He had just about finished when there was a tap on his door. He had not wished to be disturbed and had so warned everyone in the house. His “come in” was harsh and uninviting. And his frown deepened when he saw that the intruder was Janet. She and Aline were always butting in at the wrong time. He was sorry now that he was responsible for their almost continual presence in Niggeratti Manor. They were decorative and they did liven up parties, but there was no reason why they should make this house their second home.
“Well?”
“Got anything to drink?”
“Is that the reason you disturbed me? No, I have nothing to drink and no money. Isn’t there any downstairs?”
“No. Pretty tough, eh?”
“Probably a blessing.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I happen to be busy. Shut up a minute, will you?”
He returned to his writing. Janet meekly curled herself into one of the wicker chairs, and silently puffed away on a cigarette.
Finally Raymond finished. With a grin of satisfaction, he piled the sheets together.
“Finished?”
“Looks like it.”
“Don’t be so nasty, Ray.”
This was said so piteously, so abjectly, that Raymond looked up for the first time and observed her closely. Her eyes were full of tears, and the reddish brown powder, which she used to heighten her own complexion, was streaked with tear lanes.
“What the hell?”
“I’m a damn fool, Ray.”
“So are we all.”
Janet wiped her eyes, then daubed her face with a russet powder puff. This done, she rummaged in her purse for another cigarette.
“Ray … I’m in love.”
“Poppycock.”
“Honest to God.”
“With whom?”
“Steve.”
Raymond smiled in spite of himself.
“Don’t be funny.”
“I ain’t, Ray. I love him, an’… ”
“So does your best friend.”
“You think she does?”
“Well, she acts like it.” He was bored now and anxious for solitude, for he wished to mull over and revise what he had written.
“She don’t love him, Ray. She just took him to show me she had more chance.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“But don’t you see, Ray,” her voice was thick and her words hurried, passionate, “if he’d never seen her I’d a had him. He likes her best ’cause she’s almost white. All white men are that way. They’ll pass up a brown girl to get to a high yaller.”
“You’re a bigger fool than I thought you were.”
“It’s serious, Ray. I never fell for a white man before. Aline has. But Steve’s the first one for me and I’d give anything to have him.”
“Just because he’s white?” He remembered Lucille’s similar assertion. His words were sharp and scornful.
“It’s not that, Ray.” She was trying hard to make him understand. “It’s just that… it’s just that he’s different.”
“Different from Negroes. He has a white skin. It’s a badge of honor you’d like to wear. Jesus, are you Negro women as bad as Negro men?”
The tears receded. The eyes flashed angrily.
“I don’t see where you got any right to talk. What about Barbara. … She’s not white, I suppose?”
“Well, what about her? We’re good friends, yes.”
“Good friends, yeah, I know. So are Steve and Aline good friends. The little whore. But I’ll show her. She can’t keep him. I ain’t yaller, but I can get a white man the same as she.”
Abruptly she paced out of the room and slammed the door behind her. For a moment Raymond was utterly flabbergasted. The whole scene seemed absurd and unreal. Stephen’s presence among them was eternally bringing up new complications. Could not Negroes and whites ever get together and act like normal individuals or must there always be this awareness of color and this striving to gain favor?
He had noticed the languishing looks which Janet had bestowed upon Stephen, but he knew what close friends she and Aline were, and he had taken for granted that neither were serious enough about Stephen to precipitate jealousy. And Stephen had certainly shown which one he preferred. Of all the damn …
Janet had mentioned Barbara. And he had answered: “We’re just good friends.” Good friends? He considered their experiences together.
Barbara. Countess Barbara Nitsky. That was the name which had been mumbled to him months ago when they had been introduced at a party. No, it hadn’t been at a party. It had been at a dance, at the far famed Alexander Lodge masquerade.
Paul had found Barbara, a pale, slender person with ardent hazel eyes. She had worn a Florentine costume. Its fragile texture clung to her body and revealed her boyish figure. Her cheeks were pale, her lips a straight red gash, her hair a massive auburn crown studded with brilliants.
“This,” Paul had announced with a flourish, “is Countess Nit-sky.”
She had acknowledged the introduction. Her eyes had sparkled. The lips had parted. She had smiled and remained in their box for the rest of the evening.
It had been impossible to dance, for the floor beneath them was already too packed for anyone else to venture forth. Raymond and Barbara had been drawn together, and had pointed out choice costumes or amusing incidents one to the other. They had had a most enjoyable time, and from then on had often been in one another’s company.
Raymond thought of all this now. Thought of the gay comradeship which had developed between them. And wondered, momentarily, if he too was similar to the other Negroes he knew, who deemed it such an honor to possess a white woman. No. He was not like that. White people to him were no novelty. Nor was friendship with them any strange event in his life. He had been reared among them, and had had, thanks to the environment in which he had been born, as much traffic with whites as he had had with Negroes. He could no more deify one of them than he could deify a Negro. They were all creatures of the earth, some of whom he liked, and others for whom he cared nothing whatsoever.
