Jazz Moon (28 page)

B
en was at Café Valentin by nine each evening to prepare for opening at ten. He worked until three a.m., with Sebastien joining him in the last hours, eating soup and drinking or sketching, the up-and-down, right-left sweeps of his pencil almost in rhythm with the band's after-midnight music. By four a.m., they'd leave together and go to Ben's room in rue Condorcet to play and then sleep and then play again until ten. From there they'd head to the Place Pigalle for a light breakfast—coffee, bread. Light because Sebastien had no money. Painting was his life, but not a reliable living. Rent and bills—many overdue—devoured whatever was generated from the occasional sale of his work. He worked odd jobs now and then, but was loath to take time away from his painting. He remained dreadfully, joyfully poor, but also proud, so though Ben could afford to provide a substantial meal for them both, Sebastien declined.

“You won't let me buy you a good breakfast,” Ben said, “but you don't complain when I give you Monsieur Rameau's soup and liquor for free.”

“That is different. That is, how do you Americans say? A fringe benefit.” Proudly: “I am the lover of the man who runs the establishment. I am entitled to eat and drink for free.”

They were in the middle of the Place Pigalle and surrounded by people, but Sebastien placed his hands on the soft skin of Ben's neck. His hands traveled up to Ben's cheeks, then descended to his shoulders before sliding down to his arms and squeezing.

They would arrive at Sebastien's room by noon for painting and writing. They thrived in that creative refuge, in their ambitious, disciplined work. Ben produced poems that he rejoiced over as he would over a lost child, thought dead, who had miraculously returned home.

But it was back, resurrected by his own will and the need to compensate for the time lost, the energy wasted, the poems still not yet conceived, because of his addiction to the shadows. Spurred also by a competitiveness that drove him to keep up with Sebastien's constant output.

This was different. Sebastien was different. Willful and Baby Back had enthralled Ben with their self-consumed swagger; demanded his subservience and gotten it. But Sebastien didn't swagger. He wasn't aggressive or confident. Melancholy roved beneath his surface. It was there when he smiled or laughed or kissed Ben or painted. Physically he was different, too, from Ben's previous lovers, his body's loveliness owing more to a svelte shapeliness than to the heady musculature of a Willful, the imposing size of a Baby Back. And so, during intimacy, they were equal. Neither dominated the other. Intimacy was a partnership.

“How is that,
mon chaton?
Is that all right? Are you all right?” Sebastien might ask as they loved.

“Yes. I'm all right.” Tears would bubble up because Sebastien had the sensitivity to ask. The sensitivity sang and the lyrics said,
You're falling in love
.

Lord. That phrase. Je déteste ça,
he thought.

Falling in love
. As if love was some awful pit and the inevitable direction was down. Why not rise in love instead of fall? And even that was inaccurate because love didn't do either. It unfolded, like a story. It had plotlines and plot points and points of view; was populated with supporting roles like Glo and colorful auxiliary characters like Café Valentin's patrons and band. Their story unfolded with drama, like the night they argued at the club in front of everyone. Sebastien had charged Ben with flirting with a handsome male customer, a charge Ben had at first laughed off before being lured into the fight.

“I am neither stupid, nor naïve,” Sebastien said. “You know that
les tapettes
find you charming and attractive and you use that.”

“Oh, I use my masculine wiles?”

“If you want to call it that. Or perhaps your exotic wiles or jungle wiles would be
appropié.
”

“Let's add
primitive
while we're at it,” Ben said.

By now, the normally liquid voice of each man had hardened, stopping everything in Café Valentin. The patrons and Glo and the band became engulfed in their fight as if it was a stage play.

“Fine,” Sebastien said. “Primitive.
D'accord
. It suits you.”

He walked out. Glo and company resumed their set, but everyone in the place was so stunned, the only song they could do was the saddest one in their repertory.

Ben went home at evening's end, numb, horrified.
Primitive
. He cursed himself for believing Sebastien incapable of such an insult. Sebastien didn't join him that night in the room in rue Condorcet, but crept in the next morning, pale and hungry and perspiring, looking so abject that Ben immediately opened up his arms and his bed.

“I am . . . I am so sorry. For what I said.” He clung to Ben as his shards of tears fell onto Ben's chest. “Can you forgive? Forget?”

He ran his fingers through Sebastien's hair. “I can forgive.”

