, that sky.
And there was the world of sky above and light forcefully illuminating and forcefully streaming through the sky and the awe of great bodies of water flowing into each other even as they remained separate, and Nathaniel Potter was a fisherman in that
world of sky above and light streaming through the blue sky and the bodies of water below it and he was subject to this world, a small something in the great and big world that answered to nothing and no one. And from the sky would fall sheets of rain for days upon days; and the light streaming down through the sky often became blanket after blanket of heat smothering him; and the great bodies of water, ocean and sea, would become so turbulent that the world became uninhabitable to all who lived in it. And in those days, Nathaniel Potter's life narrowed and grew ugly and all the beauty of the sky and the light and the sea was ugly when seen through his eyes. And in those days Nathaniel Potter was beautiful also: his legs were long and strong and they were of help to him as he rowed his boat; his arms were long and strong and they were of tremendous help to him as he rowed his boat into the very deep waters; his eyes, his nose, his mouth, and his hair, which was the color of copper and had the texture of metal shredded to resemble tangled thread, made him beautiful, so much so that he was really the father of twenty-one children who had different mothers but Nathaniel knew only of eleven of them. And in those days of the beautiful sky and the beautiful light and the beautiful waters with the sky leaking, sometimes leaking light, sometimes leaking water, and the light streaking through the sky, sometimes creating intolerable heat, and the waters of
the sea so turbulent, Nathaniel Potter found no fish in his pots and when he cast his net no fish were trapped, and this went on for such a long time. And as he grew old, his life grew harder: he could no longer easily make a joke when faced with misfortune: no fish in his fish pots and fishnet. And the sun was in its rightful place in the sky and the sky itself was blue and the waters were calm on the surface and it was an ordinary day just to look at it, there was no trace of commotion just to look at the landscape, the landscape was so untroubled, as if it had never known the hand of man or the wrath of a god, as if it had never been observed, as if no one had ever claimed to own it and as if its ownership had never been contested; as if it had never known so much as the capriciousness that was within nature itself, a capriciousness that was beyond human understanding.
world of sky above and light streaming through the blue sky and the bodies of water below it and he was subject to this world, a small something in the great and big world that answered to nothing and no one. And from the sky would fall sheets of rain for days upon days; and the light streaming down through the sky often became blanket after blanket of heat smothering him; and the great bodies of water, ocean and sea, would become so turbulent that the world became uninhabitable to all who lived in it. And in those days, Nathaniel Potter's life narrowed and grew ugly and all the beauty of the sky and the light and the sea was ugly when seen through his eyes. And in those days Nathaniel Potter was beautiful also: his legs were long and strong and they were of help to him as he rowed his boat; his arms were long and strong and they were of tremendous help to him as he rowed his boat into the very deep waters; his eyes, his nose, his mouth, and his hair, which was the color of copper and had the texture of metal shredded to resemble tangled thread, made him beautiful, so much so that he was really the father of twenty-one children who had different mothers but Nathaniel knew only of eleven of them. And in those days of the beautiful sky and the beautiful light and the beautiful waters with the sky leaking, sometimes leaking light, sometimes leaking water, and the light streaking through the sky, sometimes creating intolerable heat, and the waters of
the sea so turbulent, Nathaniel Potter found no fish in his pots and when he cast his net no fish were trapped, and this went on for such a long time. And as he grew old, his life grew harder: he could no longer easily make a joke when faced with misfortune: no fish in his fish pots and fishnet. And the sun was in its rightful place in the sky and the sky itself was blue and the waters were calm on the surface and it was an ordinary day just to look at it, there was no trace of commotion just to look at the landscape, the landscape was so untroubled, as if it had never known the hand of man or the wrath of a god, as if it had never been observed, as if no one had ever claimed to own it and as if its ownership had never been contested; as if it had never known so much as the capriciousness that was within nature itself, a capriciousness that was beyond human understanding.
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