Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (18 page)

Also, in the pizza joint, since we were in the theater, we were special, we were gentry. It didn't seem at all odd to them that I should be in the theater—it was not only logical, it was, so to speak, my inheritance, my destiny. The only Negroes they had ever heard of had been in the theater, or in the ring. They were in awe of Paul Robeson—I must say that they really were. They loved
Joe Louis. They loved Marian Anderson. They loved Josephine Baker. They made me tell them everything I knew about Father Divine. He had helped to feed the hungry, I told them, and they agreed with me that this meant that he was a good man; even though, as I later realized, their nods and thoughtful frowns referred not to Father Divine, but to Mussolini; who had also, perhaps, helped to feed the hungry, but who had turned out, after all, not to be a good man.

Angelo, the youngest son, seventeen or so, much taken and bewildered by Barbara, had helped us place our sign in the window, just so; long before this operation was concluded, his entire family had become involved in it, coming out on the sidewalk to judge the effect, and leaving customers waiting for their dinner. When it was finally judged an artistic success—which meant rearranging the window—Angelo returned to his function as dishwasher, the others returned to their functions, and we sat down at our table. We had decided that we needed a drink, but before we could order anything, Giuliano, the second son, brought us three dry martinis.

“For us,” he said, and smiled and winked. “I hope your play will be a success.”

“We aren't
in
the play,” said Barbara.

“Oh, but you will be in another play,” he said. He looked at Jerry and laughed. “Of course you know,” he said, “this one is of no use. He will
never
be in a play.”

Jerry said something in Italian and they both laughed again. “I hope you do not understand Italian,” Giuliano said to Barbara, “he is a pig, your friend here.”

Jerry said something else in Italian, and they both, as it were, vanished in a hurricane of laughter, into Italy. Barbara and I helplessly laughed, too. She lifted her glass.
I lifted mine. We turned toward Jerry and Giuliano. Jerry lifted his glass.

“Cheers,” I said. “And thank you, Giuliano.”

He smiled and bowed. “It's a little pleasure.” He looked at Barbara, then at Jerry. “Do you want a menu, or do you want a pizza?”

“We want a pizza,” Barbara said. “The biggest you have, with everything on it.”

They very nearly, in their brief glance at each other, vanished into Italy again, but Giuliano restrained himself while Jerry choked slightly on his martini. “Very well,” said Giuliano, “a pleasure,” and he inclined his head slightly and walked away.

“What were you two laughing about?” Barbara asked.

“Family jokes,” said Jerry. He put one arm around her. They were together on one side of the booth, I was alone on the other. He lit a cigarette for her, and kissed her lightly on her restless forehead. “And family jokes can't be translated.”

She looked at him, but said nothing. I sipped my martini, and I said, “This drink is on the house, isn't it? Well, that means that we can have another one. I mean, we were going to have a drink, anyway.”

“That means you want to get drunk,” Barbara said. “Leo—we really should try to work tonight.”

“Barbara, I'm tired of working in the dark. I know that goddamn scene ass-backward. I dream about it. And I don't know if I know what I'm doing and you don't, either. It's like—jerking off.”

“I didn't know acting was
that
much fun,” said Jerry, and grinned. Barbara hit him lightly on the head. “Maybe I'll try it.” Barbara raised her hand again, but he caught it and held it.

“Have you said any more to Saul,” she asked me, “about when he's going to start working with us?”

“No. But I talked to Lola this afternoon.”

“And what did her Highness say?”

“She said that as soon as this
grueling
week was over, we would begin serious
work.
She said we had
her
word for that, and
Saul's
word.” I stared at Barbara. “If she breaks her word, I'm going back to the city.” At that moment, I really meant it. “It's not going to be any good, hanging around here all summer, if I'm not learning anything.”

Barbara opened her mouth, but Jerry spoke first. “You wouldn't just go away and leave us? We'd miss you, baby.”

“Well—you two have each other.” I said this a little awkwardly.

