Bern Book

A Record of a Voyage of the Mind

Vincent O. Carter

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781628974102
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Biographies de sciences sociales

The Bern Book is a travelogue, a memoir, a "diary of an isolated soul" (Darryl Pinckney), and a meditation on the myth and reality of race in midcentury Europe and America.

In 1953, having left the US and settled in Bern, Switzerland, Vincent O. Carter, a struggling writer, set about composing a "record of a voyage of the mind." The voyage begins with Carter's furiously good-humored description of how, every time he leaves the house, he must face the possibility of being asked "the hated question" (namely, Why did you, a black man born in America, come to Bern?). It continues with stories of travel, war, financial struggle, the pleasure of walking, the pain of self-loathing, and, through it all, various experiments in what Carter calls "lacerating subjective sociology." Now this long-neglected volume is back in print for the first time since 1973.

Since I Have Lived in the City of Bern:

Whether I have idled over a glass of wine in the Mövenpick or in the Casino, or dined with friends, a week seldom goes by in which some new acquaintance does not approach me with a host of questions, most of which I can handle rather easily. He asks, “Aren’t you cold!” if it is winter, and, “Aren’t you happy now that the sun is shining!”—if the sun is shining. In the first case I reply, “Yes,” and in the second case, which is unfortunately very rare, “Yes indeed!” She asks, “How long have you been in Switzerland?”

“Oh, about three and a half years now …” I reply.

“So long!” she exclaims, while I try to smile as surprisedly as her exclamation seems to warrant.

On a less auspicious occasion It asks me rather suspiciously and with a somewhat anxious twist of the lips, or with perhaps a smile which might be a sort of half-timid apology, “How do you like it?” Its smile (I pause a little at this point in order to heighten the effect) deepening before my answer, “Oh … I like it well enough …” issues from my mouth, as though He, She or It would dismiss the expected derisive remark before I intoned it.

The conversation rambles on a bit after that but I see that my interlocutor is not satisfied. He has never or seldom met a real black man before. He has, however, heard much and wondered much. He knows or has heard one or three Negro spirituals and he is an ardent jazz fan. He studies me as inconspicuously as he can, comparing the strong definite impression before his eyes with all the images he has seen and heard of during a lifetime. Finally he hazards another question:

“Are you a musician?”

“No,” I reply—coldly.

“Student?” he persists, noticing now my ancient briefcase, remembering that he has seldom seen me without it.

“No, I’m not a student,” I reply, a little irritated but not altogether unsympathetic. This has happened to me many times. I am only irritated because my invention is running out and because I fear that I might not tell my tale interestingly. His curiosity is so great, he apparently expects so much, much more, in fact, than I can ever hope to give him. It makes me sad.

“I just thought you might be a student. There are so many medical students in town.”

“Oh no! … no …” I reply with an uneasy smile, feeling that I have been a little mean, seeing that I will have to go through it once more, racking my brain for a new way to tell it and, finding none, suffering myself now because he does not come right out and ask me.

The conversation dawdles on. He hopes that he will find out indirectly, I think, really moved by his discretion, and yet not wishing to be indiscreet myself by volunteering information which is not directly asked for.

“How do you like Bern?” he asks during a lull. And I reply, “Oh, I like it all right,” a little grateful that we are at last getting down to specifics. In the meanwhile he has heard me make an appointment with one of the young men sitting at our table for two o’clock the next day. The departing friend had at first suggested ten in the morning, but then changed to two o’clock in the afternoon because he had forgotten that he had a class at ten in the morning. At two o’clock in the afternoon almost everybody works in Bern.

“I see you have plenty of free time,” he remarks with a nervous laugh. “You’re lucky not to have to go to the Büro,” by which he means office.

“I can’t write all the time!” I reply at last.

His face lights up.

Write? Write what? I hear him thinking a split second before he inquires: “You’re a journalist?”

“No,” I reply.

“He writes stories!” the friend who introduced him to me exclaims a little impatiently. At this point I light my pipe and try to think of an opening line, for now will come, I know, the question which I do not like because it is so difficult to answer. Even so, I am grateful for the little time which answering this question will give me because the one which comes after that will shake me to my very foundations!

The Preliminary Question:

“What kind of stories do you write?” His tone is that of a Customs Inspector, scrutinizing a suspicious-looking piece of luggage. He has never or seldom met or heard of, though he suspects there probably must be, Negroes who write. “What kind of stories do you write?”

I breathe deeply.

“Oh … I—I don’t really know. That is, it’s hard to say.”

He smiles sardonically. I take a deep breath and prepare to be more specific, shifting my weight from the right to the left hip.

“Love stories?”

