The Meeting Point Read online

  Acclaim for AUSTIN CLARKE

  “Clarke makes West Indian speech into a form of music and poetry … tremendously versatile in what it expresses and exhilarating to read.”

  The Globe and Mail

  “Austin Clarke [is] one of the most talented novelists at work in the English language today.… His fiction is unique, surprising, comfortable until the moment when it becomes uncomfortable. Then you realize you have learned something new that you didn’t want to know — and it’s essential knowledge. And so on you go, alternately congratulating and cursing Austin Clarke.”

  Norman Mailer

  “Uncommonly talented, Clarke sees deeply, and transmits his visions and perceptions so skilfully that reading him is an adventure.”

  Publishers Weekly

  “[Clarke’s] characters are so real you can reach out and touch them.”

  Saturday Night

  “Clarke is magnificent in transferring to print the music, the poetry, the complete aptness of West Indian dialogue. It is comic, it is tragic, it is all shades in between. And as prose it is as near poetry as prose can become.”

  Charlotte Observer

  “Clarke is a major Western writer.”

  Greensboro Daily News

  “Brilliant is the word for Austin Clarke’s depiction of his highly ebullient characters.”

  Canadian Forum

  Books by AUSTIN CLARKE

  Fiction

  The Origin of Waves

  There are No Elders

  In This City

  Proud Empires

  Nine Men Who Laughed

  When Women Rule

  The Prime Minister

  The Bigger Light

  Storm of Fortune

  When He Was Free and Young

  and He Used to Wear Silks

  The Meeting Point

  Amongst Thistles and Thorns

  The Survivors of the Crossing

  Non-fiction

  Pigtails n’ Breadfruit

  A Passage Back Home

  Public Enemies

  Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack

  Selected Writings

  The Austin Clarke Reader

  Austin Clarke was born in Barbados and came to Canada in 1955 to study at Trinity College in the University of Toronto. He has enjoyed a varied and distinguished career as a broadcaster, civil rights leader, professor, and diplomat, representing Barbados as its Cultural Attaché in Washington DC. His many honours include Lifetime Achievement Awards for Writing from both the Toronto Arts Council and Chawkers–Frontier College, an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Brock University, the 1998 Pride of Barbados Distinguished Service Award and, most recently, the Order of Canada. He is, formerly, writer-in-residence at the University of Guelph, and the 1998 inaugural winner of The Rogers Communications Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize. Author of eight novels and five collections of short fiction, Austin Clarke is widely studied in Canadian universities. He lives in Toronto.

  Copyright © 1967, 1972 by Austin C. Clarke

  All rights reserved under International and Pan American Copyright Conventions. Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, in 1998. Originally published in Canada by Macmillan Canada, and simultaneously in the UK by Heinemann, in 1967. First published in the United States by Little, Brown and Co. Ltd. in 1972. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited.

  Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders; in the event of an inadvertent omission or error, please notify the publisher.

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Clarke, Austin, 1934–

  The meeting point

  First book in the Toronto trilogy.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-36424-1

  I. Title. II. Title: Toronto trilogy

  PS8505.L38M4 1998 C813′.54 C98-931310-7

  PR9199.3.C526S75 1998

  v3.1

  To

  Melva Da Silva

  with love;

  and to

  Robert Weaver

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: The Experience of Arrival

  Chapter 2: The Taste of the Apple

  Chapter 3: The Triangle is Smashed

  1

  THE EXPERIENCE OF ARRIVAL

  When Bernice Leach got the job, thirty-two months ago, as a domestic for the Burrmann family, she was expected to cook three meals a day. Nothing else. As things turned out, she had to cook only one meal, supper. It was a meal which required a lot of work to prepare. There were lots of snacks for the children, especially on weekends: grilled cheese sandwiches; cheese blintzes which Bernice had to learn how to make. The family drank many bottles of Coca-Cola and other soft drinks, which Mrs. Burrmann called collectively, “pop.” Mr. Burrmann hadn’t the time or the disposition for more than a cup of coffee at breakfast; and this he drank “clear,” that is to say, without cream, milk, or sugar. He would sometimes drink it while standing up; and even when he did sit down at breakfast with his wife, Bernice noticed that his head was always buried in the business section of The Globe and Mail, or in some other newspaper of his thoughts. She nagged him for not having a heavy breakfast before going to his law office; and he argued that he was all right, that a heavy breakfast was only for peasants. Bernice would watch him, standing, drinking, and with a tipped cigarette in his left hand; and he would glance at his pocket watch, and she would shake her head and say, Boy, you sure running your damn blood to water! Mrs. Burrmann would continue to grumble and continue to eat her porridge, her bacon, her eggs and her Ryvita biscuits; and for the rest of the day (between drinks) she would slouch in her favourite couch, reading paperback novels. When the days were long, like Sundays in winter, she drank more and read less. She was at present reading Herzog.

