Dancing in the Dark (17 page)
Gentlemen of the Thirteen Club—I have seen in the daily press an announcement of a dinner to take place at the Harlem Casino Café this evening the 13th of February, 1908, [at] which time representatives of the Hebrew race, the Japanese race, the Italian race, and the Irish race will speak on the subject, “Is Race Prejudice a Form of Superstition?” Gentlemen, please explain how it came to pass that your learned society failed to invite a representative of my race to speak at your dinner. Is it possible that you have members who are seeking to emancipate themselves from superstition and yet they fail to be broad[-minded] enough to ask a man of African blood in his veins to be present and to take part in your deliberations? … Gentlemen, please do not misunderstand me in the least. I am not a race agitator, and do not claim to thoroughly understand the questions with which your society deals. Williams and Walker seek to make people happy by giving them a clean-cut show, composed of and acted entirely by members of the African race.
GEORGE WALKER
She talks endlessly, but her tirade is really a series of suggestions and complaints loosely strung together and punctuated with gestures, some decent, the remainder an unsubtle appeal to his baser instincts. She insists that men have tried to use her before, but they have failed for she is “hotter than Tabasco.” She laughs out loud, but George starts in and explains to her that these things run their course, and he can’t live with the thought of bringing disgrace on his race should anything happen to Aida, but Eva isn’t prepared to listen. She stomps around the room, tossing back her head like a petulant pony, running her hands through her untamed hair, and spitting out her foul words and kicking the furniture. By the time she finally decides to leave he has long stopped listening to her. The slamming of the door shakes the whole room and only serves to remind him of why they call her “the cyclone.” He goes to the window and discreetly pulls the drape to one side so that he can look down onto Fifty-third Street, where a clearly distressed Eva is walking slowly and with her head lowered. As he gazes down at her he is surprised to feel tears pooling behind his eyes.
Lottie opens the door and informs George that her husband is at Metheney’s Bar. George tips his hat and graciously thanks his friend’s visibly aging wife, but decides that he won’t disturb Bert. There will be time enough to set things straight with his partner tomorrow. He would want to know. Not that he would ever ask, but he feels obliged to tell Bert that this particular chapter has come to an end.
Eva took out a full-page advertisement in all the theatrical newspapers making it clear that if anybody had the temerity to accuse her of having had relations with a well-known, but unnamed, colored performer, then she would sue. She claimed that she was
aware of certain unpleasant rumors that were circulating regarding her personal behavior, but she urged her fans to use their intelligence in distinguishing between her stage persona and the Christian moral strictures within which she lived her daily life. She pointed out that she was a happily married woman, and such slander besmirched not only her personal and professional reputation, but that of her loving spouse. The advertisement was featured prominently, as were the news reports that picked up on its appearance. In response she received only favorable notices, all of which praised her courage in distancing herself from such abominable talk. As a result she was received with renewed affection and the “I Don’t Care Girl” enjoyed a sudden upsurge of popularity.
Bert continues to perform nightly in the new Williams and Walker production,
Bandana Land
, but he does so with a weary spirit for the experience of
Abyssinia
appears to have taught George very little. His erratic partner seems even more determined than ever to make a pageant as opposed to offering a coherent production, but Bert decides against trying to talk with George for he knows that his words will have little, if any, effect. It is clear, not only to Bert but to others, including Mother, that artistically speaking the two men are moving in different directions for Bert’s queer clothes and quaint colored humor contrasts bizarrely with the bejeweled opulence of George’s vision. Sadly, the two partners no longer share the same stage with ease for George’s desire for swell grace and romance makes no sense when set against Bert’s old-fashioned imitation of a nigger coon.
