They Never Told Me Read online

  THEY NEVER TOLD ME

  AND OTHER STORIES

  AUSTIN CLARKE

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Clarke, Austin, 1934-, author

  They never told me : and other stories / Austin Clarke.

  Short stories.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55096-359-5 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-55096-379-3 (EPUB).--

  ISBN 978-1-55096-380-9 (Kindle).--ISBN 978-1-55096-378-6 (PDF)

  I. Title.

  PS8505.L38T48 2013 C813'.54 C2013-905116-3

  Cover Art by Luke Siemens

  Copyright © 2013 Austin Clarke.

  Cover Art by Luke Siemens

  All characters and events are fictional.

  eBook publication copyright © Exile Editions Limited, 2018. All rights reserved.

  Text pages and cover designed by Michael Callaghan.

  ePUB, Kindle and PDF versions by Melissa Campos Mendivil.

  Published by Exile Editions

  144483 Southgate Road 14

  Holstein, Ontario, N0G 2A0, Canada

  www.ExileEditions.com

  We gratefully acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation for their support toward our publishing activities.

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  To the memory of

  Es’kia Mphahlele

  1. GALAXIE

  2. WAITING FOR THE POSTMAN TO KNOCK

  3. ON THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN

  4. OUR LADY OF THE HOURS

  5. OLD PIRATES, YES, THEY ROB I

  6. FOR ALL I CARE

  7. SO?

  8. THEY NEVER TOLD ME

  AUSTIN CLARKE: RIDING THE COLTRANE

  GALAXIE

  After the twenty-nine years he born and living in Barbados, drunk as Calvin was, he saying, “Well, I won’t be see you for a while, man, I going up.” Canada now gone straight to his head long time and with a king o’ power, so that when the airplane start up Calvin imagine that he own the whole blasted plane along with the white ladies who tell him, “Good morning, sir”; he feel that the plane is the big motorcar he intent to own one year after he land pon Canadian soil. The plane making time fast fast, and Calvin drink rum after rum till he went fast asleep and didn’t even know he was in Toronto. The white lady come close to him, and tap him soft soft pon his new tropical suit and say, “Sir?” like she is asking some important question, when all she want is to wake up Calvin outta the white man plane. Well, Calvin wake up. He stretch like how he uses to stretch when he wake up in his mother bed. He yawn so hard that the white lady move back a step or two, after she see the pink inside his mouth and the black and blue gums running all round them white pearly teets. Calvin eyes red red as a cherry from lack o’ sleep and too much rum drinking, and the body tired like how it uses to get tired and wrap up like a old motorcar fender. But is Canada, old man, and in a jiffy, before the white lady get to the front o’ the place to put down the last glass, Calvin looking out through the window. “Toronto in your arse!” he went to say to himself, but it come out too loud, “Toronto in your arse, man!”

