The Origin of Waves (5 page)

“The son of a bitch didn’t learn enough French in First Form, and still there he was, in Barbados, writing my address in French! So, you know what happen? If only the son of a bitch had learn a
little
more French, the letter woulda arrived in time,
at least
for me to get there more sooner …”

“You missed the funeral.”

“The funeral, wake, first anniversary, every-goddamn-thing! Is something I will never forget. And something I’ll never let that son of a bitch forget, either!”

“Old Smitty!”

“Son of a bitch, trying to write me in French, when he didn’t even learn it in First Form! You remember how me and you had to help Smitty with his French homework?”

“Smitty was good in Maths, though. But wasn’t nothing,
rien
, in French.”

“The son of a bitch knew the Geometry textbook by heart. But French? And
francais?
Didn’t even know how to conjugate
je suis, tu suis, il suis
. Fuck all! Robbed me of the chance and the honour of liffing my Old Lady’s head …”

“C’est la vie,”
I say.

“C’est la-fucking-vie!”
John says. And roars with laughter; and immediately, I forget the death of his mother, the Old Lady, and the grief I can see, even now, on his countenance as he relates the tragedy. I am aware that his Amurcan voice is a bit too loud for this quiet bar. One man of three other persons sitting nearby looks around until his eyes catch mine, and he turns his head, leaving me with his unspoken disgust. John’s mother liked me as if I were her own son. “So, the evening in question, when I went-home with the cobblers in my foot, the Old Lady puts me to sit down. The
cobblers bursting my arse. The blood clotting. Pure pain. And my Old Lady giving me a sermon ’bout little boys who won’t stay away from the beach. And then she take off all my clothes. And she put a’ old, large saucepan on the fire, in the backyard. You remember the kitchen in the backyard? You remember the big-rocks, the three big-rocks, or stones, that served as the oven? We call it a stove, or a grate. And she puts some fresh mahogany pods in the fire. And I wondering if she going-bathe me in hot water. And the blaze came up just like how the sun comes up sudden-sudden over the hill in Paynes Bay. And she hot the water. And washed my feet. Both feet. Although, as you know, the blasted needles was only in my
left
foot. Both feet she washed, although I told her and she could see from the blood that the ten black things was in only one foot. The
left
foot. And you know something? You want to hear …?”

“Five of the cobbler’s needles walked from your left foot, to your right foot!”

“You was always a goddamn comedian! That’s what I always liked about you. You’re still a comedian, just like you still can’t swim!”

“I was only joking.”

“You haven’t
change
! Still playing Bob Hope,” he says, laughing. People entering the bar glance at us. I feel people in the street can hear his voice. The man who was there first raises his eyes and moves his lips. “That’s why I had to axe you if you’re still screwing
chicks. You haven’t change, have you? People don’t change. I haven’t changed.” He stops talking. He slams his left foot and then his right foot against the thick carpet, loosening the cramp of the cold in his legs. And then he slaps his large hands together, then he continues, “Mothers are motherfuckers! I mean that in the
best way
, if you see what I’m saying. They’re something else! So, the Old Lady washes both my two feet, knowing all the time, as I had-tell her, and as she-had-already herself
inspect
my left foot, that the goddamn cobbler wasn’t in but only one foot, my left foot. In one foot. And I forget now … I forget that I was going to tell you that the minute
ma mère
washed both feet, the left
and
the right, both of my goddamn heels start to hurt like hell, as if the needles from the cobbler, all ten o’ them, was in each heel. Ain’t that something? Was only years ago, years after that incident, when I was at university, learning to be a therapist, did I understand the logic, and the psychological reason for that transference. You see where I am coming from? So. As I was saying. She bathes both feet. And she dries-off both feet. I am naked as when she
borned
me, all this time. Ten goddamn years old. Sitting in a wooden chair, one o’ those chairs we had in the back-room, a kitchen chair. And I am dangling my two feet, and feeling good. ’Cause, after all, this is the Old Lady …”

“A
nice
Old Lady. I remember the Old Lady. She still goes to church? I forget she’s dead. You said she’s dead. A kind woman. And she liked me.”

“Like her very-own son. And then she wipes the foot, the left
and
the right, in a bath towel; and dry-it-off, dry-dry-dry as a biscuit. And she goes to the larder. Brings out this candle-grease. Put it in something, over the fire, raging now like the fires o’ hell and damnation, and applies the candle-grease to
both
heels to draw out the damn needles from the cobbler. And as you would understand, on the same fire, on the three big rock-stones, was another pot, the buck-pot, with split-peas and rice, and pig tails and tomatoes cook-down-in-it, and another saucepan, a smaller one, with a dolphin head boil-down with more tomatoes, in a butter sauce.”

