The Autobiography of My Mother (13 page)

And still without his exhibiting any excitement, the words would pour out of him, one on top of the other, like water rushing to a precipice, and I would grow tired of it, and it would cause me to take offense, and I would put a stop to it by removing my clothes and stand before him and stretch my arms all the way up to the ceiling and order him to his knees to eat and there make him stay until I was completely satisfied.

His face afterward was patterned with randomly placed fine lines, a set of shallow impressions made by the abundance of coarse hair that grew between my legs. He looked wonderfully human then, free of blame, not happy, only quite human. He used to be young, but he wasn't young anymore. He was about my father's age, about fifty, but it was not a surprise that he did not look it; my father had had to commit his own crimes against humanity: he wore on his face the number of people he had impoverished, the number of people to whose early death he had made a sizable contribution, the number of children he had fathered and then ignored, and so on; but by the time Philip was born, all the bad deeds had already been committed; he was an heir, generations of people had died and left him something. That this had not brought him eternal happiness, had not brought him earthly peace, would not save him from becoming familiar with the unknown, and might even have driven him to a corner of the world that he did not like, into the bed of a woman who did not love him, could not be doubted. He was a tall man, taller than my bed was long, and so he could not sleep in my bed. You could see in his hands that he had no confidence, no public confidence and none in private either: his hands were small, not in proportion to the rest of his body; they were pale, the color of a bad-luck cockroach in its pupa stage; they were not hands that could invent or gain a world, they were hands that could lose a world. I had been working for him as an assistant for over a year when because I could not get rid of a cough he had to listen to my chest. My breasts then were in a constant state of sensation, the breasts themselves small globes of reddish brown flesh, the nipples a fruit purple and pointed; they burned, they itched, and this sensation ceased only when a mouth, a man's mouth, was clamped tightly over them and sucking; I had long ago come to recognize this as perhaps an unremitting part of the way I really am and so I looked for a man who could offer relief from this sensation; I did not look for a husband, and so the sentences “I married him because he was so handsome,” “I married him because I felt he was trustworthy,” “I married him because I felt he would be a good provider” would never cross my lips. Because my breasts were in such a state, I wore strips of muslin wrapped tightly around my chest, as if to protect an old wound. To have Philip examine me I had to remove the bandage, and since he was a doctor I did this in his presence. I removed the muslin carefully, as if I were alone, and this was because I was in the presence of a doctor, not because I wanted him to find it interesting in any way. His voice had a strange quality, strange because it came from him, but familiar to me all the same; he sounded like a man, a very ordinary man, a man as I knew a man to be; it made me tell him exactly why I did that. I told him that my breasts were filled with an irritable sensation, an irritable sensation that I found pleasant because it could be relieved only by a sensation I found even more desirable, a man's mouth placed securely over them.

We were in the room where he examined patients, I was sitting on the table; the room had windows on three sides, the windows had adjustable wooden slats; the wooden slats were tilted half open and the sunlight came in through them, measured, each shaft three inches wide, and some of them fell halfway across the floor and ended there, and some of them fell diagonally across another part of the floor and then bent up against the wall and ended halfway there, and it gave the room a strange atmosphere, the pattern of shading and light, a fully clothed man, a woman explaining why she bandaged her breasts, a kerosene lamp on the shelf, a set of white enamel basins which held syringes and needles and forceps inside them on a mahogany table; and all of a sudden he must have felt excited, for he walked away from me and looked through one of the half-closed shutters, and of course he saw the end of the world, because the Roseau sky looked like that sometimes, it looked like heaven, the place to go when you don't want to think too much; and it's possible that he asked himself what he was doing in this part of the world, and it's possible that he remembered all the reasons that had brought him to this part of the world; any one of them would have made him sick. People say something was inevitable when they have a sense of helplessness, when something that seemed good turns out bad, and this for the millionth time; no one ever says this on his deathbed, the only time it is the appropriate thing to say, because nothing else is inevitable, not even the sun coming up in the morning, which you may not live to see.

