Guerrillas (5 page)

At last a taxi stopped. It was nearly full; that was no doubt why the driver had risked stopping. He sat next to a fat woman and he could feel her shifting away from the contact of their shoulders. Fifteen or twenty minutes later the taxi turned off the highway and they came to a little town that had grown up around crossroads in the factory area. The taxi stopped near the center, at a shop with an illuminated clock, and Bryant got out.

It was just after eight. Half an hour before the evening movie shows began, half an hour before the streets grew quieter, that precious last half hour of the evening when, with the relaxed groups
on the pavements, the coconut carts doing brisk business, the cafes and the rum shops, the food stands and the oyster stands below the shop eaves, even a little religious meeting going, with the neon lights, the flambeaux smoking in stone bottles, the acetylene lamps like Christmas sparklers, so many pleasures seemed possible. But Bryant was wise now; he was no longer a child. He knew that these moments were cheating. He had money, he had to spend it; it was like a wish to be rid of his money, and it went with the knowledge that it was all waste, that the day would end as it had begun.

He went into the green Chinese cafe, a barnlike old wooden building, two unshaded bulbs hanging from the ceiling, and asked for a peanut punch, banging on the counter as he did so and shouting “
Ai! Ai! Ai!”
for no reason, only to make a little scene, and to see the look in the eyes of the Chinese man in vest and khaki shorts behind the counter. The man hardly blinked. The peanut punch had gone rancid and bad; but Bryant didn’t spit it out. Instead, he put the waxed carton on the counter, paid, and went outside.

He thought of the movies. He had seen most of the films: in these country movie houses certain films were shown over and over. When he was younger he used to go to the interracial-sex films with Negro men as stars; they were exciting to see but depressing afterward, and it was Stephens who had told him that films like that were wicked and could break up a man. He chose the Sidney Poitier double feature. He went into the shuttered little movie house with the noisy electric fans and was alone again, the evening almost over.

In the first film Poitier was a man with a gun. Bryant always enjoyed it, but he knew it was made up and he didn’t allow himself to believe in it. The second film was
For the Love of Ivy
. It was Bryant’s favorite; it made him cry but it also made him laugh a lot, and it was his favorite. Soon he had surrendered to it, seeing in the Poitier of that film a version of himself that no one—really no one, and that was the terrible part—would ever get to know: the man who had died within the body Bryant carried, shown in that
film in all his truth, the man Bryant knew to be himself, without the edginess and the anger and the pretend ugliness, the laughing man, the tender joker. Watching the film, he began to grieve for what was denied him: that future in which he became what he truly was, not a man with a gun, a big profession, or big talk, but himself, and as himself was loved and readmitted to the house and to the people in the house. He began to sob; and other people were sobbing with him.

The usher scrambled about, turning off the electric fans, creating a kind of silence, opening the exit doors and pulling curtains to shut out the street lights. It was quiet outside; traffic had died down. Bryant was already afraid of the emptiness, the end of the day. He had already come to the end of his money and was as poor as he had been in the morning. The excitement of money was over. The cafes would be closed when the film finished and he went outside; the rum shops would be closed; there would only be a coconut cart, more full of husks than coconuts, a few people sleeping below the shop eaves, drunks, disordered people, and an old woman in a straw hat selling peeled oranges by the light of a flambeau. There would remain the journey back, the taxi, the walk in the night along roads that would barely glimmer between walls of forest and bush. So even before the film ended he was sad, thinking of the blight that came unfairly on a man, ruining his whole life. A whole life.

It was even worse getting a taxi back. He stood under the illuminated clock; but there were not many travelers at that late hour, the taxis were empty, and the drivers pretended they didn’t see him. Eventually a long-distance taxi came with two other passengers, and Bryant got in. He waited until they were on the highway before he said, “Thrushcross Grange.”

