“We did a lot o’ things together this summer.”
“Yeah. But now that the summer all but gone, I feel as if there is somebody up there, telling every man to prepare for the indoors. I even notice in the relatively short time I living in this country, that the winter does bring a neverending everlasting vexatiousness on all the white people faces. Be-Jesus Christ, I never knew a whole race o’ people could appear and remain vexed and unhappy, all at the same time, all the time, all goddamn winter! For that one reason, I hope I never would be a white man, gorblummuh! I like my women and my drinks too much for that. Whatever they got that we don’t have, and probably never would get, be-Jesus Christ, they could keep it! I don’t want it. Boysie Cumberbatch, this ugly half-ignorant Bajan man, sitting down here with you firing this steam, I do not want one blast of their life. Let me live my life, with my people, because there is more fun in that.”
Henry smiled, and said, “I have to agree.”
And since there was agreement on such a fundamental issue, the silence descended again upon them, just as the leaves were falling.
“You hear Dots is leaving the Hunters?” Boysie said, when it was silent enough.
“Agatha told me.”
“What you think?”
“She’s free now. She could behave and feel free. Fuck the domestic scheme. No woman should have to leave the West Indies to come up here in this prejudiced, unfair, two-mouth, cold country to work as a servant for Jews and anglosaxons or whatever the hell they call them, wasps? What I saying is this. No black woman should work in a serving job for no fucking white man, in a white country, and in the same country these fucking white people don’t want to rent you a room, or give you a job. All them West Indian politicians who arrange this scheme should be strung-up by their balls, or have their balls cut off, and then shot.”
“You talking violence again. You getting back to the same thing you was talking when I first came here,” Boysie said, pouring himself a drink. “But I tell you simply, that Dots is leaving the job. She looking for a new job now. Five days, five days Dots is looking in the Star and the Tely. She don’t like the Globe. Says it is too much a white man paper. No kiss-me-arse job for her, a black woman, saving these notices put in by the Jews and the rich white people, asking for help. Tell me something now, why is it that only the Jews does put ads in the papers asking for help? You could answer that? Now, I don’t want to be unfair to anybody, because there is good and rotten in every kiss-me-arse race and tribe. But why so many Jews willing to have black people slave for them, and so few ahmm … what you call them? … anglosections? Do you think it is the Jews who want to keep us in this shit, for good? I can’t really believe that. Because they is a race who themselves see shit, at the hands o’ Hitler and many others, kings and queens, and according to Brigitte, who as you know, is a German Nazzi herself, the Jews been seeing shit for as long as the world began. And Brigitte say something else too. Brigitte say that the people who squeeze the Jews balls was right to squeeze the Jews balls. And I tell her, that that couldn’t be true, because it is the Jews who give the black man the first break, the Jew who, because o’ the knowledge o’ sufferation at the hands of the anglosections, help the black man in his struggle, against the present-day anglosections. I argued strong strong in favour of the Jew. Brigitte argued damn strong in favour ’gainst the Jew. I am ashamed as arse to tell you the bad things and names she call the Jews by, even the woman she works for, Mistress Gasstein.”
“Brigitte knows what she talking about,” Henry said. With his eyes, Boysie inquired what he meant by that; but Henry said no more in the way of explanation. “Brigitte is a German woman. She knows the Jews. Listen to what she telling you, boy. Perhaps, you are going to learn something ’bout the city o’ Toronto, if you learn something ’bout the Jew. But it is a good thing that Dots leaving Rosedale. You don’t belong up there. They’re too fucking phony up there.”
“Brigitte say Rosedale is the home of anglosections.”
“But what about you? How’s the job situation?”
“Well, I hope I wouldn’ be idle for the whole winter. I been talking to some fellas, who say things is really hard. But they can’t kill you. You gotta have a job, even if it is collecting garbage. A man must get a job. I went round so far to a paper-box-making place, a paint factory, a publishing place for a job in the storeroom, and you know where I went too? Gorblummuh, that morning, I dressed-off real sharp, and I put on that white shirt after my wife spend two hours ironing it, and gorblummuh, the seams in my pants would cut down a maple tree in half. And I go into that man’s office, in the Maclean-Hunter building. On Avenue Road … no, University Avenue. Jesus Christ, Henry, I barely had time to get in the man’s office, and before I could sit down, this kiss-me-arse white man tell me, ‘Sorry, Mr. Cumberbatch. But we haven’ no openings on our janitorial staff or our cleaning staff.’ God blind him in hell! Who told him I was looking for a cleaning job on his fucking staff? And I want
