At the Bottom of the River (7 page)

I saw a world in which the sun and the moon shone at the same time. They appeared in a way I had never seen before: the sun was The Sun, a creation of Benevolence and Purpose and not a star among many stars, with a predictable cycle and a predictable end; the moon, too, was The Moon, and it was the creation of Beauty and Purpose and not a body subject to a theory of planetary evolution. The sun and the moon shone uniformly onto everything. Together, they made up the light, and the light fell on everything, and everything seemed transparent, as if the light went through each thing, so that nothing could be hidden. The light shone and shone and fell and fell, but there were no shadows. In this world, on this terrain, there was no day and there was no night. And there were no seasons, and so no storms or cold from which to take shelter. And in this world were many things blessed with unquestionable truth and purpose and beauty. There were steep mountains, there were valleys, there were seas, there were plains of grass, there were deserts, there were rivers, there were forests, there were vertebrates and invertebrates, there were mammals, there were reptiles, there were creatures of the dry land and the water, and there were birds. And they lived in this world not yet divided, not yet examined, not yet numbered, and not yet dead. I looked at this world as it revealed itself to me—how new, how new—and I longed to go there.

I stood above the land and the sea and looked back up at myself as I stood on the bank of the mouth of the river. I saw that my face was round in shape, that my irises took up almost all the space in my eyes, and that my eyes were brown, with yellow-colored and black-colored flecks; that my mouth was large and closed; that my nose, too, was large and my nostrils broken circles; my arms were long, my hands large, the veins pushing up against my skin; my legs were long, and, judging from the shape of them, I was used to running long distances. I saw that my hair grew out long from my head and in a disorderly way, as if I were a strange tree, with many branches. I saw my skin, and it was red. It was the red of flames when a fire is properly fed, the red of flames when a fire burns alone in a darkened place, and not the red of flames when a fire is burning in a cozy room. I saw myself clearly, as if I were looking through a pane of glass.

I stood above the land and the sea, and I felt that I was not myself as I had once known myself to be: I was not made up of flesh and blood and muscles and bones and tissue and cells and vital organs but was made up of my will, and over my will I had complete dominion. I entered the sea then. The sea was without color, and it was without anything that I had known before. It was still, having no currents. It was as warm as freshly spilled blood, and I moved through it as if I had always done so, as if it were a perfectly natural element to me. I moved through deep caverns, but they were without darkness and sudden shifts and turns. I stepped over great ridges and huge bulges of stones, I stooped down and touched the deepest bottom; I stretched myself out and covered end to end a vast crystal plane. Nothing lived here. No plant grew here, no huge sharp-toothed creature with an ancestral memory of hunter and prey searching furiously for food, no sudden shift of wind to disturb the water. How good this water was. How good that I should know no fear. I sat on the edge of a basin. I felt myself swing my feet back and forth in a carefree manner, as if I were a child who had just spent the whole day head bent over sums but now sat in a garden filled with flowers in bloom colored vermillion and gold, the sounds of birds chirping, goats bleating, home from the pasture, the smell of vanilla from the kitchen, which should surely mean pudding with dinner, eyes darting here and there but resting on nothing in particular, a mind conscious of nothing—not happiness, not contentment, and not the memory of night, which soon would come.

I stood up on the edge of the basin and felt myself move. But what self? For I had no feet, or hands, or head, or heart. It was as if those things—my feet, my hands, my head, my heart—having once been there, were now stripped away, as if I had been dipped again and again, over and over, in a large vat filled with some precious elements and were now reduced to something I yet had no name for. I had no name for the thing I had become, so new was it to me, except that I did not exist in pain or pleasure, east or west or north or south, or up or down, or past or present or future, or real or not real. I stood as if I were a prism, many-sided and transparent, refracting and reflecting light as it reached me, light that never could be destroyed. And how beautiful I became. Yet this beauty was not in the way of an ancient city seen after many centuries in ruins, or a woman who has just brushed her hair, or a man who searches for a treasure, or a child who cries immediately on being born, or an apple just picked standing alone on a gleaming white plate, or tiny beads of water left over from a sudden downpour of rain, perhaps—hanging delicately from the bare limbs of trees—or the sound the hummingbird makes with its wings as it propels itself through the earthly air.

