“Don’t tell me you think you’s a writer! You playing the arse now, if you think you is a Shakespeare the Second, or something!” And Boysie, the close friend, ridiculed Henry with a laugh which sent shivers up Henry’s spine. But Henry was already taking out the piece of paper, folded by creases and marks, from his pocket.
“But you dedicate the thing to Agatha!”
“She is my wife, man.”
“Oh!”
“That’s exactly what I mean …”
“By dedicating the thing to Agatha?” Henry nodded. Boysie read the poem, which said:
But was it really time that killed
The rose of our love? Was it time?
And was it time to die? Is it time?
This rose?
It was not, could not, be time. Time
Has no power over roses, or over love
Or over me, or over you.
Time has no gun over love or over beauty.
Boysie handed it back to Henry; and all he said was, “Man, I didn’t know you like roses so much!”
“What you think of it? You think it is a poem?”
“A poem? Man, I look like a kiss-me-arse poet to you? Only a poet would know if a poem is a poem. I am only a cleaner. But I didn’t know though, that you had this great feeling about a rose.”
“How it sound, though, Boysie? How it read, man? It reads like one o’ those we used to have to learn by heart, back in the old days, in school?”
“Man, in those days, the things we read as poems was printed in a book, man. They were poems. But this one, this poem that you show me, well, I can’t rightly say if it is a poem or if it is not a poem, because as you know, the only poems we learned were printed in a English book sent down by England. I just see this thing you show me as something write-down on a piece o’ paper talking a lotta shite ’bout roses!” “Where in hell did you pick up this zombie?” Sam Burrmann said one day, referring to the middle-aged Polish-Jewish maid who had replaced Bernice. He had seen her around the house during the day and night, but he was so preoccupied that he never even stopped to consider whether she was just a part-time help, a visitor, or a poor relation from beyond the seas.
“She replaces Bernice,” Mrs. Burrmann said, when Marta left for the kitchen, silent and placid.
“Replaces?” And for a long time he was silent so she might savour his sarcasm. “What did happen to Bernice?” he asked, after swallowing the hot coffee. “I thought Bernice was a good maid.”
“Oh nothing, really! Just itchy feet, restlessness. You know these West Indians. She wanted to try another job, so I told her it was all right for her to leave.”
“Suppose you can’t blame her for that.”
“Course not. We can’t blame her for that.”
She was waiting for him to mention Estelle’s name. She was waiting, as she had waited for weeks now, to get the chance to lose her temper, not only about Estelle and Bernice, but about many things she had in mind to quarrel about. He had skillfully sidestepped the issue. He worried about it himself, for many hours each day, since his return from his vacation in the north: at the office; driving his automobile down to work along Avenue Road, and sometimes coming close, too close to the back fenders of a car in front. Once, he forgot to stop at a Pedestrian Crosswalk, and almost killed a child. He took sixty minutes to regain his composure in Murray’s Restaurant, where he stopped to drink three cups of black coffee. The child he almost killed, back there, was a “coloured” child: this started him thinking about Estelle … what kind of coloured child would his be … he was thinking of it now …
Mrs. Burrmann had been grumbling all the time about what a diligent maid Marta was, how she would do things which Bernice felt too proud to do: “Sometimes, I have to remind Marta she’s not a young person any longer … she is cleaning the floors, when I told her I have a cleaning woman, a char, to come in to do that … and the children, they just adore her … she allows them to ride on her back, at her age! …”
“Course!” He got up. He wiped something from his mouth with the paper napkin. He held over and kissed her on the hair. She closed her eyes, as if praying for a more passionate kiss. “See you.” And then she opened her eyes.
On his way out, Mrs. Burrmann said, “Well, I’ll do what I told you about the new furniture for Marta’s rooms …” He was ducking down into the garage. “Hasta la vista!” she said. Marta was standing beside her, wondering who she was talking to, in this strange tongue. “Hasta!” And to Marta, she said, “That was Mr. Burrmann I was talking to …”
He stood outside the garage door catching a breath of fresh air from her stifling conversation. He had heard: enough, every word. “Aster-la-veester? Aster-la-veeeester?” he said, over and over again, as he went into the garage. “Aster-la-fuckster! Aster-la-fuckster-la-haster! Vesster-la-fuckster …”
It was some time before Henry realized he was being followed. When he found out it shocked him. He was terrified. He did not know when it had begun, but he told himself, as a way of preparing himself for the worst, that men had been following him from that night almost a year ago
