Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (22 page)

I considered the advice seriously. I could find an apartment and send for Clyde. He was bright and would learn the language quickly. He would be freed from growing up under the cloud of racial prejudice that occasionally made every Black childhood sunless. He would be obliged to be good for his own sake rather than to prove to a disbelieving society that he was not a brute. The French students wore short pants and blazers and caps, and I knew my son would look beautiful in his uniform. The prospect looked glorious.

A woman asked me to join her table after my show at the Rose Rouge. She welcomed me and introduced me to her friends.

Her voice was tiny but piercing, and a baby-doll smile never left her pink-and-white face, and her eyelids fluttered only a little faster than her hands. She reminded me of Billie Burke and very small door chimes.

“Mademoiselle, do you know who is Pierre Mendès-France?” Smile, blink, rustle.

I said, “Yes, madame. I read the papers.”

“I want an affair for him to give.” Her English was not broken, it was crippled.

I said in French, “Madame, let us speak French.”

She bubbled and gurgled. “
Non. Non.
I love this English for practice to speak.”

Alors
. She limped along verbally, explaining that she wanted me to sing at a reception which she planned to host. It would be a fund-raising event and they would gladly pay me for my services. I would be expected to sing two songs. Something plaintive that would move the heart, I thought, and loosen the purse strings.

“The blues.” Madame said, “Oh, how the blues I love. Will you sing ‘St. Louie Blues’?” She started singing the first line: “I hate to see, that evening sun go down.”

Her shoulders hunched up to her ear lobes and she made her eyes small and lascivious. Her lips pushed out and I saw the red underlining of her mouth.

“‘I hate to see that evening sun go down.’”

She shook herself and her breasts wobbled. She was imitating her idea of a
négresse
.

I stopped her. “Madame, I know the song. I will sing it at the reception.”

She was not fazed by the interruption, but clapped her hands and told her friends to clap theirs. We agreed on a price, and she said, “You are with
Porgy and Bess
. The great opera. If Bess or Porgy or your friends desire to come with you at the reception, they will not be made to pay.”

She smiled, laughed, waved her hands and generally jangled like a bunch of keys. I thanked her and left the table.

Since my friends in
Porgy and Bess
were otherwise engaged,
I asked the two Senegalese men to escort me to the reception. They were pleased to do so and appeared at the theater's backstage door in tuxedos, starched shirts and highly polished shoes. Their general elegance put me in a party mood. I walked into the salon with a handsome, attentive man on each side, and as we stopped inside the door, I felt that the three of us must have made an arresting tableau.

Madame was informed of my arrival and she floated over in wisps of chiffon, smiling her cheeks into small pink balloons.

“Oh, mademoiselle. How it is kind of you to come.” She offered me her hand, but gave her eyes to my escorts. They bowed smartly. “And your friends you brought. Who of you is the Porgy? I do love ‘Summertime.’” She had wafted into singing “‘And the living is easy.’”

I said, “No, madame.” It was hard to wrest her attention from the two men. “No, madame, they are not with
Porgy and Bess
. These are friends from Africa.”

When the import of my statement struck her, the smile involuntarily slid off her face and she recovered her hand from my grasp.

“D'Afrique? D'Afrique?”
Suddenly there were no bubbles in her voice.

M'Ba bowed formally and said in French, “Yes, madame. We are from Senegal.”

She looked at me as if I had betrayed her. “But, mademoiselle—” She changed her mind and stood straight. She spoke in French, “Please wait here. I will have someone take you to the musicians.
Bon soir.”
She turned and left.

After I sang, a young woman gave me an envelope with
my pay and thanked me warmly. I never saw Madame again.

Paris was not the place for me or my son. The French could entertain the idea of me because they were not immersed in guilt about a mutual history—just as white Americans found it easier to accept Africans, Cubans, or South American Blacks than the Blacks who had lived with them foot to neck for two hundred years. I saw no benefit in exchanging one kind of prejudice for another. Also, I was only adequate as an entertainer, and I would never set Paris afire. Honesty made me admit that I was neither a new Josephine Baker or an old Eartha Kitt.

