Dancing in the Dark (23 page)

Her father-in-law’s eyes are open and he stares quizzically, as though struggling hard to see something behind her, but Lottie
ignores the anxiety in his gaze and reaches down her hand and quietly closes both of his lids. Her mother-in-law sits by the side of the bed, still in her nightdress, clearly shaken with grief and incapable of either speech or action. Lottie touches the older woman’s shoulder and tells her that her husband most likely suffered a heart attack in the dead of night, but the older woman says nothing, her mouth simply drooping ajar. Lottie looks again at her father-in-law, and senses that with the arrival of the final blow, relief must have flooded the poor man’s body, for he appears to be strangely serene. After the morning in which he cut both Billy “Too Fine” Thomas and the innocent customer, a deeply disturbed Fred Williams never again set foot inside his barbershop, and he and his wife chose instead to move somewhat unpredictably between their son’s house, the Harlem residence that Bert had acquired for them, and Riverside, California, as they made laborious preparations for a return to the Bahamas, but neither of them could decide when this migration might occur. Eventually a depressed Fred began to withdraw even further into himself, and the more he did so, the deeper became the melancholy that consumed his desolate wife. But now, as Lottie looks down at this peaceful man, she is overwhelmed with a sense of relief for she is sure that the demons that had begun to haunt his soul have now almost certainly abandoned him. His son is touring somewhere in the midwest with the Follies of 1912 and later this same day, after she has made all the funeral arrangements, she will wire him the news of his father’s sudden departure and she will choose her words carefully for she wishes to spare her husband any feelings of guilt or responsibility. Casting a final, baleful glance at the still-warm body, she decides to leave her grieving mother-in-law alone with her late husband, and begin to assiduously apply herself to the tasks at hand. By doing so she is hopeful that she might ensure that her father-in-law is treated expeditiously
and that her husband’s already troubled spirit is spared the worst of this shock.

He stares at the instrument that scrutinizes him. Only the clicking heartbeat of the machinery lets him know that it is alive and well, but whatever magic occurs inside the black box is beyond his knowledge. Despite his misgivings, he has little choice but to trust that the device will accurately record his offering and not impose its own authority upon him. He already understands that this may be the new art of the twentieth century, a means of transporting one individual performance to all corners of the country, and he wishes to be a part of it. So, when Mr. Tarkington Baker asked him if he might be persuaded to participate in a moving picture he cautiously agreed, and he now finds himself peering at the camera in the hope that this transaction might produce a fair and faithful record. However, the black box promises him nothing and it stares back as though daring him to perform. And so this is now his audience? The instrument gives him no clue as to what is expected and it has occurred to him that he is therefore free to do whatever he pleases. We’re ready now, Bert. Mr. Baker has set up the scene, and put the players in position, and all eyes are on Bert. He stares at the black box and a sharp surge of excitement rushes through his body. The box cannot howl in protest. It cannot leave its tripod and walk out in disgust. The box cannot disapprove of him. Everybody ready? Bert? He moves into place in front of the camera and looks from astonished face to astonished face, but nobody says a word. And then he gazes at his audience, who are hidden away somewhere at the back of the black box.

One week later the film is edited and he squats awkwardly in a room that is crowded with people and equipment, so much so
that he finds it difficult to secure a space into which he might bend his tall frame into a sitting position. Although it seems unlikely, there are four men in this tiny dark place, and then somebody’s hand reaches up and switches off the light and the images begin to flicker against the wall. For eleven minutes he sees himself performing an act that he has never before witnessed, moving easily, the hand gestures perfect, the timing flawless. He watches himself and in the darkness he is quietly moved. And then it is over and the anonymous hand snakes up the wall and snaps the light back on and Bert continues to sit and say nothing even though all eyes are upon him. He pauses for a moment, and then he speaks:
Again
. For a brief moment Mr. Baker looks quizzically at him, and then he simply waves to the man behind the projector and again the room is plunged into darkness and the images begin to flicker against the wall. As the film thunders through the projector for a second time, Bert looks at the moving picture and he feels proud of it, although he already understands that not everybody will share his feelings. When the projection is completed, and the lights are turned back on, he scans the room with a smile upon his face, but it soon becomes apparent that he is the only one who is smiling. Five weeks later they premiere the motion picture at a location in Brooklyn, but he is advised that it might be better for all concerned if he does not attend. And so he waits to hear the news of how his audience have responded to the film, and the single word “riot” floats back to him. They are angry because he has chosen not to cork his face. Why else would they respond like this? Between his needs and his audience’s expectations he walks a tightrope, but with only a black box for guidance he now knows that he is always liable to miscalculate. He understands the nature of the problem—he needs to see, hear, feel his audience—but they too must understand that there is, on his part, no desire to cause offense.