The moisture accumulated on Ben's chest, some running down the sides of his body, but most of it pooling like a stagnant pond. It occurred to him that Sebastien wore the same clothes as the night before.

“Have you been home? Where did you spend the night?”

But Sebastien had cried himself to sleep.

 

Their unfolding story had its joyous episodes. They scaled the hill to Sacré-Cœur, the first time Ben had taken anyone there. But before he could show Sebastien that beloved cityscape, the painter threw open the giant doors of the church, cloaked an arm around him, walked him inside and, for the first time, Ben stood on the
inside
of La Basilique du
Sacré-Cœur.
He had never considered going in, maybe because he'd been raised Baptist and thought he would somehow be barred from entering. He knew nothing of Catholicism, except that Catholics worshipped saints and the Virgin Mary and went straight to hell if they ate anything other than fish on Fridays.

The rows of pews extended up the nave for what seemed like miles. The altar was enthroned on a large dais. High above it rose a fresco of a white-robed Jesus surrounded by kneeling supplicants, a gold heart aglow in the center of his chest. He seemed to levitate. People were arriving for weekday morning mass. Mostly old women carrying heirloom rosaries, a few young women with small children. Many kneeled in the pews, eyes closed, pious lips mouthing prayers.

“I used to go to church,” Sebastien said. “When I was young.”

Ben laughed. “You're still young.”

“
Et tu? Tu allais à l'église?
”

“In Dogwood, with my parents. When I used to believe.”

“You no longer do?” Sebastien seemed startled.

Ben gazed at the high-flying Jesus and recalled walking to church with his folks and his sister before she died. Pa wisecracking. Ma smiling and shaking her head. Emma Jane and Ben giggling. But after Emma Jane passed, he and his folks walked to church in silence.

“I no longer believe that it matters,” he said, gazing at Jesus.

Sebastien took in the grandiosity of the church as if in awe. Ben played along while thinking,
Notre Dame's better
. But Notre Dame didn't sit on a hill at the highest point in Paris. He extracted Sebastien from his reverie and led him outside. They looked out over the panorama as sunlight darted among the crags and edges and grooves of the city, creating shadows that courted Ben with promises of pleasure; pleasure that, unlike love, did not cost and would not take on a life of its own.

He didn't answer the shadows. Answering would be majestic. But it was too easy.

With his poetry he shunned the easy words and phrases that just anybody could embed in a stanza. He took his time to shape each verse so that it shone, so that he could say,
I did this. I made this. I'm proud of this. I love this
.

J
une brought summer, if you could call it that, summer in Paris being nothing more than a warmer, slightly drier, version of spring. Not like New York and Dogwood where summers seethed. Along with warmth, June delivered news. One afternoon on the Place Pigalle, Ben ran into Norman, Chez LeRoi's bartender, only too happy to gossip about Ben's former lover: Baby Back's record sales had spiked in France, England, and Italy. The voluptuous influx of money bankrolled ridiculously expensive suits and a brand-new Packard automobile paid for in cash.

“Each record he sells feeds his bank account
and
his ego,” Norman said. “That thing's a goddamn monster. Gets bigger and hungrier with each swallow.” And Baby Back lorded it over Chez LeRoi like a despot. “He's made enemies of everyone—from the musicians to the chef to the kitchen boys.”

Soon, word of a rift between Baby Back and Clifford Treadwell swarmed the Montmartre jazz scene. The story was that they had argued on the street. Passersby, arms loaded with baguettes or fish wrapped in paper and tied with string, stopped and witnessed the colored man with shoulders as broad as the sidewalk high-stepping it as Clifford slunk to his knees, blithering like a discarded infant.

June was also the month when Ben and Sebastien rejoiced because the drought officially ended: Ben received notification from the
Deux Amours Review,
a journal publishing work by expatriate Americans in France, that two of his poems had been accepted for publication. That night, in celebration, Glo and the band played two entire sets comprised of Ben's favorite tunes and he and Sebastien helped themselves to more than their usual portion of Monsieur Rameau's liquor.

“I am so, so proud of you,” Sebastien said later. They were in the room in rue Condorcet, getting ready to play. “
Félicitations, mon chaton
.”

His pride, Ben knew, was in part because Sebastien could claim some of the credit for his success, success that served as proof that their creative partnership worked.

