Authors: Jamaica Kincaid
Mr. Potter (12 page)
And Mr. Potter did not move toward his death swiftly and inexorably, and he did not leave Mr. Shoul's employ in that way either. It was in Mr. Shoul's household that he met my mother, Annie Victoria Richardson, where she worked as the nursemaid taking care of Mr. Shoul's children; one of them, a
girl, was named Elaine, and my mother, to demonstrate to this small girl her power to transform the world, said that she would bear a child, a girl, and name that girl Elaine. And without knowing any of this, I hated my name and planned to change it every day of my life until the day I did do so. And I now do not hate the name Elaine, I only now, even now, still hate the person who named me so, and that person is now dead. My mother is dead. And she moved toward her own death swiftly and inexorably even though she was alive eighty years.
girl, was named Elaine, and my mother, to demonstrate to this small girl her power to transform the world, said that she would bear a child, a girl, and name that girl Elaine. And without knowing any of this, I hated my name and planned to change it every day of my life until the day I did do so. And I now do not hate the name Elaine, I only now, even now, still hate the person who named me so, and that person is now dead. My mother is dead. And she moved toward her own death swiftly and inexorably even though she was alive eighty years.
And I am wondering now if there was a romance of some sort between them and I can imagine that the answer is yes, because I can see my mother's own beautiful long black shiny hair, which she wore all rolled and pinned up on top of her head so that it lay there like a loaf of bread, and I imagine my father, that is, Mr. Potter, seeing his face reflected in that tightly wound braid of hair, and loving his reflection and loving the object that caused his reflection to gaze back at him. And I wonder if there was love between them and the answer to that would be no, because my mother would not submit to anything, certainly not to love, with all its chaos, its demands, its unpredictability; and because Mr. Potter could not love anyone, not anyone who was his own. And he loved the boy Louis, but Louis was not his own son.
O
h, how slowly night falls, how imperceptibly night begins, for night begins when the sun is in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky, and shining so harshly bright it makes shadows pale. Night begins in the middle of the day. And I was thirty-three years old and living in a city that was between thirty and forty-five degrees latitude north of the equator. And my life, as I viewed it then, was in a tunnel, ablaze with torrents of fire, and there were no exits; and at that time I glowed not like an ember surging toward ashes but like a stout log enveloped in flames. And Mr. Potter hovered over it, my life, with his line drawn through me and I was alive and would be for a long time, a time beyond his imagining. And at that time, when I was thirty-three years old and living north of the equator and in the temperate zone, he
came into my life like a dying insect drawn to a heated glassy surface, or like a dying insect drawn to the stilled surface of a pool of water. He was dying then and I was living in a place far from where I was born, comfortably. But how was I to know that he was dying, for he did not tell me, he did not know it himself. And Mr. Potter and I were standing in a room with three windows and the room was in a house and the house had many rooms and each room had at least two windows, sometimes three windows, sometimes four windows, but each room was part of this entire house in which I now lived. And I was thirty-three years of age, my life then far removed from its origins in Mr. Potter and my mother Annie Victoria Richardson and Mr. Shoul and Dr. Weizenger, who had tended me when I came down with a case of typhoid fever and whooping cough even though he knew nothing about childhood ailments, he had been trained to be a psychiatrist, but in Antigua no one had ever heard of such a thing as a psychiatrist. And my life was far removed from Mr. Potter and my illegitimate claim to my patrimony through him. A light filled the room, it was not a natural light, it did not come from the sun in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky, and shining so harshly bright that it would make even the shadows tremble; this light that filled the room was made up of fear and mistrust and anger and disappointment and a small number
of questions: why? For a small number would be better than a large number. But nothing goes along smoothly for too long, not even the unsmooth itself, and so the light that was made up of fear and other things that cause discomfort vanished, and Mr. Potter told me that from looking at me he realized that all his girl children had his nose, he said all my girl children have my nose, and I then suddenly saw a set of faces, not a sea, but a set, of faces, their eyes closed, their mouths clasped shut, their nostrils open, two small holes, as if offering a view into an eternity of some kind. And Mr. Potter said this: when looking at me, he realized that all his girl children had the same nose as his own, and my own nose, which had never seemed of any consequence to me at all, suddenly grew into a mountain as it rested on the base that was my face, and it overwhelmed every other aspect of the small area that was my face and my face no longer existed, just for that moment, that span of time that lasted while Mr. Potter told me that through my nose he recognized me as one of his children, a girl, and in truth he had only girl children.
