Margrit’s phone rang twice more. (Be there, baby.) Twice again. (Be there, Maggie!) Three times more and he imagined that she was just coming up the steps to her flat. (Now she was at the top of the landing, hearing the phone for the first time.) Max let the phone ring again. (Now! She had her key out; was slipping it into the lock, pushing open the door, rushing into her flat! Picking up the phone! Now, now, now!!) The phone continued to ring and Max slowly hung up.
He poured himself another drink, thinking to himself, Man, am I starting to fly!
Although in another room, Michelle heard Max squeeze the cork from the bottle, heard the neck of the bottle rattling unsteadily on his glass. She did not understand it all, Max, Harry’s sudden death, nothing, except that there were the papers which Harry had enjoined her to get to Max in New York, somehow, some way, as quickly as possible. And Harry had died the following day, the very day, it turned out, that Max arrived in Paris. His presence at the funeral had taken her by surprise. Surprise, grief and now mystery. It was too much. She had been planning to go to Leiden when Max called from Amsterdam. She could not, in the presence of her husband, behave as though nothing had happened. She had left, going, she said, to Cannes. But she went north, met Max, and now, soon, her husband would be coming north and unless she lied very well and circumspectly, grief might come to him after all. Grief, or anger.
Here: a pair of Harry’s sneakers, old, faded from white to a vile gray, but they had made him look young, especially with these: two V-necked sweaters. There was some underwear and three shirts laundered and fresh for his next visit, which would have been in July. Handkerchiefs, old pages from manuscripts either published or abandoned. There: an extra set of galley proofs; pictures which he had taken of her in the courtyard along with pictures she had taken of him. A picture of Max Ames, pensive, almost scowling, as if sensing that the picture was destined to be viewed far far away from his home in Paris where it had been taken by his father.
Fear came slowly to Michelle, but she could not particularize it. Was it the fear of discovery by her husband, the deep grief or, on the other hand, the angry words, the blows, perhaps the lonely life without him, a catastrophe at her age, or the life with him in which he quite deliberately carried on affairs with young female poets, American mostly, for all Europe waited for the Americans to come during the summers with their money and sex to fit to their strange dithyrambs.
Or was it the fear of death because of association with Harry, as Max had implied? Why hadn’t Harry told her more? They had shared so many things, everything and now—the thought was too appalling—this single secret threatened to take her life as it had taken his. Was that the greater fear?
No. It could not be. She was European and dying violently was a European habit. All other deaths were commonplace. A European learned by his condition to expect catastrophe and invariably that was exactly what he received. In Europe, a winner was one who bested those common deaths arbitrarily assigned to others. You crawled, kissed behinds, ate merde, and grinned like you loved it. Living was everything. The final fact of death was of no consequence; it was the living while everyone around died that counted. Michelle knew there was no other tradition for her but to be a survivor.
She moved hurriedly from room to room, gathering papers, pictures, clothes, ashtrays from restaurants where they had eaten. No, she did not want to know what was in that case Max held so tightly under his arm. Obviously, it was the knowing that killed. The suitcase she was stuffing the things into was full now. She looked around, retraced her steps and saw nothing more of Harry’s to put into it. She locked the case and trudged heavily up the stairs to the attic. She had no intention of throwing Harry’s things away. They’d keep well enough in a corner. She almost smiled to herself. That was the most European of traits, putting things into attic corners. She passed the room where Max had napped and read the papers. What secrets did that room now hold!
Downstairs, Max waited for the international operator to call him back. He felt good now. The pills, the whiskey, the decision-making. He knew he did not hate; they’d exhausted him in too many ways before allowing that to congeal; he’d had some breaks. He didn’t hate the way Harry had, not that killing hatred that turned in upon yourself and those close to you. Max could have hated. There had been the Army, there had been Lillian (but they had given him Margrit in her place). There had been enough ammunition to hate them every single, unrelenting tick of the clock every day of his life. But he did not hate. Oh, he had not forgotten; it was just that the future demanded something else. He had made his decision with the same cold objectivity that made the Alliance so formidable. And it had been an easy decision to make. After all, he was as good as dead. Was the doing difficult at such a time? At any other time in his life, given the chance, he would not have been able to make such a decision.
