“Shit, nigger! that ain’t true! Gorblummuh, you can’t fool a old black bitch like me, nigger! You only got to scratch yourself, or your dicky, and you gotta smell funky!”
“You’re not a Trinidadian, I know that. I could smell that accent a mile off!” He inspected her face; convinced himself she was very beautiful, and very desirable; and he watched her closely to see whether she would really be as beautiful in bed.
“You’re a Bajan,” he told her. And he smiled.
“How you know?” She knew how he knew.
“The accent. Besides, Bajan woman is the best in the Wessindies! In the world. I should know. My mother is a Bajan.” (His mother, when he had one, before she died of acute tuberculosis, was a Trinidadian woman.)
He had now come inside the doorway. But he held his hand still on the post; the door was slightly open. He was still dressed in his porter’s uniform.
“Well, for one thing, it is good to meet another Westindian in a place like this, behind-God’s-back.”
“This country hard. That’s why I working on the trains to pay my university fees.”
“That’s good, boy, you’re young, and it’s more important for you to be a doctor or a lawyer, or whatever it is you’re going through for, than to worry-out your brains about these white people, and this country, eh.”
She was enjoying talking to him. She could lapse into her Barbadian dialect without feeling self-conscious, without feeling anything but pride, and a closeness to the man she was talking to. It was so different when she was talking to Sam Burrmann, with whom she had to be so particular. “Boy, a job is a job, yuh,” she said, her voice rich with the dialect and with an assumed deep knowledge of this country. “You is a young man. A man with learning and education to boot! So save your money to pay them school-fees, you hear me?”
“I like you, I mean, I like the way you talk.” He did not think it was quite time to confess, or express, his sex-feelings for her. “You mind if I come back? Look, I gotta do a few things, but I won’t be long.”
She was nodding her head, telling him, yes, come back, it will be all right. And nervous in his thighs and anxious in his ambition, he was smiling. She’s fucking easy, he told himself.
“You had something to eat?”
“Wait! you mean to say they give you food on these trains, too?”
But he was away before she could say more to him. She felt good: it would be so good to sit down and talk with a fellow West Indian, on a lonely train, going where neither of them belonged. She touched her hair with her hands, and ducked her head this way and then that, like a boxer in the slowest motion evading punches; she passed her fingers under her armpits, to see if they smelled; and when she passed them under her nostrils, and they did not smell, she nevertheless passed the roll-on deodorant over the tufts of hair growing under her armpits. Hastily, she changed from her nightgown and housecoat, and slipped on her panties, her half slip (no brassiere: which she didn’t need, because of the ripeness of her breasts), and put on a dress, cream in colour, which exposed the tantalizations in her hips every time she even breathed. It fitted her suggestively neatly round the waist. It had no sleeves. It accentuated her colour, light bronze; and it made her look even more beautiful. (The dress was one of Bernice’s which she had altered to her fancy and size and fashion.)
She had just slipped on her slippers, when there was a knock on the door, and again, the waiter-porterman entered without waiting for her to invite him in. She had not even said, “Who is it?” But he was standing there, holding a bottle of gin (he had served her gin earlier, and he was told by his friends that gin did the job quickly), and three bottles of tonic in one hand; and in the other was a parcel of greaseproof paper, with the grease showing through it, which contained three large pieces of chicken springing juice and smell like a spring springing water.
“Brought you a little snack …”
“Man, you is the first kind man I meet on this train.”
“I know you was hungry.”
“As a horse, boy.”
“Good! I hope you thirsty, too.”
“A little taste never killed.”
“Good!”
“Boy, pour the drink, do!”
“More tonic?” he asked, pouring the drink, without asking her if he had given her too much gin. “Good!” They were drinking. She was eating. He watched her, and he laid his plans. He sized her up. And he laid his webs in the parlour of his anxiety. He undressed her in his mind; and then he selected, mentally, the best position he would bend her into, in order to get the most juices out of her body. Baked fowl! was the position he chose to use with her.
“So you’s a student, eh?”
“Yeah. Easy course, man! I studying economics, and then law. When a grajjuate, I think I going back home to Grenada and enter politics. In Grenada, man, I could be a king! So far, there ain’t all that many Grenadians with degrees.”
“I like the way you talking.”
“Well, it don’t make sense to come up here in Canada, work like a blasted dog, study books like hell, and then when you grajjuate, with a better degree than some o’ these Canadian fellows, you still can’t command the same salary or job.”
“Now, you’re not talking the way I like to hear you talk. They don’t have to give you one damn thing. You have to take it! My little experience here already told me that.”
“You right! I agree with your thesis.”
They drank; and she ate and drank. The train was moving fast. Now and then he checked to see how she was faring under the
