The Magic Keys

by Albert Murray

  But even that early on you had also already come to realize that even if your Philamayork turned out to be Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or New York City, New York, or Chicago, Illinois, or Detroit, Michigan, or Los Angeles or San Francisco, California, once you headed out from Gasoline Point toward the ever so Marco Polo blue horizon mists beyond Chickasabogue Bridge it would be as if your destination were wherever east of the sun and west of the moon was.

  So far, so good. But what now? Because there I was with my fingers also crossed because this time I was wishing what I was wishing as if the crisp autumn green campus, lawn grass, and shrubbery and the bright blue silk and cotton white autumn sky made my circumstances no less fancy free than they had ever been back during the springtime elementary school bell days of honeysuckle thickets and dog fennel playhouse games. All I had to go on was that ever so polite exchange in the library. I didn’t even know her name and was not even certain that she was still there. But by the middle of the next week, the very thought of her being on the campus had become as much a part of my speculations about what my junior year was going to be like as about any of the new electives on my academic course of study.

  Then after that many days, there she was in person again, coming up the steps and into the library again all by herself again. And as I opened the door for her and said, Nice to see you’re still here, she smiled but I couldn’t really tell if she remembered me or was just being a nice, well-brought-up young lady who was not cynical and didn’t consider herself vulnerable. So when I said what I said about becoming used to not being used to being at State Normal, she smiled again. And when she said what she said about becoming used to being a sophomore and that she had originally expected to be a freshman on this campus in the first place, all I could say was, Is that so? Because I couldn’t say how glad I was that she had not arrived before now, not to mention my freshman year.

  We stepped onto the second-floor landing again, then and to keep her from realizing how excited I was to see her again and how eagerly I was looking forward to seeing her as often as possible, I stepped in the direction of the reference room before turning to say, So nice to see that you’re still here, and that was also when I finally said my name and where I was from and that I was getting used to not being used to being a junior in liberal arts.

  And when she smiled and said her name and what part of central Alabama she was from, all I could say was, Well, hello again, statemate. And all I could do was tighten my fingers because they were already crossed.

  That was how it all began with the one that I decided was the one for me, because, as luck would have it, when it was deep purple wisteria time on the campus again that next spring we had become as close as we had become because our self-imposed restrictions were as compatible as they were because it turned out that we both were there on renewable scholarship awards that had to be supplemented with what you could earn in cash or credit from jobs available through the student employment office.

  So I had not seen her in the dining hall because she did not eat in the dining hall. She lived in the sophomore women’s dormitory, but she ate all her meals in the visitors’ guesthouse, where she worked when not in class or at the library and from the early-evening meal until seven-thirty, after which if she did not have to go back to the library, she did what she had to do back in the dormitory. As for nonacademic activities, she had decided to restrict herself to an occasional choice from the schedule of athletic events, movies, stage productions, and concerts covered by the prepaid incidental-fee admission coupon.

  I didn’t make my first obvious move until the fall dance gala on the night following the homecoming football game in November, the biggest social event of the fall term. During my freshman and sophomore years my old freelancing roommate and I went to such shindigs unattached and made our forays on targets of opportunity as we spotted them from the stag line (or “Murderers’ Row”) near the table of refreshments. But this time I was glad he was not there anymore, because I still had not seen what I had not wanted to see in the dining hall or anywhere else. And because I was still hoping what I could not keep myself from hoping since that midmorning when I first saw her on our way up the steps and into the library.

  When I arrived, the band was already halfway into the first set, and the dance floor was already more than half full of couples, with a steady stream of others joining in, some directly from the coat-check windows. My old roommate and I had always stopped at the refreshment table for a waxed paper tumbler of student punch-bowl punch, which he always spiked—his, not mine—with his own chem lab cocktail concoction from his pewter hip pocket flask. But this time I took mine and sipped it as I slowly meandered my way toward the bandstand, because I still had no way of knowing whether I was going to see what I hoped I wouldn’t see.