When the
Porgy and Bess
administration informed us that we were moving on to Yugoslavia, I found a woman to give me lessons in Serbo-Croatian and bought myself a dictionary.

Adieu
, Paris.

In Zagreb the company was called together to be told that the Yugoslav government and the American State Department wished us to be discreet; we were, after all, guests of the country and the first American singers to be invited behind the iron curtain. We would be driven from the hotel to the theater and back again. We could walk only within a radius of four square blocks of the hotel. We were not to accept invitations from any Yugoslavians, nor were we to initiate fraternization.

The hotel corridors smelled of cabbage and the dust of ages. I found the maid on my floor and asked her in Serbo-Croatian if there was anything interesting to see near the hotel. I had little hope that she would understand me, but she readily answered, “Yes, there's the railroad station.” I was elated that the money I had spent on language lessons had not been spent in vain.

I said excitedly, “Madame, I can speak Serbo-Croatian.”

She looked at me without curiosity and said, “Yes?” She waited for me to go on.

I repeated, “I learned to speak Serbo-Croatian two weeks ago.”

She nodded and waited heavily. No smile warmed her features. I couldn't think of anything to add. We stood in the hall like characters from different plays by different authors
suddenly thrust upon the same stage. I grinned. She didn't.

I said, “Thank you.”

She said, “You're welcome.”

I went to my room taking my confusion along. Why hadn't the woman been amazed to find an American Negro woman speaking Serbo-Croatian? Why hadn't she congratulated me? I knew we were the first Blacks that had stayed in the hotel and possibly the first that had ever visited the town.

At first I concluded that because the maid had never been out of her country and everyone she knew spoke her language, she thought Yugoslavia was the world and the world Yugoslavia. Then I realized that the staff must have undergone intensive indoctrination before our arrival. In the lobby no one stared at us; obviously, we were being studiously and politely ignored. The desk clerks and porters, waiters and bartenders, acted as if the sixty Black American opera singers roamed the halls and filled their lobby every other week. I was certain that we were the only authentic guests in the establishment. The others, who averted their eyes at our approach and buried their heads in their newspapers, seemed less innocent than Peter Lorre in an Eric Ambler movie.

Outside, however, it was a different story. Ordinary citizens crowded three deep to peer into the hotel windows. When one gawker could catch a glimpse of us, he or she nudged the persons nearby and all craned their necks, eyes bulging, and then laughed uproariously, revealing stainless-steel teeth that looked ominous. They had to be talked to sharply like obstreperous children at a summer fair.

Martha, who had rejoined the company, and Ethel Ayler,
the new and glamorous Bess, refused my invitation to go for a walk.

Martha leaned back and looked up at me. “But Miss Thing, they think we're monkeys or something. Just look at them. No, my dear, I'm counting on Tito to keep his people outside and I swear Miss Fine Thing will stay inside.”

Ethel laughed and agreed with Martha. “They think we're in a cage. I wouldn't be surprised if they threw peanuts at us.”

Ned warned me, “I don't think that's the smartest thing you could do. Look at those silver teeth. Those people might start thinking you're a chocolate doll and eat you up. Stay here in the hotel. I'll play you some tonk and buy you a slivovitz.”

I hadn't taken Serbo-Croatian lessons just to try out the language on hotel staff who wouldn't even pass the time of day. I walked out of the hotel.

People crowded around me. Short, stocky peasants from the country wore pointed, knitted hats and had eyes that would have been at home in Oriental faces except for their blue color. I spoke to them. “Good afternoon. Please excuse me. Thank you.”

It took a few seconds for those nearest me to realize that they could understand me, and then a hilarity exploded that would have been well received at a Fourth of July Shriners' picnic. They shouted and pushed in closer to me. A small surf of panic started to lap at my inner mind. I held it off. I couldn't afford terror to freeze me to the spot or force me to bolt. Hands began to reach for me. They clutched at my sleeve, at my face. I stretched as tall as possible and shouted, “Excuse me, I am going through.” I had followed Wilkie's teachings attentively, and if the quality of
my singing did not show a marked improvement, the volume at least, had certainly increased.

