The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

  Ah! The bitterness, some jiveass mothergrabber will say.

  But we know better, don’t we? The smile on your face in the white quilted coffin says so. The undertaker had a touch of genius, for the smile is nothing like your smile but the smile that was always underneath the surface smile. The smile that was in your voice and your laughter.

  The serene mad smile of one who is trapped!

  At the funeral home I heard a woman say, “Don’t look like he suffered one bit.”

  No, no, no!

  If you had lived, you would have been in Morocco now with the photographs and introductions I had given you. Florence, whom you met here, and Cadeau, the white Peke, were waiting for you. You spent four days in Tangier last year and liked it well enough to return and spend the summer there. That is, if you solved the money problem. And most of all you wanted to go to the folk festival in Marrakesh.

  And it was strange that Tuesday morning, Langston. I hit the streets, slightly stoned, talk-singing that old Billie Holiday tune, “Good Morning, Heartaches . . . Here we go again . . .”

  And there you were on the front page of The New York Times, dead.

  I hated to leave you up on St. Nicholas Avenue . . . just when I had gotten to know you.

  I hate to close this note, but I must put you out of my mind for the time being. And it is not your death that I’m mourning. It’s the horror of it all. “Ah, Man!” you would chuckle sadly.

  Poor black poet who died proper and smiling.

  Langston Hughes was always concerned about my eating habits. Frequently, he invited me to dinner, restaurants or to his Harlem brownstone. I was always a smiling liar: “I have eaten, old sport. All I want is a double vodka on the rocks.” But a few nights after his funeral, I returned to Harlem, buoyed with the memory of my black brother, the poet, who died proper and smiling. This buoyancy sunk as I walked through the streets of Harlem. It was like walking through the streets of Seoul, Korea, after the truce. Here the racial truce was a constant thing, almost as normal as the ultramarine evening sky, the tenements, the laughing voice of a woman describing the size of a rat (“a big cat without legs”), the expensive new cars, surreal against the backdrop of old decayed buildings. There were no stars, no breeze. The air was as potent as exhaust fumes. I walked around a long time that night, and the more I walked, pain and hunger increased like the folds of a fan. I went into a small clean “down home” café, ordered a double helping of barbecued spareribs, collard greens, potato salad, corn-bread. I even ate two slices of sweet-potato pie. Good vibrations engulfed the café. The motherly owner, circles of thick braids wreathing her head, a bib apron fronting a sagging bosom, ample stomach, called me Sonny. I felt very much at home, savored the warmth, brought it back downtown like a doggie bag, then lost it.

  A perfumed note from Paris.

  Dear Charles:

  I am staying in Anne T.’s flat on the Ile St. Louis. The poor thing had to go to Portugal for a holiday. So I’m alone and damned glad. Most of the Parisians are holidaying too, and I avoid the American tourists. Avoid quaint bistros where I’ll be cheated anyway. I go out only to walk Bebe. Anne’s Spanish maid is a jewel. My Costa del Sol Spanish comes in handy. I’m doing a little needlepoint, and yesterday I made a chocolate mousse. Hon, I’m simply laying low, working crossword puzzles, reading detective stories. I’ve even read The Little Prince again. I’ve gained a little weight and am almost my old self again. And you know what happened to me in the States. My goddamn family. A bunch of fucking rats! But don’t be surprised if I should suddenly turn up, unannounced.

  Take care. Bebe sends his love.

  Maggie

  P.S. I FORGIVE YOU!

  “Oh Jesus,” I moaned, letting the wheat-colored note fall to the floor. “I forgive you,” Maggie had written in caps. Maggie, it is a new season. I got up and discovered that I was out of Nembutals. Despite the succulent soul dinner, I did not have enough energy to masturbate. So I polished off a quart of Orange Rock wine, about a third of Chambray vermouth, chain-smoked, and tried not to think.

  Around midnight, I hit the streets. No heralding trumpets greeted me. No royal streets led to the House of Orange. However, Hershey’s Bowery bar became an orangerie, a smoky crimson stage where approximately thirty-five intoxicated men tried to upstage each other. Like ash-can whores, they tried to con each other and the bartender. A mangy, crippled dog sauntered in and bequeathed fleas. I ordered another wine, looked up at the mute television, which seemed to gradually rise toward the ceiling. Unlike the drinking men, the television apparently wanted to get closer to God.