DARKTOWN JUBILEE (1914)

The appearance last night of the celebrated Negro comedian Bert Williams in top hat and zoot suit in the motion picture
Darktown Jubilee
caused a powerful outburst of resentment among the audience, which could not be contained without violence breaking out. Although long used to the vaudeville headliners reaching out to embrace this new world, audiences have every right to expect them to remain loyal to the mode of entertainment that brought them their celebrity on the planks. But not so with our Mr. Williams. Gone was the familiar “darky humor” heavily laden with pathos, and in its place he gave to us an uncorked colored person of cunning and resourcefulness that left a sour taste in the mouth of all who had paid money to attend this presentation.

After the third motion picture Bert decides no more and he quietly turns his back on the black box. His final two films (in familiar blackface and gloves) have not been a happy experience, and he sees little point in persevering with an art form that, entombed as it is in silence, cannot even offer him the relief of dialectdrawling humor, or the possibility of conquering the audience with a plaintive tune. Bert instructs his wife that they no longer take calls from Mr. Tarkington Baker.

A NATURAL BORN GAMBLER (1916)

Williams gives his watermelon grin most satisfyingly.

FISH (1916)

The colored character is a charming big child of arrested development.

Nineteen eighteen debuts as a hard year, with America still in the war, and winter icy cold, and his wife suffering from large mood swings and feeling that the bloom is permanently off her rose, and Bert choosing to hide away in his library and spend a great deal of his time staring out the window at the colored people who walk confidently up and down Seventh Avenue. Africa is in the air again, and he hears rumors of a small Jamaican man down at 125th Street who is urging colored folks to go back to Africa, where he promises them they will meet black kings and queens, and they will discover a place where they might live in peace at some remove from all the hostility of American life. He and George tackled Africa a long time ago, but does anybody remember their productions?
In Dahomey? Abyssinia?
He suspects not, for the musical seems no longer to be in vogue now that Bob Cole and Ernest Hogan, and George Walker himself, have long since succumbed to the “entertainer’s disease.” Once upon a time it was said that all over America the Negro was dancing himself to death, but now, during these leaner times, Bert sometimes feels as though he is the only colored man still performing in America, albeit to Mr. Florenz Ziegfeld’s audience of white people, and so in 1918 he decides to take time off, having informed Mr. Ziegfeld that he has family business to attend to. Bert spends whole days sitting in his library and letting his mind wander, thinking of purchasing a roadster, or wondering about the wisdom of an airplane excursion, only to have his reverie rudely interrupted by his wife opening or slamming doors, or shouting instructions to the housekeeper. Not wishing to complain, he invests greater periods
of time in Metheney’s, where the talk is increasingly related to the question of whether the colored man should go off and fight the white man’s war, or the folly of the government at Washington, or the possibility of Jack Johnson regaining his heavyweight crown. These quiet conversations are always conducted in the spirit of Metheney’s, and although he has opinions on a wide range of subjects he finds it difficult to enter these fierce, but muted, debates. An increasingly strident Harlem is changing and, Mother aside, there is nobody to whom he might turn and air his thoughts, and so he often sits in Metheney’s and nurses his drink and wonders if he did the right thing telling Mr. Ziegfeld that he would not be taking part in the Follies of 1918 for he wished to stay home and help his wife, who was suffering from melancholia. However, it has to be admitted that since Mother has discovered the curlers and magic pomades of Madame C. J. Walker, and dispensed with her dozens of hats and bonnets, some of her despondency seems to have dissipated. The truth is, no matter how long he muses over the rights and wrongs of his decision to take time out from the Follies, he understands that he will never reach a successful conclusion, and so he resigns himself to simply sitting in Metheney’s and drinking steadily, and listening to conversations that he feels he should not participate in, led by men he finds it difficult to speak with, about subjects that he feels he knows too much about. Clyde D pours him yet another drink, and Bert occasionally lifts his head and watches America turning in one direction while he remains seated and worried that perhaps he is incapable of moving forward at either the same pace or in the same direction as his adopted country. Down in midtown the beautiful girls, and the lavish costumes, and the elaborate settings of the Follies of 1918 are being applauded by men and women who might, after the show, choose to go up and onto the roof of the New Amsterdam Theatre and join patrons such as Diamond Jim
Brady, or William Randolph Hearst, and savor the late-night antics of Ziggy’s intimate rooftop Frolic. Back up in Harlem, Bert Williams is taking a break, but he has already decided that next year, if Mr. Ziegfeld will have him back, he will return to the New Amsterdam Theatre and Mr. Ziegfeld’s colored star will rejoin the Follies of 1919.

