The Bigger Light (27 page)

“It is none of her fucking business,” he said to the cat and to the newspaper. He was deeper in the habit of talking to himself, simply because he could not really talk to a cat. There was never anybody in the apartment with him when he wanted to talk, and he was not the kind of man to keep topics of conversation, things for discussion, on his mind, waiting for his wife to come home and join him in them. Dots was not that kind of a woman. She was leading her own life at the hospital, and in the telephone conversations, nightly, with her friend Bernice. And Boysie was glad that he at least had the sense to see that she had no intention of changing, so that he would come home (on those few nights when she was not in bed, with the cat asleep between her sprawled-out legs, both of them snoring), and she would make him a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, and say, “Well, darling, how did it go tonight? You
must be tired as a dog. Let me rub you down.” No, Dots was not that kind of a woman. And although he had hoped that she would turn out to be a woman of that thoughtful disposition, he eventually gave up hoping. Too much water was now under the bridge, and the bridge itself was crumbling. Henry had explained it to him once (“When a man meet a woman in the wrong kind of circumstance, frinstance, if the woman is the one bringing in the fucking bacon, and even if the man should become a millionaire, that woman, because she is a fucking woman, that woman will always say that she make that man into the millionaire he is today. That without her, he couldn’t be a kiss-me-arse millionaire. And in the ten or fifteen years, that woman who might be working as a domestic for something like two hundred dollars a rass-hole month would argue strong-strong that without her money supporting that man, he couldn’t be no fucking millionaire at all! Now, tell me, how in the name o’ Jesus Christ, could you add-up two hundred dollars a month, multiply by twelve, and then by ten, or even fifteen, and come out with a fucking millionaire?”), and Boysie had refused to see it in his wife, because in those days he had had to love her, not in the way a lover loves a lover, not in that way, but with more feeling of obligation. He loved her in the same way that a thirsty man loves the hand that offers a glass of iced water.

Boysie had everything. But he was not happy. Perhaps, he sometimes told himself, as he sat on these mornings, listening to his music (he was back on “Both Sides Now”), and reading his newspaper, and waiting for the woman to appear, he had spent too much time making money. He was not a millionaire, certainly not; but he was well off. Money in the bank, so much that he never counted or checked his bank balance in his savings account; and his personal chequing account which was
for bills and expenses in his home and his business was never overdrawn. He bought Canada Savings Bonds every month, and he had bought four houses within the space of four or five months; and these were now rented out. He never visited the houses, he never saw the tenants; his lawyer did all that for him.

He had been spending much time recently with his car: driving it to the same garage with which he had been dealing for years, having the mechanic check it over, tune it up, and look at the tires. He kept it always full of gas. It was washed and waxed every two days, although he was going nowhere, to no wedding, on no trip, never taking anybody anywhere in it (Dots trudged through the snow and blustery winds, and he kept the car in the underground garage); but sometimes he would get nightmares about the car, and regardless of the hour, he would get up quietly, put on his winter coat, or his raincoat, or remain in his housecoat (he had started sleeping in his housecoat, because there was no reason to be more naked than that in a bed with a woman who did not need the feel of his body beside her) and with torchlight in hand would check on his car. Once or twice, he heard some activity in the underground garage at that late hour, but he was never inquisitive. And all the newspaper reports and other apartment gossip about rapings and beatings and thefts in the garage never bothered him. He was not interested. He had closed his mind a long time ago against these things. He had closed his mind against the sleeping children in the Home Service Association place; he had closed his mind against the reports of young West Indians stealing purses from old women in the subway stations; he had refused to get involved; he had refused to listen to Mrs. James pleading with him to devote some of his free time in the morning on community work in the black community.

“I didn’t know we had one o’ them!”

“You are always joking, Mr. Cumberbatch.”

“No, really. In truth!”

“Mr. Cumberbatch, where you been all these years you living in this place?”

“I have been in my apartment.”

“Oh, go ’long!”

