Storm of Fortune

  Acclaim for

  AUSTIN CLARKE

  “Mr. Clarke is masterful.”

  The New York Times

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

  Saturday Night

  “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

  “Clarke is a major Western writer.”

  Greensboro Daily News

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

  Publishers Weekly

  “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

  “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

  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

  Nonfiction

  Pigtails n’ Breadfruit

  A Passage Back Home

  Public Enemies

  Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack

  Selected Writings

  The Austin Clarke Reader

  Copyright © 1973 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 Little, Brown (Canada) & Co. Ltd. in 1973. 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–

  Storm of fortune

  Second book in the Toronto trilogy.

  I. Title. II. Title: Toronto trilogy.

  PS8505.L38S75 1998 C813′.54 C98-931309-3

  PR9199.3.C526S75 1998

  eISBN: 978-0-307-36425-8

  v3.1

  To Marjorie DaCosta Chaplin

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Violence and Fear at the Base

  Chapter 2: To the Very Quality of Friends

  Chapter 3: Gathered into the Ling

  About the Author

  1

  VIOLENCE AND FEAR AT THE BASE

  Dots was sweating when she arrived at Bernice’s apartment. Sleep, and a few yellow grains that looked like sand, were still in her eyes, testifying to the fact that she, like her husband and her employer, Mrs. Hunter, had stayed up most of the night talking about the brutal beating the two policemen had given Henry.

  Henry did not say where he was when he was beaten by the policemen (“Man, it is a damn shameful thing,” he had told them, when he dragged himself from the car which he had left parked in the middle of the road in Rosedale, where Dots worked. “It is a damn shameful thing when the police have to beat up people. Not that they was one, two or three — it must have been four or five big blasted police who kicked me like if I was a dog. I don’t mean that the beating is a shameful thing, I don’t mean that at all. I mean that it is shameful that me, a big strong-arse black man not quite turned forty, would let three, four goddamn white cops put such a licking in my arse! That is what I mean. And man, if they didn’t jump me, if they weren’t hiding, if they didn’t gang-up on me, like they did … because they’re blasted cowards when they’s walking about, individually, one at a time. And I tell you, Boysie, I tell you Dots, be-Jesus Christ, if they wasn’t cowards, and if they had just come at me one-by-one, goddamn, it would have been one big nasty race war in Toronto this morning. But this is a lesson to me. Whenever, or wherever, I meet one o’ them policemen, cop, detective, civilian in mufty, godblindme! it is licks I putting in his arse!”).

  And this was what Dots had on her mind this morning. She had heard Henry’s side of the story: she didn’t know that the beating had been intended for her own husband; and Henry said nothing about it. She didn’t know either, that he was beaten because of Brigitte, her husband’s lover and the woman whom she had come to regard as her close friend. She knew none of these things. Still, this morning, late in summer, she bounded into Bernice’s apartment in such a rage that Bernice herself became frightened.

  “And when that poor man relate to me this morning,” she went on to say, “even before I got outta my bed, before I even got out of my second sleep, how them four or five police dragged him outta the car, the car that Boysie lent him to go up to Hamilton in, to meet a friend of his that had come in from Barbados, and how they treated him, a human being, after all! a human being, gal, tell me if it is any wonder, I asking you now, is it any wonder Bernice, that I could never bring myself to like these blasted people in this place? Is it? And I am going to tell you something else. From today, from this morning I am a different-thinking person. I can’t tell you how different I am thinking at this precise moment, because I haven’ work it out completely yet. But I know I bound to think different towards Canada from today.

  “I just gave that whore I works for my notice! I leffing her! Yes. I told her straight to her face, in the presence o’ Boysie and Henry who was still there bleeding, while we was putting cold towels on his face, Jesus God Bernice! his eyeballs like they was ready to drop outta his head, from the amount o’ blows his head sustained … and … and in a time like this Bernice, in a time like today, we have to see ourselves in a new sperspective. This ain’ no time for quarrelling and bickering ’gainst one another, no matter how much I might have cussed you, or you cussed me behind my back — because Brigitte told me everything — but don’t let that come between you and me, ’cause that is life. I left my job and you have to leave yours, too. I am not going to stop nagging you, Bernice, so help me God, till you give Mistress Burrmann your notice. We have to unite over Henry’s tragedy. So, make up your mind by the end o’ the summer when she come back from Mexico.”

  Bernice remained very quiet. She was not fully attentive. She could have told Dots many things about Henry’s beating. But she had neglected to say them when Dots arrived, and now she felt she could not disclose them. She didn’t even tell Dots that her sister, Estelle, was in the Toronto General Hospital recovering and being treated for a “miscarriage.” In the first place, she had neglected to tell Dots that Estelle was pregnant.

  “So what you have to say to that, gal?” Dots asked her.

  “You got a point.”

  “I got a point! Is that all you can say, I got a point?”

  “Work is very hard to find, Dots.”

