The Man Who Cried I Am (32 page)

A souring Charlotte whose brief moments of hilarity now came because of the attention paid to her by Jaja Enzkwu. Knowing Harry as he did, Max was not prepared to dislike Enzkwu. On the other hand, he was not going to like him on sight, either. The Africans Max had met at the Franco-African meetings had made him cautious. But his first meeting with Enzkwu did turn Max violently against him.

The party was held at André's and when Enzkwu came in, his silken agbada swirling about him, he paused and glanced about the room, then came swiftly toward Max and his date, a tiny, small-boned but tough magazine reporter named Janine; she spoke British English. Enzkwu, a Nigerian, had met her before. He much preferred the French to the British and wished he had been born in Senegal, first; the Ivory Coast, second; or Dahomey, third. Most people, Max thought as Enzkwu swarmed around Janine, for the sake of courtesy at least, tend to guide their meaningful remarks through innocuous ones; or they work with the eyes. There is, after all, some
guideline
for these sorties and it was usually observed between a man and a woman trying to come together, particularly in the company of others.

There were no guidelines for Enzkwu. He simply ignored Max and gave his full attention to Janine, pausing to adjust his sleeves and to puff rapidly on his Gauloise bleu. His eyes were as uncontrolled as his rather suggestive conversation. Janine was laughing. Max was embarrassed for Enzkwu. He knew the laugh.
Pig
. That was what Janine was thinking. But one must be nice, musn't one? And not offend our black brethren. Max knew that when Enzkwu got the message that he was being put down (and he would believe Janine was putting him off simply because Max had got there first), the message would be garbled. For Enzkwu (and Max knew the type), every white woman who was courteous to him was really offering to share her bed with him.

“So, you will not go dancing with me tonight,” Enzkwu said, scowling at Max. But his eyes were already searching the room. “I will call you tomorrow, then …”

“No, Jaja, not tonight. Thank you, you are a dear. Tomorrow I have an interview. Adenauer is in town, you know. Yes. Ta-ta.” Enzkwu rustled away, heading for, Max could see, Michelle. Enzkwu's stock with Harry was submarining with every rustle of his agbada.

A momentary, floundering silence came between Max and Janine. “Say it, it's all right,” Max counseled.

“Oh, Max,” she said, tiredly. “What does one do? I find him loathsome. To think that he may even become a First Cabinet member—and I didn't want to offend you.”

“What's he got to do with me?”

“You're right, of course. Nothing. Well—”

“You people have got to stop being so foolish.” Max was both sad and irritated. “Do you like the Germans? They are white.”

“No. You know I don't.”

“Well, then, isn't it the same?”

“I'm sorry. I knew we'd have words about it. It's the reaction, you see, bending over backwards.”

“Stand straight up for me.”

Janine smiled. “Always?”

Max grinned. “No,” he said, and then, watching Enzkwu swirl away from Michelle and veer toward Charlotte, he had promptly dismissed him.

God, Max, what doesn't start with Africa? What a history still to be told! The scientists are starting to say life began there. I'm no scientist. I don't know. But I do know that this letter you're reading had its origins with what happened there. Let me go back to the beginning. I doubt if you've heard of Alliance Blanc. In 1958 Guinea voted to leave the French Family of Nations, and at once formed a federation with Kwame Nkrumah, or Ghana, whichever you prefer. The British and French were shaken. How could countries only two minutes ago colonies spring to such political maturity? Would the new federation use pounds or francs? The national banks of both countries were heavily underwriting the banking systems of the two countries. There would be a temporary devaluation of both pounds and francs, whether the new federation minted new money or not. More important—and this is what really rocked Europe—if the federation worked, how many new, independent African states would follow suit?
Then
, what would happen to European interests in Africa after independence and federation? Was it
really
conceivable that all of Africa might one day unite, Cape to Cairo, Abidjan to Addis? Alliance Blanc said
Yes!
If there were a United States of Africa, a cohesiveness among the people—300,000,000 of them—should not Europeans anticipate the possibility of trouble, sometime when the population had tripled, for example? Couldn't Africa become another giant, like China, with even more hatred for the white West? It was pure guilt over what Europeans had done to Africa and the Africans that made them react in such a violent fashion to African independence.