“Oh, Leo,” Barbara said. “Really!” Wrathfully, she put out her cigarette. Then she looked up at me with a smile. I could never resist her, never, when she looked at me that way, she could make me do anything. “Nothing would be the same without you, Leo. Really not.” She put her hand, gently, on mine. “Let's wait out the week. They'll keep their word. You have
my
word for that.” And she nodded her head firmly, humorously pulling down the corners of her lips, and took her hand away.

“If you're lonely,” Jerry said, winking, “there are a couple of girls in the Life class who are very hot for your fine brown frame.” He laughed and told Barbara, “They sit there drooling all over their sketch pads. They're supposed to be working in charcoal but they're really doing water colors, believe me.” He looked at me. “How about it? Just to while away the long summer evenings?”

“Those fat old bags? You must be out of your mind.”

“They're not so old. They're at the right age, baby.” The earnest, quizzical expression on his face made me laugh. “They're not worried about having babies anymore, you see, so—well, you know. Anything goes.”

“Jerry,” Barbara said, “those women are awful. Especially Mrs. Jenkins. She must weigh more than two hundred pounds—just in the
behind.
”

“But Leo likes that,” Jerry said. “Little men always like big women.”

“Jesus,” I said, “I wish you'd keep your cotton picking hands off my sex life.”

“Hey, I'm glad you put it that way,” Jerry said. “A couple of the guys in the class are pretty hot for you, too, and they told me—” I dipped my paper napkin in my water glass and wadded it up and threw it at him. It hit him on the shoulder; he dropped it on the floor. “Gosh, Leo. I was only trying to help.”

“Shit. I'm going to have another drink.” I grinned at Barbara. “Sex-starved actor takes to drink.”

“But I really feel for you, baby, sometimes, when I know you're going to be up there on that stand,” Jerry said. “In front of those harpies. Christ. They make my skin crinkle. You know what I mean?”

“Hell, yes.” The patriarch of the tribe, Salvatore, came across my line of vision, and I signaled for more drinks. “I know what you mean, all right.”

The Life class was pretty depressing. It was made up mainly of aging, idle women, and not one of them, as far as I could judge, had the remotest hint of talent. They usually placed me somewhere in Africa and I was often invested with a spear. But their concept of the African savage was fatally indebted to, and entangled with, their concept of the American Indian; the results on paper
were stunning indeed. I found it disquieting that anyone could look at me and see what they saw; it was not less disquieting to realize that their bland, dumpling exteriors concealed so much of fantasy, helpless, lonely, and vindictive. These ladies gave me my first glimpse of a species of psychology which I eventually summed up—or dismissed—as the fig leaf complex; they were all working members of the fig leaf division. It did indeed, as Jerry said, cause my skin to “crinkle” when I stood before them naked. At first, I was most intimidated by my color—all of me naked seemed a vast quantity of color to bear; but it was not long before I began to be intimidated, far more grievously, by the fact of my sex. I wore the regulation jockstrap, though this seemed silly to me. Female models wore nothing at all. But then I began to feel that the jockstrap actually functioned—and perhaps was meant to function—as a kind of incitement, both for them and for me. I began to resent the jockstrap, for it seemed a kind of insult to my body. I couldn't help but become terribly conscious of what the jockstrap concealed and this made my penis nervous. I was always frightened of having an erection: all of me could be seen except that most private and definitive part of me, which was on no account to announce its presence. Well, it was agony. With all of my anxiety centered below my waist, I always, inexorably, felt the vengeful organ begin to stretch and swell—with anxiety, I suppose, certainly not with lust—pulling the jockstrap down. But I kept my eyes straight ahead of me, and held my pose, expecting at any moment to hear the women scream and faint, while sweat poured from my armpits and over my pubic hair and down my legs. Holding a five-minute pose before my ladies was harder than working in the mines. But the ladies worked steadily with
their pads and pencils and brushes, sometimes holding a pencil up before them to dissect me, while I felt my rebellious black prick pounding against the walls of its dungeon, and threatening, as it seemed to my unhappy imagination, to destroy it. When it was over and I stepped down, they had achieved a noble savage who was carrying a spear and adorned with a loincloth as bland and as shapeless as their faces—a harmless savage, suitable for a pet, and one who could certainly never have any children.

