Then, after all those weeks when he leave me guessing, Dayo write. He try to blame me; he say he had to write home to get my address. He is in another town. He write nothing about his aeronautical engineering, but he say he just finish one particular course of studies and he get a diploma, and now he want some help to move down to London to do some more studies.
I take the day off from the cigarette factory and draw out a few pounds from the post office and went up by train to the town where he was staying. It is always like this now. You are always taking trains and buses to strange places. You never know what sort of street you are going to find yourself in, what sort of house you will be knocking at.
The street is solid with little grey brick houses. Only a few steps from the gate of the house to the door, and the man who open the door get mad as soon as he hear my name. He is a small old man, his neck very loose in his collar, and I can"t understand his accent too well. But I understand him to say that Dayo is owing him twelve pounds in rent, that Dayo run away without paying, and that he is not giving up Dayo"s suitcase until he get his money. I begin to hate the little fellow and his mildewed house. Dirt shining on the walls, and when I see the little cubicle he is charging three pounds a week for, I had to control myself. You always have to control yourself now, I don"t know for what reward.
In the cubicle I see Dayo"s suitcase, still with the Colombie sticker. I pay and take it straightaway. I don"t know where in this town Dayo can be, where he is hiding these last four weeks, but like a fool with this heavy suitcase, as though I just get off the ship myself, I walk up and down the streets, looking.
Even when I went back to the railway station I couldn"t make up my mind to leave. The waiting-room empty, the seats cut up with long knife slashes that set your teeth on edge just to see them. I try to think of all the days that Dayo spend alone in this town, all the times he too see the day turn to evening, and he don"t know who to turn to. And as the train take me back to London, I hate everything I see, houses, shops, traffic, all those settled people, those children playing games in fields.
At the station I wait again and take a bus and then another bus. Then there, outside my house, when I turn the corner with that heavy suitcase, I see Dayo, in the suit he went aboard the Colombie with.
He look as if he was waiting a long time, as if he nearly forget what he was waiting for. He is not thin; if anything, he is a little stouter. As soon as he see me he get sad, and the tears run to my eyes. When we go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt we embrace and we sit down together on the sofa-bed. I am ashamed to notice it, but he is smelling, his clothes are dirty.
He put his head on my lap and I pat him like a baby, thinking of all those days he spend alone, without me. He knock his head on my knee and say, "I don"t have confidence, brother. I lose my confidence." I look at his long hair that no barber cut for weeks, I see the inside of his dirty collar. I see his dirty shoes. Again and again he say, "I don"t have confidence, I don"t have confidence."
All the bad things I did want to say to him drop away. I rock him on my lap until I come to myself and see that it is dark, the street lamp on outside. I don"t want him to do anything foolish because of false pride. I want to give him a way out. So I ask, "You don"t want to go through with your studies?" He don"t answer. He only sob. I ask him again, "You don"t want to take any more studies?" He lift his head up and blow his nose and say, "It is all right, brother. I like studies." And I can tell he is happier, that he was only a little worried and lonely and down-couraged; and that it is going to be all right in truth.
In the kitchen, as soon as I turn on the light, c.o.c.kroaches scatter everywhere, over dirty old stove and mash-up pot and pan. I bring out bread and milk and a tin of New Brunswick sardines.
It is full-moon night, and the old white woman upstairs start getting on the way she does always get on when the moon is full, shouting and fighting with her husband, screaming and cursing until one of them shut the other one outside.
I light a little fire, more firelighter and newspaper than coal, and Dayo and I sit and eat. I just regret the bas.e.m.e.nt have no bath. But Dayo will go next day to the public baths, sixpence with the smooth old towel. Right now the little fire make the room more than warm, the damp dry out a little. The rat smell the food right away: I hear him scratching at the box I put over his hole. It is like living in a camp, in this bas.e.m.e.nt. Not long after I move in I make a joke about putting a tiny lady"s hand mirror right in the centre of the wall over the fireplace. Now Dayo is here to appreciate that joke.
