My Soul Looks Back

by Jessica B. Harris

  The days in St. Paul were simple and rhythmed by Baldwin’s writing schedule. There were walks up the hill into town to stop at the Café de la Place for a drink and watch the men out front play endless games of Provence’s national sport, boules. During these interludes, I learned that the game is accurately called pétanque, and it is played with boules, as the balls are called in a boulodrome, which is basically any dirt terrain flat enough to allow for the pitch to be established. It’s a simple game but can be played with the intensity of chess by the initiated. It calls for skill, accuracy, and judgment—dare I say cunning—virtues that are held dear by every Provençal peasant. Watching as the shooters attempted to place their boules closest to the cochonnet, as the target is called, I mused that it was nothing more than a game of marbles with bigger marbles and bigger boys. But I understood how it could be a major spectator sport, especially if viewed from the sunny terrace of a café while sipping a pastis or a glass of rosé de Provence.

  In the walled city, there were galleries to be visited and there were occasional excursions to a nearby town. There was the Fondation Maeght to explore as well, but in truth, La Colombe d’Or was the center of life away from chez Jimmy. Apart from the evening drinks and the occasional meal, it was the center of the life of what still essentially remained a village, albeit a village of notables and famous. The bar beckoned and the restaurant interior defined quiet luxury with its dark wood wainscoting and its walls hung with artwork acquired from the major artists of a generation.

  Nice, with its Cour Saleya market, also beckoned and offered strolling. Sam and I shared the cooking gene, so just investigating the varieties of produce, array of olives, and varieties of olive oil was inspiring. There were always more cafés to discover and time for sitting, reading, catching up on conversations, and simply savoring the lavender- and orange blossom–scented air and the beauty of the countryside that is the back country of Nice. Days were punctuated with wonderful meals of Provençal classics that used the freshest bounty from nearby markets. Baldwin’s housekeeper, Valerie, proved herself a most adept cook, preparing classic dishes from the Provençal regional repertoire, although I had not ventured professionally into that culinary domain in any real way at that time. When I did, I had sense memories of her boeuf en daube, aioli, and ratatouille to guide me.

  The week was not all resting and parties and outings. One evening, after dinner had been eaten and all was finished, Jimmy invited Bernard, Sam, and me downstairs. He’d made popcorn the old-fashioned way, with a heavy pot, oil, and shaking as the corn popped. It was a special treat to accompany his reading of the text that he’d been working on: a novel. We trooped downstairs, and I got to see the torture chamber. It was a large room with an enormous fireplace with photographs and other keepsakes organized in professorial disarray on the mantelpiece; it was furnished spartanly with a bed and a writing table and a desktop on which the typewriter sat majestically. We took up our positions in chairs, on the bed, and on the floor, and popcorn was distributed. I noticed that I was seated near Jimmy, so that he seemed to be reading directly to me. He began:

  I look at myself in the mirror. I know that I was christened Clementine, and so it would make sense if people called me Clem, or even, come to think of it, Clementine, since that’s my name: but they don’t. People call me Tish.

  The tale spilled onward, the haunting story of Tish and Fonny that would be the novel If Beale Street Could Talk. Baldwin read from the opening scene of Tish telling the incarcerated Fonny that she is pregnant with his child. He read on and on, all of the pages of the hand-typed manuscript. The evening turned into night, and night to incipient dawn, and Baldwin read on. He read the entire story, all of the harrowing tale of Fonny’s incarceration and Tish’s attempts to free him, and throughout it all Baldwin had me affixed in his laser beam gaze. With the dawn came the ending:

  Fonny is working on the wood, on the stone, whistling, smiling. And from far away, but coming nearer, the baby cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries, cries like it means to wake the dead.

  I was mesmerized when he asked what I thought; I could only reply, “Amazing, astonishing.” The answer was accepted graciously. It didn’t seem to completely satisfy, but it was all I could offer.