“I can taste it now! Lord, the food we used to eat!”

“Some of the best goddamn food in the whole
whirl
! Better than all this
hot-cuisine
I had in France!”

“That’s what I miss about living here.”

“Food! Shit,
mon ami
, living in France and Paree all those goddamn years, and hearing the
françaises-
people talk a lotta shit about
hot-cuisine
, and other
parlez-vous
food, man, many’s the nights, either at home with friends in, or in public, in a restaurant, you don’t know the number of times I had to pull-up my wife straight, and inform her that all this shit about
hot-cuisine
, garlic-and-shit, can’t
touch
the type and quality o’ food we devoured in Barbados, that place where we was both borned. You’re right! About the quality o’ food and
édiments we
used to have!”

“Fish-head boiled-down in tomatoes, and a butter-sauce!”

“Well, that was my supper that evening when we left sitting down on the beach, and me with those damn cobbler-needles, or quills in my arse. And as I telling you now. The Old Lady heat-up the candle-grease. She puts it on a saucer. A saucer we had, that my uncle had-send from Amurca, with the Statute of Liberty on it. Something make-outta brass, or copper, or something that look like that kind o’ metal. This Statute-o’-Liberty saucer. And she place that hot candle-grease all over my left-foot heel, all over, and …”

“The right heel, too!” I say, hoping to cut him short to order a drink.

“You’re goddamn right! Just in case, she says. And wrap-it-up in a’ old piece o’ shirt. And knot-it-up. And then. She gives me a sponge-bath with miraculous-bush leaves boiled in the water. Man, you can imagine how I did-feel. Relaxed. Like a goddamn
king
. Calm. Loved. The Old Lady’s favourite son. Although, as you know, she only has
me
. And I didn’t even think or remember the tube going out to sea, and disappearing out in the waves. And never coming back. I never even think of the trouble you was facing when you went home and had to explain to your father and your mother why you was late. I leff you in the lurch, that evening. I leff you, my
ace-boon-coon
in the goddamn lurch, I was so happy with the hot candle-grease on my left and right foot, and the bush-bath and the split-peas-and-rice.”

“They never asked me about the tube.”

“Never?”

“Neither my mother nor my father. And you know my mother, the schoolmistress!”

“And here I am, in all this time, years and years later, worrying my arse over you, that I had-leff you in the goddamn lurch, tube-wise! But that evening when we leff the beach and I had the quills, or the needles from the cobbler in my left foot, and my Old Lady do what I just tell you she did, there I was, waiting to have the split-peas-and-rice with the fish-head sauce, and I was going to refuse to wake up the next morning, whiching was a Saturday, because of the happiness of my state, or in other words, wake up late-late and meet you at the bus stop to go to the Public Library. And
then
. Then was when I really knew that she was not being so kind to me. It was the biggest flogging I ever got from the hands o’ my mother. The worst cut-arse! At first, I thought she was joking. You know my Old Lady! But after the first fifteen lashes, I
knew
she was giving me
two
for each of the needles from the cobbler. But when she get-pass twenty-five, I realize that she had in mind to paint my arse, three times for each cobbler needle, or quill. As a warning, she says. ‘I always warn you three times, don’t I? Three times is enough warning to you! Before I pass judgement!’ And
waps
! I stop counting after that. And from that day, whiching was the last time the Old Lady raised a hand to me, I never allowed even a sea-egg, which as you know is a cousin to a cobbler, a member of that species, to pass my two lips.
The goddamn
françaises
eat cobblers as gourmet food. And I never went-back in the sea.”

“You never told me this,” I say.

