My Heart Laid Bare Page 56

  Whispers the girl, lovely eyes narrowed to entice, to tease, to play (for she is only a child after all), Wait’ll you see!—just wait!

  And ’Lisha struts with his cane, preening-proud, now keeping a discreet eyes-ahead, a discreet distance betwixt him and the little white minx, her laughter tinkling like breaking glass in another room, O sweet Millicent the sinful companion of his soul whom one day he will love, as Devil Father cannot foresee.

  ELISHA WHO WAS, long ago in Muirkirk; Elihu who is, in the great clamorous kingdom of Harlem; yet, at certain helpless moments (indeed, hours), Elisha who is, gaunt and trembling with rage behind the Prince’s imperturbable face.

  The Prince neither knows nor cares about skinny white women, white she-devils with dry sickly skin like the underbellies of crawling things, silly rolled stockings, boys’ hats, tiny dresses that show the inconsequential outlines of their undergarments; lips darkly bee-stung in the manner of Clara Bow, or is it Gilda Gray with her feathered shimmy, or ugly Theda Bara posed with a giant snake’s tongue protruding toward hers? The Prince has no memory of the Devil Father, let alone of Millie, or Muirkirk, or the lie of white brothers; the Prince would recoil in disgust, for to him all whites are diseased, and the thought of sexual intercourse with a white woman is wholly repugnant.

  Elisha remembers, at times; Elisha is condemned to remember, so long as he has any memory at all; but in truth, with the passage of years—the tumultuous years and days of his second birth!—he cannot remember very clearly or coherently; and has even stopped hating his young white bride.

  The issue of Devil Father, she was; contaminated by his greed.

  She whom he loved, and adored, and so wildly desired, under the Devil’s enchantment: that ’Lisha and the others were as one; and the color of his skin made no division between them.

  For only brothers by blood are brothers by the soul.

  And once that truth has been beaten into one’s very flesh, it is never to be denied.

  IN ANY CASE, thinks Elisha, it’s purposeless: continuing to hate Millicent.

  “For she too was under his spell; and diseased, like him, in the way of her race. For where there can be no love there can no longer be hate. And it is ended,” he says aloud, in a flat, hard, certain voice, “—it is no more.”

  8.

  One of the more persistent of the legends told of Prince Elihu, to be endlessly embellished following his death, has to do with an attempt on his life by prominent white citizens in fall 1928.

  According to this story, the Prince was given poison; but by way of his immortal powers managed to overcome the effect of the draft and escape back to Harlem—in the magnificent white Rolls-Royce driven by his faithful Haitian chauffeur and protected by his husky uniformed lieutenants.

  (For the record, nothing of the kind occurred in Manhattan. The sole poison attempt on Prince Elihu was made in the Republic of Liberia in May 1926, following the Prince’s shock and outrage at having discovered that the Liberian ruling class, the descendants of freed American slaves, had enslaved certain of their tribal peoples.)

  What precisely happened to Prince Elihu on the afternoon of 5 October 1928, in the sumptuous cherrywood-panelled library of Bishop Rudwick of St. James’s, Park Avenue, was mysterious indeed; and never, to the Negro revolutionary’s satisfaction, comprehended. For, though he prided himself upon his pristine control in the presence of his enemies—though he prided himself upon being, to his very fingertips, an avatar of a great, even godly personage—in the midst of a secret conference with several prominent white men (among them Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Charles E. Mitchell of the National City Bank, and Bishop Rudwick himself), Prince Elihu became, suddenly, so overcome by sheer animal loathing that, for some minutes, he could not continue with his presentation; and felt so powerful a desire to unstrap his stiletto from his leg, and kill one of his enemies before he was stopped, he scarcely allowed himself to breathe.

  “They are repulsive,” he thought, staring with widened eyes at one after another of the gentlemen, “—it is true, it is true.”

  For it seemed to him that the white men, not excluding even his host, the gracious Bishop Rudwick (who made so elaborate a pretense of sympathy with the plight of the American Negro), were physically grotesque; their eyes in particular were small, hard, glassy, more like reptiles’ eyes than humans’; and didn’t they emit, variously, queer stale papery or dusty odors? If Elihu gazed too long at the elderly Rockefeller, for instance, he felt the panic rising in him, in his very bowels, that he would behave rashly; thus he looked quickly away, to the more benign Mitchell—who, after a few seconds, began to seem subtly hideous, the creases about his mouth, made by decades of smiling, deep enough, Elihu thought, for tiny parasites to burrow into and lay their near-invisible white eggs . . . .

