I stood where I was, seething, until he finished, and then strode over to the gangly Caribbean-looking p.r.i.c.k. "What the f.u.c.k do you think you"re doing? I was here first," I told him in rapid-fire French.
His eyes bugged behind the gla.s.s of his spectacles.
"Idiot!" I shouted at him. And then went on to ask him if he was deaf, and then if he was under the mistaken impression that he was funny. I finished with "Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are-Marcel Marceau?"
There was plenty of anger in his eyes, but he said nothing. Which only increased my fury.
"Eh bien, salaud? Pourquoi tu me reponds pas?"
"I"m not answering you," he said, acidly, and in English, "because I don"t know any gutter French yet."
"Oh my G.o.d. You"re...an American."
At this point he chose to answer me in French, adding a Gallic smirk to his little repertory of expressions: "No need to be so snotty about it. So are you-obviously."
"Obviously?" I began to splutter. "Oh, so I don"t know how to speak French? Is that what your lame-a.s.s little riposte is supposed to mean?"
More smirk.
I got right up in his face then. "Don"t even think about criticizing my accent, mister. You speak French like a pig."
"That"s because I am an autodidact. I hope to polish my accent while-"
"An au-to-di-dact," I repeated, and then began to roar with scornful laughter. I was being the schoolyard bully picking on the kid with the bulging book bag. It was cheap and unworthy of me, but I couldn"t put the brakes on it. "Jesus, this is unbelievable. I have to come all the way to Paris to deal with an evil, pretentious, bourgeois a.s.shole from the hood-"
"I was thinking the same thing about you."
"Hey, you see here! I may be pretentious, but I am not bourgeois-and I sure as h.e.l.l am not from your hood."
"b.i.t.c.h, you can be from Jupiter for all I care," he said, abruptly ending our absurd argument. "Just as long as you move your a.s.s along. This is my spot."
"What do you mean, your spot? You own it or something?"
"I mean I got a right to play here at this time four days a week. I have a piece of paper that says so."
"I don"t believe you."
"I have no interest in what you believe. I"m a legal resident of the city of Paris and I have an artist permit to play here."
I was going to slice into him about his prissy-sissy att.i.tude, but suddenly all the wind was gone from my sails. Suddenly I knew who I reminded myself of: a monster-gold-earring-wearing gangsta girl on the IRT; hunching her shoulders, threatening, gesticulating wildly, using her high-polished fingernails like a garden trowel as she read out some enemy in subliterate slang.
"You know what?" I said, calm now. "You can die on this f.u.c.king spot, mister legal resident. Forget you."
I turned on my heel and walked back to my case.
As I climbed the stair at the other end of the tunnel, I could hear him playing "How About You?"
His playing was effortless, swinging, like something humming inside your own head.
I"d like to show you some New York in June, I thought bitterly.
Oh, but s.h.i.t, he was good.
Well, that was nice and ugly.
"Ugly" didn"t really capture the essence of it, though. It was, to use some prissy language of my own, mortifying. Jesus-why did I do that!
I hated myself.
Above ground again, my face burned with shame. Two black Americans, strangers, meeting in Paris under those singularly strange circ.u.mstances-it should have been an occasion for rejoicing. But what do we do? Rather, what do I do? Ridicule. Curse. Clown. Fight over a little patch of peesoaked concrete. G.o.dd.a.m.n, it was horrible. And the more I thought about it, the more thoroughly depressed I became.
I walked for a while, trying to get myself in hand, shake off the bad feelings. I sat in the Jardins du Luxembourg for a little while, smelling the sweetness of the gra.s.s, despising it. I watched the parents as they sauntered home with their kids; the lovers as they kissed in parting. Everybody seemed to be carrying a baguette for that night"s dinner. Man, it would be so nice to be invited to somebody"s house for dinner. I was yearning for somebody just to call me by my name-for something familiar like that. A plain meal in an apartment I"d visited many times, and a couple of hours of aimless, civilized conversation. I am still civilized, I told myself. Despite that appalling interlude in the metro. I"m not the a.s.shole who behaved that way. I"m better than that-really.
