The students smiled through their entire argument, then closed their topic with a chummy clinking of coffee cups. The Fitzgerald-endorsing student stood out. His tie askew. Longish hair falling in front of his eyes. A dash of scruff on his ruddy face.
Something in Ben's pants smiled.
He went downstairs to use the lavatory, the basement dark and medieval-dungeon cool. The Fitzgerald boy was at the sink when Ben came out of the stall. They studied each other through the mirror's reflection.
“
Bonjour,
” Fitzgerald said.
“Bonjour.”
Silence. Studying.
“I need to wash my hands,” Ben said.
“What were you doing in that stall to make them dirty?”
He stepped aside. Ben moved to the sink. As water poured over his hands, he felt a nice slap on his backside. Sharp and quick, the sound like a whip. Ben looked in the mirror, saw Fitzgerald at the stall cocking his head in its direction, renegade hair flailing. He went in, left the door ajar.
Ben finished at the sink and moved to exit. He looked back at the stall, felt the smile in his pants again. He hesitated, then hesitated some more, then walked toward the stall with purpose, then reversed course and left.
Â
Montmartre was brown. And beige. And tan. And bronze. The majority of Negroes living in the city called the jazz-drenched province in northern Paris home. Mostly musicians or show people, but former soldiers, writers, painters, and sculptors, too. Ben ran into many Negroes during his explorations and, regardless of their height, they all walked tall, carrying themselves with the poise of those who are welcome. If he saw someone at a distance, he didn't go out of his way to introduce himself. But at close proximity, he had no choice. It was
de rigueur
.
“What instrument you play?” was often the first question asked of him.
“I ain't a musician,” Ben would say, then quickly add, “But I'm here with my cousin; he's a trumpeter. Baby Back Johnston? He's playing at Chez LeRoi over in rue Fontaine?”
“Oh, yeah! I been hearing all about that cat. I'm piano man over at Zelli's, myself. Come over and catch the show some night. Tell 'em you're a friend of Lawrence. By the way, what do
you
do?”
“I write.”
“Songs?”
“No. Poetry.”
“Killer. Working on something now?”
“No.”
The brown, beige, tan, and bronze exploded in the black night in rue Fontaine, rue Blanche, rue de Clichy, rue de la Trinité, rue Pigalle, and rue des Martyrs. The Jungle Alley of Paris. Jazz clubs ruled those streets. Drunk partiers would tumble into a club with their own booze glass in hand, listen and dance for a spell, then tumble back out and into another club to do the same thing all over again, all night. Some clubs drew top-drawer patrons in dinner jackets and ermine; others were holes-in-the-wall where hand-me-downs and yesteryear's fashions reigned. Both attracted the set that prowled their way to Montmartre to slum and gawk and then, the next week, host a
fête
at their Neuilly estate where they would shake their heads and tell their buttoned-up friends, “
Oui,
Montmartre.
Très décadent
. I have seen it firsthand.”
But whatever the patrons' incomes or intentions, the Negro musicians jammed with a freedom Ben didn't hear back home. A devilish finesse in the pianists' riffs, a little extra jive from the brass, a saltier bump from the singers' hips. Even that genius Baby Back seemed to jam harder in Montmartre.
Â
“
Bonjour, mademoiselle,
” Ben said. “
Nous voudrions deux billets, s'il vous plaît
.”
The ticket seller produced the requested tickets, then appraised Ben and Baby Back. “
Ãtes-vous de l'Afrique ou de l'Amérique?
”
“
D'Amérique
. New York,” Ben said.
“Harlem?”
“Oui.”
“
Des musiciens de jazz?
” she asked.
He patted Baby Back's arm. “
Il est un musicien. Et il joue le jazz le plus sublime dans le monde!
”
“
C'est magnifique. Bienvenus à la Louvre et à Paris
.”
“
Merci, mademoiselle
.”
Ben assumed the Louvre would feel like a many-colored tantrum. But it was sinless-virgin white. The museum itself was a blank world, a stark white canvas on which empires of color had been grafted. The walls writhed with paintings, hung one above another above another, from floor to ceiling and from end to end. The eye didn't know where to start, what to latch on to. A chaos of art.
How do I absorb all this?
How does one distinguish between a piece that's very good and one that's superlative?
Which of my poems is superlative? Or very good. Or just good. Any of them? How can I tell? How could
these
artists tell? Baby Back, he can always tell when his music's superlative. He always knows. Baby Back Johnston. He's always superlative.
They were touring the Italian Renaissance wing. Curious Ben surrendered to the reverie that was the Louvre, but Baby Back made a theatrical production of his boredom. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and scuffled his feet abrasively against the floor; pointedly checked his watch; yawned so melodramatically that eyes at the gallery's far end temporarily abandoned the Da Vincis and Bellinis and shifted toward him.
