“Not bad, eh?” Moïse said into my ear.
I looked all around me, read a few titles of the books on the ground, The God Damn White Man jumped out at me. Piles of pamphlets distributed on the corner of practically every street. And newspapers as well, “black” newspapers, like Muhammad Speaks handed out by young men dressed in suits and ties, members of the Nation of Islam.
Moïse turned towards me, “You’ve heard of it?”
I shook my head, perplexed. He laughed, and began dragging me along, all the while rattling off his story, “Islam comes from far way. It has no roots in America. That’s why it’s so attractive to them.” He stopped to wipe his eyes filled with fine grey dust that the wind had raised off the dirty streets of Harlem. “Christianity allowed slavery. Christianity determined they didn’t have souls. So they invented a religion.”
“What does it say?”
“That blacks are the original humans. From which us, the whites, the Asians, and the Indians, all descended. We are inferior races. Wonderful, no?” He laughed. “They say the black man is the begetter of all men. They believe that the place they occupied in the beginning will be returned to them one day.” Before my stupefied expression, he chortled, then said more seriously, “God is an invention of man. Humans decide what God thinks of them. Do you understand? So I say that God is watching us from up there, at this very moment, and he’s having a good laugh. And by the way, he also says welcome to New York!” And we laughed out loud under the Harlem sun.
Moïse dragged me far from the chaos of 125th Street into a cross street, lined with dilapidated brownstones, windows covered with old sheets. The dust here made us blink, filled our nostrils, and irritated our throats. On the sidewalks, mountains of trash. From time to time we saw a rat scuttling off, as large as a cat.
“Come on!”
We were walking north. Tall, sinister-looking types gave us sideways glances, but Moïse didn’t even look at them. He seemed to know where he was headed.
We ended up somewhere on West 129th Street, in front of a door that opened onto a grimy apartment, dark and humid. Moïse looked me over: “You’re going to be okay, man? You think you can do this?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
He smiled, as if to say, what you’re about to see will be with you for the rest of your life.
In the single room with cracked walls, there was a woman. A young black woman, no more than twenty-five, her eyes sad. Thin and not particularly pretty. Henrietta was her name. A name that carried a singularly joyous rhythm to it, far too happy for the desperate woman before us. She waved in our general direction.
Around her, on the dirty floor, four young children, all her own, slept or crawled on their fat little legs. Henrietta sat, a newborn in her arm, sucking at her breast without much energy. A stink of sour milk and dirty diapers permeated the air, and I felt like I was about to throw up. “Hey, man! You gonna make it?” I nodded, ashamed at being so weak.
Henrietta. Moïse seemed to know her, but from where? He brought a chair over and sat down, placing his notepad and a pen on a sticky table next to him. One of the children caught his ankle. Moïse smiled and picked him up and put him on his knee. The child began laughing, babbling. I stayed separate, attentive, seated on a broken couch. Moïse spoke softly, his head near the young woman. She answered his questions nonchalantly. How was she pulling through? Where was her husband? He left when the youngest was born, no news since. She sighed, plaintive. “Niggers don’t make good fathers.” Niggers? Hadn’t Moïse said that blacks hated the word, which was tied to slavery? He didn’t seem to notice, continued his interview — did she have family in Harlem? How did she see her children’s future? She stiffened at that, “The future?” Moïse could have damned God and she wouldn’t have reacted so strongly. “The future is for no one!” she cried, offended. “The future is in God’s hands and God’s alone.”
Moïse smiled. With compassion. He grabbed his pen and scribbled down a few notes on his pad. She observed him, offended or amused, it was hard to say. She moved her hand towards him on the dirty table, as if she wanted him to understand that she didn’t want him writing about her. But Moïse persevered, asking other questions, always in that same low, calming voice. Then one of the children began crying, and the young woman got up, the newborn in her arms, its small head hanging limply. She told Moïse it was time to go. Moïse got up, taking the boy he had on his knee in his arms, a small boy, two years old perhaps, who looked at my friend intently. How did he know this woman, for God’s sake? Where had he met her?
