'Membering

by Clarke, Austin;

  It felt as if I were applying for a job advertised in a Toronto firm, where all the employers and employees were white. I gave up hope. I decided to spend the remaining time visiting Greenwich Village bars, sitting in the same seat Dylan Thomas kept warm before his historic night, breaking all records for the number of whiskeys drunk on this single seat, in that single night, and reading The Village Voice, and pausing to drag my feet in the three-inch-thick husks of peanuts on the floor, making a carpet; and dream of becoming a poet; and checking out Miles Davis, and John Coltrane, and Count Basie, and Thelonious Monk, and Charles Mingus, and Paul Chambers, and Cannonball Adderley … and hanging out at the Apollo Theater, back in Harlem.

  But I was tired of Harlem. Harlem was too intense in its gestures of offering what it had to offer. The food was too rich. The watching of men and women on the street corner was too intense. It was not a diversion. It had never been a diversion. The soapbox speakers were proclaiming doom. The fire next time came through Baldwin’s nostrils like a prehistoric monster breathing fire. Harlem was preparing a twentieth exodus back to Africa. All this feeling was like a too-rich curry, with chicken and basmati rice.

  The two Yeargans sons were getting dressed to visit Basin Street, to hear Jimmy Witherspoon. I had never had too much love and appreciation for the blues. But I was keen to accompany them. As we were deciding on the time, the telephone rang.

  “It’s for you,” the older son said. He was smoking. Taking puffs, closing his eyes, coughing a little, taking deep breaths, and when he opened his eyes, they were red. He talked as if he was catching his breath. “It’s for you.”

  I took the telephone. I did not know anyone living in New York. I was not expecting a call from home.

  “Are you Mr. Clarke?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hear you’re looking for Mr. Malcolm.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I became nationalistic. I became Canadian. I thought I would use the pronoun “we.”

  “We at the CBC in Canada, want to portray Mr. Malcolm X, impartially; and we will publish everything Mr. Malcolm X says in the interview …”

  “We’ll call you tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock,” said the man on the telephone.

  It was a deep voice. It was a sure voice. It was an intelligent voice.

  When I related the conversation to my hosts, there was general excitement in the large brownstone mansion. Even Mrs. Yeargans, whom I had glimpsed once, during the few days I lived in her house, came downstairs, and joined in the merriment.

  ”Congratulations, Austin!” she said, and went back upstairs.

  “Let’s have some shit, man!” the elder son said. And he offered what was in his tobacco pouch.

  “I’ll stick to Cutty Sark,” I told him. I took my tobacco pouch from my pocket, and shook it, and got ready to stuff my Peterson of Dublin pipe. The Peterson was the same model that Sherlock Holmes and Harry J. Boyle used. My hosts, all three of them now, father and two sons, were disappointed by my refusal to be “communal,” and urged me to “try some, this is some heavy shit, brother. From Latin America!” But I declined. I repeated that I got my kicks from Cutty Sark Scotch and Irish tobacco.

  We are ready now. Friday night, out on the town! The eagle is flying, tonight, Jack! And the four of us drive in Jimmy’s late-model Porsche with a stick shift, and zoom downtown to Basin Street.

  My briar is going like a well-attended fire. And the three brothers in the cars are inhaling deeply and noisily. And saying, “Yeah,” when no question requiring an affirmative reply is posed. “Yeah! Yeah, man!” Coltrane is in the tape player, and the automobile is filled with the fragrance of Youth Dew, which we all wear, because we have read it in a magazine that John Coltrane wears Youth Dew, that every great black musician wears Youth Dew. Somebody said, “Yeah, man!” And adds, “Because he’s trying to kill the smell of this shit. Grass!”

  We are going to check out Jimmy Witherspoon, at Basin Street.