He continues to soap the man’s face, all the while looking closely at his client’s features, until he loses sight of the individual beneath the white foam. He sharpens his razor on the strop and
then makes a few small movements of his wrist as though carving the air into thin slices. A seated customer suddenly exclaims, “Don’t you know it’s the man’s son you’re talking about?” He tries not to listen to their gossip as he gives the razor a few final strokes against the strop, but what can he do? He knows that this is a barbershop, and that a barbershop is a colored man’s country club, where folks feel free to run their mouths in all directions, but his Bert has bought the shop for him, and in spite of everything, he has his loyalties to his son. This being the case, he knows that eventually he’ll have to say something to these crispy-haired American men for they cannot talk about his West Indian son and expect a big man like Fred Williams to endure much more of this discourtesy. Next comes the water. He likes to rinse his hands one final time before touching a man’s skin, and so he lets the warm water ribbon gently through his fingers. All the boy is trying to do is entertain people; he is trying to make them happy and make them laugh, but the truth is he has never been able to watch his son perform beyond that first time. He takes up the towel and dries his hands as another customer gets his point across. “Making us all look foolish, don’t care what nobody says, the nigger makes us all look bad.” He takes the razor and drags it gently across his client’s face, careful to ensure that his strokes are smooth and true. How many more of these conversations? Damn it, this is his son, and people should respect this, and appreciate the fact that Williams and Walker is an all-Negro organization that employs coloreds and gives them a chance to succeed, and often presents them with a start in the entertainment business. However, whichever way you look at it, a barbershop is not a good place to frequent if you don’t wish to hear talk, and soon Fred Williams had heard enough talk. Eventually everybody knew the story of what happened on the morning Fred Williams finally closed down his barbershop, but nobody ever heard the story
from Fred. In fact, according to Billy “Too Fine” Thomas, after Fred was through with his craziness he just took off his smock, tossed it over the back of one of those big old padded leather chairs, and locked the door behind him. Billy “Too Fine” Thomas worked with Fred in the shop as some kind of apprentice, doing the easy cuts, wiping down the counters, and sweeping up hair from the floor, and for years after Fred Williams’s patience finally ran out, Billy could ride three or four free drinks in any bar in Harlem on the back of his story—a story that got bigger with every retelling.
“You see, that morning I knowed something was wrong with Fred for I could smell the whiskey on his breath, but Fred ain’t no liquor head and it wasn’t like Fred at all, and then when he starts to organize his scissors and blades and everything, he’s banging things down like he’s spoiling for a fight and I figure something must have happened at home with the wife, for most of the worriments that trouble a man go right back to the wife, and most likely he’s dealing with some kind of problem behind closed doors that he got to play out in public, so I don’t say nothing and I swear I just try to stay out of the nigger’s way and so I go through to the back and try to reckon up how I’m going to survive this day, but in the end I know I just gotta watch carefully and see what old Fred does with that temper of his for the man’s just crashing around like a crazy fool, and then when I come back through there’s a customer sitting high up in the chair, been in a few times, but he ain’t no regular, and I don’t even know the man’s name, but already I see that blade going back and forth, back and forth, and then I see the blood for Fred’s cut the man, cut him good, but it’s like Fred don’t notice or something, so I move toward Fred and just at that moment the man cries out in pain, I mean his cheek is cut good and proper, and now the man can feel the blood begin
ning to trickle down his face, all hot and flowing, and so he raises his hand and touches his face, then he looks at his hand and he’s fierce angry, shouting and cussing, and just when I’m about to put my hand on Fred’s arm to tell him, ‘Hey, Fred, the man’s bleeding,’ I’ll be damned if the island nigger doesn’t turn and cut me too, doesn’t say a word to me, just a quick movement of his wrist and I’m holding on to my arm and blood pumping through it like I sprung a leak and so I look at the man with blood on his face, and me with blood on my arm, and right there and then I know that old Fred’s come unglued and so me and the customer start to back away from him and move toward the door, all the while keeping an eye on that blade for we both know that anything can happen with Fred for it’s clear that he ain’t through with his cutting for the day, but we both hightail it out of there and leave him to wait for whoever else is dumb enough to venture into Fred Williams’s barbershop, but I know right away that I’m going to have to get me another job, either in barbering or something else, but I don’t much care what it is as long as I don’t have to work with this crazy man for the devil had surely seized old Fred’s soul and good sense had jumped clear out of the man’s head.”
