by Steve Cash
“Yes, yes, of course. I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just that I can’t help thinking about something Arrosa said in her letter. It’s a bit of an understatement.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“She told me to ‘expect the unexpected.’”
Two days passed in a blur of activity. From early morning until late at night we combed the streets, shops, cafés, and bars of the fifth, sixth, and seventh arrondissements. We made countless strolls up and down Saint Germain and Saint Michel, asking questions, searching, hoping to find a connection to Rune Balle. No one seemed to know him, which was not odd since he had been considered dead for twenty years. Lindbergh’s name, however, was everywhere and on everyone’s lips. Mercy accompanied us during the day, but at night she was working at Chez Josephine. We spent both nights in Montmartre, high up on rue Florentine, loitering near two clubs across the street from each other, Bricktop’s and Zelli’s. Geaxi said they were the kind of places Rune Balle had preferred in his youth. We watched the traffic and never saw a sign of him, but Nova became completely absorbed and fascinated with Parisian street life—the personalities, hairstyles, conversation, and especially the fashion. Geaxi seemed unaffected by it, telling me, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin,” or “We must cultivate our own garden.”
By morning of the third day, we still had not heard from Mitch. I worried about it. It was unusual for him not to call or come by. Whatever the reason, if he had fallen down, fallen ill, or fallen in love, it was probably serious. We made our rounds anyway and then headed back to Mercy’s apartment for lunch. The telephone rang. Mercy picked up the receiver, laughed, then held out the receiver so we could hear. The voice came through loud and clear. It was Josephine Baker, laughing and shouting and telling Mercy to get those children from St. Louis over to her apartment now, faster than a pig squirms. She wanted to meet us before we went to the benefit that night. She couldn’t wait to talk about St. Louis. She was sending over her car and her chauffeur within the hour. From her place we would all go to the Theatre des Champs-Élysées together. She went on and on. Mercy finally stopped her and said we would be waiting on the front steps.
Less than an hour later we were picked up and driven to Josephine Baker’s apartment. Her chauffeur opened the door getting in and out, then ushered us inside the apartment. Mercy had warned us that Josephine loved animals, but the reality was bizarre. Between and among a cluttered, exotic, eclectic collection of things and furniture, including a bust of Louis XIV, stacks of letters and magazines, records, clothes, costumes, and furniture, she kept a parakeet, a parrot, three baby rabbits, and a snake. We were led through the apartment into a large kitchen, where half a dozen people were gathered in a small circle, each with a smile on their face and a champagne glass in their hand. In the midst, kneeling and talking rapidly, Josephine Baker was telling a story about Berlin. She was also grooming her pig. The pig’s name was Albert and he smelled of perfume. She caught a glimpse of the chauffeur and looked up, first at him, then to Mercy, then over to us. She was at eye level. She was dressed in a full-length silver gown with sequins sewn in an intricate design, platinum loop earrings, and a string of pearls around her neck. Her short hair was styled similar to Mercy’s, only the wave across her forehead ended in a spit curl. She wore heavy eye makeup and oxblood lipstick. On her head she wore a lacy skullcap covered in sequins. She was a beautiful, stunning, brown-skinned girl of only twenty-one—the rage of Paris—and yet, she looked familiar. I was certain I knew her, I had seen her before, but I couldn’t place it. Then she smiled. It was a great, wide grin, which took me back instantly to the night I met Arrosa at Mitch’s club in St. Louis. I remembered a young girl backstage, trying to sneak in and watch the dancers. Mitch called her “Tumpy,” but he said her real name was Josephine. For a second that night, the girl and I caught each other’s eye and she smiled, just before Mitch pushed her out the door.
Josephine Baker’s smile faded and she stared at me. I saw in her eyes the gradual recognition of our mutual memory, followed by the puzzling paradox that comes with it.
“I remember you,” she said. “It was St. Louis…I was a kid about your size…I remember you, but…”
“How is it possible that I appear the same now as in your memory?”
“Yes.”
“Because the true you chose to remember it that way. If you did not, I would not exist.”
Josephine Baker laughed and whistled. “That sounds almost crazy, honey.”