  That’s when I turned, looked out the door, and saw the girl. I ran to the door and watched a black teenage girl walk down the Bowery. Walking as if it were day and the street, a pleasant, tree-lined country lane.

  I caught up with the girl and remembered where I had first seen her, playing softball in Chrystie Street Park about a week before. She played very well and commanded every male’s attention. What I’m sure most of us were admiring was not her pitcher’s left arm but her ice-cream-cone tits, the wide womanly buttocks, although she appeared to be no older than sixteen.

  “Hello,” I said. “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” the girl replied, averting her eyes.

  “You shouldn’t be out this late alone.”

  “I was over at my girlfriend’s on Houston. We were listening to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and I forgot what time it was.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Ludlow,” the girl said, sounding like an eight-year-old.

  “Do you want me to walk you home?”

  “If you want to.”

  In the beginning, I had told myself that I wanted to protect her like a brother, like a father. But when we reached Delancey Street I had my arm around her. She rested very easily in my embrace. Innocent and sweet fantasies waltzed through my mind. But the Midwestern, Methodist country boy did not applaud the waltz.

  “I don’t have to go home yet,” the girl told me, looking straight ahead.

  We crossed Delancey and walked through the park, deserted except for winos bedded on the pop-art-colored benches and a group of teenagers smoking marijuana. Their transistor gave out with the driving Jackson Five.

  Once we stopped and kissed. The girl offered her lips willingly. There was desperation in her caress. I wanted to have her in bed, all night. I wanted to wake up with her in the morning. My hotel was out of the question. But at the far end of the park, beyond the recreational building, the land sloped. Large old trees formed a canopy, blocked the light. The wide ditch was cool and dark, and we went there and made love. The early-morning hours were delicious.

  NOW I WAS MANAGING to write for The Village Voice every other week, supplementing that income with an occasional slop-jar job; washing dishes in penal delis, carrying one-hundred-pound bags of rice on my 129-pound shoulders. But I had my big toe in the door of my world again. The dusty black telephone which sat on the floor like a discarded toy and never rang except when management called bitching about the rent began ringing. There were letters, invitations to parties. I began seeing old friends again. One of the best was beautiful black Hilary, an artist-model.

  After a pushcart hot-dog lunch, we decided to go into the Cedar Tavern and have a few drinks.

  On the fourth Scotch and water, Hilary said, “You must be more social, Charles. Parties are where things happen.”

  “And don’t happen. I’m tired of assholes and freaks and phonies.”

  “Now, baby,” Hilary pleaded.

  “Shit, Hilary,” I exclaimed. “I wasted a whole weekend with those black middle-class cocksuckers on Long Island. Why? Because I was promised a job. And all they wanted to talk about was my experiences in Tangier and Mexico. Plus the hostess had ‘always wanted to write.’ Shit. Let’s have another drink.”

  Hilary giggled. “At this rate, I’ll be stoned before I get to the Art Students League.”

  “Won’t be th
e first time, babe,” I said, signaling to the waiter.

  Hilary reached over and played the piano on my left hand. We got along damned well.

  “Grit your teeth and curl your toenails,” Hilary said absently.

  “That’s right, cupcake.”

  “T. C. Moses is having a party Friday night. And he asked me to see if I could get you to come.”

  “Is he still screwing that fat blonde?”

  The waiter arrived with the drinks. Hilary’s timing was perfect: “Do you think that nigger is gonna give up all that vanilla ice cream?”

  “He might as well get it here. He sure as hell can’t get it in Greensboro, North Carolina.”

  Joshing, Hilary cleared her throat and said grandly, “Baby, I’m waiting on your answer.”

  “I don’t know.” I sighed. “You know the last good party was the one that Bob Molock gave for me. That was nice. I like Bob. He’s got balls.”

  “Are you coming?” Hilary wanted to know.