  There were two children in the household: Serene and Ruthie, healthy and red, the only persons who had three square meals a day. Bernice made herself four: tea, breakfast, lunch and dinner.

  But time passed, and Mrs. Burrmann got used to Bernice, and to her singing in the kitchen. And Mrs. Burrmann overcame her earlier reservations about having Bernice’s black hands touch her white bed linen and her silver cutlery. She grew accustomed to Bernice; and permitted her to graduate from merely preparing meals to serving them at table. But Bernice very often wondered why Mrs. Burrmann wanted a servant: she was such a diligent housewife — and this in spite of the novels and the whiskey. The way she could plan the household expenses for a month; sometimes cook a four-course meal and attend to the children, and still find time to have a nap in the afternoon, convinced Bernice that Mrs. Burrmann was a better domestic than she. Bernice did find out, later, why she was ever engaged: it was during a husband-and-wife bout of secrecy and whispering, when the word “treatment” was dropped. Apparently, Mrs. Burrmann was taking “treatment” for something; and Bernice began to notice her leaving the house, every Wednesday afternoon at a quarter to two, punctually as a bill collector.

  She began to handle Mrs. Burrmann’s Royal Doulton chinaware, with its golden wheat sheaf stamped in the middle, as if it belonged to her. With her own two black hands, she would tuck the lily-white linen bibs under the chins of Serene and Ruthie, who were seven and five respectively. She began to move like a conqueror round the table, and about the house.

  There were many parties: sherry parties; wine and cheese parties; cocktail parties, masquerade parties, and dinner parties. Bernice liked the parties which were usually attended by a jolly, prosperous man named Silverstein who revelled in hilarious, dirty jokes, and jokes about the Jews. But at these parties to which Mrs. Bu
rrmann insisted on inviting many artistic-looking men and women, and some radio producers of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr. Burrmann behaved as if he were one of the invited guests. His wife would be domineering and distant; sophisticated and arrogant, giving the guests the impression that she was the artistic one in the family; the cultured one. It was so obvious that Bernice could not help noticing it; and soon, the guests themselves started talking about it. Mrs. Burrmann was the boss in the household. She had come from a very rich and respectable Jewish home, “one of north America’s best diasporas,” as she liked to say at parties. Mr. Burrmann was the poor Jew, who had brains, but no social acceptability. Mrs. Burrmann had supported him for the three years he spent in the University of Toronto Law School. At this time they were already married and he was undoubtedly in love with her, yet he resented this dependency.

  Mrs. Burrmann’s behaviour at some of these parties, and in the home generally, greatly distressed Bernice; and in time she too began to resent her mistress. She could not understand what kind of a wife would hold a party when her husband was absent: perhaps on a business trip in Hamilton; or in his office or his study, studying and pretending to be sick from the recurrent headaches which Bernice felt were the frustrations of his marriage. For Bernice, failure in marriage meant failure in bed. Early in her employment in this wealthy household, she began to feel the tension, and see the first signs of a division; and so, on more than one occasion, she had to shake her head, while standing amidst the rising evening fog of steam from the boiling pots, and say with some sympathy in her heart, “Mrs. Burrmann, God, you giving that man a dog’s life!”

  But Mrs. Burrmann continued to drink; and to read. She was subject to bouts of great affection; and would come into the kitchen and talk about herself, and about the children. And she would say how Sam was so disappointed he didn’t have a son; and how close and fond he was of Mrs. Gasstein’s little five-year-old boy. She would talk more about the children than about herself or her husband. She said once, perhaps overcome by Bernice’s warmth, that sometimes she felt her husband resented her, almost hated her, because, after four pregnancies and two miscarriages, she had not given him a boy child. But it remained a superficial kind of friendliness: a probing, with short laughs and sniggers; and on Bernice’s part, broad smiles like the sunrise. After more than two years of these outings with affection, Bernice never felt close enough to Mrs. Burrmann to tell her that she herself had left an illegitimate child back in Barbados. And in spite of this affection, she always saw herself as a servant; a sort of twentieth-century slave. It was mainly the amount of hard work which reminded her of her status. And also, the small wages.

