Nathaniel closed his eyes. For a moment his father’s voice wavered in his mind. The time he had talked about Malcolm. Nathaniel was twenty the year they shot King down in Memphis. And the poet Henry Dumas just a month later, right there in Harlem. He hadn’t taken it as badly as others had, certainly not as badly as his father. But that was before. That was then. Now he had taken more time to learn, to think and reflect. When he thought on it hard what he saw in his mind was dishonor. Too many nameless dead. Ship holds. Coffles. The deaths he had seen in his own lifetime. At Orangeburg over a bowling lane. At the hands of the police. He thought of the years of lynching. The faces smiling under the charred flesh of Jesse Washington down in Texas. He thought of the Freedmen betrayed in the Reconstruction. The long centuries before then, all under the whip of the founding fathers, as they took in their immeasurable lucre, built their empire westward, fiddled in their private Monticellos. He thought of all the brothers behind bars. The acquittals of officers, as regular and predictable as tides. Nathaniel opened his eyes. It was shocking to realize how powerfully he missed home. How the catalog of infamy that he had wanted, consciously or unconsciously, to run away from for so much of his life, to somehow ignore or work around, was still not powerful enough to keep him on the run forever. How strange it was to be here in this other land, in so many ways a better one, where he was seeing and understanding more than at any other time in his life, and yet his experiences, his study of history, all of it was only solidifying an itch he had repressed: a need to get back, to return home.
“No,” he said finally, looking over at Claude, “I don’t think there will be a black president in my lifetime.” He thought a moment and added, “But that won’t keep us from trying.”
Of the three friends from Cité Lamartine, Apollinaire was the one Nathaniel had gotten to know the least. Yet the week before it all came to an end, they had shared a most intimate moment together, one that Nathaniel could never forget. Apollinaire had insisted they go for a drive. Nate had to practically crouch to get himself in the little green Simca, but once they were packed in they peeled out marvelously, swerving out of the projects with a beastly guzzle, accelerating along the wide boulevards extérieurs, crossing the arm of the Seine at Bercy, switching lanes, the suspension yawing as they darted through traffic. A wooden cross on a string of colored beads jangled in a syncopated dance over the dash.
“Open the glove box!” Apollinaire ordered, as he imperiled their lives in an attempt to light a pungent cigarillo. Nathaniel popped the notch and instantly, an avalanche of papers began flying into the back seat. Nathaniel quickly shut it again, but not before having nabbed one of the pages as it whipped past. Compiled with a wobbly ballpoint pen was a list with the heading The Plot Against Africa:
Jacques Foccart / François de Grossouvre / Paul Barril / Bob Denard / Étienne Léandri / Charles Pasqua / Félix-Roland Moumié / Bolloré / Outel Bono / Eduardo Mondlane / Herbert Chitepo / Amílcar Cabral / Dulcie September / Steve Biko / Patrice Lumumba / Thomas Sankara / Aginter Press / Robert Sobukwe / Union Minière du Haut-Katanga /
* * *
—
“Don’t worry about that,” Apollinaire said. “Just some research of mine. Look in there for my OK Jazz.” Nathaniel rummaged through the papers at his feet and pulled out a plastic cassette box. Franco et le Tout Puissant OK Jazz Band, Paris 1984. The tape was a mess, looping out in a crazed tangle. Nathaniel stuck his pinky in one of the eyes, felt the teeth pinch his fingertip, wound it back till it was tight again, then shoved it in the car deck between their knees.
The twang of African guitars and Lingala poured out of the car stereo. Electrified guitars clanging Franco bellowing out with his chorus chiming in behind—LIBERTÉ—the guitar ringing out eh pa! OK Jazz en forme Apollinaire agreeing slapping the gearbox through second and third and fourth up the boulevard Leclerc—LIBERTÉ—Franco insisting on it the guitar chimes spilling over with a shattering clarity like diamonds in a briefcase on a flight from Goma to Kisangani to Antwerp like earrings chilling a glass countertop at De Beers—LIBERTÉ—Apollinaire gliding the whip expertly round the Place de la Nation the tires of the Simca skittering over the neatly combed cobblestone the two friends leaning magically in time muziki na biso—LIBERTÉ—in their wake the frown of disbelieving Gauls bopped on the head by the swinging congas of the Simca this African parrot green and raucous and loud her chassis screeching in bittersweet spasm—sweet LIBERTÉ!!!
“Ah voilà, mon ami. Nous sommes arrivés.” Apollinaire brought the car to a stop by the side of the road just off the roundabout at Porte Dorée.