  The night of T. C. Moses Ill’s party was extremely warm. I had spent the day delivering circulars from door to door in Yonkers. Even an extremely fast Doberman pinscher could not catch fast Charlie. The weather, frustrations, the small circular check could not bring me down. I was laid back. With my cool. I even listened to a right-wing, country-western station. Relaxed, once I had bathed. I popped a couple of bennies, siphoned off the last of the vodka. It was almost 10 P.M. now, and I put on my party costume, which was nothing but a pair of clean blue jeans, a button-down drip-dry white shirt, a pair of second-hand imitation Gucci black shoes that I had bought on the Bowery for three dollars.

  Once upon a time, Manhattan’s Upper West Side was a slum except for the splendor of Central Park West, West End Avenue, and Riverside Drive. The police and underground knew it as the playground of drug addicts and flaming drag queens. But that seems a long time ago. A decade? Today it is known chiefly for Lincoln Center, expensive remodeled brownstones, and as the province of the literary and artistic Jewish Mafia. Yet another breed has staked out part of the West Side for its own. A strange black breed that was conceived in the idealistic Kennedy years, passed their youth in Johnson’s Great Society, grew to maturity, prospered in the subtle South Africa of the United States of 1971. The majority of these young black men and women are clever, extremely intelligent. The majority of these young black men and women are only superficially militant. Of course, they give money to black causes and buy the Black Panther newspaper (how can they refuse with their manner and dress on a blue-sky Saturday afternoon?). All of them agree that New York’s finest pigs are “terrible. Just terrible.” And like skimming fat from milk, they are as bourgeois as a Republican Vice President. Y’all hear me? Riot all over the goddamn city, but don’t bomb Macy’s, Gimbels, or Bloomingdale’s. Do not open a drug-addict center within five hundred miles of Tanglewood.

  Some of these young black men and women are my acquaintances. I knew and liked T. C. Moses III. I was finger-popping as I rang his doorbell.

  T. C., who went to Howard University, received his law degree from Columbia University, sported a conservative Afro. Darkskinned, he wore an English suit, white shirt, and dark tie. Smiling warmly, he shifted one of his sixteen pipes from his right to his left hand.

  “Charlie. My main man. We’ve been expecting you.”

  “Sorry I’m late.” I smiled, hoping it was real.

  Just then, Julie, the fat blonde in something long, flowing, and purple, squealed. “Angel, baby,” she cried and gave me a solid hug, about a dozen wet, little kisses. She smelled of gin and perfume.

  We went into the white-walled living room with its highly polished floor, garden of green plants, paintings, and drawings by black artists. As far as the eye could see, fake imported African artifacts took possession of walls, floor, tables. The most imposing had their own lucite pedestals (T. C. went to Africa last year and forced a protesting Julie to remain in Paris).

  The lights were low, people milled about like museumgoers. Aretha Franklin was on the stereo, and I knew it was party time. Time for most of them to let their hair down about an inch. Earlier the music would have been a little Bach or a Mozart fanfare, and the talk would have been heavy: the fate of mankind, crime in the street, and that man in the White House and how are you, my dear, and Sybil is in the country for the weekend. “What you drinking, sport?” T. C. asked.

  “Double vodka on the rocks.”

  “Got it.”

  “Look who is running, running.” Julie giggled.

  Who else could it possibly be, dressed in silver from head to foot. Hilary. She grabbed me, and we went off to a corner.

  “Cupcake. Take it easy.”

  “Give me a kiss,” Hilary said in a pouting little girl’s voice. “Party’s a drag. Let’s go somewhere and fuck.”

  “Be sweet,” I warned.

  “Be tweet,” T. C. repeated. “Hilary, I want Charles to meet Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt Robinson.”

  “All right,” Hilary was suddenly serious. “I’ll be goody-good if you get me another Scotch, love.”

  And off we went to meet Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt Robinson. Mr. and Mrs. Robinson were in their early thirties and stood against the curtainless picture window that overlooked the Hudson River. They were an attractive couple and seemed slightly uncomfortable. But we managed to make smooth small talk. I found them pleasant. They had heard of me and were properly thrilled. Neither of them had read my two books.