  Relations improved, nonetheless, between the two women. Bernice’s wages did not. Mrs. Burrmann began to feel so much at ease with “this, this-this — woman” (that’s how she first described Bernice to her friend, Mrs. Gasstein) that in addition to having Bernice bath and dress the children, she gave her permission to take them into the nearby city park on Eglinton Avenue, and for walks along Marina Boulevard, where they lived. The children were very intelligent, but not too well-mannered; not sufficiently whipped and scolded to satisfy Bernice’s own principles about bringing up children. The fact that they knew they were wealthy; and conscious of their position in this cadillac-and-fleece-lined, suede-coat-and-fur-and-sable-reinforced section of Forest Hill Village, added to their being precocious in the most embarrassing situations. Bernice was nonetheless very impressed by the wealth of the Burrmann’s. Sometimes, you thought it was her wealth as she reminded her Barbadian friend, Dots, that Forest Hill was superior to Rosedale. “Good God, Dots!” Bernice said, one day. “There’s money on everybody’ face and clothes, up here in Forest Hill!” Dots, also a domestic, said the same thing about Rosedale, where she worked.

  But Bernice knew her place. Sometimes, it was pointed out to her that on this street she was to remember she wasn’t a housewife. A head would lean out of a passing car; or would draw back a window blind, to wonder and to consider the possibility that the two healthy-looking children belonged by blood to the woman into whose hands they had entrusted their hands. One snow-filled afternoon, a woman driving a blue Cadillac stopped and waited until Bernice and the children got alongside; and when she thought they could hear and were in smelling-shot of her Estee Lauder Youth Dew perfume, she pulled her spectacles down her long Semitic nose and said, “Well!” in that short aggressive manner, as if she really meant to say “shit.” That was the day Bernice wished everybody in Forest Hill, man, woman and child, dead; the day when a tear came to her eyes, and shimmered her entire view of the road and the world.

  But it was Bernice’s facility for work, long hard work, which knitted her into a glove of affection on to her mistress’s hand. Mrs. Burrmann would brag to all her friends on the street, and at the pottery and watercolour classes which she took at the YWHA on Spadina Avenue. She would tell Bernice, “Leach, you’re a wonderful worker. Really!” Bernice would smile sweetly and openly in her presence; but within, she would say, You don’t have to tell me that, woman. I know I works hard as hell in this house, and for peanuts. The smile would brighten on Bernice’s face a second time, and Mrs. Burrmann would contract this disease of happiness, and would smile; and the entire household would brighten for the remainder of that day. But Mrs. Burrmann never knew and couldn’t imagine how deep Bernice’s hostility was. One day, Mrs. Irene Gasstein had trouble with her German immigrant maid, Brigitte. Brigitte had remained in her quarters in Mrs. Gasstein’s house, taking a rest from a touch of influenza and a bout of overwork. Mrs. Burrmann came to her rescue. “Forget about calling an agency for extra help, darling. That costs money. I will send Bernice over. She can do the work of a mule, two mules, ha-ha! and look, you don’t even have to bother paying her anything. Bernice will come, darling.”

  “Oh I couldn’t do that!” But she had already mentally accepted the offer of Bernice’s sweat.

  “Forget it. Don’t spend your money foolishly.”

  “But … ah, would Bernice come? You know how these West Indian women feel.…”

  “Will Bernice come! Irene, are you forgetting Bernice is my maid? That’s what I pay her to do.”

  When Bernice raised no objection, this silence was mistaken for surrender, for acceptance. Silently, she grew to hate Mrs. Burrmann even more than she hated winter and the snow. To her, Mrs. Burrmann not only symbolized the snow; she symbolized also, the uneasiness and inconvenience of the snow. Her loneliness grew, too; and so did her hatred of Mrs. Burrmann: deeper and deeper, the same way as December, January and February piled snow on the ground. Added to this, Mrs. Burrmann refused to raise her wage from the ninety dollars a month, with which she had started, almost three years ago in 1960.

