Where are all my Lords in this hour? a small, hidden part of him whispered. I face the East and bow, I face the west and bow and the north and the south, and I hear nothing but ship’s whistles and the echoes of music. Everything else is—is nothing, empty. Except Della. And I cannot decide, Lords who trod the earth no more (if you ever did and you didn’t, because if you had I know I would have seen you): no, I cannot decide, Lords, whether I love her or hate her.
The coffee had started perking now, and Keel waited until the fragrance came. As he rose from his chair, the ship’s whistle sounded again, twice, and Keel paused to listen to it slam back and forth off the façades of Manhattan and the Palisades. I am in love with her, I believe—he thought—but it is also possible that I hate more than love, and if I hate, how may I love?
The three, final, sonorous blasts of the ship preparing to leave its berth came some fifteen minutes later, as Della walked down the street from the agency on her way to a lunch she had no appetite for. In her mind was the need to keep up her strength for the ordeal in which she was involved.
Though it had been unspoken the evening before, she knew just as Keel did that the final separation was only a short time away. She was numbed by the thought, for they had passed that period of frequent separations and had gone on to approach marriage. Now this thing was between them—and it nullified dramatically all the gains they had made. If what Keel had told her were true, and she had no reason to doubt him (though it did hurt, his talking about other women, even with a psychoanalytic preface), then what was not right between them could only stem in great part from her.
With her mind, she tried to deny the selfishness which makes up the major part of love and wondered if, for Keel’s sake, the separation might not be the best thing.
Della thought of the long year in which their love had remained unexpressed. She had been patient. She had extended idea after idea and had waited: she knew she had to, having learned that love has no meaning without the person one loves. Was it minutes before she saw David Hillary with a suit-box under his arm that she thought this?—but balanced it quickly with the idea that no genuine love is sullied by sleeping with a person one does not love. Didn’t sex then become medicinal, a soporific? These thoughts might have come, on the other hand, precisely at the moment she saw Hillary or even seconds after.
She quickened her pace, threading through the crowd until she was close enough to hail him.
CHAPTER 8
Weeks later, spring crept in like a new girl in town, not suddenly but quietly, demurely, leaving the city soft with haze in the evenings and mornings, blotting out the harsh winter and making everyone forget the blistering summer ahead. David Hillary moved surely about the coffee shop, considering a walk down to the Battery. The door to the street was open but the noises which tried to enter were stopped at the door by Eagle’s “Invitation,” which Hillary had been playing over and over on the phonograph.
When he moved, he moved quickly, without the unsteadiness he had had when he first moved into the shop. His face was more alert, his skin more vibrant. Even his eyes, dulled for so long, sometimes flashed their deep black.
A strong wind bore the fresh smell of the river into the shop and Hillary breathed deeply. I should walk down there, he thought. He had walked the distance many times, straight down Lafayette Street; there were few bars along the way, apart from a small clutter of them near City Hall and the other government buildings. Sometimes he had gone with Eagle, sometimes with Della, and a couple of times with Keel—carrying on peripatetic discussions or in silence. Saturday and Sunday mornings were the best time for there was little traffic then, human or mechanized, and pedestrians could move easily along the broad streets, between the buildings, past the empty stores to the sea where, already, round-the-island cruise ships hove in sight circling the seven miles of concrete.
Once there, Hillary would stare in fascination at the Statue of Liberty rising out of the water. Along the pier was a pack (you could count on it) of Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Campfire Girls, or Girl Scouts, all lined up to take the boat out. Once there, they would clamber over her, exclaim about her, miss the meaning of her being there and never sense, somehow, why she was there. He would watch the ferries going back and forth from Manhattan to Staten Island, their decks loaded with cars and people, hurrying across the strait like squat bugs. Sometimes great ships came up slowly with their lean-back stacks and upper decks, with waves leaping outwards from their bows as they steamed upriver to their berths. There were gulls and pigeons, of course, walking the rails or tracing flight patterns across the sky. And when the sun was out behind the glass buildings there, they blazed like the front side of a burnished shield and the reflection was like a threat.
