Mr. Potter by Jamaica Kincaid Page A

new world that had not been imagined by the person looking at it. Mr. Shoul’s father continued in his way after his wife had died, his way of mingling with gold
and silver bangles, some by themselves in small velvet boxes, others all mixed up with each other in drawers; and earrings, too, were things he mingled with, and all sorts of other trinkets, none of it essential, none of it necessary. He was a trader and he started out with things that were necessary, pots and pans and cups made of tin and then painted with enamel, and cloth: cotton it was, madras it was, chambray it was, poplin it was, dotted swiss it was, and seersucker. And that was a profitable business, trading in essentials, things that are absolutely necessary; but even more prosperous was trading in things that promised to make life more beautiful, or promised to make life more worthwhile, but of course could do neither, make life beautiful more or less, make life worthwhile more or less. And inside his little trading empire—it was that, a little trading empire—was Mr. Shoul’s father, mingling and intermingling with a dazzling array of lights and colors: the red of rubies, the green of emeralds, and the at once cool and hot light of diamonds, the blue of sapphires; all this was in abundance, all this not essential to living, but it is the way of the world to devote itself with a wanton fervor to the things that are not essential; and it does so, always, with the anger of a child who is afraid its will has been too often thwarted.
    And then Mr. Shoul’s father died also, not on the road to Damascus or the road going toward Damascus,
but while crossing the threshold of his dwelling place, his home or trading place; it was all the same, home and place of trading; he dwelled in both, and he died when he was not expected to, for that is the way of death, always so inevitable, always so unexpected, and Mr. Shoul’s world was shattered at its center, and this shattering was more like the shattering of the glass bowl made of crystal in which were kept the dates and figs his mother loved to eat and this was because his world was precious to him; but to someone else, someone who did not love Mr. Shoul and did not care to take in his tender existence (he was a human being and so, therefore, his existence was tender and deserved to be protected), his world was shattered as if it were an old bottle and its contents nothing but sediment.
    â€œEh, eh, Mr. Shoul,” Mr. Potter was saying, and it was not really meant to be that Mr. Potter should interrupt the life of the almost, the life of the mind’s eye of everyone he meets, any more than it is meant to be that everyone he meets will interrupt again and again his own surprising (to himself, that is) and bewildering (to himself, that is) internal landscape, the view that rests in his mind’s eye, the mind’s eye being the almost, the as if, the like, the in the vicinity of: the almost. And when Mr. Potter said those words to Mr. Shoul, Mr. Shoul could not hear them for he was in the middle of seeing (almost) and hearing (almost) his
world tremble and then shatter irrevocably and he wanted to move away from it all, but there were smells and sounds and there were pictures of things of pleasure, a light snow falling out of that eastern and middle sky, so unexpected was the snow, so miraculous was that snow, so miraculous, but there was no miracle, nothing to save anyone from the many endings that life will present, the ending that was Mr. Shoul’s world; it began when he was born and it died when he was all too alive. Who is prepared for that? No one is prepared for that! But just then, just then, when Mr. Potter said, “Eh, eh, Mr. Shoul,” to Mr. Shoul, the world in Mr. Shoul’s mind’s eye (the world of almost) whirled about him like snowflakes (he could remember such a thing), like small bits of uncollected dry rubbish in a yard (Mr. Potter was familiar with