We pull out the bed part of the sofa-bed and make it up. I even forget the smell, of dead rat and old dirt and gas and rust. Upstairs, the old woman shut her husband out. When I wake up in the night it is because the husband is either shouting from the pavement or banging on the door. In the morning all is calm. The monthly madness is over.
So, suddenly, the sadness and the fright pa.s.s, and the happy time come. The happy time come and it don"t go away, and I start forgetting. Stephen and his family, my father and mother, the sugarcane and the mud and the rich man"s rotting house, the ship at night and the mystery land in the morning, all of that I forget. It is far away, like another life; none of that can touch me again. And in that bas.e.m.e.nt, with the old mad woman upstairs, I feel as the London months pa.s.s that I get back my life, living with Dayo alone, knowing n.o.body else.
I fix up the little back bedroom for Dayo, with a reading-light and everything, and he start taking some regular studies. He get back his confidence and it looks as though what he say is true, that he really like studies, because as fast as he finish one diploma he start another. In the new clothes I buy for him he is looking nice, even sharp. He develop his way of talking and he is looking good to me, like any professional. I know my own ignorance and I don"t interfere with his studies. I let him go his own way and take his own time. I don"t want anything to happen to him again. It is enough for me that he is there.
And you could say that I begin to like big-city life. At home, where people treat you rough and generally get on as though work is a crime and a punishment, I did always prefer to be my own boss. But here I get to like the factory. n.o.body watching you; you lower n.o.body; n.o.body mock you. I like the nice sharp tobacco smell, and I get to like the machine I mind, with the cigarettes coming out in one long piece, so long and strong you could skip with it. I never think work would be like this, that it would make me feel good to think that the factory is always there and I could always go to it on a morning.
Every Friday they give you a hundred free cigarettes. These cigarettes have a special watermark, but those fellows from Pakistan don"t always appreciate this and some of them get catch. A white fellow start walking out one day like a cowboy on high heels. When they stop him they find his shoes stuff up with tobacco. Things like this always happen. The factory is like a school that you don"t like at first but then you like more and more.
No hustling with the lorry, n.o.body beating you down all the time, and you get your money in a little brown envelope, as though you are some kind of civil servant or professional. Regular work, regular money. After some months I finish paying off the moneylender at home, and then I even start saving a little for myself. I am not keeping this money at home, as my father used to do with his few cents. It is going straight in the post office; I have my own little book. One day I find I have a hundred pounds. Mine, not money I borrow. A hundred pounds. I feel safe. I can"t tell you how safe I feel. Whenever I think of it I close my eyes and put my hand to my heart.
But it is so when you get too happy. You forget too much. That hundred pounds make me forget myself. It give me ideas. It make me forget why I am in London. I want to feel more than safe now. I want to see that money grow, I want to see the clerks writing in my book in their different handwriting every week. That become like a craze with me. I know it is foolishness, and I don"t tell Dayo about it; but at the same time I enjoy the secret. And it is because I want to see this money grow week after week that I take a second job. I look around and I get a night work in a restaurant kitchen.
So I start stunning myself with work, and my life become one long work. I get up about six. By seven, Dayo still sleeping, I leave for the cigarette factory. I come back about six to the bas.e.m.e.nt, sometimes Dayo there, sometimes he is not there. By eight I leave for the restaurant, and I come back about midnight or later. London for me is the bus rides, morning, evening, night, the factory, the restaurant kitchen, the bas.e.m.e.nt. I know it is too much, but for me that is part of the pleasure. Like when you are sick and thin, you want to get thinner and thinner, just to see how thin you could get. Or like some fat people who don"t like being fat but still they just want to see how fat they could get: they are always looking at their shadow, and that is like their secret hobby. So now I am always tired when I go to sleep and tired in the morning, but I like and enjoy the tiredness. That is like the secret too, like the money adding up, fifty, sixty pounds a month. And the tiredness does always go in the middle of the morning.