Hillary, when he stared down over the railing at the sea, felt as if it were breathing as it kicked up little spittles of salt and debris and commanded attention. When Eagle was with him, Hillary could see he was fascinated by it and had no fear of it. Keel, on the other hand, had a wise man’s respect for its mystery; he feared it and had never learned to swim. For Della it was a thing of constancy and strength.
For Hillary it had been a vast highway to war and to love. It had returned him safely from the war, and later carried him to a honeymoon and a new life. Sometimes, when he was down there, he wondered what the Battery had looked like when he and Angela sailed for Europe. Of his three friends, though sometimes he preferred to go alone, he enjoyed the walk and the view best with Della. With her he was conscious of waiting, of wanting something lasting to happen. It hadn’t, but he felt it would.
Second he preferred Keel, who though almost always rather distant, somehow managed to convey a warmth Hillary enjoyed. Keel talked more with his eyes than he did with his lips. They sparkled when nothing else in his face moved or at times remained cold and flat though his lips smiled. Keel was getting over—he had confessed to Hillary—being a black white man.
This conversation had taken place on a four-hour trip to the Battery, when it was still not warm and not cold. The wind racing up from the sea and across the straits had made mucous stand glistening in their noses.
He lived in a society, Keel said, to which he did not belong. Yes, he had tried; you could not help it. You strove toward the only symbols that were available, but they were symbols that, regardless of what a few laws and books said, had no relationship to you, because you were Negro. On the other hand, suppose the symbols were to be successfully emulated and acquired: you still did not change color; you remained what you were. But you were required by the very nature of living to try again, and again, and still again—like climbing a hill only to stumble halfway up and tumble down. You rose and began again. Hillary remembered how Keel had gone on and on, speaking sometimes in a monotone, sometimes with great animation, all the while looking out toward the sea. Until at the very end he had said, with a sad smirk that was not a smile for it had something devil-may-care and threatening in it: “‘Cause of death: resisting reality.’”
Afterward, walking back in silence with Keel, Hillary had wondered why this man who possessed a cove of warmth, who had money from his parents—not too much but some gained in Harlem, Brooklyn, and Astoria real estate ventures—had chosen open desert for his life. Perhaps to purge himself completely, Hillary rationalized, since his Protestantism and his Mohammedanism had somehow failed. Keel never talked of what Hillary most wanted to hear: Della. He had seen, however, for the first time, how paradoxical Keel’s position was in relation to her.
Eagle had no such problem. Generally, he took the women as they came, and he spoke contemptuously of how often they came and how many, and of what he did to them and how, as if he were trying to goad Hillary into anger. Eagle drove at things with an almost impossible fury, hurtling himself as though the destruction of his mind and body would end the torment which sometimes showed in his face. He spoke leeringly of Candy, the sharp-faced, chic woman, who sometimes came to the shop to wait for Eagle. At first his talk had sickene
d Hillary until he realized that Eagle himself was the victim of a hopeless sickness, and heroin not the cause but the result of it.
Hillary paused in the kitchen and sipped a cold can of beer to take the edge off his desire for liquor. He had been, he complimented himself, doing rather well on the hooch. He thought back to his trips and at that moment—all the talks and looks, the hip talk, the idiomatic expressions, all the attitudes congealed into the realization of horror. But it was a horror he dared not believe, because it dared not exist. Swift on the heels of understanding, numbly, that the horror of Keel and Eagle was very real, as if emerging from a bad dream in which one sighs with relief at finding the experience is only fantasy, Hillary realized that he was white: thus better: thus sheltered from the coldness at the bottom of the world.
At some point, he told himself, I must speak to Della.
He placed another coin in the record player and turned to see a fat little man enter the shop.
“Hello,” the fat man said with a smile. He gestured toward the phonograph. “That’s mine,” he said. “You like it?”
“Sure,” Hillary said with a frown. “I like it fine, but that’s Eagle.”