“My friend, I wanted to bring you here to tell you a story, to illustrate to you so you might know my situation. You see that telephone booth over there. That one. I used to sleep in it. No money, no job, nowhere to go. It was a very bad time. That café over there, I would go in there when they were closing and offer to clean their toilet in return for some bread and a glass of wine to help me sleep. At first the waiters just said no. But I came back again, and the barman who was very nice, he said okay, but just a few times, a week maybe. Then I had to go elsewhere. I was very scared. It was a very hard time. And then, my friend, a miracle happened. I met a woman. Here, right here, where we are now. Her name was Florèse. You see over there that great building? That is the Tropical Aquarium of Paris. That was where she worked. One evening when she came out, she saw me, and she saw how I had nothing. How I was scared. My friend, I was so ashamed. That was the first day, the first day of my life, I really began to believe in God. Florèse took me home with her. She lived just around the corner in a tiny room on the rue de l’Alouette. You know, I had not washed and I smelled so bad. But she didn’t say anything. She gave me soap. I thought I was in heaven. I was so happy. I was sleeping on her floor. And I would lie there and think, this is the greatest gift God has given me. Florèse gave me life again, and I began to fall a little bit in love with her. During the days I would look for work. I found some small jobs but always in the evening I would come back. And I asked, ‘Florèse, what can I do for you?’
“She had pain to her back when she worked. So she’d take me some evenings into the aquarium, secretly, when it was closed and there was no one. And I helped with her job. I was doing cleaning, washing things so she could rest. It was water all around us. We were alone under the ocean. Florèse knew all the fish and she would name them to me, like a goddess: gourami fish, green and pink Malabar fish, Picasso fish, Blue Hamlet fish. We would walk together and talk this way. And little by little I came to see two things. That Florèse was very intelligent, like a scientist or a saint. And that she was a woman who loved women. She was always talking about her lover. And even so, I know it’s crazy, but I found myself falling deeply in love. I hid my feelings, of course! What could I do? Besides, we became good friends. It was Florèse who introduced me to the music of Franco and the Orchestre Kinshasa. And it was Florèse who opened me to poetry. She was always writing on her days off, and sometimes, if I was helping her, she would write during her shift while I mopped. She encouraged me to make my own poems. She said it helped when you were hungry. She said that when you write you do not feel the time so much, and I discovered this is true.
“Florèse gave me books to read and she taught me many words. I was changing and becoming better in many ways that had escaped me in my past. But the burning inside of my love would not go away, and I did not know what to do. Florèse wrote poems in Lingala for her lover who lives in Saint-Denis and is married to a very religious man. She would read her poems to me and try to teach me words from her language. And it stung me more than you can imagine, because I wanted to learn everything from Florèse. I wanted anything that was drawing us nearer to each other. It was Florèse who introduced me to Rabearivelo. Jean-Joseph, mon frère austral, who changed everything in me, whose poems I drank coup sec like cups of coffee at six in the morning. I would be hauling trash or moving crates in a warehouse and my m
ind would drift to the palm beaches of Madagascar, to campeachy trees and willowy filao, to the bars and taverns of Antananarivo. Florèse would read to me from his journals. And I suffered with him the pain of wanting to get away, to get to Paris at all costs, and yet desiring the fragrance of home only the more with each passing day. Florèse told me that it was Rabearivelo who gave her the courage to continue writing in the face of everything. Florèse was a great poet too. But she was hopelessly in love with a married woman. I knew from the tone of her poems, even though I couldn’t understand most of them, that I would never be able to reveal my feelings for her.
“Then one day, the immigration police came and arrested her, right in front of everyone, all of her colleagues at the aquarium. It was terrible. Of course, there was no way I could see her, or find out if she was alright. I had to think of my own problems. Through contacts I learned that they had deported her. She had been working with false papers. Some people said that she had gotten them through Papa Wemba. I don’t know if it is true. What I do know is that she made it back to Kinshasa, because about a month later a person from the community found me at the café and gave me a letter from Florèse postmarked from the Congo. In the letter she asked me to act as a courier, to discreetly forward her poems to her lover in Paris. I wrote her back and promised her that I would take this job. Soon letters began arriving regularly from Kinshasa. Nathaniel, would you believe, to this day they come in thick envelopes with many stamps. And every couple of months I meet a woman I know nothing about, only her first name, and we always meet at the same café. I wait at a little table with letters from the woman I love in my hands, and her lover comes in and joins me. We talk about the weather and such things. She leaves a coin for the coffee, takes her packet, and leaves. This is what I owe Florèse. I have to do this for her. She saved me, out of the goodness and the strength of her heart. This is how I live, my friend. It is hard, very hard to live away from the people and the places that you know and love. My heart is not broken, but it is heavy. It is far away in the Congo where I know the most wonderful woman in the whole world is writing poems and love letters, but not for me.”
* * *
Life in Paris came abruptly to an end. But when it did, Nathaniel did not find himself entirely surprised. It was as if there had been an off-ramp he knew was coming, and perhaps had even somehow wished into being. Still, he was deeply hurt that Laura never came to say goodbye. It was a friend of hers who delivered the message one day after classes. She simply said she was charged with telling him that Laura would not be coming to classes anymore and handed him a letter written on a loose sheet of quadrille paper. He knew what that letter meant even before reading it. And he had resolved, even before hearing out its arguments, to leave the country.