I feel Dayo would mock me if he get to find out what possess my mind. He don"t say anything, but I know that he, as a student in London, can"t really appreciate having his brother working in a restaurant kitchen. But as the months pa.s.s, as one year pa.s.s, and two years, as the life hold out and the money add up, I find the money making me strong. And because the money make me strong I can put up with anything. I don"t mind what people say or how they watch me. When I didn"t have money I used to hate the bas.e.m.e.nt, and I used to daydream about buying nice clothes not only for Dayo but for me too. But now my clothes don"t matter to me, and I even get a thrill to think that n.o.body seeing me in my working clothes, on that street, coming out of that bas.e.m.e.nt, would believe that I have a thousand pounds in the post office, that I have twelve hundred, that I have fifteen.
I scarcely believe it myself. Life in London! This was what people say at home, to mean everything nice. I didn"t look for it; it wasn"t what I come for. But I feel that that life come now, and if I was frightened of anything it was that my strength wouldn"t hold out, that Dayo would finish his studies and leave me alone in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and that the life would end.
It is true. This was the happy time, when Dayo live in my bas.e.m.e.nt and I work like a man in blinkers, when I have the factory to go to every morning and the restaurant every evening, when I can enjoy a Sunday the way I never enjoy a Sunday before. Sometimes I think of the first day, and those men in yellow oilskins in the deep green water in the morning. But that to me is now like a memory from somewhere else, like something I make up.
Craziness. How a man could fool himself like that? Look at these streets now. Look at these things and people I never did see. They have their life too; the city is theirs. I don"t know where I thought I was, behaving as though the city was a ghost city, working by itself, and that it is something I discover by myself. Frank will never understand. He will never see the city I see; he will never understand how I work like that.
He is only querying and probing me about foremen who insult me at the factory, about people who fight with me at the restaurant. He is forever worrying me with his discrimination inquiries. He is my friend, the only friend I have. I alone know how much he help me, from how far he bring me back. But he is digging me all the time because he prefer to see me weak. He like opening up manholes for me to fall in; he is anxious to push me down in the darkness.
His att.i.tude, in the cafe and then at the bus stop and then in the bus, is: keep off, this man is weak, this man is under my protection. When he is like this he have the power to draw all the strength from me, he with his shining shoes and his nice tweed jacket. As though one time I couldn"t go in a shop and buy twelve tweed jackets and pay in cash.
But now the money gone and everything gone and I only have this suit, and it is smelling. But everything does smell here. At home, at home, windows are always open and everything get clean in the open air. Here everything is locked up. Even on a bus no breeze does blow.
Somewhere in the city Dayo is getting married today. I don"t know where he think he is.
I work and work and save and save and the money grow and grow, and when it reach two thousand pounds, I get stunned. I don"t feel I can go on. I know the life have to stop sometime, that I can"t go on with two jobs, that something have to happen. And now the thought of working and saving another thousand is too much for me. So I stop work altogether. I leave the cigarette factory, I leave the restaurant. I take out my two thousand from the post office and I decide to use it.
It is ignorance, it is madness. It is the madness the money itself bring on. The money make me feel strong. The money make me feel that money is easy. The money make me forget how hard money is to make, that it take me more than four years to save what I have. The money in my hand, two thousand pounds, make me forget that my father never get more than ten pounds a month for his donkey-cart work, that he bring all of us up on that ten pounds a month, and that ten by twelve is one hundred and twenty, that the money I have in my hand is the pay of my father for fifteen or sixteen years. The money make me feel that London is mine.
I take my money out and I do with it what I see people do at home. I buy a business. It is the madness working on me, the money madness. I don"t know London and I know nothing about business, but I buy a business. In my mind I am only calculating like those people at home who buy one lorry and work that and buy a second lorry and buy another and another.
