Josephine Baker

by Jean-Claude Baker

  I said I would. By now, she was off on another tack. “Look, Jean-Claude, look at all the people who worry about me.” She waved telegrams from Princess Grace, Jean-Claude Brialy, Golda Meir, the queen of Denmark.

  A report to her doctor in Paris from Ole Thage, the consultant neurologist at the hospital, said she had made “a speedy recovery from what we consider a cerebral thrombosis of the right hemisphere.” She had been admitted on July 17 “with a paresis of the left side of the face and the left arm.” She’d had trouble speaking, the left side of her face drooped, her heart rhythm was irregular.

  Ten days later, she was sent home with digoxin and an anticoagulant, and I made my first visit to the Villa Maryvonne. I had decided to leave Berlin, join Josephine in her world, since she wanted and needed me with her. I’d achieved success, money, friends, lovers of both sexes, but her idea of universal brotherhood brought me back to my fascination with Abbé Poulot, the wonderfully eccentric religious mentor of my childhood village. I was once again happy to be an altar boy, to serve a cause bigger than myself.

  I left everything behind but my new Mercedes 350SL coupe.

  The villa at Roquebrune was built on two levels, with a stone terrace that looked over the sea. Josephine called the upstairs, shared by the boys, the pigsty. Broken doors, floors covered with dirty underwear, metal lockers, bunk beds. Downstairs, the only full bathroom was across from Josephine’s bedroom. Marianne and Stellina slept in a converted pantry, and Akio had a small room that Josephine asked him to give up for me. I said nothing, but felt odd about displacing him. These kids had enough problems.

  One of which was Josephine’s flash tempers. Only recently she had expelled Moïse from the house, and he was working as a waiter in a restaurant in Monte Carlo. The older boys and I went down to see him. He had cut his hand very badly, and was just back from the hospital. I found him very nice, good-looking, apparently well-balanced. When we told Josephine that he had been in the hospital, she did not respond. It was as if he did not exist.

  Dinner was meager. Pasta with margarine—“Butter is too expensive,” she told me—and for water glasses we used empty mustard jars.

  The next day, I went out and bought meat, groceries, and colored plastic tumblers to give a little color to our lunch. Josephine, seated at the head of the table, made an announcement. “Your brother, Jean-Claude, will read you a letter from Dr. Thiroloix.” Then she handed me the letter.

  I started to read, and could barely keep from laughing. “You are murderers, and you are killing your mother,” Dr. Thiroloix had written. When I had finished, Josephine stood up and ran to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Stellina was sobbing, “Maman is going to die.” “Idiot, it’s a game,” said one of the boys. The others just looked at me as if to say, “You see the circus we live in?”

  I followed the distraught Stellina to Josephine’s room. I was stunned by the way she brought order into her home. “They don’t care about my health,” she said. Now that Moïse was gone, Jean-Claude had become her obsession. “He’s a drug addict, you have to talk to him before it’s too late.”

  I took Jean-Claude to the Café de Paris for a conversation over a couple of beers. “You know she means well,” I said. “She is difficult, and not very logical, but she loves you so much.”

  “She is mad,” he said bitterly. “You see how she traumatized Stellina. She can’t do that number with me. I never asked to be adopted, I would have been happier in an orphanage, with an ID bracelet, at least I would have known who I am. And I wouldn’t have been an object of curiosity, like we all are with her.”

  I let him talk. He spoke with the passion of an unhappy twenty-year-old. “She chose pretty babies, none of us are ugly or mutilated. At home, she plays the poor old black mother, and when we open the newspapers, here she is half naked at close to seventy, laughing, drinking champagne with actors, presidents. And always dropping a word about her children, her ideals, human dignity. If she had dignity, she would not treat us as she does. She has used us for her career; if she wants us to live like a normal family, then she must act normal too!”

  His outburst floored me. I said I understood, but that she too had endured a hard youth, and didn’t know how to show love. “Even with me, she is tough, and I take it.”

  He didn’t want to take it. “Look at her. She’s even too old to be my grandmother, how could I feel like she’s my mother?”