  As Elihu, or Elisha, had arranged for this historic meeting himself, and had plotted his course in some detail beforehand, he was frightened by his own response. For had he not, in the old days of his youth, in the reign of the Devil Father, adroitly bent to his will men and women whom he secretly detested? . . . persons whose only relationship to him was as mere objects of The Game?

  Do you doubt?—you have already lost The Game.

  (“But I do not doubt!” Elisha thought. “For I am not I—but the bearer of a sacred mission.”)

  The subject of Prince Elihu’s meeting with this group of wealthy and influential gentlemen was nothing less than the partial funding of the World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union in its plan to establish an American, and then an African, colony, to which all American Negroes would emigrate within the next decade. For there had begun to arise certain difficulties of a financial nature, in regard to selling enough stock in the Black Jupiter Line, even to pay off debts owed on the initial ship; and Elihu had discovered, to his bafflement and chagrin, that large sums of money (membership dues, contributions, advertising revenue for the Negro Union Times) appeared to be missing . . . as were two or three of his most trusted associates; and the district attorney’s office had issued him yet another summons, the eighth in a single year; and, most distressing, the Harlem congressman with whom he had been working closely in the matter of the historic Land and Indemnity Bill had informed him but the other day that in his opinion the bill was doomed . . . for if white Americans voted to pay $5 billion owed to black Americans it would be revealed to all the world that they did owe the money, and this they would never accept!

  So it occurred to the ingenious Prince that, since all Caucasians including the presumably liberal, Christian and humanitarian secretly despised Negroes (“As any normal Negro despises them”), and if negotiations were kept confidential, wealthy whites might be willing, if not eager, to help finance the mass emigration back to Africa.

  “Gentlemen, we understand one another completely: we are mirror images of one another, and race-loathing is our common bond. So, may I speak openly?”

  A murmured pretense of surprise, among a few of the gentlemen; while the remainder, to Elihu’s relief, put aside the usual masks of hypocrisy and condescension, and bade him speak frankly.

  For the first hour of the conference, Prince Elihu did speak frankly; with his usual clarity of purpose, and rather less of his usual flair for words. He could see that he quite impressed his white companions with his knowledge of both white and Negro (that is, slave) history of North America. Succinctly, without a trace of rancor or sentiment, he limned for them, as if such might be new to their ears, the wretched lot of Africans brought chained to the New World when New York City was but a wilderness inhabited at one end by the Netherlands colonists; he spoke of early, naive hopes for “African reclamation” by freed slaves in Rhode Island and Philadelphia in the eighteenth century; and of the support of the philanthropic American Colonization Society—which had funded the experiment of Liberia in 1847. (“And what is your opinion of Liberia, Mr. Elihu?” Bishop Rudwick asked earnestly; and Elihu, not to be diverted from his argument, said coo
lly, “I am not a man of mere ‘opinions,’ Bishop.”) Should they require statistics, Prince Elihu was in possession of statistics; should they require a distillation of white promises repeatedly made and then broken to the Negro—most recently, Woodrow Wilson’s promises to Negro veterans of the Great War—he was in possession of these. Also, should the white gentlemen, who were shrewd businessmen after all, require precedent for their involvement in what might be termed domestic Negro politics, he could point to the Tuskegee Institute, to which Andrew Carnegie had given a tiny portion of his money (which is to say, millions of dollars): an organization of gross paternalist racism, yet a gesture of charity nonetheless.

  On their side, the white men knew to ask the right questions (“What guarantee have we that you will use the money properly, if we give it,” “Who will provide the cheapest manual labor, if all Negroes emigrate,” “Should you establish a sovereign African state, would we be granted special privileges in regard to trade,” etc.); and it soon became evident that, for all their pose of geniality, Prince Elihu had read their sentiments correctly. As he said, with a flashing smile, “It can hardly be denied that, in your hereditary nostrils, we dark-skinned peoples stink: and there is no more natural desire than to wish a stink as far away as possible.”

