by Sherry Jones
“This film will increase your audience at the Folies-Bergère,” M. Derval said. Pepito bragged about the distribution: it would be shown throughout Europe and, next year, in the United States—as if showing the world how ugly and stupid she could act were something to be proud of. What in the hell was she doing with him? What had she seen in Pepito?
She’d seen his title. His good looks. His flattery. His promises to make her the richest woman in the world.
Now, at thirty-eight, he looked old, the creases in his forehead deepening and lines forming around his mouth. His compliments, once so effusive, had turned like sour milk into criticisms and commands: Hold your fork like this. Straighten your shoulders when you walk. Do not talk with your mouth full of food. She didn’t even have his title anymore. The only way to get it back would be to legally marry him, and she’d be damned if she’d do so.
Of course, that’s not what she told the press. She and Pepito didn’t need a ceremony, she’d said, because they were married in their hearts. She’d never seen so many eyes roll.
“Pepito is still going to give me the family jewels,” she’d said. This was no lie: he’d get them when he took her to Italy in February, after her show Un Vent de Folie closed and after her “Farewell to Paris” show at the Salle Pleyel. They would leave Paris to tour Europe and South America. Pepito had arranged it. He was a great manager, which was why she stayed with him. Of course, he had a temper, but, truth be told, so did she. She’d thought about leaving him, but decided against it every time. He helped her succeed. He pushed her harder than she had even pushed herself. Bricky and others looked down on him, but even they had to admit: Pepito had made her rich.
And if his twisted English that she had once found endearing now made her want to strangle him? If she found his monocle no longer dashing but an affectation? If his kiss—the rare times when he parsed one out to her—left her cold? It was better than being out in the cold, wasn’t it? For excitement, she had plenty of offers, in the clubs and in the wings, in the bedroom and the dressing room, in the back seats and the back alleyways.
“We will transform you,” Pepito had said in proposing the tour, his eyes fairly flashing with dollar signs. No more naked nichons; no more banana skirts; no more jungle acts. “You will depart from Paris a primitive caterpillar and return a sophisticated butterfly.”
IN HER FAREWELL performance, Josephine sang. Perched atop a grand piano in a red gown, she sang her heart out for Paris, this city that had given her respect and love and money and dreams of a better life in a new world.
She sang her farewell to Montmartre and Pigalle and the Champs-Élysées and Montparnasse, to the Les Halles market and the beautiful gilded Pont Alexandre III, to the Parc Monceau with its ponds and statues and Roman-style colonnade and sandpit full of playing children, to the gold-and-green Place de la Concorde fountain, to the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower, to Le Chat Noir and Le Grand Duc and Chez Joséphine.
She sang to M. Derval and Bricky and Paul Colin, to Mistinguett and Chevalier, to Edith Piaf and Colette and Pirandello and Fernandel, to her hairdresser and furrier and shoemaker and clothing designers, to the men she had loved and the women she had loved, including to Sim, whose heart she could not help breaking, who had begged her to marry him (he would divorce Tigy, he swore, but Josephine knew it could never work out; she and he were too much alike). He had forgiven her and come to her farewell tonight to read his homage to her, eliciting sniffles and a thunder of applause from the sold-out house.
Most of all, she sang farewell to nude dances, banana skirts, and crossed eyes. Paris was ready to be rid of that girl, and so was she. She could all but hear the yawns these days as she danced the Charleston. For her to come out in a gown and sing was risky, especially with the city’s most popular chanteuses in the audience, but it was working, she could feel the energy rising. No one cared that she struggled to reach the highest note and hold it. When she’d finished on a long, low moan, the room fell silent for such a long time that she thought she might faint from holding her breath, but then came the reward: a standing ovation. She blew kiss after kiss, especially to Pepito, in the front row beaming at her, looking like he might break into light. Their experiment had succeeded. When they returned from her world tour, Paris would welcome the new Josephine Baker. She hoped. She prayed.
Europe was good to her—at first.