Salvatore himself brought our fresh round of drinks and began setting up our table. He was a very sturdy, peaceful man, built rather like a short tree, incontestably and effortlessly the ruler of his house. Though he liked Barbara, as a patriarch he was also slightly disapproving of her; but the fact that Jerry was Italian reassured him, for he knew that Jerry would surely regulate their situation and then they could begin to have babies. Salvatore did not take any other human possibility very seriously.

There was something very wonderful which Salvatore brought to the fore in Jerry. Jerry showed a side of himself to Salvatore which he showed to no one else. I think if I had never seen Jerry with Salvatore, I would never have known what pain and love were in the boy, could not have guessed how much he had lost already, and why it was possible for Barbara really to care about him. Salvatore treated Jerry like a son; and this brought forward the man in Jerry. It brought forward in him elements of delicacy and courtesy which Jerry, in most of his daily life, disguised by rough speech and rough play. The lost and loving boy Jerry was attempting—helplessly—to divorce and deny was the only creature Salvatore saw, and it did not even occur to him to doubt the value of this creature.
Salvatore could not know it, but he thus reached directly into the heart of Jerry's loneliness, and also foreshadowed his hard and lonely life. When I watched Salvatore and Jerry together, I was happy for Jerry but I was sad for me. For the old, sturdy man recognized Jerry, he had seen him before. He found the key to Jerry in the life he himself had lived. But he had no key for me: my life, in effect, had not yet happened in anybody's consciousness. And I did not know why. Sometimes, alone, I fled to the Negro part of town. Sometimes I got drunk there, and a couple of times I got laid there. But my connections all were broken.

Salvatore and Jerry were conversing in Italian, Jerry looking up at him with a child's huge, limpid eyes, when Madeleine came in. And perhaps because I wished to be protected from my thoughts—or from Barbara and Jerry, who were my thoughts made flesh—I was irrationally glad to see her. She had that polished look women have when they come back from the hairdresser and she was wearing a bright orange dress—of which Barbara, I realized, as she gave a small, theatrical shudder, completely disapproved.

“Well,” said Madeleine, with her big, good-natured grin, “are you all having a conference, or can I join you?”

“The conference ended,” I said, “when we hung up the last sign. So you can come on in the house.”

“Good.” She sat down and beamed at Barbara. “How are you, sugar? I think they've been running the ass off you kids this week, haven't they?”

Salvatore did not approve of Madeleine at all. He abruptly ended his conversation with Jerry, glanced quickly at Madeleine, and walked away. And I realized
that Jerry was a little embarrassed. “Hi,” he said, with a crooked smile, “how're things going?”

“It seems to me that they work
everybody
like slaves,” Barbara said. “You must be weary, too. But at least
you're
doing a play.”

“
Am
I?” asked Madeleine, with her eyes big, and her hands in the air. “Is
that
what I'm doing? I'm glad somebody told me—
I
need a drink.”

“What's wrong?” asked Barbara. “Isn't it going all right?”

“Look. I know I'm not a big Hollywood star, like that broken-down lost weekend you've got over at The Green Barn now—and is
that
going to be a mess, my God!—but I'm a
good
actress and I've worked hard and, after all, they hired me for this damn thing—and I won't tell you what they're paying me because I'm too ashamed—for
them
—and I just don't think artists should be treated like shit. Baby, if I survive this mistake, you can
have
The Actors' Means Workshop,
believe
me. Especially that old dyke who calls herself a director, who couldn't direct a kid on rollerskates across the yard.” She paused. She subsided. She looked at us and laughed. “Well. I had to tell somebody before I burst.” Giuliano came and she smiled up at him and ordered a double bourbon.

“You've got a rehearsal tomorrow morning,” Barbara said. “You'd better be careful tonight.”

“
Fuck
them,” said Madeleine. “Maybe I'll get there and maybe I won't. Maybe I'll walk out on them. And let them
try
to find somebody else
now.
”