Josephine Baker's Last Dance

by Sherry Jones

  But even the star of tonight’s performance could not hold the spotlight for long. When Fanny Brice walked in, every eye turned to her and remained fixed there. She gave Josephine the once-over but otherwise acted as though she didn’t know who she was. Josephine hoped they wouldn’t be seated together at dinner, but she needn’t have worried: Mr. Nast had Josephine and Pepito sit at the head of the table with him, where he translated her French into an English much better than she could speak, making her sound lively and witty. When Mr. Nast had stepped away near the end of the meal, Fanny walked by and heard Josephine ask the maid for plus de café, s’il vous plait. Fanny laughed loudly, drawing everyone’s attention to where she stood, pointing at Josephine.

  “Honey, you is full of shit,” Fanny said in a shrill Southern drawl. “Why don’t you talk the way your mouth was born?”

  FLORENCE MILLS HAD hit the nail on the head: it would take more than one woman’s success to change people’s minds about Negroes.

  “How do you compare to Ethel Waters?” a reporter had asked, as if she and Ethel had anything in common except their race. Folks compared them because Ethel had her own show at the Majestic, the only Negro leading a cast of whites, and because she’d once sung in a Josephine Baker costume, an ironic twist if there ever was one. Irving Berlin, who’d written the music for her show, said Miss Ethel had done a good job, or so he’d thought until he’d seen Josephine perform.

  “How do we compare? I’m a soprano,” she told the newsman. When his story came out, he called her a “colored soprano.”

  Americans did not adore her, as she had hoped. Hell, they didn’t even like her. On opening night, she went to the cast party and made her usual entrance, this time wearing diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds dripping from her ears, throat, arms, and fingers, and the great comic Beatrice Lillie—a white woman—had turned to the rest of the room and said, “Who dat?”

  Josephine felt so delighted to meet her that she forgave the racial slur, seizing the opportunity at dinner to gush over the woman’s films.

  “I’ve seen every one, and love them all,” she said in English. “You are the greatest comedienne in the world, Miss Lillie.”

  The women sent a sly, quick glance to Fanny Brice—Josephine noticed the exchange—and arched an eyebrow. “Honey chile,” she said, affecting a drawl, “you ain’t so bad yo’self.”

  Unfortunately, the critics did not agree. Mr. Anderson went out for the reviews and returned beaming, reading the praise for Fanny who crossed her eyes at Josephine and curled her lips, making Josephine’s face.

  Fanny is marvelous. It is her evening. Her delicious mimicry, her occasionally crossing eyes . . . and her knees that often are not on speaking terms with one another . . . her ever-hilarious presence.

  Josephine crossed her eyes and curled her lip back at Fanny. The woman’s eyes widened and she snatched the notices from Mr. Anderson’s hand.

  “Let’s see what they think of our little French performer,” she said.

  After her cyclonic career abroad, Josephine Baker has become a celebrity who offers her presence instead of her talent . . . her singing voice is only a squeak in the dark and her dancing is only the pain of an artist. Miss Baker has refined her art until there is nothing left of it.

  “Oh, honey, how awful! I never liked this writer, anyway,” she said, rifling through the papers for another.

  In sex appeal to jaded Europeans of the jazz-loving type, a Negro wench always has a head start, but to Manhattan theatregoers last week she was just a slightly buck-toothed young Negro woman whose figure might be matched in any nightclub show, whose dancing and singing could be topped practically anywhere outside France.

  “Imbecile!” Fanny shouted, and everyone laughed because she didn’t mean it, they all knew she despised Josephine, but they didn’t know why. Josephine knew; she’d heard Fanny call her nigger under her breath.

  Josephine snatched up her stole and stormed out of the party. Pepito ran after her, grimacing with indigestion.

  “This is your fault,” she said. “You used to be a good manager, but I’m fed up. You are fired, Pepito, you understand? The doorman at my hotel could do a better job than you.”