  Toward the end of my week, Baldwin’s house again became a flurry of activity because Toni Morrison was going to arrive and Angela Davis might be showing up a few days after that. The sleeping arrangements were rejigged, allowing me to say that I shared a bedroom with Toni Morrison. I knew her from my work as a book review editor and burgeoning feature writer at Essence magazine, where I’d later interview her.

  Jimmy made popcorn again, and we all trooped downstairs for the second time in a few days. Again Jimmy read the entire manuscript. Again the harrowing story of unjust incarceration was told. Again the evening folded into the morning as the story unwound. This time, though, Jimmy fixed the laser beam of his concentration on Morrison. At the end of the second reading, he asked the same question of Morrison that I had been unable to answer satisfactorily. What did she think? How was it? Infinitely wiser than I and trained as an editor, Morrison immediately understood the multiple levels of the question and the situation. She answered with remarks about the point of view and the handling of the female voice, agreeing that it did work. The unspoken question had been answered. The lightbulb finally dawned for me. The book was almost completed, and Baldwin was looking for comments about the accuracy of the female voice that he had selected as a vehicle for telling the tale. It was a conversation of equals, with respect for each other’s work and trust in each other’s judgment.

  I’d recognized that the story was connected with the real-life story of William Anthony “Tony” Maynard: a twentieth-century horror story that resonates equally in the twenty-first. As recounted in the New York Post of October 23, 1973, by James Wechsler, then that newspaper’s editorial director, “Maynard was a 31-year-old aspiring actor, theatrical agent, civil rights activist and friend of such figures as William Styron and James Baldwin when he was suddenly jailed in the senseless predawn killing of a marine sergeant in Greenwich Village.” The article presents the case: two previous prosecutions had resulted in hung juries, two of the five judges in the Appellate Division found “grievous prejudicial errors in the conduct of the trial that led to his conviction,” and an eyewitness questioned by the police offered a description “utterly at variance with Maynard’s.”

  Baldwin had written about it in No Name in the Street in 1972, detailing the Kafka-esque intricacies of the case. He defines Maynard as his bodyguard, chauffeur, and man Friday—a role similar to that later taken over by Bernard Hassell. Maynard was undeniably Baldwin’s friend, and the case had become a cause célèbre for Baldwin, who worked with Maynard’s sister Valerie to secure his release. No Name in the Street is his cri de coeur—his white-hot rage. The work that he had read to us in the summer of 1973 while peering into my soul was another version of the story: a fictionalized one that railed equally at the horrors confronted by Black and Puerto Rican people caught up in American justice:

  Black and Puerto Rican matrons, black and Puerto Rican girls, black and Puerto Rican boys, black and Puerto Rican men: such are the fish trapped in the net called justice.

  He’d said that in No Name in the Street. In If Beale Street Could Talk, he showed what it felt like with a different, perhaps softer spin.

  In If Beale Street Could Talk, the fictionalized story of Tony Maynard, Clementine, known as Tish, who narrates the story, is a twenty-something Black woman—my age at the time. The book is written from the point of view of that young woman who could have under other circumstances been me. Morrison understood that as well and said what I could not. If Beale Street Could Talk would be published the following year to mixed reviews—a disappointment for Baldwin, but one mitigated by Maynard’s release in the fall of 1973. I would always regard it with special respect because I knew the “secret” of how I had h
eard it from Baldwin’s mouth in the room in which it had been written . . . twice.

  I would later meet Maynard at Sam’s apartment in New York. He was tall and lean and handsome, with the kind of good looks that should set off clanging warning bells signaling trouble but never do. Sullen and very much the reluctant focus of the attention that he was given, he was fêted and celebrated by Sam and the crew. I noticed that he was wearing jewelry that I had given Sam. I wasn’t amused but had learned to keep my “bourgeois” thoughts to myself and so held my peace. Maynard proved a disappointment to Baldwin and showed no interest in remaining the focus of his savior’s ministrations.