She adored Copenhagen, such a beautiful city and the people so welcoming; Oslo, where she went fishing under the midnight sun; Amsterdam, where she danced the Charleston in yellow wooden shoes; Stockholm, where the prince of Sweden took her to his palace, covered her body in jewels, and made such ardent love to her that she’d cried for days after leaving him. In Prague, an enormous crowd greeted her at the railway station, forcing her to climb on top of her car until the legions of hands swept her away, floating her on their outstretched arms like a cork on the water. The reception in Budapest was even more frenzied, the Hungarians grasping at her clothes, tearing at them, wanting to see her naked, forcing her to take refuge in an ox cart—an ill omen, she feared, and she was right.
Budapest was when things started to get ugly.
On opening night, young men threw ammonia bombs on the stage while she danced. “Go back to Africa!” they screamed. She ran off the stage, weeping from gas and grief, straight into the arms of a different André, a tall, blond cavalry officer who’d rushed backstage at the first sign of trouble, vowing to protect her. When he spoke to her, Josephine found herself, suddenly, able to comprehend French (although with Pepito she would still, sometimes, pretend not to). She’d thought her knees would buckle when he told her she was la reine de la nuit, “queen of the night,” and le soleil noir de la cité de la lumière, “the black sun of the city of lights.” He sent her love poems that she folded and tucked into her bra, next to her heart.
Pepito found out about their affair, of course, and the next thing Josephine knew, he’d challenged André to a duel. Josephine gave Pepito hell: he’d better cancel this foolishness! Pepito talked about l’honneur, which made her suck her teeth in disgust. What honor was there in getting himself killed? André was an officer in the Austrian cavalry, and surely knew how to use a sword. What would she do if Pepito ended up dead? Who would take care of her?
“I hope you’ve named me in your will,” she said.
Pepito’s face turned white, and he sat down to write another note. By the time the “duel” happened at dawn the next day, he and André had reached an agreement. As a gaggle of reporters snapped photos and took notes, Pepito parried and thrust, dancing and waving his sword like a dandy; Josephine screamed, playing her part, until André reached out almost casually with his blade to nick Pepito’s shoulder, the “first blood” making him the winner.
That evening he sent Josephine another poem, inviting her to his bed, and of course she went.
“Joséphine à Bobino” doesn’t mention any of the bad stuff in these around-the-world scenes. As she sings “Give Me Your Hand,” the chorus takes the stage in red jackets and fur hats to do a Russian dance, although she never set foot in Russia. The audience loves it—the upbeat music, the spinning and kicking, Josephine smiling as though three years touring Europe and South America didn’t teach her that racial hatred isn’t just an American illness, but a plague that disfigures people everywhere. That tour changed her forever.
She kept her spirits up, at first. Although glad to leave the ill winds of Budapest behind, she’d hoped the mood would improve as the tour continued. It didn’t. As she danced in Zagreb, a group of young men stood and shouted, “Long live Croatian culture! Down with vulgarity!” She knew what that meant: “Croatian culture” didn’t include Negroes.
Vienna, thank goodness, welcomed her with open arms, or so she thought when she stepped off the train and into a throng of admirers cheering and tossing flowers. The theater director drove her and Pepito in a gold-and-blue horse-drawn carriage through a light-falling snow along the Ringstrasse,
the ringing of church bells coming from near and far. Were they for her? she asked the director, who nodded, looking grim. Later, she learned that the bells tolled to ward off the evil her “satanic” presence had brought to the city.
They passed buildings that looked like frosted cakes to arrive at the Grand Hotel Wien, a magnificent building of white marble, tall and broad, with velvet curtains framing the covered entryway. She felt as though she were in a fairy tale until she noticed the fifty white men on the sidewalk, none looking like he’d ever had a good day.
Josephine stared, feeling like she was in a recurring dream. Many wore brownshirt uniforms. Some carried posters for her show, a red X smeared across her picture. “Negersmach!” some of them shouted—an ominous-sounding word if ever there was one. It seemed like a mile from the carriage to the hotel door.
“You are the scandal of Austria,” said Pepito, twisting his mustache. “We will sell many tickets. That is good, no? Why are you sad? Your success grows with every protest. You are getting stronger.”
