Just Above My Head Page 54

  Arthur wonders about all this, and Guy touches his elbow. “What will you drink?”

  For the barmaid is standing before them, a tall, thin, dark-haired girl, with high cheekbones and enormous dark eyes, and a genuine smile.

  “Bonsoir, m’sieu,” she says.

  “Bonsoir, mam’selle.” He looks at her, at Guy, feeling a little embarrassed, he does not know why. “I’ll have a whisky,” he says, “with ice.”

  “Bon. Et vous, m’sieu?” This, to Guy.

  “The same,” says Guy.

  “Bien.” She goes to the end of the bar, suddenly, apparently having been summoned by Sonny Carr. She leans toward him, while he whispers something to her. She nods, smiles, and pours their drinks, returns.

  She puts their drinks on the bar, before them. When Guy attempts to pay, she puts up one hand, in refusal. “Later.” She turns away, with a laugh. “Do not go. You will understand, later.” She addresses something she sees in Guy’s face. “Attends. Que ça reste entre nous.”

  “Je n’ai pas tort, dis?”

  She shrugs. “Ah!” And laughs, and begins serving other customers.

  Arthur asks, “What was that about?”

  “I really cannot tell you,” Guy says, and lifts his whisky. “Cheers. Sacré chanteur sauvage.”

  Arthur studies his face. Guy looks somewhat stunned, but very pleased.

  The trio finishes with a genuine flourish—it must be admitted that Arthur has not really been listening to them, has been plunged into his own version of a tale of two cities: but has been horribly aware of the black pianist, who reminds him of Peanut, and the slide trombonist, who reminds him of Crunch, and, in some way, of me. And he shakes his head against all these terrors, and sips his drink.

  Guy touches his elbow. “We will now hear Sonny Carr.”

  For the slide trombonist, riding the applause, has taken the microphone, and, wiping his brow with a willed and florid handkerchief—a handkerchief with a history—and smiling, says, “Ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs, I cannot tell you how honored I am to be able to stand here and present one of the greatest blues artists of all time—mesdames, messieurs, notre père et notre ami, le grand—Sonny Carr!”

  And he steps back, and Sonny Carr steps up.

  There is a curious and subtle difference in him when he takes his place before the microphone. He does not, in the first place, seem to know what the microphone is doing there: it is clear that the microphone is a trivial and dubious instrument and he is willing to put up with it, if it acts right. In the second place, he seems to grow, not so much taller as, in every way, immense, as though he is threatening the roof and the walls. He grins, and one sees the dimple in one cheek, which cannot have changed very much since he was young, and a wonder in his eyes. He says nothing. He looks around him once, at the musicians, and snaps his fingers, and, at the same moment, begins:

  Water-boy,

  now, tell me

  where you hiding?

  If you don’t a-come,

  I’m going to tell your mammy,

  sounding cajoling, tender, stern and weary—thirsty, for he really needs that drink of water, then he smiles, seeming to look straight down the bar, at Arthur,

  you jack of diamonds,

  you jack of diamonds,

  I know you of old, boy,

  yes, I know you of old!

  He shifts, without pause, into

  See, see rider,

  See what you done done,

  and then, triumphantly,

  Take this hammer,

  carry it to the captain.

  Tell him I’m gone, boys,

  tell him I’m gone.

  And ending like that, something like the blow of a hammer, with the trombone supplying the vast and hostile landscape, and the bass and the piano supplying the rigors of days and nights. The place explodes with applause, and Sonny Carr stands there, and bows his head.

  It is, suddenly, a mighty gesture. Arthur has seen this gesture all his life, and yet, has never seen it before.