The business I had in mind was a little roti-and-curry shop. Not a restaurant, something more like a stall you get at a racecourse, two or three little basins of curry on the counter on this side, a little pile of rotis or chapattis or dalpuris on that side. A lot of women at home do very well that way. The idea come to me just like that one day when I was still at the cigarette factory, and it never leave me. And because the idea come just like that, as though somebody give it to me, I feel it is right. Dayo wasn"t too interested. He talk a lot in that way he have, talking and talking and leaving you guessing about what he mean. I don"t know whether he is ashamed or whether he find the idea of a roti-shop in London too funny, a reminder of home and simple things. I let him talk.
The first shock I get was the price of properties. But I didn"t get frightened and stop. No, the madness is on me, I can"t pull back. I am behaving as though I have a train to catch and must spend my money first. And the strange thing is that as soon as that first piece of money go, for the lease for a few years of a rundown little place in that scruffy street, as soon as that piece of money actually leave my hand, I know it is foolishness and I feel that all the money gone, that I have nothing. I feel the business bust already. I feel I start to bleed, and I am like a man only looking to down-courage himself.
So in just four or five weeks the whole world change for me again. I am no longer strong and rich, not caring what people say or think. Now, suddenly, I am a pauper, and my shabbiness worry me, and I begin to pine for the little things I didn"t give myself, like twelve-pound tweed jackets, which now, after I pay decorators, electricians and the catering company, I can"t afford.
Then I run into prejudice and regulations. At home you can put up a table outside your house any time and start selling what you want. Here they have regulations. Those suspicious men in tweeds and flannels, some of them young, young fellows, are coming round with their forms and pressing me on every side. They are not leaving me any peace of mind at all. They are full of remarks, they don"t smile, they like nothing I do. And I have to shop and cook and clean, and the area is not good and business is bad, and no amount of hard work and early rising will help.
I see I kill myself. The little courage that still remain with me wash away, and the secret vision I had of buying up London, the foolishness I always really know was foolishness, burst. Without my two thousand pounds in the post office, without my real cash, I was without my strength, like Samson without his hair.
When the men in flannels go, the young English louts come. I don"t know what attract them to the place, why they pick on me. Half the time I can"t understand what they say, but they are not people you can get on with at all. They only dress up and come to make trouble. Sometimes they eat and don"t pay; sometimes they mash up plates and gla.s.ses and bend the cutlery. That become like their hobby, a lot of them against me alone. That is their bravery and education. And n.o.body on my side.
Before, in the days of the hard work, of the two jobs, in the days of money, this was the sort of thing that didn"t bother me at all. But now everything is hurting. I can"t bear the way those louts talk or laugh or dress, and I feel my heart getting full of hate again, as it used to be for Stephen and his family, that hate that make me sick.
Dayo should have helped me. He was my brother. He was the man I make the money for. He was the man I went aboard the ship for. But now he leave me alone. He is there with me in the bas.e.m.e.nt; sometimes we still eat together on a Sunday; but his att.i.tude is that what I do is my business alone, he have his own things to do. He is going his own way, pursuing his studies or doing whatever he is doing. Sometimes the light is on in his room when I come in; sometimes he come tiptoeing in afterwards; in the morning I always leave him sleeping. He is there. You can"t forget him. And then my heart begin to set against him too.
I begin to hate the way he talk. I begin to look at him. Once he was the pretty boy, using Vaseline Hair Tonic and combing his hair like Fairley Granger. Now you could see the face becoming just a labourer"s face, without even the hardness that my father"s face get from work and sun. And when he start talking in that way he have and he can start talking about anything: all you have to say is "Dayo, give me a match" he make me feel that something is wrong with him, that someone who is using words in this way is not right. He still have his accent, but he is like a man who have no control over his speech, as though it is the first time he talk that day, as though he have n.o.body in London to talk to.
