On the sidewalk, the musicians stood idly together, still fanning themselves with their handkerchiefs, their faces blandly watchful, ignoring the occasional panhandlers, and the policeman who walked up and down with his lips pursed and his eyes blind with unnameable suspicions and fears.
He wished he had not come. He was afraid of seeing Vivaldo, he was afraid of meeting Ida; and he began to feel, standing helplessly in the center of this sweltering mob, unbearably odd and visible, unbearably a stranger. It was not a new sensation, but he had not felt it for a long time: he felt marked, as though, presently, someone would notice him and then the entire mob would turn on him, laughing and calling him names. He thought of leaving, but, instead, inched into the bar and ordered a drink. He had no idea how he would go about finding Ida or Vivaldo. He imagined that he would have to wait until she began to sing. But, presumably, they would also be watching for him, for his red hair.
And he sipped his drink, standing uncomfortably close to a burly college boy, unpleasantly jostled by the waiter, who was loading his tray next to him. And he was, indeed, beginning to attract a certain, covert attention; he did not look American, exactly: they were wondering how to place him.
He saw them before they saw him. Something made him turn around and look out through the door, to the sidewalk; and Ida and Vivaldo, loosely swinging hands, walked up and began talking to the musicians. Ida was wearing a tight, white, low-cut dress, and her shoulders were covered with a bright shawl. On the little finger of one hand, she wore a ruby-eyed snake ring; on the opposite wrist, a heavy, barbaric-looking bracelet, of silver. Her hair was swept back from her forehead, piled high, and gleaming, like a crown. She was far more beautiful than Rufus and, except for a beautifully sorrowful, quicksilver tension around the mouth, she might not have reminded him of Rufus. But this detail, which he knew so well, caught him at once, and so did another detail, harder, for a moment, to place. She laughed at something said by one of the musicians, throwing her head back: her heavy silver earrings caught the light. Eric felt a pounding in his chest and between his shoulder blades, as he stared at the gleaming metal and the laughing girl. He felt, suddenly, trapped in a dream from which he could not awaken. The earrings were heavy and archaic, suggesting the shape of a feathered arrow: Rufus never really liked them. In that time, eons ago, when they had been cufflinks, given him by Eric as a confession of his love, Rufus had hardly ever worn them. But he had kept them. And here they were, transformed, on the body of his sister. The burly college boy, looking straight ahead, seemed to nudge Eric with his knee. Eric moved a little out from the bar and moved nearer the door, so that they would see him when they looked his way.
He stood sipping his drink in the bar; they stood on the twilit sidewalk. Eric watched Vivaldo and used these moments to remember him. Vivaldo seemed more radiant than he had ever been, and less boyish. He was still very slim, very lean, but he seemed, somehow, to have more weight. In Eric’s memory, Vivaldo always put one foot down lightly, like a distrustful colt, ready, at any moment, to break and run; but now he stood where he stood, the ground bore him, and his startled, sniffing, maverick quality was gone. Or perhaps not entirely gone: his black eyes darted from face to face as he spoke, as he listened, investigating, weighing, watching, his eyes hiding more than they revealed. The conversation took a more somber turn. One of the musicians had brought up the subject of money— of unions, and, with a gesture toward the spot where Eric stood, of working conditions. Vivaldo’s eyes darkened, his face became still, and he looked briefly down at Ida. She watched the musician who was speaking with a proud, bitter look on her face. “So maybe you better give it another thought, gal,” the musician concluded. “I’ve thought about it,” she said, looking down, touching one of the earrings. Vivaldo took this hand in his, and she looked up at him; he kissed her lightly on the tip of the nose. “Well,” said another musician, wearily, “we better be making it on in.” He turned and entered the bar, saying, “Excuse me, man” to Eric as he passed. Ida whispered something in Vivaldo’s ear; he listened, frowning. His hair fell over his forehead, and he threw his head back, sharply, with a look of annoyance, and saw Eric.