  So she may have seen me before I saw her this time, because when I came within eight yards of the bandstand, there she was sitting at a front-row table in the waist-high spectators’ gallery on my right. And with her were two other sophomore coeds whom I remembered from the year before but had not met. And when I was as sure as I could guess that I was in her line of sight, I waved and she waved back and when I held out my hand, she stood up and came down onto the dance floor. And when I said her name, she said mine.

  XV

  Hi ya, fellow, the voice on the phone said. And I said, Eric von Threadcraft. And he said, Got you. He said, Got you in two rings. And I said, Hey, man, I said, What say, Mice? I said, Goddamn, man. How you been and what you been up to? And he said, A little of this and some of that plus the same old ongoing, but always on the afterbeat, man. You know me, fellow. And then he said, Hey, what this is about is that I caught the band in person out here tonight for the first time since you cut out, and naturally I went backstage to check with Papa Joe and he gave me your number and told me what you were up to and into these days. So how is school and how is family life?

  And I said, Man, the thing about graduate school is that the more advanced the courses of study, the more basic the material and the more obvious the assumptions and the more relative and tentative the conclusions. So it’s the also and also all over again, my man, the also and also and also, perhaps even as the also and also of arithmetic becomes the also and also of algebra, calculus, and trigonometry.

  Then before he could say anything about that, I said, As for family life, affirmative by me, man. What can I tell you, man? Je suis tout à fait en train d’être dans le vrai, if you remember that old Flaubert riff you tried to sneak in there on me that time. Or should I say heureusement en train?

  And that was when he said what he said about me spending the time I spent keeping the time as a bass player, and about how lucky I was to have come across that particular instrument of all musical instruments the way I did. Then he also said, Speaking of fundamentals, my man, that fabulous Miss Hortense Hightower you used to tell me about, had your number, fellow. Just think about it, Schoolboy, if you will pardon the expression. There you were up there in college because your Miss Lexine fairy-tale aunt Metcalf had earmarked you as early on as the third grade for some undefined something special requiring higher education. So there you are up there on the campus flat broke except for what little was left over from the fellowship grants, but determined to pass the academic equivalent of every obstacle that Jason the argonaut was supposed to pass to qualify himself for the ultimate boon of a golden fleece and here you come out of there on commencement day having earned yourself not only the magic sheepskin but also the bull fiddle, of all things. A goddamn completely unacademic jazz-anchoring bull fiddle!

  That’s something else, fellow, he said. That’s something to think about. Because, man, are you sure that your Miss Hortense Hightower was not your Miss Lexine Metcalf in the disguise of an after-hours nightclub diva? And what about that roommate of yours that turned up down there from Chicago and stayed around just long enough to become in some ways even more and certainly no less indelible than your Mr. B. Frankl
in Fisher himself, without whom, after all, there would have been no Miss Lexine Metcalf in the first place? No him without her, but hey, no her without him to bring her there as if specifically to find the likes of you. Fairy-tale stuff U.S.A., fellow.

  Just look at how it all hooks up, he said. It was Hortense Hightower who got you that incredible quantum leap of a break that didn’t just land you a gig with the greatest band that ever was, but also meant that your elementary, repeat elementary, as in beginner’s school music, faculty was made up of none other than Joe States, Old Pro, and the Bossman Himself ! Incredible, fellow! Incroyable! Think about it, fellow, think about it.

  And I said, I hear you, man. I really do hear you. But you feel like that because of what music means to you as a musician. But man, I was doing what I was doing because that was what came up for me that summer, and I’ve always done the best I could and once more it was good enough to get me by. Because they were not looking for an expert. You know the Bossman, Mice. Sometimes he just likes to find out what he can make of whatever turns up. You and I have been over that, I said, reminding him of references he and I had made from time to time to how visual artists sometimes used unaltered and somewhat altered found objects!