George knocks at the door and waits. He holds on to the railing for his head is spinning, but the news of his new social organization will soon be made public and it is important that he formally invite Bert to participate, for he knows that Bert can be a mighty formal kind of a man. George looks around and notices a few people staring up at him as he stands at the top of the flight of steps. They know who he is, and the tasty suit leaves them in no doubt. He waves and they smile, and then the door opens and a grim-faced Lottie ushers him in and she announces that Bert is in his library keeping company with his books. She speaks with a strange mixture of both pride and contempt, but he has heard this
tone before and he therefore tries his best to ignore it. Lottie and Aida remain friends, and this being the case he seldom says more to Lottie than is absolutely necessary, but he knows exactly what she thinks of him. He only has to see the way she looks him up and down, as though inspecting him for some external evidence of the inner taint that she obviously feels disfigures his personality.
Bert rests the book in his lap and looks up as his wife withdraws and leaves the two men alone.
—Everything all right?
—Figured I’d just come by and talk to you for a minute about the social organization.
—Won’t you take a seat?
George nods and carefully closes in the door behind him, but try as he might he cannot disguise the fact that his legs are shaking and his gait is unsteady.
An organization to be known as the “Frogs” was formed Sunday evening at the residence of George W. Walker,107 West 132nd Street. The prime movers in forming such an organization are the leading actors of the race, and it is the intention of the incorporators to make the “Frogs” to the Negro performer, as well as to the members of the race, what the Lambs’ Club and the Players’ Club mean to the white profession…. The Frogs have been formed for social, historical and library purposes with a view to promoting social intercourse between the representative members of the Negro theatrical profession and to those connected directly or indirectly with art, literature, music, scientific and liberal professions and the patrons of arts.
NEW YORK AGE
He sits in Bert’s library and looks at his friend and wonders if Bert even remembers those nights in the mountains of Colorado. They had dreams back then, and they were determined and talked often of the future, but these days Bert never speculates about the future. In fact, these days Bert seems reluctant to talk on any subject, and he hardly ever mentions
Bandana Land
. Bert appears to have effectively passed business responsibility to George, for he does not seem in the slightest bit interested in either Williams and Walker or the Frogs, and for some time now George has felt that they
ought
to talk frankly but he knows that Bert is uncomfortable sharing his feelings. George understands that the situation with his father must be making life even more difficult for his partner, for people are talking, and the more people talk, the less poor Bert seems to want to open up. Of late, Bert seldom leaves his home unless he is going to the theater, or unless he is visiting Metheney’s, but George suspects that, in his mind, Bert travels.
I used to go over [to Europe] every summer and study pantomime from Pietro, the great pantomimist. He is the one artist from whom I can truthfully say that I learned. He taught me gesture, facial expression—without which I would not have been able to do the poker game stunt that was so popular…. I played a good deal of pantomime in Europe. I did the Toreador in the pantomime version of
Carmen
and many other parts.
BERT WILLIAMS
But George knows that Bert travels only in his mind.
The poker game was the most famous stage act that Mr. Williams ever performed, and I had read that he
included it for the first time in
Bandana Land
where he played the part of Skunton Bowser, who takes up the deck of cards while heavily under the influence of applejack. I wanted to ask Mr. Williams about the origins of the act, for he claimed to have discovered his technique for the routine while studying with “Pietro” in Europe. However, although I read everything that I could find, I found it impossible to discover anything about this Mr. Pietro. Even more puzzling was the fact that nobody I questioned had any memory of Mr. Williams ever doing any studying in Europe. When I found myself privileged to be sitting opposite Mr. Williams I had second thoughts about raising this puzzling quandary. Instead, I asked him about the big hit song of the show, “Late Hours,” which he sung while performing the famous poker game routine. Mr. Williams was happy to talk to me about the song.