*   *   *

Yet what was that light in which I stood? How singly then will the heart desire and pursue the small glowing thing resting in the distance, surrounded by darkness; how, then, if on conquering the distance the heart embraces the small glowing thing until heart and glowing thing are indistinguishable and in this way the darkness is made less? For now a door might suddenly be pushed open and the morning light might rush in, revealing to me creation and a force whose nature is implacable, unmindful of any of the individual needs of existence, and without knowledge of future or past. I might then come to believe in a being whose impartiality I cannot now or ever fully understand and accept. I ask, When shall I, too, be extinguished, so that I cannot be recognized even from my bones? I covet the rocks and the mountains their silence. And so, emerging from my pit, the one I sealed up securely, the one to which I have consigned all my deeds that I care not to reveal—emerging from this pit, I step into a room and I see that the lamp is lit. In the light of the lamp, I see some books, I see a chair, I see a table, I see a pen; I see a bowl of ripe fruit, a bottle of milk, a flute made of wood, the clothes that I will wear. And as I see these things in the light of the lamp, all perishable and transient, how bound up I know I am to all that is human endeavor, to all that is past and to all that shall be, to all that shall be lost and leave no trace. I claim these things then—mine—and now feel myself grow solid and complete, my name filling up my mouth.

 

Also by J
AMAICA
K
INCAID

Annie John

A Small Place

Lucy

The Autobiography of My Mother

My Brother

My Favorite Plant
(editor)

My Garden (Book)

 

Praise for J
AMAICA
K
INCAID'S

At the Bottom of the River

“Of a handful of internationally known West Indian writers, only Kincaid so precisely conveys the dual texture of the smaller islands: the translucent overlay of colonial British culture upon people and places so absolutely alien to England. Gently, she peels back the fragile tissues of religion, vocabulary and manners to expose the vibrant life beneath the imported, imposed customs.”

—Elaine Kendall,
Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Jamaica Kincaid's first book of short stories … plunges us into the strange, magical, shifting world of childhood in the West Indies … These pieces are … full of brilliant colors, magical symbols, secret feelings and tropical scenery.”

—Roxana Robinson,
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“She is a consummate balancer of feeling and craft. She takes no short or long cuts, breathes no windy pomposities: she contents herself with being direct … So lush, composed, direct, odd, sharp, and brilliantly lit are Kincaid's word paintings that the reader's presuppositions are cut in two by her seemingly soft edges.”

—Jacqueline Austin,
Voice Literary Supplement

“What Kincaid has to tell us, she tells, with her singsong style, in a series of images that are as sweet and mysterious as the secrets that children whisper in your ear.”

—Suzanne Freeman,
Ms.

J
AMAICA
K
INCAID
At the Bottom of the River

J
AMAICA
K
INCAID
was born in St. John's, Antigua. Her books include
Annie John, A Small Place, Lucy, The Autobiography of My Mother, My Brother, My Favorite Plant
(editor), and
My Garden (Book).
She lives with her family in Vermont, and she teaches at Harvard University.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983 by Jamaica Kincaid

All rights reserved

First published in 1983 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

First Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback edition, 2000

Grateful acknowledgment is made to
The New Yorker
for the following stories, which first appeared in its pages: “Girl,” “In the Night,” “At Last,” “Wingless,” “Holidays,” “The Letter from Home,” and “At the Bottom of the River,” and to
The Paris Review
for “What I Have Been Doing Lately.”

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Kincaid, Jamaica.

    At the bottom of the river / Jamaica Kincaid.

         p. cm.

    Contents: Girl—In the night—At last—[etc.]

    ISBN-13: 978-0-374-10660-7

    ISBN-10: 0-374-10660-6

    I. Title.

PS3561.I425A93

813'.54

83–16445

Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-374-52734-1

Paperback ISBN-10: 0-374-52734-2

www.fsgbooks.com

eISBN 9781466837799

First eBook edition: January 2013