  This incidental remark was met by the white gentlemen with pained, and then abashed, expressions; and only the embarrassed bishop made an effort, faltering and unconvincing, to assure Prince Elihu that this was not so.

  Discussion was resumed; and, after some time, a light meal was served around the table (rich-veined Stilton cheese, bread, several kinds of fruits and nuts, dry white wine, mineral water), which most of the gentlemen fell upon with appetite. Elihu, paying little heed to what he was doing, expertly pared for himself a sweet fruit of some dark, pulpy, unfamiliar sort (neither an apple nor a plum, though possessing the qualities of both; but rife with masses of soft slimy seeds), and swallowed a few mouthfuls . . . following which (but surely there was no connection) he began to feel uneasy; vaguely sick; light-headed. A sweaty chill of animal panic overtook him as he looked, and for the first time actually saw, the men seated about the polished mahogany table, gazing at him . . . unspeakably ugly, vile, “diseased,” indeed! The most offensive was the arrogant Pierpont Morgan with his small beady eyes, enormous misshapen nose, and puckered mouth: he had been staring at Prince Elihu from the very start as if he were a species of exotic trained monkey.

  Yet all were frightful; grotesque; repellent—the very pigment of their skin curdled in any number of sickly hues, ranging from ashen-white (the ninety-year-old cadaverous Rockefeller) to a mottled beefy red (the fat-bellied bishop). And how curiously and morbidly their skins were blemished: moles, warts, broken capillaries, liver spots and discolorations inscribed deep in the flesh, like rot.

  And I saw that I despised them in the flesh, and not merely in theory.

  And knew that I would exult in killing them with my own ravenous hands.

  AND THEN . . . the most extraordinary development of that day:

  For suddenly Prince Elihu ducks his handsome head in a comical loll . . . widens his thick-lashed eyes till they nearly pop . . . Elihu the descendant of African kings, his face distended by the white glistening grin of affable idiocy, softly intoning:

  “Weel about and turn about

  And do jis so

  Eb’ry time I weel about

  I jump Jim Crow!”

  So unanticipated is this cheery outburst, so wholly inappropriate to the setting, it seems for a moment that the unspeakable has at last been uttered, and cannot be retrieved. Yet more mysteriously, no one in the Bishop’s library could have said, not even Prince Elihu himself, whether the feckless little rhyme has been sung voluntarily, or no.

  And how exquisitely Prince Elihu sings the words, with what infectious zany good humor he sways in his chair, lolling head, comical bulging eyes, his tongue darting busily about: who would have guessed that he, of all Negroes, could cut such hilarious monkeyshines?

  “I’m a rorer on de fiddle,

  An down in ole Virginny

  Dey say I play de skientific

  Like massa Pagganninny!”

  As if he can’t restrain himself another moment, Prince Elihu in his flowing white caftan leaps to his feet, and cavorts, and flails his arms about, and, rolling his eyes, shouts:

  “De way dey bake de hoe cake,

  Virginny nebber tire!

  Dey put de doe upon de foot

  And stick im in de fire!”

  The disoriented white men can’t determine whether Elihu, who had seemed so congenial earlier, and so straightforward in his remarks, is now joking; or “entertaining”; or mocking them in so vicious a way, it dare not be acknowledged. (For surely it is a peculiar thing, to hear a favorite minstrel ditty sung not by a white man in blackface but by an actual black man . . . in his own face.)

  The Prince continues dancing for another few minutes—squatting, wriggling, shimmying, clapping broadly as if to expose the pinkish palms of his hands—

  “Weel about and turn about!

  And do jis so!

  Eb’ry time I weel about

  I jump Jim Crow!”

  —until suddenly he’s drained of energy, and simply stops.

  There’s a brief, frightened outburst of applause; a few nervous chuckles; and unctuous Bishop Rudwick rises stiffly smiling as if to confer a blessing upon the meeting . . . and the historic secret conference is adjourned.

  SO IT HAPPENED that Prince Elihu failed in his mission to extract from the white enemy money to finance the Union’s great project; and retreated, in a trancelike state, back to his shaky kingdom in Harlem.

