Dancing In The Dark

by Caryl Phillips

  As the ship moves slowly in the direction of the United States, Bert stands on deck with his partner. He turns to George, and silently revisits the same questions that have plagued him through many lonely evenings in the foggy country that they are now leaving behind. Is the colored performer to be forever condemned to pleasing a white audience with farce, and then attempting to conquer these same people with music and dance? Is the colored American performer to be nothing more than an exuberant, childish fool named Aunt Jemima, Uncle Rufus, or simply Plantation Darky, who must be neither unique nor individual? Can the colored American ever be free to entertain beyond the evidence of his dark skin? Can the colored man be himself in twentieth-century America? He remembers long nights drinking good whiskey and worrying about these matters in Jimmie Marshall’s hotel with his partner, and Bob Cole and Ernest Hogan, and he recalls an increasingly petulant George talking loudly about his determination to kill the chicken-stealing, crapshooting, razor-toting, gin-guzzling, no-good nigger in white people’s heads. Bert stands on deck and continues to look at his partner, but sadly he understands what George thinks about him. His comic timing, his wide range of facial expressions, his much-admired technical skills—he knows that his partner respects these well-honed talents, but he also knows that his partner longs to say, “Bert, you look and act like a nigger and we colored Americans no longer recognize you for we are trying to move on.” But George says nothing, and George has never said anything directly, and Bert turns away from his friend and narrows his eyes as the sea breeze begins to gather strength. In the distance he can see faintly visible steamers trailing dissolving smoke as they hug the line of the horizon and inch slowly in the direction of America. Bert pulls a pack of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his jacket, and then he cups his hand and strikes a match, which immediately sputters out. He understands how George feels about his blackface performance, but until his partner finds words that neither admonish nor accuse, then an uneasy discord will exist between them. Bert finally lights his cigarette and then he tosses the match overboard. He stares plaintively at the sea, but he feels the weight of George’s critical eyes and understands that his carefully calibrated blackface act is now beginning to corrode their partnership.

  It was in Scotland that Bert was finally able to discover more about this elusive man Ogilby, whose book he loved to study. He learned that John Ogilby was born outside of Dundee in 1600, the son of a well-heeled Scottish gentleman. He published hisAfrica in 1670, a volume that—Bert had always felt convinced— should he study it sufficiently, would eventually provide him with the evidence that every Pullman porter was descended from a king. It was this leather-bound tome that he utilized for proof that Africa was a continent of history and tradition, and not one of rude chaos; and the act of entering this book always enabled Bert to experience the temporary peace of being able to moor himself in some other place.

  AFRICA: / BEING AN / ACCURATE DESCRIPTION / OF THE / REGIONS / OF / Egypt, Barbary, Lybia, and Billedulgerid, / The LAND of / Negroes, Guinee, AEthiopia, and the Abyssines, / With all the Adjacent Islands, either in the Mediterranean, / Atlantick, Southern, or Oriental Sea, belonging there unto. / With the several Denominations of their / Coasts, Harbors, Creeks, Rivers, Lakes, Cities, / Towns, Castles, and Villages. / THEIR / Customs, Modes, and Manners, Languages, / Religions and Inexhaustible Treasure; / With their / Governments and Policy, variety of Trade and Barter, / And also of their / Wonderful Plants, Beasts, Birds, and Serpents. / _____ / Collected and Translated from most Authentick Authors, / And Augmented with later Observations; / Illustrated with Notes, and Adorn’d with peculiar Maps, and proper Sculptures, / By JOHN OGILBY Esq; / Master of His Majesties REVELS in the Kingdom of IRELAND. / _____ / LONDON, / Printed by Tho. Johnson for the Author, and are to be had at his / House in White Fryers, M.DC.LXX.