The white man, as we well know, has never been of so single an accord as when maltreating black men. And he has had an amazing historical rapport in Africa, dividing it up arbitrarily across tribal and language boundaries. That rapport in plundering Africa never existed and never will when it requires the same passion for getting along with each other in Europe. But you know all this. All I'm trying to say is that, where the black man is concerned, the white man will bury differences that have existed between them since the beginning of time, and come together. How goddamn different this would have been if there had been no Charles Martel at Tours in 732!

19

FRANCE

Tours. Except for a few phrases found in the encyclopedias, its meaning had been lost in history, perhaps intentionally, Max remembered thinking when he and Harry had stopped there on the way south to Carcassonne to buy smuggled Spanish shotguns. Somewhere between Tours and Poitiers, Charles Martel had halted the Moors driving up from Spain in, the encyclopedias said, “one of the decisive battles in history.”

There was a stinging clue, Max thought, as they were taking lunch in a cafe along the Loire. Otherwise how white would Europe be? Or America, for that matter? They misled you, the historians, balladeers, the monks. Like ancient Egyptians, they destroyed the histories of the vanquished carved on stone stelae and wrote their own. Was Alexander's chief captain, Clitus the Black, black after all, or only by nature, like Nero? How could Balthazar of the Three Kings be black when historians wrote that black people came out of the ass-end of history? How then could Balthazar be king of anything? But at Christmas who questioned? You got your gift and you got drunk. Go, Balthazar. Why couldn't they tell you straight out who was a Moor? They told you a Moor was a Berber, a Saracen, an Arab, anything to keep you from knowing that Berbers, Saracens and Arabs were often black. But the Spanish knew; how well they knew. (Max had gone on a brief trip to Madrid and had been there only long enough to know that Spanish women didn't like to remove their brassieres when making love [saving the contents for the kiddies] and to hear the Spanish whisper loudly to each other when he walked along the Plaza de España, “
Mira! Mira! Un moro!
” Max had heard the history resounding in their voices.) So great a conspiracy, Max thought; the extent of that conspiracy which, conscious or unconscious, had the same effect. It really was too much. What they wouldn't do, the white folks, to keep you from having a history, the better, after all, to protect theirs.

Max had felt empty walking beside the Loire after lunch; he even felt stupid. There was so much he wanted to know, but never would know. How wonderful it would be to be able to read Arabic; what answers would come from that! Or classic Chinese to understand what had happened to the great Chinese navies and find a clue, perhaps, to the presence of black people in the Melanesian islands of the Pacific. How did they get there? What immense traffic in goods and people took place between China and Africa, and in which dawn of which history? Caught up in the spin of history, Max tried to imagine the battlefield upon which he walked, the snorts and neighs of horses, great, ungainly Percherons against small, fast, surefooted Arabian steeds, the jangle of armor, the shouts in Old French and Arabic, the lung-bursting cries for god and country, as usual.

Harry broke into his thoughts. “Goddamn.” Max glanced at him, then followed the direction of his eyes. Coming toward them, motionless above the knees, was a small, wrinkled Negro. He was wearing a beret faded to an ugly purple; a white shirt out of which sprang in every direction a huge, red, polka-dotted tie, the kind which had not been seen since the days of Bop City in New York in the midforties. He also wore a zoot suit and highly polished black knob shoes. The man, as black as his shoes, his lips as red as the inside of a watermelon (he would have gone well in a 1930's Hearst caricature of a Negro), moved steadily across the green, stone-dotted lawns as if someone had wound a crank in his back and pushed him forward.

“Professor Bazzam,” Harry said hurriedly.

“Hello, hello,” the man called Professor Bazzam said. “I saw you people cooling it along the river here. Haven't seen you in a couple of years, Harry.” He took Harry's hand and shook it, while studying Harry keenly with myopic eyes. “Came down here for a bit because Paris was getting too crowded, know what I mean?” Turning to Max, he said, “You from the Apple? How's the Apple? You like this side of the ocean, man? Nice, isn't it? Everything's cool here.”