But then… he remembered a conversation he had had with Barbara. It had followed his asking her if she was really a countess, after Samuel had assured him that she was nothing of the kind, that she was, to the contrary, a Jewish girl who had been born in the Bronx, sophisticated in Greenwich Village, where she had fallen in love and been deserted by an erudite dilettante from Chicago, and had then migrated to Harlem, broke and discouraged, to discover that among Negro men she could be enthroned and honored like a queen of the realm.
She had been surprisingly frank with Raymond.
“The title and everything is a joke, Ray. Someone called me that the first night I attended a Harlem party and didn’t want to give my right name. I have been known as the countess ever since.”
“That is funny.”
“It’s funnier than you think. I heard you arguing with Samuel about Negroes the other day, and it reminded me of a number of things. Have you seen the Harlem News this week?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice how my name was flung all over the society page?”
“I never read that junk.”
“Well… the countess was here and the countess was there. It’s beginning to get awful.”
“Don’t you enjoy it?”
“I’m not entirely a rat, Ray. I do have some feeling … even though I couldn’t very well give up a profitable living.”
“I don’t get the connection.”
“Well, I have to live. I’m washed up downtown, the more so since I’ve come to Harlem. And I can get better treatment and more money from colored men than I could ever make downtown with my limited looks and lack of any special ability to put me in the limelight. When I first came up here, I enjoyed it. Everybody made such a fuss over me. But now it makes me sad.”
“Why?”
“I see through it all. It’s tragic to realize that your Negro men are all so eager to p
ossess a white woman, no matter what her antecedents or present condition. And I’m not talking about the lowbrows, men like Bull, for instance, who just take you casually as they would any woman, then bid you good-by, even though they may brag for months afterwards. No, I’m talking about your professional men… your doctors, lawyers, dentists, business men, and social service workers, especially the latter. They do so much yawping about racial injustice and for racial solidarity, and then when someone like me comes along and gives them the glad eye, they fall over one another in the rush. It’s tragic.”
“Much more disgusting than tragic, Barbara. But why the hell should you care? If you don’t string them along, someone else will. If they want to dine, wine and tip you silver, let ’em. I hope you bleed them well, then write your reminiscences.”
Barbara’s revelations were not new to Raymond. He had observed similar antics ever since his arrival in Harlem, and had laughed about them. But when women he knew intimately began to fight over his best friend, merely because he was a white man … well… as Stephen had said, there seemed to be no end to the complexes Negroes had managed to store within themselves.
He was still sitting as Janet had left him, the book review temporarily forgotten, when Stephen sauntered into the room.
“Jesus Christ, Fm tired. I’ve been in that damn library for hours. Just about one more thesis, and I’ll… ”
“I’m glad you came in, Steve.”
“You don’t look very joyful.” He threw his books down on the table. “Did you finish your review?”
“Yeah … with difficulties.”
“What kind of difficulties?”
“Yours, Steve.”
“Mine?… Say … what the hell’s eating you tonight?”
“Your love affairs.”
“Will you talk sense? Or are you drunk?”
“Janet’s been talking to me about you.”
“What’ve I done to her?”
“She says she loves you.”
“Horse collar.”
“She says you prefer Aline to her, because Aline’s almost white, but she’s going to make you despite her brown skin.”
“Are you completely nuts?”
“I’m not that imaginative, Steve.”
“But I’ve hardly noticed the girl, since I’ve been chasing with Aline.”
“Since? Then you have given her a play?”
“Oh, hell, I’ve kissed her, I guess, when I was drunk, and she’s asked me to take her out every night for the past week but I’ve always had a date with Aline, and couldn’t. I didn’t think she was serious.”
“Well, she thinks she is. She’s all het up to have a white man. Since you’re the most desirable one in sight you’d better give her a break.”
“I’m not that ambitious.”
“Must you be monogamous? Go ahead, give the girl something to be thrilled about.”
“Ray … you’re the damndest… What’s eating you anyhow? If I thought… ”
He was interrupted by Paul bursting excitedly into the room.
“What the hell do you want?” Raymond asked angrily.
“Come on downstairs, both of you.”
“For what?”
“We’re gonna pray for gin, and we need reinforcements.”
“Grand idea, Paul. Come on, Ray. I feel both thirsty and pious, and I’m sure you need gin.”
“Oh all right, but I wish to hell you people would leave me alone some time.”
There was the usual crowd. Aline, Bull, Pelham, Eustace, and Janet who stared fixedly at Stephen as he entered the room. They were all sitting in a circle holding hands. Three empty chairs awaited the arrival of Stephen, Raymond and Paul. Silently, they took their places. Eustace was master of ceremonies.
“Beloved, we join hands here to pray for gin. An aridity defiles us. Our innards thirst for the juice of juniper. Something must be done. The drought threatens to destroy us. Surely, God who let manna fall from the heavens so that the holy children of Israel might eat, will not let the equally holy children of Niggeratti Manor die from the want of a little gin. Children, let us pray.”
All heads were bowed, according to a familiar ritual. Reverently, Eustace patted his foot and rolled his head heavenward.