So in these days I start worrying about Dayo. The roti-shop is always there to worry about, but that to me is in the past now. I do my hard work, I waste my money and my reward. I can"t start again. I can"t go back to the cigarette factory and those insulting illiterate girls and that long ride in the cold morning to the factory. That finish. Now I concentrate on Dayo, my brother. I watch his face, I watch the way he walk, the way he shave. He don"t understand; he is just talking in his womanish way. I don"t tell him anything. I don"t even know what I think. I just look at him and study him.
I wake up early one morning with a wet-dream. It was the second wet-dream I had; the first happen when I was a boy. It leave me exhausted and dirty and ashamed. I want to go to Dayo and beg him to forgive me, because this, the thing that just happen to me, is something I never did think about for him. I feel I let him down, that I betray him in my heart, and I feel I would like to go to him and make up and talk as in the old days. I feel I must show him that I always love him.
I go in his little room at the back, the early backyard light showing through the thin curtains, and I look at the boy with the labourer"s face sleeping on the narrow iron bed. On the table, that I cover with red oilcloth for him, is the reading-lamp I fix up for him for his studies, and his big books, and the paperbacks he read for relaxation sometimes, and the little transistor radio he get me to buy for him so that he could listen to his pop music.
A labourer"s face. But the sadness of the sleeping face hit me, and the smallness of the room, and the concrete wall outside the window, and that yard where no sun fall. And I wonder what it is leading to, what will happen to him and me, whether he will ever take that ship back and get off one bright morning and take a taxi to the junction and drive through places he know.
I notice the saucer he is using as an ashtray, and the expensive cigarettes. I notice the dirtiness of his finger-nails and hands, the fatness at the top of his arms. Once those arms was so strong. Once he used to walk so nice, I used to think like Fonda.
I stand and watch him in the cold room. He twist and turn, he open his eyes, he recognize me. He get frightened. He jump up. And how dirty the sheets he is sleeping in. How dirty.
He say, "What happen?"
He talk without his accent. He look at me as though I come in the room to kill him. He say nothing else; he suddenly lose his way of talking. The labourer"s face.
Sadness, but my sadness. It flow through my body like a fluid.
I say, "What course of studies you are now pursuing, Dayo?"
The fright leave his face. He try to get vexed. Try. He say, "Somebody make you a policeman or what?" He is not talking with his accent now, he is not going on and on. He is like a child again, back home.
I say, "I just want to talk with you. You know I am busy with the shop. It is a long time since we talk seriously."
He say, and as he talk he get back his accent, "Well, since you ask, and you have every right to ask, I will tell you. It isn"t easy to take studies in this place as you and other people believe. A lot of people come here with their own ideas and they think they will start taking studies "
I had to stop him. "What you are taking?"
"I am preparing myself for the modern world. I am taking a course in computer programming, if you want to know. Com-pu-ter pro-gram-ming. I hope this meet with your approval and satisfaction."
I lift up the pack of cigarettes from the table. I say, "Expensive."
He say, in his accent, "I smoke good cigarettes."
The labourer"s face. The labourer"s backchat. I feel that if I stay in that room I would hit him.
And yet I went to his room with love and shame.
The shame stay with me all day. In the evening, after a bad time in the shop, more trouble with those white louts, my arms getting the feeling that there is stretched wire inside them, I travel back by the night bus. When I get off, a black dog with a collar round its neck start following me. The street lamps shining on the trees, those trees with the peeling bark that is a little bit like the bark of our guava trees. The pavements damp, footmarks in the thin black mud. The big dog is friendly. I know it is making a mistake and I try to chase it away. But it only look at me, wagging its tail, and as soon as I walk on it follow me again, really close, as though it want to feel me all the time.
It follow me and follow me, right down past the rubbish bins to the bas.e.m.e.nt. You would think that it would know now that it make a mistake. But no, it slip inside as soon as I open the door and it run up and down the hall, happy, wagging its tail, leaving footmarks everywhere.
