Going to Meet the Man Read online

  The sun fell over everything, like a blessing, people were moving all about us, I will never forget the feeling of Harriet’s small hand in mine, dry and trusting, and I turned to her, slowing our pace. She looked up at me with her enormous, blue eyes, and she seemed to wait. I said, “Harriet. Harriet. Tu sais, il y a quelque chose de très grave qui m’est arrivé. Fe t’aime. Fe t’aime. Tu me comprends, or shall I say it in English?”

  This was eight years ago, shortly before my first and only visit home.

  That was when my mother died. I stayed in America for three months. When I came back, Harriet thought that the change in me was due to my grief—I was very silent, very thin. But it had not been my mother’s death which accounted for the change. I had known that my mother was going to die. I had not known what America would be like for me after nearly four years away.

  I remember standing at the rail and watching the distance between myself and LeHavre increase. Hands fell, ceasing to wave, handkerchiefs ceased to flutter, people turned away, they mounted their bicycles or got into their cars and rode off. Soon, Le Havre was nothing but a blur. I thought of Harriet, already miles from me in Paris, and I pressed my lips tightly together in order not to cry.

  Then, as Europe dropped below the water, as the days passed and passed, as we left behind us the skies of Europe and the eyes of everyone on the ship began, so to speak, to refocus, waiting for the first glimpse of America, my apprehension began to give way to a secret joy, a checked anticipation. I thought of such details as showers, which are rare in Paris, and I thought of such things as rich, cold, American milk and heavy, chocolate cake. I wondered about my friends, wondered if I had any left, and wondered if they would be glad to see me.

  The Americans on the boat did not seem to be so bad, but I was fascinated, after such a long absence from it, by the nature of their friendliness. It was a friendliness which did not suggest, and was not intended to suggest, any possibility of friendship. Unlike Europeans, they dropped titles and used first names almost at once, leaving themselves, unlike the Europeans, with nowhere thereafter to go. Once one had become “Pete” or “Jane” or “Bill” all that could decently be known was known and any suggestion that there might be further depths, a person, so to speak, behind the name, was taken as a violation of that privacy which did not, paradoxically, since they trusted it so little, seem to exist among Americans. They apparently equated privacy with the unspeakable things they did in the bathroom or the bedroom, which they related only to the analyst, and then read about in the pages of best sellers. There was an eerie and unnerving irreality about everything they said and did, as though they were all members of the same team and were acting on orders from some invincibly cheerful and tirelessly inventive coach. I was fascinated by it. I found it oddly moving, but I cannot say that I was displeased. It had not occurred to me before that Americans, who had never treated me with any respect, had no respect for each other.

  On the last night but one, there was a gala in the big ballroom and I sang. It had been a long time since I had sung before so many Americans. My audience had mainly been penniless French students, in the weird, Left Bank bistros I worked in those days. Still, I was a great hit with them and by this time I had become enough of a drawing card, in the Latin Quarter and in St. Germain des Prés, to have attracted a couple of critics, to have had my picture in France-soir, and to have acquired a legal work permit which allowed me to make a little more money. Just the same, no matter how industrious and brilliant some of the musicians had been, or how devoted my audience, they did not know, they could not know, what my songs came out of. They did not know what was funny about it. It was impossible to translate: It damn well better be funny, or Laughing to keep from crying, or What did I do to be so black and blue?

  The moment I stepped out on the floor, they began to smile, something opened in them, they were ready to be pleased. I found in their faces, as they watched me, smiling, waiting, an artless relief, a profound reassurance. Nothing was more familiar to them than the sight of a dark boy, singing, and there were few things on earth more necessary. It was under cover of darkness, my own darkness, that I could sing for them of the joys, passions, and terrors they smuggled about with them like steadily depreciating contraband. Under cover of the midnight fiction that I was unlike them because I was black, they could stealthily gaze at those treasures which they had been mysteriously forbidden to possess and were never permitted to declare.

  I sang I’m Coming, Virginia, and Take This Hammer, and Precious Lord. They wouldn’t let me go and I came back and sang a couple of the oldest blues I knew. Then someone asked me to sing Swanee River, and I did, astonished that I could, astonished that this song, which I had put down long ago, should have the power to move me. Then, if only, perhaps, to make the record complete, I wanted to sing Strange Fruit, but, on this number, no one can surpass the great, tormented Billie Holiday. So I finished with Great Getting-Up Morning and I guess I can say that if I didn’t stop the show I certainly ended it. I got a big hand and I drank at a few tables and I danced with a few girls.

  After one more day and one more night, the boat landed in New York. I woke up, I was bright awake at once, and I thought, We’re here. I turned on all the lights in my small cabin and I stared into the mirror as though I were committing my face to memory. I took a shower and I took a long time shaving and I dressed myself very carefully. I walked the long ship corridors to the dining room, looking at the luggage piled high before the elevators and beside the steps. The dining room was nearly half empty and full of a quick and joyous excitement which depressed me even more. People ate quickly, chattering to each other, anxious to get upstairs and go on deck. Was it my imagination or was it true that they seemed to avoid my eyes? A few people waved and smiled, but let me pass; perhaps it would have made them uncomfortable, this morning, to try to share their excitement with me; perhaps they did not want to know whether or not it was possible for me to share it. I walked to my table and sat down. I munched toast as dry as paper and drank a pot of coffee. Then I tipped my waiter, who bowed and smiled and called me “sir” and said that he hoped to see me on the boat again. “I hope so, too,” I said.

