The Polished Hoe (30 page)

“‘The pains of hell are loosed at last
The days of mourning now are past.’”

and wishes for the second time tonight that he was in the Choir of Sin-Davids Anglican Church, and away from this Great House, in spite of its seductive pull upon his heart and his body, a pull he is trying both to accept and to reject.

She surprises him, by singing the last two lines of the fourth verse:

“‘An angel robed in light hath said,
“The Lord is risen from the dead.” ’”

“Thirty-six hours ago,” she says. Sargeant does not pay any attention to her. He is still thinking about Hurricane Darnley. “Thirty-six hours before this,” she says again, “I was a different person.”

“That is how life is,” he says without interest.

“Yes! And thirty-six hours later, I am here.”

The silence falls upon the room. She and Sargeant go back to listening to the Choir from St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.

“In police-work,” he says, “’specially when you’re on a ’vestigation, some of the strangest things does come into your mind, Miss Mary. Some o’ the strangest things. With me, it is the fear that the man I tracking-down going-play a trick on me and get away. But not many have get-away from my paws. Not many. If I had one-hand only, I could count the number o’ escapees on half the fingers on that one-hand who escape. But according to what you just said, in regards to the differences that time bestow, I, many-a-time stand-in-awe and tremble when it get dark, like tonight; and I not ’shamed to tell you that I fears that the man that I am tracking-down, could, if he get the chance, kill me before I nab him. Or kill
him.
But not one, so far, get that chance.

“The last murder in this Island, tek-place five years ago; and I was in-charge-of-the-’vestigation; spending many a dark night tracking-down that son-of-a-bitch—pardon my French, Miss Mary . . .”

“Boysie-Boys, you mean! Boysie-Boys terrorize the whole Island . . .”

“. . . many a night tracking-down Boysie-Boys in the canes, in the gullies, in the caves back o’ this very Plantation, in the woods; under cellars, and every step I take in the darkness, I imagine that Boysie-Boy have a knife to my throat. I could even feel the coldness of the steel in the blade of the knife in the crux of my neck. And taste my own blood.

“But I tell you, Miss Mary-Mathilda, God was with me. The very next night, I see-heem, crouching under a cluster o’ pigeon-pea trees. I hold-on-more-tighter on my bull-pistle. All eighteen inches of it. And I creep-up-on-heem. Slow-slow. And quiet as a micey. And I measure-he-off, with regards to the distance he was from me, and the length o’ my bull-pistle, plus the length of my hand holding the pistle.
Whapppp!
Miss Mary, when I drive the first lash in Boysie-Boys arse, he tremble. And then he shake. And then he stann-up. Straight-straight-straight as a arrow. And
whapppp!
Jesus Christ, when the second blow hit heem, Miss Mary, pardon my language, but when the second-one-hit-heem, and the bull-pistle land
whhhapps!
in Boysie-Boy’s arse, excuse my . . .”

“He was terrorizing the whole Island!” she says.

“When the third lash hit-heem, I-myself was sorry for him!”

“Good-God! But still!”

“That was the last murder that tek-place in this Island.

“I sometimes does-think that some of the crimes I read-’bout in magazines that my daughter send-down from Amurca, dealing with murders and crimes in the Canadian North, and ’pon the Prairies, where the snow does be ten feet deep, and white-white-white, falling ten months outta twelve, and the Mounties and the
RCMP
ees tracking-down criminals and serial killers, on foot and sometimes on horseback, when I read about them crimes, I does imagine that I am facing the same breed o’ criminals and mass murderers, in this Island.

“In a magazine, I read about a fellar who kill thirtyfive women in three months . . . in Canada.”

“thirtyfive murders? And
all
women?”

“At the ratio of thirtyfive murders to three months, that comes out to seven killings every month, or one every twenty-eight, or thirty-one days, as thirty days hath September, April, June and November, all the rest have thirty-one days, excepting February alone, which hath . . .”

“. . . but twenty-eight . . .”