I boomed again, “Excuse me. I am going through.” The noise abated and the country people's mouths gaped. The crowd parted and I strode through their moment of fluster and down the street. I didn't dare turn to see if any had chosen to follow me. Mobs of any color terrified me, and had I seen the mass behind me, without a doubt I would have taken flight and been lost in a second.

When passersby saw me, they stiffened in their tracks as if I were a fairy queen or an evil witch who had the power to suspend their mobility.

I walked into a small store which sold musical instruments. The salesman took one look at me and rushed back to a draped doorway. He shouted, “Come and see this!” Then, as if I had not heard and seen his action, he dressed his face in the universal sales-pitch smile and asked, “How are you? Good morning. May I help you?” He jerked his face away and toward the door again. “Come. Come now.” Then back to me with a courteous manner.

I said, “I'd like to buy a mandolin.”

He interested me as much as I interested him. It was fantastic that he thought he ceased to exist for me when he removed his attention.

“A mandolin? Certainly.” His eyes fled toward the back room. I grabbed his attention: “Here. How much is this one?”

While he removed a mandolin, beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl, children began to tumble through the rear door and into the store. They were followed by a heavy woman with a large, florid face. When they saw me they stopped as if they had rehearsed the scene.

The woman directed a question to the man. He looked at her and answered but I couldn't catch the language. They all began to talk at once, the children's voices stabbing in and out of the deeper sounds. I continued examining the mandolin, strumming on it, turning it over in my hands to appreciate its fine woodwork. I ignored them and said to the man that I would like to buy the instrument.

He interrupted the family dialogue and told me the price; I gave him the money. The family had advanced on me. The mother was holding back as many of the children as she could reach while she inched closer to me.

I spoke to her. “Good morning, madame.”

She smiled tentatively, but the incredulous look on her face remained.

“Good morning, madame,” I repeated, looking directly in her eyes. If they thought I was a talking bear, then they would have to admit that at least I spoke Serbo-Croatian.

Her husband was wrapping my package, so I continued, “How are you, madame?”

Finally, her lips relaxed and opened and I saw the bar of metal that substituted for teeth. She placed herself between me and the children, then said, “Paul Robeson.”

It was my turn to be stunned. The familiar name did not belong in Byzantium. The woman repeated, “Paul Robeson,” and then began one of the strangest scenes I had ever seen.

She began to sing, “Deep River.” Her husky voice was suddenly joined by the children's piping “My home is over Jordan.” Then the husband teamed with his wife and offspring, “Deep River, Lord.” They knew every word.

I stood in the dusty store and considered my people, our history and Mr. Paul Robeson. Somehow, the music fashioned
by men and women out of an anguish they could describe only in dirges was to be a passport for me and their other descendants into far and strange lands and long unsure futures.

I added my voice to the melody:

I made no attempt to wipe away the tears. I could not claim a forefather who came to America on the
Mayflower
. Nor did any ancestor of mine amass riches to leave me free from toil. My great-grandparents were illiterate when their fellow men were signing the Declaration of Independence, and the first families of my people were bought separately and sold apart, nameless and without traces—yet there was this:

I had a heritage, rich and nearer than the tongue which gives it voice. My mind resounded with the words and my blood raced to the rhythms.

The storekeeper and his wife embraced me. My Serbo-Croatian was too weak to carry what I wanted to say. I hugged them again and took up my mandolin and left the store.

Porgy and Bess
received the expected kudos from sold-out houses in Zagreb, and after a few days we moved on to Belgrade. We had been told that Belgrade was a city that was reasonably cosmopolitan, and we were all eager for the bright lights.

The Moskva Hotel in Red Square was considered a large hotel but it could hardly accommodate our singers, administration and conductors. Bob Dustin, cheery as usual, announced that we would have to triple up, and that if we didn't want to be assigned bed space arbitrarily, we should choose roommates and let him know.