“No, no, no,” the fat man said, laughing. He punched himself fiercely in the chest. “My company. I pressed and released that record. ‘Invitation.’”
“Oh,” Hillary said. This had to be Moe Alvin: “The Thing,” the musicians called him. Alvin had a small record plant in New Jersey and used the cheapest recording studios in New York for pressings. He hung around town, mostly on the corner near the Turf Restaurant, and waited for impoverished musicians to show up. He then offered them twenty or thirty dollars to cut sides for him. Since they almost always needed the money, the musicians did it, even though they lost all royalties and other benefits since Alvin did not give them any. It was rumored that Rod Tolen sometimes worked with him.
“Eagle sounds good on that,” Hillary grunted.
“Eagle, hah!” Alvin exclaimed. “He always sounds good.” He stopped laughing and looked carefully at Hillary. “You Prof, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure, you see, I know. I get the word. Hah, hah.” He turned off his laughter again. “You alone here?”
“Yes.”
Behind them Eagle took off on one of his inspired passages. It seemed to transfix them. Alvin shook his head slowly, as if filled with some sad knowledge. He said, “That man is worth fifty million dollars.”
They did not speak until the record was finished.
“He sign with Demetriades?” Alvin asked. He had pulled up a chair. Now he sat in it.
“He’s been gone for about three weeks.” Hillary said. “I might meet him upstate.”
Might, he thought, suddenly not listening to Alvin, whose mouth was moving, making sounds. Might? What the hell was he thinking about? It had been set up the morning the letter came from the University.
He remembered Eagle’s coming in, on his way home to sleep for a couple of hours, just as he was ripping Doerffer’s letter open.
“Whatcha got, Jimsey?”
“From the school.”
“What they say?”
“I got an appointment,” Hillary said, reading rapidly, smiling. “Looks very good.”
“Hell, let’s celebrate.” Eagle took out a bottle of scotch. “Glasses, garçon!”
Laughing, Hillary raced for the kitchen. “Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, which shall I take?” He had returned and as Eagle poured the glasses half-full he read the letter again.
“Prosit!” Eagle cried.
“Cheers!”
Eagle poured again.
“Wait, man, I don’t want to get high.”
“Today you can get high.”
“Monday,” Hillary mused. “That’s bad—hungover from the weekend. Wednesday they’re rushing to get to the weekend. Friday.” He drank again. “Hey, man, you’re in town that Friday for a concert.”
“I am?”
“Let me get the schedule.” Hillary bounded up and came back with the handwritten copy of the tour. This copy was kept for the benefit of the inner circle of musicians who wanted to know who was where and when.
“Show me around the place,” Eagle said, roaring. “Them halls of ivy.” He leaned over the table. “When am I there? When am I there?”
“If I pick Friday,” Hillary said, “you’ll be there. You get in the night before, but you don’t play till Friday night.”
“Show me around, man. Maybe meet one of them doctors of philosophy, an’ shit.”
High now, effusive with his fortune, Hillary poured out more drinks, emptying the bottle. “I’ll take you in to Doerffer and say, ‘Dr. Doerffer, meet Dr. Eagle.’ Sure, man, sure.” He slammed the table. “Now let’s see.” Drunkenly he tapped his head as if to make himself concentrate and looked at the schedule. “Hotel.…”
“To hell with the hotel,” Eagle said. “I’m never there anyway. I’ll meet you some place.”
“All right!” Hillary said, pulling himself up to the table in a business-like fashion. “You meet me at the corner of Drake and Hammond. Know where that is?”
“University section?”
“Yes, There’s a drugstore on one corner and a bar on the other; it’s called the Crimson. Can’t miss.”
“What time’s your appointment?”
“Ten. Should be through by eleven-thirty. Meet you there at eleven-thirty, okay?”
“Crazy,” Eagle said. “Let’s write it down.”
“Gimme a pencil,” Hillary said, and he wrote down the time and place for Eagle, also for himself.
“Yeah, I dig them halls of ivy,” Eagle mumbled.
“When you start the tour?”
“Tomorrow, so I’ll see you up there. Crazy?”