  And was it true, or was it my imagination, that a flash of wondering comprehension, a flicker of wry sympathy, then appeared in the waiter’s eyes? I walked upstairs to the deck.

  There was a breeze from the water but the sun was hot and made me remember how ugly New York summers could be. All of the deck chairs had been taken away and people milled about in the space where the deck chairs had been, moved from one side of the ship to the other, clambered up and down the steps, crowded the rails, and they were busy taking photographs—of the harbor, of each other, of the sea, of the gulls. I walked slowly along the deck, and an impulse stronger than myself drove me to the rail. There it was, the great, unfinished city, with all its towers blazing in the sun. It came toward us slowly and patiently, like some enormous, cunning, and murderous beast, ready to devour, impossible to escape. I watched it come closer and I listened to the people around me, to their excitement and their pleasure. There was no doubt that it was real. I watched their shining faces and wondered if I were mad. For a moment I longed, with all my heart, to be able to feel whatever they were feeling, if only to know what such a feeling was like. As the boat moved slowly into the harbor, they were being moved into safety. It was only I who was being floated into danger. I turned my head, looking for Europe, but all that stretched behind me was the sky, thick with gulls. I moved away from the rail. A big, sandy-haired man held his daughter on his shoulders, showing her the Statue of Liberty. I would never know what this statue meant to others, she had always been an ugly joke for me. And the American flag was flying from the top of the ship, above my head. I had seen the French flag drive the French into the most unspeakable frenzies, I had seen the flag which was nominally mine used to dignify the vilest purposes: now I would never, as long as I lived, know what others saw when they saw a flag. “T
here’s no place like home,” said a voice close by, and I thought, There damn sure isn’t. I decided to go back to my cabin and have a drink.

  There was a cablegram from Harriet in my cabin. It said: Be good. Be quick. I’m waiting. I folded it carefully and put it in my breast pocket. Then I wondered if I would ever get back to her. How long would it take me to earn the money to get out of this land? Sweat broke out on my forehead and I poured myself some whiskey from my nearly empty bottle. I paced the tiny cabin. It was silent. There was no one down in the cabins now.

  I was not sober when I faced the uniforms in the first-class lounge. There were two of them; they were not unfriendly. They looked at my passport, they looked at me. “You’ve been away a long time,” said one of them.

  “Yes,” I said, “it’s been a while.”

  “What did you do over there all that time?”—with a grin meant to hide more than it revealed, which hideously revealed more than it could hide.

  I said, “I’m a singer,” and the room seemed to rock around me. I held on to what I hoped was a calm, open smile. I had not had to deal with these faces in so long that I had forgotten how to do it. I had once known how to pitch my voice precisely between curtness and servility, and known what razor’s edge of a pickaninny’s smile would turn away wrath. But I had forgotten all the tricks on which my life had once depended. Once I had been an expert at baffling these people, at setting their teeth on edge, and dancing just outside the trap laid for me. But I was not an expert now. These faces were no longer merely the faces of two white men, who were my enemies. They were the faces of two white people whom I did not understand, and I could no longer plan my moves in accordance with what I knew of their cowardice and their needs and their strategy. That moment on the bridge had undone me forever.

  “That’s right,” said one of them, “that’s what it says, right here on the passport. Never heard of you, though.” They looked up at me. “Did you do a lot of singing over there?”

  “Some.”

  “What kind—concerts?”

  “No.” I wondered what I looked like, sounded like. I could tell nothing from their eyes. “I worked a few nightclubs.”

  “Nightclubs, eh? I guess they liked you over there.”

  “Yes,” I said, “they seemed to like me all right.”

  “Well”—and my passport was stamped and handed back to me—“let’s hope they like you over here.”

  “Thanks.” They laughed—was it at me, or was it my imagination? and I picked up the one bag I was carrying and threw my trench coat over one shoulder and walked out of the first-class lounge. I stood in the slow-moving, murmuring line which led to the gangplank. I looked straight ahead and watched heads, smiling faces, step up to the shadow of the gangplank awning and then swiftly descend out of sight. I put my passport back in my breast pocket—Be quick. I’m waiting—and I held my landing card in my hand. Then, suddenly, there I was, standing on the edge of the boat, staring down the long ramp to the ground. At the end of the plank, on the ground, stood a heavy man in a uniform. His cap was pushed back from his gray hair and his face was red and wet. He looked up at me. This was the face I remembered, the face of my nightmares; perhaps hatred had caused me to know this face better than I would ever know the face of any lover. “Come on, boy,” he cried, “come on, come on!”

  And I almost smiled. I was home. I touched my breast pocket. I thought of a song I sometimes sang, When will I ever get to be a man? I came down the gangplank, stumbling a little, and gave the man my landing card.