  I’D LIKE TO BE A REAL LADY

  Introduced by Ada Overton Walker in Williams

  and Walker’s latest production, In Dahomey

  Ada walks with him on deck and again she asks him about Eva, although she never mentions the woman by name. His wife is angry and distressed, and sometimes her behavior frightens him. George stares out toward the distant point where the rough mating of sea and sky fuses at the horizon, and he carefully prepares yet another story as a substitute for the truth for he cannot tell his wife that in his soul he is sailing back across the broad expanse of the Atlantic Ocean toward Eva, who, one night after the show, approached him in his high-scented dressing room at the New York Theatre. A half hour later, Eva unlocked the door and stepped back out into the corridor knowing full well what the rest of the company were thinking. Eva does not care, and George likes this about her, but Ada does care, for this is not just another of her husband’s anonymous women, this is Eva Tanguay, and Ada believes that her full-lipped, ebony-hued husband has no place with a flame-haired, hip-swinging white maiden. Ada cares, and at least to begin with she said nothing, but when she eventually asked her husband to deny the rumors he lied to her face, and she knew that he was lying. And now again, on this ship, Ada asks him about Eva Tanguay and George notices that his wife has a crazy glint in her coal black eyes and so he kisses her delicately on the cheek and then ushers her from the deck of the ship and in the direction of their cabin, where he will gently cradle her small breasts as though they were newborn twins for he knows that his Ada is partial to such attention.

  I’d like to be a real lady, yes,

  I’d like to be the genuine,

  I’d like to look a real mansion in the face

  and say to my friends “that’s mine,”

  I’d like a blue grass lawn on which to give my pink green tea,

  I’d like an English butler to announce my company,

  I’d like a golden sleeping room

  a maid to bathe me in perfume,

  I’d like to be a real lady.

  —You needing to talk?

  Bert leans against the railing as he asks the question. Theirs has been the most successful tour of Britain by any American company, white or colored, but melancholy sits heavily on both men’s shoulders. George looks up at his friend and pauses a moment before replying.

  —Got plenty on my mind. How about you?

  Bert pulls on his cigarette and stares out at the gently undulating blanket of black water. For days now they have been making their painfully slow way back in the direction of New York City, and they have decided that once they return home they will take In Dahomey on the road in the United States. Bert pulls on his cigarette and chortles to himself. He turns to face George.

  —I guess we’ve both been away for a good long while.

  —I don’t know if I’m ready to go back yet.

  —You ready to become an Englishman, George?

  Bert laughs at his own joke, and a small smile appears at the edge of his partner’s mouth. George turns from him and looks up at the clouds racing across the darkening sky, and Bert flicks his dying stub over the edge and watches it land on the water, where it bobs furiously in the eddy before being swallowed up. Bert removes a crumpled pack from his inside jacket pocket, cups his hand, and lights another cigarette. He has spoken again with his wife about her giving up the stage and focusing on their new home and her husband’s career, and she seems to be slowly acclimatizing to the idea. In fact, she confessed that her first husband had wanted her to abandon what he called “hoofing and prancing” and she resisted, but these days she appreciates that she is older and less spry and her ambitions are now primarily invested in developing a shared life with her new husband. She reached out and touched her husband’s arm as she said this, and Bert rewarded her with a smile. However, out here on deck, he senses that his wife probably still requires a little time by herself for the idea of retirement to take a proper hold, and so he decides to lean against the railing in the stiff breeze and keep company with George. There is no pressure on either of them to speak.