  “Terminée?” He looked stunned.

  “That’s right,” she said. “You’re finished, and so are we. I put up with your jealousy and your abuse for too long, because you were the best manager I could imagine and you’ve got all my money. But I don’t care anymore. Go back to Paris and take everything I’ve got. I can always make more. Which is more than you can say, you no-account ‘count.’ ”

  He didn’t say a word, just got into a cab and rode away.

  CHEZ JOSéPHINE IN New York kept her busy singing and dancing nightly to a packed house, getting away with things they wouldn’t let her do in her Follies revue. When audiences had complained about white men touching a Negro woman, for instance, the producer had cut the scene in which the male chorus lifted her up. She added the routine to her nightclub show, and folks loved it. The critics loved her, too, saying she was “in her element” in the club. She made good money. She didn’t need Pepito.

  And she found a lover, too, right away, or, she should say, found him again. Josephine went with the cast to a cabaret on the East Side one night and the bouncer turned her away, saying it was a segregated club. Josephine flashed a hundred-dollar bill, but he suggested she try Harlem.

  Harlem again? Was there nowhere else they could send her? Did Harlem alone house the Negro folks, a veritable cage of colored people in a whites-only zoo? Josephine walked into the street to hail a taxi. Fuckers. If they wanted her in Harlem, she’d go to Harlem. She’d put on the clothes Curt Riess had helped her pick out for her Paris Soir series in which she went out pretending to be just any Negro on the streets and then wrote about her experiences. At her hotel, she slipped on the cotton dress with a missing button, the ragged hat, the old shoes. In the mirror, she saw how she might appear had she never gone to Paris—if, God forbid, she’d stayed in New York. Why had she come back?

  She walked to the nearest subway stop, where a skinny white man with bad teeth leered at her. She went to a bench and sat next to a colored woman who gave her a dolorous once-over. The woman wore a shabby cloth coat that had once been red, and a tattered blue dress. She looked tired. She averted her gaze to the little boy tugging at her knee. You’re richer than I am, Josephine wanted to say.

  She got off at 125th Street and saw a line of people standing outside the Apollo Theater, illuminated by rows of lights strung under the big marquee. What was going on? she asked a young man with a music case in one hand and a pretty girl in the other.

  “It’s Amateur Night,” he said. “I’m going to play the saxophone, and she’s going to sing.” Josephine paid the fee and went in, directed by the doorman to a sign-up sheet. She wrote, Gracie Walker, singing “J’ai Deux Amours.” Then she went backstage to wait for her turn.

  When the emcee walked onto the stage, her heart turned over in her chest: it was Ralph Cooper, her old love from her pre-Paris years in New York, who’d kept the ghosts away many nights while Billy worked. He was still so handsome it made her eyes hurt. They called him “Dark Gable” and anyone could see why: that wavy hair, those wide-set bedroom eyes. He welcomed the crowd and announced the first contestant, a tone-deaf crooner who hadn’t made it through the first verse when people started to holler. A shot rang out, making Josephine jump in her seat. “Dead,” Ralph cried, smoking cap gun in his hand. As the crowd jeered, the poor little man removed his porkpie hat and bowed as though he’d received a standing ovation.

  Next up were a pair of jugglers who did a decent job of keeping balls, batons, and fire sticks in the air, but the audience grew restless, shouting, “Juggle something good,” and the gun fired again. Josephine almost wished she hadn’t signed up. This was a tough crowd; what if they booed her? Would Ralph recognize her after all these years and refuse to fire the gun, or would he send her slinking offstage? />
  A tap dancer whose feet flew so fast they might have thrown up sparks. A couple doing an acrobatic Lindy Hop. The saxophonist and singer she’d met in line, performing “Dinah.” A young woman singing, “Was I Drunk?” A comedian with the raunchiest mouth she’d ever heard—he didn’t last three minutes. And then Ralph was peering into the wings, calling the name of the next performer, who didn’t show.