  Much later in the day, a customs inspector checked my baggage and waved me away. I picked up my bags and started walking down the long stretch which led to the gate, to the city.

  And I heard someone call my name.

  I looked up and saw Louisa running toward me. I dropped my bags and grabbed her in my arms and tears came to my eyes and rolled down my face. I did not know whether the tears were for joy at seeing her, or from rage, or both.

  “How are you? How are you? You look wonderful, but, oh, haven’t you lost weight? It’s wonderful to see you again.”

  I wiped my eyes. “It’s wonderful to see you, too, I bet you thought I was never coming back.”

  Louisa laughed. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hadn’t. These people are just as corny as ever, I swear I don’t believe there’s any hope for them. How’s your French? Lord, when I think that it was I who studied French and now I can’t speak a word. And you never went near it and you probably speak it like a native.”

  I grinned. “Pas mal. Te me défends pas mal.” We started down the wide steps into the street. “My God,” I said. “New York.” I was not aware of its towers now. We were in the shadow of the elevated highway but the thing which most struck me was neither light nor shade, but noise. It came from a million things at once, from trucks and tires and clutches and brakes and doors; from machines shuttling and stamping and rolling and cutting and pressing; from the building of tunnels, the checking of gas mains, the laying of wires, the digging of foundations; from the chattering of rivets, the scream of the pile driver, the clanging of great shovels; from the battering down and the raising up of walls; from millions of radios and television sets and juke boxes. The human voices distinguished themselves from the roar only by their note of strain and hostility. Another fleshy man, uniformed and red faced, hailed a cab for us and touched his cap politely but could only manage a peremptory growl: “Right this way, miss. Step up, sir.” He slammed the cab door behind us. Louisa directed the driver to the New Yorker Hotel.

  “Do they take us there?”

  She looked at me. “They got laws in New York, honey, it’d be the easiest thing in the world to spend all your time in court. But over at the New Yorker, I believe they’ve already got the message.” She took my arm. “You see? In spite of all this chopping and booming, this place hasn’t really changed very much. You still can’t hear yourself talk.”

  And I thought to myself, Maybe that’s the point.

  Early the next morning we checked out of the hotel and took the plane for Alabama.

  I am just stepping out of the shower when I hear the bell ring. I dry myself hurriedly and put on a bathrobe. It is Vidal, of course, and very elegant he is, too, with his bushy gray hair quite lustrous, his swarthy, cynical, gypsylike face shaved and lotioned. Usually he looks just any old way. But tonight his brief bulk is contained in a dark-blue suit and he has an ironical pearl stickpin in his blue tie.

  “Come in, make yourself a drink. I’ll be with you in a second.”

  “I am, hélas!, on time. I trust you will forgive me for my thoughtlessness.”

  But I am already back in the bathroom. Vidal puts on a record: Mahalia Jackson, singing I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song.

  When I am dressed, I find him sitting in a chair before the open window. The daylight is gone, but it is not exactly dark. The trees are black now against the darkening sky. The lights in windows and the lights of motorcars are yellow and ringed. The street lights have not yet been turned on. It is as though, out of deference to the departed day, Paris waited a decent interval before assigning her role to a more theatrical but inferior performer.

  Vidal is drinking a whiskey and soda. I pour myself a drink. He watches me.

  “Well. How are you, my friend? You are nearly gone. Are you happy to be leaving us?”

  “No.” I say this with more force than I had intended. Vidal raises his eyebrows, looking amused and distant. “I never really intended to go back there. I certainly never intended to raise my kid there—”

  “Mais, mon cher,” Vidal says, calmly, “you are an intelligent man, you must have known that you would probably be returning one day.” He pauses. “And, as for Pauli—did it never occur to you that he might wish one day to see the country in which his father and his father’s fathers were born?”

  “To do that, really, he’d have to go to Africa.”

  “America will always mean more to
him than Africa, you know that.”

  “I don’t know.” I throw my drink down and pour myself another. “Why should he want to cross all that water just to be called a nigger? America never gave him anything.”

  “It gave him his father.”

  I look at him. “You mean, his father escaped.”

  Vidal throws back his head and laughs. If Vidal likes you, he is certain to laugh at you and his laughter can be very unnerving. But the look, the silence which follow this laughter can be very unnerving, too. And, now, in the silence, he asks me, “Do you really think that you have escaped anything? Come. I know you for a better man than that.” He walks to the table which holds the liquor. “In that movie of ours which has made you so famous, and, as I now see, so troubled, what are you playing, after all? What is the tragedy of this half-breed troubadour if not, precisely, that he has taken all the possible roads to escape and that all these roads have failed him?” He pauses, with the bottle in one hand, and looks at me. “Do you remember the trouble I had to get a performance out of you? How you hated me, you sometimes looked as though you wanted to shoot me! And do you remember when the role of Chico began to come alive?” He pours his drink. “Think back, remember. I am a very great director, mais pardon! I could not have got such a performance out of anyone but you. And what were you thinking of, what was in your mind, what nightmare were you living with when you began, at last, to play the role—truthfully?” He walks back to his seat.