  “Did I tell you different? I haven’ just emigraded he
re, Bernice! ’Course, I know work’s hard as hell to find. And for us, it harder still. But is it more harder to find than pride? Could it ever be harder to find than that? You tell me, because you is the Black Muslim.”

  “Well, I don’t mean it that way,” Bernice said, feeling trapped. She was wondering how much Brigitte had told Dots about Estelle and about Henry.

  “Anyhow, I waiting. I waiting to read them papers, the Star and the Globe. Normally they have a damn lot to print and say ’bout negroes living in this city. I waiting to see their story concerning this violence, this blasted racial unjustice that we negroes have to live with, day in and day out. And so help me God, if Henry don’t get satisfaction, well … I have something planned for the Mistress Hunter, the Mistress Burrmann, the mister policeman, for everybody in this place.” Her hostility seemed to exhaust her, and she remained quiet for a while.

  Bernice had tidied the apartment. And she was glad she had thought of doing it before Dots came. She had already put the soiled, blood-stained sheets from Estelle’s bed into the dirty clothes hamper.

  “But where she gone to so early in the morning?”

  “Who? Mistress Burrmann?”

  “What the hell would I be inquiring ’bout Mistress Burrmann for? Is Mistress Burrmann and me any friends? I mean Estelle!”

  “Oh! Estelle? … well, you should have met her at the corner. You didn’t see her at the corner? … well, she must have gone in Agaffa’s motor car then …”

  “So Estelle socializing with Agaffa, eh?”

  “Just left.”

  “In a motor car?”

  “They just this minute turned the corner there, by Marina Boulevard and Eglinton. Not five minutes ago.”

  “At nine o’clock in the morning?”

  “Child, even I was surprised to see Estelle wake up so damn early, in almost six months that she’s been living here with me. First time Estelle get out of bed before mid-day noon.”

  Dots shook her head in that characteristic way when she wanted to express deep and unpronounceable sorrow. Then she looked Bernice straight in the eye, and said, “How long we been friends?”

  “Friends? Well, Dots, it’s a long time! If you really want me to count the time, this month coming would be thirty-three, thirty-four months. Almost three years.”

  “Right! Three years. Three years I’ve been trampling up here at your every beck and call. Three years. Three Christmases! Every time you feel bad, every time you feel depressed. Every time you get a headache, every time you want to go to church and you don’t want to be the only black person to be riding by yourself on that streetcar. Every time your period comes and you can’t do Mistress Burrmann’s kitchen-work, I have come and help you, I been answering your call. Right? And now, good Jesus Christ, Bernice! you mean to say you can’t be honest with me, for one minute? You call that friendship? Well, let me tell you something. Agaffa just dropped me here! In her motor car, with her man Henry, and Boysie. With Henry in the back seat bleeding like a pig and crying like a dog. Now, is there two Agaffas that we know?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Dots. That is what Estelle told me.”

  “Estelle is a liar!”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “I have always tell you, Bernice, that Estelle is a lying bitch. She is your sister, and I am your friend … was your friend. And still I say to you, she lie like hell! Now you can do what the hell you like.”

  “Well, that is Estelle’s business, not mine.”

  “Well, that is Estelle’s business, not mine!” Dots said, aping Bernice. “And that is all you have to say?”

  “Well, that is what Estelle tell me.”

  “Well, that is what Estelle tell you! Did she tell you she was running round all over Toronto with a married man? Did Estelle tell you that? And that the married man is a white man, to boot? Did she tell you that? And did she tell you that the same white man she was running round with, the same man mind you, did she remember to tell you that that man was, or is, your very own employer, Mr. Burrmann?”

  “But Dots …”

  “Don’t but-Dots me! Jesus Christ, woman, we is womens, grown women, not kids! I am trying to be honest with you. I made a effort to tell you all this, all this nasty scandal making the rounds round Toronto the last time I came up here in the hot o’ that summer day. You didn’ even want to answer the ’phone or the door. I had was to go over by Brigitte to see if you was there or if you was really home. And I didn’ well sit down in that whore’s, in Brigitte’s place, before she didn’ expose both you and the Estelle to me. I had was to cuss Brigitte like hell after she told me all them things ’gainst you and ’bout Estelle. Be-Christ, and what made my belly burn me was that you entrusted such personal things as that to a stranger. And a white woman at that! To a complete, complete stranger. Never mind that Brigitte would bring a imported German beer over here and sit down with you and laugh and smile and cuss her employer Mistress Gasstein and yours, Mistress Burrmann, with you. That isn’ friendship, Bernice. That is not sincereness. I thought I was your friend. But I see that nowadays you forgetting the Black Muslims and you gone overboard, contrary-wise the other way.”

  This struck Bernice hard. She didn’t know who to trust now: not even Dots, who was bringing this new “sperspective” to her; and to think of it — that she had recently put Brigitte at the top of her friendship list, not more than a week ago.

  “I swear to you, Dots, I swear to you this Friday morning, I swear to you … you have me wrong.”

