The Bigger Light (15 page)

“Look, ma’am,” he began, “I don’t really know why I am doing this …” The woman was unkempt. Her dress was open
around the waist, and he could see smudges of food or work or toil showing on her petticoat. Her slippers were torn and her hair was uncombed. “I just thought that you wouldn’t mind if I gave you these few things. I know … look, what can I say? I scarcely know you, well … I know, man, this country could be a hard place to live, and for years I didn’t have a job myself, and well …”

“Come in, come in.” She opened the door wider and he went in. The room had a strange smell. It was a smell of food, of air freshener from a bottle, of clothes sweated in and slept in, of life that was bare in its luxuries. He looked around and was surprised that the room was as tidy as his own living room. Everything was in place. There were doilies on each table, and one on top of the television. It was a colour television, and it was turned on, but playing low. The radio was also playing. The station was CHUM. Boysie knew this station. Everybody, almost everybody, in Toronto listened to CHUM. CHUM always had gimmicks for making people listen to CHUM. He had laughed, only yesterday, when he called a number by error, and the voice of a child blared out to him.
“I listen to CHUM!”
hoping to win a thousand dollars cash if the caller had in fact been CHUM. There was a colour print of a man painted by Rubens hanging on the largest wall space, over the television. And on the television itself was a picture of a family group. He could not make out from where he was standing whether the family in the picture was the woman’s family in life. He was standing all this time, and he did not hear the woman offer him a seat. But then he heard “… you are a strange man, Mr. Cumberbatch. A very strange man.” She had been seeing him, and watching him for months now, as he came and went.

“Can I make you some coffee?”

“No, it doesn’t matter.”

“Won’t be any trouble, at all.”

“No, I don’t want you to go to that trouble. I’m all right.”

“I been seeing you coming and going, Mr. Cumberbatch. You own the panel truck, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“You better give me those things outta your hand, before the blood spoil your clothes. And where’re my manners, eh?” She took the bag from him; but he was not sure if she had accepted it. “You sure you won’t stay and have a cup of tea, then? Something? What about a beer?”

“No, I was just on my way out, and I said to myself, why don’t I give …”

“Don’t feel bad about it. I know how you could feel. Mr. Cumberbatch, you must never feel bad about giving. Enough people don’t give. People shouldn’t feel bad about giving. Anything. To feel bad about giving is very bad. Won’t you say?” And then the woman sneezed. It was a loud sneeze, which he did not expect from her. But what made him pay attention to the sneeze was that it was a sneeze similar to Dots’s. Dots sneezed in a loud, vulgar, sensual way, like the passing of gas loudly, or like an orgasm, if an orgasm, and not the voice of the woman having the orgasm … if an orgasm could talk … this woman’s and Dots’s sneeze was like an orgasm. And straightaway, Boysie knew something more about his wife, that nothing before, word nor deed nor even observation of her personality, could have provided him with: it was possible for his wife to have been fooling around with him all these years. It was the message in the sneeze. Everything she could control, except that sneeze. “Mr. Cumberbatch? Mr. Cumberbatch?” the woman was saying.

“It’s all right, ma’am.”

“You seem to be so far away, as if you are not really here.
Anyway, we should introduce ourselves, properly.” She smiled. When she smiled she lighted up the entire room, and if he was not in that depressed mood, his heart would have been brightened too. But she smiled sweetly. And her teeth were strong and youthful and were her own, and as bright as he had seen once in a television commercial. And indeed, he joked in his mind, and said to himself, “Ultra-bright, Ultra-bright, or brite?” and she held out her hand for him to take, and he took her hand by the palm, and touched it in a handshake, and before he let it drop out of his grasp, he remembered, he saw in his mind, the picture of his own wife with the young man turning the pages of the picture book and her housecoat hem, and he could not determine whether he had seen that in his dream or on the street when they were crossing over together. And in his heart he was sorry he had not accepted the coffee, or the tea, or the beer, so that he could just remain here, not to intrude upon the woman, for he was conscious of that, and of her situation; but he just wanted to be invited to sit down, to rest, to flop down and breathe with ease until he fell asleep and never woke up again.