  “Ever’thing’s Gonna Be Alright!” “I’m a Man!” And we become weakened by the power of his music, and at the same time, enervated, and we realize that he is talking directly to us; and I am in his thrall, but I feel like the little boy, facing Mother Horn at the Calvary Baptist Church, nothing more, nothing less than a storefront, with the question, “Whose little boy are you?”; and I have no answer, just as that other little boy had no answer.

  Jimmy Witherspoon becomes separated from his sweating face. We are in a congregation, musician and audience, clapping, shouting, rejoicing. There is a dismemberment of face from torso. Suddenly, the face is on a vinyl disc. It is revolving at thirty-three and one-third rpm. The shouting continues. The rejoicing. Tambourines are beating against thick, sweaty palms that have a lighter complexion from the back of the same hand, and the palms are tough leather, scarred and calloused; and hardened by manual labour in the winter. And my head is spinning, too.

  Punctually at nine o’clock the next morning, the telephone rings. We are already up. Going back over the drama and the humour of the previous night. And the telephone is ringing. It does not interrupt our teasing. And no attempt is being made, by anyone else in the brownstone, to answer it. It seems as if they all know that it is for me. So, I go to the telephone.

  “This is Malcolm X.”

  It is the same voice as last night’s caller.

  The shock, the punctuality of the call, the sound of the voice, almost cause me to drop the telephone. But it is the punctuality of the call, something I would get to know without falter. It almost causes me to drop the telephone. Although I am expecting the call, when it comes, it still comes as a shock.

  I must have somehow impressed the voice of the previous night, that we — Canada and I — are not out to paint him in the demoniacal smear of a man who wants “separation from the rest of America,” who hates white people; and calls them “devils.” A man who with these precepts, comes to be known as the most powerful black man in America, representing the largest number of followers. And therefore, the most dangerous man in America.

  It is the same voice that had called the night before. But this Saturday morning, the voice is indulging in nuance, and in linguistic trickery.

  I thank him for calling. And for being punctual. Punctuality is part of the training prescribed by the Nation of Islam for its followers, particularly the Fruit of Islam, the paramilitary wing of the Nation.

  “Can you come up to Harlem?” he asks.

  I catch the nuance. I catch the stress placed upon “you.”

  I get my first taste of his ability to taunt, to confound, to humour me; and to be satirical, all in the same breath. I know I am going to be face to face with an intelligent man. A religious man. But a man of the world. And a very busy man.

  I immediately remember I am bilingual. So I launch into my Harlem vernacular.

  I had been picking up this Harlem speech; imitating it; rehearsing it to myself. I had been learning its comedic characteristic; and its dramatic and racial seriousness. Its pace. And its numerous linguistic meanings.

  “I can give you ten minutes, sir,” he says.

  I would have accepted five!

  “Can you meet me at the Muslim Restaurant?” he asks. And he repeats his nuance. “Can you come up to Harlem?”

  He places the stress on the word “you.”

  I am not really bilingual: My Harlem speech he cannot follow. But I assure him, in my best black idiom, with judicious numbers of “Yeah,” and “man”; and end with the egotistic saying, conscious of the humour embedded into it, “I’m cool.”

  He was apparently impressed. He was going downtown to meet with the editorial and photographic staff of Life magazine, to discuss the feature article they had done of his Hajj to Mecca. Malcolm had broken with the Muslims by this time. Some prefer to say that he was expelled from the Muslims. He had formed his own organization, more broadly based, and because of his experience in Mecca, he was no longer advocating the separation o
f the races. White people were no longer “those blue-eyed devils.”

  I was relieved when he chose to meet me downtown instead. I suggested the CBC studio in the Rockefeller building. I had become anxious about operating the Nagra tape recorder. Suppose I touched the wrong switch and something went wrong?

  At the CBC studio, there were technicians, professionals, who could record the interview without a blemish of its levels. Also, they would relieve me of having to carry the heavy Nagra from the subway stop in Harlem to the Muslim Restaurant. But more than this, I knew that if I could get him in a studio, it would be more difficult for him to escape after ten minutes, even though he had promised me only ten. I could be devious and expand it to fifteen …

  “Ten o’clock, then. Monday morning. In the CBC studios in the Rockefeller building.”