h, how slowly night falls, how imperceptibly night begins, for night begins when the sun is in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky, and shining so harshly bright it makes shadows pale. Night begins in the middle of the day. And I was thirty-three years old and living in a city that was between thirty and forty-five degrees latitude north of the equator. And my life, as I viewed it then, was in a tunnel, ablaze with torrents of fire, and there were no exits; and at that time I glowed not like an ember surging toward ashes but like a stout log enveloped in flames. And Mr. Potter hovered over it, my life, with his line drawn through me and I was alive and would be for a long time, a time beyond his imagining. And at that time, when I was thirty-three years old and living north of the equator and in the temperate zone, he
came into my life like a dying insect drawn to a heated glassy surface, or like a dying insect drawn to the stilled surface of a pool of water. He was dying then and I was living in a place far from where I was born, comfortably. But how was I to know that he was dying, for he did not tell me, he did not know it himself. And Mr. Potter and I were standing in a room with three windows and the room was in a house and the house had many rooms and each room had at least two windows, sometimes three windows, sometimes four windows, but each room was part of this entire house in which I now lived. And I was thirty-three years of age, my life then far removed from its origins in Mr. Potter and my mother Annie Victoria Richardson and Mr. Shoul and Dr. Weizenger, who had tended me when I came down with a case of typhoid fever and whooping cough even though he knew nothing about childhood ailments, he had been trained to be a psychiatrist, but in Antigua no one had ever heard of such a thing as a psychiatrist. And my life was far removed from Mr. Potter and my illegitimate claim to my patrimony through him. A light filled the room, it was not a natural light, it did not come from the sun in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky, and shining so harshly bright that it would make even the shadows tremble; this light that filled the room was made up of fear and mistrust and anger and disappointment and a small number
of questions: why? For a small number would be better than a large number. But nothing goes along smoothly for too long, not even the unsmooth itself, and so the light that was made up of fear and other things that cause discomfort vanished, and Mr. Potter told me that from looking at me he realized that all his girl children had his nose, he said all my girl children have my nose, and I then suddenly saw a set of faces, not a sea, but a set, of faces, their eyes closed, their mouths clasped shut, their nostrils open, two small holes, as if offering a view into an eternity of some kind. And Mr. Potter said this: when looking at me, he realized that all his girl children had the same nose as his own, and my own nose, which had never seemed of any consequence to me at all, suddenly grew into a mountain as it rested on the base that was my face, and it overwhelmed every other aspect of the small area that was my face and my face no longer existed, just for that moment, that span of time that lasted while Mr. Potter told me that through my nose he recognized me as one of his children, a girl, and in truth he had only girl children.
And why not the eyes, I said to myself then and even now, why not the eyes, which are sometimes said to offer a way of entering the soul, and why not the ears, which are sometimes said to offer a way of entering into the eternally celestial, and why not the mouth, which is sometimes said to be the instrument
through which the imagined, the world held in the mind's eye, is brought to life through words. But only through the instrument of smell could Mr. Potter recognize his children, and those children were all female and those children were not familiar to each other, only Mr. Potter could make their noses and only through him and with him could they make sense of the world in which they found themselves. And how glad I was to be alive and to hear Mr. Potter say that I was his and my nose was his and I was his through his nose, and how much more important that was than if he had seen me or heard me, or touched me in some way or tasted me, which could never even be done, to taste me, and he spun himself into a golden ecstasy on the realization and the revelation that all his female offspring could be identified through their noses being similar to his own. And the light grew dim and then darkened and then completely disappeared because in the middle of everything I found my voice, not my nose, which was there and dominated everything and would not go away, but my voice, and I said to Mr. Potter, who was standing across from me in only one of the many rooms in which I lived then: What should I call you? How should I address you? What is your name to me? When wanting your attention, how can I get it? And I asked him plainly in this straightforward way: What am I to call you?