In mid-July, another journal accepted his work. Notification coincided with
La Fête Nationale
—Bastille Day. To salute his adopted country's freedom and his most recent success, Ben and Sebastien joined hordes of celebrants along the Champs Élysées. They watched the military parade from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde as the crowd waved an infinite fluster of French flags on both sides of the boulevard and someone held up a banner inscribed with the French national motto:
Liberté, Égalité, Frater-nité
.

Afterward, they went to a café. Sebastien allowed Ben to treat him. They sat outdoors and ate ham omelets and salad while a waiter stood nearby, greeting passersby. “
Bonjour, monsieur. Bonjour, madame,
” he intoned, his voice fraught with boredom and more nasal than the typical Frenchman. “
Bonjour, mademoiselle. Bonjour, les enfants. Bonjour, tout le monde
.”

“You have attended your first
Fête Nationale,
” Sebastien said. They clinked their champagne glasses together. “You are a French-man now.”

“And proud to be.”

“I wonder what they would think about that in Dogwood. I wonder what your parents would think.”

Ben shrugged.

“I'm sure they would be proud of your literary success,” Sebastien said, “if they knew.”

Perhaps they will soon,
Ben thought.

The death of Baby Back's ma had prompted an ache for his own folks. It aggravated a longing that gnawed. Over the years he'd convinced himself he didn't want, need, or love them; that the surplus of hurtful times invalidated the good ones. Then why the longing? It was rather like
this thing
once upon a time: too massive, too prominent a part of himself to ignore or contain. It had to get out. And, like
this thing,
the more he ignored it, the more it would gnaw until it hollowed him out.

So he had paused his hurt and written to his parents.

The words had stuttered from his pen. Fragments, incoherent on their own, strung themselves to one another and expanded into a letter.
Been so long . . . Shouldn't have hurt you. . . . Shouldn't have left like that.... Forgive me? . . . Can you? . . . I . . . I love you.

He had mailed it, weeks ago, but not heard back. He hadn't told Sebastien for fear of jinxing the outcome. And what if regaining his ma and pa piqued Sebastien's loneliness for his own parents? What if he became jealous? They already competed for Glo's mothering attentions. They fought about it once. During coffee at Glo's one afternoon, Sebastien had monopolized her with stories and advice-seeking and narration of his own history. By the time they left, Ben had barely talked with her.

“She's
my
friend,” he said, on their way back to Sebastien's. Ben set the pace, walking at a clip and a little ahead.

“It is stupid to be jealous,” Sebastien said.

“I don't mind sharing, but—”

“—you would like me to take a smaller share? As if she is a thing to be divided?”

Ben stopped walking. Sebastien didn't.

“She's the closest thing I have to a mother!” Ben shouted at the painter's back, pleading, ridiculous, mad at himself for his ridiculousness.

“Same for me!” Sebastien shouted back.

The
bonjour
waiter resumed his weary greetings. “
Bonjour, madame. Bonjour, jolie fille. Bonjour, tout le monde
.”

“I should not talk about our parents so much,” Sebastien said. “I suppose I do because I miss mine. Imperfect and impossible and cruel as they were—
are
—there is still no substitute.”

 

A month after
La Fête Nationale,
Ben learned from Norman that Baby Back quit Chez LeRoi to star at a larger, swankier club in rue de la Gaîté in Montparnasse.

And that Clifford Treadwell had moved out of Baby Back's house.

“From what I heard, it wasn't voluntary,” Norman said. “Ain't nobody sure where he went. Is he still in Paris? Did he leave France? Go back to his wife in the States? Nobody knows.” Norman smiled, villainous, victorious. “And let me tell you something else: Don't nobody give a shit.”

Ben smiled, too: his nemesis defeated. But he also pitied Clifford Treadwell because he knew what it was to love and to lose Baby Back Johnston.

“I wonder why it is,” Sebastien said when Ben told him, “that you take such interest in what happens with your
former
lover.”

Ben said nothing, locking out, momentarily, Sebastien's jealousy of Baby Back—a cover for the more insidious jealousy that had folded itself into their unfolding story: A third batch of Ben's poems had been accepted by another journal at the end of July, a fourth in September for an anthology, but Sebastien hadn't sold a single painting.

“You should try to sell your work to the tourists and slummers on the Place Pigalle,” Ben said. “Or set up shop on a street corner.”