“I was too embarrass. To-besides, we were studying hard for the Scholarship, and you and me was planning to leave the island. Plus, we moved from the district. Remember? And another thing. It turned my mind from really learning to speak French. The first time, the very first time in my life, I find myself now, the moment I meet you, using a few French words which unconsciously I must-have-pick-up, in the five years I was living in Paree when I was married to the first-wife. So, getting back to you, and to eating
hot-cuisine
. When I was in France, one afternoon I am taking a stroll along the Shan-deleezays, or whatever you call it, when all of a sudden I see this stall full-up with cobblers. I stand up …” He takes his hand from my shoulder, and stands up. At last, he is ready for me to order drinks. But all he does is stand. He is facing me. I feel he is trying to get Buddy’s attention. The men in the bar look at him, wondering what he is about to do. I am wondering, too. His arms are akimbo. And before speaking, he roars again. The two women entering, passing hand in hand, pause, look, and go on walking past our table, as if they had come upon a very offensive but short-lived smell. He is about six-foot-six. “
Mon dieu
! I am walking with my wife, my French wife, and Jesus Christ! I almost drop dead at the sight of cobblers in a market in Paree, in France! I tried to explain to her why I won’t
let another cobbler, which is what they eat
instead
of our sea-eggs, pass my goddamn two lips. The French eat cobblers, man! The French would eat anything, and call it
hot-cuisine
, if you see what I’m saying. They eat anything. Fix it up with lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil, and call it
hot-cuisine
. In the last five years that I was still living in the island, in Barbados with the Old Lady, a sea-egg never passed my goddamn lips, neither. Far less a cobbler. All the time I talking to you, I trying to remember the word that the
françaises
use for cobblers. I heard the name
cipaille
used once. But I not sure. Anyhow. And in the five or six years o’ marriage to Hyacinthe, when I was
parlez-vous
to that woman, my wife, she never spoke one goddamn word o’ English. But we had two thrildren together. And that shows you that somehow we still
manage
to communicate.”

“What about a drink, John?”

“We’re old-talking, man! What’s the hurry? You got a goddamn job to go to? Wait a minute …”

I am lonelier now that I am sitting beside John. His company heightens the loneliness of yesterday. I am stripped of that loneliness now, though, that he is talking, sitting beside me, as we had sat together on the warm, damp, conch-shell-coloured sand.

He goes on talking about his life in many countries I have not seen, speaking with the same broad Barbadian accent he grew up with, although to show me the difference between us, and his greater sophistication than mine, which I feel he has noticed, he laces
his speech with words he has remembered from the languages of those countries. I like the way the touch of French falls off his broad lips, hitting my ears thin and delicate as pastry.

He is wearing a tailored suit, and a custom-tailored shirt. His Old Lady made all his shirts on her old treadle Singer sewing machine. The Singer had no electricity to double her production of clothes and her productiveness and lessen the brute force she had to use by working it with her feet. There was no electricity running through the village or the house. But her artistry on the Singer was not great enough for her to try her hand at making a pair of trousers.