I went and had a drink at the Cafe Flore. In fact, I had a few of them.
Like every musician, probably, I had often wondered what it was like to play high on drugs. All the cornball stuff crosses your mind: does the heroin unlock some door in your soul? Does it make you better? I don"t just mean, does it make you play better. I mean, are you better, however briefly.
For all my musical forefathers, it had to do more than just make the pain go away. G.o.d. Negroes and their pain. What the f.u.c.k were we going to do if suddenly it all did go away? Would we even know who we were anymore?
The waiter was looking at me, the bottle in his left hand, the smile on his lips like a question mark.
I shook my head. No more, merci I wasn"t exactly merry, but I"d had enough wine to make me lighten up somewhat. Enough with the cliches, Nan, I cautioned myself. No more being blue in Paris. Gotta lose that "Azure-tay," as Nat Cole sang.
So, back to work. I walked for a few blocks and then descended into the station called St. Sulpice. The crowds had disappeared. I set up and began to play again. Not many pa.s.sersby, but what did it matter? The sounds of my horn ricocheted hauntingly off the tiled walls. I felt almost as though I was in my own private city, the occasional visitor dropping a few francs into my case like a toll to enter the gates.
I played "Something to Live For" and another Ellington, "Come Sunday."
I think what happened was, I pushed it too far. One minute I was playing the break on "Ill Wind," my eyes closed, and the next moment I was seeing stars. I had thought I heard a kind of scuffling noise farther down the tunnel, but I was so wrapped up in playing I paid no attention.
All I know is that suddenly they were on me: two white guys in denim and swastika-ed leather, short haircuts, bad teeth. And one of them was banging my head against the tiles.
I began to flail around, hit out blindly, but my fists never connected with anything. I became dimly aware of shouting-somewhere far off-and then I heard a ripping sound. They were tearing the pockets off my jeans, going after my money, I guess. The instrument case must have gotten overturned, because the few coins that had been inside it, I heard rolling up the tunnel floor. Someone was pulling at the strap of the sax now, but it was all twisted around my head. I heard the unmistakable epithet, negre, spoken through clenched teeth as I took a blow to the face. I once saw a film clip of Thelonious Monk playing at the Five Spot in New York. When the spirit moved him, he got up from the piano and spun himself around madly, like a holy drunk. That"s how I felt right then, as if someone had set me spinning, like Monk, and I was never going to stop.
My head and heart were drumming hard. I raised my hands to cover my ears. Something on my face. Something on my hands. Wet. That was blood. Blood! Was I cut up?
So this is how it ends, I thought fleetingly. Me beaten to death by skinheads. Aunt Viv starves to death in a back alley or rots in prison. Mother, grief stricken, carted off screaming to the insane asylum. Daddy, riddled with guilt, commits suicide. Negro angst turned Wagnerian.
"Ends" is the right word. One of them is coming back to finish me off now. His face comes into focus. Wish I had the strength to kick him in the b.a.l.l.s.
But wait-it"s not a white face. And this guy"s got a mop of curly hair and wears gla.s.ses.
And, somehow, all the noise has stopped.
CHAPTER 3.
I Didn"t Know About You White sheets. Creaky bedsprings. My old suitcase open on top of the bureau. Unless heaven was a budget hotel room with no TV, I was still alive.
Oh yes. There was something else in my room that tipped me off I wasn"t dead: a fine-looking, long-legged, high yellow black man, snoring softly, sitting on a hard chair, his big bare feet propped up at the foot of my bed. He wasn"t wearing any pants. Gray T-shirt over matching briefs.
Lord-a-muzzy, I am still alive.
"How"s it going, sleeping beauty?"
s.h.i.t. He caught me staring at his shorts. How gross.
"I"m okay, I think. My nose hurts a little. Is it broken?"
"Nothing broken," he said, a little patronizing.
There followed a long and awkward silence.
"Last night"s still fuzzy to you, I guess," he said, yawning and getting to his feet. He reached for his trousers and turned his back while he zipped up. "I asked if you wanted to go to the hospital, but you wouldn"t do it."