“Millie. Millicent James. What’s yours? I know you are Mr. Cumberbatch, but you were Mr. Cumberbatch before you were so kind to me.”

“Boys … Bertram. Bertram.”

“You’re not sure?”

“No, just that I never asked anybody before … but I prefer Bertram now.”

“To what?”

“Boysie.”

“Boysie?”

“Yes, Boysie.”

“You know something, Bertram?” She said “Bertram” in
two distinct syllables. And he liked that. At last he had got somebody to call him by his correct name, somebody to see the value in calling him by his real name. “You know something, Bertram? A man like you, the way you dress, the way you go and come in this building, a man like you, you shouldn’t allow
anybody
to call you Boysie. It is not manly. You should always watch out for your manhood.” And she laughed (those strong teeth!) and he laughed, and in his heart he wished it would never end. And then, it did end: it ended but just for a second, for into his mind came the passage from the newspaper:
a 37-year-old mother of five who was beaten by a suspected purse snatcher in the underground garage … died of her injuries;
and he painted in more details, some of rape, some of brutalization, some of loving. And he wiped them out of his mind and continued laughing with her.

“You know, Bertram, life is so funny! I was just here listening to that show on the television where they give away cars and things like that, and I say to myself, I said to myself, I wish somebody would bring a five-dollar bill and lend me right now! As you know, it is harder for a woman in this city to go out on the street and be a beggar. She could be something else on the streets. And then, out of the blue, here you are!” She smiled again. “You see what I mean, Mr. Cumberbatch?”

“Bertram.”

“Yes, Berr-tramm.”

She shifted her position in her seat. She pulled her dress down well over her knees. She held her legs, from the knees down, close together.

“I must thank you for the gift, and I’m not going to open it until after you leave. No, no, no! I’m not hinting for you to leave now. No, please.” He sat back down. But he knew he had to leave soon. And she knew it. The relationship, the
breathing, the sounds they were making when they were not speaking, the vibrations were telling them both that they should part, right now, because if not, they would have to do something. And they both knew what it was, what it would be. But they were more interested at this moment in what had prompted them to meet like this. “Have you ever met my children? They are all at school now. My eldest is fourteen. I wish he would learn.” Boysie began to dream, and to hardly listen; for he had stumbled upon what he had been waiting for. He had thought of this, and he had planned in his way of planning — refusing to face the consequences of the first exertion of thought; but now he knew, now he was strong enough to do it.

They were standing, he at the door, outside, she just inside the door. He wanted to be able to tell her “I am going to call on you again,” but he knew he could not, and he knew he did not have to say it. For she was smiling. She held the dress together now (not like Dots had allowed her housecoat to remain unbuttoned in the eyes of the young man, even in a dream: even if it was a dream!) and so he knew his distance and also that he did not have to take that distance … Boysie saw it now: what was disturbing him about the incident on the street with the young man and Dots was not jealousy, not that; but that Dots had made the invitation with so little style, and had invited the manliness in the young man, and as a man, he had nothing to do but … it was a cheap way to behave. Was this on the street, or in the dream? In the dream. In the dream, she had invited the man’s hands. Boysie saw this now, clearly. The woman was smiling, and he was smiling as he walked away. She left the door open until he walked away from her, until he reached the lobby, until he went down the front walk; and in all this time he wanted to look back and wave and smile,
because he knew, he
knew
she was there, but he knew also, that he did not have to look back.