I look for Dayo in his room, and the dog look too. I just see the dirty bed when I switch on the light, the sheet gathered up in the centre, the sheet and the pillow brown with dirt, the saucer full of cigarette ends. Oh my G.o.d.
I am hungry, but I can"t stand the thought of food. I make a little Ovaltine. When I start to drink, the dog come right up to me again, wagging its tail. And wagging its tail, it follow me to the hall. I open the door. The dog know now it make a mistake. It race up the steps, not looking back at me, and run away in the night. It leave me feeling lonely.
Later, lying down, I hear Dayo tiptoeing in and switching on his light.
And it was the next morning, leaving Dayo sleeping in his room, and taking the Underground to the market, it was then that I see the advertis.e.m.e.nt in the carriage: PREPARE YOURSELF FOR TOMORROW"S WORLD WITH A COURSE IN COMPUTER PROGRAMMING.
I understand. I am not surprised. But the hate fill my heart. I want to see his face get frightened again. I get off the train after a couple of stops. I walk about the platform, I don"t know what I want to do. I smoke a couple of cigarettes, I let the trains pa.s.s. I feel people start looking at me. I cross over to the other platform, not many people waiting that side, and take the train back.
The smart labourer boy. He only smoke good cigarettes. Oh G.o.d. I see myself going down to the bas.e.m.e.nt to that room with the dirty sheets and the saucer with the expensive good cigarettes. I see myself lifting him out of that bed and hitting him on that lying labourer"s mouth.
But I can"t bring myself to go down the bas.e.m.e.nt steps. I stand up for a long time looking down at the dustbins and the breakdown fence with two or three hedge plants that grow too big, like little trees, n.o.body tr.i.m.m.i.n.g them, the bas.e.m.e.nt window dull with dirt, sc.r.a.ps of wet-and-dried paper and other rubbish scattered about the little garden where somehow a type of gra.s.s is still growing.
The moon-mad white woman open the front door. Her face wrinkled and yellow, and you get a glimpse of the blackness behind her. The woman is dazed; the monthly madness tire her out; you can see that every night she is fighting in her sleep. As she bend down to take the milk, I see her yellow hair thin like a baby"s. She look at me and I can see that she recognize me but she isn"t sure. I nearly say good morning. It is the only thing we say to one another after five years. But then I change my mind and walk away fast to the corner. And I think: Oh my G.o.d, I am glad I change my mind.
But I can"t leave and go to the market. I can"t face that now, I feel I have to settle this thing first. I wait and wait at the corner, I don"t know what for. I don"t know what I want to do. Until I see Dayo stepping out, in his suit, with his books.
I know the bus stop he is going to. I turn left and walk to the stop before. The bus come; I get on and find a seat on the righthand side. At the next stop Dayo is waiting. It is funny, studying him like this, as though he is a stranger, and he not knowing that you are studying him. You could see that he just throw some cold water over his face this morning, that his shirt is dirty, that he is not taking care of himself. He get on; he go upstairs; he does smoke good cigarettes.
He get off at Oxford Circus, and at the traffic lights I get off and follow him down Oxford Street through the crowds. At the end of Oxford Street he buy a paper and go inside a Lyons. I wait a good time. It is getting late now, the morning half gone. I follow him down Great Russell Street, and now I can see that he is idling in truth, looking at the window of the Indian food-shop, the noticeboards outside the newsagent selling foreign papers, crossing the road to look at the dusty books outside the bookshop. A lot of Africans knocking around here, with jacket and tie and briefcase; I don"t know what good the studies they are taking will ever do them.
No more shops, only tall black iron railings beside the pavement, and then Dayo turn in the big open yard of the British Museum. A lot of foreign tourists here, in light tourist clothes. It is like a different city, and he is like a man among the tourists: watch him going up the wide steps with his suit and his books. But these people come for the day; they are happy, they have buses to take them back to their hotels; they have countries to go back to, they have houses. The sadness I feel make my heart seize.
