It seemed all of Harlem had come out to wish Harlan farewell.
At midnight, Emma’s surprise arrived wearing a brown Stevedore low over his face. Before anyone could see who he was, she grabbed his hand and whisked him through the unsuspecting revelers, up the stairs, and into her bedroom.
“Wait here,” she whispered. “Sam will come and get you when it’s time.”
“And?” he said, smiling coyly.
Emma cocked her head. “And what?”
“And?” he repeated, rubbing his belly, his face lit brightly with his million-volt smile.
“Oh yes,” Emma laughed, “and when Sam comes up, he’ll have a plate of red beans and rice.”
* * *
At half past the witching hour, Emma found Harlan propped up against the parlor wall staring down the blouse of a slant-eyed girl with greasy curls. As she hooked her arm around Harlan’s waist, she shot the girl a look so sharp it nearly sliced her in two.
“He’s here,” Emma whispered, dragging Harlan across the floor.
Harlan scanned the crowd. “Where?”
“In my bedroom.”
“Did you hide him in the closet like you do my Christmas and birthday gifts?”
Emma popped him playfully upside the head. “Boy, go and find Lizard.”
Harlan pushed his way through the throng of well-wishers. Each step brought him face-to-face with someone who wanted to shake his hand, slap his back, or convey some critical piece of information Harlan would need on his trip across the Atlantic.
By the time he found Lizard in the cellar, puffing on a cigarette, it was nearly one o’clock.
“What you doing down here?”
“Aww, it’s a lot of people up there. I just needed some air.”
Harlan glanced around the cellar. Fanning his arms, he said, “You need air, so you came down here?”
Lizard shrugged his shoulders.
“My mama and daddy threw this party for us, you better come on and enjoy it.”
Lizard dropped the cigarette into the dirt and mashed it with the toe of his shoe, following Harlan up the wooden staircase into the soggy smoke-and-perfume-choked heat of the house.
“Mama wants you to play,” Harlan called over his shoulder as they made their way toward the group of musicians Emma had hired for the party.
“My horn is up in your room,” Lizard shouted back.
“Nah it ain’t, Mama brought it down.”
Emma, smiling like a cat with a mouse, stood at the front of the parlor clutching Lizard’s strawberry-colored trumpet case to her chest.
“Anything special you want to hear, Mrs. Elliott?” Lizard asked, carefully removing his horn.
“Whatever you play is fine by me.”
Lizard started with “Potato Head Blues,” a Louis Armstrong classic. He expertly mimicked Satchmo’s rapid notes—nailing the D chord, toggling the G, flying into a quarter E note, hitting it so hard it took his breath away. He stopped. He didn’t really feel like playing. His mind was on other things and his heart was elsewhere.
Lizard nodded apologetically to the crowd, swabbed his brow, and gulped air. Just as he pressed his mouth back to the lip of the trumpet—three horn blasts, perfectly pitched E notes, rattled his left eardrum.
Lizard turned toward the sound, his fingers still dancing over the valve pistons, all Es, all Es—building, building—and at the moment when he was supposed to drop back to D and bear down in a sort of dazzling placidity, his gray-green eyes clashed with Louis Armstrong’s brown ones and Lizard lost his breath a second time.
Buoyed by cheers and applause, Louis swaggered into the parlor, retrieved the note Lizard had dropped, and went on to remind everyone why he was the king.
They performed three songs together, Louis nodding approvingly, patting Lizard on the back like a proud father.
Later, in the backyard, beneath an ever-brightening sky, seemingly oblivious to the February morning bite, Lizard found Louis Armstrong perched on a rusty lawn chair holding court. His black-and-gray-checkered dress shirt was unbuttoned to the navel, revealing a white cotton undershirt. Dangling from the gold chain around his neck was a hexagram the size of a half-dollar fashioned from the same precious metal.
When Louis waved Lizard over, the cluster of men parted. Lizard grabbed a milk crate and edged into the space they’d made for him. He sat quietly, reveling in their stories of music, women, and the ups and downs of life, until one by one the men began to drift away, eventually leaving Lizard and Louis alone.