He asked her whether she could let him stay for a few days. She stared at him with large dark eyes as if he was insane, then glanced at me suspiciously, hoping for reassurance. I shrugged, not knowing what to say. “Henrietta, it’s for the novel,” Moïse reminded her. Henrietta? It was said so … intimately. “The novel I told you about.” She pouted. “I’ll pay, of course.” And Moïse pulled ten one-dollar bills from his pocket and gave them to her, a fortune for him. The woman contemplated them with her wretched eyes, as if she’d never seen money before. She rolled the bills in her dirty fingers and placed them in her bra, clearly grateful. Then she intoned in a deep drawl, “Gad bless ya. Gad bless America. In Gad we trust.”
Outside, as we walked in silence along 129th Street, Moïse turned angry, “Goddamned country! She can’t even read, d’you know that? But she knows what’s written on a goddamn dollar bill! In God we trust. She could die in her own filth, and America wouldn’t give a shit. Her civil rights were taken from her, America doesn’t give a shit. But, to her, it’s like that betrayal doesn’t even exist. She’s proud of her country! Because it.…” He choked on his anger. “Because it believes in God and prints it on its goddamn dollar bills! In God We Trust. Fuck! That’s Eisenhower’s strategy to taunt the Communists and get on McCarthy’s good side. Capitalist Christian America vs. Atheist Soviet Union! Goddamn this country concocted from God and money! There are still slaves here, for crying out loud!” He kicked a pile of trash, and we heard a tin can rolling down the street. “Fuck!”
That strangely fabulous day in August 1962 would remain carved in my memory forever.
2
The day after Labour Day, I got Dana on the phone. After having tried the number a few times over the course of the previous days — Moïse had found her number in the phone book — and brief, polite exchanges with a person with a strong accent — the maid, according to him — to whom I’d refused to give my name, I finally got Dana on the line. My throat tightened, tears in my eyes.
“Where are you?” She sounded furious, her voice as brittle as glass. A half-hour later I was in Harperley Hall, an Art Nouveau building on Central Park West. The door opened on a small woman with pale eyes, mute with astonishment, with Dana appearing behind her, red pants and white blouse, her face drawn by two long days on the road. “What the hell got into you? Everyone’s been looking for you for two weeks!”
“Dana, let me explain.…”
But she wasn’t listening. She dragged me roughly into the living room, a large space decorated like a museum, great paintings on the walls. She poured herself a vodka, then poured a second one for me without asking whether I wanted it, and pushed it into my hands.
“Have you looked at yourself in a mirror? What have you been doing for the past two weeks? Have you been sleeping in the streets?”
My voice trembled, barely audible now, “I.…”
“Is it true, then? What they’re saying?”
“No!”
I told her about Frank Brodie, what he had said to my mother, defending myself.
She looked at me, concerned, “What did you do?”
“I slept with Gail.” She took her head in her hands. “Dana, I swear, I have no idea why Brodie said I raped her.”
She said nothing. My breath quickened. My leg
s were like rubber, I thought of the provincial police agents Brodie had alerted, their thick fists pounding on every door in the village, looking for me. No, Dana said. Nothing like that. Only rumours. The Newells said something about rape, but no one knew whether it was true. The Egans had disappeared like thieves in the night.
“Do you believe me, Dana?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she got up from her seat and began pacing.
“Why did you run away, then?”
The question surprised me. It was clear we came from different worlds. “What choice did I have? Do you really think Robert Egan cares whether I slept with Gail or.…”
“He sent Brodie?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why do you think he did it?”
“I don’t know.”
Dana struggled to remain calm. She grabbed her pack of Kools off the coffee table, sprung one out of the pack, lit it, blew smoke with exasperation. That untenable silence between us! When the smoke cleared, a discouraged expression on her face — or was it concern? “What’s important is that you’re safe. That nothing bad happened to you.”