For a moment they simply stared at each other. Another musician, entering the bar, passed between them. Then, Vivaldo said, “So there you are. I didn’t really believe you’d make it; I didn’t really believe you’d be back.”
“But I’m here,” said Eric, grinning, “now, what do you think of that?”
Vivaldo suddenly raised his arms and laughed— and the policeman moved directly behind him, glowering, seeming to wait for an occult go-ahead signal— and covered the space between himself and Eric and threw both arms around him. Eric nearly dropped the glass he was holding, for Vivaldo had thrown him off balance; he grinned up into Vivaldo’s grinning face; and was aware, behind Vivaldo, of Ida, inscrutably watching, and the policeman, waiting.
“You fucking red-headed Rebel,” Vivaldo shouted, “you haven’t changed a bit! Christ, I’m glad to see you, I’d no idea I’d be so glad to see you.” He released Eric, and stepped back, oblivious, apparently, to the storm he was creating. He dragged Eric out of the bar, into the street, over to Ida. “Here’s the sonofabitch we’ve been talking about so long, Ida; here’s Eric. He’s the last human being to get out of Alabama.”
The policeman seemed to take a dim, even a murderous view of this, and, ceasing to wait on occult inspiration, peered commandingly into the bar. The signal he then received caused him, slowly, to move a little away. But Vivaldo beamed on Eric as though Eric were his pride and joy; and said again, to Ida, staring at Eric, “Ida, this is Eric. Eric, meet Ida.” And he took their hands and placed them together.
Ida grasped his hand, laughing, and looked into his eyes. “Eric,” she said, “I think I’ve heard more about you than I’ve ever heard about any living human being. I’m so glad to meet you, I can’t tell you. I’d decided you weren’t nothing but a myth.”
The touch of her hand shocked him, as did her eyes and her warmth and her beauty. “I’m delighted to meet you, too,” he said. “You can’t have heard more about me— you can’t have heard better about me— than I’ve heard about you.”
They held each other’s eyes for a second, she still smiling, wearing all her beauty as a great queen wears her robes— and establishing that distance between them, too— and then one of the musicians came to the doorway, and said, “Ida, honey, the man says come on with it if you coming.” And he disappeared.
Ida said, “Come on, follow me. They’ve got a table for us way in back somewhere.” She took Eric’s arm. “They’re doing me a favor, letting me sit in. I’ve never sung in public before. So I can’t afford to bug them.”
“You see,” said Vivaldo, behind them, “you got off the boat just in time for a great occasion.”
“You should have let him say that,” said Ida.
“I was just about to,” said Eric, “believe me.” They squeezed through the crowd to the slightly wider area in the back. Here, Ida paused, looking about her.
She looked up at Eric. “What happened to Richard and Cass?”
“They asked me to apologize for them. They couldn’t come. One of the kids was sick.”
He felt, as he said this, a faint tremor of disloyalty— to Ida: as though she were mixed up in his mind with the colored children who had attacked Paul and Michael in the park.
“Today of all days,” she sighed— but seemed, really, scarcely to be concerned about their absence. Her eyes continued to search the crowd; she sighed again, a sigh of private resignation. The musicians were ready, attempts were being made to silence the mob. A waiter appeared and seated them at a tiny table in a corner next to the ladies’ room, and took their order. The malevolent heat, now that they were trapped in this spot, began rising from the floor and descending from the ceiling.
Eric did not really listen to the music, he could not; it remained entirely outside him, like some minor agitation of the air. He watched I
da and Vivaldo, who sat opposite him, their profiles turned toward the music. Ida watched with a bright, sardonic knowingness, as though the men on the stand were beating out a message she had commanded them to convey; but Vivaldo’s head was slightly lowered and he looked up at the bandstand with a wry, uncertain bravado; as though there were an incipient war going on between himself and the musicians, having to do with rank and color and authority. He and Ida sat very still, very straight, not touching— it was as though, before this altar, touch was forbidden them.