“Call me Pops,” Louis said when Lizard started yet another question with, “Mr. Armstrong . . .”
“This?” Louis pointed to the hexagram resting on his chest. He cupped it in his hand and stroked it lovingly with his thumb, explaining to Lizard that the pendant was a Jewish symbol known as the Star of David.
“You’re Jewish?” Lizard asked, stunned.
Louis snickered. “No, no, I’m not.”
“Then why do you wear it?”
Louis folded his arms. “Well, when I was growing up in New Orleans, there was this family called the Karnofskys who had a junk business. I needed a job to help support my family, and they gave me one. I was seven years old.”
Lizard’s head bobbed. “Seven?”
Louis held up seven fingers. “Anyway, them Karnofskys were different from most of the other white folk I’d come across.”
“Different how?”
Louis leaned forward and rubbed his knees. “Well, ya see, son, they ain’t never—not once—called me a nigger, ape, tar baby, or any of them other horrible names they call us black folk.” He waved his hands at Lizard. “’Course, you so light, you probably haven’t suffered that type of humiliation. They were a different kind of white folk; so different that they treated me like family. They fed me. Not at the back door neither. I ate right at the table with them! In fact, when things got too hot at my house, they took me in.”
Lizard’s eyes shone with astonishment.
“I thought white folk stuck together, so I was confused when I saw the treatment the family got from people who were white like them.”
Lizard leaned in. “What d’you mean? How’d they treat ’em?”
Louis shrugged. “Like niggers.”
“Why was that?”
“Because they were Jewish,” Louis said pointedly.
Lizard cast his eyes down to his shoes and frowned.
“That family was real good to me. When I left New Orleans for Chicago, Mrs. Karnofsky gave me this pendant.” He tapped the hexagram with his index finger. “And I’ve kept it with me ever since.”
Suddenly aware of the cold, Louis stood and raked his hands up and down his arms. “Son, I don’t hate anyone. That’s not to say that I don’t have it in me. I believe we all got it in us—but whenever I feel it trying to climb out, I look at this here pendant and am reminded that love is more powerful than hate will ever be.” He slowly buttoned his shirt. “I think I smell bacon. What about you? You ready for some breakfast?”
“Yes sir, Mr.—”
“Pops,” Louis said gently. “Call me Pops.”
“Yes sir, Pops.”
Lizard followed his icon to the door. Louis reached for the handle, turned his head, and asked, “So, why they call you Lizard?”
Lizard grinned. “Because Satchmo was already taken.”
Chapter 50
They met up three more times to fuck. The last being just four days before Harlan’s bon voyage celebration. But Gwen wouldn’t receive an invitation, nor would she be informed of his imminent departure. Harlan didn’t feel obligated to share anything with Gwen, other than his sex.
Gwen, naive and unseasoned, assumed that Harlan’s desire to sleep with her was the very underpinning of true love—no matter what her mother said.
The final time she and Harlan were together, Gwen, writhing in ecstasy beneath him, sunk her fingernails into his back and declared her undying love for him over and over again like a broken
record.
Harlan didn’t return the affection; he just grunted, rolled off her, and reached for the pack of smokes on the nightstand.
Afterward, he accompanied Gwen as far as his front door and pecked her on the lips. “I’ll come up to the fairgrounds on Wednesday.”
“Okay,” Gwen bubbled, leaning in to steal another kiss.
Wednesday came and went, and Harlan failed to show. Nor did he appear at Grand Central Station where he sometimes met Gwen as she exited one train to board another.
She phoned his home numerous times only to be informed by whichever parent answered that Harlan was out, but they’d be sure to let him know she called. Again.
While Harlan’s absence was disappointing, it was tolerable because Gwen had the memory of their lovemaking to feast on. But when the warmth he’d fired between her legs cooled, giving rise to an ache in her heart, she had no choice but to take matters into her own hands.
She went to Harlem, marched up the steps of Sam and Emma’s brownstone, and lay hard and long on their doorbell as bold as a scorned woman twice her age.