“Oh, Lord,” he began. The others joined in. “Lord, send us some gin. Oh, Lord, send us someone with some money to buy gin, or visit thyself upon the bartender on the corner and make him allow us credit. Father in heaven, we bend before thee. Hear, oh hear, our plea. Send us some gin, Lord, send us some gin.”
The prayer finished, the circle remained intact with bowed heads and joined hands. A low moan escaped, a moan such as is often heard in darky camp meetings. It grew in volume and swelled melodiously throughout the room. Abruptly it stopped. Eustace had spoken:
“And, Lord, send me a little sandwich too.”
X
The prayer was not answered immediately, and in time everyone became gloomy and morose. Since no one came in with money to buy gin, it was thought expedient for Raymond to go to the corner speakeasy and attempt to chisel two bottles from the bartender, promising payment at a later date. But this Raymond refused to do. He, himself, was not over-anxious for a drink, and consequently felt no interest in whether the others had any or not.
He kept a close watch on Aline, Janet and Stephen, expecting an outburst, but Janet contented herself, sitting apart from the rest, glowering at Aline, who retaliated by snuggling closer into Stephen’s arms as if to advertise her priority. Paul attempted to enliven the group with one of his fantastic tales, but by now everyone was familiar with almost any tale Paul could tell, and paid so little attention to what he said that he soon gave up, and sauntered out of the room, saying that he was going for a walk.
Bull alone seemed to be in good humor, and finally announced that since no one else would move a finger, he would sally forth and return with enough gin to “ossify the whole damn bunch o’ you.”
Eustace cornered Raymond, and began his usual lament about his lack of opportunity. It annoyed him considerably that so many young and unknown Negro singers were getting hearings from Broadway audiences, while he, older, more experienced, and more musically learned, must be content with infrequent and disappointing Harlem appearances. He wanted to branch out and entrance larger and more discriminating audiences than Harlem offered, but every attempt he had made to get in a Broadway show, or arrange for a radio or concert audition, had ended in failure. Raymond knew why this was, but he knew there was no use sharing this knowledge with Eustace.
He was tired, though, of continually listening to Eustace’s wails, and made up his mind then and there to consult Samuel about the matter, and see what that energetic soul could do.
Bull did not return. There seemed to be no hope for getting any gin. The prayers of the holy children of Niggeratti Manor had met with no results. Raymond eased himself away from Eustace and returned to his studio and to his book review. Pelham, too, had deserted the would-be revelers, and secluded himself in his room where he set about putting on the finishing touches to a portrait he had just finished, a portrait of Pavlowa, copied out of the New York Times Rotogravure supplement. Only Aline, Janet, Stephen and Eustace remained downstairs. Eustace was finding solace in the piano and in song. He had opened a portfolio of songs by Shubert and was running through the entire group. Janet still sat in her corner, glowering at the interlocked couple on the bed. Finally she spoke.
“I’m going home.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” Aline answered. “The key’s in my pock-etbook.”
“I don’t need your keys. I’m not living at your house any more.” With which she stalked out of the room.
Stephen would have followed, but Aline restrained him.
“Never mind, baby. She has nowhere else to go. She’ll be right there in the bed where she belongs when I get home.”
Nothing else happened. Eustace continued to sing. Aline and Stephen, tired of spooning in such a depress
ive atmosphere, decided to go to a motion picture show. The night was singularly dull and uneventful.
Early the next morning, Raymond telephoned Samuel and asked him to come up as soon as possible. Always willing to be of service, and always eager to know just what was going on in Niggeratti Manor, Samuel dropped everything and immediately made his way to Harlem.
“What is it Ray?” he asked before removing his hat and coat.
“Nothing exciting, Sam. I just want you to see what you can do to help Eustace get an audition downtown. Make him some contacts. Of course he can’t sing, but give him a break. I’ve heard worse, and,” he added slyly, “you’re always bemoaning the fact that none of us will let you champion our cause. Here’s your chance to make an impression.”
Samuel set to work immediately. He interviewed many people who were figures in the concert world, and finally located a group who not only promised to grant Eustace an audition, but who also said that if his voice was all Samuel claimed, they, themselves, would present him in a concert of songs at Carnegie Hall.
Exultingly, Samuel rushed back uptown to tell Eustace the good news. Raymond entered the room soon after his arrival, and was startled to find Eustace angrily pacing the room. He had been apprised by telephone of what Samuel had done, and had expected to find Eustace most joyful. It did not take him long to discover what was wrong.
“But I won’t sing spirituals,” Eustace declared.
“Why won’t you sing them?” Samuel asked. “They’re your heritage. You shouldn’t be ashamed of them.”
“What makes you think they’re my heritage, Sam? I have no relationship with the people who originated them. Furthermore I’m a musician, and as far as I can see, spirituals are most certainly not music.”
“Nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense. Aren’t there enough people already spurting those bastard bits of doggerel? Must every Negro singer dedicate his life to the crooning of slave songs?”
“But they’re beautiful,” Raymond interjected.
“Beautiful?” There was scorn in his voice. “Beautiful because they are now the fad. I’m a concert singer, and I won’t be untrue to my art.”
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