through which the imagined, the world held in the mind's eye, is brought to life through words. But only through the instrument of smell could Mr. Potter recognize his children, and those children were all female and those children were not familiar to each other, only Mr. Potter could make their noses and only through him and with him could they make sense of the world in which they found themselves. And how glad I was to be alive and to hear Mr. Potter say that I was his and my nose was his and I was his through his nose, and how much more important that was than if he had seen me or heard me, or touched me in some way or tasted me, which could never even be done, to taste me, and he spun himself into a golden ecstasy on the realization and the revelation that all his female offspring could be identified through their noses being similar to his own. And the light grew dim and then darkened and then completely disappeared because in the middle of everything I found my voice, not my nose, which was there and dominated everything and would not go away, but my voice, and I said to Mr. Potter, who was standing across from me in only one of the many rooms in which I lived then: What should I call you? How should I address you? What is your name to me? When wanting your attention, how can I get it? And I asked him plainly in this straightforward way: What am I to call you?
And that very question itself, What am I to call you? seemed to rearrange not only a singular world but a whole system of planetary revolutions, for in that simple statement, and it was a statement, not a question, I raised the issue of what he was to all these girls and what he was to himself and who was he to me as he stood before me in that room, one of many in the house in a city in the temperate zone. And my nose was on my face and the words What am I to call you? were in my mouth and then on my lips and then in the air that hung between us and surrounded us and suddenly I was overcome by a fear of mammals with wings and that fear was not explainable for I was in a city and it was daytime, I was not in an unmapped forest at night. And at that moment, should anger have surged through me like a force unpredictable in nature, should I have wished my father dead, should I have gone beyond mere wishing and walked over to him and grabbed him by the throat and squeezed his neck until his body lay limp at my feet, should I have thrown him out the window and then looked to see him lying in a lifeless, decorative puddle of blood, tissue, and bones on the sidewalk, should I have wished him somewhere else and something else and not related to me in any way at all at that very moment?
And I did wish him dead and I did want him dead and I wanted my moments past, present, and future to
be absent of him, but he did not die then and I never saw him again and again or ever again and then he died.
be absent of him, but he did not die then and I never saw him again and again or ever again and then he died.
And he left my life then forever, his back disappearing through the door of the house in which I lived, his back disappearing up the street on which stood the house in which I lived; and his appearance was like his absence, leaving my surface untroubled, causing not so much as the tiniest ripple, leaving only an empty space inside that is small when I am not aware of its presence and large when I am.
A
nd Mr. Potter returned to his life, the smooth, everydayness of it, the ordinariness of it, breathing in, then breathing out, pulling his shirt over his head so that he could wear it and then pulling his shirt over his head so that he could remove it after wearing it, and his favorite meals were placed before him and he ate them and he moved through the streets of St. John's in a car made somewhere in North America, a car to him still seemed so magical, appearing in all its completeness and ready-to-be-carness, without at all betraying how it came to be that, a car. And Mr. Potter's life had been like that to him. Sometimes, if he had thought about it, sometimes his life had been like his car, made somewhere else, appearing as if by magic out of nowhere and without at all betraying how it came to be; that is how his life appeared
to him sometimes, but he could not read and he could not write and all of his life and all of his feelings were trapped in a capsule which from time to time he could see in a glimmer, fleetingly, with certainty and then the opposite of certainty. And he could not read and he could not write and his life lay still, for he could not make wars or cause events to make a violent reversal. He made female children and all of them had noses that resembled his own.
nd Mr. Potter returned to his life, the smooth, everydayness of it, the ordinariness of it, breathing in, then breathing out, pulling his shirt over his head so that he could wear it and then pulling his shirt over his head so that he could remove it after wearing it, and his favorite meals were placed before him and he ate them and he moved through the streets of St. John's in a car made somewhere in North America, a car to him still seemed so magical, appearing in all its completeness and ready-to-be-carness, without at all betraying how it came to be that, a car. And Mr. Potter's life had been like that to him. Sometimes, if he had thought about it, sometimes his life had been like his car, made somewhere else, appearing as if by magic out of nowhere and without at all betraying how it came to be; that is how his life appeared
to him sometimes, but he could not read and he could not write and all of his life and all of his feelings were trapped in a capsule which from time to time he could see in a glimmer, fleetingly, with certainty and then the opposite of certainty. And he could not read and he could not write and his life lay still, for he could not make wars or cause events to make a violent reversal. He made female children and all of them had noses that resembled his own.
