Dancing In The Dark

by Caryl Phillips

  The dressing room is the one place where he is able to think clearly, for the silence and privacy suggest to him the sanctity of a church. The dressing room is a place where he can sit alone and remember all that has gone before, and imagine all that is still to unfold. The mirror is the most important part of the room. The mirror and the lightbulbs. Plenty of bright, gleaming lightbulbs arranged tastefully around the perimeter of the mirror glass. And a door with a good lock to it. Two chairs, please. One in front of the mirror, and a softer chair where a man might relax and read a newspaper or a book and enjoy some peaceful contemplation. These few items are all a man needs in his dressing room. At the New York Theatre, at Forty-fifth Street and Broadway, where they played In Dahomey, he enjoyed a perfectly adequate dressing room. Whenever he needed privacy he simply locked the door and withdrew from everybody. A major New York critic had penned a favorable notice of the show, but the man described the star as an amiable coon who possessed “magnificent white grinders in a cavernous mouth.” Every evening, having washed his face and applied the towel, a despondent Bert stared into the mirror but he failed to see the amiable coon with the cavernous mouth who the influential critic had described.

  George enjoys decorating his dressing room with large and some-what vulgar bouquets of sweet-smelling flowers, but Bert does not care for this kind of ostentation and so he seldom visits with George. In fact, Bert does not care for lace cloths, or perfumed water, or soft plump cushions, and there are always far too many people in George’s dressing room, but George understands his partner’s difficulties with strangers. When George wishes to talk with Bert he frequently travels to his colleague’s dressing room with a liquor bottle in one hand, and he is always careful to lock the door behind him before he sits down. He understands that if they are to talk, it is he who must visit Bert’s quarters, and so slender George, with his perfectly oval face and clothes that would grace a prince, grins at Bert and places his insubstantial weight on a creaky wooden chair and then lights his cigar and pours them both a drink as he makes ready to engage his partner.

  . . .

  “Bert, you really want to take the show to London?” George pulls eagerly on his cigar. “I thought you didn’t care for sailing on water. Man, I thought you just wanted to stay here and work on another show.”

  Bert picks up George’s bottle and pours them both a second shot of whiskey. They clink glasses.

  “If the Englishman wants to see In Dahomey, then maybe we should show the Englishman what we got.”

  “So what you think we got, then?”

  Bert laughs now—slow, rumbling laughter that rocks the room. George’s eyes light up.

  “Come on, man, what you think we got that the Englishman needs to see? Besides high-toned women, fine music, fresh comedy, and all the dance stepping in the world?”

  “Well,” says Bert, as he swirls the whiskey in his glass, “I figure that’s plenty to be going on with, don’t you? I’m ready to ease on over there and show the Englishman what we got.”

  “You ready to cross water to do so?”

  “Ain’t no other way of getting there.”

  “Maybe the English will treat us with a little more respect.”

  Bert continues to laugh. “George, you think they could treat us with less?”

  Bert remembers his short week in New York vaudeville just before the opening of In Dahomey. He remembers sharing the bill with Maurice Barrymore, who, having finished his own act, liked to stand in the wings at every performance and peruse Bert’s technique, but this scrutinizing never troubled Bert. Everybody took from everybody else, and he saw no reason why this man should be any different. However, Barrymore’s studiousness annoyed the stagehands for Barrymore was not supposed to admire a man like Bert. Over the years, Bert has endured many problems with ill-bred stagehands, but nothing to match the difficulties that he encountered during this short week. A particularly rough-hewn man asked Barrymore if he really liked the nigger coon, but Barrymore simply glared. As Bert came offstage, and passed by them both, he heard the boorish stagehand say, “Yeah, he’s a good nigger, he knows his place.” Without breaking his stride, or looking at either man, Bert replied, “Yes, a good nigger knows his place. Going there now. Dressing room one.” Barrymore punched the stagehand in his mouth. Later, when George heard about the incident, he was livid, but Bert would not talk with George, or with anyone, about the unsettling episode.

  Well, Bert, if the choices we got is working on another show, going back to vaudeville, or going to England, then let’s go to England. Another show can wait a while, but I don’t got your stomach, Bert, so I sure as hell won’t be doing no more vaudeville, no sir, not me. I reckon that George Walker is better than working with iron jaw acts, and regurgitators and acrobats straight from the ships, and long-limbed girls from burlesque who don’t understand that there’s no place in vaudeville for bare legs and foul language. America got those Wright boys up in the air, and automobiles rolling down the streets, and some kind of baseball World Series, and this is a new country for everybody, including the colored man. Damn it, we’ve gone beyond getting up there three or four times a day, even if they do give us prime billing. Everything in goddamn vaudeville is always rush, rush, rush, with the Jews playing the Germans, and the Germans playing the Irish, and the Irish playing the Chinese, and everybody thinking they can play colored because what’s a poor colored man going to do to stop them? We coloreds got to be doing more respectable work like In Dahomey instead of playing damn-fool happy creatures who between steamboat arrivals just pick cotton or fry fish until it’s time to slouch off again and tote some cargo and sing some coon songs. Williams and Walker done gone beyond vaudeville. We got to take our time and do what we do with style. In Dahomey is the thing, Bert, and no reason for us to be rushing to produce another show, or for you to be going back to no foolish vaudeville. We should do like you say and take our colored tails across that water to old London and show them what we got.