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What color was the night? Black. I was in my room. What time of night did he come to me? It was not too long after I heard the sound of the night guards' boots on the cobblestones; they were returning from their duty of guarding the governor's house, even though such a function, guarding the governor, was without any meaning whatsoever, because who would harm the governor? I would, I could easily cut off his head, but they would only send another governor, and even I would grow tired of this, cutting off his head. Did he knock at the door? Did I say, Come in? Did he open the door with some hesitation? Did he open the door quickly and come in with a mistaken look of being wanted on his face? Did he wipe his feet on the mat at the door? Did he close the door behind him? What color was his face? Was it pale and ghostly, cowardly, hollow, sad? Was it red, full of blood, excited, happy? Perhaps, perhaps. He wore a blue shirt, the shade of blue that the sea became at midday, and this surprised me, because I did not know that he would like such a color; he must have worn shoes; he must have just bathed, a scent came from him, a perfume for a man, a scent no man I had ever known could afford. He carried a book in his hand—he did that from the beginning—he carried it in his right hand and his index finger separated it into two parts. He said my name. My room was not too small, it was not too big; it was built to house his nurse, built to hold someone way above my social standing, someone way beneath his, someone who was not me, someone who was not him, someone who would keep me in my place, someone who would keep him in his; but no nurse ever came. I could feel the darkness of the night outside, a darkness no starlight could brighten, a darkness that discouraged movement unless you felt your feet had eyes; I could hear someone singing, a woman—it was an English woman; she was singing a sad song, a sad lullaby, but she herself was not sad, people who are sad do not sing at all. My room was lit by a small blue lamp whose base was made of porcelain with two flowers with multicolored petals painted on it—parrot tulips, Philip had told me they were called—and it gave off a light that made the room seem not romantic, not wicked, not warm, none of those things; it only gave light, not much light, because it was a small lamp; it had been my mother's lamp and would have been the last lamplight that she saw, because it was the lamp that lit the room at the time she died, which was the time I was born; and by this lamplight, too, she would have seen my father's face as he lay on top of her, just before he withdrew himself from inside her. But this small lamp gave not much light and Philip was carrying a book in his hand which he wanted to show to me, he thought; he really thought so, he thought he wanted to show it to me from the moment he picked it up from its place on a shelf just before he ate his dinner; and after his wife went to her bed and he stood in three doorways going in and out of rooms, and then he stepped out of his house and walked over to my room and was inside the door, and all the time he thought he wanted to show me this book, right up to the moment when I let him know I did not want to see it. I had been sitting on the floor caressing in an absentminded way various parts of my body. I was wearing a nightgown made from a piece of nankeen my father had given me, and when Philip came in, one hand was underneath it and my fingers were trapped in the hair between my legs. When he came in I did not remove my hand hurriedly. He said my name. I wanted to respond in a normal way, the way usually done when someone calls you. You say, “Yes?” and you wait for them to continue, but I could not do this, my voice felt as if it were trapped in my hand, the hand that was trapped in the hair between my legs. He then said nothing. The cuffs of his trousers rested on the top of his shoes; the trousers were made of linen and were a shade of beige that I did not like: long-dead bones are that color, empty shells are that color, it is one of the colors of decay, but a color he liked, many things he wore were this shade of beige; his shoes were brown, substantial, and shiny.