Thirty minutes into the visit, while Ben inspected a dark male beauty peering out of a Caravaggio painting, Baby Back said, “You and that ticket girl was having quite the conversation. It all had to be in French, huh? When you speak French and all I can do is stand there, I feel like a fool.”
“You
chose
not to learn it.”
“I'm sick of looking at this white-folks' art, so now I'm choosing to get the hell out of here.”
They fought all the way back to Montmartre.
“You love making a fool of me, don't you?” Baby Back said.
“You make a fool of
yourself
.”
“Why'd you drag me to that stupid museum? So you could act like you're better than me? So you could act white?”
“I dragged you there so we could spend time together,” Ben said. “Won't make that mistake again. Trust me.”
“Yeah. Trust
you
.”
The battle escalated by the time they reached the boardinghouse. They cut each other off mid-sentence, shouted over one another, launched bullets of sarcasm that exploded like shrapnel. Tenants in the next room beat their complaints on the wall, and the landlady, Madame Gautier, appeared at their door threatening eviction.
“You don't give a shit about the language. You don't give a shit about the culture. So why come to Paris?” Ben said. “Why are you here?”
“To be a star. My uncle Roland wanted me to come.”
“Your fucking uncle is dead.”
Ben's senses suddenly swam loose in his skull. He perceived only blurs and smudges. A cloudy, muted gauze. The spot where his head pressed the floor (or was it the other way around?) throbbed. He felt himself being hefted off the floor and seated on the bed; he sensed more than heard Baby Back's voiceâ
Oh God. Oh God, Ben. I can't believe I . . . Oh God, I didn't mean to
âand then Baby Back stumping around the room, ransacking drawers. Sound and vision began to sharpen. A prick of liquid stung his forehead, then his bloating lip. He licked it and tasted the metallic fusion of iodine and blood.
35
O
ver the next weeks Baby Back reverted, in part, to the doting lover Ben had originally gone crazy for. They rediscovered intimacy, waking each morning and gravitating to each other, without thinking, without opening their eyes, without effort or creativity. Like a puzzle they had memorized, they knew where all the pieces fit and eased them into place automatically. But Baby Back's niceness was medicine that relieved the symptoms and left the disease untouched. On the steps of Sacré-CÅur, as he tried to coax a poem out of hiding, Ben pondered whether it was possible to sustain love in the throes of change.
“Why do things have to change? Why did Baby Back have to change?”
Perhaps it wasn't that people changed, but that they revealed themselves; that fertile ambitions bloomed and clamored to be harvested. Maybe this dark side of Baby Back had existed all along and Ben had been too naïve, too much in love, to see it.
He gave up coaxing the poem. It didn't want to come. He glowered at the blank page as if it had wronged him.
He missed Harlem and the haven of The Oasis. He wished they'd never come to Paris. Then he looked out over that panoramic view from the portico of that church on the crest of that hill. And Harlem vanished. It just went away. Like a whisper in a dark church, or a light, pastel rain sprinkling down on an orchard of trees. It was gone. There was only Paris.
Â
Clifford didn't come to Chez LeRoi during the weeks of Baby Back's niceness, giving Ben space to breathe.
“You want to know what I think, Benjy?” Glo asked. He opened his mouth to answer, but she kept talking. “He ain't been here in two weeks, so that means him and his wife done took their high-yellow asses back to the States.”
He tested her theory.
“Haven't seen Cliffy in a while,” he baited Baby Back one morning.
“Left Paris. Him and Millicent.”
“What about his contacts?”
“They're
my
contacts now. I don't need him.”
Baby Back gloated, but Ben sensed he was relieved as well. As if Clifford was a hurdle he was glad to have cleared, glad to have gotten clear of. He became more immersed in himself. Instead of leading the band, he acted as though he owned it. He reduced the musicians' parts to give himself more solo time; substituted his own arrangements for songs the band had been playing long before he arrived. The club's staff withstood his screaming orders and watched, speechless, when he castigated the young technician for not keeping the spotlight on him enough. And he and Glo waged repeated skirmishes about material and tempos and musical styling.
The staff grumbled to LeRoi Jasper, but there was nothing he was willing to do. Glo may have been the official star, but it was Baby Back who now packed the place. Audiences talked or drank through Glo's vocals, but came alive for Baby Back's solos.
“Is this the club with the big Negro trumpeter?” arriving customers asked, or “This is the Baby Back Show,
n'est pas?
”
The uninterrupted flood of talent-scouting show business people proved he'd been right: He didn't need Clifford. And when he hooked an agent and then a contract with a small record company, his ego rioted. He demanded recognition as Chez LeRoi's official star or he'd jump to another club. After suffering through negotiations with Baby Back and weathering Glo's threats to quit, LeRoi Jasper invented a solution: He put Baby Back's name on the marquee after Glo's. But Baby Back's name was slightly bigger.