  It is a gesture as far beyond humility as it is beyond pride. Sonny bows his head before what his audience supposes to be his past, and his condition. He bows his head before their profound gratitude that this past, and this condition, are his, and not theirs. He bows his head before their silent wonder that he can be so highly esteemed as a performer and treated so viciously as a man: whenever, and wherever, he is esteemed to be one. He hears, in their applause, a kind of silent wonder, inarticulate lamentations. They might, for example, be willing to give “anything” to sing like that, but fear that they haven’t “anything” to give: but, far more crucially, do not suspect that it is not a matter of being “willing.” It is a matter of embracing one’s only life, even though this life so often seems to be, merely, one’s doom. And it is, in a way, though not “merely.” But to refuse the doom of one’s only life is to be trapped outside all nourishment; their wonder, then, is mixed with, and their lamentations defined by, that paralyzing envy from which what we call “racism” derives so much of its energy. Racism is a word which describes one of the results—perhaps the principal result—of our estrangement from our beginnings, from the universal source.

  And the applause functions, then, in part, to pacify, narcotize, the resulting violent and inescapable discomfort.

  Sonny brings the applause to an end by raising one hand, and saying, with a smile, “Merci, messieurs-dames. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I think we might have a surprise for you a little bit later. Don’t go ‘way.”

  He looks at the trio, and they bounce into an old, good-natured ballad Paul sometimes sang for Arthur, when Arthur was little, “Get Along Home, Cindy, Cindy,” and they make something very cheerful and bawdy out of it. Arthur assumes that the crowd can certainly not understand Sonny’s down-home, sexual cross-references—Cindy, in Sonny’s version, is quite a prodigy, but he, somehow, forces himself to match her—but they appear to follow him with no effort at all. They are following his eyes, and his voice, of course, and he telegraphs, and comments on, each joyous convolution. Arthur wonders what he would feel like before this audience.

  The trombone’s moan cuts off the applause, a warning, urgent, insistent sound. The bass and the piano have melancholy news, and Sonny begins to spell it out:

  Ever since Miss Susan Johnson

  lost her Jockey, Lee,

  Guy grabs his elbow.

  “That is my song!” he whispers. “It is Bessie Smith. Never have I heard anyone else sing it before!”

  There has been much excitement,

  more to be

  Very dry, an announcement, suggesting, furthermore, that there is nothing new about it. Yet, he has the entire room waiting for the news.

  You can hear her moanin’

  night and morn.

  Wonder where

  my Easy Rider’s gone?

  This is quite another girl than Cindy; or it is Cindy, later. Sonny is merely telling the tale. It is, furthermore, an exceedingly laconic tale, and Arthur wonders what the present audience can make of it. The room is absolutely silent, as though everyone held his breath, waiting for the message to be delivered.

  All day, the phone rings,

  but it’s not for me.

  Arthur looks around the tense, silent room, and he wonders; wonders what they are hearing, indeed; but, beyond that, wonders. The voice does not falter in the telling of the tale: the three musicians supply the literally unutterable truth. A world is being created around this laconic event, an event, which, without commenting on itself, steadily becomes more terrible. An anonymous runaway, and his pacing, waiting woman, somewhere in the American Deep South, when? Right now, if one is to judge from the silence on the faces, and in the room, and the runaway, or the woman, may walk in from the streets at any moment.

  For,

  He’s gone where

  the Southern

  “cross”

  the Yellow Dog.

  All pos
sibilities open, or all possibilities closed. The question is left hanging until it is submerged by applause.

  The applause is tremendous, but it is time, says the trombonist, that they take a break.

  Guy and Arthur look at each other. Guy shakes his head, smiling.

  “Il est formidable.” He purses his tips, smiling, and nods his head. “Merde.” He looks over Arthur’s shoulder, and his face changes.

  Arthur turns, and sees Sonny Carr walking down the bar, and he comes straight to Arthur.

  Arthur realizes that Guy had known that this moment was coming.

  “Maybe I’m mistaken,” says Sonny Carr to Arthur, “but if two and two and two make four, I believe I can call your name. Just tell me yes or no: is your name Arthur? Your first name?”

  “Yes, sir,” Arthur says.