  I said, man, they weren’t even looking for an expert when they picked up Scratchy McFatrick. They were looking for a replacement for Jameson McLemore, who was only a temporary—no, interim—replacement for me. Because Jamie had no intention of staying away from L.A. and his family for more than a short period. So when old Scratchy Mac turned up with all of that virtuosity he also fell right into the Bossman’s old utilization approach, but this time there was so much more there than anybody on that instrument had ever come in with from anywhere. Man, I like to think of old Scratchy as the Bossman’s reward for the good deed he did for me.

  I said, Man, as for me getting with cutting them dots, that was Old Pro’s department and sometimes he used to call me up to sit with him on the bus as he checked through the score sheets and made sure that all of the Bossman’s latest revisions were in place. That was something he used to do, especially during those long stretches when the landscape was the same old stuff mile after mile after mile and everybody else was nodding and I was awake and happened not to be reading.

  And he said, See what I mean, man, that’s precisely the kind of priceless stuff I’m talking about. But hey, look, I better cut this off so you can get back to your homework. Speaking of which, I must tell you this. Man, when Papa Joe States clued me in on your whereabouts these days I could just see you relaxing back in one of those comfortable, heavy-gauged oak New York University classroom chairs with your invisible bass fiddle sound box between your legs like a cello with your pizzicato fingers here and your fretting fingers up here and the ornate tuning pegs and scroll protruding above your head like some kind of regal decoration.

  And then he said, Anyway, I just want you to know that I’ve missed you, fellow. As tied up as I’ve been since I came back from that deal in Europe not long after you cut out and also disconnected your answering service. I still kept expecting you to turn up any day. But hell, I guess you can tell I’ve been thinking about you. And oh, by the way, before I hang up I also want you to know that Felix has some loot for you. That movie thing didn’t go through because something so much better turned up for me. But there was something up front for the preliminary work that we did and part of it is yours and we kept expecting to hear from you. So it will be on the way to you tomorrow.

  So I really better get off the line now, he said then, but I just had to call and let you know how much I’d like for us to get together the next time I’m in New York. And naturally I’m just dying to meet that fine stone fox of a roommate of yours that Joe States was carrying on so about. He calls her some fine people, which just knocks me out, fellow. Because just leave it to old Papa Joe. Because I don’t know whether he’s riffing on our man James Joyce’s Annalivia or not, but calling her some fine people brings back to this schoolboy’s mind is Plurabelle, which I distinctly remember you yourself using in a conversation we were having about “Sweet Georgia Brown” on the way back to Hollywood from a Central Avenue jam session one night. I kept talking about how those battling tenors kept leapfrogging each other and you said what you said as if any parody of James Joyce or Williams and Walker, or was it Miller and Lyles in a vaudeville skit? Man talking about Annalivia, man, I could tell you something about Annalivia, about the plurabilities of Annalivia Plurabelle! Yeah, man, but what about this? Man, I know that, but let me tell you about the time when. Hey, yeah, man, but listen to this . . . with the rhythm flowing like old James Joyce’s river running all the way back to Eve and Adam.

  I often think about how you used to come up with stuff like that, my man, he said then. Who knows? Old Joe States has a set of ears second to none. And a mind like a steel trap. If you ever started signifying about that tune like that anywhere near him he’s subject to pick up on that Plurabelle part right away, and riff it back at you so fast you won’t even recognize that you’re the source. His source, in any case.

  Then just before he actually did finally hang up he said, But hey, look. Speaking of Plurabelles and plurabilities, I must confess that there are perhaps some possibly significant reorientations in progress chez your old scene cruising friend Mice these days. But which I’m not going to tell you about until I get to New York before long or maybe even sooner. But definitely as soon as I can make it and that means the next time I call I just might already be there on my next as of now inevitable trip back east.

  XVI

  Man, what can I say? Roland Beasley said as we crossed Madison Avenue on our way along Fifty-seventh Street to Fifth Avenue and Rizzoli’s Bookstore. We had spent the first part of the afternoon at an exhibition of Jacques Callot drawings, sketches, and etchings that Roland had invited me to come along and see at an upstairs gallery near Park Avenue.