  He asks Eva where she is from. “Canada, honey, th
en Massachusetts. I’m like a big storm blowing south to sweep your stylish little colored behind off its seat.” She laughs and then begins to unbutton her blouse. “Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do if she’s gonna get on in this world.” Eva stops and stares at him. “Mr. Walker, don’t you intend to step out of those clothes?” George leans forward and begins to unbuckle his shoes. “George, baby, you ever see my costume of dollar bills and shiny pennies?” George shakes his head. He stands and slips out of his jacket, which he hangs neatly on the back of his dressing room chair. “But I heard about it. Heard it scared every man in town, and excited a few of them too.” Eva’s hoarse laugh rattles noisily around her throat. “Well, that’s the idea, George. That’s the idea, honey.” Eva puts a shapely leg up on a chair and begins to roll her stocking carefully down toward her ankle. She looks at George as she does so. “Now then, honey, when Eva takes hold of you you’d better keep your voice down unless you want everybody in the theater to hear you hollering for mercy.” George fumbles quickly at his belt, and then he pulls the tail of his shirt out of his pants with a lively clean jerk. Eva places the now bare creamy leg back on the floor and hoists the other leg up and onto the chair. “And, honey, when I sing ‘That’s Why They Call Me Tabasco,’ I mean just that. I’m a girl who can make a man feel good and hot all over, so you ready to have some fun?” George lets his pants drop to the floor. As he neatly steps clear of them it isn’t just this one song that he is thinking of. Eva’s celebrated repertoire includes “It’s All Been Done Before but Not the Way I Do It,” “I Want Someone to Go Wild with Me,” and her famous “I Don’t Care.” Eva looks directly at George as he folds his pants properly and drapes them over the back of the chair. “George, I heard a lot of things about you, and about what you got down there in those pants of yours, but you really think you’re ready for Eva Tanguay?” She sits on the wooden chair and opens her legs slightly. Eva watches as George removes his shirt and she notices the tight muscles that climb his stomach like a ladder. She reaches up and releases her breasts from the prison of her corselette, and she wets her lips with the end of her tongue. “Georgie, you know I don’t think you got what it takes.” Eva lets out a large raucous laugh and slaps her thigh. “Whatever it is you’re hiding in those drawers don’t look like it’s gonna be of much use to old Eva.”

  —How’s things between you and Lottie?

  Bert doesn’t turn to look at his friend. He continues to scan the horizon, which, as the last slither of light fades rapidly from the sky, and the moon and stars declare themselves, is becoming increasingly difficult to discern.

  —Well, things with Mother and myself is pretty much how you expect things between a man and his wife to be.

  —And how’s that?

  Bert abandons the horizon, and he looks directly at George and sees that his partner’s eyes are bright and troubled. Bert sighs deeply, and then he decides that he will speak slowly, but from the heart.

  —Well, my wife has certain expectations that I confess I don’t feel any obligation to fulfill. Nothing personal, I just figure my focus is elsewhere, but that doesn’t help her loneliness none. I expect that most of them are probably the same way. Needing to have you organized in a manner that makes them feel safe and appreciated, but that isn’t always easy for a busy man with a career. Men like us got professional worries that have to be accommodated, but that don’t always square with them, so it soon becomes a matter of each learning to live with the disappointment of the other. That’s pretty much how things are between me and Mother. Each learning to live with the disappointment of the other. George purses his lips and quietly nods.

  —I hear you. The only problem is I don’t think Ada’s done much to disappoint me.

  Fact is, I’m the one who’s been doing all the disappointing and I guess it’s just eating me up a little.

  —You sweet on somebody in particular, George? Miss Tanguay? George laughs.

  —I never known you to get stuck on just one.

  —Hell, I never known me to get stuck on just one either. It ain’t exactly what I was expecting, you know. You’d think that all this time away in England, and a few new adventures, would wash her right out from under my skin. But she got something, Bert, and I don’t know what it is.

  —You sure you don’t know what it is?

  —Hell, that flash is just for show. But beyond all that foolishness, there’s a real bighearted woman there.

  Bert stares at his friend, but he deems it best to say nothing further. George likes to live dangerously, he knows this, but as stubborn as Ada can be, doesn’t she at least have a right to some dignity? Bert continues to look pitifully at his friend and partner, who now peers out into the blackness of the night. When he has finished his cigarette Bert will leave George by himself and go back downstairs to Mother.

