My Heart Laid Bare Read online

  Like all devoted pianists, Darian has devised for himself a magic keyboard which he plays at will by lightly depressing his fingertips (in Philbrick’s class, for instance, where twenty-six boys with a detestation of Latin have been engaged in translating Cicero for weeks); when a real piano isn’t accessible he can play his invisible keyboard and hear, or almost hear, the notes as they’re struck. If all goes well, and Darian isn’t called upon in class, he can practice piano for hours every day.

  Since the Academy, despite its reputation for excellence, doesn’t offer formal music instructions, Darian acquired permission to practice on the chapel organ; within two weeks of his arrival, he made arrangements on his own to take piano instructions with Professor Hermann, who lives within a mile of the school, and who was recommended to him by the chaplain’s wife. (These lessons, Darian will pay for out of the allowance his father sends him—“For luxuries, not for necessities.”) Though Mr. Meech doesn’t approve of such extracurricular activities, since Darian Licht is the son of Abraham Licht, and known to be an unusually talented lad, an exception has been made. “Mr. Meech, thank you very much. My father will be so pleased”—Darian makes sure his gratitude is clearly, articulately expressed.

  Playing organ in the chapel, often in the dark, Darian drifts into one of his trances . . . and his lost mother appears close by, in silence; a diaphanous yet clearly defined figure, with long, unbraided hair; listening, admiring each note he plays; if he plays without error, drawing nearer, and nearer . . . to brush her cool fingertips lightly against his hair or the nape of his neck . . . whispering Darian. Darian, my son. I love you. But sometimes the tension is too great, Darian’s concentration snaps and he gives a violent shudder and jerks his hands from the keyboard, turns wild-eyed to see . . . no one there at all.

  Yet whispering Mother? . . .

  5.

  Unexpectedly, just after midterm, Darian Licht is moved to another, loftier and more spacious room in Fish Hall. Though he’d been on cordial terms with “Tige” Satterlee and others in his corridor following Abraham Licht’s visit, suddenly he finds himself sharing a well-appointed fourth-floor suite overlooking the green with a boy he scarcely knows, Roddy Sewall, heavyset, frowning, with bitten thumbnails and a squeaking nervous giggle—“Why?” Darian asked the headmaster’s assistant, who’d arranged for the move, and was told simply that his father had worried his previous room was too drafty for his respiratory condition.

  Roddy Sewall. The name is familiar—isn’t it? But Darian, absorbed in other things, quickly gives up trying to recall what, if anything, that name might mean, if not to him then to Abraham Licht.

  IN THAT WAY I passed through their world, untouched.

  THE DEATH OF “LITTLE MOSES”

  1.

  At first he can measure his exile in terms of hours and days, and then it is weeks, and then the weeks blur drunkenly together and it is months, entire seasons, the sun has turned about in the sky, and he has not been well, he has not been himself, for a very long time.

  It is SPIRIT that has drained from him, it is SPIRIT that has departed, leaving him light-headed and giddy, and sometimes sick in his guts. (For the flesh remains, darkly encasing his luminescent bones. For the flesh is all that remains.)

  “Father give birth to me,” he thinks, without anger, “—and now he has given death to me. But I will not die.“

  HE IS NOT angry. He is not a vessel of wrath.

  For pride will not allow such.

  For he is suffused with pride, even in his tight-fitting livery costume, attending the gentleman of the house, murmuring Yes sir, No sir, Yes sir at the proper time, carrying away toiletry items, carrying away stained undergarments, filthy towels, brimming chamberpots, his gentleman’s hats (top hat, bowler, straw boater, “derby”), his gentleman’s silk-lined cashmere coat, the ladies’ furs, walking not with stealth but with dignity, for this is the great Sylvester Harburton home in Nautauga Falls, this is immense Harburton Hall overlooking the river, and he knows himself fortunate to have acquired employment here; against the wishes, it seems, of the pork-faced “Negro” butler who is his superior.

  His tenure at Harburton Hall will be brief, and abruptly terminated.

  Though why, he can’t comprehend.

  He is a model of correct behavior, is he not?—or nearly. He is not angry. He does not tremble with inward wrath. His waking hours are spent at a healthy trot, Yes sir, yes ma’am, of course sir, a supple young animal kept in motion, his hours of sleep are primitive and innocent, though sometimes he wakes groaning, near-sobbing, the slap of Father’s hand burning on his cheek, sometimes he wakes because his guts have turned to liquid fire and he is in danger of soiling his bed.

