The Jazz Palace (12 page)

“Morning, Your Majesty,” she said, poking fun at his nickname, scooping his biscuits onto a plate, ladling the gravy, pouring him a mug of coffee. “I bet you're hungry after your show.”

“I could eat a cow and more,” Napoleon said. “Especially if you fixed it.” It never mattered that he had just eaten. Napoleon had an appetite he couldn't explain. He had to control himself, but controlling himself wasn't what he did best and he knew it. Some nights when he played, it was nothing for him to have a fried chicken and mashed potato meal at six, a plate of meatloaf and pork pie at eight, then steak and eggs at midnight, not including desserts and all the ice cream he could eat. And still have room for breakfast when he got home.

He could always eat again. He could drink a fish tank of coffee and still go to sleep. “So will you be here when the kids get home?” she asked, as she did each morning.

“I'll be asleep,” he said with a laugh. “Just like always.”

Maddy was fretting about the children being alone that evening. A few nights a week she worked a second job in a restaurant, tidying up the bathroom and handing white ladies paper towels, wiping their toilet seats dry, for tips. She kept air fresheners and perfumes, combs and hand lotion in the bathroom, too, and the women were always appreciative and she did all right with her tips. Those nights the kids were on their own. “Don't worry,” he said, “I won't leave them before eight.”

They should have made more of a life together, Napoleon thought as he watched her getting ready to leave for work. Perhaps things would have been different if they'd had a child. He would have liked to have had a son. Not a girl. He could not bear to think of a daughter with a man who took advantage such as himself. But a boy would have been different. He could teach the boy whatever he knew. But it hadn't happened. Not with Maddy nor with another woman.

“You'll be back by midnight?”

She nodded, rifling in the drawer for something. She was always rummaging around. Her cottage of two bedrooms and a kitchen was crammed with sepia prints—old pictures of her with her pretend husband and the kids on picnics, wedding pictures, crushed bouquets, locks of hair tied with ribbons. She was always searching for something she couldn't find.

With a sigh and a shake of the head, her gaze fell on the postcard of Idlewilde taped above the sink. Idlewilde was a resort in Michigan where blacks could go, and Napoleon had sent it to her when he'd gone to play a gig. It was a picture of a clear, blue lake, surrounded by pines, and a hotel on the water. On the back he'd scribbled how the moon glistened and fireflies lit the woods like lanterns. Black children jumped off docks, shouting, and the air smelled of citronella candles and ribs. You could drink cocktails on porches, and the music came from everywhere.

He wanted to give Maddy what she'd given him. Something they could call home. One day he would leave the Rooster. He planned to leave soon, though when he'd asked the Gianellis, who owned the bar, they'd laughed in his face. They'd tried to frighten him by sending a few thugs around, big vault-sized men who hung out at the door. But when the time was right, he'd move on. He'd head over to Dreamland or the Grand and get a better gig. He gazed at the card again. He circled a bungalow with a front porch, right off the lake. He'd buy it for her one day.

Maddy sat while he slopped up the gravy with his biscuit. “There's this white boy been coming around, listening to us play. I think he's stealing.”

“What you got worth stealing?”

“I got my tunes.”

“Maybe he's taking some of that.” She gave him that fake scowl of hers. “Or maybe he just likes to hear you play.” Napoleon pondered this as he wiped his plate clean. It was a possibility he hadn't really considered. He and Maddy paused, listening as the first morning train rumbled by, shaking the cottage. It was her alarm clock—the
moment she knew she had to start leaving for work. He kissed her on the cheek and, while Maddy dressed in the kitchen, went whistling his tune into the room they shared. She'd pulled up the covers so that the bed wouldn't be cold when he crawled in. The sheets were still warm from her body and that warmth soothed him as he slept.

Ever since he could remember, Leo Lehrman tossed all night. When he was a boy, he would wake up and cry. He was stricken with night terrors. He could imagine a million things gone wrong even as a small child. His father walking out on them again and again. His mother never home when he returned from school. The beatings he took with his father's belt or, even worse, the back of his hand. He imagined all kinds of impossible things. Insects that laid black eggs on his arm. His head stuck between the slats of a fence. Once he saw his own head, impaled on the top of a pole, wearing one of his caps. And then there were the very real dreams of running out of money, his family with nothing to eat. He woke from all these dreams, shaking. He never shared any of them with a soul.

It was rare for Leo to sleep through the night. On this night he'd woken, preoccupied with trying to convince baseball teams to put the designs on their caps. He had heard that Detroit already had an orange tiger on theirs, and he was afraid the idea would catch on fast. He wanted to be in the forefront. He'd overextended himself with a ten-thousand-dollar loan to purchase embroidery machines. He wanted the women to work faster, more efficiently. Then they could make more caps. But the women didn't like the machines. Their fingers were accustomed to frilly work, stitches made one at a time.