Why had he not thought of taking a walk at this time of day before? It was such a simple thing to do. Walk out of your apartment and walk into the street. His apartment had held him captive, and the strange woman from the subway had been his guard; so that he had to remain indoors in order to feel some life from the outside. But the street is easy now. There are people all around. And now that he is outside and seeing West Indians, he likes them, he even feels something close to them, with them, for them. Them. He feels more like a West Indian now than a Barbadian, in all these smiling numbers of people from the Caribbean. He began to understand now why he had held so much contempt and resentment for them. He had despised their youth because he was made to feel that he had not much left himself; and that he was already laden with a bulging stomach. “Look at your blasted belly, eh? What more use is you to me?” Dots was saying this almost every day. And the fact that he was on a diet, which is to say, that he was eating less, and finding it embarrassing to refuse her food at dinner, was making it more unsatisfactory for him. He had not really hated these young men, he told himself. He had rather resented … what the hell was he trying to argue? The day was fresh and alive with people. And he had forgotten to wear his topcoat, but he did not realize this until he was walking along Church Street heading towards the Lake, going south. “Why the hell you don’t jump in the lake, eh, Boysie?” Dots had told him that, once, and they had laughed about it then. The woman in Apartment 101 is younger than he: and yet she seemed to be much older; and older women have always had this reputation, this history, Boysie, women with
reputations are not fit for you to talk to, or about (“You are a decent man, and what the hell you’re doing thinking of going with a prostitute? A woman of ill repute, heh-heh-heh!”); women who are older have had a long history of teaching younger men the meaning of life.

In Barbados there was a woman who lived next door to his mother’s place, and she must have been, let’s see, about fifteen years older than he was at the time. Oh yes! She is the woman who gave him a coconut bread one Saturday night. Now, let’s see what year that was … ahhmmm! Nineteen forty-two.
Forty-two!
Because in forty-two you was wearing your first long pants! Oh hell! I remember that as if it was yesterday … yes, old man, women who are older have this frigging gift to show a man the ways of the world, and this woman didn’t even talk about rudeness, what a word! We uses to call it rudeness back in them days. In this country they call it
screwing
. And what a terrible word. Ducks do screwing. Human beings make love …

March is such a beautiful month to walk out in! Men and women tired of wearing winter coats, and of wearing the haggard look of winter in their faces, are now walking with more life, with more meaning in their limbs, and two clumps of young people are sitting on the steps of stores and shops and houses, sitting there where you won’t normally expect them to be sitting.

Boysie walks slowly, breathing in rhythm with his strides, which are slow, his hands folded behind his back, and he looks left and right like a movie camera panning and taking in surroundings as if to place the context of his walk in some new lively meaning. He tips his hat at an old lady who fumbles into his path, and she looks back, a bit astonished at his courteousness, smiles a second time in complete feeling, and says, “What a nice day!” They walk side by side for a moment of
mutual respect for each other, and he says to her, “A nice day!” He says that more than four times, and she answers in the same feeling.

“What a nice day!”

He understands now how loaded a sentiment it is to say “a nice day.” He understands now, for the first time in all his years in Canada, that when a person says it is a nice day, it is a nice day, and it has a meaning that could be the motivation for great deeds, or the motivation for some ironical misconception about oneself. It is a language he must learn more carefully. The crowded bus lumbers down the street, jerky from running on the now-unused tramcar tracks, and the giggle in the movement of the bus capsizes onto the faces of some of the passengers. The bus stops, somebody gets out, and he could swear that he knows the person. But he does not. Beyond him, about two blocks, he sees the pawnshops. A long time now since he has walked on these streets. He used to. With Henry. Days back. Laughing and drinking and calling out after women, and some of them must have been whores. But it was Henry who always did the calling: he did the wishing, because those were days of a horny time, rimmed by desire, a desire born of mere looking. “Look, look, be-Jesus Christ, but don’t touch! Don’t
tech
as the Bajans say.” Oh Henry, good old Henry, sweet Henry!

Boysie is walking with his hands in his waistcoat pockets. Something is missing from his waistcoat pockets. A man in his position. What did the lady back in the apartment say? “A man in your position.” Boysie smiles. He likes that woman. He likes the way she speaks. And when she said, “A man in your position,” it filled him with joy and pride, and a bit of power. She had said something to him which his wife had never said to him. But wives do not have to say that, do they? Do they?
They do, as they should, sometimes. A man in my goddamn position … should be wearing a pocket watch, goddamn! … “I’m beginning to talk a little like that bastard, Henry.” A man in your position is a man in a position to buy a solid gold watch right now, from one of these secondhand pawnshops.