  Poor Emile—as he calls himself.

  Poor Emile—who begins to go strange after two weeks, his soft murmur a (mocking?) drawl, his eyeballs rolling in his head, thick lips twitching as if he has something to say but will not say it, Yes sir, yes ma’am, his features impassive when he’s observed, his mirth all inward, secret. (For he’s light-headed with the horror of a chronological progression of days in which Emile does not have even a minor role to perform at Harburton Hall or elsewhere; a progression of days in which Emile need not exist; for no one guides him, or adores him, or gazes upon him with admiration, awe, love.)

  SPIRIT has departed, leaving FLESH behind.

  Yet it’s unlikely that anyone notices, for Emile is far too clever to be found out.

  And Harburton Hall is so lively!—so festive!—so resolutely gay!—for despite the War in Europe, it seems to be a time for discreet celebration in certain circles.

  They are making money on the war, selling munitions. Selling death.

  And out of that income, Emile’s paltry salary.

  Luncheons at Harburton Hall for more than one hundred guests. Formal balls for more than five hundred. High teas, dinners, evening parties, musical parties, foxhunting soirees, midnight suppers, skating parties, toboggan parties . . . Mrs. Rhea Ludgate Harburton, lady of the house, jealously prides herself on being the outstanding hostess of the Valley; and closely studies the society pages of the New York newspapers to see what her Manhattan counterparts (Astors, Morgans, Fishes, Huntingtons, etc.) are doing. The Harburtons’ wealth isn’t equal to theirs but Mrs. Harburton is as imaginative as any rival hostess. Where the flamboyant Mrs. Fish gives a dinner party at her Fifth Avenue home in honor of the visiting “Prince del Drago of Corsica” (to her guests’ astonishment the “Prince” turns out to be a spider monkey in full evening dress complete with saber), Mrs. Harburton gives a lavish lawn party in honor of the visiting “Princess Kwali de Alibaumba of Ethiopia” (revealed as a large black poodle with frightened eyes and inveterate doggy ways—how Mrs. Harburton’s guests laughed!); where Mrs. John Jacob Astor gives a fancy-dress party with an Oriental theme, Mrs. Harburton gives one with an Egyptian theme, appearing as Queen Nefertiti herself—so burdened with a gilt-embroidered headdress, a gown of silver cloth, a golden scepter and a twelve-foot train carried by two “pickaninnies” in livery, she can scarcely walk. In Manhattan, the younger Mrs. Huntington shocks society elders by giving a “nursery dinner” where guests dressed as babies prattle in baby talk and eat variants of baby food; in Nautauga, a “servants’ supper” in which guests disguise themselves as their own servants, most of them in hilarious blackface.

  And Emile must serve, moving among them.

  Emile must smile . . . must he?

  The new craze in Manhattan, however, is “jazz dancing.” So there are dances at Harburton Hall each weekend, tea dances, dinner dances, midnight dances, even breakfast dances. Young Emile in his monkey-livery observes with glaring, slightly bloodshot eyes the expensively costumed white women and their partners as they dance, not always very gracefully, such revolutionary new steps as the turkey trot . . . the bunny hug . . . the Texas Tommy . . . the lame duck . . . the half-in-half . . . the Castle walk . . . the jazz-tango, the jazz-maxixe, the jazz-waltz. Possibly one o
f the Harburtons discovers him staring too intently when he should be serving champagne, his lips drawn back in a smile from clenched teeth as gay drunken couples dance, or try to dance, to the syncopated pace of “Too Much Mustard,” “Snooky Ookums,” “Everybody’s Doin’ It, Doin’ It, Doin’ It.”

  Emile?—from Jamaica.

  Emile who delights white folks’ ears with his precise, clipped British accent.

  “ . . . just like a white man isn’t he? I mean, his voice. If you didn’t, y’know, see him.”

  “ . . . like one of those, what are they . . . chimps? On his hind legs.”

  “ . . . pitch-black like tar baby. Ugh!”

  “Shhhhhhh! Stu, you’re ter-ri-ble.”