  Yet, en route to Union headquarters, Elihu, that’s to say poor Elisha, began to feel sick again; sick in his guts; and, not wanting to despoil the luxurious plush interior of the Rolls-Royce, commanded his driver to stop. And so the whitely gleaming vehicle, familiar to Harlem eyes, came to a stop at 120th Street; and, shielded partly by a rear door, the renowned Negro revolutionary stooped, and retched, and vomited into the gutter while his burly twin lieutenants, stricken with shame, looked resolutely away.

  THE ENCHANTED PRINCESS

  Like one of Katrina’s old fairy tales it’s all coming true: her heart’s most secret, stubborn wish: the prayer of many a foolish lost hour.

  And, like one of Katrina’s cruel tales, it teaches that one’s wish is not after all one’s wish.

  SAYS AARON DEERFIELD, But I had always thought . . . that we would marry.

  Says Esther Licht, But my life is different now, I am different now.

  Says Aaron Deerfield, Then we can’t be married? We won’t be married? And again he repeats, smiling, bewildered, staring at Esther’s tense face, It’s just that I’d been led to believe we had an understanding, all these years . . . .

  Says Esther, But you never spoke of it to me.

  . . . all these years, until we were ready.

  Until you were ready. Until you made up your mind.

  No, of course not . . . .I suppose it might have looked that way to you, Esther, I mean from time to time; but you must have known.

  Says Esther, I had hoped, but I didn’t know.

  Says Aaron, If you had hoped, then . . . ?

  Says Esther, choosing her words with care, Because I am different now. My life has changed.

  That night Esther writes a letter to Darian in Schenectady, taking care not to seem boastful, let alone vindictive (for in truth she still loves Aaron, and would marry him if circumstances allowed), telling him that, at age twenty-six, she feels like a princess awakened from a long enchanted slumber . . . or was it a lifetime of having been bewitched as a frog, or a toad, or a dun-colored little bird? . . .

  If I regret my decision, she concludes, at least it has been my decision.

  BUT IS THAT too smug, too self-assured? too boastful after all?

  Esther doesn’t mean it to be!

  Thus, in a postscript, written
the next morning: It is one of Katrina’s cruel old tales, where the wish comes true but it is no longer the wish . . . and it’s no longer true.

  “THE FIRST ANNUAL UNIVERSAL NEGRO CONFRATERNITY RALLY”

  1.

  Why . . . ? Because it’s his ‘game,’ Maynard,” Millicent whispers, suffused with a queer exhilaration, as her nine-year-old tugs at her gloved hand in an annoying little spasm of fear. “He won’t fall as you would, in his place.”

  “But why, Momma?” the child persists.

  “Because it’s his; because it’s what he does.”

  “But—”

  “Do be quiet, sweetheart: you ask too many pointless questions!”

  Forty dizzy feet above Richmond’s Rialto Theatre there sits, on a rubber-covered seat, atop a flagpole newly erected for this very purpose, the great “Shipwreck” Kelly himself—champion flagpole sitter of North America, man of mysteries and amusing little foibles (he will play only “Peg o’ My Heart” on his harmonica, for instance, and is said to have refused a Hollywood contract because his filmed self would replace his true self in the hearts of his fans). Shipwreck refers to himself as “the luckiest fool alive” and it appears to many that this is so: hotels and movie theaters have bid for his services across the United States, paying him a goodly sum of money simply to climb atop a flagpole and sit.

  And now he’s come to Richmond, Virginia, to the splendidly gaudy Rialto Theatre on Main Street, and is in his fifteenth day of sitting—a lone triumphant figure against a changing sky, cheery, stoic, much admired and debated-over (for is he mad, or is he merely very shrewd?), the focus of all local attention, white and Negro alike. People of widely divergent ages and social classes have sent Shipwreck small gifts; several young women have proposed marriage (for he is handsome, and only thirty-two years old); a number of local businesses have joined up with the Rialto Theatre, pledged to pay for bonus days beyond the first two weeks. There is even a lottery—not altogether legal, but very popular—which will pay $500 to the person who guesses closest to the day, the hour, and the minute of Shipwreck’s descent (voluntary or otherwise) from his solitary perch.