Glo complained at Ben as she ranted around her apartment and boozed from her silver flask. “I been singing for Mr. Jasper for years and he does this to me?” She stamped and stomped, but beneath the thin skin of her anger lurked fear. “And why? Just 'cause Baby Back got hisself a contract with some two-bit record company?”
“That
is
a selling point.
Chez LeRoi is proud to present recording artist Baby Back Johnston.
”
“Yeah, Benjy. That's right,” Glo said, her speech slurred. She took another swig of gin. “Defend a man who beats you.”
But Baby Back never hit him again. Instead, their life devolved to cycles of war followed by silence. Ben continually picked fights about his refusal to learn French. Baby Back pointed to Ben's camaraderie with Glo as evidence of disloyalty, which prompted Ben to rail about the trumpeter isolating him in regard to his career.
“You signed with that record company without even telling me,” Ben said. “How could you leave me out of a decision like that?”
“I ain't gotta consult you. This is
my
career.”
“And this is
our life
. What you do affects
me
.”
“You fucked Angeline after you and me had already got together. Remember that? Huh? Then you kept Clifford's offer to yourself. So why should I give a shit what you think?”
Then days of silence.
Mornings they would wake, decline to say a word to each other, then dress and go their own ways. Nights they lay in the same bed, but locked in separate realms. Unless Baby Back needed release. Then he would climb onto Ben, satisfy himself, then climb back into his own realm. He didn't let on but, secretly, Ben craved those times, prayed for them. Because he didn't trust himself not to succumb to the orchard men in Le Jardin de Tuilleries or the men in jazz suits on the Champs Ãlysées or the men at Chez LeRoi who, after he took their orders for champagne and oysters, might surreptitiously slip a card with a name and phone number into his pocket, or leave it on the table in addition toâor in lieu ofâhis tip.
Often, they were members of Denny's set.
“Ben,
mon cher,
” she said one evening. “I do not believe you have met Ãdouard.”
Of course he hadn't met Ãdouard. He was her latest toy and she played with a different one almost every night. This one was as young as the rest with a head of brunette curls.
“Ãdouard, Ben is from
Harlem
.”
He guessed the next question before it was uttered.
“
Connaissez-vous Josephine Baker?
” Ãdouard asked.
“
Non, monsieur,
” Ben said. “
Malheureusement, je n'ai pas cet honneur
.”
“Not only that,” Denny said, “but Ben is a very bad Negro. He has not seen La Baker's show. Bad Negro. Bad, bad, bad.”
Ãdouard and the rest of the entourage shook their heads at the shame of it. Denny sat forward. “But listen to this.” She paused, let the suspense hover, and then dropped the bomb. “Ben loves the Louvre.
The Louvre! Real
Negroes do not love the Louvre.
Real
Negroes play jazz and dance and act wild. The Louvre is not wild.”
She laughed. Her entourage did, too. Laughed at the Negro from Harlem who didn't know how to act like one.
Denny held a cigarette to her lips. Ãdouard lit it instantly. Then winked at Ben.
He went to the Folies Bergère to see about tickets, to shut Denny up. Two big posters for the production hung outside the theater. The first depicted Baker dancing. Her skirt of bananas flared yellow against her brown skin. A crescent of light dappled her short, black hair. The artist had rendered her from behind, but mildly in profile, so you saw her bare back and a hint of her uncovered breasts. Baker's body was silky, sexy, fluid. She bled sensuality.
“She is amazing.
Incroyable
. Have you seen the show?”
A man in a snappy three-buttoned, double-breasted overcoat stood close by.
“
Non, monsieur,
” Ben said. “
Pas encore
.”
“See it before you die.
La Baker est une force de nature
.”
Ben viewed the second poster. In this one, Baker's face was visible, her mouth a boastful red, her figure clothed in a skimpy white dress hitched a mile up her thighs. The poster depicted two men alongside her, each with dark black skin and fat, monstrous lips the same scarlet as Baker's. One's mouth was spread open in a clownish grin, exhibiting an animal-like abundance of oversize teeth colored a searing white. His white hat tipped forward in jocular fashion. Ben's eyes kept returning to the lips.
He told Baby Back about that poster. “The way the men was painted, they looked like monkeys. Is that what they think of us?”
“Who cares? They pay us. We're in
their
countryâlike you keep reminding meâso we give them what they want. Everybody wins. Don't be an uppity nigger.”
“Don't call me that!”
“Uppity nigger. Uppity niggerrrrrrrr. What you gonna do? Huh? What you gonna do about it?” Baby Back towered over him, leaned down, and stuck his face right in Ben's. “Uppity, French-talking nigger.”
Ben wanted to hit him, but Baby Back would pulverize him. He tried to think of something witty to cut him down. He couldn't. All he could do was say, “Fuck you,” as tears fell.
Baby Back left. Ben sat at his typewriter, tried to convert his pain to poetry. He couldn't.