And all the silvery twilight in the world did not fall on the top of Mr. Potter's head, and all the silvery twilight in the world did not fall on his shoulders, and he receded back into the world from which I had come and the world I did not know and so can still even now only yearn for, and he receded into the world from which he had come and knew so well, into the world of driving automobiles whose backseats were larger than the beds in which his daughters were conceived, and these automobiles offered a form of comfort which was unknown to Mr. Potter, getting from one place to another while thinking of something else altogether, something not having to do with the journey at all. And Mr. Potter receded into his own world, which was his life, and he turned his back to the world, the world as it is made up of that great big thing: a shared commonality, feelings of love for something ordinary, like his own child regardless of the shape of her nose, and the sun which shone overhead
day after day, and the earth beneath his feet which could be forced to yield sustenance, and in between was the atmosphere in which he actually lived. And Eh, eh is what Mr. Potter said to himself, and “Eh, eh” is what Mr. Potter said out loud sometimes.
day after day, and the earth beneath his feet which could be forced to yield sustenance, and in between was the atmosphere in which he actually lived. And Eh, eh is what Mr. Potter said to himself, and “Eh, eh” is what Mr. Potter said out loud sometimes.
A
nd walking along Market Street one day, a holiday, a special day designated to commemorate an event full of significance in the history of Mr. Potter's long-standing and overwhelming subjugation, Mr. Potter looked up and saw Mr. Shoul looking down on him from the veranda of Mr. Shoul's house, and Mr. Shoul was accompanied by his wife, who also came from the Lebanon or Syria or someplace near there, and she too had come to this place, Antigua, through some disaster made not by nature or anyone she loved, and she and Mr. Shoul and their children, especially one named Elaine, looked down on Mr. Potter and Mr. Potter looked up at them and all those gazes met, not as if in some celestial alignment, but in its complete opposite, random and evil and without purpose. And Mr. Potter walked on and by his side
was a woman and she was a nurse by profession and she could not bear children through her own will. And how he walked, and walked and walked, through his own life again and again; and looking upward again he saw Dr. Weizenger, and his wife, who was a nurse also but from England, was with him but they had no children of any kind, not boys or girls, because the two of them were not fertile, or had decided not to be fertile, I do not know. And in the middle of Newgate Street was where Market Street came to an end, and above this juncture stood the Anglican cathedral and it had been built by African slaves, from whom Mr. Potter could trace his ancestors, and the tower of the cathedral had a clock with four faces looking north, south, east, and west, making the cathedral seem as if it simultaneously captured and released time, but all this notion of time captured and released was of no interest to Mr. Potter if only because he was all by himself: a definition of time captured and released, released and captured. And Dr. Weizenger, Zoltan was his name and Samuel was his name also, was often in the shadow of that clock, sometimes all by himself, sometimes with his wife, and that clock with its four sides, each facing one of the four corners of the earth, was meant to replicate another marker of time, the clock called Big Ben, situated in the capital city of London, or so thought Dr. Weizenger, but not
Mr. Potter, and Mr. Shoul thought only of the road that went toward and away from Damascus.