The musicians sweated on the stand, like horses, played loudly and badly, with a kind of reckless contempt, and failed, during their first number, to agree on anything. This did not, of course, affect the applause, which was loud, enthusiastic, and prolonged. Only Vivaldo made no sound. The drummer, who, from time to time, had let his eyes travel from Ida to Vivaldo— then bowed his head to the drums again— registered Vivaldo’s silence with a broad, mocking grin, and gestured to Ida.
“It’s your turn now,” he said. “Come on up here and see what you can do to civilize these devils.” And, with the merest of glances at Eric and Vivaldo, “I think you might have had enough practice by now.”
Ida looked into his eyes with an unreadable smile, which yet held some hint of the vindictive. She crushed out her cigarette, adjusted her shawl, and rose, demurely. “I’m glad you think I’m ready,” she said. “Keep your fingers crossed for me, sugar,” she said to Vivaldo, and stepped up on the stand.
She was not announced; there was merely a brief huddle with the piano-player; and then she stepped up to the mike. The piano-player began the first few bars, but the crowd did not take the hint.
“Let’s try it again,” said Ida, in a loud, clear voice.
At this, heads turned to look at her; she looked calmly down on them. The only sign of her agitation was in her hands, which were tightly, restlessly clasped before her— she was wringing her hands, but she was not crying.
Somebody said, in a loud whisper, “Dig, man, that’s the Kid’s kid sister.”
There were beads of sweat on her forehead and on her nose, and one leg moved out, trembling, moved back. The piano-player began again, she grabbed the mike like a drowning woman, and abruptly closed her eyes:
You
Made me leave my happy home.
You took my love and now you’ve gone,
Since I fell for you.
She was not a singer yet. And if she were to be judged solely on the basis of her voice, low, rough-textured, of no very great range, she never would be. Yet, she had something which made Eric look up and caused the room to fall silent; and Vivaldo stared at Ida as though he had never seen her before. What she lacked in vocal power and, at the moment, in skill, she compensated for by a quality so mysteriously and implacably egocentric that no one has ever been able to name it. This quality involves a sense of the self so profound and so powerful that it does not so much leap barriers as reduce them to atoms— while still leaving them standing, mightily, where they were; and this awful sense is private, unknowable, not to be articulated, having, literally, to do with something else; it transforms and lays waste and gives life, and kills.
She finished her first number and the applause was stunned and sporadic. She looked over at Vivaldo with a small, childish shrug. And this gesture somehow revealed to Eric how desperately one could love her, how desperately Vivaldo was in love with her. The drummer went into a down-on-the-levee-type song, which turned out to be a song Eric had never heard before:
Betty told Dupree
She wanted a diamond ring.
And Dupree said, Betty,
I’ll get you most any old thing.
“My God,” muttered Vivaldo, “she’s been working.”
His tone unconsciously implied that he had not been, and held an unconscious resentment. And this threw Eric in on himself. Neither had he been working— for a long time; he had merely been keeping his hand in. It had been because of Yves; so he had told himself; but was this true? He looked at Vivaldo’s white, passionate face and wondered if Vivaldo were now thinking that he had not been working because of Ida: who had not, however, allowed him to distract her. There she was, up on the stand, and unless all the signs were false, and no matter how hard or long the road might be, she was on her way. She had started.
Give Mama my clothes,
Give Betty my diamond ring.
Tomorrow’s Friday,
The day I got to swing.
She and the musicians were beginning to enjoy each other and to egg each other on as they bounced through this ballad of cupidity, treachery, and death; and Ida had created in the room a new atmosphere and a new excitement. Even the heat seemed less intolerable. The musicians played for her as though she were an old friend come home and their pride in her restored their pride in themselves.