“You’re not the first girl to say that.”
“But that don’t explain nothin’,” she said.
Nova smiled and said, “Oh, yes it does.”
“It could explain everything,” Geaxi said.
Josephine Baker stood and waved her arms high in the air and shook her hands as if she were in church or singing in a revival. “Tout de même,” she said. “You must be an angel because Mitch needs some hometown cheerin’ up and I ain’t been able to help him one little bit.”
“Is this where he’s been staying since he got to Paris?” I asked.
“That’s right, and we were havin’ a swell time until this mornin’. Then Mitch came down with the blues real bad. He’s as sour and mean and quiet as a man can be.”
“Where is he?”
“In a church.”
“Church?”
“Yes, and I’m worried about him. He’s been there for hours. Why don’t you talk to him, honey? Cheer him up—talk him into goin’ with us tonight.” She pointed to a dark-haired man with a thin mustache standing near her. “Pepito will take you there.”
“I’ll go right away,” I said.
Pepito was Josephine Baker’s companion and soon-to-be husband. He was an obvious hustler, but he was nice to me and we struck up an easy conversation. He led us through traffic for several blocks until we stopped in front of an old and ornate church, Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis. The facade was three-tiered and rose seven or eight stories, covered in great stone columns and arches with statues in recesses on all three levels. Pepito climbed the steps with me, saying he would wait for me under the massive stone arch of the entrance. I walked inside. My eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light and I found a place to sit near the aisle on the last row of pews. The cavernous cathedral was eerily silent and all the pews were empty, except for two people: a young girl in the front row who seemed to be weeping, and a black man two rows ahead of me. He sat with his head bent forward and his eyes closed. It was Mitch. As always, he was wearing his tuxedo, but the jacket had been removed, the tie loosened, and the collar unbuttoned. I stood and walked down two rows. He kept his eyes closed. I sat and moved over until I was within five feet and waited.
Thirty seconds passed. Almost whispering, I said, “Mitch, are you all right?”
He looked up slowly, not even surprised to see me. There were no tears in his eyes, but there was a deep and true sadness. “Hey, Z,” he said. His voice sounded dull and flat. “I been meanin’ to call, man. I just…I just ain’t got around to it.”
Another twenty seconds passed. I gazed around the cathedral. “I didn’t know you liked churches, Mitch.”
He smiled faintly. “I can’t say I frequent the joints, Z.”
“Any reason you picked this one?”
“It was old.”
“Sounds like a good reason to me.” I let a few more moments go by. The girl in the front row rose to light a candle at the altar. I heard her mumbling a prayer. I turned to Mitch. “What’s wrong, Mitch?”
He took a deep breath and sighed. “Nothin’ I won’t get over. Today is May 27, the same day my old man died in Ithaca. It hit me hard this time around.” He paused and looked up at the girl by the altar. “I think about him different now than I used to. I miss him.”
“I know how you feel. I miss my papa every day.”
“No, Z, that ain’t what I meant. You miss what you two had together. I miss what we never had until the very end, and then we just ran out of time. I only got to
know him those last few months. Inside, I hated him most of my life, but in the end I got to know him. And I forgave him inside. Now I miss him and I can’t bring him back. It’s not fair, man.”
“I agree. There’s nothing fair about it.”
“And he died confused, Z. That ain’t fair either.”
“What do you mean, ‘confused’?”
“He never got rid of his guilt…and his regret.”
“Because he left you and your mama?”
“I think so, but you see, he’d done it before. He told me he did it twice in his life—once in Africa, and again a few years later in St. Louis. He spent several years with his family in Africa before he left, but he left St. Louis not long after I was born. He said I got a half sister somewhere. No doubt about it, he had a pile of regret. And you know what the saddest part is, Z? He never knew why. ‘I have searched my soul,’ he told me, ‘and I have never known why I did it—either time.’”
“That is sad, though he must have been happy to finally have you with him.”