On the night Gail and I were together — it seemed so long ago now — Riddington appeared at the Tees’ place still in his bathrobe, in a state of panic. Dana hadn’t actually seen it, she’d gone home by then. Something had happened to Gail and the dog. Everyone mentioned the dog. “I went to your mother’s store, but it was closed. Didn’t open once before I left. I couldn’t talk with her or your father. I even rang at the door, but didn’t get an answer. The drapes were drawn day and night. But I knew your parents were there. Françoise told me. They’re worried sick. Françoise is too. You should have heard her over the phone, she couldn’t stop crying.”
I kept silent, trying to think, my chest tight. The shock my mother must have felt when she opened the door on an empty room, my window open, the drapes floating in the wind. “My parents, they … do they believe.…?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t say.” She rubbed her forehead. “What a crazy story.”
She poured herself another vodka and asked me whether I was hungry. Rosie, a matronly Irish woman, prepared a plate of cold roast beef and placed it in front of me. I devoured it in minutes as Dana looked on tenderly. As soon as I finished, her face hardened, “You can’t stay in New York.”
I felt my head spinning again. “Why?”
“Have you thought about your parents? What are you going to do here?”
“You don’t understand. If I go back, Robert Egan is going to have me arrested.”
“I’ll talk to that imbecile.”
“No, please! I don’t want to go home! Now that I’m here, give me my opportunity.”
“Your ‘opportunity?’”
“Dana, please, I could make a life here. If you just agree to help me a little.”
It was late, past midnight. Rosie gathered up my empty dishes. Dana covered a yawn. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Meanwhile, Rosie, show him his room. There’s a bathrobe on the bed. And draw him a bath. It certainly won’t hurt him.”
The next morning, I found Dana in the kitchen, seated before a bowl of fruit and a cup of black coffee, already dressed, her hair done, made up, with Rosie reading an old copy of the Irish Times. She didn’t look any more welcoming than the night before, which only increased my apprehension. Before she opened her mouth, I said very quickly, “If you don’t want me here, kick me out. I’ll figure it out. But I’m staying in New York; I’ve made my decision.” She looked at me, astonished, “Who said anything about kicking you out?” She turned to Rosie. “Did I say that?” Rosie shook her head, unequivocal.
I stared at them.
“Well now,” Dana said. “You see? Don’t just stand there looking at me like that. You’ve got a big day ahead of you. First you’re going to call your mother, she must be worried sick. Then, you’ll put on those clothes, if we can call them that.” She waved her hand in the direction of my clothes that Rosie had washed, disinfected, and folded, and now waited for me in a basket on the counter. “Then we’ll go out and find some real clothes for you. Now that you’re in New York, we’ll make a man out of you, a real one, refined and cultivated.”
Next to her, Rosie smiled, flashing a mouthful of rotten teeth.
3
“Look at your reflection, Romain. Know that it marks the beginning of your new life.”
Dana was laughing, amused by the gruelling game we were playing. An army of salespeople were at our service at Brooks Brothers on Madison Avenue. I was trying to go through the ever increasing pile of clothes in my change room. Shirts of all colours, sports pants, polos, stylish suits, and more, including the one suit I currently had on my back, which made Dana chuckle with pleasure, “Handsome man!” Polite, the salespeople approved with half-smiles as Dana exclaimed her pleasure or displeasure, circling me, examining me head to foot, cradling her elbow in her hand, her finger touching her lips. “Never forget, Romain, Americans believe in new beginnings.” Happy words to me. A suit of fine wool, perfectly cut, white shirt, silk tie. I admired my reflection, surprised and enchanted by what I was seeing — a tall, thin, yet elegant boy, hollow cheeks with prominent cheekbones, brown eyes shining with optimism. My future was before me.
I didn’t dare ask my mother to close my account with Joe Rousseau and send me the one thousand five hundred dollars. I wanted to save her the trouble — it was hard enough for her as it was. It was easy to imagine that she was watched every time she left home, she and my father both. A boy who abandoned his parents, a sordid story of rape about which no one knew the whole truth but that was told and retold anyway. If he fled like that, for sure he had something to hide. On the phone, my mother was inconsolable, but, at least, she hadn’t believed Brodie, and each time we spoke, she would insist, imploring, “You’ll come back and explain everything?” Explain what, Mom? The truth might kill her as much as the lie.