When they were out of the factory area the driver fumbled for something on the floor of the car, next to the accelerator; and Bryant, sitting at the back, heard the sound and understood the signal: the driver had a cutlass. Bryant was nervous. He said, “But like everybody is a bad-John these days”; and was surprised at the tough way the words came out. The driver didn’t reply. He gave a
little grunt; and he grunted again when some minutes later—Bryant saying, “Here! Here, nuh! Where you going?”—he set Bryant down and took his money. The headlights of the taxi swept on, the red taillights receded; and Bryant was left alone in the darkness.

He had got off at a junction some way beyond the road to Thrushcross Grange. It wasn’t to the Grange that he was now walking. This was a shorter walk: soon the bush flattened out and he saw the house against the forest wall. A light was on, not the dim car port bulb that burned all night, but the light in the living room.

Jimmy was up, and Bryant knew that Jimmy would be writing. Jimmy wrote a lot. For this writing of Jimmy’s Bryant had a great respect; and Bryant knew that when Jimmy was up so late writing it was because something had happened to make his head hot.

JIMMY WAS writing. The mood had come on him late, after the disturbance of the afternoon, which had stayed with him through dusk and sunset and the night. This was how he usually wrote, out of disturbance, out of wonder at himself, out of some sudden clear vision of an aspect of his past, or out of panic.

As he had been talking to Jane and Roche, as they had let him run on, he had began to feel unsupported by his words, and then separate from his words; and he had had a vision of darkness, of the world lost forever, and his own life ending on that bit of wasteland. After they had gone he allowed himself to sink into that darkness, keeping the memory of the afternoon close: the memory of Jane who, by her presence, manner, and talk, had suggested that darkness reserved for himself alone. Yet at the same time, in his fantasy, she washed away the darkness; he carried the picture of her standing outside the hut on the bare, bright earth, nervous, tremulous in her flared trousers.

I wonder how a man of those attainments can waste his life in a place like that with all those good-for-nothing natives for whom to speak in all candor I cannot have too high an opinion, seeing them shit everywhere just like that, just like animals, they
don’t even shit in the high grass but on the path, because wait for it they’re afraid of snakes
.

This is not the kind of thing I am accustomed to with my own class of people, but Peter doesn’t turn a hair, the buzzing of the flies around the shit is like music to his ears I’m sure. He wants to beat it out on the drums that he likes being with the natives, so he says. What a laugh, the reason is that they make him feel good and with them he enjoys a position he wouldn’t enjoy anywhere else, never mind all the talk about revolution and his sufferings in South Africa for the black man
.

Ever since I arrived here I have been hearing about the man they call Jimmy. I had heard about him in London, he was like a celebrity there, but I never dreamt that Fate would throw us together. Out here he is a controversial figure, no one is indifferent to him, he is discussed in every quarter. For the ordinary people, the common people, he is like a savior, he understands and loves the common man, and that is why for the others, the government people and the rich white firms and people of that ilk, he is something else, they’re scared of him and they queue up to give him money. And Mr. Roche of Sablich’s too, he thinks he’s using Jimmy for his own purposes, he is scared too
.

So I scheme to see this man, knowing full well that he is not accessible to visitors like myself and resents intrusion, and when on the appointed day I make the journey to Thrushcross Grange and see this man with the naked torso, not black, but a lovely golden color, like some bronze god, I am amazed, my heart is in my mouth. He says nothing and I’m scared of this cold reserve, and yet I am amazed at the perfection of his form and the way he gets these black louts to respect him and behave with a little discipline; that’s not something they know much about
.

You wouldn’t believe that he can be so different from them. They live in poky little shacks on the highway and up the hills, any old piece of board and pitch-oil tin would do for them, you should see those shacks and then it will occasion no surprise that I have no great regard for these natives. But Jimmy’s house is something else, I can scarcely believe my eyes when I enter, wall to wall carpeting, everything of the best and everything neat and
clean and nicely put away. And what a collection of books, no skimping there. He’s obviously a man of considerable refinement rare for these days
.

I said, “Do you mind,” and went to the shelves. He said, “By all means, they’re not dummies,” and I took up Wuthering Heights. “Ah,” he said, breaking into my thoughts, “you are looking at that great work of the Brontës. What a gifted family, it makes you believe in heredity. Would you like some tea?”