nd walking along Market Street one day, a holiday, a special day designated to commemorate an event full of significance in the history of Mr. Potter's long-standing and overwhelming subjugation, Mr. Potter looked up and saw Mr. Shoul looking down on him from the veranda of Mr. Shoul's house, and Mr. Shoul was accompanied by his wife, who also came from the Lebanon or Syria or someplace near there, and she too had come to this place, Antigua, through some disaster made not by nature or anyone she loved, and she and Mr. Shoul and their children, especially one named Elaine, looked down on Mr. Potter and Mr. Potter looked up at them and all those gazes met, not as if in some celestial alignment, but in its complete opposite, random and evil and without purpose. And Mr. Potter walked on and by his side
was a woman and she was a nurse by profession and she could not bear children through her own will. And how he walked, and walked and walked, through his own life again and again; and looking upward again he saw Dr. Weizenger, and his wife, who was a nurse also but from England, was with him but they had no children of any kind, not boys or girls, because the two of them were not fertile, or had decided not to be fertile, I do not know. And in the middle of Newgate Street was where Market Street came to an end, and above this juncture stood the Anglican cathedral and it had been built by African slaves, from whom Mr. Potter could trace his ancestors, and the tower of the cathedral had a clock with four faces looking north, south, east, and west, making the cathedral seem as if it simultaneously captured and released time, but all this notion of time captured and released was of no interest to Mr. Potter if only because he was all by himself: a definition of time captured and released, released and captured. And Dr. Weizenger, Zoltan was his name and Samuel was his name also, was often in the shadow of that clock, sometimes all by himself, sometimes with his wife, and that clock with its four sides, each facing one of the four corners of the earth, was meant to replicate another marker of time, the clock called Big Ben, situated in the capital city of London, or so thought Dr. Weizenger, but not
Mr. Potter, and Mr. Shoul thought only of the road that went toward and away from Damascus.
And that great big clock with its four sides, each facing one of the four corners of the earth, struck every hour on the hour, marking off time, as it passed, and the ending of each hour was the beginning of the next, and the clock had done that from the day of its completion by the hands of slaves, Mr. Potter's ancestors, hundreds of years before. And time was Dr. Weizenger's enemy: the past certainly; the future he did not know how that would turn out. And Mr. Potter's lifetime began in the year fourteen hundred and ninety-two but he was born on the seventh day of January, nineteen hundred and twenty-two, and his mother was Elfrida Robinson of English Harbour and his father was Nathaniel Potter, also of English Harbour, and the midwife who assisted his mother in bringing him into the world was named Nurse Eudelle. And all through this small narrative of this small life was the loud and harsh ringing of the church's bell, and this loudness and this harshness was such a surprise to the people who had ordered the cathedral and its clock and bell built and to the people who had built the cathedral and its clock and bell that these two peoples agreed to call the harsh loudness a chime and the chiming of the church bells marking off time eventually became a part of the great
and everlasting silence. And Mr. Potter did not move with great hurry or inexorably toward his inevitable end, it was only that the end is so inevitable, his end was beyond avoidance, and yet like the hours trapped in a clockâlet it be the clock on the top of the cathedral with its four faces, each facing a corner of the earthâthe end of each hour is the beginning of the next, his end has a beginning and it rests in the small girls, each of them with his nose, and one of them can read and can write and perhaps this one shall remove him from the great and everlasting silence.
and everlasting silence. And Mr. Potter did not move with great hurry or inexorably toward his inevitable end, it was only that the end is so inevitable, his end was beyond avoidance, and yet like the hours trapped in a clockâlet it be the clock on the top of the cathedral with its four faces, each facing a corner of the earthâthe end of each hour is the beginning of the next, his end has a beginning and it rests in the small girls, each of them with his nose, and one of them can read and can write and perhaps this one shall remove him from the great and everlasting silence.