“Oh, no—not exactly … But, of course, there’s love in them sometimes. After all, love is … People, I mean, have—”

“Psychological?”

“Of course! People do have psychological aspects, don’t they? Still, I can’t really say—”

“Philosophy?”

“There’s always some philosophical implication in every story. Naturally! But—”

“What kind of stories do you write?”

“Well, look, I try to write a story that shows how a character has some particular problem. And I try to relate it to some of my own—general moral conviction—”

“Universal.”

“What!”

“Timeless.”

I breathe deeply.

“The problem, you mean—”

“Do you write for a newspaper?”

“No.”

“Magazines?”

“I don’t write for anybody … For myself. That is, I try to write them first and then sell them wherever I can.”

“Do you have any books already printed? I’d like to write something you’ve read—”

“You mean read—”

“I’d like to—”

“You mean read something I’ve … But I don’t have anything. Nothing much. One story. Once I published a little story—not very good—in—in Annabelle …”

“Where?”

“In Annabelle. Last year …”

“Detective story?”

“No. It was a love story—”

“Oh …”

“Not exactly a love story. It had love in it.”

“What—”

“It was about a white girl and a Negro boy. They were in college together.”

“American democracy!”

I breathe deeply.

“I’ve done a few radio programs.”

“Where?”

“Radio Bern.”

“When!”

“Since I’ve been here. The last one was Christmas before last.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“Do you listen to Radio Bern much?”

“Sottens. They have better programs … That’s too bad. I’d like to write something you’ve read …”

I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand while he studies me more closely. I don’t look like a writer, he thinks: I feel it. And then he thinks, How should a writer look? His eyes grow narrow, as though he is on the verge of asking me for my passport. I stare back at him, feeling like a prostitute in a Dutch bordel.

And now I perceive a new change in his appearance. The large vein which divides his forehead into two unequal parts swells and throbs violently, as though it will burst the skin. I can literally see him straining his imagination to accommodate the new idea of me with which I have confronted him. I can feel him lifting me out of the frame of his previous conception of the universe and fitting me first this way and that, like a piece of a puzzle, into the picture of the writer his mind is conjuring up. He is struggling with Goethe and Rilke and Gotthelf and Harriet Beecher Stowe and me. Suddenly a wild look of ecstasy comes into his face. He points at me with an extended forefinger, as though a liberated part of his mind would reveal to an enslaved part the upsetting contradiction of all his actual experience. But then, as though overpowered by the effort of changing his viewpoint, his finger falls limply and his eyes grow dull and lifeless. But only for a second, for now I perceive, as though he has pushed the old problem aside, that his expression is reanimated by a new problem. My bosom heaves with dread. He is going to ask me the hated question—I know!—the question which kills me once, twice and sometimes four times each and every week twice a month all of these past three and a half years.

The Foundation-Shattering Question:

“But why—”

“I have to go,” I say, trying to divert the conversation. I wiggle in my chair, and look desperately this way and that.

“But why—”

“Waiter!”

“But why—”

“Why what!”

“Why did you come to Bern?”

I sink down into my chair with a weary groan and look at my man carefully. I try to evaluate the intensity of the glint in the pupils of his eyes. I try to penetrate with my own analytical glance his hidden motives. Maybe he doesn’t even realize the import of his question. Maybe he is like “this” instead of like “that,” one of “these” types instead of one of “those”; in which latter case I can get out of it and rush to Marzili Bath and lie in the sun with my eyes shut tight and try not think of such things. The desire to escape is so pressing that I can feel it, the coolness of the wet breeze washing over the river, bathing my face. I can hear the voices of children running on the grass and see the men and women stretched out under the sun. In the din of the Mövenpick I can hear the egg-white ping-pong balls cracking on the cool cement tables:

He waits!

Now what is so special about a little question like that? I hear you asking.

Personal Problems Involved in Answering the Question

It all depends upon who is asking it, the tone of voice in which it is asked and in the aura of what light gleaming in his eyes. It depends upon whether or not there is a smile upon my inquisitor’s face, and what kind of a smile. It depends upon my peculiar feeling of security or insecurity, which is very much influenced by the weather and by my metabolic rate on that particular day. And finally, it depends upon whether or not I will have to spend my last centime for the wine.