“. . . and twenty-nine in each leap year.”

“God-have-His-mercy!”

“I sometimes think that the level o’ crimes and criminals that I reads about that is part of Amurcan life, and life in the Canadian North, will one day reach these peaceable shores of Bimshire. But I pray to God, and hope not.”

“Oh, North Amurca!” she says. “I told you that I visited Amurca? I did. Didn’t I? But thinking about it now, I don’t even know what I related as a experience undertaken by me actually might not’ve been something that I undertaken. You know what I mean?

“It could be that I was relating a story I read in a book. It don’t matter if I remember actually going to Miami-Florida. If I was actually on that train going north. It is not those facts that I claiming to be true. The story itself is the thing. That experience of living through the story. Wilberforce tell me that you could pick up so much knowledge from travelling, that the more you travel the less you sometimes know exactly where it is that you travel to.

“I see things when I sit-down in my chair, and I am studying. And I see things when I dream. And I cannot make a distinction between living-out a story, and reading a story.

“I think that is how the journey to Amurca happened. It was the story that I wanted to give to you. I may not have visited Amurca. And then-again, I may-have-in-fact visited Amurca.

“But I know that those coloured ladies eating Southern-fry chicken out of paper bags, on the train, is one and the same thing in real life, as in my imagination. It is the fact, and it is the story.

“Also, the Buffalo wings . . . Yes.

“The Buffalo wings. And the eighty-one-year-old woman who I heard singing the blues.”

“Amurcans are real singers!”

“The best in the world!”

“If you don’t mind me putting this to you,” he says, “what we are going do with him?”

“With who?”

“Bellfeels.”

“
Mr.
Bellfeels, you mean!” she corrects him.

“Mr. Bellfeels. Sorry. What we going to do about Mr. Bellfeels? We can’t sit down here all night and not face facts, Miss Mary. We got to face facts. What are we going do with Mr. Bellfeels?”

“In the matter of this case?”

“In the matter of this case,” he says. “And in tekking the evidence that belongst to this case.”

“In the taking of the evidence.”

“And from who?”

“Who from?”

“Witnesses. From supporting witnesses. ’Leviating circumstances, with evidence in support; and things-so. And it is getting late, although the time is moving in slow motion, like in a magic lantern.”

She remains still; “studying,” as she calls thinking; and the night seems to stand still, too: crickets are chirping; fireflies that were drops and flickers of light, like starlights seen from a distance, disappear altogether; or else are dropping dead, falling off into nothing; the nothing that the night becomes: thick, heavy, shining with blackness; a blackness like death.

“Wilberforce coming into my thoughts,” she says, “with such a heaviness of soul and spirit. Why, at a time like this?

“Very often Wilberforce would be in this same room, sitting down just where you are, and not one word would pass between him and me. And then-again, he and me would be in this room, and would be talking and chatting and laughing our head off. Wilberforce playing the piano, and me singing along. Or else, just listening . . .

“I bet you that the wife of the Solicitor-General, or the wife of Revern Dowd or the wife of either of the two leading barsters-at-Law, even the wife of the Headmaster of the Elementary School, are all women schooled in the ways of appreciating music. And that they could tell you everything about music and art. And beautiful things. Things like the pictures on this wall that we were trying to figure out. We got some answers right. But we didn’t pass the exam, though. Even a simple thing like the meaning of
tisket.
These simple things that are so hard. And being such, being schooled in these better things of life, even in this Plantation life, is the explanation of their not-ever giving me a invitation into their front-houses, to have tea with them. Or to dinner. Saturday night after Saturday night will come and pass, and you will find me here, watching the stars and the tops of the canes. Watching the four walls, as the saying goes. A invitement from one o’ them bitches to dinner in their home? I would dead waiting for one! Not even for a cucumber sangwich . . . not that their cooking is anything to make your mouth water! So tasteless; and without salt. And don’t talk about no pepper! Yes . . .

