What’s unusual about the three women is that they all have blue eyes. The women in other wall paintings have brown eyes, and in the three-quarter rather than full-bodied studies they have pronounced, lusciously thick lips; the lips of the blue-eyed babes cannot be precisely defined. It’s as though Lord Carnavon, James Breasted, Caton-Thompson, Champollion, Budge and whoever else was messing around there thought that a bit of the old Anglo-Saxon blue was needed, and slipped in to touch up the eyes.
Or maybe the mixed-bloods of the New Kingdom, just coming to prominence, were still unusual enough in certain respects (blue eyes) to be painted.
I affixed our sign so that it neatly covered the museum’s legend, and started out. The guard had circled round and was at the exit, humming and clicking softly, pretending not to notice me. But as I passed him, still feeling a slight dread that he might be a traitor, he broke off his humming and clicking and said, almost without moving his lips, “Tutankhamen is coming.” I let some cards fall out of my hand to the floor.
Out then. I slogged through the Park, though by now all the papers carried stories at least once a week of someone being mugged or murdered there. But it was still daylight and I took refuge in the belief that it was not my destiny to be ended in such an ignominious fashion. Anyway, suddenly I had other concerns. The book salesmen. Jock’s look. Gullian’s attempt not to look any special way. Literary death was not all that far away.
The silence prevailed, naggingly, and it would have been ominous had I not expected it. I went off to some nearby campuses to do some readings from The Pushkin Papers and Unmarked Graves and returned to find my daughter-in-law-to-be (I supposed) almost ready to leave to meet Glenn, whose letters had come from Mombasa and, finally, Tehran, to which he traveled after leaving the tanker at Kharg Island. (He mentioned that Fanon’s works had been translated into Farsi and were being read everywhere.)
We gathered all the latest photographs and gave them to Maija for Glenn and Alejo and then, quickly, day pounding down upon day, it was time to drive her to the airport with her Arab, French and Spanish dictionaries, her hair freshly done, and her sleek travel bag, stickered and tagged from previous trips, hung over her shoulder.
A few days later, close to the end of October, Maxine called. “We have to have lunch.” Her tone was brusque, without any of the small talk or the stroking that agents often apply to the egos of their clients. Of course, something was going on with TCFP.
“Pushkin,” she said, “is in trouble.”
We were in the Plaza. It occurred to me that it might be my last time there. “Whaddya mean?” I wanted the numbers, the complete briefing.
“That was a beaut you ran off at the conference. Maureen told me all about it. It’s all over town, how you cut your own throat. You think those guys are gonna go out and push that book now?”
“Well, shit, Maxine, they never really did push for the others, did they?”
She ignored that. “There are things that you simply cannot say, sweetie. But, anyway, we know people in this town, so let’s try to make that work.”
“Like how?”
“Let’s get a typescript to Paul Cummings—”
“We’re out of touch.” I demolished the last of my lamb chops. She watched me chew it.
“Listen, Cate. I can get in touch with anyone. You want to do it?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “Remember, you’re also under contract for Graves, but unless we rescue Pushkin from the oblivion to which it’s surely headed, Graves’ll go down the drain even faster—if TCFP even decides to go ahead with it.” She sat back, small triumphs dancing in her eyes. “You remember I did tell you that things simply aren’t the way they used to be.”
“No,” I said. “Not Paul.” I looked out at the Park. Funny. He lived on one side of it and I lived on the other. That hadn’t changed.
Her voice was carefully level. “No?”
“No.”
“A quote from Paul might open the way for lots of others, not to mention the reviewers. TCFP couldn’t afford to ignore a groundswell.”
I sighed and said again, “No. I don’t think so, Maxine.” Certainly not. No more save me, white folks; it had to end, this sad, sad volleyball game. Who but white folks, on the other hand, had kept me afloat? Was it now really very cool to refuse the lifesaver?