As he leaves the park bench and begins to walk slowly uptown through Central Park, he remembers that again, tonight, on his final performance with the Follies, he had difficulty seeing them through the frosted glass. He knew that should he reach up his hand and wipe the glass, his confusion would be revealed, and such a move would therefore be humiliating. He has suffered like this for the whole season, and he has survived many fraught moments when he found himself standing on the Follies’ stage and looking out at the audience without either fully seeing or hearing them. Luckily, he has had little trouble with the actual performance, which is like a broken-backed shoe into which he can easily step, but whenever he tries to focus on the audience his mind often wanders aimlessly and he discovers that he can no longer communicate. At least the patrons have not noticed, that much he is sure of, but it frustrates him that he can never predict when this affliction might strike. The Follies of 1919 has been a trial, for each evening he has walked onstage consumed with dread, and on this evening, at his farewell performance, he once again found himself staring helplessly at the glass, unsure if the audience could actually see the full terror of the man in the window who has been so unforgivably clumsy with his own life and who is peering out in their direction. Leaving tonight’s stage he felt great relief, for he understood that never again would he have to withstand this nerve-racking turmoil of uncertainty, and now, after Mr. Ziegfeld’s Circle Bar party, he is content to find himself
walking alone through Central Park and in the direction of ‘35th Street and into retirement in a Harlem that, to his dismay, seems to be increasingly dominated by sporting-house keepers, but a Harlem that nevertheless feels like some kind of home.

In retirement he soon discovers that one unstructured day leads aimlessly to the next, and he rapidly falls into a stupor of illness. His wife worries at his physical and mental state, for he begins to keep strange hours, often alert and awake in the middle of the night, but during the day he dozes long and hard, and he will only pick idly at his food. Finally Lottie can take no more and she decides to call a doctor and plead with him to examine her husband. Exhaustion of mind and body is the young doctor’s analysis of the situation, and although his wife finds this prognosis unsatisfactory she pays the man and resolves to nurse her husband back to health. She thinks about writing to his aging mother in California, but she understands that her always private husband may consider this an unwelcome intrusion into his affairs, and so she quickly dismisses this thought. She also puts to one side her hope of one day inviting her three nieces to New York City, for she knows that her husband is not strong enough to endure the confusion. Mr. Ziegfeld, like the rest of the profession, hears the sad news of Bert’s post-Follies spiral into drinking and despondency, and he sends a huge bunch of mixed flowers in which roses are the dominant species. There are so many flowers that it is easy for his wife to divide them into four vases, which she places at various points in the house, leaving the largest and most impressive of the bunches in her husband’s library. The high odor permeates the whole house, but she cannot decide whether it is a good thing or not to remind her husband of Mr. Ziegfeld at precisely the time that he is trying to move beyond the Follies. However, he enjoys the scent, which lingers even after the flowers have begun to wilt,
and he reads his newspaper and stares out the window and tries to obey the doctor’s orders to take rest. Viewed from the outside it appears as though the famous colored performer is assiduously following instructions, but inside himself Bert tries to still a pounding heart, and in his mind he wishes to stifle his own private knowledge that he has no plans as to what he might do next. His inability to make a decision of any kind is causing him great embarrassment, and these days when he smiles weakly at his wife, whose lips he remembers taste as sweet as cherries, she often feels like turning away and shedding tears.