And: “Won't you come into my parlor,” said the spider to the fly. Mr. Potter was remembering that someone had tried to help him recite the rest of that nursery rhyme, it was a nursery rhyme, that is what it was, something meant for children, and Mr. Potter thought, A child! But he was never a child, he had always been Mr. Potter (he said, “Me name Drickie, you know, me ah tell you, me name Drickie”). Parlor! Spider! Fly! Tomorrow is the same as today, was a fundamental way of organizing the world to Mr. Potter. Tomorrow will hold good, bad, the same as today, whatever that should be, was a fundamental way of organizing the world to Dr. Weizenger. Tomorrow, tomorrow, said Mr. Shoul, but he fell out of Mr. Potter's consciousness altogether for he died suddenly and his funeral was a spectacle. The procession following the hearse bearing his coffin extended for a mile or so,
most of them people to whom Mr. Shoul had sold yards of cloth, or aluminum pans or basins or cups, most of them people who felt Mr. Shoul had made their lives better, but he had not made their lives better, he was the medium through which they felt their lives were better, but their lives were the same, the same, the same, always the same, for life is that way: the same. And the red clay that bound itself to Mr. Shoul as he lay dead was indifferent to Damascus and the road that went toward it and the road that went away from it, and that same red clay of Antigua that encased Dr. Weizenger as he lay dead in it was very different in texture from ashes; and Dr. Weizenger had once been very close to becoming only ashes, all that would have remained of himâashes. And Dr. Weizenger died also, but he did not have a long funeral procession, for his patients did not like him or love him, though he had made their lives better, he had made them well when they had been sick, and none of the people he made well mourned him when he died, they only remembered that he had told them he did not like the way they smelled and he did not like dirt under their fingernails and he did not like their hair and he did not like their very existence, for they were so vulnerable and yet they persisted; and how their persistence annoyed him. So vulnerable was Dr. Weizenger and he perished in the warm clay that was the opposite of ashes, for everything was the same
yet everything repudiated sameness. Dr. Weizenger's wife died, and his nurse died too; his wife and his nurse were the same person and her existence in the world was so ordinary and so ordinary and so ordinary again, it does not thrive under observation. And Mr. Potter did not move hurriedly toward his own end.
most of them people to whom Mr. Shoul had sold yards of cloth, or aluminum pans or basins or cups, most of them people who felt Mr. Shoul had made their lives better, but he had not made their lives better, he was the medium through which they felt their lives were better, but their lives were the same, the same, the same, always the same, for life is that way: the same. And the red clay that bound itself to Mr. Shoul as he lay dead was indifferent to Damascus and the road that went toward it and the road that went away from it, and that same red clay of Antigua that encased Dr. Weizenger as he lay dead in it was very different in texture from ashes; and Dr. Weizenger had once been very close to becoming only ashes, all that would have remained of himâashes. And Dr. Weizenger died also, but he did not have a long funeral procession, for his patients did not like him or love him, though he had made their lives better, he had made them well when they had been sick, and none of the people he made well mourned him when he died, they only remembered that he had told them he did not like the way they smelled and he did not like dirt under their fingernails and he did not like their hair and he did not like their very existence, for they were so vulnerable and yet they persisted; and how their persistence annoyed him. So vulnerable was Dr. Weizenger and he perished in the warm clay that was the opposite of ashes, for everything was the same
yet everything repudiated sameness. Dr. Weizenger's wife died, and his nurse died too; his wife and his nurse were the same person and her existence in the world was so ordinary and so ordinary and so ordinary again, it does not thrive under observation. And Mr. Potter did not move hurriedly toward his own end.
When Mr. Potter died, his death coincided with a natural calamity. It rained and the rain fell out of the sky as if what was at first a gash widened and widened until there was no sky above, only an ocean emptying itself out, and its contents fell on Mr. Potter's death and on everyone who had an interest in his death. I had no interest in his death, his being alive had only recently become known to me. Mr. Potter died, he died again and again, and he also died only once, in that way all people do, just die, die, and die. He died. And the rain fell and fell and my father's body, for Mr. Potter was my father, lay in Mr. Barnes's funeral home, a home that was a house with no windows at all, only a door through which everyone entered, dead or alive. And Mr. Barnes was the true father of Mr. Potter's only son and that son did not attend Mr. Potter's funeral, his name was Louis and he lived in Canada then and he died in Canada eventually, and how helpless is everyone and everything in the face of this eventuality, death. And all his girl children (I was not there) gathered around him, all their noses the same in shape and color, and they looked at him and looked
at him searching for a sign of recognition, but he could not give them any, for he was dead, and his nose no longer looked like theirs. He was anonymous, the way the dead are, anonymous, and only the living can make sense of the dead, the dead cannot make sense of any living thing. And Mr. Potter's daughters could not make any sense of him.
at him searching for a sign of recognition, but he could not give them any, for he was dead, and his nose no longer looked like theirs. He was anonymous, the way the dead are, anonymous, and only the living can make sense of the dead, the dead cannot make sense of any living thing. And Mr. Potter's daughters could not make any sense of him.