They had had several chances. They had the Civil War; that was to be a start. Reconstruction; that was to be a start. Truman’s integrated Army; that was to be a start. May 17, 1954; that was to be a start. The March last August; that was to be a start. Each new President, his mouth filled with words, promised a new start. There were always starts, the big ones and the little ones, but there were never any finishes. Enzkwu’s papers proved they were faking it all the time; all the goddamn time! Time had moved on, but beneath the surface change remained in doubt. And it was time they came to know, once and for all, that Negroes now knew everything. No more of those stupid television interviews:
Sir, are you a violent Negro?
Sir, ubba, ubba ubb!
That was going to change.
Now, another one of the white man’s inventions, the telephone, the transatlantic cable, was flashing signals, voices and numbers under the sea to New York. Ironic that one must inevitably come to use the tools of the destroyer in order to destroy him, or to save oneself. Destruction, however, was very much a part of democratic capitalism, a philosophy which was implicitly duplicitous, meaning all its fine words and slogans, but leaving the performance of them to unseen elfs, gnomes and fairies. And Max had known this for the better part of his life; but it was only now, no longer vulnerable to the dangers of that life, that he not only saw it quite visibly, but could act on it because King Alfred and Alliance Blanc had form and face and projection. Before, all was nebulous; there were few names and places and the form was so all-pervading that it seemed formless. But now the truth literally had been placed in Max’s lap. That truth told him that change could no longer be imperceptible, without cataclysm. Permanence was imperfection.
Max had never agreed with Shakespeare that murder would out, and he knew the Alliance and King Alfred were not stopped by the faintest consideration that they would be discovered. Max knew that people who believed as he now believed had to adopt that view, too, and at once, for the secret to converting their change to your change was letting them know that you knew. And he now knew to what extent they would go to keep black men niggers.
White men had done in their own by the hundreds, thousands and millions, pausing along the way from time to time, just to keep in practice, to do in a few million Negroes. All this while great cheers went up, for there are no nonparticipants, no lonely untouched islands. Then you always got back to the race of the Six Million. You visualized them bellowing, shouting, chattering, screaming in, say, New York City one single day, driving the cabs, buses, subways, or riding in them; you saw them walking the avenues and cross-streets, manning the offices and corners, the stores, the markets, jamming the hotels and parks, theaters, restaurants and movies. Catastrophe. The next day they are gone. The city is silent, mocking traffic lights directing no one. But Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Washington continue to blare, honktonk with traffic, hum with people, spark with neon. All without pause, without prayer. You had to picture it that way. Why the Six Million?
Because their deaths happened in my time, Max thought, and because before I was made aware of it and sent to crawl belly-down over Italian mountains, I danced
the Lindy and the Jersey Bounce and the Boogie Woogie; and the American air was thick with banal phrases: I’m Making Believe, Mairzy Doats; God Bless America, I Heard You Cry Last Night; Coming In on a Wing and a Prayer, Don’t Cry, Baby; Don’t Fence Me In, Kalamazoo; Chattanooga Choo-Choo, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.
The songs did not obscure the bankruptcy of the human soul, for no such thing existed. Help was pledged (by the ignorance later pleaded) to the extinction which, being so widespread and evil, brought on collective amnesia again and made that evil not only unreal, but untrue.
There were lessons:
The unprotesting, unembattled die.
The enemy today is the believer in Anglo-Saxon updated racial mythology.
The clash is inevitable because Justice is an uncool lesbian.
Many, many will die, Bernard Zutkin. Black bodies will jam the streets. But thoses bodies, while they still have life, would be heading downtown this time. No more Harlem. East Cleveland. Lynch Street. Watts. Southside. Downtown. Those people are going to tear up that unreal tranquility that exists in the United States. The promises, unfulfilled, can go to hell now. That three-hundred-and-forty-five-year-old bill, its interest climbing since Jamestown and before, is going to be presented.