He was not at all the person I dreamed of lying on top of me, my legs wrapped around his waist; I was not without someone, I knew a man, a man I thought of in this way, a man I dreamed of, but he was not in that room with me right then, he was away, I did not know where, and until Philip came, I was alone in the room caressing myself, one of my hands purposely trapped in the hair between my legs. His hair was thin and yellow like an animal's that I was not familiar with; his skin was thin and pink and transparent, as if it were on its way to being skin but had not yet reached the state that real skin is; it was not the skin of anyone I have loved yet and not the skin I dreamed of; the veins showed through it here and there like threads sewn by a clumsy seamstress; his nose was narrow and thin like the small part of a funnel, and tilted up in the air as if on the alert for something, not like a nose I was used to being fond of. He did not look like anyone I could love, and he did not look like anyone I should love, and so I determined then that I could not love him and I determined that I should not love him. There is a certain way that life ought to be, an ideal way, a perfect way, and there is the way that life is, not quite the opposite of ideal, not quite the opposite of perfect, it just is not quite the way it should be but not quite the way it should not be either; I mean to say that in any situation, only one or two, maybe even three out of ten, things are just what you have been praying for. He called my name. He had placed the book he was carrying on a table, a table made of the wood taken from an oak tree, a table with three feet that ended in the shape of claws, a table that he had brought from England with him but had found no real use for and so it had been given to me or to whoever would occupy the room it was in. He called my name and it was as if he were imprisoned in the sound of my name; his voice was muffled, raspy, like someone not getting enough air, he was in despair, he was in tears, although no water came out of his eyes, he was not himself, he never would be in this room. I started to remove my nightgown, I pulled it over my head, I had plaited my hair into two braids and rolled them up along the side of my head, they covered my ears; the neck of my nightgown had too small an opening and so I stood before him, my arms above my head, my head inside my nightgown, naked. I do not know how long I stood like that, it could only have been a moment, but I became eternally fascinated with how I felt then. I felt a sensation between my legs that I was not unfamiliar with; he was not the first man I had been with, but I had not allowed myself to acknowledge how powerful a feeling it was, I myself had no word for it, I had never read a word for it, I had never heard someone else mention a word for it; the feeling was a sweet, hollow feeling, an empty space with a yearning to be filled, to be filled up until the yearning to be filled up was exhausted. He stood behind me and raced his tongue up and down the back of my neck. He helped me bring my nightgown back down over my body, and then he unraveled one plait of hair and I unraveled the other. He helped me remove my nightgown and it came off easily. Around his waist he wore a brown belt made of hemp dyed the same color brown as his shoes and I wanted to remove it, but I could not bear to see him naked, his skin in its almost skinness would remind me of the world, the world that was outside the room which was the dark night, the world that was beyond the dark night, and so I closed my eyes and I turned around and removed his belt, and using my mouth I secured it tightly around my wrists and I raised my hands in the air, and with my face turned sideways I placed my chest against a wall. I made him stand behind me, I made him lie on top of me, my face beneath his; I made him lie on top of me, my back beneath his chest; I made him lie in back of me and place his hand in my mouth and I bit his hand in a moment of confusion, a moment when I could not tell if I was in agony or pleasure; I made him kiss my entire body, starting with my feet and ending with the top of my head. The darkness outside the room pressed against its four sides; inside, the room grew smaller and smaller as it filled up almost to bursting with hisses, gasps, moans, sighs, tears, bursts of laughter; but they had a deep twist to them, a spin, an edge, that transformed these sounds from their ordinary selves and would make you cover your ears unless they came from inside you, until you realized that they came from inside you; all these sounds came from me; he was silent then and he was always silent when he was in such a state; no words came from him, no sounds came from him, only sometimes he would murmur my name as if it held something, a meaning, a memory that perhaps he could not let go. He fell into a sleep, not the sleep of the contented, the sleep of the satisfied, but the sleep of the drunk; I did not mean peace to him (as he did not mean peace to me); I could not mean peace to him, it would have been dangerous for him if that had been so, the temptation to see him die I would have found overwhelming, I would not have been able to resist it.

