The Bigger Light by Austin Clarke

building in the Sherbourne-Bloor area
, “Christ, what some men won’t do for a piece o’ pussy!”
and a 36-year-old mother of four
“A mother? Even a woman who is a mother isn’t safe in this blasted country!”
who was beaten by a suspected pursesnatcher in the underground garage of her Scarborough apartment Monday night, died of her injuries last night in Scarborough Centenary Hospital
“I wonder why Dots changed this second story to a different hospital when the paper says Scarborough. Did she really say Scarborough, when she read it out to me, or …”; the motor was ready now, and he drove out. Suppose he was parking his truck one morning early, about three, and he saw a woman in the underground garage, would he rape her, would he make a pass at her, would he make conversation with her? “Shit! what am I thinking?”
    These thoughts disappeared as he emerged from the garage to meet the sun, and it was a bright day and very cold,and he remembered asking Henry many years ago how it could be cold with the sun still shining, but he couldn’t remember what answer Henry gave him. “That bastard had an answer for every question.” It was probably a philosophical answer, too. But he was by himself this morning and he had things to do. As he waited for the light, he saw the old ladies with their shopping bags coming from the Liquor Store, dressed in the same faces and winter coats as they wore to church every Sunday morning; and he wondered what exactly was in those bags. He was walking between an alley one night not too long ago, to clean one of his contract offices, just a laneway, and he stumbled upon three men, their faces red around the cheeks and their necks white like parts of a dead chicken, or like paste or flour dough, in black coats shabby around the elbows, (“Why do bums always wear black?”), drinking from the mouth of a bottle. As he passed, one of them hailed him, “Hey, buddy! Sir, just a minute, sir,” and he halted in his pace, for he was no longer afraid or scornful of confronting drunks either in elevators or in laneways; and the man came up to him, with the bottle of wine in his hand, it was something named “67” or “76” or it could have been “1776,” it was so dark in the laneway; and he knew what “1776” meant, the independence of America, it should have been, could have been 1776; but this man said to him, “Could you spare a dime or a quarter?” Boysie stopped, put his hand in his overalls, fumbled a little and took out a thick wad of bills. “You buying coffee or you are buying wine with this?” The man’s teeth showed and he was missing some in the front and some at the back, and the whiskers on his face bristled and he said, “Take a swig, sir. You’re a goddamn gentleman.” Boysie put the bottle to his lips, and when he took it away, almost half was gone. He gave the man a five-dollar bill.“You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re from Jamaica, right? You’re goddamn okay, mister!”
    These old ladies were hurrying to cross the street with the light changing now from amber before he moved off. One of them, — there were only three crossing together, but not in the same company, not as friends, — wore a crucifix around her neck. He moved off, turning right onto Wellesley Street East, and he looked about him and saw all the derelict men and women, most of them past fifty and, certainly older than thirty (“The Eskimos live to be thirty years old, ain’t that a bitch, Mr. Cumberbatch? In my country, in
their
country really, ’cause it is theirs, but they live to be thirty and when I am thirty I will just be beginning to hit my highest earning power! What do you think about that, Mr. Cumberbatch? I am a Canadian, but they’re the
real
Canadians!”), bulging in their bodies in places where you won’t expect them to bulge, the women beyond the child-bearing age and child-bearing interest, walking heavy as if a barrel of water is suspended just below what used