  Bert always takes dressing room number one, while George establishes himself in dressing room number two. This is the way that it is, and neither man has ever discussed the subject, and if George has any cause for complaint, then Bert has not heard anything about it. George refills their glasses with whiskey and Bert proposes that they drink a toast. To England, and to their forthcoming salty voyage, during which, each evening, they will temporarily lose the sun on the other side of the sea.

  On the long passage across the Atlantic Ocean, Bert’s cabin is his dressing room. It is his place of refuge, but in his cabin there are no oversized shoes, no ill-fitting pants, no overventilated coat. There is no smell of burnt cork, no communion with anxiety, no sense of performance hanging in the air. He has to neither apply nor does he have to scrape off the black from his face. He does not have to peer cautiously into the mirror wondering if any signs of disfigurement remain. His lips, are they normal? In this dressing room he need not look at himself with the sadness that precedes and concludes a performance. Here on the SS Aurania, his superior cabin is a dressing room where disguise is unnecessary. In the corner a silent clock stands tall, its wooden casing polished by the touch of many hands. He is leaving America behind.

  His company trusts him. This evening he sits at a table with his wife and looks across at the fifty colored men and women huddled together in one corner of the ship’s dining room. They are sailing with him to England, following him over the horizon to a Europe that most of them have never seen. They are excited, and George is both entertaining them and lecturing them. Occasionally George looks up and glances in Bert’s direction and their eyes meet. There is a little nod of the head from both of them. The white diners look on in bemusement, but they stare hard at Bert, disturbed by the fact that his dignified presence among them is beginning to challenge their sense of who he is. Coon. The novelty is becoming tedious. Without his disguise their ability to trust him is being seriously undermined, and if truth be told, they would rather he knew his place a
nd joined the Negro rabble.

  I make my entrance with only a small spotlight penetrating the darkness. I thrust my white-gloved hands through the curtains and into the light. Before they see me they see my gloved hands twisting and turning, and then they make out the rest of me as I carefully edge my way between the heavy velvet drapes and stand still and slowly look all around. They do not know what to do. It is only when I move that the problems begin. I shuffle and they laugh. I show them that I am clumsy and they laugh. I stand still and they do not know what to do. Until I move I might be pitiable. It is only when I move that they recognize me. I enjoy the beginning, with my white gloved hands, and the small spotlight, and edging my way through the curtains and standing still. But they require both the cork and the movement, the broad nigger smile and the shuffle, and only then do they know me. Only then am I welcome in their house.

  The white cliffs of Dover are white. It is morning and the whole company is on deck, their necks rolled in scarves, their hands holding collars tight, staring at England rising up through the mist. The first light of dawn is igniting the sea, and somewhere in the distance the forlorn howling of foghorns drifts through the gloom. Above their heads a thin line of gulls dip on the early morning breeze and then bank steeply away from the ship in the direction of the open sea. Lottie holds her husband’s arm and gently tugs him closer to her. The midwest suddenly seems a long way distant, but she realizes with both surprise and pride that her new husband has traveled even farther than she has. If only Flo could see her now; in Europe with her husband’s company, standing near the prow of the SS Aurania, bringing colored America to England. America’s Shylock Homestead looks down at her, a thin smile creasing his lips, and she recognizes loneliness behind his sad eyes and wishes more than anything in the world that there was some way for her to bring sunshine into his life. She looks up at him and smiles and then a sudden gust of wind threatens to dislodge her hat and she quickly reaches up a hand and clamps it down on her head. Might England be a new beginning for them both? She asks the question, but only with her eyes.

  He walks alone in Hyde Park, where he observes the persistent wind blowing furiously at the dresses of young women, and where he tips his hat to passersby, who in turn are keen to tip their hats to the colored stranger. At all times of the day and night a fog seems to hang over the city like a giant cloud that is reluctant to disperse. A plump-lipped but otherwise slack-faced woman, with an off-white egg of a face, tries to engage him in conversation. He can see that the woman dresses well, but it soon strikes him that her expensive tastes merely mask the fact that she is one who walks the streets for profit and he promptly hurries on his way. He detects a problem in this sad city, under its thick blanket of despair, and he chooses a park bench by a pond and sits in order to better examine these people. He notices that despite the cold this pond is not capped with ice, and then he turns his attention to the faceless people, their heads hanging low, a seemingly endless caravan of misery. They trudge with shoulders hunched and with furled umbrellas in tightly clenched hands, and then he realizes that even the spring flowers that surround him appear to be pouting. Where is the joy in this country, or among these people? Where is the energy? Already he is wary of how Williams and Walker will be received once In Dahomey opens. He wants to feel comfortable in this new country, but the beat is wrong. Something is out of tune in England, and he knows that his company, huddled away in their cramped rooms at the damp hotel, they feel it too.