“Sweetie,” she said. Her voice carried a warning. “Pride goeth before the you know. Why do you have the hatchet out?”
“There’s no hatchet.”
“But you behave as though you’d be hurting him instead of him helping you.” She curled her tongue over her lips after she swallowed the last of her pêche Melba.
Hurting him. Hurting him. But yes of course that was it. He’d love to do it. He’d do it for me (even though lately it was being said that he no longer gave quotes) because I was in his ball game, in his ball park, into which I’d strolled at the wrong time. But it was time to cut off the nose to etc., etc. It was time.
“Another friend of yours,” Maxine said, seeming to hide her face behind the cup of coffee she was drinking, “Roye Yearing, remember him?”
It was true I had not heard from him since our panel of readings. I assumed that he was, as always, working on something that would soon be coming out to good reviews but would make him very little money. He was, after all, a “serious” writer and being serious was somehow equated with being retarded.
“Of course,” I said. “What about him?”
“He’s down in the Bowery.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what you think it’s supposed to mean, and he’s not doing research.”
Ah, no, I thought. But she was threatening me with a similar fate, and I laughed. The more puzzled her expression became, the more I laughed.
“I’m sure he doesn’t think it’s so funny.” She leaned toward me. “Look what happened to Ike, too—zzzzip!” She pointed her thumb toward the floor. “And Amos, he’s not such a hotshot anymore, either, is he? And now Roye. What do—”
“No,” I said again. “Let’s go.”
She touched my arm. “Right now I know that Jock and Maureen are contemplating a print order of no more than thirty-five hundred copies of your book. How’s that strike you? Advertising budget? Hah! Unless everybody loves it, zilch, and how can they love it if it isn’t available, and how can it be available if we don’t hustle the goddamn thing?”
“Uh-uh.”
She studied my face. “I have to tell you, Cate, that I’m in only until Graves is published.”
“Dropping me?”
“I’m dropping all of you. I’ve got my other career now, and I’m going to make some bucks, big bucks, lotsa money, instead of dealing with you—artists—for a lousy ten percent.”
“’S’all right,” I said. “It will have been a long time.”
She was standing now, gathering things. “Yes,” she said. “A long time. It’s all changed, Cate.”
“I suppose it always does.”
We stopped outside. “What’re you going to do this afternoon?” she asked.
“Sulk, I guess.” Something made me ask. “You want to sulk with me or something?”
She took a deep breath. “Walk a little way.”
We started walking. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think you really meant it. Bored, maybe? You don’t really want to do it with a forty-eight-year-old sex object, do you?”
I laughed. “No, I guess I don’t, though there’s nothing wrong with the sex object.”
She grinned. Instantly, an indefinably superfeminine motion was added to her stride. “You know,” Maxine said, “Paul and I are friends. Good friends. Even before they broke up. He’d do it, give you the quote.”
“No.”
She had slipped on sunglasses. She stopped. “Okay, Cate. I’ll call. You take care.” And she disappeared through the crowds on slender, taut, black-stockinged legs.
Dear Dad and Allis and Mack:
How
lucky a man you are to have three wonderful sons, three!
We have met Alejo. We adore Alejo. Forgive the delay in writing this, but we have been on a romp of getting to know each other. He looks like you. He cried when we met; he cried when he read your letter. He introduces me as his hermano and Maija as his hermana. Just like that. I can’t tell you everything in this letter. There’s just too much, too many emotions, all good.
We’ve been all over Spain with him and his girl, Dolores. She’s a dancer. Fiery, as they say. The new democracy, Alejo says, is not very different from the last stages of the Franco times. We’ve been to Sitges and found the house where you lived with his mother. She’s in Fernando Po.
We’ve also been to Paris.
Alejo is a good friend of Iris Joplin Stapleton. She’s got a club in the Ramblas and sings a couple of sets a night. I know she’s been around a while, but, boy, does she look good. Said she was thinking about packing it in and returning home, too. We just missed her niece, the daughter of Ralph Joplin, the playwright. Iris said the niece had studied with you. Do you remember her?
