by John Keene
Open your mouth as if you intend to swallow. You set the glass down and head for the door. “Excuse me, Sir, but you finished?” the young man, so light only his features, hair texture reveal his story, murmurs politely, “Can I get you anything else, Sir, send something up to your room?” You pause, look him over, see the eyes catching yours, another time, you think, shake him off, force a half-smile when you catch his flash of recognition, or perhaps it’s just that broader sense of a link mixed with abstract solidarity, so common wherever you see each other, our people, even if no one else fully sees you, until the stain of disdain seeps in, perhaps the young man stood at the doorway as you regaled everyone last night with a few of the songs your fingers played from memory since your mind would not cooperate, you could see your mother beaming from her seat as you completed “Under the Bamboo Tree,” nodding, clapping, her eyes telling you that everything was all right although it wasn’t, it isn’t, perhaps years before he saw you staring back from a handbill, contentedly, unlike now, and he too secretly blames you, they all do, for how you all are viewed? You pass into the alcove, past the check-in desk. The doorman, dark as a pneumatic tire, in elaborate livery despite the heat, swings the door open. You flinch, seeing your own face staring back, your mug never so cool or placid anymore except in photographs, engravings, the same wide forehead, broad slender lips, lantern eyes bearing something outward while beaming back in, making you glad no mirror’s nearby, that you never saw yourself on stage, made up and masked, always masked, that awful jamble thankfully never captured for the Nickelodeon or a gramophone, you recover and extract the sole bill—$10—you have and some coins from amid the goldweight and the paperweight you stuffed this morning in each of your trouser pockets and place the money in that other palm, sheathed in white cotton beneath which you know lies a square of pink ridged with brown like your own, as your grip tenses, relaxes. The hurdy gurdy in your head churns on. “Thank you so much, Sir. Shall I call you a driver, Sir?” the doorman asks, assuming correctly that you will not want to walk in this heat through the streets toward downtown, or perhaps you might be heading to Athens or across the river to Hudson. No thank you, you mean to say, if you there, staves and quarter notes stalling your tongue, spilling out, you think you assure the doorman you’re fine with a wave and head in the opposite direction, away from the town and river, northwest instead, over the meadow toward Main.
The first response is to struggle but you should stifle it. On the lawn as you pass a seated trio is laughing. Beneath them spreads a lake of gingham. You know the couple, initially because of your stays here, later after time spent with them in the City and at their home, Luther and Anna, they travel down from Buffalo where he has a general practice and also runs the local colored paper and she teaches school. You chatted with them briefly yesterday when you got in. The other woman, pretty enough to be a movie star if colored women starred in movies, looks familiar but you cannot place her. Gwendolyn, they introduce her, from Boston, she was here last year with her parents, the father a bishop of some sort, now you remember, I’ll bet six bits she was one of Anna’s former students you’d said to yourself before you met her then, they are trying to make that kind of introduction again, she straightens the ribbons in her loose black locks before you take her hand and drop it. She is saying something to you about your songs, your shows as you think you hear Luther ask, Why don’t you join us, Bob? he and Anna nodding, she adds, We’d like that, we haven’t hardly seen you since you arrived. You cannot hear what Gwendolyn is saying, it’s as if someone has a trombone against your lobes, playing an ostinato, the same long, low phrase, then the original song comes back and you feel light, almost giddy, whisper you are going to walk over to the creek, if you see yourself going along so, Luther looks at Anna, they lift themselves up to join you. You touch your hairline where the music threatens to erupt, as they gather up the knives and forks, the bread and honey, the corked bottle of lemonade, place it in the basket, fold up the cloth, Luther’s and Anna’s manners each as precise as they always have been, as anyone would expect of folks of their station. Gwendolyn hangs back, fanning herself, her eyes trained on you. You mean to say something about the weather, but no words emerge, nothing about the food, the staff, your mother, Luther’s suit, Anna’s dress the shade of crème anglaise, Boston, Harlem, Rosamond or Jimmy, the Sambo Girls Company or your other efforts, touring, business in general, Gwendolyn in whom you’d never be interested, your other friends in New York you would never discuss let alone hint at, the train ride up, the last few months, years, the long winters of blue periods that have plagued you even before the music could not be turned off. Only a sound that sounds like the inside of a sound, a not-whistle, a not-warble, not-words, a code, a cloud of could and cannot, and Luther laces his arm in yours, Anna close by on his other side, the basket on her free arm, Gwendolyn somewhere behind them, humming, why is she humming? two live as one, she’s humming one of your tunes, or is that you and the sound is escaping you, as it sometimes does, if you like a me and I like a you, as you proceed across the grass to the road.