I called her every week when my father wasn’t there. If he was, I heard the front door slam the second my mother pronounced my name. One time he picked up the phone. His large calloused hands grabbing the receiver, and his malicious voice, ferocious, “Your goddamn face, you son of bitch, I don’t wanna see it, am I clear enough?” A knife to the heart. Not that it was a surprise coming from my father, but hurtful anyway. My mother informed me he’d lost his contracts — first Robert Egan, then the others, and no one gave him the real reason, because no one knew the whole truth.
“Mom, I have a chance in New York. Dana is helping me. I’m going to school.”
“Going to school” might have been an exaggeration, though not by much. Dana had organized private English and art history courses so I could take advantage of New York’s museums and understand what I was seeing. What incredible museums they were! The Metropolitan, the Museum of Modern Art, and the impressive Guggenheim, like a ship’s hull, a staircase like a propeller that you climbed down slowly, finally reaching street level. “A new museum experience,” my teacher had told me, excited. Darren Hunter was thirty or so, with an old patched tweed jacket on his back, messy blond hair, a deep soft voice, and penetrating blue eyes. Together, we walked through the museum’s rooms, while he spoke of the various painters’ works — Picasso, Braque, Poussin, Delacroix. Every week, we met up at his place in Morningside Heights, near Columbia University, a small apartment fitted out with a projection room; sometimes there were two or three of us watching his colour slides, the masters’ works appeared and dis-appeared on the walls like luminescent heartbeats. Caravaggio’s dramatic theatre of shadows and light, Rembrandt’s humanity-filled portraits. I was amazed that the hand of man could so perfectly reproduce the miracle of love in the lustre of an eye.
I liked Darren a lot. He taught me new, surprising things, always respecting the limits of my understanding. He was one of Dana’s old friends, and often he invited us to eat at his pla
ce on Claremont Avenue, the projection room transformed into a dining room. Happy meals, with no one to make me feel like I was seventeen; the pleasure of being treated like an adult by Dana, her sister Ethel, and their friends was certainly the best way to help me gain confidence in my budding maturity.
When you’re expected to be a man, you don’t want to disappoint.
One day, in front of a portrait of Genghis Khan at the Met, Darren said, “At fifteen, he was already an infamous warrior, respected. Never underestimate the young.” That night, he gave me the honour of being seated next to him, signalling that my conversation was as interesting as anyone else’s. He sat at the end of the table, I was to his left, Dana to his right. An older couple was also present. The man was a professor at Columbia — as was Darren — and his wife painted, just like Ethel. I remember noticing Darren watching Dana closely that evening. In the taxi ride back to Harperley Hall, I asked Dana:
“Darren and you.…”
“What, exactly, Darren and me?”
“You were never … together?”
“Never! He told you that?”
“No! I just thought that.…”
“Don’t put your nose where it doesn’t belong, young man.…”
She glowered, her face turned towards the window. I couldn’t decide whether she was angry or upset. If I’d been a woman, I think Darren would have been the sort of man to attract me. But Dana didn’t seem to want a man in her life.
With my English teacher, things were different. Ian Dart was a university friend of Ethel’s, a young man with thick glasses and fine, bony hands, naturally kind, perhaps a little shy. He came three times a week to Harperley Hall, coached me through my lessons, gave me texts to analyze and essays to write. Most of the time I was free to choose my own topics, except when he decided I should become more interested in a particular subject — current events, more often than not. He taught me about America’s domestic issues. I remember well how interested I was in racial integration — the first black student admitted to the University of Mississippi, his admission forced by John Kennedy. Of course, I was fascinated by JFK’s promise to send a man to the moon before the end of the decade. I bore down, filled with wonder, telling myself that everything was possible in this country. Yes, everything was possible.
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