  I had told him what I had told him about how I had begun reading about the Commedia dell’Arte during the fall of my freshman year in college. And when he called he had also reminded me that I also said what I had said about Jacques Callot the first time we talked about the reproductions of the Harlequins and Saltimbancs in a book from the Museum of Modern Art about the first fifty years of the paintings of Pablo Picasso.

  I had become aware of the origin and existence of medieval miracle, morality, and passion plays by the time I finished junior high school at Mobile County Training School, where nobody who ever heard Mr. B. Franklin Fisher talk about how citizens of the German town of Oberammergau traditionally spent ten years developing the roles of the biblical characters they had been chosen to represent that many years ahead of the next periodic production, were ever likely to forget what a Passion play was about. And of course, that story was also related to what you already knew about Christmas and Easter pageants, not to mention class work that became a part of the history pageants presented as part of general assembly programs and graduation exercises. Not to mention the fact that Mobile being not only the pre–New Orleans French Gulf Coast settlement town that it was, I had grown up knowing about riverboat entertainers along with traveling tent shows and vaudeville acts as well as annual carnival costume masks and parades.

  But before the fall term of my freshman year in college I had never become aware of anything at all about the Commedia dell’Arte as such, although I did know what Harlequin and Pantalone costumes looked like and that both represented stock characters like the stock characters in newspaper comic strips and also like Punchinello in the Punch and Judy puppet shows and like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton of silent moving pictures.

  As we stopped at the corner of Tiffany’s and waited for the light to change so we could cross over to the west side of Fifth Avenue, Roland Beasley shook his head and clenched and rubbed his palms, saying, What can I say, my man? What can I tell you? I really do think that we just might be on our way to getting next to something that we can riff on for days, man, and I mean day and nig
ht.

  And I said, You said it, old partner. I said, All you’ve got to do is start vamping and riffing around stuff like “Drop Me Off in Harlem” or “Echoes of Harlem” or “Slapping Seventh Avenue with the Sole of My Shoe,” and what about stuff like “Harlem Airshaft” and stuff like that. And just watch how variations on old Jacques Callot’s and all that jiveass crew will start turning up stomping at the Savoy and jumping at the Woodside and cooling it at Connie’s Inn just like they did in Picasso’s Belle Epoque Montmartre, and just look at all of those theater and nightlife characters already there in Toulouse Lautrec. And don’t forget Degas and all those dancing girls and scenes.

  There we go, he said as we turned into the entrance to Rizzoli’s, no doubt about it. Degas and Toulouse Lautrec and Picasso at Connie’s Inn and Small’s Paradise, at the Lafayette and at the Savoy, the Home of Happy Feet. You know what I mean? Not them, me. Old Rollo! Old Rollo’s visual echoes of Harlem. Old Rollo. Not Miguel Covarrubias and all that old-trouble-I-seen-eyed blubber-lipped, blubber-butt, blubber-foot refugees from the goddamn cotton field out barrelhousing on Saturday night in their Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck Sunday best. Man, talk about square. Man, even the goddamned drummers looked square in that goddamn Covarrubias stuff. I know better. Man, I was right up there. Man, I’m from North Carolina, but I grew up right around the corner from Connie’s Inn and the old Lafayette Theater. Man, remember to remind me to tell you about Big John’s, where they used to serve that Big John Special that Fletcher Henderson’s band made that Big John Special record about. Boy, we used to live right off Seventh Avenue on 131st Street, and the Old Rhythm Club, where most of the uptown hoofers and keyboard ticklers used to hold those legendary cutting contests while waiting for gigs in between tours, was on 132nd Street, right down the block from the Lafayette going toward Lenox Avenue. Boy, if old Covarrubias was ever in there, he must have been blind as a bat and had plugs in his ears.