Listen. It’s all all right. Alejo wants to see you and plans to come to New York as soon as he can. He’s working on another collection now. He finds it astoundingly significant that we’re all writers. He hopes Mack will be, too. Did I say “we’re all writers”? I confess to having changed my mind. Had I ever changed it in the first place? But you knew, didn’t you? Oh! I got the galleys back in good time—air mail, too. Were you as restless with your first as I am? Impatient for the damn thing to come out even when you know the reception it’s likely to get? Deep down don’t you still feel that way, or am I just experiencing the first-book syndrome?
Hey, what happens if you get caught putting up those signs and cards? I mean, suppose one of the brothers isn’t in on the plot?
More later. Listen, when you visit the prison, don’t let them keep you there, okay? Lots of love from all of us. (We do wish you were here.)
Glenn
10
The prison walls, buildings and fences pierced the snow, shining grayly in reflected light as if they were objects too big and too hot for any precipitation to stick upon. I parked in the space marked for visitors and looked up at the wall that had cast its shadow over me. I climbed out of the car and walked toward the floodlighted gate. A series of hums and clicks commenced. A small door within the gate itself opened, and a guard—corrections officer—a stocky black man with a weary air, let me in without question and pointed to still another door, another guard. To the second guard, also black, I gave my name because he asked for it. He looked it up on a battered clipboard, whistling softly a tune I did not recognize.
“Gonna talk about books and things, huh, Brother Douglass?” He smiled a sassy bright smile; his mustache flared out above his lips.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
He cradled the clipboard on his hip like a quarterback on a bootleg play, and we moved into the prison, the guard opening this door and locking it and opening that door and locking it, until we were inside a long, gray hall that was stifling and hot. It reminded me of places I’d dreamed of racing through with nightmares at my heels.
“We got some heavy brothers in here. Don’t let ’em eat you up, hear?” He chortled deep down in his chest. “Warden Kelley’s waiting for you. C’mon.”
We continued through the halls, and guards, all black, now began to materialize at doors, unlocking and locking them without comment. It was like moving down into the belly of some vast, quite unconcerned being. I wasn’t sorry that I had finally accepted the invitation of the librarian, Miss Dobbs, to spend a few hours with the inmates, but I wasn’t sure either why I’d come. To preach down these walls? These bars and endless, thick doors? What could one do in a place like this? Was one to do anything? If not, why did one come?
Through film, people learned that the jails once were filled with white men in the images of James Cagney, Eduardo Cianelli, Edward G. Robinson, George Raft, Paul Muni. They made no films then or later of the Scottsboro Boys, the Dade County Four, the Wilmington Ten, the San Quentin Six, nor even of the Chitlin Three or the Porkchop Two, nor of Paul Crump. Forget the Genuine Bad Nigger.
Quite suddenly it seemed that all the prisons were filled with black and brown people, and so came the prison programs, the going into and the coming out of places like these, some of us seeking for a thing we could not know, others out of that do-gooding superguilt trip, some because it extended their knowledge and still others because they were paid.
The warden was a big man who walked on the balls of his feet as though he’d often worn high-heeled shoes. His manner was soft, his hands smooth. His face was pink and heart-shaped. He moved with a dainty grace for a man so large, and his hair was a mass of gray curls. He reminded me of the man old Harlem residents still spoke of, Legs Diamond’s hit man, a huge faggot who wore lipstick and powder and danced closely with his lovers, his eyes closed, on speakeasy floors. No one laughed at him; they didn’t even dare look in his direction.
“Good of you to come, Mr. Douglass. The men’ve wanted to talk to you for some time now, Miss Dobbs tells me. Coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
“Purcell,” he said to the guard who’d brought me, “get the men settled.” As the guard left, the warden called, “Harvey.” A young inmate, clean-shaven, his face prettier than a man’s ought to be, his prison jeans and shirt tailored to his body, entered the room through a side door.
