On Beauty (43 page)

Choo put a glass of water down over this photo and sat back on the bed. The damp ring spread out across the paper. He smoked his joint and said nothing. Levi got the feeling that Choo wasn't used to entertaining.

‘You got any music?' asked Levi. Choo did not.

‘OK if I . . . ?' said Levi, and took from his knapsack a little white speaker set which he plugged into the wall by his feet, and then connected to his iPod. The song he had just been listening to in the street filled the room. Choo came forward on his hands and knees to admire the thing.

‘Jesus! It's so loud and so tiny!'

Levi got down on the floor too and showed him how to pick songs or albums. Choo offered his guest some of his joint.

‘No, man – I don't smoke. I'm asthmatic and shit.'

They sat together on the floor and listened to
Fear of a Black Planet
all the way through. Choo, though very stoned, knew it well and repeated all the words, and tried to describe to Levi the effect first hearing a bootleg of this album had had on him. ‘
Then we knew
,' he said eagerly, bending his bony fingers back on the floor. ‘That's when we knew, we understood!
We were not the only ghetto
. I was only thirteen but suddenly I understood: America has ghettos! And Haiti is the ghetto of America!'

‘Yeah . . . that's deep, bro,' said Levi, nodding largely. He felt stoned just breathing in this room.

‘Oh,
man
, YES!' cried Choo when the next song began. He did this whenever the songs changed. He didn't nod his head like Levi; he did this strange shaking of his torso – like he was hanging on one of those elastic straps that vibrate and make you thin. Every time he did it Levi cracked up all over the place.

‘I wish I could play you some of our music, Haitian music,' said Choo mournfully, as the album ended and Levi used his thumb to flick through other possibilities. ‘You would like it. It would move you. It's political music, like reggae – you understand? I could tell you things about my country. They would make you weep. The music makes you weep.'

‘Scene,' said Levi. He wanted – but did not feel sufficiently confident – to speak of the book he'd been reading. Now Levi brought his little music machine close to his face, looking for a particular track whose name he had slightly mistaken, making it impossible to find in the alphabetical lists.

‘And I know you don't live near here, Levi,' added Choo. ‘Are
you listening to me? I'm not an idiot.' He was sitting on his heels and now laid his back right along the floor. His T-shirt rode up his rigid chest. There was not an extra piece of flesh on his body. He blew a large smoke ring into the air and then another one that fit into that. Levi kept flicking through his thousand songs.

‘You think we're all peasants,' said Choo, but without any sign of rancour, as if objectively interested in the proposition. ‘But we don't all live in dumps like this. Felix lives in Wellington – no, you didn't know that. Big house. His brother runs the taxis there. He saw you there.'

Levi knelt up, still with his back to Choo. He never could lie straight to someone's face. ‘Well, that's 'cos my
uncle
, see,
he
lives there . . . and, I like, I do small jobs for him, stuff around his yard and – '

‘I was there Tuesday,' said Choo, ignoring him. ‘In the
college
.' He treated this word like ink upon his tongue. ‘Fucking serving like a monkey . . . teacher becomes the servant. It's painful! I can tell you, because I know.' He thumped his breast. ‘It hurts in here! It's fucking painful!' He sat up straight suddenly. ‘I teach, I am a teacher, you know, in Haiti. That's what I am. I teach in a high school. French literature and language.'

Levi whistled. ‘Bro, I
hate
French, man. We have to do that shit. I
hate
that.'

‘And now,' continued Choo, ‘my cousin says – come and do this, serve them one night, thirty dollars in the hand, swallow your pride! Wear a monkey suit and look a monkey and serve them their shrimps and their wine, the big white professors. We didn't even get thirty dollars – we had to pay to dryclean our own uniforms! Which leaves twenty-two dollars!'

Choo passed Levi the joint. Once more Levi declined it.

‘How much do you think their professors get paid? How much?'

Levi said he didn't know and it was true, he didn't. All he knew was how hard it was to get even twenty bucks out of his own father.

‘And then they pay us in cents to serve them. The same old slavery. Nothing changes.
Fuck
this, man,' said Choo, but it sounded
harmless and comic in his accent. ‘Enough American music. Put some Marley on! I want to hear some Marley!'

Levi obliged with the only Marley he had – a ‘Best Of' collection copied off his mother's CD.

‘And I saw him,' said Choo, kneeling and staring past Levi, his bloodshot eyes acute and fixed upon some demon not in this room. ‘Like a lord at the table.
Sir
Montague Kipps . . .' Choo spat on his own floor. Levi, for whom cleanliness had long superseded godliness, was repelled. He had to move position to where the phlegm was not in his sightline.

‘I
know
that guy,' said Levi as he shuffled across the carpet. Choo laughed. ‘No, I do . . . I mean I don't
know
him know him, but he's this guy that . . . well, my pops
hates
his ass, he's like, you even mention his
name
and he's like –'

Choo pointed his long forefinger right in Levi's face. ‘If you know him, know this: that man is a liar and a thief. We know all about him, in our community, we follow his progress – writing his lies, claiming his glories. You rob the peasants of their art and it makes you a rich man! A rich man! Those artists died poor and hungry. They sold what they had for a few dollars out of desperation – they didn't know! Poor and
hungry
! I served him his wine –' Here Choo lifted his hand and pretended to pour out a glass, with a crude servile look on his face. ‘Don't ever sell your soul, my brother. It isn't worth twenty-two dollars. I was weeping inside. Don't ever sell it for a few dollars. Everybody tries to buy the black man.
Every
body,' he said, pounding the carpet with a fist, ‘tries to buy the black man. But he can't be bought. His day is coming.'