His wife then was still alive, her name was Moira and she was still alive; they lived in the same house and ate the same meals together at the same time and did many things together, but they did not sleep in the same bed in the same room; they did many things together, went to church, saw the same people at the same time, but they did not sleep in the same bed in the same room, and though it made sense to me, for I, too, always choose to sleep, actually sleep, alone, I did not know how they came to such an arrangement and I did not know which of them required it. I did not know how they met, they did not look as if they could ever have been in love with each other, but even I did not trust that observation; after all, everybody is full of surprises. She was very pleased to be who she was, and by that she meant she was pleased to be of the English people, and that made sense, because it is among the first tools you need to transgress against another human being—to be very pleased with who you are. She liked her hair, it was black and cropped close to her head like a man's, and she would make a mixture of eggs, honey, and lemon juice and comb it through her hair to make it gleam. She liked her complexion and would not have described it in this way: waxy, ghostish, without life; she would have said of herself that she was kind, full of sympathy for others (she collected used clothes for victims of natural disasters), decent (she gave to the poor), full of grace, but in her present situation it did not matter and this situation was a climate she did not like, a place full of people she could never love. For days she would eat only fruit and complain that it was too sour or too sweet or the flesh not firm enough or the flesh too firm, and she would lie in the shade because the sun was too hot, or she would lie in a room with the windows shut to keep out the damp, or perhaps it was the darkness or something else. She wore only black or only gray or only white, and since she was very thin, bony, almost like something that used to be and had been long lost and then found, a remnant, fossil-like, these colors gave her a malicious quality; she looked like a vector, a vector of malaise, and then she would speak in long sentences, sentences that were hundreds of words long, and she would not pause for breath, and nothing was really said, just a strange sound in the air, an annoyance that was her voice, and my impulse to make it quiet with a swift blow had to be resisted. I did not like her and I should have liked her, or at least I should have had even a tiny bit of sympathy for her, because like me she also had a broken womb, but I could not tell if like me she had broken hers deliberately or if she was born that way. I did not like her; I did not like her, it was impossible, it was an impossible situation. We did not like ourselves, we did not like each other, and so it was impossible to like them; they had a quality of something other, something other than ourselves; we were human and they were not human, and each thing about them that was different from us made us doubt their reality; they were cruel in ways we had never thought of, they were one of the definitions of contradiction: they lived among people they did not like, they did not do this with ease, they did not do this in happiness, they did it anyway. Her otherness was not particularly offensive; it was just that I became more familiar with it. She sat in basins of cold water to make her hot body cool and then she sat in basins of hot water to make her cold body warm. When I saw her for the first time, she was standing in front of a mirror rubbing the small old stones that were her breasts, but with no aim to it as far as I could see: her mouth was not open, her legs were not spread slightly apart, her hands just moved back and forth in a circling motion around her breasts. Her eyes were a shade of blue more suited to a wide expanse like the sky or the sea, and set in her bone-dry face, they confirmed an ungenerous nature. I would always look forward to seeing her face, not with pleasure, from curiosity, and was always taken aback that it held nothing new: no softening, no tears, no regrets, no apology; she was a lady, I was a woman, and this distinction for her was important; it allowed her to believe that I would not associate the ordinary, the everyday—a bowel movement, a cry of ecstasy—with her, and a small act of cruelty was elevated to a rite of civilization. And so she would say, “There is a woman who holds shop every Tuesday at the corner of King George and Market Streets; tell her that the lady who bought…” It was an accurate description of herself, more so than she could have wanted it to be, for it is true that a lady is a combination of elaborate fabrications, a collection of externals, facial arrangements, and body parts, distortions, lies, and empty effort. I was a woman and as that I had a brief definition: two breasts, a small opening between my legs, one womb; it never varies and they are always in the same place. She would never describe herself in this way, she would shrink from such a description, such a description has at its core the act of self-possession, and at that moment my self was the only thing I had that was my own. It was not to her, then, that I could pose the question: Why do women hate each other? And this life that she (and Philip and all who looked like them) lived among us, this life of ease, this life of comfort, the result of a great triumph, a life that no one seems able to resist, dominion over others: it, too, was a life of death, a different death from the one of the gravedigger Lazarus, a different one from my own, but a death all the same, a living death, for each deed, good or bad, holds inside its self its own reward, good or bad; each act you commit is your gift to yourself. She died. I married her husband, but this is not to say that I took her place.