“Coffee, Harvey.” To me the warden said, “Cream, sugar?”
“The works.”
Harvey vanished.
Warden Kelley, bulging out of his chair, tapped his fingers on his desk. Under the smell of paint, food, rust, sweat, shit and Harvey’s cologne was the smell of urine; it was needle-sharp, as though men were pissing their pants with fear. The radiators hissed and banged softly, and in the halls outside there were voices, cautious, muted. I thought of my sons thousands of miles away and the one at home who could not understand why I would want to visit a prison. I wondered how many times in my life I had come close to being in a place like this.
“I haven’t read any of your books,” the warden said. I was always meeting people who hadn’t read any of my books. “But I’m told that the men have, and like them. They’ll be glad you’ve come.”
Harvey returned with the coffee. Now I wondered if the warden too was thinking how come I hadn’t wound up in his care.
“How long’s the session?” I asked.
“A couple of hours. Play it by ear.”
He swallowed his coffee and looked at the door through which Harvey had gone again. “And you teach at the university,” he said.
“Yes.”
“How nice.” He swallowed again and glanced at his watch. He smiled at the knock at the door. He set down his cup. “That’ll be Purcell.” He extended his hand. “Good luck, Mr. Douglass.” He took three great strides to the door and opened it. Purcell stood there. “Ready,” he said.
I plodded beside Purcell, now sweating with the heat. The smells were stronger. When at last we entered the room they called the library, I was relieved. There were books on the shelves, maps on the walls, a catalogue stand, and here the solid, comfortable smell of aging paper and cloth.
The inmates were sitting, chairs drawn in a half-circle. A heavy, gray-haired woman introduced herself as Miss Dobbs. She took my hand and led me before the group. I felt that I was on trial and they were my jury.
“He’s here,” she said. “Cato Caldwell Douglass.”
“Hear, hear!”
“Raht on!”
“Yeah!”
“Aw raht!”
Purcell eased into a corner, sat down and promptly started yawning. Miss Dobbs continued the introduction while I studied the group of about thirty, only three of whom were white. Five were Hispanics and the rest black. And they were studying me, in much the same way I’d observed students studying me in the classroom.
In anothe
r time the impulses that sent them on the ventures that had landed them here instead might have placed them in the midst of the exploration and colonization of Australia, of Sierra Leone, of Bermuda, Georgia. They might have sailed the seas, beating up on natives from one end of the globe to the other; they might have found Melendi, Goa, destroyed Montezuma. But those worlds were gone now.
I had had occasion, like all good marines, to have done a hitch in a USMC brig out in the islands. I’d disobeyed a white sergeant’s order, and the penalty after the court-martial was five days piss and punk. There were two black Seabees there. They had killed a commanding officer who fled a Japanese counterattack somewhere in New Guinea. They were awaiting transport home—that is, to a naval jail in the States.
One of the Seabees was tall and the other short. They wore leg irons and they had learned to adjust, each to the other’s stride. They walked as one misshapen being—a shuffle, slight hop and a stride, their chains clanking, clinking and clicking. You could hear them coming and going. They ate together, slept together, shit and pissed together. They were kids (and though, so was I, they remain fixed at a hard nineteen, clanking through my memory). How careful they were of each other, not to pull or jerk, so that the chains didn’t scrape or hurt when they moved. Lovers, husbands and wives, it seemed to me, are never as considerate of each other. And now, looking at the inmates, I wondered if those two kids were still serving time. I’d not thought of them in years, had not even known their names. We’d called each other “Mate.”
I began to talk. At first they listened, their faces expressionless, and then that choral mask slipped away and revealed that exaggerated politeness of people who possess both a wealth of time and experience, the range of which you could not begin to imagine. And this soon passed, meandered, actually, into the bullshit, fragile tenderness a veteran on the line might fleetingly feel for a replacement who has just come up.
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