'Oilfields, oilfields. The white people keep the best jobs for themselves. All you could do there is to become a bench-chemist.'
Bench-chemist, I never hear this word before, and it impress me to hear it. Stephen's family don't give Dayo any credit for learning, but I can see how much the boy improve in the two years and how he develop a new way of talking. He don't talk. fast now, his voice is not going up and down, he use his hands a lot, and he is getting a nice little accent, so that sometimes he sound like a woman, the way educated people sound. I like his new way of talking, though it embarrasses me to look at him and think that he my brother is now a master of language. So now he start talking, and I let him talk, and as he talk. he lose his sadness and fright.
Then I ask him, 'What you would study when you go away?
Medicine, chartered accountancy, law?'
My mother jump in and say, 'I don't know, ever since Dayo small, I always feel I would like him to do dentistry.'
That is her intelligence, and you well know that she never think of dentistry or anything else for Dayo until that moment. We let her say what she have to say; and she go down to the kitchen, and Dayo begin to talk in his way. He don't 'give me a straight answer, he is working up to something, and at last it come. He say: 'Aeronautical engineering.'
This is a word, like bench-chemist, that I never hear before. It frighten me a little, but Dayo say they have a college in England where you just go and pay the fees. Anyway, so we agree. He was going to go away to further his studies in aeronautical engineering.
And as soon as we agree on that Dayo start behaving as though he is a prisoner on the run, as though he have a ship to catch, as. though he couldn't stay another month on the island. It turn out in truth that he had a ship to catch. It turn out that he had some friends he did want to go to England with. So I run about here and there, raising money from this one and that one, signing my name on this paper and that paper, until the money side was settled.
Everything happen very fast, and I remember thinking, watching Dayo go aboard the ship with a smile, that it was one of those moments you can only properly think about afterwards. When the ship pull away and I see the oily water between the ship and the dock, my heart sink. I feel sick, I feel the whole thing was too easy, that something so easy cannot end well. And on top of all this is my grief for the boy, that slender boy in the new suit.
The grief work on me. In my mind I blame Stephen and his family for their jealousy. And, I couldn't help it, two or three days after Dayo leave I went to the city and went to Stephen's house.
It was a poky little old-fashioned wood house in a bad part of the city, and it shame me to think that once upon a time I used to look on Stephen as a big man. Now I see that in the city Stephen is not much, that all his hope and all his daughters' hope is in that son who is studying in Montreal. He is like the Prince to them. And in that little house, with no front yard and next to no backyard, they are living like Snow White and the seven dwarfs, with their little foreign pictures in their little drawing-room, and their little pieces of polished furniture. You feel you have to stoop, that if you take a normal step you will break something.
It was late afternoon when I went. Everybody home. Stephen rocking in the gallery. It surprise me to see him looking so old. The hair on his head really grey now, standing up short and stiff. Everybody is looking at me as though they feel I come to make trouble. I disappoint them. I kiss Stephen on his cheek and I kiss his wife. The girls pretend they don't see me, and that is all right by me.
They give me tea. Not in our crude country fashion, condensed milk and brown sugar and tea mixed up in one. No, man. Tea, milk, white sugar, everything separate. I pretend I am one of the seven dwarfs and I do everything they want me to do. Then, as I was expecting, they ask about Dayo.
I stir my tea with their little teaspoon and take a sip and I put the cup down and say, 'Oh, Dayo. He gone away. On the _Colombie__.'
Stephen is so surprised he stop rocking. Then he begin to smile. He look just like my father.
Stephen's wife, Miss Shameless Christian Short-Dress herself, she ask, 'And what he gone away for? To look for a work?'
I lift up the teacup and say, 'To pursue his higher studies.' Stephen is vexed now. 'Higher studies? But he didn't even begin his lower studies.'
'That is an opinion,' I say, using some words I pick up from Dayo; One of the girls, a real pretty and malicious little one, come out and ask, 'What he is going to study?'
'Aeronautical engineering.'
The shock show on Stephen's face, and I feel I could laugh.
All of them are mad with jealousy now. All the girls come out and stand up around me in that little drawing-room as though I am the brown girl in the ring. I just drinking my tea out of their little. teacup. On the walls they have all those pictures and photographs of foreign scenes, as though because they are Christian and so on, they must know about these things.
'Aeronautical engineering,' Stephen say. 'He would be better off piloting a taxi between the airport and the city.'
The girls giggle and Stephen's wife smile. Stephen is the mocker and joker again, the man in control, and it is all right again for his family. They get a little happier. I see that if I stay any longer I would have to start insulting them, so I get up and leave. As I leave I hear one of the girls laugh. I can't tell you how full my heart get with hate.
Next morning I wake up at four o'clock, and the hate is still with me. The hate eat me and eat me until the day break and I get up, and all that day the hate eating me while I am working, driving the lorry to and from the gravel pits.
In the afternoon, work over, the lorry parked below the house, I take a taxi and went back to the city, to Stephen's house. I didn't know what I was going to do. Half the time I was thinking that I would go and make friends with them again, that I would go and take Stephen's jokes and show that I could laugh at the jokes.
But that is the way of weakness and it would be foolish and wrong, because you cannot really joke with your enemy. When you find out who your enemy is, you must kill him before he kill you. And so with the other half of my mind I was thinking I would go there and break everything in the house, swinging one of those drawing-room bentwood chairs from wall to wall, from jalousie to jalousie, in all those tiny rooms, through all that damn fretwork.
Then a strange thing happen. Perhaps it was because I did wake up so early that morning. The constipation that was with me all day suddenly stop, and by the time I reach Stephen's house all I want is a toilet.
So I rush in the house. Stephen rocking in the little gallery.
But I didn't tell him anything. I didn't say good afternoon or anything to his wife and his daughters. I went straight through to their toilet and I stay there a long time, and I pull the chain and I wait until the cistern full again and I pull the chain again. Then I walk out and I walk through the house and I didn't tell anybody anything, and I walk out on the street, and the feeling come back to my arms, no more stretched wires inside them, and I walk and walk until my head cool down, and then I take taxi home, to the junction.
And next morning again I wake up in the darkness at four o'clock, but this time I am frightened. I only feel like crying and praying for forgiveness, and I begin to know something gone wrong with me, that my life and my mind not right. Even the hate break inside me. I can't feel the hate. I begin to feel lost. I think of Dayo lying sick on the floor in the old house and I think of him leaving on the white _Colombie__. And even when I get up in the morning I feel lost.
I expect punishment. I don't know how it is coming, but every day I wait for it. Every day I wait to hear from Dayo, but he don't write. I feel I would like to go back to Stephen's house, just go back and sit down and do nothing, not even talk. But I never go.