  “And your father’s name is—Paul?”

  “Yes, sir.” Arthur cannot help smiling. He does not know what is happening to him.

  “And you just come in from London?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell you how I know. I got friends in London, told me about a young dude come through, singing gospel, name of—I’ll recognize the name, now, you give it to me—now, what is it? Wisconsin? Oklahoma? Ohio? Indian name, I believe—not Chattanooga?”

  They are both laughing, and Guy is laughing, and so is the barmaid. The trio, and everyone else in the bar, are immobilized.

  “No, sir. The name is Montana.”

  “Knew it was somewhere around there. How’s your father?”

  “He’s fine. He used to talk to me about you, when I was little.”

  “Oh. I used to talk to him—when he was little.” He smiles, and takes Arthur’s hand in his. “Will you sing a little for us? Come on.” Then he pauses, very delicately—Lord, the humility, the depthless courtesy, with which experience recognizes youth!—and looks at Guy. “Good evening, sir. Bonsoir, and God bless you. I’m going to try to kidnap him for a little while, but I ain’t going to take him far. He’ll be right where you can see him.” He smiles and extends his hand.

  Guy takes his hand, smiling. “I am most honored to meet you. I am Guy Lazar.”

  “I’m glad to meet you, too. Come on up here, and have a drink with us.” He throws an arm around Arthur, and signals Guy, and the three of them walk back to the end of the bar.

  So he is to meet the Africans, and the North Africans, after all. He is keenly aware that he is, visibly, with Guy. He wonders how the North Africans, especially, will take this.

  It occurs to him that he is now in a position not entirely unlike that of a white person in the States, worried about how his white friends will look at his black friend—well: worried, too, about how his white friends will look at him.

  He cannot pursue this dizzying speculation. They are being introduced.

  He need not have worried. He has entered Sonny Carr’s orbit with Sonny’s arm around him, Sonny has sought him out, and claimed him. This makes him special and makes Guy special, at least for this moment, tonight.

  They shake hands, all around. There is, perhaps, the very slightest stiffening and exaggeration of courtesy in the North African reception of Guy, but it passes swiftly, like a faintly acrid odor on the air. Sonny announces what the barmaid already knows, that Guy and Arthur are his guests—they have been his guests since they entered—and that Arthur is the son of an old friend of his, from way back yonder, and that Arthur will sing. So he meets the trio. The white bass player is from Chicago, the trombonist from Oakland, the piano player from Syracuse. And, after the first few stiff, shy seconds, they begin to talk to each other, Guy and two of the North Africans entering into a discussion which sounds—or, rather, perhaps, looks—guarded, friendly, and intense.

  The trio establishes, above and beside them, a fine, rocking beat into which Arthur can enter at will. Sonny announces him as the “surprise” he had promised earlier. Arthur steps on to the bandstand.

  Sonny, sitting on his bar stool, towers over Guy, who. stands beside him. The faces of the Africans, and the North Africans, burn in the dim light, like statues in a cave. And the faces beyond this circle, beyond the circle nearest Arthur, are both vivid and shapeless, a kind of breathing, waiting sea.

  Arthur moves with the beat for a moment, his shoulders back, as I have seen him move while dancing. But his mind has gone blank: he cannot think of the words to a single song. He looks at Sonny, and Sonny sees this in his face, and laughs.

  “Sing ‘Daniel’!” he cries.

  Still not certain of the words, Arthur opens his mouth, and the words come out!

  Daniel

  saw the stone

  that was hewed

  out the mountain,

  and everything comes together, he and the trio and the beat, Sonny’s black face and Guy’s white face, and all the other faces.

  Daniel

  saw the stone

  that was rolled

  into Babylon.

  It is all right. Sonny is clapping his hands: “Well, let’s have a little church in here!” Guy’s face is burning. The other, darker faces meet him with the intensity and the beauty of the beat he rides, and the faces beyond this circle seem to come forward with a mute appeal.