  Before the first week come and gone, Calvin take up pen and paper:… and I am going to tell you something, this place is the greatest place for a workingman to live. I hear some things about this place, but I isn’t a man to complain, because while I know I am a man, and I won’t take no shit from no Canadian, white, black, or red, I still have another piece of knowledge which says that I didn’t born here. So I controls myself to suit, and make the white man money. The car only a couple of months off. I see one already that I got my eyes on. And if God willing, by the next two months I sitting down in the driver’s seat. The car I got my eyes on is a red one with white tires. The steering wheel as you know on the left side, and we drives on the right-hand side of the road up here, not like back in Barbados where you drive on the left-hand. Next week, I taking out my licence. I not found a church I like yet, mainly because I see some strange things happening up here in church. You don’t know, man, but black people can’t or don’t go in the same church as white people. God must be have two colours then. One for black people and one for white people. And a next thing. There is some fellas up here from the islands who talking a lot of shit about Black Power. I am here working for a living and a motorcar and if my mother herself come in my way and be an obstacle against me getting them two things, a living and a motorcar, I would kill her by Christ… Calvin was going to write more; about the room he was renting for twenty dollars a week, which a white fellow tell him was pure robbery, because he was paying ten dollars for a more larger room on the ground floor in the same house; and he didn’t write bout the car-wash job he got the next day down Spadina Avenue, working for a dollar a hour, and when the first three hours pass he felt he been working for three days, the work was so hard; he didn’t tell that a certain kind of white people in Canada didn’t sit too close to him on the streetcar, that they didn’t speak to him on the street… lots o’ things he didn’t worry to tell… so Calvin work hard, man, Calvin work more harder than when he was washing off cars back in Barbados. The money was good too. Sal’ry and tips. From the two carwash jobs he uses to clear a hundred dollars a week, and that is two hundred back home, and not even Dipper does make that kind o’ money, and he is the fucking prime minister! The third job, Calvin land like a dream: night watchman with a big big important company which put him in big big important uniform and thing, big leather belt like what he uses to envy the officers in the Volunteer Force back home wearing pon a Queen Birthday parade on the Garrison Savannah, shoes the company people even provide, and the only thing that was missing, according to what Calvin figure out some months afterwards, was that the holster at his side, join-on to the leather belt, didn’t have in no blasted gun. He tell it to a next Barbadian he make friends with, and the Bajun just laugh and say, “They think you going rass-hole shoot yourself, boy!” But Calvin did already become Canadified enough to know that the only people he see in them uniforms with guns in the leather holster was certain white people, and he know he wasn’t Canadified so much that he did turn white overnight. “Once it don’t stop me from getting that Galaxie!”… he went down by the Tropics Club where they play calypsos and dance, one time, and he never went back cause the ugly Grenadian fellow at the door ask him for “three dollars to come in!”’ and he curse the fellow and leff. But the bank account was mounting and climbing like a woman belly when she in the family way. Quick quick so, Calvin have a thousand dollars pon the bank. Fellas who get to know Calvin and who Calvin won’t ’sociate with because “’sociating does cost money, boy!” Them fellas so who here donkey years, still borrowing money to help pay their rent, fellas gambling like hell, throwing dice every Fridee night right into Mondee morning early, missing work and getting fired from work, fellas playing poker and betting, “Forty dollars more for these two fours, in your rass, sah! I raise!” – them brand o’ Trinidadian, Bajun, Jamaican, Grenadian and thing, them so can’t understand at all how Calvin just land and he get rich so fast. “I bet all-yuh Calvin selling pussy!” one fella say. A next bad
-minded fella say, “He peddling his arse to white boys down Yonge Street,” and a third fella who did just bet fifty dollars pon a pair o’ deuces, and get broke at the poker game, say quick quick before the words fall out o’ the other fella mouth, “I goint peddle mine too, then! Bread is bread.”

  Calvin start slacking up on the first car-wash work, and he humming as he shine the white people car, he skinning his teet in the shine and he smiling, and the white people thinking he smiling because he like the work and them, cause his hands never tarried whilst he was car-dreaming, they drop a little dollar bill pon Calvin as a tip, and a regular twenty-five-cent piece, and Calvin pinching pon the groceries, eating a lotta pigs feet and chicken necks and salt fish… all the time work work so that Calvin won’t even spend thirty cents pon a beer with a sinner, an’ the only time he even reading is when he clean out a car in the car wash and it happen to have a used paper inside it, or a throwaway paperback book. For Calvin decided long time that he didn’t come here for eddication. He come for a living and a motorcar. And he intend to get both. And by the look o’ things, be-Christ, both almost in his hand. Only now waiting to see the right model o’ motorcar, with the right colour inside it, and the right mileage and thing. The motorcar must have the right colour o’ tires, right colour o’ gearshift and in the handle too. And it have to have-in radio; and he see a fella in the car wash with a thing inside his Cadillac, and Calvin gone crazy over Cadillacs until he walk down by Bay Street and price the price of a old one. He bawl for murder, “Better stick to the Galaxie, boy!” he tell himself; and he do that. But he really like the thing inside the white man Cadillac and he ask the man one morning what it was, and the man tell Calvin. Now Calvin must have red Galaxie, with not more than twenty-thousand miles on the register, black upholstery, red gearshift, radio, AM and FM and a tellyfone. Them last three things is what the man had inside his Cadillac. Calvin working even on a Syundee, bank holidays ain’ touching Calvin, and the Old Queen back home who send a occasional letter asking Calvin to remember the house rent and the Poor Box in the Nazarene Church where he was a testifying brother, preaching and thing, and also to remember “who birthed him,” well, Calvin tell the Old Queen, his own own mother, Things hard up here, Mother. Don’t let nobody fool you that because a man emigrade it mean that he elevate.