There is no way to counter the initial pain, a burning sensation, but eventually it will subside. Luther’s arm slows you, stops you here at the roadside, you pause to pat your cheeks dry, your chest, the late afternoon heat is intensifying, you all pause as cars and carriages barrel by. Anna is talking again, something about her people who came up from Richmond to visit, some other folks they met during a trip to Ottawa, the ones appearing every day in Buffalo from Kentucky to Kingston, their planned cruise to Venezuela, what do you think about all the lynchings so far this year, what do you think about the new National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New York, those white liberals and our folk who belong to the upper ten, Rosamond and Jimmy know people involved with it, you do too, what do you think, Luther’s agreeing with everything she says, his voice like hers softening as if to distract you, and though you cannot hear anything they’re saying clearly anymore, hear anything beyond this interior echo, though you perceive somewhere in their tone something else in the rhythms of their words, the blade of rebuke, not even friendship can hide it, you know what you did, they want to say, what you wrote, how you helped to sow this sickness even in the minds of your own, you know you did and tighten your fingers on the weights, so solid the gold, so smooth the glass, sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down but they are anchoring you right here, what do you think, as you squeeze on the weights what do you think and you do not. Gwendolyn, whose voice tinkles like a triangle slightly out of tune, has taken your elbow in her hand, fanning you as she inspects your eyes, your trembling lips. She asks if you would like a drink of water. Luther pats you on the back and suggests you all continue to the creek, sit on its banks briefly and rest, then return to the hotel. You want to say you were heading there anyways, the shade of the paper birches and slippery elms letting you cool off before you continue on your intended journey. You wag your head, something issuing from your insides, something that is and is not the noise buzzing in your brain, your throat, all down the column of your spine, into your toes, you can almost arrest snippets, you know these songs by heart, how many times did you perform them by heart, stand before that wall of stares and pull everything from your heart, by heart, record them by heart, you could put on a show right now by heart, as you did last night by heart, here on this greensward by heart, anywhere you wanted to by heart, like you used to, like you did in the park by heart that night and the man, that midnight man standing above you just turned on his heels and ran, you squatting there and could not stop yourself and the entire routine of A Tri
p to Coontown came out, every single note, not one missed, and it wasn’t until a small crowd out seeking just like you had surrounded you, their shapes stirring the black, that you realized where you were. Luther guides you to a spot they’ve picked, Gwendolyn dresses it with the gingham cloth.