  He sits in his Shaftsbury Avenue dressing room and he stares into the mirror. The booking agent has urged him to understand that the English audiences will expect a certain type of Negro authenticity, but what the man does not know is that a determined George has made sure that their own performers can never stoop to deliver such crude “authenticity.” The booking agent has led Bert to believe that the patrons of the English theater are probably waiting for their American visitors to take to the stage and entertain them with a volley of raggy coon songs, while all the time winding their tan behinds at them like flags. If this is the case, then in all likelihood Williams and Walker will probably disappoint their hosts, but it is too late now, for the impatient English stage manager is already stalking the corridors. (“Come along, my sons. Chop-chop.”) The man bellows in his thick cockney tongue, demanding that the Yank darkies make their way to the wings, and as he does so Bert’s colored heart begins to pound.

  The audience loves the dancing. A bold couple even takes to the aisle and imitates the Negro performers, who in turn stop and applaud their English impersonators. Ada refuses to applaud for she considers the audience disrespectful, and once they are all safely offstage she loudly conveys her dismay to George, who promises to discuss the situation with Bert. However, her husband is undisturbed by this English mimicry, for his primary concern is that they should attract a paying audience and therefore make their stay in this miserable country a short but profitable one. Once Ada has passed into the women’s dressing room, George stands backstage by himself and resolves to say nothing to Bert. The following evening another limey couple takes to the aisle and again a furious Ada refuses to applaud them.

  The English critics are puzzled by In Dahomey, and in particular, they fail to understand why the vast majority of the colored girls are light-skinned with straightened hair. George gives a newspaper interview in which he explains at length about the popularity of hair-straightening products and skin-bleaching creams among colored women, but to a man the English critics seem disappointed by the very few specimens of genuine sable beauty upon their stage. Especially so, notes one apoplectic scribe, given the fact that the back-to-Africa theme appears to be so much in vogue among Negroes, and this subject matter, which falls squarely within the current theatrical craze of locating Americans in queer lands, would seem to demand some genuine exoticism. Are we to assume, he thunders, that these near-white creatures in highly unlikely complex costumes, and displaying exquisite and alluring mannerisms, are the type of creatures that we would find were we to journey to that dismal continent? This one man lambastes the whole enterprise as “preposterous,” but his voice is not in the majority. Each evening a respectable audience flows up Shaftsbury Avenue from Piccadilly Circus to witness the Negro players and enjoy the spectacle of them performing their newly fashionable dance, the cakewalk; and then, a few weeks into their engagement, they receive the honor of a royal visit, which serves only to confirm the newfound English celebrity of Messrs. Williams and Walker. A week after the highly successful royal visit, the whole company receives the ultimate accolade of a command to perform privately in the garden of the king’s residence, Buckingham Palace.

  In size as well as ability is Mr. Bert Williams a big comedian, and in the vicinity of Shaftsbury Avenue, where he is frequently to be seen striding his way lurchingly to and from the theatre, with his great head turning curiously and solemnly first one side and then another, like an elephant on the broad path (“Bun Avenue”) at the Zoo, he is already known as “Big Black Bert.” The delightful thing about his impersonation of Shylock Homestead is that the actor, not withstanding that it is to him chiefly the audience looks for amusement, is never seen forcing the fun or pushing himself forward in the least. With his heavy, rocking gait, he “hovers around” like one who has found himself on the stage by taking the wrong passage, and thinks he may as well stay there since no one has interfered with him.

  MOSTLY ABOUT PEOPLE, LONDON, 1903

  And then they tour England. Dark-skinned missionaries in the heartland of Britain moving diligently between Hull, Peckham, Newcastle, Sheffield, and Manchester. Bert especially enjoys Oxford, the center of books and learning, and once they leave this ancient city the company travels north and eventually crosses the invisible border into Scotland, where they offer In Dahomey to a new race of people. In Edinburgh, the capital of this new king dom, Bert is taken in by a secret group of men who wish to honor him. He becomes a mason, a colored man in Waverly Lodge No.597 of Edinburgh, Scotland, and b
y degrees he enters further into a foreign world of respectable connections. It transpires that it is his offstage clerical dignity that has also impressed these fellows, for they recognize in Bert the type of man in whose shadow people might seek shade and protection. But this is not to say that they don’t appreciate his darky antics. He has made them all laugh with his droll singing and his loose-limbed dancing, but the shrewd Scots suspect that behind Mr. Williams’s broad grinning mouth something mournful is stirring for their new American brother performs as though he derives little joy from his tomfoolery.

  When the assembled Scottish pressmen ask an exasperated George to demonstrate the cakewalk to them, he smiles weakly then climbs to his aching feet, noisily pushes back a few chairs, and begins with a sporty strut.

  Bow to the right

  Bow to the left

  Then you take your place

  Be sure to have a smile on your face

  Step high with lots of style and grace

  With a salty prance

  Do a ragtime dance

  Step way back and get your gun

  With a bow look wise

  Make goo-goo eyes

  For that’s how the cakewalk’s done.

  George cocks an eyebrow to make himself appear more rakish, but he can no longer maintain the pretense. This buttery exchange, lubricated with flattery on both sides, is turning his stomach. Williams and Walker have made their coin and he is now eager that they should return home as hastily as possible.