In their room, Josephine looked out the window at the commotion, at the rage-red faces of blond-haired men shouting and calling her “black devil.” The Viennese were more snobbish than Parisians, Pepito said, putting his arms around her. They resisted anything new that might “pollute” their culture. A jazz opera had debuted here last week and caused riots in the streets. Josephine extricated herself from his embrace and turned to face him. He knew this, and yet he’d brought her here?
He rubbed the fingers of one hand together and grinned, looking like he was the devil.
“Money,” he said.
Throughout her tour, Josephine worked to improve herself, studying French, German, Spanish, etiquette, posture, piano, and voice, some days locked in her room by Pepito until she had finished her lessons. “You must work, and grow stronger in every way,” he said. The day after she’d spent the night with Gustaf, the Swedish crown prince, Pepito locked her in the bedroom of their hotel suite for twelve hours. When she heard him come in the door she began to scream. “Dirty wop,” she snarled. “Phony count.” In an instant, the door flew open followed by Pepito’s fist. Josephine fought back until he lay on the floor, cupping his balls.
“You were right,” she said, standing over him. “I am getting stronger, and it feels damned good. You ever hit me again, I’ll bite your fucking hand off.”
CHAPTER 19
1928, Berlin
It seemed like every time she’d mentioned Berlin, folks had to issue a warning. Germany, they said, had become a dangerous place for anyone who wasn’t an Aryan, meaning white. In Budapest, her lover André had urged her to cancel her Berlin performances, saying she might not get out alive. The Nazi Party was gaining influence; poverty had increased in Germany, and Hitler blamed the Jews. Those same people hated Negroes, too.
Josephine took the doom and gloom with a grain of salt. Hadn’t she heard the same bleak warnings before her Berlin tour three years ago? With the exception of a few annoying brownshirts, though, she’d had little trouble. Au contraire, the people had loved her there. Of course she would return.
Knowing how popular she’d been in Berlin, Pepito had booked her for a six-month run in the Stage Theater des Westens, a much bigger venue than the Nelson, where she’d played before. The Westens reminded her of a palace, with an ornate white facade sporting seven arched doorways and seven huge windows. The auditorium didn’t seat as many as she’d expected, though; the massive brick-and-marble balconies on either side of the stage took up a lot of room. Still, it was an improvement over the Nelson. No one was likely to rush onto the stage here, thank goodness. After six months’ excitement in Eastern Europe, Josephine hoped for an uneventful time in Berlin.
One night about three weeks into her run, her old friend Max Reinhardt came to her dressing room door, his intense eyes hooded by a new, wary expression.
“Congratulations on your film,” he said. “I look forward to its German debut.”
“Oh, gosh, no, please don’t see that garbage,” she said. She should have enrolled in his school and learned to act, she told him. “I went there last week looking for you, but nobody would tell me where you were. Are you in trouble?”
“Life is not the same here, Josephine. Germany is not the same, especially for Jews like me and Negroes like you. I am certain that you have noticed the changes.”
She had: Berlin looked grayer and more squalid than before, the faces grimmer. The merriment and freedom that had buoyed the city three years ago had disappeared, clamped down by an oppressive hand and choked by squalor. She’d been shocked to see streetwalkers on the sidewalks at all hours of the day, eyes empty, faces gaunt, three of them clawing one another over a coin someone had dropped. She’d also noticed many more brownshirts, now with swastika symbols on their sleeves and glaring at her with a disgust that made her want to scuttle into the nearest hole, as though that were where she belonged.
The brownshirts were bullies but they wouldn’t hurt her, Pepito had insisted. Her show was sold out for weeks, and he’d found a venue for a Chez Joséphine, where she could perform after hours. The club was a hit, the “toast of Berlin,” someone had written. She’d enjoyed herself until the Nazis had started showing up, poisoning the room and sucking all the pleasure from the night, taking the best tables, pounding their fists to demand more beer, eating like pigs and strewing food on the floor, shouting insults with full mouths while she sang. Fräulein Landshoff came to see her, too, not in a tuxedo as before but in a blue evening gown. Josephine hadn’t recognized her at first.
“When some Nazis called me ‘boyfriend’ and asked if I liked it in the ass, I changed my look,” she said.