Emma angrily wrenched open the door. “So where’s the fire?”
Gwen blushed beneath the woman’s hot glare. “I’m sorry, um . . . Good afternoon,” she stammered, suddenly remembering her manners. “I was wondering if Harlan was home.”
Emma rolled her eyes in exasperation. What had become of these young women? Calling her house at any hour, day or night, and showing up on her stoop—unannounced, no less—puppy dog–eyed, barely able to keep the begging out of their voices. Obviously, their mamas had raised them wrong.
“What’s your name, girl?”
“Gwendolyn. Gwen,” she whispered.
“Well, Gwendolyn, Gwen, Harlan ain’t here. He should be halfway to France by now.”
Flabbergasted, Gwen leaned back and took a long hard look at the house. Surely she was at the wrong address, talking to some mother who also had a son named Harlan.
Emma stepped onto the stoop and followed Gwen’s searching eyes with her own.
“What you looking for?”
“I-I’m sorry, miss,” Gwen uttered uneasily, “but I’m looking for Harlan Elliott.”
Emma’s eyes narrowed. When she spoke again, her voice was slow and deliberate. “Yes, that’s my son. Harlan Elliott.”
Gwen’s face went dark. “France?”
“Yes, chile, France,” Emma sighed. “He’ll be back in two months or so. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
And with that, Emma backed into the house and shut the door.
PART VII
Montmartre
Chapter 51
Harlan and his band arrived in France on a clammy March morning. Eugene Bullard met them at the pier, embraced them one by one, and pressed hard kisses onto each of their cheeks.
Georgia born and bred, tall, dark, and handsome, Bullard had fled the oppressive racial atmosphere of the South as a teenager by stowing away on a ship bound for Scotland. From there he made his way his way to Paris where he supported himself as a boxer.
At the onset of the First World War, Bullard enlisted in the Foreign Legion and became a machine-gunner. In time, he joined the French Air Force, where he took part in more than twenty combat missions before being promoted to the rank of sergeant. His heroism earned him the Croix de Guerre and he would go down in history as being the world’s first black fighter pilot.
After the war, Bullard, a skilled drummer, returned to Paris to pursue his love of music. He eventually became the manager of the famous Le Grand Duc located in the Parisian neighborhood of Montmartre before going on to open his own cabaret, L’Escadrille.
In the sedan, the group exchanged few words, struck silent by the sights of pigeon-filled squares, narrow streets lined with cafés, pastry shops, and Parisian dames strutting along the cobblestone boulevards in peep-toe high heels and jaunty hats.
On their arrival in Montmartre—the Mount of Martyrs, the Harlem of Paris—Ivy pressed her forehead against the window and pointed at a white-domed building perched on a high hill. “What’s that?”
“It’s a church called Sacré-Coeur,” Eugene explained.
“Ugh,” Ivy responded. “It looks like a giant birthday cake!”
“Looks to me like some big ole white titties,” Harlan commented loudly.
The observation raised a chorus of raucous of laughter.
Eugene rolled down the window, flooding the car with a staggering bouquet of strong coffee, freshly baked croissants, and heady perfume. Reaching his hand out, he indicated the Moulin Rouge, saying, “Josephine Baker performed there. And you see that hotel over there? That’s where Langston Hughes stayed when he first came to Paris. There, to the left, is the American Express office. You can receive and send letters and telegrams from there. That club over there is Le Grand Duc. I used to manage it back in the day when Bricktop was the main attraction. Do y’all know her? Oh, look, that’s where Pablo Picasso once lived, and right over there is my club: L’Escadrille.”
Their heads swiveled with the dizzying commentary. They’d recognized some of the names, but not all. Nevertheless, they nodded and hummed interestedly in their throats.
“W.E.B. Du Bois used to sit in that café and hold court for hours.”
The sedan slowed to a stop.
“Ah! That is Florence. It used to be called Chez Florence, named after Florence Jones. Phenomenal talent and a pistol! One night she dragged Prince Henry onto the floor and coaxed him into participating in a Black Bottom dance contest. He wasn’t very good.”