“Yeah, he loved it. He had a hell of a life, Z. He was an engineer, a gambler, a preacher, and a professor. He quoted Walt Whitman all the time, and the Bible. He survived a shipwreck off West Africa and being captured by a desert warlord named El Heiba, then escaping with the daughter of a shaman. She was being held as a slave because El Heiba believed she had some kind of voodoo power. They made it out of the desert and cross-country all the way back to her village, where he lived with her and her people for years as man and wife. Wild stuff, man, but he lived it.”
Suddenly, I got a chill up my spine, not because of the story but because I’d heard it before—in Africa! The coincidence was too startling to be an accident. “Mitch, did your papa ever tell you the name of your half sister?”
“Yeah, he said it out loud one time. He whispered it. He called her ‘Emme.’” Before I could say anything, Mitch added, “I got a picture of him right here, Z. I took it myself about a week after I got to Ithaca.” He reached for his tuxedo jacket and withdrew a photograph from the inside pocket. “Here he is,” Mitch said, “that’s Cayuga Falls in the background.”
I looked at the snapshot and another strange coincidence occurred. I had seen the face in the photograph before. I had met the man in 1919, just as we were preparing to dock in New York. It was when we were bringing Star home, finally, after all those years in Africa, along with the bodies of Nicholas and Eder. I was walking the deck alone when a thin old black man asked me to watch his things while he stepped inside. I remembered the books he carried with him, Leaves of Grass and the Bible. His bookmark in the Bible was a train ticket to Ithaca, New York. Mitch’s father was the same man. I almost laughed out loud at the recognition, then realized where we were.
“Mitch,” I said, “you are not going to believe a couple of things I have to tell you.”
Just then, the wide doors behind us opened and I heard Josephine Baker’s voice saying, “Merveilleux! Merveilleux! What a church!”
Mitch and I both turned around. Mitch said, “Tumpy, what are you doin’ here?”
She wore her long silver gown with sequins and they sparkled in the half-light and shadows. She marched over to Mitch, speaking in exaggerated whispers. “Because, Mitch honey, we have decided that you need a night out and we won’t take no for an answer.” She stopped and looked down at Mitch in the pew. Pepito followed close behind her. She glanced his way. “Ain’t that so, Pepito? We all agreed, right?”
“Sí, sí, we all agreed,” Pepito said. He started to say more, but decided to light a cigarette instead. Josephine grabbed the cigarette out of his mouth before he could light it and stuffed it in his coat pocket without saying a word. She turned back to Mitch and flashed her biggest, widest grin. “Come on, you got to go, honey. What do you say?”
Mitch answered slowly and without much emotion. “Josephine, don’t take this personally, but I believe I’ll pass on this one.”
Josephine almost stamped her feet in frustration, then glanced at me for help.
“I think she’s right, Mitch,” I said. The sadness still filled his eyes.
Mitch looked away, toward the altar. “I just don’t feel like it, man. I just…I don’t know…I just…”
I heard the doors swing open behind us. I turned and Mercy Whitney walked through, dressed in an elegant crimson dress and wearing a skullcap similar to Josephine’s. She smiled when she saw us and hurried over. Ruby earrings dangled from her ears. Her lips were the same color as the rubies. “What a beautiful old church,” Mercy said. Mitch suddenly looked startled, as if a bell had rung. He turned in his pew instantly. His eyes found Mercy’s and Mercy’s found his. The exchange was and is one of the rarest moments in life and I was witness to it. I recognized it because I had experienced the same moment in China when Opari and I first looked into each other’s eyes. It is a split second of wonder, mystery, and magic. It is love at first sight. Unexpected and unprepared, and in the dim light of the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, Mitchell Ithaca Coates and Mercy Whitney were given the flower of that moment. It came to them unasked and unannounced and in full bloom. I couldn’t help myself and laughed out loud with joy, despite where we were. Josephine Baker had also seen the exchange and joined in, understanding immediately what she had seen. Mitch and Mercy ignored us. Their eyes were locked. I watched Mitch’s eyes. I have never seen such a sincere and heartfelt sadness disappear so quickly. Finally, Mitch smiled and said, “I just changed my mind, Tumpy.”
“I can see that, honey,” Josephine said.
I noticed an older priest walking up the aisle from the altar. He was not pleased or amused. “I think it’s time to leave,” I said, nodding in his direction.