Sebastien cringed at the suggestion as a quiet torch of the former rich, spoiled scion still blazed. But he took Ben's advice. The results were minimal. Mornings he left with loads of canvasses under his arms and evenings he returned with the same ones. Depression staked its claim on him. He was grumpy and silent or he vented his frustrations on Ben. He would stay away from Café Valentin and then appear in Ben's room the following day, pale and weak and looking dazed and strangely tranquil. More than once, Ben detected a sweet aroma trailing him. He wanted to follow that trail and see to what—or whom—it led.

“You do not know,” Sebastien said, “how humiliating it is to place your life's work on the sidewalk and watch as people pass by as if they are walking by trash. Or they stop and look and give you a courteous smile and then keep going. I do not want their courtesy. I would rather they spat in my face.”

He gave up the street corner sales, took odd jobs, lived off Ben, and grimaced each time Ben paid for a meal. Ben felt bad, but was more jubilant about his own success than sorry about Sebastien's rut.

His poetry was back. He was whole again. His poetry was a star out in space that he had worshipped, prayed to. As with ships' navigators of old, its place in the sky was a marker of where he was, where he was going, how long and far he had traveled. For a while the marker had disappeared, snuffed out by God.

He never wanted that starlessness again. So Sebastien terrified him. His erstwhile pride in Ben's accomplishments had reshaped into an ax. Ben thought about ending it.
But he set me on the starlit path home. And I . . . I love him.

He did not want to crush their unfolding story. But he hoped he was not in love with love. That was like wanting to read, but only good news. Love could fill, but not make whole; it could cushion loneliness, not cure it. What it did was broaden your circumference of concern beyond yourself to encompass another person. Even if—when—that person caused you grief.

He so often felt as though he hailed from a different species, not quite human. He'd always been different, had never fit. Negroes looked at him askance, questioning his credentials as a Negro man. Whites did, too. For both groups, he wasn't Negro
enough
. They didn't know what to make of him, what category in which to box him. And queer to boot! Benjamin Marcus Charles was something that shouldn't exist but had slipped through the mesh of the evolutionary net. As such, he was a natural and perpetual outsider. It was in the very cells that composed him.

And then came Sebastien, another exile. They were of different races; one had been rich, the other poor; one was French, the other American (if Negroes counted as Americans), but they were of the same outsider species. Their circumference of concern naturally encompassed each other.

They inspired each other. Ben scoffed at the cliché:
love as inspiration; love inspires
. It sounded like a passage from a Romantic play from the last century. But wasn't inspiration an ingredient of love? Perhaps itself a form of love? If you embarked on the fool's errand of defining love, wouldn't inspiration be one of the roots? Without Sebastien, without Sebastien's art, Ben would still be blundering in the wasteland, starless, guideless.

 

In November, just as winter settled in, Norman gave Ben the latest news: Chez LeRoi was dying.

“We ain't had a packed house since Baby Back quit.”

LeRoi Jasper's patrons had deserted him. Denny and her menagerie of escorts and hangers-on were gone. The tourists and rich slummers sought other venues.
Chocolate Jubilee of 1926
had long since moved on to Brussels, London, and Berlin as
Chocolate Jubilee of 1927,
although a few cast members—inspired by Baby Back's stardom—stayed behind to try their luck in Paris. Most nights the joint LeRoi Jasper had anointed the hottest in Paris sat empty, the music from its stage reverberating in the hollow shell of the club.

“And the few folks who do come,” Norman said, “think they gonna hear Baby Back. When they find out he ain't there no more, they turn right around and walk out.”

Ben sat up in bed. The room was chilly even with the radiator hissing steam heat. Another night had passed without Sebastien. It had become a ritual: the painter staying away all night and then straggling over Ben's threshold the next morning, a snippet of some sweet aroma (whose?) straggling with him.

He hadn't sold a single painting or attracted the interest of any gallery. His melancholy now dwarfed his ability to paint. He would sit at his easel, waiting for a stab of creativity with which to slay his canvas. It rarely came. Ben understood that. Resented it, too: He was supposed to inspire Sebastien and took it personally when he didn't, couldn't.

But this morning, he just wanted Sebastien to come back.

“One-thousand-one. One-thousand-two.” He counted to calm himself, hoping Sebastien would come.

At
one-thousand-twelve,
he did.

“Where were you?” Ben asked as he held him, sniffing covertly for a trace of that sweet scent. There it was, nearly camouflaged by Sebastien's strong body odor, but there nonetheless. Too sweet for a man's scent, but not a woman's either.