West Indians were coming and going; some of them were getting into trouble with the police, most of them were working, making money, making progress, gambling, running back to the Caribbean on holidays, some of them three times a year, and life was going on. He had thought of going back to Barbados once, for a vacation, but that idea soon went from his head. He had not even considered the reason for not wanting to return to Barbados. He began, however, to hate Barbados; not really hate it as he was beginning to hate Dots, not even for the same reasons. But he hated it, because you could say that he did not like it. And that is how he put it to anyone who asked him, “Why, a man in your position, with all the money you have, remembering that in Barbados, a Canadian dollar is worth two o’ we-own, why you don’t go back there and put up some beach houses and make some easy money offa the tourists?” And Boysie would just look the person in the eye without even changing the expression in his own eyes. But he knew that he was never going back. Not even to be buried in the warm soil of the land that had brought him forth. He did not consider it in these terms; he did not think in terms of land and birth, and culture and warm soil. He knew nothing about soil. He was born in Barbados because he was not born in Canada. He was in Canada now. He had come here, he had suffered, and he had taken his licks, he had given a few (recently, to his wife), and he was content to spend the rest of
his life here. He had applied for Canadian citizenship, at first as insurance against having to return to Barbados, or to go someplace else, and knowing that he could always return here in case things there got rough. But when he got it, when he touched the flimsy book with the Canadian coat of arms on it, he felt strong as he usually did when he got into the bathtub with the water hot, when he was in the apartment alone, and he could walk out naked, right through his apartment, and listen to his music without distraction. When he received his Canadian passport with the citizenship that went along with it, he felt this kind of strength.

All these things he had done without a plan. But as he would sit down on these early mornings, thinking. (“What you are really doing, Mr. Cumberbatch,” the Canadian young fellow said, when Boysie, most uncharacteristically, told the young man what he sometimes did, “is not really thinking. Thinking is not sufficiently philosophical for what you are going through. You are meditating, Mr. Cumberbatch, and meditating is the most spiritual enterprise a man can get involved in, especially in a country as culturally barren as this one.”) Boysie liked the idea about meditating. But he did not like the remarks about Canada being a barren country. Not
his
country. Nobody should say these things about his country. And he would have told the Canadian young fellow just as much, but his conservatism warned him to permit the young fellow to express his views without molestation. Boysie’s conservatism was being shown in other ways, more significant ways these days: his conservatism and the feeling of influence and ungrounded arrogance that went along with it. He had lived through many radicalisms: first Henry, then Dots, then Bernice and her young man (“A woman her blasted age should be looking for God, not man!”), the thousands of West Indians
he was seeing on the streets everywhere in Toronto, walking around the place with all kinds of women on their arms, and not even ashamed or embarrassed to be seen in such exposure; and those at the airport, whenever he dropped in there to have his Scotch and watch the planes taking off for places around the world; yes, he had grown accustomed to radicalism, and it had not bothered him. He could stomach it, because he was a man “in his position.”

His meditations, or his thinking sessions with himself, were not fitting into any kind of pattern or into any plan, at least not when he first thought out certain things he should do. The buying of the four houses was one plan. It was an investment plan. What else could he do with his money? He didn’t have any children. He was still a young man. He was living well: buying new suits and shoes (“I won’t be seen dead wearing those boots you want me to buy, young man. Shoes were made for gentlemen. Boots for old women and queers.” The young man, who was very fastidious and very polite, lost a little colour and placed the five pairs of boots back into their boxes. Boysie bought the three pairs of shoes he had seen in the window, as he passed), drinking the best of Scotch, and wines with his dinner, which was usually alone, late at night, early in the morning, except on the weekends, when he had Bernice and her young man over to share his boredom. But if he could see the future when it began in the present, he would have known that his thinking sessions about life, about his life and about his wife’s life, were bound to devolve into some plan. And the observer, Dots, and in some cases Bernice, would have sworn that he had been involved in devices. Devices. He had devised his plans to some peculiar conclusion.

He wondered how, sitting in his pyjamas, he had been
spending all these months waiting to see a woman he had never seen close up. He wondered if he was not going mad, wasting his time in this diversion. And it was really a diversion. He hadn’t known of any other man who sat every morning to see a woman pass. Now if the man had met the woman in a bar one night, and even if she had refused him, even if she had snubbed him, then he could understand himself waiting to see what colour of disposition her walk, the day after, would have: but this sitting all this time waiting for a woman … Perhaps the Canadian young fellow could understand this, and find some explanation in terms of philosophy! Henry was a man who could give a reason for this kind of behaviour too. Since it was not the kind of thinking about the strange woman that aroused his passion for her, since he was not in love with her, since he did not want to go to bed with her, he should have been able to talk about it to his wife. But would his wife understand? He felt she would not. But he had not asked her. It was his assumption, based on his knowledge of her, and her knowledge of the world, which told him that Dots would find something in the situation to laugh at, and then she would call Bernice on the telephone and laugh some more about it, and some more about “this blasted man going crazy, you hear me, gal. Going crazy as anything.” No, Dots was not the person to entrust this sensitive thing to: and that was it, it was his sensitiveness, and the sensitiveness of the situation, and the entire sensitive embryo in which he found himself living.