  I went home and told Josephine that Jean-Claude was not a drug addict, and that I found him very bright. It made her angry. “I knew you would fall under his spell, you’re against me like everyone else, why are you here?”

  There was so much that could not be fixed that I turned my energies to matters over which I might exercise some control. The house was dirty, the Italian maid was not doing a good job. Josephine said she knew it. “But she is young and pretty, and the boys sleep with her, so they don’t have to go out of the house for sex. It’s safer like that.”

  Next day, as though we’d never had this bizarre conversation, Josephine brought up the subject of one of the boys (who shall remain nameless). “You have to take X to a girl, because he is very shy, but his body is ready.”

  Flabbergasted, I stared at her. Yesterday, everyone was having sex with the maid; today, she wants X to lose his virginity to a stranger, and she doesn’t even know if he’s interested. It reminded me of farmers in my village taking a cow to the bull when they decided it was the right moment.

  “Here are two hundred francs,” she said. “Take him to Nice and find him a nice young girl.”

  I didn’t know where in Nice one went for nice young girls, but I told X the good news, and two of the other boys and Marianne resolved to come with us. We parked in front of a little hotel—it was the right part of Nice, a few girls were already walking the streets at 3 P.M.—and I got out and went to a young blonde and told her the story. “Be nice to him,” I said. Then I gave X the two hundred francs, and we all wished him luck.

  He was back five minutes later. “We went to a room,” he said, “I sat on the end of the bed, she asked me for the money, I gave it to her, then she said I could go.”

  Even Josephine laughed. Then she blamed me for having chosen the wrong girl.

  Seeing that many admirers still beat a path to her door fired Josephine’s fantasies. “Princess Grace, that filthy American,” she burst out one day. Shocked by this denunciation of her benefactor, I waited for an explanation. It was not long in coming. The prince and princess had decided Monte Carlo needed a new discothèque, the better to lure tourists, and Josephine had thought she was the logical person to front it. “Instead, the prince and princess took Régine, the fat one from Paris. So, Jean-Claude, here at the Villa Maryvonne, we will build a new Chez Joséphine, and you will manage it.

  “And we will kill Régine, the princess will be sorry she did not take me. We will have shops where guests will buy postcards of me, and dolls, and on the top floor there will be the cabaret with glass walls, the only decoration will be the splendid view over Monte Carlo, people will come from all over.”

  It never occurred to her that the villa wasn’t zoned for commercial use, or that she might be perceived as too old, too sick, too unreliable to run a club. Especially as she didn’t plan to entertain. “If I start, I am obliged to continue. Once or twice a year, I’ll do a special show, but I’m tired, that is why my United States tour will be my last one. It will bring us three million dollars.”

  “Three million?” I say. “Are you sure?”

  She’s sure. The tour, the selling—one more time—of her story. There will be a movie, and three more books, one about her career (“not my sex life”), one about the famous people she has known, and one about the war. Then, when we come home again, the new club. “You’ll be boss, but give some of your brothers little jobs, teach them.”

  She is exhilarated rather than exhausted by all this planning. She can’t stop. She is going to build a tower of thirt
een floors, a floor for each child. With two apartments on a floor. “The second apartment can be rented out for income. You will have your own floors because your sisters-in-law will cause disputes, so privacy is necessary.”

  She thinks of everything. “Come on, let’s go,” she says. “I want to show you that piece of land we are going to buy.”

  There are good days and bad days. When she wants to talk privately, she asks me to come to her bedroom. There she opens a big armoire—she travels with the key—and shows me files. “I have kept a file on each child. You will not believe it, but as they grow up, they develop the characteristics and faults of their race. Look at Akio. Like the Japanese, he’ll smile at you and knife you in the back. And Luis, have you noticed what a beautiful black boy he is? He will drive the girls crazy, and in the end, he will fall in love with one who drags him around by the nose.”

  She was like a mad scientist documenting lab specimens, a little frightening, and certainly racist.