I can see that he is of a difficult disposition but he is making some effort to be civil, and yet in spite of his unwonted readiness to indulge in the tittle-tattle of the tea table I can see that he is revolving great thoughts and projects in his head. Little of this escapes him however, he is a man who knows how to keep his own counsel. He lives in his own rare world, his head is full of big things, he is carrying the burden of all the suffering people in the world, all the people who live in shacks and grow up in dirty little back rooms
.

I am drawn to this man, I can’t help it, my eyes light up when I look at him, and Peter is getting jealous. But this is no surprise, this is always how the revolution and the love of the black man ends. All the way home I am in a daze, I don’t see anything, and I find at night that Peter’s touch is repugnant to me. There wasn’t much that way between us anyway, but suddenly now he is in heat, and he knows why, and I can see that Peter will soon be on the side of the others, the people who want to destroy this man
.

I dream about this man but I don’t know how we will meet again. I know he will never forgive a second intrusion and I have no desire to aggravate his impatience. He is an enemy to all privilege and I am middle-class born and bred and I know that in spite of his great civility and urbane charm he must hate people like me. I only have to look in his eyes to understand the meaning of hate
.

He had begun without conviction, simply putting down words on the pad. But then excitement had possessed him; the words became more than words; and he felt he could go on for a long time. Now, out of that very excitement, he stopped writing and
began to walk about the room. As he walked he became aware of the night and the bush; and he was undermined again. Melancholy came over him like fatigue, like rage, like a sense of doom; and when he went back to the desk he found that the writing excitement had broken and was impossible to reenter. The words on the pad were again just like words, false.

One day I was driving on the highway and suddenly in the middle of the traffic my car broke down, when who should appear in my moment of need but Jimmy driving about in his Aston Martin …

Words alone: again he stopped.

At the beach one day of glorious sunshine amid the sands and dunes and motorcars below the coconut trees, the splendor of the scene marred only by a gang of louts …

He heard footsteps in the road, and waited. Bryant came in from the front porch, red-eyed, exhausted, null. His movements were abrupt, as though, having hurried to the house, he wanted now only to draw attention to his own mood. Saying nothing, not looking at Jimmy, he sat down heavily on one of the furry chairs with his legs wide apart, rested his head on the top of the back cushion and looked up at the ceiling. There were fresh tears in the corners of his eyes.

Jimmy said, “You went to the pictures, Bryant?”

Bryant didn’t reply.

“For the Love of Ivy?”

Bryant wiped the corner of one eye with a long, crooked finger.

Jimmy knew the film and he knew the effect it had on Bryant. He said, “Go and make yourself a little Ovaltine.”

Bryant didn’t move.

Jimmy said, “Stay and watch the milk. Don’t let it boil.”

He watched Bryant rise, his movements less abrupt now, and he watched him leave the room. He sat for some time looking at the door through which Bryant had gone. Then he faced the desk and turned over to a new page on the pad.

Dear Roy, In my last I sent you some clippings form the local rags which I thought would amuse you and give you some idea of our activities. No one
here
who is in charge seems to know
how close the crisis is, how this whole world is about to blow up, and when I consider the world as it is presently constituted, when I think of the boys I work with here at Thrushcross Grange, I feel that to destroy the world is the only course of action that is now open to sane men
.

The destructive urge comes on me at times like this, I want to see fire everywhere, when I stop and think that there is no hope of creative endeavor being appreciated, it is all for nothing, and on a night like this I feel I could weep for our world and for the people who find themselves unprotected in it. When I think how much I expected of my life at one time, and when I think how quickly that time of hope dies, I get sad, and more so when I think of the people who never expected anything. We are children of hell
.

Perhaps after all, Roy, the world is only made for the people who possess it now, and there are some people who will never possess anything. The people who will win are the people who have won already and they’re not taking chances now, like the liberals. You know better than I how they let me down when the crisis came, you would think that after making me their playboy and getting me deported from England they would leave me alone. But they do not. Even here they are coming after me, well I ask you. These liberals who come flashing their milk white thighs and think they’re contributing to the cause
.