Last night at the Coq d’Or he had seen another black American singer on the stage. “One thing about these black Americans, they really have style! Man, you should have seen that man up there, singing and carrying on, and looking so good that I wished I was a singer. I actually sat down there, with my drink in front of me, the same Scotch that I bought
when I got there at ten, and I am a man who drinks four or five Scotches whenever I drop by there. They know what I drink, but sitting down there looking at that man sing that song, ‘A Rainy Day in Georgia,’ it’s raining all the time, it’s raining all the time. And then I saw what I was looking for all the time, it’s raining all the time. He was free up there, he was so free that he looked like if the song was killing him, as if the song had him in chains, he was so pretty in the singing of it. But he was free, because it was a rainy day in Georgia, and a rainy day in Georgia is just like a rainy day in Barbados: you run out in the rain, bare-naked as you was born, and you open your mouth wide-wide and drink in the warm rainwater from outta the skies, and the barrel beside your house, under the drain, catches that same rainwater, and there is nothing better tasting than rainwater.” Freedom the man had sung about, not the rains in Georgia. It was that freedom that Boysie found himself lacking all these years. This morning was the first time he had sat down in his own apartment, at this hour, dressed in pyjamas. Why hadn’t he thought of doing that before? It was a good feeling. “A Rainy Day in Georgia,” a black American singer, rainwater, and pyjamas were just like a hot bath in his bathtub.

My Dear Dots, I want to talk to you. Sometime. Your husband
. He had written this letter to his wife some few weeks ago, he couldn’t remember how many weeks; and he had put it on the kitchen counter where she was sure to see it as she came in to make her cup of coffee, and bring up “some o’ this gas outta my stomach.” But the letter had been removed. Could the cat have mistaken the name on it? He did not receive a reply from Dots whether in words or in attitude. And Dots never wrote letters to anyone. He remembered the words he had written at
work on his notepad which was attached to his wallet. He had wanted to tell her what he wanted to tell her about, but that would have brought about a conclusion, and he did not like conclusions, particularly when he was not certain that he controlled the conclusions. To have told her in that letter what he wanted her to know, that he was going away (not leaving her, for no one can leave Dots, Dots is a mere object that is living everywhere, and she would follow you to the ends of the earth, and molest your memory when you had nothing to think about, but the past of your boredom and its history and its growth), that he had bought a new car, that he had bought four houses, and had put them in her name; that he had made a will and had put all his money in her name (he did not hesitate to do this, he did not wonder whether she would outlive him, for he was certain that something in her, something in the way she saved energy by not making conversation, by not exerting herself in sex, by not doing things which one normally expected a woman to do, he was certain that he would die before her; not that she would kill him, no, Dots was not so cruel as that, even in spite of what he had been thinking about her. It was simply that he had resigned himself to her eventual widowhood, and himself to be replaced by someone else, and to be some place else, just before she inherited all his money), to make certain that her memory of him would not be discussed harshly between herself and Bernice.
“My Dear Dots, I want to talk to you. Sometime.”
He thought of the letter. Should he have written, “I want to talk to you sometime”? And did the “sometime” standing alone frighten her? Or had she just disregarded it? But it was signed “Your husband.” And Boysie knew Dots was a very faithful woman to him; the word “husband” would bring out her morality. She had never told him that she was not faithful to him; she had not told him that
she had allowed another man to lift the dress-hem of her clothes in an act of love or even hate; she had not even told him, “I love you, Boysie.” Dots never was so emotional towards him. But he knew that she loved him. A woman who behaved like Dots had to love him. And he felt she was faithful, and a faithful woman deserves something. What he had to give her he did not think she could appreciate; indeed, he did not know if he had anything to give her, except money. And he thought of the money because of the amount of problems it had caused them, early in their marriage, and the deep hurt it had caused him when she was the breadwinner. He wanted to tell her that he was tired, that he was dying, that he was fed up, that his life with her was like sleeping in a coffin, which their bedroom had become. He wanted to tell her all these things. And more especially, he wanted to take her back to that afternoon when she came unexpectedly early and found him in the bathtub naked, in the condition which would have demanded not much effort on his part, or on her part, had she been willing, when he wanted to rip the housecoat off her body and drag her into the hot water with him, not to drown her, but to drown her, for that last time, into an everlasting experience of love. But he could not tell her then, and it was no easier for him to report about that telling which was aborted by the noise and her sound and her presence. She was killing him, and he was tired waiting.