  In the end it isn’t either of the Harburtons who dismiss Emile but the Negro butler who oversees the Negro staff and whose responsibility it is to keep these servants in line. He and other domestics have been observing Emile as he sits by himself in a corner of the servants’ kitchen, his young face creased with thought, his mouth working in silent arguments. They believe his tale of being, not an American black, the grandson of slaves, but a Caribbean black, his original allegiance to the British Empire; they believe him but feel no warmth for him, he isn’t a brother to them, he’s a stranger with peculiar white ways and an air of reproach as if he’s too good for his station. A dangerous man.

  So he’s given notice. Two weeks’ salary.

  Pride forbids him to protest. He’s contemptuous, departing without a word. As if he’s being watched, assessed, admired as in the old days of his family who’d loved him, and who’d known who he was.

  2.

  In Barre City, in Norwich, in Niagara Falls . . . in Mount Moriah and Wells . . . in Olean, Binghamton, Yonkers, Pittsburgh. A cultivated soft-spoken Negro gentleman, young, at any rate youthful, presents himself as a candidate for “positions”: being qualified, it seems, to be a librarian or a schoolteacher or a tax collector or an insurance salesman or the manager of a small business . . . but none of his interviews comes to anything. Often his very presence, his poise, the dignity with which he speaks evokes smiles.

  Not seen, not heard at all.

  Emile, or Elihu, or Ezra seeking an interview with a subeditor of the Pittsburgh Gazette, yes he has samples of his writing, humor columns he’s penned and had set into type, as witty as anything by Mark Twain; he has ideas for advertising campaigns for the paper, and for the establishment of a lottery the Gazette might administer, how well he speaks, with what poise, educated speech, pleasing “Brit” accent, deferential yet not craven, clearly not an American black yet American in his energy and eagerness; except he’s interrupted in midspeech and told rudely there’s no opening for him at the Gazette, he might try one of the “colored” papers in the city.

  HOW THEN TO survive? Being neither black nor white? Trapped inside this skin.

  Strange how frequently he dreams of—that man who’d been his father. As frequently as he dreams of Millicent.

  Though he’s given them both up, of course. In revulsion, in disgust. His Licht blood—“If I could squeeze it out of my veins drop by drop!”

  Still, he dreams of that man who’d been his father. His Devil-Daddy. Stooping to save him from the flood, baptizing him Little Moses. Child, I love you best. Always, I’d loved you best. Don’t make me strike you, Little Moses!

  He wakes from such dreams soaked in sweat, his heart knocking against his rib cage. How thin he’s become . . . Millie would be shocked. His face stinging from the blows of Abraham Licht’s fists and his soul writhing in shame. But he’s determined. He won’t give up. “You imagine you’ve given death to me,” he accuses their pale, rapt faces, “—but I don’t intend to die. Not for a long time.”

  3.

  Though Death is growing in him like a malignant tumor.

  In Pittsburgh, in Johnstown, in Altoona . . . in Williamsport and Scranton . . . in Newark . . . he’s Emile from Jamaica or Eli from Ontario, Canada, whose ancestors, never slaves, fought on the side of the Loyalists in the Revolution; he’s Elihu, sullen mute Elihu whose ancestry is unknown . . . working in an icehouse for 50¢ a twelve-hour day . . . working in a livery stable until the stink and exhaustion of the job makes him ill . . . and for a grain elevator operator on the Susquehanna who refuses to pay him his final day on the job . . . and for a brewery where for ten hours daily he loads barrels onto wagons, arm and shoulder muscles throbbing with pain and a nerve burning the length of his spine.

  His skin has darkened with fatigue, he believes. Since the expulsion from Muirkirk.

  His features have grown coarser. He’s losing his ’Lisha-looks. The flat squat nose, flaring nostrils and thick lips. The deep-set bloodshot eyes. A mask that frightens him when he sees it by chance.

  “But that isn’t me. That isn’t me. Not that.”

  Yet, seeing his mask of a face, others see . . . what they imagine they see. Other Negroes, seeing him, mistake him as one of their own, at least until he begins to speak.

  So he begins to speculate: an entire race might mistake him as one of their own if he but knew how to approach them.

  But it’s true, ’Lisha is fearful of Negroes. Intimidated by them. The men especially. Crude, unpredictable, dangerous when they’ve been drinking and no whites are around; he’s been beaten and robbed several times in the past year. Kicked in the groin, left choking on his own blood. Their speech so alien to him, guttural, crude, he can’t comprehend it much of the time, any more than they can comprehend him. They don’t speak English! he thinks in dismay. Not as American citizens speak it.