“Berlin has become a treacherous place,” Max said now. “Promise me that, as soon as you feel a threat, you will flee. The Nazis are . . . unpredictable. You should be ready to leave at a moment’s notice—as I am.”
When uniforms filled the front rows that night, she wondered if Max had been trying to give her some kind of signal. These weren’t the rowdy youths she’d been dealing with at the club but grown men, more disciplined, with disapproval chiseled onto their faces. Their hoots and whistles started while Lea Seidl, a popular, blond-haired German actress, was singing. Why were they picking on her? Then they began shouting “Rotter,” the name of the show’s producers, and Juden—the Rotters were Jewish. Josephine felt sick. Lord knew what they would do when she took the stage.
Lea staggered into the wings, her face full of fear. Josephine put her arms around the poor girl, and Lea leaned on her for a moment or two. “Kaput,” she whispered, sliding a finger across her throat. She’d thought the Nazis were going to kill her.
“Not you,” Josephine said. “I’m the neger. Me kaput.”
Her legs shook so bad she could hardly stand up, let alone dance. Her voice stuck in her throat, not that it mattered, anyway, because they hollered so loudly no one could hear her. She danced in the banana skirt and a bra for the censors, ignoring their shouts of “Take it off!” Their laughter sounded like the barks of vicious dogs. A man with a scar on his nose and the hardest eyes she’d ever seen spread his legs and fondled a large pistol in his lap. His eyes seemed to see right through her clothes. Josephine had never felt so naked, or so vulnerable.
Fuck them: she was there for everybody else. She took a breath and started to dance, trying to let the music carry her away. Where was it? She couldn’t hear a thing over the noise they made.
There: a note.
She danced and kicked, imagining the Nazi in the front row at the receiving end of her foot. Kicked him away, then stepped back and kicked another one. How dare they? Dancing harder now, faster, her feet keeping time with the beating of her heart, her racing pulse carrying her through the dance, faster and faster, running in place for dear life while fear like a fist attacked her chest, her arms and legs, her entire body. The sneering brownshirt faces became a blur, their voices twisting and screeching, schwartze—fuck them, she’d be d
ancing and giving love to her audiences long after their hatred had poisoned them to death. The music played faster and faster, spinning and whirling and jerking her in furious circles, her breath gasping, water streaming down her face, pouring from her eyes, she never sweated, this was something else, this was every pore in her body crying. As soon as she left the stage, she dropped to the floor.
They did it. They killed me, she thought. And fainted dead away.
Someone carried her into her dressing room and lay her on the couch. A nurse had revived her with smelling salts and was checking her pulse when Pepito came running in, his face as white as a sheet. From his usual seat in the third row he’d seen everything, including the pistol in the Nazi’s lap.
“Do you believe I’m in danger now?” she snapped.
“Yes, the jug is up,” he said. He sent the nurse away, handed Josephine’s fur coat to her and stuffed her belongings in a sack, and led her out the stage door to a waiting car. The two of them lay on the seat, holding hands, all the way to the train station. Twenty long minutes later, their train pulled out of Berlin, and Josephine released the breath she’d been holding for weeks. The city streamed past her window, lights streaking the panes, her tears blurring the lights.
It would be a cold day in hell before she returned to Berlin, but she’d get those Nazi bastards back somehow. They hadn’t seen the last of Josephine Baker.
For the BROADWAY–USA scene, a plaster-of-paris Statue of Liberty comes rolling out. Huh. Give me your huddled masses? Your tired and poor? America isn’t the “land of the free,” not for people like her. In America, liberty is a privilege reserved for white people, and the rest is a lie they tell themselves.
“You must go to America and show them what you can do,” Pepito kept saying. The man never gave up, no matter how many times she said she didn’t want to go back, that she knew how she’d be treated. But he could see only dollar signs. For a while after the stock market crash, the United States economy collapsing, folks jumping off buildings, he let up on this talk. In a few years he started up again, America this and America that. She would become a more popular singer than the Boswell Sisters, he said, a bigger movie star than Greta Garbo, more famous than God himself. Josephine snorted. All of them white, even God. There was no way.