  “Somebody got cold feet,” he was saying. “Gracie? You here?”

  Someone nudged her and she stepped out and rubbed the famous tree stump on the stage for good luck, and sang “J’ai Deux Amours” with all her heart—“I have two loves, my country and Paris,” even though, at the moment, she felt less than enamored of her country. The audience never made a peep, and the gun didn’t go off, and when she’d taken her bow she glanced at Ralph, who looked at her like it was Christmas morning, and she the present under his tree.

  “This is a special treat, folks, and a real surprise,” he said. “I wonder how many of you recognized the great Josephine Baker on our stage?”

  It was almost like being in Paris, then, applause rising and cresting in great, crashing waves, but no restrained Parisian audience made half as much noise as this cacophony of stamping feet, whistling, shouts, shrieks, roars. This, too, was nothing like the polite applause she heard at the Follies shows, the gold dress weighing her down, the masked dancers keeping their hands to themselves. She knew the reason for the difference: here, as in Paris, as in her nightclub, she performed naturally, as herself. The Ziegfeld Follies routines felt artificial—because, for her, they were. She’d been given the costumes, the songs, and the steps, all devised by others, with not a single bit of Josephine Baker in any of it. She might as well be a wind-up toy going through the routines. She’d hated the rehearsals and she dreaded every performance, and everyone—critics and audiences alike—could tell.

  God, how she wanted to leave New York. She wanted to go home, where she felt like a human being, where she had dignity. But how could she? Pepito owned everything—Le Beau Chêne, her bank accounts, her royalties and income. She’d gone to the Shubert Agency and told them to write her checks out to her, not him, so she had that to live on, as well as her Chez Joséphine earnings. But she had nothing in Paris—no income, no house, no work. She couldn’t even afford passage back to France. Her worst nightmare had come true: she was trapped in New York.

  Perhaps she’d lashed out at Pepito too harshly. Certainly she’d been hasty: she should have waited until they’d gotten home. Her temper had gotten the best of her again.

  What was done was done, though. She’d save her money and get back to France eventually. No matter what happened, she was still Josephine Baker.

  Removing her stage makeup after the show one night, she heard a knock on her dressing-room door and a familiar voice speaking in French. Pepito! For a minute, she thought not to answer. But here was her chance to go home, and so she opened the door—and let out a scream.

  M. Paul Derval dropped the bouquet he held as she flung herself against him, kissing his face and weeping.

  “Josephine, you are being underutilized in this revue,” he said as she pulled him inside.

  “They are wasting my talent, yes. M. Derval, I wish you could tell the director what I am capable of. You know I’m better than Fanny Brice!”

  “I am sorry, but I cannot help you succeed here,” he said as he reached for the champagne chilling in a bucket on her dressing table. “If anything, I would like to hasten your failure.”

  Josephine frowned. Why had he come, then? To gloat, like everybody else? She had a mind to snatch the champagne bottle from his hand and break it over his head.

  But this was M. Derval, who had given Josephine her first show, who had been her friend for ten years. “You want me to fail?” A tear rolled down her cheek. “Why?”

  He turned to hand her a coupe, grinning: She had fallen for his jest.

  “Because I want you to return to Paris with me and star in my new show this fall at the Folies-Bergère.”

  ACT IV

  * * *

  Vive la Résistance

  CHAPTER 22

  1939, Le Beau Chêne

  If there was one thing she hated, it was being underdressed. Josephine was having that sinking feeling right now outside her castle, Les Milandes, as she watched her visitors emerge from their car. Her theatrical agent Daniel Marouani was the picture of chic, as always, swarthy and slim and wearing a woven silk suit of pale taupe with a blue necktie. But it was his companion, in a military uniform, who made her want to run indoors and change clothes. He was a rogue, she pegged him in an instant: hair the color of sand falling over his brow on purpose, he probably thought it made him look rakish (and he was right), muscles like hard candy (and she with such a sweet tooth), a swagger that boasted of conquest. She’d forgotten how beautiful eyes could be, wasted on a man, some would say, but not when that man was lying under her, which was where she imagined him until his gaze took in her battered garden hat and old cotton dress, her grass-stained knees, and the jar of snails she’d been collecting to feed to her ducks.