Orders weren't pouring in. Though he had canvassed all the major Chicago teams and had even tried the Negro League, there wasn't been much interest in his caps with trademarks. The managers thought they were too fancy, and the players seemed to agree. But Leo was certain its time had come. He had to be patient and persevere, but he wasn't sure he could even meet the interest on his loan. He tossed and turned, trying to find a place to rest away from Hannah's small, brown body. He had loved another woman before her. The woman he had loved had large round breasts that he'd hold in each hand. He had never warmed up against his wife's thin, bony flesh.

The mattress was too soft, the pillows too fluffy. Leo sank in the feathery down until he thought he would suffocate. Besides he had his problems. The pressure in his bladder, the gas that plagued him in the night. He got up to check on his boys in their beds. He'd liked it when there were four little boys. He had enjoyed their heavy breathing, their night sweats. The covers pulled up to their chins. He'd liked the roundness of the number four, the evenness of the six of them. The way they'd fit—three in front, three in back—into the Model T.

When Harold died, there was suddenly an empty bed. Hannah said they'd keep it for guests, but Leo couldn't bear the sight of its emptiness. The oddness of the number three, the unevenness of the breathing, the fact that now all the boys rode in the backseat of the car, the parents up front. The boys no longer slept as they had: Benny and Ira in one room; Art and Harold in the other. For a time Ira seemed to float around, moving between his old room and Harold's bed so that sometimes Leo's breath was taken away when he peered into Art's room and saw that two boys were tucked in bed.

After a while the boys began to sleep that way, the middle boys sharing a room. Benny never said anything about it, though he and Ira had shared a room all their lives. The empty bed in Benny's room was eventually moved into the sewing room for the guests who never came. Only Benny slept alone as if he were a kind of pariah. He was put into solitary confinement as punishment for his neglect.

Leo roamed, hoping to relieve his gas or empty his bladder, taking
sips of cold milk, and when that didn't work, he poured himself a brandy. He paused at Ira and Art's room where they lay in their beds. Then he peered into Benny's. Benny should have been asleep, but he hadn't come home. Hannah had fretted, wringing her hands. Leo was certain that nothing was wrong, but she'd been worried enough to cry herself to sleep.

The overstuffed chair was Leo's favorite place to sit. It was green velvet with big arms, and he sat in that chair like a king, as if he ruled from there. He often fell asleep in it. But mainly he listened to sounds in the middle of the night. Carts wheeling by; bakers opening their shops. He listened for creaks on the stairs and banging doors. He'd listen, if it took all night, for his son to come home.

F
rom the street Benny saw that the living room light was on. He hoped his mother had left it on for him or perhaps his father was sleeping, as he sometimes did, in the chair. He assumed, for whatever reason, that his parents didn't notice his nightly wanderings. Or if they did that they didn't care. Quietly Benny made his way up the stairs, putting his key in the door. He wore a thin jacket and, even though it wasn't yet winter, was shivering. He needed a new coat, but had no money for one. He didn't dare ask his father. Perhaps his mother could sew a new lining in this one. Flakes of snow were melting in his dark brown hair. The apartment was silent, but when he walked in, he heard his father's voice. “Benjamin,” his father boomed, “come here.”

His father never called him Benjamin. All his life he had been Benny. He thought for a moment, I don't even know who Benjamin is. When his father called again, he followed the voice into the living room where his father sat in the dim light.

Now Benny stood in front of him.

“Where have you been?” His father looked bloated, his skin ashen. But a fire raged in his eyes.

Benny thought of a dragon—the kind that frightened him in children's stories. In the silence of the room Benny could hear his father breathing. It was not a normal breath but a deep, wheezy
sound. Benny pondered telling his father the truth about where he'd been, but he was afraid he would get Marta in trouble. There were a dozen lies, but which one would be better? “I was playing ball with the guys. Then it got late and I went over to Moe's for a card game. I fell asleep over there.”

“No, you didn't. I saw them in the lot and you weren't there. And I walked over to Moe's. You weren't there either.”

Benny looked out the window where the sky was growing light. A violet hue hung over the buildings.

“Didn't I tell you never to lie to me?”

Benny heaved a heavy sigh. “I went to listen to music.”

“What kind of music?”

He couldn't bring himself to look his father in the eye. He feared he'd start to stammer. “Music I like to listen to.”

“And what kind of music is that?” Benny just shook his head. His father knew. Benny could tell by the way he pursed his lips. His father held a piece of paper in his hand and he was folding it and unfolding it, making small animals out of paper. “Were you drinking?”

“I don't drink,” Benny said.