It turned out she was not only leaving him. Laura said in her note that she was heading to South America, that she needed to get away, and it was a trip she had always wanted to make. He took no comfort in her faint apologies, but he couldn’t bring himself to hold the decision against her. After all, he had felt the same urges and made his own moves when he had the chance. Coming to Paris, he had wanted to acquire knowledge that he felt he lacked. He had learned enough. The affair with Laura, the life at Cité Lamartine, the stories of Apollinaire, all the recent past took on the force of wisdom, the last of it dashed with pain. The whole freewheeling world be damned. He knew where he belonged. He wasn’t going to hit the hardwood again. He was too old for that. But he could take the young boys from his neighborhood and teach them to play ball. He could live in the streets of New York with his people and hear those voices again and share those burdens and make something out of the places that made him. Mixed with the hurt that she didn’t have the courage or the desire to confront him in person was an ironic sense of relief. He had lived the dream of a black man abroad in Paris. Now he had to complete the other half of that curious pilgrimage: return to the native land.
10
Under the high ceilings of a Tremont Avenue duplex, the young teacher and the retired hooper examined each other closely. Both had listened; both had talked. They enjoyed sharing memories. Across space and time they were connected by so many experiences that connected at odd angles, like crooked street corners. Nathaniel had let the floodgates open within. Talking brought relief and even a little thrill from realizing how crisp his recollection of those days remained.
They had indulged their inward feelings and most private remembrances in the manner of people who believe they will never meet again. Now there was a hesitant energy of expectation between them.
“I’m supposed to go down to South America soon,” Jonah said suddenly. Nathaniel squinted, as he gauged this new knowledge.
“You serious?”
“Next week. Flying down to Rio with a friend.”
“You mean for the summer?”
“I don’t really know. I didn’t buy a return ticket. I think what I want right now is just to get away from it all, just sort of be invisible…”
But he stopped because Nathaniel was chuckling to himself.
“You want to take off somewhere for a bit. Okay, and then what? It’s chess out here, you gotta have at least one or two more moves than that!”
Jonah rubbed his temples.
“I mean, truthfully, I don’t know that I’m cut out for this teaching thing. And there’s all these places I never been before. I feel like if I don’t get to them now, I never will. I’ll get stuck in something, maybe something I don’t even really like but that I feel like I have to do.”
“I hear you. That’s what you want. But just remember, at some point it’s not going to be about you. At some point you’re gonna have to make it about something bigger than that.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yeah, I mean no disrespect, but like, why?”
Something in the tone of this set Nathaniel on a different track. It wasn’t that he didn’t have enormous sympathy; in a way he’d been just the same even if their life chances had nothing to do with each other. But he couldn’t shake the feeling rising in him now that this brother was off course.
“I’ll tell you why. Because there’s a city right here that needs help. There are children born in this city everyday who are being thrown to the lion’s mouth. No education. No opportunities. Damn near half the kids who grew up on my block either dead or in jail, and everybody’s lives scarred. You don’t really know nothing about that, do you? You don’t know what it feels like to look out every day on the same broken streets and know that if you can’t play ball or rap, you never going nowhere. What you know about that?”
“I ain’t arguing that though.”
“You ain’t arguing but you ain’t saying nothing neither. And I’m calling you on your bullshit, pardon my French. You’ve had this amazing life. You’ve had this perspective. You have it all—the sheer possibility to do and be anything you want. Now you telling me all you can do is go hide somewhere with your Ellison blues? You gotta own up to some things. You a grown-ass man. It’s time to take a look around and take this thing seriously, figure out the reality of the moment. I know that ain’t easy. Trust me, I get it. It took me coming back here, back home, to see how privileged I was, and how much trouble my people, our people, are in. And it’s deep. I know you’re smart enough to see that. But do you know that?
“Well, I totally get where you’re coming from, but see I feel like—”
“Excuse me, brother—but you educated. Not just educated, but worldly in ways most of our people will never get to be. Don’t you see how important it is that you share that knowledge with a younger generation?”
“But that’s the thing, why does it have to be me? You got the media, the corporations, the politicians—what the hell can I do? Nothing’s gonna make a difference, so why not just get the hell out, at least go see something else before it all goes to shit, before like everyone in this fucked-u
p country, I lose my goddamn mind!”
“What I say about that cussing in my house?”
“My bad.”
“That’s okay, it’s a fair point. You just wrongheaded about it is all. Are people’s heads all messed up? Yeah. But that’s exactly why you got to speak the truth. Why you gotta give it to ’em raw, uncut, straight to the gut—no bullshit. You got to call out the folks you know is wrong when they wrong, and do it right where you are, right here in the community, where it matters, where it can make a difference. It’s like how I teach when I’m coaching. Talking to the kids about how you got to keep your head straight out here, think for yourself, respect yourself and your community. You don’t think it matters that they see someone around them who has that message?”
“But they can’t hear that message though.”
“Nah, you the one not hearing the message. The truth always comes out on top. The best players can go cold, but they don’t lose their shot. If you have it, soon enough it will manifest, and when it does, it’s a wrap. These phony rappers out here today, flashing they cash and don’t have no talent—they can’t win the battle for these young minds forever. Not if you show them what else is possible.”
The Fugitivities Page 13