“Crazy.”
Crazy. What do I mean “might”? Hillary wondered.
Alvin was snorting. “On the road. Busses. Texas, Oklahoma, California, Illinois, Wisconsin. Upstate. Bad for Eagle. Drafty. Drafty? A hurricane!”
Hillary knew that “drafty” meant the suspected or real presence of discrimination.
“Sandwiches and one-night stands, blowing before some hicks who won’t even know who it is they’re listening to or how great he is. Shit.”
So why, Hillary wondered, do you rob him, you and all the rest? Then Alvin answered it for him. He said absently, “Well, Demetriades got the money”—he smiled at Hillary—“the bread, and he can afford to pay. Me, I got to be dirty-like. I got to make it someway too.” More briskly he said, “So he’s gone, huh?”
Hillary nodded again.
“Anybody around at all?” Alvin asked, cloaking desperation.
Hillary named some of the musicians who still came into the shop, who hadn’t yet made their spring and summer connections.
“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” Alvin sighed. He stood disconsolately. Out of his bitterness he asked, “How you like working for the schvartze?”
Hillary retreated to the Musicians’ Room and played the record again. Perplexed, Alvin waited for his answer.
“I like it fine,” Hillary said, returning to him.
Alvin retreated slowly toward the door. “Goodbye,” he said, stumbling over the first step. He recovered and scrambled hastily into the street and vanished. Hillary sat down. Until he had come to Sadik’s he had never felt anger such as he was now shaken with: a helpless anger, for what could you do and what could you say that would change these old, fearful concepts? Still, someone, somewhere, sometime, would have to try. And what right did he have to feel this anger? Wasn’t he unaffected by the Alvins and the Tolens and the Cranes—even the Eagles and the Keels?
It’s because I am a human being—he told himself angrily—that I feel this way.
Then why—he asked himself—do you feel shame when they ask it?
He rose quickly and went to the phonograph and slipped in coin after coin and turned up the volume. Garner: he wanted him to come hurtling from behind
a crescendo of arpeggios and chords and to slip slyly into his lag-along beat and theme. Basie: he wanted Basie, buoyed by Walter Page’s clumping bass, to swallow him up in rhythm and swirling brass, pegged neatly by a light right-handed chord. Kenton: brass, brass, brass, big, bold, loud, trying to handle themes only a combo should handle, like a Cadillac trying to go where only a Jeep should. Yards: his too-cool horn with its insinuations which nonetheless swung the whole of that big band. Duke: to come behind all of them and soothe with his shadowed strokes.…
Hillary retreated to a corner and sat down to listen.
He was listening so intently that he did not hear her come in. “Why do you look so bugged?” she asked, her own voice echoing sadness. The light was behind her, so that he did not at once recognize her face, only the voice. Della stood, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her oyster-colored raincoat. Hillary shrugged. Della removed the coat and draped it over a chair and sat down. “It was so nice today,” she explained, “that I rushed to finish early so I could walk a little.”
“How are you?” Hillary asked.
She nodded and said she felt well, but her face was drawn. They sat for a moment listening to the records. Neither this nor the walks to the Battery had been their first meeting alone. Three times, Hillary thought now, as a youngster might total up the number of times in a year his grandmother, laden with gifts and love, had visited him, they had been together, slept together. A euphemism of double-depth: they had not slept, of course, nor had they really loved. Even while within her Hillary had found her as distant as she now was across the table from him. She had reminded him of a fantasy in which a man, moving all day along a dusty road in silence, stops for a drink of water at a stream, not because he likes water but because of his health, drinks quietly and proceeds along the way in silence, forgetting in a matter of moments that he had ever paused. At such times he had wondered how it was with Keel. She had, each time, managed to make him feel deep gratitude for her kindness, so that he had really been unconcerned with the way she was. It had made him feel as he had with Catharine, a girl in Fayetteville who did it with everyone—if you looked sad enough, had pimples enough or were going with someone like Angela whom you didn’t really want to sleep with, at least not until you were married.
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