“Time indeed, the car is waitin’ for us,” Josephine added.
Outside, there were two limousines lined up against the curb. We climbed in the open door of the lead car and were welcomed by Geaxi. She said Nova was in the second car with the rest of Josephine’s entourage. The lights of Paris were shining all around us. Josephine told her chauffeur, “Theatre des Champs-Élysées, Etienne, s’il vous plaît.” We pulled into traffic and in moments the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis became a memory, but the moment inside was alive and well in the front seat, where Mitch and Mercy were only beginning a conversation that would last the rest of their lives.
After waiting in a long line of limousines on avenue Montaigne, we arrived at the gala event. When Josephine stepped out, she was more than welcomed, she was practically worshipped. Shouts of “La Perle Noir!” and “Our Fifine!” surrounded us. She rushed past, waving at everyone and throwing kisses. The presence of children in her entourage was nothing unusual. The people of Paris knew she loved animals and children and often took them with her wherever she pleased.
We were met inside by one of the managers. Josephine was currently dancing with the Folies Bergere, but I was told she had become famous at the Theatre des Champs-Élysées, where she performed her outrageous Banana Dance in La Revue Negre. The manager accompanied us to a private box reserved especially for Josephine. Whistles and scattered applause greeted her as she appeared, waved, and took her seat. It was nothing compared to the thunderous, hysterical standing ovation a few minutes later as Charles Lindbergh made his entrance. He waved from a private box on the opposite side of the hall, along with local dignitaries and a few aviators. He was taller than all of them and looked half their age and half their weight, but he was the reason they were there. He was the reason everyone was there. Even Josephine clapped and whistled, shouting his name with abandon.
Geaxi, Nova, and I took our seats behind Josephine, Pepito, and a half dozen others. Mitch and Mercy sat off to one side, completely oblivious to everyone and everything. They spoke rapidly and never stopped staring in each other’s eyes. The diva, Mary Garden, dressed as Lady Liberty, sang the Amercan national anthem and the show began.
Geaxi kept her attention focused on Lindbergh’s box throughout the first two acts, th
en turned to me. She winked and said, “I think I shall take a stroll, young Zezen.” She slipped on her beret and gracefully exited unnoticed into the hall behind us.
Nova enjoyed everything about the show and the performers. She wanted to know each of their names and was constantly asking Josephine about costumes, sets, jewelry, and makeup. She was fascinated with the theater and the people who lived the life of the theater. She told me she loved the “illusion of it all.” She watched every act with anticipation and joy, laughing and clapping, sometimes jumping up and down, exactly like an excited twelve-year-old girl—the best illusion in the room.
Occasionally, I glanced at Lindbergh’s box, fully expecting Geaxi to suddenly appear, but she never did. Mitch and Mercy continued falling in love, oblivious to most of the show and the people around them. At one point, I saw Mitch touch Mercy’s lips and trace the outline with his fingers. I remembered doing the same thing with Opari and for several minutes I was lost in a kind of dream, thinking only of Opari, longing for her, aching for her.
It was Geaxi who broke the reverie. “Zianno, come quickly!” I turned and she was standing directly behind me. She motioned for me to follow. “Quickly!” she repeated. I rose and left without a word to anyone.
Once we were in the hall, I asked Geaxi, “Did you get to see Lindbergh?”
“No,” she said, pulling me aside. The hallway corridor was crowded and she wanted privacy. Geaxi acted calm, though her black eyes burned bright with energy. “I just met someone,” she said. “I was, in fact, near Lindbergh’s box, observing the security, which was extensive. To devise a plan, I found a seat on a small bench against the wall of the hallway. As I was thinking, a black woman approached me directly. I remained silent and she sat down on the bench. ‘Do not be alarmed,’ she said, then smiled. I smiled back.” Geaxi paused.
“So, that’s not unusual,” I said.
“Yes, but then she asked, ‘Do you know Zianno Zezen?’ I did not answer right away. Instead, I looked in her eyes. She was aware that I was Meq and she was completely comfortable, even respectful. I examined her closer and realized she must be a shaman’s daughter. She had been deliberately scarred as a child with three raised lines on both temples.”