a novel by Austin Clarke
EXCERPT
“A LONG TIME AGO, before tonight, I decided to stop walking in darkness.
“With that temperriment and determination of mind, I first-started on a regular basis, to polish my hoe. And to pass a grinding-stone dip in car-grease, along the blade, since September the fifteenth last-gone; September, October, November just-pass, is three months; and every day for those months, night after night as God send, more than I can call-to-mind. And I have to laugh, why, all-of-sudden, I went back to a hoe, I had-first-used when I was a girl, working in the cane fields, not quite eight years of age. The same hoe, weeding young canes, sweet potato slips, ‘eight-weeks’ yams, eddoes, all those ground provisions.
“This hoe that I use all those years, in the North Field, is the same hoe I used this Sunday night.
“If it wasn’t so black outside, you could look through that window you sitting beside, and see the North Field I refer to, vast and green and thick with sugar cane, stretching for acres and acres, beyond the reach of your eyes, unmeasuring as the sea...
“So, no, Constable. I was not seeking the shadows of night even though the moon wasn’t shining!
“I already stated to you that at seven o’clock, the hour in question, it was a full moon was shining, by which I mean, as the saying in this Village goes, a full-moon alters the way men behave — and women, too! — turns them into lunatics, and...”
“Pardon me, ma’am. But on the telephone to the sub-station, in your perlimary Statement to Sargeant, Sargeant say that you say the night was dark, and no moon wasn’t shining. Is so, Sargeant tell me to write down your Statement, in my notebook, using your exact words. So, I hope that I not stating now, in-front-o’-you, what you didn’t state, nor intend to state, in your telephone Statement, ma’am?”
“Sargeant send me to get your Statement offa you before he come himself. All we know is what you say when you call, that something happen, and you want Sargeant to come, and take your Statement, first-hand, from you. We don’t know what happen and we don’t yet know what is the circumstances. Sargeant would look after that. He say to say he have another important assignment. I am consequently here until Sargeant comes. But Sargeant coming...”
“Soon, I hope.”
“Sargeant soon will be here.”
“... And so, what I mean by a bright night and the moon shining, is merely a comparison of my disposition towards darkness and light; something, as Wilberforce calls it, like the ironies of life. Ironies. He uses it all the time, and would say, ‘Sitting down to eat food is full of ironies.’ ‘Life is full of ironies.’ ‘A full moon is full of ironies.’ That is Wilberforce favourite word for it. ‘Ironies.’
“When there is a full moon, people behave strange. But tonight, with no moon at all, all my behaviour was still strange, granted.
“Tonight the thirteenth, a Sunday, in spite of no moon, the act that I committed, however the people in the Island wish to label it, is not a act, or behaviour of a woman ruled by a full moon; nor of a woman who chooses darkness over light, to move in, or to hide her act in.
“My footprints that you say might be evidence, was, in the darkness, strong footprints, if not stronger than temperriment itself. And my act went along with that. I was determined. And deliberate. Because I knew what my cause was. And I had a cause.”