  George stands alone on the deck of the ship and thinks of Eva. He knows all about her. In fact, how could he not know about her? Controversy follows Eva wherever she goes. Three times she has married, and each time she has chosen a second-rate show business personality. First there was a dancer named John W. Ford, then a vaudevillian named Roscoe Ails, and now she has taken up with a pianist named Alexander Brooke, but for Eva marriage is never a serious affair. She openly admits that her middle name should be “Trouble,” for trouble always seems to find her, and when trouble slips out of sight she goes looking for it. If she is not being arrested for brawling on a train, or being discovered by detectives in a hotel room where she is having an affair with her press agent, she is complaining to the audience, as she did in Sharon, Pennsylvania, that she is displeased with the size of the mirror in her dressing room and rounding on them by calling them “small-town saps.” In Louisville, Kentucky, she was successfully sued for $1,000 by a stagehand who she pushed down a flight of stairs, and a local court fined her a further $50. One evening in Evansville, Indiana, she overslept and missed a performance so the manager fined her $100, which prompted her to take a knife and slash the curtains of the theater to ribbons. This is George’s girl. Eva Tanguay, who told him that when she finally tracked down her birth mother she got a letter in reply from the woman stating that she had absolutely no wish to meet her. Eva, who smokes while she is eating, and whose nails are often chipped and dirty, and who keeps a purse in the cleavage between her breasts. He stands alone on the deck of the ship and feels a shiver surge through his body as the night breeze begins to pick up strength. He is going back to America, but the truth is he is returning to Eva, even though he fears it’s unlikely that she will still be waiting for him. He continually asks himself, Why this one? Of all the women with whom he has exchanged his colored fame for their favors, why this untamable one?

  Back in Harlem, he sleeps now in a different room than Mother, but she never mentions this fact. These days, neither the thought nor the touch of his wife produces any stirring of ardor in his loins and so he eventually deemed it best to make a dignified, if somewhat clumsy, exit from their bedroom. Surrounded by his precious hardbound volumes, which sit on handsome dark oak shelves, their spines broken, the leather rubbed thin, he sits up late into the night and smokes cigarette after cigarette as he reads. In the morning the din of street traffic announcing a new day often finds him still seated but asleep, the book having slid to the floor at some point in the night. Bert’s triumphant return to the United States and the pressures of his increased fame have finally convinced his wife that indeed she can now afford to retire from the stage and devote herself to home and husband. However, her disconsolate days, and lonely nights, begin to trouble her for she is incapable of fully inhabiting this new role of wife and lady of the house if her husband is reluctant to take up his part. The national tour of In Dahomey having been completed, each evening he now leaves with a curt but polite farewell for Hammerstein’s Victoria, where he and George are playing a limited season. And then, after the show, he stops in at Metheney’s before ambling back to 2309 Seventh Avenue under the cover of night. George,
on the other hand, often hurries over to the Variety Theatre to catch the last part of Eva’s act for he finds himself possessed by an intoxicating affection that he thought himself incapable of feeling for any woman. Although Ada is still slender, and firm-bodied, George understands that he is making a young widow of his wife, but what can he do?

  At the Victoria, Williams and Walker perform “The Detective Story” from their hit in the all-black musical In Dahomey. In the humorous sketch Walker tells stories about Nick Carter and the Old Sleuth. Williams sings his well-known songs “Nobody” and “Pretty Desdamone.”

  HAMMERSTEIN’S VICTORIA PLAYBILL,

  NOVEMBER 1905

  Having unleashed every fighting phrase at his disposal, George now glares at their promoter and tries to control his desire to spit in the face of this fool. Why can Bert not see that this man is talking down to them? And if he does see it, why can he not open his mouth and say something? After all, they are stars. Williams and Walker are no longer boys fleeing Cripple Creek, and this is not the Barbary Coast. They have headlined on Broadway and in London’s West End, and it is to Broadway that they should be returning with their new show, Abyssinia, which, like their previous success, will eschew the razors, the chickens, the loose women, and the low talk of regular coon performances. They are the most important, and the most serious, colored performers in America so who is this man to suggest that they now play at Columbus Circle? George struggles manfully to control his temper, but Bert embraces silence and his partner looks helplessly at him. Sometimes Bert behaves as though his makeup is an extra layer of skin that he cannot rub away, and George worries that perhaps both Bert’s unfortunate blackface performance and his disturbingly accommodating personality are becoming somewhat confused in his partner’s mind. George Walker shakes his head for his disposition has now soured, trapped as he is between a damn fool promoter and a foolish friend, neither of whom seem to have noticed that they have entered the twentieth century.