The suit he is wearing now is dark grey, with a thin pinstripe. His shirt is white with French cuffs. I can see his initials,
JDN
, embroidered in blue italics on his shirt pocket. In all the years of separation, my imagination had made his taste more American and conspicuous than he now looks, like parts of his conversation and speech; and I would have dressed him in a heavy faked wool suit with large red squares upon the green cloth, and with cufflinks that are square and shiny and that have animals, or birds the shape of eagles, on them. The cufflinks he is wearing now are thin, conservative ovals of pure gold. His dark grey tie is shiny, made of silk, and tied in a knot that is tight and elongated. The last time I saw a tie tied like this was on the reddened neck of the Headmaster of our elementary school, the Headmaster who wore a pure gold ring round
his
knot.
There is a stiffness in the neck of John’s collar, and in his cuffs, just like the Headmaster’s. And I remember that John’s Old Lady used to take in washing from the crowded hotels where the “tourisses,” as his mother called them, stayed along the long stretch of the fresh clean pink beach, called the Gold Coast. I would visit John’s house on Saturday afternoons after we had returned from the Public Library. Our arms would be laden with books, more numerous than those read by the entire neighbourhood, except the Headmaster who lived nearby. John and I found out the Headmaster cared for his books, which he bought from England, from Foyles Book Stores, Used and Secondhand, by spraying them generously with kerosene oil. He paid for these imported classical texts out of his meagre salary with money orders, and then was forced to protect the wisdom contained in them – Latin texts, Greek texts, and Roman history – by soaking them page by page, and their hard covers, too, in kerosene oil. The same oil from the lamp he used to study with into the early morning when the conch-shell blew and sounded the arrival of some fishing boats. Yes, on those Saturday afternoons when we returned from the Public Library, when John and I were engaged in “reading races,” and he beating me in all of them, and I feeling that at any moment he would burst his brains with all the serious knowledge contained in our small books, just as all the neighbours knew that the Headmaster, seeking greater academic status within our
midst, would certainly burst
his
brains from all the serious reading he put himself under, under the faint light from the kerosene lamp, reading and reading for his Bachelor of Arts Degree, External, from London University, Part 1,
Honours
, in Classics. He taught us Scripture, World Geography, Reading and Writing and ’Rithmetics, as he prepared for his greater intellectual prowess. Yes, and on those Saturday afternoons, after we had wrapped our borrowed books in brown shop-paper as John’s Old Lady ordered us, “to proteck the learning inside them books, boy! To proteck that precious learning in them books!”, I would sit in the open door of the back-room and watch her standing at the wooden kitchen table, which was layered with three white sheets, pinned at the four legs of the battered table for smoothness. I would watch her as the sweat poured off her forehead as she moved the heavy, sturdy clothes-iron over the mountain of clothes. She would pass the sizzling iron, after she had first tested it for hotness close to her jaw, over the sheets and pillowcases and white shirts interminable as the waves coming up onto the beach and going back into the sea which washed the Gold Coast and the tourisses in the hotels. I could see the waves and the beach and the fishermen and the conch-shell from my seat in the door of her back-house. And sometimes, when she was too tired from ironing the hotel’s laundry, she would change to the clothes that John wore to school and to Sunday school, and then back again to the more careful
pressing of the hotel’s laundry; and I remember that all his shirts worn to Sunday school at the Anglican church up the hill, upper-side from the Paynes Bay Beach, were made of silk. And that is why I am attracted now to the material of his tie and of the shirt he is wearing. They bring into greater focus, after forty-fifty years, those Saturday afternoons of borrowed books, and eating black pudding and souse, which his Old Lady made only on Saturdays, before she faced the mountain of hotel laundry. And of watching the sea, and hearing the waves and the sizzling of the hot clothes-iron travelling over the white shirts which the tourisses wore, and over the white shirts which the Vicar of the church upper-side of the beach wore to his secret-society meetings, the Masonics, as John’s mother called them. “That is where he does-drink rum and eat corn-beef sangwiches with the Headmaster and the tourisses in the hotels, who happen to belongst to these same blasted secretive Masonics,” John’s Old Lady used to tell me. The stiffness in the neck of his collar and his cuffs, on this cold afternoon, is the same deal-board stiffness as I have seen him wear in his khaki shirts when he was in the Lower School, the same as I have seen in his white shirts when he was in the Upper School, the same as I have seen his Old Lady wash and iron. I cannot see his shoes. The room in which we are sitting, waiting for John to have me call the barman to come from behind the bar, is too dim for me to see under the table, which has a round, shiny, black top, and the dimness in this room,
the light from the bulbs, their glow and the red wallpaper and the polished brass railings, is warm; and even though the brass has been polished hours before, it has a fragrance of affection and warmth and Brasso, just like the feeling I have every Christmas Eve when the tree is being trimmed with blue lights that wink, and the presents are lying on the carpets, and incense and candles are burning in soft anticipation; that smell of love, of success, of life, that smell of warmth that locks out all anxiety. Even the anxiety of hours spent in cooking the turkey, and the short space it takes to devour it, and strip it down to its bare bones. After it is devoured, the more natural smell of love is then mixed with a different kind of anxiety. In this room there are paintings of the landscape of this country and this city of Toronto, in the various whiteness of winter, with thick unsullied snow in banks and on the branches of trees which are white-limbed even without the colour of winter. And in a strange way, now that my eyes are accustomed to looking at them, these paintings make the room even warmer, and I feel at home. But it could be the light bulbs, small red balls under the bell-shaped shades, or small white balls under the shades of the fake Tiffany lamps. I cannot see his shoes, but I imagine that they are black leather, since John always wore black leather shoes. He was always fastidious in dress. I sit facing him, and his face and his body become the face and the body of the small boy years ago. I remember sitting beside him on the hard wooden bench
that had no back, in the elementary school, and standing beside him at the bus stop, five mornings in the week, stiff in his khaki uniform pants, and his khaki stockings pulled up to his large knees. His stockings, like mine, had the school colours of blue and gold, in the flashes, two pieces of ribbon attached to an elastic band. They were worn on both legs, up to the knees. On John’s thin legs, his flashes attached to his garter belts, when blowing in the wind, looked like two small wings. But on Saturday afternoons, after the Library, when I would sit in the verandah of his mother’s house when no breeze coming from the hills or off the sea could cool the hotness of the day and the only wind was in the smell of her cooking …