He go inside. I know I have no more to see, but I decide to wait. I look at the tourists and walk about. I walk about the portico, the yard, and out in the street below the trees. One time I walk back nearly to Tottenham Court Road. The Indian restaurant is hot and smelling. It make me think of my own shop, the way I trap myself and throw away my life there. Lunchtime, I nearly forget. I run back to the Museum and I run straight up the steps through the tourists coming and going and I nearly run through the door. But then I see him outside, in the portico, sitting on a wood bench and smoking.
He still have the books with him, and he is sitting very sprawled. The hate rush in my heart, I want to punish him in public, I want a big thing right there in the open, in front of everybody. But then I catch sight of his face, and I stay behind the pillar and study him.
It isn"t only the sadness of the face. It isn"t only the way he is smoking, letting the cigarette hand drop from his mouth like a man who don"t care. He is not sprawling to show off. He is like a man who break his back in truth. It is the face of a tired, foolish boy. It is the face of someone lost. It is the same face of the boy who wake up in the room and look at me with terror. And I feel that if anything happen now to frighten him that mouth will open in a scream.
The sun shining bright now. The gra.s.s green and level and pretty. You can see the edges of the lawn black and rich, like the first time you clear a piece of bush and you know anything will grow: you can feel the damp with your foot when you walk, you can see the seeds coming up, splitting and tiny, growing day after day. The school-girls sitting young and indecent on the concrete kerb in their short blue skirts, laughing and talking loud to get people to look at them. The buses come and go. The taxis come and turn, and men and women get out and get in. The whole world going on. And I feel outside it, seeing only my brother and myself in this place, among the pillars, me in my working clothes, he in his suit that is so cheap it can"t hold a crease or a shape, smoking his cigarette. I would like him to smoke the best cigarettes in the world.
I don"t want him to turn foolish like Stephen"s son. I don"t want that to happen. I want to go to him and embrace him and put my hand on his head and smell his body. I want to tell him that it is all right, that I will protect him, that he must take no more studies, that he is a free man. I would like him then to smile at me. But he wouldn"t smile at me. If I go to him now I will frighten him and he will open his mouth to scream. This is what I do, this is what I bring on myself. I can"t go to him. I can only stand behind the pillar and watch him.
He put out his cigarette. Then with his books he walk out through the gate between the big black railings. Lunchtime now, pub, sandwich, people coming out of offices, walking below the trees. He mingle with them. But he have nowhere to go. And after I watch him leave I feel that I too have nowhere to go, and that the life in London is over.
I have nowhere to go and I walk now, like Dayo, where the tourists walk. The roti-shop: that noose I put my neck in. I think how nice it would be if I could just leave it, leave it just like that. Let the curry from yesterday go stale and rotten and turn red like poison, let the dust fall from the ceiling and settle. Take Dayo home before he get foolish. If a man could do that, if a man could just leave a life that spoil.
To leave the bas.e.m.e.nt with the moon-mad woman upstairs, to leave the windows that look out on nothing back and front. Night after night in the bas.e.m.e.nt the rat scratch. One time, when I did take away the box to stop up the hole with Polyfilla, I see where the claws scratch and scratch in the dark. Something like white fur cover that part of the box. Let the rat come out. The life is over. I am like a man who is giving up. I come with nothing. I have nothing, I will leave with nothing.
All afternoon as I walk I feel like a free man. I scorn everything I see, and when I tire myself out with walking, and the afternoon gone, I still scorn. I scorn the bus, the conductor, the street.
I scorn the white boys who come in the shop in the evening. They come to make trouble. But it is different tonight. I am fighting for nothing here. They are provoking me. But they give me strength. Samson get back his hair, he is strong. Nothing can touch him. He is going back on the ship, and no matter how black the water is at night, in the morning it will be blue. Just for a little bit more he must be strong, and he will leave. He will go away and let the dust fall and the rats come.