  But in St. Paul, Tony was a fictionalized character. In those halcyon days, names mentioned and understood by all but me in the shorthand of friendship presaged folks I’d met or would later meet in Paris or in New York or learn of from other circumstances: Benny Luke, Tria French, Lucien Happersberger, Richard Marek, and more. These were names of friends and dear ones and colleagues, and I would learn their importance to Jimmy’s life and work. He also had legions of friends and admirers up and down the Mediterranean coast, but perhaps none was dearer to him than Mary Painter.

  • • •

  Mary Painter and Georges had retired from Paris to Solliès-Toucas to open a restaurant called Le Lingousto. The small town in the hills above Toulon was another side of Provence and was also home to Richard Olney, general editor of the Time/Life series of cookbooks. Paul and Julia Child had settled nearby as well at the behest of Simca, her coauthor. Something about the air of Provence seemed to draw all manner of folk to it in the early years of the twentieth century’s eighth decade. If St. Paul-de-Vence was all about work and relaxation, Solliès-Toucas was about friendship, fun, and food. Our motley band would spend an unforgettable day visiting them there.

  One morning a car was procured and we headed off to visit Georges and Mary. We threaded our way through the twisting roads among the olive and orange trees down out of the hills to the coast, then followed the ribbon of towns—Antibes, La Napoule, St. Raphaël, St. Tropez, Le Lavandou, Hyères, and on the outskirts of Toulon back up into other hills to Solliès-Toucas, the village to which they had retired. We were going for a lunch to be cooked by Georges at the newly opened restaurant. The menu was a summer version of the splendid one that I’d had earlier in Paris at Chez Garin, but it was no less memorable—this time for the company as much as for the food. For the first course, there was the Mediterranean lobster, called lingousto in Provençal, that gave the restaurant its name. I recall that it was there because an allergy precluded me from eating it, so I had another dish. There was a reprise of the sublime lamb that I had had Paris, this time seasoned with herbes de Provence, where the flavors of thyme, marjoram, lavender, and rosemary blended with the hints of the lavender that also perfumed the air. This was different from the more formal restaurant of Paris, although no less exceptional. It was a meal shared among friends, the wine was local, the conversation scintillating, and the day a restful time complete with stories spun like gossamer webs of remembrance of earlier times they’d shared together in Paris and New York.

  • • •

  My departure loomed. Sam was leaving with me, and we were to head on to Spain, but in a final farewell to St. Paul, we had a solo luncheon at La Colombe d’Or. St. Paul’s weather gods had graced us with the most splendid of Provençal days: cerulean blue sky, brilliant sunshine, and just enough breeze. Courtesy of Titine, we were seated in one of the prime spots on the terrace at the wall overlooking the valley down to the sun-dappled sea on the horizon. The hors d’oeuvres were served from the specialties devised decades earlier by Paul Roux: stuffed baby vegetables, grilled peppers in olive oil, baked Provençal tomatoes, all perfectly prepared with just the right amounts of garlic and drizzles of local olive oil. There were anchovies and eggplant, saucisson and artichokes—all of the things that meant Provence to me. For a main course there was only one choice possible for me: the daurade royale grilled over a wood fire to which Provençal herbs had been added and a garlicky aioli of cod with accompanying vegetables for Sam washed down with a bottle of angel-blush rosé de Provence. I don’t remember the dessert, but I’m sure that there was one, followed by coffee and armagnac. It had been an idyllic week with real conversation, and an acknowledgment from Sam’s best friend of my being a part of a couple. I blissfully floated back down the hill to Jimmy’s house feeling very much in love with the South of France and Sam and wishing that it didn’t have to end.

