The Polished Hoe: A Novel: An Epic Novel of Confession and Colonial Legacy in Post-WWII Barbados - Softcover

Clarke, Austin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060557621 ISBN 13: 9780060557621

Verlag: Amistad, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

When Mary-Mathilda, one of the most respected women of the island of Bimshire (also known as Barbados) calls the police to confess to a crime, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings together elements of the island's African past and the tragic legacy of colonialism in one epic sweep.

Set in the West Indies in the period following World War II, The Polished Hoe - an Essence bestseller and a Washington Post Book World Most Worthy Book of 2003 - unravels over the course of twenty-four hours but spans the collective experience of a society characterized by slavery.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Austin Clarke is a professor of literature and has taught at Yale, Brandeis, Williams, Duke, and the Universities of Texas and Indiana. He assisted in setting up a Black Studies program at Yale in 1968, after which he became the cultural attaché of the Embassy of Barbados in Washington, D.C. Culminating with the international success of The Polished Hoe, which won the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the Trillium Prize, Austin Clarke's work since 1964 includes eleven novels, six short-story collections, and four memoirs. He lives in Toronto.

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When Mary-Mathilda, one of the most respected women of the island of Bimshire (also known as Barbados) calls the police to confess to a crime, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings together elements of the island's African past and the tragic legacy of colonialism in one epic sweep.

Set in the West Indies in the period following World War II, The Polished Hoe -- an Essence bestseller and a Washington Post Book World Most Worthy Book of 2003 -- unravels over the course of twenty-four hours but spans the collective experience of a society characterized by slavery.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Polished Hoe

By Austin Clarke

Amistad Press

Copyright © 2004 Austin Clarke
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060557621

Chapter One

"My name is mary. People in this Village call me Mary-Mathilda. Or, Tilda, for short. To my mother I was Mary-girl. My names I am christen with are Mary Gertrude Mathilda, but I don't use Gertrude, because my maid has the same name. My surname that people 'bout-here uses, is either Paul, or Bellfeels, depending who you speak to . . ."

"Everybody in Flagstaff Village knows you as Miss Bellfeels, ma'am," the Constable says. "And they respects you."

"Nevertheless, Bellfeels is not the name I want attach to this Statement that I giving you . . ."

"I will write-down that, ma'am, as you tell it to me. But . . ."

"This Sunday evening," she says, interrupting him, "a little earlier, round seven o'clock, I walked outta here, taking the track through the valley; past the two stables converted into a cottage; past the sheep pens and the goat pens, and fowl coops; and through the grove of fruit trees until I came to the Front-Road, walking between two fields of canes. In total darkness. But I knew the way, like the back of my two hands. Now, where we are in this Great House is the extremity of the Plantation Houses, meaning the furtherest away from the Main House, with six other houses, intervening. These consist of the house the Bookkeeper occupies; one for the Overseer, Mr. Lawrence Burkhart, who we call the Driver -- that's the smallest house; one for the Assistant Manager, a Englishman, which is the third biggest after the Main House; and there is a lil hut for the watchman, Watchie; and then there is this Great House where we are. The Main House have three floors, to look over the entire estate of the Plantation, like a tower in a castle. To spy on everybody. Every-other house has two floors. Like this one. That would give you, in case you never been so close to this Plantation before, the lay of the land and of things; the division of work and of household."

"I sees this Plantation only from a distance, ma'am. I know it from a distance only," the Constable says.

"It was dark, and I couldn't see even my two hands outstretch in front of me. I took the way from here, right through the valley where the track cuts through it. I could make out the canes on both sides of me; and I could hear them shaking, as there was a steady wind the whole evening; the kind of wind that comes just before a heavy downpour of rain, like before a hurricane. They were 'arrows' shooting-out from the tops of canes. Crop-Season, as you well-know, is in full swing; and the Factory grinding canes, day and night. You could smell the crack-liquor, the fresh cane juice, strong-strong! What a sweet, but sickening smell cane juice is, when you smell it from near!

"Wilberforce, my son, who was home earlier, is my witness to the hour I left . . .

"Have I told you about Wilberforce, yet? No? Pardon me. The memory is fading, Constable, the memory. The mind not sharp no more, and . . . very often . . . What was I telling you about?"

"You was talking about your son, Mr. Wilberforce, the doctor, ma'am."

"Yes! Wilberforce! My first-born. He isn't really the first of my thrildren I give birth to. He's the one outta the three who lived-past childbirth.

"Wilberforce, always with his head always inside a book, I keep telling him that with all that book-learning retain in his head, if he's not careful, he going burst his blasted brains!

"He, I gave birth to, in the year nineteen . . . I told you that, didn't I?"

"You didn't tell me when Mr. Wilberforce born, ma'am."

"Nevertheless. Two more thrildren I had. A boy and a girl. I gave them the names I intended to christen them with, if they had-live. William Henry. Two names I took from a English magazine. And Rachelle Sarah Prudence, the girl. Lovely English names I named my two dead thrildren with. One died eighteen months after the first one. The boy.

"My third-born, Wilberforce, became therefore my first-born. A mother's pride and joy.

"Wilberforce went to the best schools in this Island of Bimshire. Then overseas. He travel to countries like Italy, France, Austria and Europe; and when he return-back here to this Island, he start behaving more like a European than somebody born here. But, at least, he came back with his ambition fulfill. A Doctor. Of Tropical Medicines.

"Whereas, had the other two thrildren survive, I wanted them to follow in the path of the Law. They would have made such lovely barsters-at-Law! You don't think so?"

"Yes, ma'am," the Constable says.

"My sweet boy-child, William Henry; and lovely Rachelle Sarah Prudence, the girl.

"Yes, Constable. Me. I, Mary-Mathilda . . . I, Mary Gertrude Mathilda, although I don't use Gertrude, as I told you . . ."

"Yes, ma'am."

". . . left inside-here at seven o' clock this evening, and walked the four hundred and something yards from here to the Plantation Main House, and it take me fifteen minutes time to arrive there; and . . ."

"Which night you mean, ma'am, when you left your residence of abode?"

"Which night I took the walk? Was it Saturday night, last night, or tonight Sunday night, is what you getting at?"

"I mean that, too, ma'am. But what I really getting at, is if the moon was shining when you leff your home and place of abode, on the night in question, walking to your destination? Or if you was walking in the rain. 'Cause with rain, I have to refer to footsteps. They bound to be footprints . . ."

"If there are footsteps, those would be my prints in the ground, Constable. Bold and strong and deep-deep; deep-enough for water to collect in them. Deep-enough to match the temperriment I was in. I can tell you that my determination was strong.

"It was dark-dark, earlier tonight. But in that darkness, I was not hiding from anybody. Not from the Law; not from God; not from my conscience, as I walked in the valley of the shadow of darkness and of death. No. There was no moon. But I was not a thief, craving the darkness, and dodging from detection. Oh, no!

"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 used 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 like 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...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Amistad
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0060557621
• ISBN 13: 9780060557621
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 480
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: HarperCollins Publishers, Product Safety Manager; enquiries@harpercollins.ie; ; HarperCollins, Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper; Dublin 1; D01 C9W8; Irland