  Jesus is the stone

  that was hewed out the mountain,

  tearing down

  the kingdom of this world!

  The applause washes over him, like the sound of a crumbling wall. The crowd refuses to let him go. Finally, Arthur and Sonny sing together,

  Oh, when I come

  to the end of my journey,

  and Sonny looks into Arthur’s eyes, as they sing,

  weary of life,

  and the battle is won.

  Arthur hears the great, gallant weariness of someone making himself ready for the last, or the first, great test. Now standing next to Arthur, at once towering over him and leaning on him, one arm on Arthur’s shoulder, Sonny does not look, or seem, but is his age. It is almost certain that he will never see Arthur again. He will surely never see Paul again: but he is standing here, singing with Paul’s son.

  Carrying the staff,

  and the cross of redemption

  Yes, Sonny Carr is old. For Arthur, he is unimaginably old. Standing next to him, Arthur can feel, as they sing together, the faint, uncontrollable tremor in the hand on his shoulder, the rasp at the bottom of his voice. His breath is slightly acrid from the years of women and whiskey and smoke; of wandering, rejection, silence, and sound; of wandering, of going under and rising up; of tears, and rage, and laughter and lust and tenderness. Arthur cannot imagine what lies before Sonny now. Does the road open, or does it close? Does he look back, wishing to turn back? What does he remember?

  He remembered my father, Arthur thinks, from when my father was young. And that’s how he recognized me.

  But he is too young, by far, for these speculations. So far from trying to detach himself from memory, he is only beginning to acquire one. Anguish is still, for him, a new and dreadful country, he has yet to pitch his tent, and contest the weather there. Nor does he know whether the road before him is open, or closed. Oh, yes, Sonny growls, I know, and Arthur sings with him, the last lines of the last song they sang together that night,

  I’m pleased with what you’ve done,

  and your race has been run

  and I’ve brought you the key

  and I’ve got your key here with me

  and I praise God, I have another building,

  not made with hands!

  Guy and Arthur spend the night with Sonny and his friends, ending up having breakfast in Sonny’s apartment, which is in a courtyard off Pigalle. They get home long after the sun is up, and sleep till suppertime.

  Then, there is, of course, their late, prolonged, and quiet suppertime. This is Friday night, and they agree that Arthur will leave on Sunday night.

  “Paris will be empty without you,” says Guy, lying on the sofa, his head in Arthur’s lap. “I will
miss you, mon cher chanteur sauvage. But even if I were a million times more unhappy than I am, I could not be sorry to have met you. It has meant very much to me, it has”—he smiles up at Arthur—“given me the hope to live again.”

  “It’s been beautiful for me, too,” Arthur says. Then, “Let’s not spend the weekend saying good-bye. You know, shit, let’s have a ball. Like, let’s go and price that raincoat tomorrow, for example, and let’s say good-bye at the airport, just like that. Because you’ll see me again, baby, don’t worry about it.”

  Guy grimaces. “Do not forget to send me tickets when you open at L’Olympia. That is where Josephine Baker, all the great ones, Trenet, Piaf, Montand—they all have sung there.” Arthur grunts. “No, I am not kidding. You will surely sing there, one day.”

  Guy takes him to the airport on Sunday, and kisses him good-bye at the barrier. Arthur is wearing the raincoat he so admired, which Guy has insisted on buying for him. “That way, whenever it rains, you will surely think of me. Perhaps, there will be a deluge in America. That would please me very much.”

  He watches Arthur’s back while Arthur gets his passport stamped. Then Arthur turns, one last time, and waves. Guy waves back. He feels tears gathering behind his eyes. Arthur’s long, lean, loping figure disappears up the ramp.

  Julia had flown from Abidjan to Paris the day before, and arrived in New York, on another flight, on that same Sunday. She had warned no one of her arrival except Jimmy, but Jimmy was in the South.