  But other times, we were almost like an ordinary family. She would be happy with her children. One night I took everyone—including Rama—to a restaurant called The Pirate. Preparing to go was like getting ready for a big wedding, people washing in the bathroom full of Josephine’s wigs hanging like dead birds after a shooting spree, and the suffocating smell of Madame Rochas (always perfume, never cologne) seeping from the large crystal bottles with the initials J.B. in gold.

  Josephine was dressed in tight white pants, a pretty shirt, and she looked young and proud as we made our entrance into the restaurant. She was greeted by flashbulbs and applause, the orchestra struck up “J’ai Deux Amours,” and we drank champagne and danced and laughed till morning.

  Vertei Martin came from America for vacation that summer, and stayed with Margaret. When she was introduced to Josephine’s brood, she was bewildered. “I had grown up with Aunt Josephine’s records, I had seen the pictures of the Rainbow children, but meeting them was just strange. I thought, how can this white guy be my cousin?

  “I saw Aunt Margaret in a very subservient position, the children were very cruel to her, called her la bête noire. I’ll never forget her going up the hill every morning to serve those children. She used to scream about those kids, but she did it every day. It was hard to see family treat family like that.

  “But Aunt Margaret found solace in Rama: Rama was clean, Rama went to school, Rama loved her mother.”

  Aunt Margaret, says Vertel, “would tell me I couldn’t wear red. Black people were not supposed to wear red, it was too flamboyant. She was living in the past, and so was Aunt Josephine. My whole black family in France lived in the past. I told them there had been a lot of changes in the United States, but they were afraid of changes.”

  At Margaret’s house, Vertel met her grandfather again. Richard had brought his French family to Monte Carlo, hoping for a reconciliation with Josephine. He came to the Villa Maryvonne, and one of my brothers of the Rainbow Tribe ran up to the house with the news. “Maman, Uncle Richard is at the gate, he would like to see you.”

  Josephine turned to me. “But Jean-Claude, you know I can’t see him. I adopt orphans and he makes orphans.”

  I’m not proud of myself, I could have fought with her, but I didn’t. Because Richard had many children by many women, she, the queen, was refusing to receive him, and I was the messenger who delivered the bad word. “Sorry, dear Richard,” I said, “Maman loves you, but she is too busy now.” He understood. More than I wanted him to.

  Among the people Josephine did not turn away from her door during that August was the seventy-eight-year-old Michel Simon. The French actor and his German lady friend paid a call, and Josephine received them in bed. She asked Akio and me to bring chairs for her guests and then go away. Intrigued, we listened at the door, and were rewarded for our nastiness. Turning to the German lady, Michel said, “Tell Josephine I still get a hard-on, tell her—”

  And Josephine whispered, “Mais out, Michel, I have heard.” It was wonderful. Forty-eight years had passed since their first encounter—Michel was never a handsome man, he and Josephine had been called Beauty and the Beast—but their youth still burned in them.

  Now Josephine accepted an invitation to go to Jerusalem for the state of Israel’s twenty-fifth anniversary. I disapproved; the doctors had told her to rest. When I refused to make the trip, she was amazed. “But Jean-Claude, the whole world will be there, Pablo Casals will perform.” She took Stellina and went.

  A lot of the world—the world she valued—was there. “Four hundred and fifty international guests,” wrote Terence Smith in The New York Times, “sang ‘Hello, Golda, well hello, Golda . . .’ to Israel’s premier at a torchlit party. . . .”

  Bricktop got a wire from Josephine, HERE I AM IN THE HOLY LAND THINKING OF YOU . . . I HAVE AS USUAL WHEN I AM HERE FOUND PEACE IN MY HEART AND MIND.

  Peace was quickly dissipated when she returned to Roquebrune. One night, she gave me permission to take the oldest children to a discothèque in Monte Carlo. They loved to dance, we went in two cars, had a good time, nobody got drunk, and at 2 A.M., I decided we should leave. Marianne and one of the boys got into the family Fiat, I took Rama and the others with me. After we dropped Rama, we went home and crept into the house so we would not disturb Josephine or Stellina.