Max hadn't heard New York City referred to as “The Apple” in fifteen years. The Professor, Max estimated, was at least sixty years old and he was, in the flesh, the kind of Negro every white man laughed at and pointed to. Yet there was about Professor Bazzam (which of course wasn't his right name) the uncompromising self-possession one sees in clowns performing before thousands in Madison Square Garden. What great penance was the man paying to degrade himself so? Looking at him closely, Max could see that the Professor hadn't combed his hair; it stood balled and napped on the sides of his head as berries left for the birds after the passing of the berry picker; his suit hadn't had a cleaning or pressing in months; the white shirt collar was ringed with dirt. Of all the black American characters Max had met so far, Professor Bazzam was the oddest. Even standing still his forearms were held forward, his hands bent toward the ground, like a bird's legs seeking to come to roost. Harry and the Professor finished their brief conversation and Bazzam stuck his gnarled hand into Max's, pivoted and marched off, nothing about him moving save his legs. “See you in Paree.” His knob shoes sliced neatly through the grass and expertly topped the small stones.

Harry shrugged, and anticipating Max's questions, said, “I don't know who he is. He pops up in the strangest places: Paris, where I first met him; London, Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Barcelona. Nobody knows who the hell he is. When he shows up, he reminds all the Negroes, who'd like to forget it, that they are; they don't like to be reminded. I wish to hell he'd get a new suit and throw away that tie.” Harry shook himself with irritation. “He's like a bad penny or a conscience.”

The next day they continued south to Carcassonne and purchased the Spanish guns. Then they returned to Paris along the Rhône via Mâcon, roaring down the highways bordered with ancient plane trees that had white rings painted on them; passing the ugly French farms, the farmers and their families with centuries' old dulled looks ground deeply into their faces; passing giant wine tank trucks and Max thought, How different after Paris, just as all America is different after New York. The long ride made him think of the day, months from now, when he'd have to take that four-hour drive to Le Havre again to the ship that would carry him back to New York, the
Century
and the future. It would be time then, for the book would be finished and perhaps he would be tired of Paris. But there was plenty of time yet. Time for hunting in the fall; he would be disappointed if French pheasant and duck were as similar to American pheasant and duck as French women were to American women. A change in locale did not make Max lose perspective; a woman was not better in bed simply because she was French. The same did not apply to French wines, however; they were better.

“How goes the book?” Harry asked.

“Good.” Max struggled from the grip of his own thoughts, suddenly aware of the long silences they had had on the trip north. Well, he assumed that Harry, like himself, didn't like long, drawn-out conversations on the road all the time. Max said, “It's going to be all right.”

Harry glanced at him. “Sure would like to take a look at it. But I'll wait until it comes out.”

That
tone of voice, Max thought, knowing what the tone and the words meant. Most rigidly observed by writers who are friends is the rule that one never reads (or asks to read) the work of another while that work is in progress. Harry was aware of that rule, yet, however you cut it, Max thought, Harry
had
asked. Did Harry think he was in it? Did Harry
want
to be in it? Max knew that a lot of people thought they were in novels or wanted to be in novels, but he'd never thought Harry was like that. Then watching the suburbs of Paris, Moret and Fontainebleau rush up and slide behind them, Max knew what it was. The old jealous bit; Harry thought he would have reason to be jealous of the novel. Goddamnit, Harry, Max thought in the silence, it's
not
me against you; it's you against them working out of your bag and me against them working out of my bag; us against the bad guys. Harry's unanswered question hung heavily in the car until he started to whistle tunelessly. Then Max hummed a tune and finally they came to Place d'Italie and Harry became involved with the heavy traffic. Max breathed a little easier, but he knew Harry would never forgive his unspoken refusal to let him read his manuscript.

By autumn Max was feeling like an old Parisian. The steady flow of Negroes from America, he noticed, was on the increase. During their first few weeks they savored Paris to the full, then a few of them drifted off to be seen occasionally selling the
Herald Tribune
in front of the American Express office or sitting glumly in the cafes in the Quartier, speaking their high school or college French which of necessity was becoming sharpened with the flavor of Paris. It was one thing to quit New York or Chicago or San Francisco because of discrimination, but the youngsters hadn't learned yet that Paris wasn't going to welcome them with open arms because they were discriminated against in the States: if you had no money, the world discriminated against you. Generally, the newcomers were young. Their hatred for the United States was loudly and volubly voiced. Still, it seemed to Max that what they had suffered was, after all, negligible. Perhaps America's blacks were getting soft.