His father nodded, taking this in. “Have you been doing something with that woman at the factory? That slut you're always hanging around?” Benny winced at the word “slut” but said nothing. Slowly, methodically, Leo folded and unfolded the slip of paper. Everything he was he'd made happen himself. Another man would hear his own father's voice, telling him what to do, but Leo heard none. His father, a forger of art objects and religious artifacts, had fled to Palestine when Leo was still a boy in Russia, leaving behind his debts and a memory of beatings. His mother, a woman he remembered only for her smell of soap and her rough hands, died soon afterward. He'd forgotten his siblings long ago.

Leo had been raised by cousins, then he'd made his way to America. No one had ever helped him out. At each step he had met with obstacles—businesses gone bad, a child lost, women who had left him. But he had struggled on until now he found himself standing before his oldest son in a rage over where he wandered off to in
the night. Surely another father would know how to handle this better than he. But all Leo knew how to show was his fury.

“I haven't been doing anything I shouldn't have,” Benny replied.

His father, who was not a large man but was strong, rose up. “And how do you know what you should or should not be doing? I will decide that. As long as you live under this roof, I will make that decision.” Leo felt the anger rising in him, an anger he didn't know he could feel for anything, let alone his son. Now all the things he'd once blamed on himself he blamed on Benny. All of this had somehow become Benny's fault.

“I…I think I'm old enough…” The words were stuck in his throat.

“I don't care what you think. This is my house.” Leo was trembling now, a wave building inside. “I'll tell you when you're old enough.”

As the hand made its arc, Benny did not flinch. Even as his father's open palm smacked against his face, he did not move away. Tears stung his eyes; his cheek burned. Deep inside his bones throbbed, and a darkness grew around him. Leo stood, shaking while Benny waited to see if the blow would be repeated. When it was not, his face smarting, he went to his room.

T
he following day, his cheek swollen, his eye darkened, Benny climbed the stairs to Mr. Marcopolis's dreary rooms, where his teacher waited for him. His teacher took one look at Benny, then tilted his head in his direction. “What happened to you?”

“A baseball,” Benny replied.

Mr. Marcopolis nodded thoughtfully. “Well, you're going to have to stop that if you want to protect your hands.”

Benny stared down at his hands. He hadn't thought about protecting them before. He had been working on his reach. He could slip a twelfth now. It wasn't as long as Honey Boy's, but it was big just the same. Now he had to protect them.

Mr. Marcopolis sat on his chair beside the piano bench, sipping his tea. “I'm tired today, Benny. I'd like you to just play for me.”

“Play for you?”

“Play your own music. Don't worry. I won't charge you for the lesson. I want to listen.”

So Benny sat at the bench and, as it happened to him whenever he sat down at the piano, he forgot about where he was or who was listening. He just played. At first he was aware of Mr. Marcopolis's foot, tapping along, but then he didn't think about it again. The notes came to him. One tune blending into the next. He began with a melody he'd heard, then improvised on that. He broke the chords down, inverting them. He slowed the left hand down, letting it come in late, then sped it up. He went off in directions he had no idea how he'd resolve, but came back to where he'd started. He played by instinct, the way he always had.

When he was finished, he looked up and saw his teacher, sitting with his eyes closed, his light skin paler than it usually was. It seemed as if he was not even breathing and for an instant Benny panicked. But slowly Mr. Marcopolis opened his dark eyes and peered at Benny once again.

“I don't suppose you've ever heard of Abraham Abulafia, Benny, have you?” Benny shook his head. “He was a mystic who lived in 1280. I know about him because I have a small interest in the Kabbalah. Abulafia believed that to find God it was necessary to ‘unseal the soul; untie the knots which bind it.' Are you following me?”

Benny nodded, letting his fingers drift along the keys. Though he wasn't really following and he wondered what this had to do with music, Benny was used to Mr. Marcopolis's mind drifting off onto strange philosophical tangents. He tried to listen.

“Untying the knots is what you are learning to do, Benny. Abulafia taught the method of Hokhmah ha-Tseruf, The Science of the Combination of the Letters. The Kabbalist took the letters of the name of God and meditated on them by recombining the letters in different ways. Abulafia himself said this was reminiscent of musical harmonies in which the letters of the alphabet take the place of the notes of a scale. Are you paying attention?”

“Yes, I am.” Benny had a sense that this would be his last lesson, so he did his best to understand.

“What I am trying to say, Benny, is that Kabbalah is like jazz.” Benny could not hide his surprise. “Yes,” Mr. Marcopolis went on. “I've been listening, too. I even went to hear some music in one of those clubs where it is played. It's not a musical form I particularly enjoy, but one I am beginning to admire. So, Benny, what you are doing is this. You are improvising on the name of God. Isn't that what you want to do with your music? In this way, Benny, though you may not know it yet, you are coming closer to God.” Then Mr. Marcopolis handed Benny a small notebook with musical lines. “This is a present for you.” Without another word, he ushered Benny to the door and said good-bye.