So doomed was Mr. Potter to be encased within his own self, with all his limitations, and all his boundaries had no borders; so doomed was he to liking his own gait, as he imagined himself walking toward and away from Mr. Shoul's garage; doomed to liking the noses of his girl children as they appeared before him, sometimes through his own seeking them out, sometimes when he did not wish to know of their existence in the first place; and Mr. Potter was always himself, he was always Mr. Potter, and when he died it rained for many days, by coincidence the rain came after years of drought, and the people gathered around his grave quarreled as his coffin was about to be lowered into the ground, as he was about to vanish from the earth forever and with him any hope, any evidence of his love. And they quarreled over his love, for they had nothing to show for it but their noses. And all through that day of his burial, the rain fell and fell with such ferocious constancy, as if the world from then on would be made up only of that, rain and rain and rain, and the water gathered up in the hole, six
feet deep, that was to be Mr. Potter's grave, and it stayed there, waiting, as if it were the beginning of something, a new world, but it was only Mr. Potter's grave and his burial had to be postponed, for the gravediggers could not bail out all the water that had gathered in his grave before nightfall. The day into which Mr. Potter had died was so much the opposite of the day into which the sun was always in the middle of the sky; the sun was blotted out, blotted out by an eternal basin of rain, and that basin had, by accident, been inverted.
feet deep, that was to be Mr. Potter's grave, and it stayed there, waiting, as if it were the beginning of something, a new world, but it was only Mr. Potter's grave and his burial had to be postponed, for the gravediggers could not bail out all the water that had gathered in his grave before nightfall. The day into which Mr. Potter had died was so much the opposite of the day into which the sun was always in the middle of the sky; the sun was blotted out, blotted out by an eternal basin of rain, and that basin had, by accident, been inverted.
How sad never to hear again the sound of a mother hen chirping with satisfaction at the sight of an overly bloated worm which she knows will be nourishment for her baby chicks; how sad never again to see a rainbow gracing the arch of the sky in that space before the horizon begins and ends; how sad never again to see the gleaming mound that is the top of a woman's breast; never to look up and see a sky sealed blue and blue and blue again, and to know that blue signals the sky's opposition to moisture-bearing clouds; how sad never to hear your name called again; how sad never to look up again and see the face of someone you recognize, someone you love or thought you loved, someone really dear to you, or someone you know to be dear to you because her nose is shaped exactly like your own; how sad never again to see a winged mammal wending its way in the cool, dark night; how sad
never to touch your own toes again as you remove your shoes from your feet; how sad never to clasp yourself in your own arms again out of a sense of desolation or loneliness or approval or pleasure or knowing the sheer nothingness of such a gesture; how sad never to be able to look up at the vast expanse of endless emptiness above and the seeming limit of the ground on which you stood ever again; how sad never to again see the sun turn red sometimes and disappear sometimes; how sad never again to touch another person spontaneously, without thought, without reason, without justification, and to expect a similar response, and how sad to find yourself disappointed, one way or the other, the other or one way; how sad never again to stand in the middle of nowhere and see the world in all its brightness and brimming over with possibilities innumerable heading toward you; how sad to know that you will be alive once and never so again, no matter how you rearrange your life and your very own self. “So, me ah wharn you, me ah tell you, eh, eh!” said Mr. Potter when he was still alive and not dead and helpless, lying all alone in his coffin, dressed up in garments suitable for burial, his naked body swathed in a brand-new white linen suit. But when he was dead, he said nothing at all, and sadness or its opposite could not come from him; sadness or its opposite might be attached to him, but Mr. Potter himself was dead and could experience no such thing, could
not experience anything at all, for he was dead. And the world in its entirety and the individuals who contribute to its entirety are small and smaller yet again, and how sad, how sad, how very sad is life, for its glorious beginnings end and the end is always an occasion for sadness, no matter what anyone says.