The number ended and Ida stepped off the stand, wet and triumphant, the applause crashing about her ears like foam. She came to the table, looking at Vivaldo with a smile and a small, questioning frown, and, standing, took a sip of her drink. They called her back. The drummer reached down and lifted her, bodily, onto the stand, and the applause continued. Eric became aware of a shift in Vivaldo’s attention. He looked at Vivaldo’s face, which was stormier than ever, and followed his eyes. Vivaldo was looking at a short square man with curly hair and a boyish face who was standing at the end of the bar, looking up at Ida. He grinned and waved and Ida nodded and Vivaldo looked up at the stand again: with narrowed eyes and pursed lips, with an air of grim speculation.
“Your girl friend’s got something,” Eric said.
Vivaldo glanced over at him. “It runs in the family,” he said. His tone was not friendly; it was as though he suspected Eric of taunting him; and so referred, obliquely, to Rufus, with the intention of humbling Eric. Yet, in a moment he relented. “She’s going to be terrific,” he said, “and, Lord, I’m going to have to buy me a baseball bat to keep all the hungry cats away.” He grinned and looked again at the short man at the bar.
Ida stepped up to the microphone. “This song is for my brother,” she said. She hesitated and looked over at Vivaldo. “He died just a little before Thanksgiving, last year.” There was a murmur in the room. Somebody said, “What did I tell you?”— triumphantly; there was a brief spatter of applause, presumably for the dead Rufus; and the drummer bowed his head and did an oddly irreverent riff on the rim of his drum: klook-a-klook, klook-klook, klook-klook!
Ida sang:
Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand.
Her eyes were closed and the dark head on the long dark neck was thrown back. Something appeared in her face which had not been there before, a kind of passionate, triumphant rage and agony. Now, her fine, sensual, free-moving body was utterly still, as though being held in readiness for a communion more total than flesh could bear; and a strange chill came into the room, along with a strange resentment. Ida did not know how great a performer she would have to become before she could dare expose her audience, as she now did, to her private fears and pain. After all, her brother had meant nothing to them, or had never meant to them what he had meant to her. They did not wish to witness her mourning, especially as they dimly suspected that this mourning contained an accusation of themselves— an accusation which their uneasiness justified. They endured her song, therefore, but they held themselves outside it; and yet, at the same time, the very arrogance and innocence of Ida’s offering compelled their admiration.
Hear my cry, hear my call,
Take my hand, lest I fall,
Precious Lord!
The applause was odd— not quite unwilling, not quite free; wary, rather, in recognition of a force not quite to be trusted but certainly to be watched. The musicians were now both jubilant and watchful, as though Ida had abruptly become their property. The drummer adjusted her shawl around her shoulders, saying, “You been perspiring, don’t you let yourself catch cold”; and, as she started off the stand,
the piano-player rose and, ceremoniously, kissed her on the brow. The bass-player said, “Hell, let’s tell the folks her name.” He grabbed the microphone and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve been listening to Miss Ida Scott. This is her first— exposure,” and he mopped his brow, ironically. The crowd laughed. He said, “But it won’t he her last.” The applause came again, more easily this time, since the role of judge and bestower had been returned to the audience. “We have been present,” said the bass-player, “at an historic event.” This time the audience, in a paroxysm of self-congratulation, applauded, stomped, and cheered.
“Well,” said Vivaldo, taking both her hands in his, “it looks like you’re on your way.”
“Were you proud of me?” She made her eyes very big: the curve of her lips was somewhat sardonic.
“Yes,” he said, after an instant, gravely, “but, then, I’m always proud of you.”
Then she laughed and kissed him quickly on the cheek. “My darling Vivaldo. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“I’d like,” said Eric, “to add my voice to the general chorus of joy and gratitude. You were great, you really were.”
She looked at him. Her eyes were still very big and something in her regard made him feel that she disliked him. He brushed the thought away as he would have brushed away a fly. “I’m not great yet,” she said, “but I will be,” and she raised both hands and touched her earrings.
“They’re very beautiful,” he said, “your earrings.”
“Do you like them? My brother had them made for me— just before he died.”
He paused. “I knew your brother a little. I was very sorry to hear about his— his death.”
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