At the Bottom of the River Read online

  * * *

  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 JAMAICA KINCAID

  Annie John

  A Small Place

  Lucy

  The Autobiography of My Mother

  My Brother

  My Favorite Plant (editor)

  My Garden (Book)

  Praise for JAMAICA KINCAID’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.

  JAMAICA KINCAID

  At the Bottom of the River

  JAMAICA KINCAID 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