  “Ten minutes, sir,” Malcolm reminded me.

  I assured him that I had taken his condition seriously.

  Apart from his obsession with punctuality, his politeness in the way he addressed me, these were the two virtues of Malcolm X’s that remain indelible.

  He addressed me as “sir” throughout the interview.

  Later, when I got to know him better, and could regard him as a friend, he still continued to address me as “sir.”

  The CBC studio in Rockefeller building is on a very high floor, above Sixth Avenue. It is a small studio. It is the size of the one used by Peter Gzowski for CBC Morningside. Apart from Ms. Dorothy McCallum, there were two technicians, a secretary, a receptionist, and perhaps one or two more persons. Ms. McCallum functioned as manager, and also producer. I reported to her that I would like a very good technician to record a five-minute interview with Malcolm X. At the mention of his name, she fell silent. Regaining a fraction of her former composure, she said, “That would be me. I’ll be your technician.”

  I watched her line up the large reel of audiotape, large enough to hold a five-hour sermon. I watched her test the levels. I watched her place an extra tape on a second giant tape machine. “Just in case,” she said. And then she left.

  I went to the receptionist and told her that I was expecting Malcolm X, and that … she had already started to breathe more heavily. She flicked her eyes shut; and then opened them; and then nodded her head … and then she answered the incoming calls.

  I went into the studio, and checked that everything was in order, although I did not know what to do, or what to look for, to check that everything was in order. The clock on the wall in the studio where I would be conducting the interview, said five past ten. I walked into the control room where Ms. McCallum would sit, facing me, to give me instructions, in sign language: raise my voice; sit closer to the microphone; and the sign that I had one minute more. Thirty seconds … ten … five … four, three, one … NONE!

  One minute in radio time, or one minute in television time, in an interview in a studio, is a very long time, particularly when you have nothing sensible to say, or to ask. But I did not fear this kind of constriction. I knew my opening statement. And I knew my opening question. And I knew what I would say to introduce Malcolm X. I had learned them by heart. My short, curtailed life as an actor, in television drama, when television drama was “live,” had served me in good stead.

  Seven past ten.

  I would begin by asking him what was his reaction to the charge laid by all the American magazines and newspapers, “that you are bent upon forming a separate state within the United States of America?”

  Ten past ten.

  I had been always impressed, by the declared and reported obsession of the Nation of Islam, with punctuality. I would ask him whether these “states would be located in the South? And what would you do with all the white people living there?”

  Twelve minutes past ten.

  I was going to ask him if “the children of mixed marriages would be admitted to this black state? And would this black state, a total of six or ten Southern American states, still retain any relations with the rest of America, which presumably would be white?” This argument later proved not to have been so idealistic, when I put this question to him.

  William Faulkner said that the problem in Mississippi wasn’t racial, and Malcolm X’s proposal to establish a separate black state within America, was to him not a racial matter, either.

  Quarter past ten.

  I telephoned the receptionist. And I asked her if Malcolm X had arrived. No sir, she said, confidently, Mr. Malcolm X had not arrived. But she would keep a keen eye out for him; and buzz me the moment he arrived.

  I checked my opening statement to the interview. I must appear fluent, and assured. After all, this is my chance, my first chance, and probably my only chance to impress the executive producer of the Project Series, the famous CBC Sunday night radio programme. This is my first chance to storm the bulwark of what was at the time, an all-white CBC senior level of freelance broadcasters.

  At this time, Barbara Frum was doing two- and five-minute fillers for Bill McNeil’s midday show; and other small bits with announcer, Allan McFee. Howard Engel was editing small bits. Later he became a producer of one of the three literary programmes. It was a professional honour to have a three- or five-minute interview broadcast on CBC Radio. Many freelancers made a good living from these three- and five-minute interviews. The standard of interviews prepared by freelancers was very high; and the backbone of the CBC’s programmes was freelance broadcasters.