  End it did, with a ride to the Nice airport and a brief flight to Malaga in the south of Spain, where I introduced Sam to the Costa del Sol. My parents had a time-share there. If the time with Jimmy was the seal on our life as a couple, Spain was like playing house or playing honeymoon. There was great food. There were late-night dinners in Torremolinos, upstairs at Perdro’s on the main drag; the place specialized in tableside service, and the steak au poivre was a fork-tender delight. Easo’s on the Torremolinos/Marbella road offered sublime gazpacho and cinco pescados andaluz. We ate sardines grilled on skewers on the beach, where the sand was too hot to walk on. There were rounds of golf and even a hole in one that I hit. I honestly didn’t know where the ball had gone, but Sam’s glee in the shot and the ball in the cup at the end of the walk to the green were a triumph that seemed to cap our stay and make it all fairy-tale perfect. There was more gazpacho and more golf and more days spent exploring the restaurants and beaches, but delightful as they were, nothing could quite beat the allure and the delight of St. Paul-de-Vence and the specialness of having been with Jimmy chez lui—in the intimacy of his home on the periphery of the intimacy of the confidence he had for Sam.

  They were heady times indeed. Nothing could survive that white-hot intensity, and neither could our relationship. It ended not with a bang but with the ebbing of a wave that had reached its crescendo and was flowing back out to sea. We headed to other places and met other people. I matured steadily, was less tolerant of offenses and slights real or imagined, and moved on to other things. But love never really dies, and the affection that Sam and I had for each other also evolved and morphed. We saw each other at school and indeed often off campus and were still an occasional couple when I had an extra ticket to something or Sam wanted a companion. We drifted apart, coming to a fork in the road and separating paths, yet we always maintained a kinship, friendship, and a complicity about the world that we had shared for a time.

  * * *

  * * *

  Soupe au Pistou

  Any meal with James Baldwin was bound to be unforgettable, but my first meal in St. Paul-de-Vence, outside under the tall cypress trees at Jimmy’s house, is one that lives in my head, heart, and taste buds more than forty years later. The outdoor dining room centered around what I would later learn he called his welcome table. The summer day boasted the cerulean blue sky of the sort that is produced only in Provence and the air was fragrant with the heady mix of citrus, lavender, and sea that is the region’s hallmark scent. The meal was a Mediterranean classic: soupe au pistou. This soup will always mean Jimmy and Sam and that wondrous week to me.

  – Serves four to six –

  1 large leek (white and pale green parts only), scrubbed and thinly sliced

  1 celery rib, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

  1 large carrot, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

  1 garlic clove, minced

  1 large sprig of thyme

  2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

  1/2 teaspoon salt

  1/4 teaspoon pepper

  1/2 pound boiling potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces

  3/4 pound kale, coarsely chopped

  1/2 pound zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

  1/2 pound string beans, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces

  3/4 cup medium elbow pasta shells

  Cook the leek, celery, carrot, garlic, and thyme in oil in a 5- or 6-quart heavy pot with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper over medium heat, st
irring occasionally, until the vegetables brown, about 5 minutes.

  Add the potatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until they begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add 8 cups of water and bring to a boil, stirring and scraping up any brown bits. Stir in the kale, zucchini, string beans, pasta, and salt to taste. Simmer, uncovered, until the pasta is al dente and the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Discard the thyme and adjust the seasoning.

  Remove the soup from the heat, stir in half of the pistou, and adjust the seasoning to taste. Serve hot with the remaining pistou stirred in as desired.

  Pistou

  * * *

  * * *

  Makes about 2 cups

  1 small tomato

  1 cup packed basil leaves

  1/2 cup packed flat-leaf parsley leaves

  2 garlic cloves, minced

  2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

  3 ounces Gruyère cheese, coarsely grated

  Core the tomato, then purée it with the basil, parsley, and garlic in a food processor. Slowly drizzle in the oil, add the cheese, and blend well.

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  * * *

  * * *

  SOUL-FULL

  The world was changing. My world was changing. It was a time of men in Cuban-heeled boots and peacock-hued finery. It was a time of doors opening to closets and doors closing on lies, both intentional and inadvertent. It began as a time of famous clubs like Studio 54 and other venues less savory, like the Continental Baths, where Bette Midler and Barry Manilow had their starts amid the toweled gay crowd and avant-garde. I never made it to either of them, but knew many folks who were regulars at each.