After that, Mister Charlie and the engineers of King Alfred you will have learned your lesson. There will be, you see, white bodies, too. Once, the first time, like this, really (behold, Nat Turner! Look here, “Mad” John. How does that grab you, Denmark? In the balls, Gabriel?) should be enough. Max saw once more:
The chino-covered legs, blurs of white sneakers mixed with heavy country shoes, the uneven drumming of running feet on the grass, the curses.
And heard:
“I call now for black manhood. Dignity. Pride. Don’t turn the other cheek any more. Defend yourselves, strike back, and when you do, strike to hurt, strike to maim, strike to—” Kill, Max thought, wearily. I am going to loose those beasts, black and white, and when they are through, and it may take them a long time to get through, perhaps even as long as this farce which has forced us to this has been running, we will know just where we stand. It will be a start.
But remember. Like everything else, you started this too. Today it is the Alliance, it is King Alfred; before that it was something else and something else before that. Lie about it. Cry about it. I know the truth and can do something about it.
Michelle dropped something on the floor above. Michelle, Max thought. She took it well enough. No questions, or not many questions. On a continent where life marched evenly with the tread of armies, the European was attuned to death, expected it in a way, he supposed, and avoided the first suggestion of its coming. So many of them were Negroes in that respect, but didn’t know it.
The phone rang and Max’s heart began to pound. Was he right? Was he wrong? He moved to the instrument. The international operator had his number. Max began to pull the papers from the case once more. He stacked them beside the phone and listened intently to the hums and sharp clicks on the line. Yes, it is right, he told himself. What choice is there? None. He was putting an end to the peace in which Negroes died one at a time in Southern swamps or by taking cops’ bullets, the dying from overwork and underpay, praying all the while, looking to the heavens. Max smeared away the sweat that had come to his face and hands.
The voice from New York came through clearly. “Hello, hello?”
Max said, “Hello, you are a dead man. Maybe.”
“Who is this?” The voice across the sea was both amused and impatient.
“Max. Max Reddick.”
“Brother. Well, how are you? Where are we meeting this time?”
“Amsterdam.”
“Holland?”
“Holland, but they prefer to call it the Netherlands.”
“Brother, that’s not where the people are.”
“Yes, they’re here, too.”
“Really? I always think of the Dutch like the picture on the Old Dutch Cleanser can—blue, white and faceless.”
“No. Not any more.”
“Now, what’s all this talk about dead men?”
“Is your machine on?”
“Brother, my machine is always on. That’s the life these days. You know it.”
“Good. My friend, Harry Ames, is dead, you know.”
“I read about it. I’m sorry. I looked forward to meeting him.”
“He was killed.”
“Ah-ha. You know that he was killed.”
“Yes.”
“I’m listening; I hear you.”
“What I have to say is important—”
“Of course. Otherwise you wouldn’t be calling. I understand. Tell it to me, brother. Tell me all about it.”
“Listen, then. Don’t interrupt. I’ll be reading for about forty minutes: notes, names, addresses, things. You’ll know what to do. This material comes from Jaja Enzkwu.”
“Brother Jaja, who is also dead. Go ahead, brother.”
Max read. Once Michelle came into the room and he waved her out. And once he wet his throat with a sip of whiskey, but he read on and asked only once, “How is your tape?”
When he was finished, the voice at the other end of the line, heavy and yet tingling with subdued excitement asked, “Brother, are you armed?”
“Yes.” Max was gathering the papers; it was done.
“You know you’ll need it, don’t you?”
“I know it.”
“What can I say? Good luck. I do know what to do with this. If I don’t see you again—the life is like that, brother—take some with you. My prayers to Allah commence at once. Salaam-Alaikum, baby!”
Max paused a moment, then said, “Sure, man, sure.” He heard Minister Q give a deep chuckle which rumbled softly with satisfaction. Max hung up, staring at the phone and thinking, There, it’s done.
* 849–899 (?) King of England; directed translation from the Latin of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
29
NEW YORK—LEIDEN—AMSTERDAM
One block from Minister Q’s office, along a street scaled with grime, crushed gray cigarettes and debris, in a tenement boarded up and condemned by the Board of Health, Department of Sanitation, the City of New York, one man tipped a pair of earphones from his head and swung a practiced eye to his delicate recording machinery.