  Even so, a month and a half later, two days before Calvin decide he see the right automobile, a card drop through the door where Calvin living, address to Calvin: What are you doing up there, then? Canadians buying out all the island. You standing for that? Send down a couple of dollars and let me invest it in a piece of beach land for you, Brother. Power to the people! Salaam and love. WILLY X. Calvin get so blasted vex, so damn vex, cause he sure now that this Willy gone mad too, like everybody else he been reading bout in the States and in England; black people gone mad, Calvin say; and he get more vex when he think that it was the landlady, Mistress Silvermann, who take up the postcard from the linoleum and hand it to him, and he swear blind that she hand it to him after she done read the thing: and now she must be frighten like hell for Calvin, cause Calvin getting letters from these political extremists, and birds of a feather does flock together, she thinking now that Calvin perhaps is some kind o’ political maniac, crying Black Power! All this damn foolishness bout Power to the People, and signing his name Willy X, when everybody in Barbados know that that damn fool’s name is really William Fortesque: Calvin get shame shame shame that the landlady thinking different bout him, because sometimes she does be in the house alone all night with Calvin, and she must be even thinking bout giving him notice, which would be a damn bad thing to happen right now, cause the motorcar just two days off, the room he renting now is a nice one, the rent come down like the temperature in May when he talk plain to Mistress Silvermann bout how he paying twice as much as other tenants, but what really get Calvin really vex vex vex as hell is that a little Canadian thing in the room over his head come downstairs one night in a mini-dress and thing, bubbies jumping bout inside her bosom, free and thing and looking juicy, and giggling all the time and calling sheself a women liberation, all her skin at the door, and the legs nice and fat just as Calvin like his meats, and Calvin already gone thinking that this thing is the right woman to drive bout in his new automobile with, this Canadian thing coming downstairs every night for the past month, and out of the blue asking him, “You’ll like a coffee?” When she say so the first time, coffee was as far from Calvin mind as lending Willy twenty-five cents for the down payment for the house spot pon the beach back home. Now, be-Christ, Willy X, or whatever the hell that bastard calling himself nowadays, is going to stay right there down in Barbados and mash up Calvin life so! Just so? Simple so? Oh, God, no, man! But the landlady couldn’t read English, she did only uses to pretend she is a genius; but the Canadian girl is who tell Calvin not to worry; one night when they was drinking the regular coffee in the communal kitchen, the Canadian girl say, “Missis Silvermann is only a D.P. She can’t read English.” Calvin take courage. The bankbook walking bout with him, inside his trousers all the time, he counting the digits going to work, coming from work, in the back seat alone, pon the streetcar, while waiting for the subway early on a morning at the Ossington Station, and then he make a plan. He plan it down to a T. Every penny organize for the proper thing, every nickel with its own work to do: the bottle of wine that the Canadian girl gave him the name to; the new suit from Eaton’s that he see in the display window one night when he get hold of the girl and he get bold bold as hell and decide to take she for a lover’s walk down Yonge Street; the new shoes, brown brown till they look red to match the car; and the shirt and tie – every blasted thing matching up like if he is a new bride stepping down the aisle to the wedding march. And he even have a surprise up his sleeve for the thing, too. He isn’ longer a stingy man, cause he see his goal; and his goal is like gold. The car delivery arrange for three o’clock, Sardah; no work; the icebox in his room have in a beer or two, plus the wine; and he have a extra piece o’ change in his pocket… “I going have to remember to change the money from this pocket,” he tell himself, as if he was talking to somebody else in the room with him, “to the next pocket in the new suit”… and he have Chinese food now on his mind because the Canadian thing mention