As your mind goes black, begin counting backwards. The years? Where have they gone? 1911, 1910, 1909, nobody knows the trouble . . . finally words erupt from you: “I’m going to go for a swim.” They look puzzled, Anna is whispering, reminding her husband she did not bring her swimsuit and you all can try tomorrow at the river, but you hurtle forward down the slope into the water. “Bob,” Luther is saying, “Bob,” and you’re pantomiming, because no more words will flow, only the music, forehead steaming, you are miming swimming, waving to them and grinning, that wit and playacting that always got everyone, this time without the kohl or charcoal corking and the floppy hat, “Bob,” and you do the crawl and the sidestroke and the breastroke, your arms windmilling the air, can feel the creekwater in your shoes, halfway to your knees, your drawers, if you like a me, eyes gleaming, cold, and I like a you, you can hear it now too, the creek, streaming, the water, no wig or whiskers now, no polish, must a been dreaming, never again, “Bob, come on out,” Luther is walking toward you, never again to croon a coon song, Uncle Rastus, you wave him off, the water at your chest, dreaming all the time you tried, Bob come on out, how you tried but it kept leaking in, moon don’t make me wait in vain tonight, no whistling coon no more, no cane or jig now, oh soul you cut it out soon as you could, so loud, the music and those voices, Bob, all this was a seeming, you ducking beneath the surface, the hot hate floating, away, swimming away, No, Bob, maybe Anna now, someone crying out and crying, Gwendolyn please go get someone from the hotel and Mrs. Isabella, sinking, go soul, under the bamboo tree, Zulu from Matabooloo they never knew you, blues, the true you dreaming the true you nobody’s looking nobody knows no coon no more two live as one they will never harm you at all fly soul no coon a man bending down into the mud it’s quickest someone once advised you when you completely let go, because the surface appears tranquil but beneath there’s the undertow, and you shut your eyes and lay your head back, knowing the current and weights in your pockets will do most of the work, allow the foliage below you its ready embrace, but just in case you open your mouth because you intend to swallow, battling then defeating the impulse to struggle, you feel the first stabs of pain, a burning in your chest no worse than the pain of that music you knew best, eventually it too will subside, that bonfire, the nightmare track as your mind turns back into the blackness you count backwards joining in your song no coon no more nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen nobody but Jesus if you get there before I do tell all ’a my friends I’m coming until the music breaks into a screaming silence that if you could describe it in a word would be no word or note or sound at all but fleetingly, freeingly cold. . . .
BLUES
He wanted to say something . . . but the English words at first eluded him . . . when they met earlier that year . . . at a secret party . . . after the dinner given by Rafael Lozano . . . at the German director Agustín’s . . . the noted poet had been staying briefly in Mexico . . . even before then a few of them had shared his poems like talismans . . . reading them as if their lives depended upon it . . . he had translated three and published them in a local journal . . . the older poets had already dismissed this so-called literature, condemned it . . . much like their peers in Harlem . . . all this pansy dust from the gutter passing for good writing . . . this only spurred them to read more . . . and talk about it more, write more . . . unforgettable as his verse, each thought . . . to himself when the American entered the living room . . . a compact beauty, tea brown . . . high brow capped by wavy black hair . . . after receiving his drink he stood at the center of their circle . . . smile flashing . . . each was vying to get his attention . . . to their surprise he spoke decent, vigorous Spanish . . . in his soft melodic voice . . . all strained to hear him . . . maybe he was a veracruzano . . . who had grown up among gringos . . . a Mexican as the new star of American Negro literature . . . someone whispered this in laughter . . . he mentioned his friend, José Fernández de Castro, the Cuban writer . . . Carlos corrected that he was from Missouri, wherever that was . . . his father, he told them, had managed an electric plant . . . run a ranch in Toluca . . . he had spent part of his adolescent years here . . . he had come to wrap up the estate . . . he was staying with family friends on the Calle de Ildefonso . . . though grieving he still appeared gay . . . something nevertheless held in reserve by that insistent grin . . . so as not to keep him standing Agustín invited him to sit . . . the American recited lines by López Velarde and Jiménez as he walked to the couch . . . they scrambled to places beside him . . . Agustín as usual slung his leg up over the easy chair’s arm to show off his ample package . . . Roberto, who already had a boyfriend, nevertheless daintily perched on the edge of his seat . . . Antonieta, the lone woman among them, took it all in stride . . . he winked at her several times as he spoke and she leaned forward too . . . his English name was not so easy to pronounce . . . Long Stone is how they all kept saying it . . . he had no problem with any of