  “Darling,” Hilary cooed. “Charles is looking for a job, and I know you have connections with that urban youth thing . . .”

  “I’ll give Mr. Wright . . . Charles, my card.” Mr. Robinson beamed, looking directly down into Hilary’s Mount Rushmore bosom. Mrs. Robinson looked first at Hilary, then back at Mr. Robinson.

  Hilary was wound up now. She squeezed my moist hand. “Charles is so talented. And we wouldn’t want him to have to wash dishes forever, would we?”

  I wanted to talk and comfort the attractive couple, Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt Robinson. But all I could say was, “Hilary’s stoned, and it was nice meeting you. Excuse us please.” Escorting Hilary toward the bar, I teased, “Oh, you bitch. You screwed that deal.”

  “Fuck’m. Fuck’m. Phony shitheads.”

  “If I don’t get a drink,” I chuckled, “this new mass department-store culture will smother me.”

  Before we could reach the bar, a black voice commanded, “Charles Wright!”

  “Oh, Charles,” Hilary said. “It’s A. X. and his gentleman friend, the poet.” A. X.’s court consisted of two white men and one serious, plain young woman who looked as if she was a graduate of an expensive avant-garde girl’s college and might at one time have considered joining the Peace Corps. A. X.’s poet was Afroed, bearded, serious, wore a rumpled suit and tie. He was searching. “Trying to get the feel, baby”—for a proper African name. Africa was where it was at. Poetry was where he was at.

  “But is it art?” I wanted to know. “And why do the majority of black poets sound alike. I’m not talking about the kids from the street.”

  “But there’s a war going on. We’re at it with whitey,” the poet said dramatically.

  I looked at A. X. He nodded gravely. Was he thinking of his Irish doorman, who said, “Good evening, Mr. Coombs”?

  “I wanna dance.” Hilary pouted. “I wanna dance with my dress up over my head.”

  “Hilary,” A. X. said, “there are ladies present. You are not in the Village.”

  “And, my dear, you are not in the subway john on your knees.”

  “Hilary,” I exclaimed, pulling her away.

  “Let’s have a drink and drown all the schmuck faces. Am I really naughty?”

  “Never,” I said, bestowing a prize kiss on her unlined forehead.

  A week later, a Monday, following the Newark riot, I was delivering circulars door to door in the Bronx. Now a good circular man is aware of dogs. Therefore, I stuck the supermarket throwaway in the iron gate, which was open.
A healthy young dog came running from the side garden with his teeth bared. I managed to grab the gate; the dog, hunched like a quarterback, tried to chew my left foot through the fence.

  “Don’t kick him,” a woman screamed. “This ain’t Newark.”

  In the voice of a serene, opium-smoking saint, I replied, “I was not trying to kick your dog, madam. I was merely trying to close the gate. I didn’t want him to bite my foot.”

  The fury had left the woman. “Oh, he won’t bite you. He just don’t like mailmen.” My country ’tis of thee. Sweet land of old prejudices and new-old hates! A week before, a black co-worker and I had worked very hard to enjoy a long break. It was a very hot day and we were very thirsty. A neighborhood park was directly across the street. My man decided to go over and drink from the fountain. The scene didn’t look kosher to me. Like some rare, two-legged bloodhound, I can scent a cracker neighborhood before you can snap your fingers.

  There were teenagers in the park with that vibrant end-of-school-term air. I did not join my man at the drinking fountain. He returned, complaining, “They don’t want you to even drink water. ‘What is this neighborhood coming to?’ one of them chicks said.”

  Naturally, I did not brood over what might happen to her neighborhood—a neighborhood where the majority of the people do not even read The Reader’s Digest. Their mentality ran the gamut from the Daily News to the National Enquirer. The small old houses are kept in good condition. The lawns, the size of twin bed sheets, are green and mown. There are birdbaths, statues of the Virgin Mary, pink plastic flamingos, reindeer, climbing roses, interspersed with plastic turquoise roses (the famed Burpee flower growers would not be pleased). Many of the mothers look hard and tired and have voices like seasoned soldiers. This is hardly my idea of a neighborhood that I’d want to move into. My man, born in Harlem, wants to die there.