The room was neat; the adjoining bathroom still smelled of fresh paint. New walls had been put up and the lights repaired. A second man, his earphones off altogether, tapped thoughtfully on the cigarette-scarred naked pinewood table. Both men were in shirtsleeves, for it was May and a heat wave had come unheralded to the city. A small fan hummed quietly, stirring the cigarette smoke and the smell certain law enforcement officials always have about them, as if unable to remove from their persons, like coalmen or slaughterers, the odor of grime that is an integral part of their trade.
The second man, looking at the names he had written on the pad in front of him, said, “Stay with him, Tom; I’m calling the office.”
“Minister’s dialing again.”
The second man picked up the phone. “This is Merriman, station 12. We just monitored a call from Amsterdam, Holland, from a Max Reddick. It was close to fifty minutes long. The subject of the call was an organization called the Alliance Blanc—that means the White Alliance, Reddick told the Minister, and something called King Alfred that sounds real crazy, about race riots and emergencies and the President and the Army. I don’t know if this is for State, Central or us. I’ll give you some of the names to check out, and a list of homicides connected with the White Alliance. Minister Q is calling a meeting for one o’clock, so we’re still monitoring. It’s going to be about the call he just got from Amsterdam.”
The call had traveled beneath the sewers and subways through one wire which was bound tightly to a thousand others. From the Federal office which the first call reached, still another call was made, this one traveling out of the city, southward to Washington where, in a matter of minutes, the
top secret vaults were opened and cross-indexed files traced, one back upon the other. One half hour later, a pipe-smoking official with thinning hair said to an assistant, “Technically, this is now Federal’s baby, but since we’ve carried it this far, and there isn’t time to go into details, Central will have to hang on to it. Get me New York.”
At nine forty-five in the morning, the humidity building slowly, three men drove along the littered, battered street in New York and stopped one block from the boarded-up tenement. They walked briskly past the entrance of the building and into a small, flyspecked candy store and vanished.
At the sound of footsteps in the hall, the two men monitoring Minister Q’s phone opened the door.
“Hiya, fellas,” the first man through the door said, bending to get his massive body through.
“Hello, Barney, did we strike a mine?”
The man called Barney smiled. “Central thinks so. This is Ted Dallas, African division, foreign operations, and his assistant.” The five men shook hands and the second man in shirtsleeves offered his pack of cigarettes around. “The jigs have really ripped it this time, hey?”
“Just play back the tape and shut your fat mouth,” Dallas said curtly. “I’m a jig.”
The second man opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, and with a drawn smile on his face sat down and said to his mate, Roll it, Tom.”
The man called Tom pressed a lever and the voices of Max and Minister Q, along with telephone cable noises, filled the room.
The first man in shirtsleeves glanced briefly at Dallas and said, “He’s still calling people.” He cautiously handed Dallas a list of the names. Some Dallas knew, and some he didn’t. The two technicians exchanged glances.
At the moment it was not important whether Dallas knew the people or not. He listened to the voices intently, head bent, pen in hand. He had to get it now and set it in action. He glanced at his watch. It would be about quarter to eleven when he finished listening to the tape. It was going to be a nasty business from here on out. Minister Q would have to be cut down. Federal’s watch on the Minister had been increased to five men in just the past half hour, but Central would have to put on the play. The Minister would have to be stopped before the meeting or at the beginning of it. Dallas motioned to his assistant, a surly young blond who wore a straw hat with a bright band. He hesitated before speaking. He wondered now how Max had got into it, then wondered why he was doing it. He’d always had more balance than Harry. Enzkwu had been an ass from the first. When last reported on, Max had been in New York. Some friendship. But it was the habit of men like Max and Harry to be bitter about things here at home, but never to the extent of trying to wreck the country as they could with the information about Alliance Blanc. All the little people they said they cared about in their writing, would be the first to go. “Call Washington,” Dallas now said to his assistant. “I’m going to need two men to complete this job. Shotguns and .45’s. Taking no chances. Negroes—”
The Man Who Cried I Am Page 42