He may be one of those inferior-feeling Swiss who has lived in Bern all his life, who hates himself and the society in which he lives and can’t understand why anyone who is in his right mind would come to Bern (as a tourist, for a day or two, sure, but for three and a half years!). Flattering myself that I understand his feelings thoroughly, comparing him to people whom I know back home in Kansas, Texas and Missouri, I say the following:

“Oh—I like it well enough in Bern. It is a very beautiful town. Very clean … Well taken care of. Comfortable—if you have enough money to really enjoy it …”

His eyes darken with a suspicious gleam. He suspects satire. But I convince him: “Oh, yes, I know. Many people are surprised that I have come to such a small town in the center of Europe. Well, I find it interesting enough. The life here is in many ways different from the life I have known in Kansas City. There I lived not as I chose to live, but as a dwarf among apparently normal-sized people. Accordingly, I had dwarf-sized loyalties, aggressions and fears—both real and imaginary. For life was both real and fantastic at the same time. It was also earnest and, above all, dangerous.

“But here in your ancient city my stature has increased. Here I am like a dwarf, but with three-league boots. I can move around a little more freely, and I am exposed more or less to the society at large. My loyalties, aggressions and fears have become modified in proportion to my new social status. And yet, I find life here to be both as real and as fantastic as I found it in Kansas City. Furthermore, I have found it to be just as earnest and just as dangerous. Most of all I find life in your city, as well as the life in my city, to be interesting. There can be no doubt that the Bernese are among the most interesting people on earth …”

Now I Philosophize a Little

“Look at that tree,” I say, pointing to an imaginary tree in the middle of the room. “Over there—between those two tables which the waitress is setting for supper.” He looks at the tree. “Now look at the other one. There—sprouting out of the cash register by the counter, near the frozen lobster flying through the air.” He looks excitedly at the second tree and follows the flight of the frozen lobster in a sweeping circle, which I indicate with my fingertip. “They look the same, don’t they? From here it would appear that all the leaves are of the same shape and color. Are they of the same shape and color?”

“No,” he answers, feeling a little uncomfortable. And I answer that he is right, “They are certainly not all of the same shape and color,” adding:

“The longer you look at those two trees the more you realize what fascinating things they are. Watch!—watch the light fall upon them. Notice—the shading of the leaves, the patterns they make upon the ground. Pluck them. Hold them up to the light. No two are exactly the same, especially the cluster upon the branch hovering over the fishpond with the little blue fishes. He stares at the cluster of imaginary leaves upon the branch hovering over the imaginary fishpond with the imaginary blue fishes in amazement. “But wait!” I cry. “You see that pattern only now. It’s changing. It changes every minute, every instant. How does it look in the morning? in the evening? at noon when all the people are going home to lunch? And how does it look at two and three o’clock when all of the people are returning to the offices? Is it the same at four o’clock on a sunny afternoon in August? when its leaves have flown in October? when it is covered with ice in January? It is not! And we have only considered the most superficial, the most banal aspects of those two trees. However—however, I say, perceive fully only that much about a tree and you may be able to enter Heaven without even showing your pass!”

But what has that got to do with Bern or the Bernese people? his expression says, and I stop him before he can get it out:

“Are not people more complex, more intricate, more vital than trees?” Before he can answer, “Yes,” I add:

“Even Bernese people?”

And while he frowns:

“How much more interesting are people, even Bernese people, than trees?—Infinitely!” I reply to my own question. “Now, if I want to write, and I am interested in people, can I not write about the Bernese people if I have the ability to do so?”

“But there are much more interesting places for a writer,” he protests. “Paris, Rome, London!”

“Wait!” I interrupt. “I cannot speak of Rome or London, but I will tell you why I did not stay in Paris, Amsterdam and Munich.” I tell him this:

Why I Did Not Go to Paris

“Oh, I thought of Paris, all right. When I was in America, in Detroit, working in the automobile factories in order to save enough money for the trip, I thought, I must go to Paris! And I had good reason, for I had visited Paris as a soldier and had therefore, many intimate feelings about the place. Why, I had had beautiful experiences with the French people even before I got to Paris, in Normandy and in Rouen. I promised myself then that one day I would return. So you see, I was highly in favor of the idea. But upon my arrival in ’53 many unfortunate things happened.

Firstly, I had made the mistake of coming in April—the weather was bad. And then, although I had a very pleasant crossing on the Îsle de France, when I got off the boat at Le Havre I received a shock. The city was much changed since I first drove through its bombed-out ruins on a cold rainy night ten years ago. The port was new, the town was new, there were many strangers ordering me around: ‘Go here! Go there!’ I guessed they said, because they spoke a language which I didn’t understand—was that French!

“Before I could finish being disappointed about Le Havre and summoning up old memories of this and that experience (Cherbourg was close, and Barfleur, the little port at which we landed during the invasion, was only twenty-five miles from there) I was on the train, puffing and sweating, with my luggage crowded all around me, sitting among strangers who spoke in foreign tongues while my beloved Normandy receded in the falling darkness. Names came to mind, faces to mind, sounds and smells. Somewhere—in Barfleur!—there...

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