theirs, forgetting not a single one . . . complimenting the German on the furniture, his modern taste . . . he, Xavier, sipped his punch and observed those lips polishing each syllable . . . the nasturtium, rose incarnate . . . of that mouth . . . he hated comparing things to flowers . . . but in that moment there was no other metaphor . . . the houseboy brought in canapés and nuts and the American’s eye trailed his low broad shoulders . . . ah ha, some of them thought, campesinos are what he goes for . . . the German could unrefine his touch as needed . . . he unbuttoned his shirt collar, his fingers combing his chest . . . the poet offered his observations of the city’s literary scene . . . who, he asked, were the politically radical, the experimental writers . . . he spoke of the visual arts, his love of bullfighting y los novilleros . . . he beamed a smile which made them all smile more . . . that’s what he likes, the fighting daredevils . . . they were going to take him to a party at a painter’s house . . . he agreed and after several more rounds of drinks they headed out . . . the German’s hand on the American’s waist, Elías’s clasping his left elbow . . . he, Xavier, followed a few steps behind, chatting with Antonieta . . . studying the visitor’s solid back . . . ample buttocks . . . they piled into two cars, sped through the night to the painter’s house . . . after five knocks the man with the scar from his right eye to his chin ushered them in . . . friends were already there, everyone wanted to meet the American . . . a cross-dresser emerged from a stairwell, her conversation in mid-sentence . . . he, Xavier, had another drink and then another . . . a man named Rodolfo he had never met before whispering something in his ear . . . the American disappeared into the darkness . . . then suddenly Long Stone is at Xavier’s side, smiling . . . saying I will be staying in the city for a little while longer . . . Xavier mentioning his fellowship to study drama at Yale . . . if you get to New York send word, we’ll meet up in Harlem . . . he gives him several contacts in order to reach him . . . before Xavier can answer a bullfighter’s expert hands spear the visitor’s arm from behind . . . his eyes saying this one is mine tonight . . . the two of them gliding away . . . into the writhing hive . . .
He sent a telegram from New Haven . . . to the address on St. Nicholas Avenue, where Langston was staying . . . he had heard through the grapevine about the Guggenheim . . . the journey out to Los Angeles to write scripts . . . he jots in his notebook that he enjoyed the tr
ain ride down along the coast . . . he sat on the south side as his classmate had recommended . . . observing the scenery of autumnal New York Sound . . . the water indifferent in its blue undulations . . . vanishing intermittently behind screens of greening trees and warehouses . . . he slipped down for the holiday the Americans celebrate to honor the Genoese Columbus . . . he would miss a single lecture . . . but will be able to catch at least a weekend matinee . . . he has told no one though he may send Salvador and Elías each a letter . . . he paused to photograph the great vault of Grand Central Terminal . . . from the taxi to the New Yorker Hotel he stared up into the midday sky . . . the height of the towers astonished him . . . he imagined the shadows sleeping in the caverns between them. . . . the pace, still more fervid than Mexico City at lunchtime . . . all the colors of these people, their vivid, hungry faces . . . some made him forget that there was a Depression . . . others’ eyes scored their suffering right into him . . . he saw through to their inner solitude . . . you should not stay up in Harlem, a friend had written . . . they rioted in March, another warned, attacking every white person . . . another said it was fine, spend a night at the Theresa . . . No problems for Mexicans but Negros are forbidden there . . . he wanted to explore that and other neighborhoods . . . perhaps he would venture up there even before meeting with Langston . . . after a nap that first evening he wandered the streets . . . then took the subway down to the West Village . . . ambling slowly around Washington Square, avoiding the beggars, cars and buses . . . he happened upon the Italian district . . . a meal of pasta with red wine . . . in a little tavern he downed a few drinks . . . his eyes lingering on the men but he said nothing . . . no one to help relieve his loneliness . . . he knew there were places nearby . . . a bottle of whisky and a pack of cigarettes . . . he retraced his steps back to Times Square. . . . the doorman’s gaze tracking him inside . . . he sat at his desk and worked on several drafts of poems . . . smoking a cigarette he penned a new one . . . then the meal and trainride hit him and he lay down . . . stretched across his bed atop the covers . . . studying the sliver of midnight sky, scarred with stars . . . he wondered how well or if the poet even remembered him . . . no messages at the front desk, he will call the number he has tomorrow . . . friends had sent him the names . . . of several countrymen and other Latin Americans to meet . . . new Yale friends provided him with others . . . there are other writers he would love to encounter . . . his intention during his return after the new year . . . he thinks of Salvador, of his Agustín, Lazo, not the German . . . and falls fast asleep. . . .