never to touch your own toes again as you remove your shoes from your feet; how sad never to clasp yourself in your own arms again out of a sense of desolation or loneliness or approval or pleasure or knowing the sheer nothingness of such a gesture; how sad never to be able to look up at the vast expanse of endless emptiness above and the seeming limit of the ground on which you stood ever again; how sad never to again see the sun turn red sometimes and disappear sometimes; how sad never again to touch another person spontaneously, without thought, without reason, without justification, and to expect a similar response, and how sad to find yourself disappointed, one way or the other, the other or one way; how sad never again to stand in the middle of nowhere and see the world in all its brightness and brimming over with possibilities innumerable heading toward you; how sad to know that you will be alive once and never so again, no matter how you rearrange your life and your very own self. “So, me ah wharn you, me ah tell you, eh, eh!” said Mr. Potter when he was still alive and not dead and helpless, lying all alone in his coffin, dressed up in garments suitable for burial, his naked body swathed in a brand-new white linen suit. But when he was dead, he said nothing at all, and sadness or its opposite could not come from him; sadness or its opposite might be attached to him, but Mr. Potter himself was dead and could experience no such thing, could
not experience anything at all, for he was dead. And the world in its entirety and the individuals who contribute to its entirety are small and smaller yet again, and how sad, how sad, how very sad is life, for its glorious beginnings end and the end is always an occasion for sadness, no matter what anyone says.
Oh, and there is the thinning of hair on your head, and your skin losing its firm, taut texture, and the loss of the thick substance that held your limbs together, and events and events again and the time lapsed between these events, and the failing to recall all these events and even the times between them! Oh! Oh! And never again to see the faces of all those female people named Andrina and Elaine and Cynthia and Elfrida Robinson and Annie Victoria Richardson and someone named Emma and the flower called Marigold, and Rachelle and Etta and Esther and Roma and Joycelynne and Sylvie, and to wonder sometimes if they had any needs and then to dismiss the idea of them having needs and then just completely forget their existence: Oh, how sad, so sad! So sad to be removed from life, with all its clutter: like the many girls with the same-shaped noses; the arrival of Mr. Shoul, the appearance of Dr. Weizenger, diminished the presence of Mr. Shepherd; to hold the loving attention of many women at once, without letting any one of them become aware of the presence of the others. So sad to meet the unexpected love, grief,
huge loss, grief again. Oh, how sad! So sad! Too sad!
huge loss, grief again. Oh, how sad! So sad! Too sad!
And on the day of Mr. Potter's burial, it rained and rained. A spout opened up in the sky and poured its contents into his grave and that was enough, for no other source of water marked his death. No one cried to show sorrow over his death and no one was sorry that he had died, they were only sorry they had known him, or sorry they had loved him, for he left them nothing at all. He left his wealth, his house and a large bank account, to a distant relative who had migrated to an island so small that only the very poor or the very rich could afford to live on it and sometimes they are the same thing. Oh, to be rescued from the oblivion of death must be a cry each of us makes in the middle of the darkest of nights, but who can hear it, who can hear our voices? And when Mr. Potter died, I could read and by then I had become a writer, and so when I heard of his death, to hear it was the same as to read it, and I heard through reading, Mr. Potter is dead, my father is dead, and I recognized that a source from which I flowed had been stanched. It was my mother who told me that my father had died: she said, “Potter dead, 'e dead you know, me ah tell you, eh, eh, me ah tell you,” and she said it in the same tone of voice as if she were describing a natural catastrophe, a hurricane or an earthquake, as if she were noting something common and everyday: the sun did not shine the day she had put the starched
white clothes out to dry. And how amazed I was to hear my own mother, who was alive, tell me that my father had died, for he was dead, she had never told me of his being alive. And at that moment I could read and I could write and I wrote then only about my mother, trying to explain to myself her life and why it should make sense to me, for my own life as I lived it had become irrevocably (and yet impossible to do so) untethered from her life and that was a natural thing to have occurred.
white clothes out to dry. And how amazed I was to hear my own mother, who was alive, tell me that my father had died, for he was dead, she had never told me of his being alive. And at that moment I could read and I could write and I wrote then only about my mother, trying to explain to myself her life and why it should make sense to me, for my own life as I lived it had become irrevocably (and yet impossible to do so) untethered from her life and that was a natural thing to have occurred.
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