  Twenty-two past ten.

  I went back in my mind to the U.S. immigration officer at the border, at Niagara, and wondered whether it would not have been wiser to return to Toronto, and bury my woes in rum; what was the point of trying the border at Erie, getting through what we called in those days, the Maginot Line, coming all the way down here, to New York, hanging out in Harlem, mixing with the “elders” of Harlem, and reconciling the disappointment of James Baldwin’s flight to Greece, and nobody who told me he was in Greece knew that he was really in Greece, and not in Istanbul, which, because of what Istanbul is, is the more likely place Baldwin would have been; and coming this close …

  “He’s not coming, now,” Ms. Dorothy McCallum said. “Try the front desk again, just in case. Perhaps, he got delayed …”

  And I walked out to the receptionist, at the front desk, and glanced at the receptionist, who was chatting with another member of the staff.

  Sitting to her right was Malcolm X.

  Two stern men, in black suits, with bodies that looked as if they had just come from the gym, with heads almost shaven to a skin of their scalps, were his bodyguards, the Fruit of Islam. Sitting between the two of them, was Malcolm X. He looked as if he were waiting for his dentist to call him in for his appointment, as if he knew what was going to happen when he got inside, as if he had confidence in his dentist.

  “I am very sorry to have left you sitting here, Mr. Malcolm X, but …”

  When the receptionist realized who was sitting so close to her, her countenance showed the fear in her reaction. But there was a more intense, though understandable, aspect to her fear. She had sat this close beside “this violent man,” for about ten minutes, as she would have sat in a subway train, without knowing the danger they said she would be in.

  I cannot remember what he said was the reason for his lateness. And I do not think he said that he was late. I think his manner was so compassionate toward the receptionist that he had remained silent about her inefficiency, and permitted me to apologize profusely, saying only, “It is all right, brother. It is all right.”

  Malcolm X, the two members of the Fruit of Islam, and I, walked into the studio. The receptionist was still visibly shaken. The technician was ready. And said not a word. I do not remember whether Ms. Dorothy McCallum greeted Malcolm X. The two Fruits of Islam, satisfied that Malcolm X was in no danger, retreated back to the reception area, and sat beside the receptionist, who seemed, at the end of the interview, to have regained her composure.

  I knew that this would be the centrepiece of he
r dinner conversation, with husband, boyfriend, lover, or female roommate. “Guess who …? My God, I could hardly believe my eyes when I found out who was sitting beside me! In the chair beside my desk! Oh my God …”

  What follows is a just a portion of the sixty-three minutes in which Malcolm X spoke with me. At the time of this book’s publication, the full audio is available online:

  AC: What are the aims of the [Nation of Islam] movement, the practical aims?

  MX: The aims of the Honorable Elijah Mohammed, his reason for teaching us the religion of Islam is that it is the only thing that will solve our problems. It will clean us up morally. It will awaken us intellectually, mentally. It will show us how to stand on our own feet economically. It shows us also, it instills within us our independent desire to govern our own affairs, plot our own destiny, control our own future. One of the reasons it is so important for the black people in America to develop this kind of thinking, this kind of concept, you have to understand the religion of Islam. The religion of Islam teaches us to believe in one God, whose proper name is Allah. By believing in one God we believe in all of the prophets because we believe that there being one God, he only had one religion, and therefore every prophet who walked on this Earth had to teach the same religion. So once we accept Allah as God, the oneness of God, that means we also accept the oneness of God’s religious message. And we also accept the oneness in the mission and the objectives of all of the prophets, the oneness of their source, the common origin that all of them had.

  In accepting this, we also accept the Scriptures that were taught by all of these prophets and all of the prophets always mention that there would come a time when God himself would manifest himself in the flesh on this Earth and bring about the end of all wicked kingdoms and then establish a kingdom of his own that would be based upon freedom, justice, equality, righteousness, peace, love, and brotherhood. This would be heaven on earth.