  The burden and demands of her new life in this country were becoming too much for her, when one day (“Bam! bam! bam!” she actually clapped her hands in joy, three times and shouted, “there’s still a God up there!”) chance and God placed Mrs. Burrmann in her hands. What she saw the mistress do that night almost terrified the maid. The discovery upset Bernice, and she had to struggle hard to keep it a secret, because an idle word would make Mr. Burrmann tear loose in this woman’s backside, if he is a man in truth. Lord, a idle word on my behalf could do a lot o’ harm in this household! and look how I have the balance o’ power in my hand! Her power cascaded into laughter. The laughter carried her into the kitchen, the kingdom of her service that was now a dominion; and she put her hands over her mouth to control her laughter. When she withdrew them, she was a different woman. “I’m going to blackmail her arse!” She laughed, and added, “I will whitemail her backside, clean clean clean!” She thought about it; and she conceded, “That isn’t a christian-mind thing to do, though.”

  For many nights, Bernice dreamed about what to do. In all her dreams neither the colour nor the enormity of the incident was altered. It had happened on a Thursday night. The house was smelling of incense; rose in the sitting-room; sand
alwood in the pantry, because “guests’re coming here tonight, Bernice darling, so we have to cut down the awful smell of your cooking”; jasmine in the downstairs toilet, because Ruthie did not have time in the split seconds of need to get upstairs and relieve herself of her stomach flu, cabbage, minced steak and Boston beans. (“Christ! child, why you always having the belly? Your guts always running. I think something basic is wrong with you.”) All the normal house-smells had to be counteracted. Mrs. Burrmann had had some bunches of roses, red roses and white roses, delivered earlier in the day. She had draped a red satin cloth on to a round table, and on this, she had placed her “priceless, absolutely priceless” candelabra with its five candlesticks (“Those thieving bastards down there in Yorkville Village, selling a lot o’ junk for art!” But she had bought it for seventy-five dollars; and insisted in company that it was a bargain), four red candles; and a black one. When Bernice went into the sitting-room and saw it, she was speechless. She wondered if the black candle was her presence. She was thinking: Mrs. Burrmann, do you have ghosts in here? You have as much candle and incense in here to bury a dead man and raise him up again from the dead. All these blasted candles! Mrs. Burrmann, I swear you is a fortune teller, or some damn thing. The room was charming; and Bernice loved it. To her, it looked like the inside of Beth Tzedec, like a very sacred place; and this worried her, because she knew Mrs. Burrmann never went to the synagogue. And then the guests began to arrive; and Mrs. Burrmann, dressed to look like a sheath in a dress with two slits at either side, showing her blue-veined calves, greeted each guest man or woman with, “Darling! how sweet of you to come.” For the men, she had a kiss on the cheek. For the women, she had a kiss on the cheek. Bernice could not understand what was happening. As the evening wore on, the guests relaxing with drink, their desires rising, it suddenly occurred to Bernice, that Mr. Burrmann was still absent. She saw Mrs. Burrmann put down her glass of port; pass her hands over her cheeks as if she was removing a stain, or pain; look purposely frustrated, and alien amongst the happiness, and go to the telephone in the hall. The stereophonic record player was giving out the soft, cool jazz of the MJQ. Nobody was listening. Mrs. Burrmann rested her left hand on the table top, to steady herself; and she dialled a number. Mr. Burrmann had left the office, his secretary said. Was he coming home? Or was he going to see a client? “He said he was coming …” and instinctively, the secretary paused, considered her salary, unemployment stamps and old-age pension, and then added in a new voice, in a surer lie, “Mr. Burrmann said he was coming home after seeing a client who he had to see earlier today, but who he couldn’t see today, earlier, because …” The expression on Mrs. Burrmann’s face changed. She replaced the receiver before the secretary had finished; she struggled briefly and arrogantly to steady the drink in her legs and said, “Bastard!” It was a whisper; but Bernice heard it. And then a tall man, well dressed, slightly older than Mr. Burrmann, came to her. He carried two glasses of whiskey. He leaned over. He rested his lips on her lips and forced her, gradually, gently, against the telephone table, until the table sagged a little and the receiver slipped off. Mrs. Burrmann took a glass from the man’s hands; put it on the table; wrapped her arms round the man’s waist, and seemed to surrender herself to him. The glass fell and the whiskey was spilt. Nobody came from the sitting-room to find out why.