"Yeah, one member of the family in trouble is enough," I mumbled.
"What?"
"Doesn"t matter. I remember now. You rescued me and got me back here."
He didn"t respond. Instead, he went over to the basin and began to splash water on his face.
"d.a.m.n nice of you," I said, laughing a bit, too embarra.s.sed to do much else. "After that scene I pulled-going out on you like that in the metro-you should have let them kill me."
He shook his head. "Forget it."
"G.o.d, I haven"t even asked, how are you? What are you-Hercules or something? There were two of those freaks. Did they hurt you?"
"Not really. I"m not much of a hero. I was screaming like a white lady and three or four other folks came running to help us out. The Aryan League didn"t even manage to get your wallet."
I suddenly buried my face in my hands and moaned.
"What is it?" he said, alarmed. "Headache?"
"No, no, no. I"m just cursing my f.u.c.king karma. I don"t know why I"m so surprised when stuff like this happens to me. You know what I mean?"
"Uh-"
"What"s the story downstairs, by the way? Did you bring me in here all b.l.o.o.d.y and stuff? And what did they say-"Be out by tomorrow morning"?"
"I told them I witnessed two thugs trying to rob you. The madame is the one who supplied the sleeping pill for you."
"Oh."
"Why did you ask that?" I distinctly heard lofty censure in his voice. "You think they figure anything that happens to a black person, it"s gotta be his own fault? Some flour-faced n.a.z.is just tried to kill you. Why are you worried about how it looks to some white people? Think you"re letting the race down?"
Oooh. Touched a nerve there. Big time.
She"s a little middle-cla.s.s hypocrite playing the bohemian. Was that what he was thinking? What did we have here? A truly enlightened brother? Or was he mixing me up with himself? Was he talking about his own fears? Or had he really zeroed in on mine?
I decided discretion was the better part of etcetera and-for once-held my tongue.
"All right," I said. "You nailed me trying to be exemplary. I"ve been chastened, and you paid me back for what I said about you being bourgeois, okay? But it"s a little more complicated than that. The management here is just not having the best luck with the coloreds from Elmhurst, Queens lately."
He looked at me questioningly but didn"t press for any explanations.
The silence fell again. "How about handing me that mirror?" I finally asked.
He plucked my makeup mirror from the bureau top and gave it to me. He stood at the foot of the bed quietly examining me while I examined my face. He was right: nothing broken. The bridge of my nose was a bit tender and there was a little lump on the back of my head. That was all. I didn"t look half as bad as I imagined. In fact, the tonic effect of a good night"s sleep seemed to be right there on my face. Satisfied, I nodded and handed the mirror back.
"Think you"re going to be okay now?" he asked.
"Fine."
"Good. I just didn"t want to leave you until I was sure."
"Listen," I called out to him as he prepared to leave, "you do have a place to stay, right? I mean, you really are living-uh-somewhere?"
I saw that little smirk on his lips.
"Yes. I don"t need any help."
"Right, right," I said quickly. "I kind of forgot for a minute there. I"m the one who needs all the help." You"re Mr. Perfect, aren"t you, you p.r.i.c.k? d.a.m.n, was there nothing I could do right with this guy? He just kept outcla.s.sing me. He was a living reminder of my incompetence. Bet if he was looking for his aunt Vivian she"d be cleaned up and firmly in hand by now, her a.s.s in a seat on TWA.
"What"s your name?" he asked mildly.
I began to laugh then. That"s right. We hadn"t been introduced, had we?
"Nan."
"My name"s Andre."
"Okay. Thanks again, Andre. I owe you one."
"You really do speak French very well," he said.
"I"ve got an idea, Andre. Why don"t you start polishing your accent, like you said yesterday. Why don"t you pick up the phone there and order two breakfast trays with extra coffee."
I got one thing right, at last. Cheerful little Marise, the maid, was sick that day. Her replacement was indeed called Josette. She had never served me before, so she didn"t even raise an eyebrow at finding two of us in the room.
I carefully moved his violin case aside and opened the shutters wide to let in the morning air.
"Keep polishing, Andre. Speak to me in French," I said, pouring more coffee.