  I had just turned out my light when a fury burst through my door. Josephine was screaming, “Where is Marianne? Where is your sister?” (She always brandished the words brother and sister like weapons against us.) Now she continued to yell: “You broke my trust, get up, we are going to go find her!” She was in nightgown and bare feet.

  “Mother,” I said, “this is not good for your health—”

  “Forget my health! You are the one who is killing me!”

  She sat beside me as we took the little road behind the house to go to Margaret’s. There, Rama corroborated my story that Marianne had been right behind us. By the time we got back to the villa, Marianne was in bed.

  Josephine went to her bedroom and I to mine. Again, I was in shock. It was impossible to live here in any normal way. Next day, Josephine wrote Harry Hurford-Janes: “Marianne is still impossible, I have suggested she go to Jo Bouillon.”

  Still, we made plans for our trip to America. I was going to be the master of ceremonies, and sing in Josephine’s act, so I must have a tuxedo to match each of her dresses. “Go to Pierre Cardin,” she said, “but tell him he should give you a big discount.”

  I went to Berlin to wind up my business there. Soon I would be off to America as Josephine’s nurse, secretary, son, agent, buffer between her and the world—not to mention spokesperson for the Rainbow Tribe. My second mother and I would next meet in Paris, where she was to have costume fittings.

  In the station waiting for the train to take her to the city, she told a young American reporter that racism was alive in France. At Les Milandes, she said, people had wanted her gone from the neighborhood “because they could not accept a black woman living in a castle.”

  The reporter, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., now a distinguished professor at Harvard, was then twenty-two years old, and working for Time magazine. He asked Josephine if she had ever felt guilty for having left the United States, for “not being there to participate, particularly during the civil rights era.”

  She said she’d often thought about that question, “about running away from the problem. At first I wondered if it was cowardice, wondered whether I should have stayed to fight. But I couldn’t have done anything. I would have been thwarted . . . I probably would have been killed.”

  In Paris, she stayed at Marie Spiers’s apartment, and went for her fittings to the costume house of Raymonde and Catherine. “She had asked for black fox from Revillon, though we could have used dyed rabbit and got the same effect onstage,” Catherine says. “But that was not good enough for Josephine. As soon as she had a generous producer, she would demand splendor.

  “We made her a corset dyed in the color of her skin, it gave the im
pression that she was naked, and on top of that she wore a body stocking of nylon tulle, very strong, and again the color of her skin, embroidered where it had to be to reinforce the illusion of that fabulous body. (Marlene Dietrich did the same.) The wigs and feathers came from Madame Février, the shoes—size 7—from Capobianco, the money to pay for all of it from the embassy of Morocco, the embassy of Sweden, the Red Cross. She could always get somebody to pay.

  “She was what she was. She knew how to profit from everything, from everyone who loved her.”

  The night before we left Paris, we—Josephine, Marie, my sister Marie Jo, and I—went to Chez Michou, a famous transvestite club, for dinner. (Michou had started in the female impersonator business by transforming himself into Brigitte Bardot, but he didn’t need to put on drag anymore, he was the boss. “I’m the greatest impresario in the world,” he likes to say, “who else can present Josephine Baker, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli in one show?”)

  Next morning, I was at Marie’s place with two taxis, to pick up Josephine and her luggage. We were on our way to America to make three million dollars.

  Chapter 43

  JOSEPHINE MARRIES “IN SPIRIT,” AND WRECKS A TOUR

  “Once men get what they want, they keep walking”

  Since we had some time before our plane left, Josephine led me to Orly’s duty-free shops. She was like a child in front of the perfumes, scarves, belts, the fake jewelry. Catching her excitement, I offered to buy her pearls and rubies. “Look at that one, and that one and that one!”

  She cooled me down. “Too big, too flashy. If we choose simple ones, they will pass for real.”

  I bought her a handful of glass diamonds and emeralds, and learned a lesson. Thanks to her legendary past, she could lend even phony jewels credibility; other women, seeing them on her, would feel admiration and desire.