Eugene fell quiet as the car rolled forward again. When it reached the corner, he added with mournful reverence, “Florence is dead now.”
They would stay in the Lyceum Hotel—a slender, daisy-colored building sandwiched between a garden on the verge of bloom and a café so small it could only accommodate one customer at a time.
They followed Eugene through a vestibule covered in aqua-colored tiles, into a lobby no bigger than a box. There, Eugene spoke a few quick words of French to the young towhead at the front desk. She replied with a gracious smile and slid three brass keys across the counter.
The rooms were tiny and plain: radiator, window, a set of twin beds, no closet. Guests either kept their clothing in their luggage or hung the articles on the row of nails that had been driven into the wall for just that purpose.
“The toilet is down the hall,” Eugene told them. “There are plenty of places to eat cheap. Get some rest and be at the club no later than nine.” With that, he trotted down the stairs and was gone.
Outside, the residue of an early-morning shower glimmered on chimney pots and slanted terra-cotta rooftops.
Harlan opened the window, stuck his head out, and bellowed, “Paris, I’m here!”
Behind him, Lizard collapsed onto the bed and kicked off his shoes, which clattered to the floor. Harlan whipped around. When his eyes met Lizard’s miserable gaze, he asked, “What’s with you?”
Lizard shook his head. “Nothing, man. Nothing at all.”
Chapter 52
With the arrival of Harlan’s band and others, Montmartre came alive again. For a while, the threat of war between Germany and Great Britain had scattered the musicians like ants. The cabarets had closed down and overnight Montmartre was transformed into a ghost town, leaving the Zazous without a place to revel in the American swing music that had come to define them.
The Zazous took their name after Cab Calloway’s hit “Zaz Zuh Zaz.” They’d thoroughly immersed themselves in swing culture, going so far as adopting Calloway’s style of dress, gliding back-step dance moves, and hep language.
During those grim days of September 1939 and the months that followed, Zazous could be spotted wandering the quiet streets, the men adorned in brightly colored zoot suits, broad brim hats, and suede shoes. The women slathered their lips in red chili pepper–colored lipstick, regaled themselves in miniskirts and ridiculously wide-shouldered blazers. They wandered hooked-arme
d in groups or alone through Montmartre’s streets, stopping at the shuttered cabarets, peering mournfully into the dark structures.
For a time, Parisian bands had tried to fill the void, but they were little more than tragic substitutes.
When the New Year dawned, and not a shot had been fired from Germany or England, Eugene Bullard and the other cabaret owners decided it was time to reverse the tides, to rekindle the soul of Montmartre, and set out to woo the musicians back.
The response was quick or none at all. Many had secured work in other countries, in other venues, or had returned home—to Harlem, Chicago, and St. Louis. One trumpeter explained in his telegram, It may be quiet now, but that don’t mean there ain’t a cotton mouth in the tall grass. He knew without consulting a map, globe, or atlas just how dangerously close Germany was to France, and it made him uneasy.
Lizard harbored similar misgivings, so when Harlan had first come to him with the opportunity, he had flat-out declined. Eventually, of course, Harlan wore Lizard down, and he got his way, just like always.
Chapter 53
The weeks stumbled through March, April, and into May, and still Harlan and the rest of his group hadn’t acquired a sense of Paris beyond her mirth-filled nights.
After playing L’Escadrille until three a.m., they spent the rest of the morning wandering from one cabaret to the next, dancing with patrons, flirting, and draining champagne from bottles left in silver ice buckets.
When the cabarets closed at eight a.m., all of the musicians gathered at various cafés for breakfast. Over eggs fried in olive oil, flaky croissants, and coffee, they recounted the evening’s events and shared news from back home. By eleven, most returned to their flats and hotel rooms, climbed into bed, and slept until twilight.
Being in Montmartre was like attending one long party, but even the best parties had to come to an end.
On the morning of May 10, 1940, German forces sank their fangs into France’s west coast. Panicked, all of the musicians who had been lured to Paris to sate the natives’ thirst for black music rushed the homes of their sponsors, demanding immediate passage back to America.
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