The gla.s.ses and the plates are breaking. The words and that laugh are everywhere. Let everything break. I will take Dayo on that ship with me, and his face will not be sad, his mouth will not open to scream. I am walking out, I will go now, the knife is in my hand. But then at the door I feel I want to bawl. I see Dayo"s face again, I feel the strength run right out of me, my bones turning to wire in my arms. These people take my money, these people spoil my life. I close the door and turn the key, and I know then I turn around and I hear myself say, "I am taking one of you today. Two of us going today." I hear nothing else.
Then, always, in the quiet, I see the boy"s face surprised. And it is strange, because he and Dayo are college friends and Dayo is staying with him in this old-fashioned wood house in England. It is an accident; they was only playing. But how easy the knife go in him, how easy he drop. I can"t look down. Dayo look at me and open his mouth to bawl, but no scream coming. He want me to help him, his eyes jumping with fright, but I can"t help him now. It is the gallows for him. I can"t take that for him. I only know that inside me mash up, and that the love and danger I carry all this time break and cut, and my life finish. Nothing making noise now. The body is in the chest, like in Rope, but in this English house. Then the worst part always come: the quiet dark ride, and the sitting down at the dining-table with the boy"s parents. Dayo is trembling; he is not a good actor; he will give himself away. It is like his body in that chest, it is like mine. I can"t see what the house is like. I can"t see the boy"s parents. It is like a dream, when you can"t move, and you want to wake up quick.
Then noise come back, and I know that something bad happen to my right eye. But I can"t even move my hand to feel it.
Frank is sitting beside me on the bus now. I am on the inside, looking down the road. He is on the outside, pressing against me. We will go to another railway station and take a train; then we will take a bus again. And at the end, in some building, in some church, I will see my brother and the white girl he is going to marry. In these three years Dayo make his own way. He give up studies, he get a work.
I used to think of him going back to the bas.e.m.e.nt that day and finding n.o.body there, and n.o.body coming home; and I used to think of that as the end of the world. But he do better without me; he don"t need me. I lose him. I can"t see the sort of life he get into, I can"t see the people he is going to mix with now. Sometimes I think of him as a stranger, different from the man I did know. Sometimes I see him as he was, and feel that he is alone, like me.
The rain stop, the sun come out. In the train we go past the backs of tall houses. The brick grey; no paint here, except for the window frames, bright red and bright green. People living one on top of the other. All kinds of rubbish on top of the flat roofs over projecting back rooms, and sometimes a little plant in a pot inside, behind windows running with wet and steam. Everybody on his shelf, in his little place. But a man can leave everything, a man can just disappear. Somebody will come after him to clean up and clear away, and that new person will settle down there until his own time come.
When we come to the station it is as though we are out of London again. The station building small and low, the houses small and neat in red brick, the little chimneys smoking. The big advertis.e.m.e.nts in the station yard make you feel that everybody here is very happy, laughing below an umbrella in the shape of a house-roof, eating sausages and making funny faces, the whole family sitting down to eat together.
As we wait for the bus, for this last lap, my nervousness return. The street is wide, everything is clean, and I feel exposed. But Frank know me well. He edge up close, as though he want to protect me from the little cold wind that is blowing. The wind make Frank"s face white and it lift a little of his thin hair, so that he look a little bit like a boy.
I see him playing as a boy in streets like this one. I don"t know why, I see him with a dirty face and dirty clothes, like those children asking for a penny for the guy. And as I am thinking this, looking down at Frank"s big shining shoes, a very little girl in very small jeans come right up to Frank and embrace his knees and ask for a penny. He say no, and she hit him on his leg and say, "You have a penny." She is a very young child; she don"t know what she is doing, rubbing up against strangers; she don"t even know what money is. But Frank"s white face get very hard, and even after the girl go away Frank is nervous still. He is glad to get on the bus when it come.