‘I hear you,' confirmed Levi and, not wanting to be an ungrateful guest, took the joint that was, once again, offered to him.

This same morning, in Wellington, Kiki also paid an unannounced call.

‘It's Clotilde, isn't it?'

The girl stood shivering, holding the door ajar. She gazed at Kiki
vacantly. She was so slender Kiki could see her hip bones through her jeans.

‘I'm Kiki – Kiki Belsey? We met before.'

Now Clotilde opened the door a little wider and, upon recognizing Kiki, became distressed. She gripped the door handle, twisting the plank of her upper body. She had no English words to convey her news. ‘
Oh . . . madame, oh, mon Dieu, Meeses Kipps – Vous ne le savez pas? Mme Kipps n'est plus ici . . . Vous comprenez?
'

‘Sorry, I –'

‘
Meeses Kipps – elle a été tre `s malade, et tout d'un coup elle est morte!
Dead!'

‘Oh, no, no, I know . . .' said Kiki, fanning her hands up and down, putting out the fire of Clotilde's anxiety. ‘Oh, God, I should have called ahead – yes, Clotilde, yes, I comprehend . . . I was at the funeral . . . no, it's OK . . . honey, I just wondered whether
Mister
Kipps was here, Professor Kipps. Is he in?'

‘Clotilde!' came Kipps's voice from somewhere deeper in the house. ‘Close the door –
fermé
– must we all freeze?
C'est froid, c'est tre `s froid
. Oh, for goodness sake –'

Kiki saw his fingers curl round the edge of the door; the door swung wide; he stood before her. He looked astonished and not quite as dapper as usual, although his three-piece suit was in place. Kiki sought the anomaly and found it in his eyebrows, which were wildly overgrown.

‘Mrs
Belsey?
'

‘Yes!I–I. . .'

His huge head, with its glossy pate and brutal, protruding eyes, proved too much for Kiki. She lost her words. Instead she held up the wrist of her left hand, around which one of the thick paperbags of Wellington's favourite bakery hung.

‘For me?' asked Monty.

‘Well, you were so . . . so
kind
to us in London and I . . . well, really I just wanted to see how you were and bring you –'

‘Cake?'

‘
Pie
. I just think sometimes when people suffer a –'

Monty, having processed his astonishment, now took control.
‘Wait – come in – it's Baltic outside – there is no point talking out here – come in – Clotilde, out of the way, take the lady's coat –'

Kiki stepped into the Kippses' hallway.

‘Oh, thank you – yes, because I think when people suffer a loss, well, the temptation is for folk to stay away – and I know when my own mother died,
everybody
stayed away and I felt most resentful of that, and bottom line, I felt, you know,
abandoned
, and so I just wanted to come by and see how you and the kids were doing, bring some pie and . . . I mean, I know we've had our differences, as families, but when something like this happens I just really feel . . .'

Kiki saw that she was talking too much. Monty had snatched the briefest of glimpses at his pocket-watch.

‘Oh! But if this is a bad time –'

‘No, not at all, no – I am on my way into college, but . . .' He looked over his shoulder, and then put a hand to her back, ushering Kiki forward. ‘But I am just in the middle of something – if you could possibly – could I leave you here, for two minutes only, while I . . . Clotilde will make you some tea and . . . yes, just make yourself comfortable here,' he said, as they stepped on to the cowhide rug of the library. ‘
Clotilde!
'

Kiki sat down on the piano stool as she had before and, with a sad smile to herself, checked the shelf nearest to her. All the N's were in perfect order.

‘I'll be back in one minute,' murmured Monty, turning to go, but just then there was a loud noise in the house and the sound of someone charging up the hallway. The someone stopped at the library's open door. A young black girl. She had been crying. Her face was full of rage, but now, with a start, she spotted Kiki. Surprise supplanted anger on her features.

‘Chantelle, this is –' said Monty.

‘Can I get out? I'm leaving,' she said and walked on.

‘If you wish to do that,' said Monty calmly, and followed her a few steps. ‘We'll continue our discussion at lunchtime. One o'clock in my office.'

Kiki heard the front door slam. Monty stayed where he was for a moment and then turned back to his guest. ‘I'm sorry about that.'

‘
I'm
sorry,' said Kiki, looking at the rug beneath her feet. ‘I didn't realize you had company.'

‘A student . . . well, actually that is the question,' said Monty, walking across the room and taking the white armchair by the window. Kiki realized she had never really seen him like this, sitting down, in a normal, domestic setting.

‘Yes, I think I met her before – she knows my daughter.'

Monty sighed. ‘Unreal expectations,' he said, looking at the ceiling and then at Kiki. ‘
Why
do we give these young people unreal expectations? What good can come from it?'

‘Sorry, I don't . . . ?' said Kiki.

‘Here is a young African-American lady,' explained Monty, bringing his signet-ringed right hand down solidly on the arm of the Victorian chair, ‘who has
no
college education and
no
college experience, who did not
graduate from her high school
, who yet believes that somehow the academic world of Wellington
owes
her a place within its hallowed walls – and why? As restitution for her own – or her family's – misfortunes. Actually, the problem is larger than that. These children are being encouraged to claim reparation
for history itself
. They are being used as political pawns – they are being fed lies. It depresses me terribly.'

It was strange being spoken to like this, as if in an audience of one. Kiki wasn't sure how to reply.

‘I don't think I . . . what was it she wanted from you, exactly?'

‘In the simplest terms: she wants to continue taking a Wellington class for which she does not pay and for which she is entirely unqualified. She wants this because she is black and poor. What a demoralizing philosophy! What message do we give to our children when we tell them that they are not fit for the same meritocracy as their white counterparts?'

In the silence that followed this rhetorical question, Monty sighed again.