“It is not that they are prejudice, and serrigating me. I don’t think they have a dislike for my colour. They just couldn’t be so prejudice and serrigating!

“They are not, after all, Amurcans. No.

“Not in this regards.

“Or am I fooling myself?”

“I don’t know, Miss Mary. You are more closer to white people, than me. To-besides, the only white people I know is the ones round-here, that I grow up with. And sometimes I don’t know them at all. But the real white? The only ones I know is the woman who missed the ball and fall-down and hit the paling at the Savannah Lawn Tennis Club; and the clerkess, Miss P. Weatherhead from the Perfumes and Fragrances Department at Cave Shepherd & Sons, Haberdasheries, who one day in Town showed me a bottle o’ Eau de Cologne No. 4711; and rubbed some on my hand. A perfume like your perfume. On my left hand. On the back. Plus, the Commissioner o’ Police. But I won’t call them bosom-friends.”

“And the Revern,” she tells him; and he nods, agreeing; and she adds, “And what about the Solicitor-General and the Headmaster of Harrison?”

“You didn’t tell me to name-off all the white people that exist in this Island!”

“And how you see
these
local white people?”

“These white people that I name-off, that born here? They’re not just white people. They are Bimshire-people. Like me and you. Regardless to what they say. Or feel. But Amurcans, on the other hand . . .”

“And the English?”

“I don’t make no exceptions between the two o’ them two races. The Amurcans and the English to me is one-and-the-same. Six o’ one, and half dozen of the next!”

“I couldn’t be fooling myself, all these years, you think so? . . . I feel that it is education, and knowing things, like the meaning of a
tisket
and a
tasket
, the real meaning of ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ and understanding
Head of the Madonna.
Things so; and certain other words, and things, like being able to play ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ on a violin, or the piano; and be able to explain the history behind ‘The Ride of the Valkyries.’ Knowing these things is what separates the wife of the Solicitor-General, or the Commissioner wife, from me.”

“You really think so, Miss Mary?”

“Take ‘The Ride of the Valkyries.’ I have heard it so many times that every time I hear it, I learn something more about Mr. Bellfeels. And the Solicitor-General. But moreso about the Solicitor-General, because he is a Englishman. A pure European. Mr. Bellfeels, on the other hand, is a Bimshire-white, with mix-blood, the same don’t apply . . .

“You remember the calypso we used to sing ’bout-here, the one they made on Clotelle? And you remember how all o’ we knew the words, by-heart?..Well, that was our way of celebrating Clotelle, even though it was a tragedy. That made it, therefore, a damn-strange kind o’ celebration.

“Well, it was no celebration at all. No. It was a memorial. Like a wake. And it was our way, the Village way of telling the whole Island, the world, everybody, people living and people not born yet, but who, when they hear the calypso, would know that Clotelle existed in a certain time, lived in that time and met her death in that time, by certain means. Our singing the calypso on Clotelle was our way of saying these things to the world.

“That calypso was therefore something like a history, or like a myth. I got that word,
myth
, from Wilberforce. We were building-up a myth over Clotelle. It is something like a shrine, then. Yes?

“That is the word! Maybe that is the word!

“But whether-or-not, you know what I mean. Clotelle is a local shrine, a myth.

“‘The Ride of the Valkyries,’ played on that piano by Wilberforce, all these years that I have sit and listened to him playing it, is the same thing. A shrine. Or a myth. Yes.

“The least it is, is a story about Europeans from that part of the world, just north of the Eyetalian mountains, the Eyetalian Alps. The Dollaramites. I am smart-enough to know that.

“It tells me what a cruel race o’ people they were. With all the killing they executed over the ages. Both there. And down-here. There first. Then, with Columbus and all o’ them, Drake, Hawkins, Newton, Bligh and Lord Horatio Nelson, turned their affection to down-here. The only exception, so far, in present times, is Winston Churchill, the leader of the Allieds . . . and we still have to watch him.

“The killings by Europeans appears plain-plain-plain in their music. . . .