  He’s afraid, too, that if a Negro looks frankly into his eyes the Negro would discover his secret: Elisha Licht, like “Little Moses,” is a fraud.

  THROUGH THE WINTER of 1914 and the spring of ’15 he resolves to change his fate. Forcing himself to speak with Negroes. His toiling comrades in a reeking tannery on the Delaware River near Easton. Imitating their speech as best he can. Though they have trouble understanding him. Great husky fellows these men are, so much stronger than he is, their arm muscles thick as his thighs, they’ve been laboring at such jobs since childhood. Still, as Father might advise, smile and any fool will smile with you, smile and “strike up a conversation” complaining bitterly of working conditions, poor pay, the white bosses, white men who own everything, but his voice lacks resonance, he’s having difficulty looking into his comrades’ eyes for fear they will discover he’s a fraud. Or, worse, they’ll think he’s a spy in the hire of the company. Or a Bolshevik union organizer who’ll cost them their jobs . . . and get them beaten until they spit blood.

  “No suh thankyuh. No time right now suh.”

  “Gotta be goin, suh. Sowrry.”

  He’s hurt. He’s devastated. He’s angry. Subhuman brutes, long-limbed apes yet they dare to snub him.

  WALKING AT THE side of the highway leading into Paterson, New Jersey. Where his feet should be, a roaring numbness. He’s gaunt with hunger. “Little Moses” with a swollen potbelly. Not ill, yet not well. Is something wrong with his eyes? A glaring nimbus of sun burning his brain.

  He sleeps in lice-infested bedding, or out in the open. He sweats like a draft horse. Until he sweats himself dry, and his bowels have emptied out with dysentery. Stooping to drink ditch water like a lapping dog. Splashing icy water onto his face and pausing staring at the face . . . the mask . . . with his eyes. Yes it’s me. Yet no name.

  His several names, he’s lost along the roadside. He’s lost in sweat. A peculiar peace to it, no-name. Just the skin, and the eyes.

  And, at the outskirts of the city he isn’t fully aware is Paterson, let alone that he’s in the state of New Jersey. That blinding glaring sun. His bloodshot eyes. The handsome couple in the stalled automobile, in the mud. The driver, a white man in his thirties, squatting in the roadway and turning the crank clumsily, failing to start the car; his passenger, a white woman of about his age, with a fleshy pale face and rouged cheeks, a peach-colored cloche hat on her c
urled hair.

  To the rescue! He’ll give them aid, and they’ll give him aid. He’ll ride off with them. And the anxious woman in the cloche hat will recognize him for the person he is and not this . . . mud-splattered creature with jaundiced eyes, sulky lips and protuberant wristbones.

  The automobile is a four-seater Welch touring car, cream-colored with chocolate-brown leather interior and trim, flawless brass fixtures (rounded headlights, large horn, prominent grill) and stately spoked tires. When he’d been Elisha Licht—when he’d been “Little Moses”—he’d ridden in automobiles as fine as this, owned by the man who’d been his father; he’s even driven such an automobile, a beautiful fair-haired young woman snug beside him, whispering and laughing with him. You wouldn’t believe it, these suspicious white folks wouldn’t believe it, but—it’s so.

  “Having trouble, sir? I can help, I think.”

  “You—?”

  “I can try, at least.”

  In his rags, in his whiskered lice-bitten mask of a face, taking the crank handle in both his hands, trying to get leverage, at last kneeling in the mud, and—“There! There it is, sir.” Like magic he gets the sodden engine of the Welch touring car to turn over, and spark into roaring, vibrating life. He squints, wipes his hands on his trousers, tries to rise to his feet but an attack of dizziness slows him, even as the engine drowns out his hopeful words and the gentleman driver in a mud-splashed beige driving costume with flushed face, fatty chin, resentful eyes calls out, “Thanks, boy! You’re a lifesaver.” The woman in the cloche hat calls out, “Ohhhh thanks! How did you do that!” He’s on his feet now smiling shakily yet expectantly at the couple awaiting the invitation from them to climb into the rear of the gleaming cream-colored automobile even as the driver carelessly tosses a coin—dime? quarter?—that falls onto the muddy edge of the roadway, and drives off.