  Why hadn’t she dressed up? She hadn’t felt like taking the trouble, not for the old, fat-bellied coot she’d expected. “He does not trust you because you are beautiful and in show business,” Danny had said of the capitaine he had proposed bringing to meet with her. The man hadn’t even wanted to come—the meeting had been Danny’s idea. Who but a codger with nothing going on between his legs would turn down Josephine Baker?

  She whipped the hat off her head so fast the jar dropped to the ground, scattering the snails but she’d forgotten all about her ducks now. Lord, let me work with this man. What he was cooking up Danny wouldn’t say, “the officer” would explain, something against the Nazis, which was all Josephine needed to know to say yes. Now she wanted to know everything else, too: his name, rank, and serial number, the feel of his hands on her skin, whether he liked it rough or gentle, and which of them on top.

  “You must be the youngest commander in the history of the French army, Captain,” she teased as her maître d’ led them indoors to the parlor, a masculine room of stone and wood with an enormous fireplace in which a fire roared. Three Louis XVI chairs had been arranged in front of it, as well as several small tables, one of which held a bottle of fine champagne on ice. Settling into a chair, Josephine smiled as if she were wearing a silk sheath rather than an old cotton dress. “Do your men obey that sweet baby face?”

  How anyone could pack so much contempt into a single glance she would never know.

  “Captain Abtey does not give orders to soldiers,” Danny said. “He works in the Deuxième Bureau.”

  “Intelligence?” She poured a flute of champagne and offered it to the captain, but he declined. “That must be so interesting.”

  His frown deepened; he still had not said a word. Josephine gave a coupe to Danny and took one for herself, saw the officer’s eyes take note as she nervously gulped down the contents. She set her glass on the table.

  “One of Captain Abtey’s duties is to recruit volunteers,” Danny said.

  “Spies?”

  “Honorable correspondents,” Abtey said. His voice sounded like warm honey, just as she would have imagined. He shifted in his seat, crossing one leg over the other and looking uncomfortable.

  “His correspondents travel around, observing and gathering information,” Danny said. “Then they report what they find to Jacques.”

  “I’m very observant,” Josephine said. “I remember details that escape most people. Like the flecks of gold in your blue eyes.” Captain Abtey looked unimpressed, and so she added, “And the color of your socks.”

  “What color are they?” he challenged, daring her to look down at his feet, but she didn’t need to.

  “You aren’t wearing any,” she said. “In spite of the fact that the weather is cool. You must have known that you’d be sitting before a warm fire with me.”

  He cocked a
n eyebrow and regarded her. Her hand more steady now, Josephine poured herself another coupe.

  “That is quite observant. What else have you noticed?”

  “You are left-handed,” she said. “At least, that’s the hand you used to turn away my very good champagne.”

  He uncrossed his legs and sat up straight, glancing over at Danny. Ha! She was right.

  “And as much as you want me to think that you don’t drink, I’m guessing that you do. I saw you eyeing my liquor cabinet. Would you prefer a snifter of cognac?” She rang for a servant, who presented a glass, which he took with, yes, his left hand.

  “Your eye for detail is good,” he said. “But will it be so when you are frightened or nervous?” He set down the glass and gave her a defiant look.

  “Why, monsieur, I am surprised that you are not more observant,” she said. “Otherwise, you would know that I am frightened nearly out of my wits right now.”

  “Non, you are not,” he said, and the smile he finally offered made Josephine want to melt all over her chair. “The great Josephine Baker is fully aware of her power over men. Far from quaking in your boots, you have felt only confidence that you will get what you want from me.”