  “Listen to me, Bernice,” Dots said. She made herself comfortable on the chair, and she took out a package of cigarettes, plain tips (a habit which Bernice didn’t know she had), and she made a great performance lighting one. She offered one to Bernice, but Bernice shook her head in disdain and in disgust. “I am going to tell you something now that is going to take you as a big shock. I know more about your business than you think. Yes.” She inhaled the cigarette. She closed her eyes. She exhaled. She opened her eyes and then she said, “Last night or this morning, whichever it was, that you called me, and wake me up outta my bed, well I put two and two together, and be-Christ I did know that something was wrong. Something had to be wrong that you would call me that hour o’ the night. Foreday-morning? Boysie been creeping in my bed all hours, three, four, five, six o’clock. And in all that time, Bernice, do you think that my eyes was shut? You really think so? When every blasted night I am seeing all kinds o’ blonde hairs and long hairs on Boysie jacket? Bernice, my hair isn’ blonde. Is my hair blonde? Be-Christ, it never was, and never will be! And I’m only telling you all that to tell you this, that I haven’ been sleeping whilst Boysie was out screwing-round with Brigitte. I haven’ been sleeping whilst Estelle your sister has been running round with Mr. Burrmann. Bernice, Dots was not dozing whilst you been talking my name to that German whore, Brigitte. ’Cause, look! I is a married woman. And a married woman could see things that no damn single gal could ever see and comprehend. You ain’ know that? Marriage, Bernice, marriage is the best high school and college I know on this Christ’s earth. So before you could come to me with any more lies, either ’bout you or Estelle, just let me remind you that my name is Missis, you hear? Mistress! And even in this cruel country, that means a damn lot.”

  After this, nothing more was said, either by Dots or by Bernice, who in the first place could not find much to say. Bernice felt now the same way she felt when she saw the violence through her window; and when she realized it wasn’t Boysie, but somebody else. And hearing Dots talk this way, so frankly that it was upsetting, she wondered whether she could not have been more honest with herself; whether she should not have gone downstairs last night, after the policemen had driven away; whether she should not have looked into the car to identify who was the man beaten.

  She thought of it now, trying to relive the tension and the fear and the violence of a few hours ago; a night which began with the car and then the other car, and then the violence, and which ended wi
th Estelle bleeding as if she was a pig killed by an amateur butcher; she thought of Brigitte; and she remembered the ambulance screaming across respectable Marina Boulevard where motor cars didn’t even sound their horns, nor children dare to ring their bicycle bells too loudly; nor domestic servants and nursemaids to call out to one another, as they most surely would do back in the West Indies. And all that time she had to wait in the hospital; and the evil abusive looks from Nurse Priscilla that same bitch who came in here that night when Estelle arrived from Barbados, and cocked up her fat backside and drink my drinks and eat my eats, my curry-chicken and souce, that same short-memory whore, Priscilla … She wondered whether Brigitte had really told Dots everything about Estelle, or whether Dots was making it all up.

  “Bernice? Bernice?” Estelle had said in her delirium only a few hours ago. “Hold my hand, Bernie. I am so ’shamed, and I have disappointed you so much I don’t know what to do. Don’t forget to post the letter to Mammy for me, and don’t forget to remind me that Sam Burrmann ask me to go to the Immigration on Bedford, first thing Monday morning, ’cause he already fixed it up with a friend who works there. But Bernice, I really brought my pigs to find market this time, eh? I come all this way up here from Barbados to Toronto, and spoil things for you, and me, in nearly no time at all, in merely six months … but I have to put this one down to experience. And Mammy always used to say that experience never killed anybody, that you have to experience a bad experience one more time to correct it, that only the weak in spirit and intelligence … but I have gathered my experience from this experience. If I tell you how this whole thing happened, if I told you all the things that that man told me ’bout his wife, Mrs. Burrmann, how she can’t do this and how she can’t do that, that he isn’ happy with her, if I tell you everything that that man promised to give me, merely because he could work-up his behind on me and feel like a man for once in his life, Bernice you yourself would be ashamed. I am so ashamed of myself, so ’shamed that I brought shame on your head and on Dots heads. … But there is one thing that I want you to understand. Bernice, one thing. And that is that I didn’t let that white man do anything to me that I couldn’t prevent him from doing. And I want you to understand that. You and Dots and everybody who would have something to say about this, although they don’t know one damn thing about my business. The only reason he succeeded in doing what he did to me was that I had less love in my heart than he had hate in his. And to-besides, I treated him like a man. And this is what got me frightened now. A great fear has come over me, Bern, a great fear. But I am not going to embark on any vengeance scheme. There ain’ going to be no hatred from me, although, be-Christ, as you would say, the white man ain’ have no blasted right expecting nothing from us save hate and hatred and bloodshed …” And it was at this point that she had fainted on the stretcher, from the exhaustion of her body and blood and thoughts — or was it while she was on the bed? Perhaps, it was on the bed where they had put her by this time.