a nice Chinese restaurant down in Chinatown near Elizabeth Street. Calvin nervous as arse all Fridee night; all Fridee night the thing in Calvin room (here of late she behaving as if she live in Calvin room), and Calvin is a man with ambitions: one night she tantalize Calvin head so much that he start talking bout high-rise apartment; perhaps, if she behave sheself he might even put a little gold thing pon her pretty little pink finger… the girl start asking Calvin if he want some; not in them exact words, but that is what she did mean; and Calvin turn shame shame and nearly blush, only thing, as you know black people can’t show really if they blushing or if they mad as shit with a white person, and Calvin turn like a virgin on the night before she getting hang in church and in marriage, and he saying all the time cause his mind pon the mileage in the motorcar, “Want some o’ what?” And the girl laugh, and she throw back she head and show she gold fillings and she pink tongue and the little speck o’ dirt under she neck; and she laugh and say to sheself, “This one is a real gentleman, not like what my girlfriend say to expect from West Indian men, at all…” And you know something? She start one big confessing: “…and do you know what, Calvin? Would you like to hear something that I been thinking…” Calvin thinking bout motorcar and this blasted white woman humbugging him bout sex! Calvin get vex, he play he get vex bout something different from the woman and she sex, and he send she flying back upstairs to she own room. He get in bed too, but he ain’ sleeping, he wide awake in the dark like a thief, and he eyes open wide wide wide like a owl eyes, and in that darkness in that little little room that only have one small window way up by the ceiling and facing the clotheslines and the dingy sheets that the landlady does spend all week washing, Calvin see the whole o’ Toronto standing up
and watching him drive by in his new motorcar – with the Canadian thing beside o’ him in the front seat! – dream turn into different dream that Fridee night, because he was free to dream as much as he like since Sardah wasn’ no work. Sardah is car day. He have everything plan. Go for the motorcar, pick it up, drive it home, pick up the Canadian thing, go for a spin down Bloor as far as Yonge, swing back up by Harbord, turn left at Spadina, take in College Street, and every West Indian in Toronto bound to see him in new car, before he get back home. Park she in front o’ the house, let everybody see me getting outta she, come in, have a little bite, change, change into the new suit, given the Canadian thing the surprise, and whilst she dressing, I sit down in the car… “And I hope she take a long time dressing so I would have to press the car horn, press the horn just a little, a soft little thing, and call she outside, to see me in the…” Morning break nice. It was a nice morning round the middle o’ September, fall time in the air, everybody stretching and holding up their head cause the weather nice. Even the cops have a smile on their fissiogomy.

  The salesman-man smile and shake Calvin hand strong, and give Calvin the history of the bird although Calvin did already hear the bird history before. The salesman-man come outta the office still smiling, holding the motorcar keys between the index finger and the big thumb, and he drop them in Calvin hand. Calvin make a shiver. A shiver o’ pride and ownership. “Galaxie in your arse!” He say that in his mind, and he thinking o’ Willy and the boys back in Marcus rum shop. He get in the car. He shuffle bout a bit in the leather seat. He straighten he trousers seams. He touch the leather. He start up the motor. Listen to the motor. It ticking over like a fucking charm. He put the thing in gear. And he bout to make a little thing through the car park, and he would have gone straight back up Danforth if the Canadian thing didn’t wave she pocketbook to remind Calvin that she come with he, cause Calvin did forget she standing up there looking at a white convertible Cadillac, which she say is the car for Calvin, that there is lots o’ “Negro-men driving them, even in Nova Scotia where I come from,” that Calvin should have buy one o’ them. “You start spending my blasted money already, woman! This is mine!” He didn’t tell she out loud in words what he was really thinking bout she, but he was thinking so, though.