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.An upright piano and on it photographs of family large, dispersed, done bad to by whites, Ben and little May grinning at making grade, the father long dead in bogey accident on railroad.The kids, Bobby and Nelson, televisiongawpers like other kids, showing no enthusiasm at sight of festive square packages from Indianapolis.You take dem walkin Reverend while me and ma daughter has lil talk.So Enderby had to walk the main street of Chapel Hill, empty of college students because the vacation was on, with a little black kid in either hand.This was not something he had foreseen.The kids rolled eyes of suspicion up at him but also demanded Cokes and ice cream sodas.They also demanded to be taken to one of the town's two cinemas, where a Swedish travesty of Fanny Hill was being shown.No kids allowed, he told them.He walked them back very wearily and at first could not find the house, nor could they, but at length saw the gardener wrenching up plantains and growling some ancient song of bondage.He and the kids had a brief colloquy that Enderby could not understand, and then the three of them went in.April Elgar had turned into May Johnson, in sloppy dressing gown and old mules, hair disarrayed and a daughterly whine.Enderby one of the family then.He lay in the bedroom that had been intended, it seemed, for Ben the son, who had however Christmas engagements but telephoned from somewhere to his mother, who said you just do dat son and we be thinkin of you and lovin you just de same.After the meatloaf and collard greens and a Sara Lee creature, strong tea but no alcohol, Mrs Johnson opened up her Bible, put on spectacles and looked over the top of them at Enderby.Enderby felt fear: he was going to be tested.But all she said was what your favourite psalm Reverend, and he was able to answer Psalm 46 and even quote some of it at her, so that she nodded and checked and said dat right Reverend.And then she said: what you goana preach about tomorrow Reverend and that made him spill his tea on his tie.She had him there in the corner of the combined living and dining room at the cleared table, while May Johnson had her arms about the two kids on the biscuit-coloured settee, watching Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire in Holiday Inn."The meaning of the Nativity," Enderby said, and she nodded and quoted about de census to be taken ob all de world in de time ob Caesar Augustus.Well, he lay there.Mrs Johnson lay in the room next to his, her daughter in the room beyond, and the two kids on a two-tiered bunk in the room beyond that.This was neither the time nor the place to entertain lewd thoughts about April Elgar, so he lay there partly illumined by a sodium street lamp working out tomorrow's sermon.Of course, this had been inevitable and he, or that blasted divine girl there, ought to have foreseen it.Distinguished visiting inevitably Baptist preacher all the way from England.It was not to give a sermon to Baptist blacks that he had come all the way from Morocco.He ought really to try to convert them to his own brand of apostate Catholicism, but perhaps Christmas was hardly a discreet season for that.Soon, a Holiday Inn face towel stuffed inside the crotch of his faded striped pyjamas in case of accidents, he slept.He slept remarkably well, and was wakened in southern winter sunlight by a small black boy bashing him on the shoulder and offering him a mug, no inscription on it, of very strong hot tea.The other black boy was with him, and then May Johnson herself came in in dressing gown and worn mules to wish him a merry Christmas and even to hand him a small gaudily wrapped gift.She also kissed him on the lips, her lips being warm from sleep and also greaseless, while the two kids looked solemnly on.Fortunately he had slept with his teeth in.He said, unwrapping:"Oh my God, you shouldn't, I didn't get anything for.Oh my God, oh just what I wanted." It was not really, being a miniature calculator to be worn on the wrist with a dusky screen that showed time playing the game of numerical transformation, squarish figures becoming other figures with the minimum of dim-lit metamorphosis.The day, and all the days to follow till the end of the world, were presented to Enderby as a linear process, not the fall-rise cycle of the poet.As for calculating, what had he to calculate? He looked at her, sitting on the bed edge, with humble gratitude, saying: "It was a problem of.Well, you see, I had to pay the hotel bill.""You gave me a poem," she said.He could not now very well upbraid her for getting him into this Reverend situation.He offered his tea mug to her but she shook her head.Enderby slurped.The voice of Mrs Johnson below called them to breakfast.The kids, jostling each other for precedence, ran.She remained seated, lovely though not, the deglamorized daughter, mythical [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]