The Man Who Cried I Am (34 page)

Max cleared his throat and asked Roger, “When are you going home?” They always needed social workers in the States. Things were getting rough for ditch diggers, but they were clamoring for social workers. Progress.

“Sometime in the summer,” Roger said. “But I tell you, man, it's mighty appealing over here if your bread doesn't run out.”

“Maybe I'll go back one of these days,” Harry said absently. “For a visit.”

“With your luck,” one of the group said, “you'll probably wind up back in Africa and Dawes will wind up the greatest Negro writer ever.”

Harry nodded wryly. “Strange, Africa. Really. You're glad to get away from it, yet something keeps pulling you back to it.”

“Oh, man,” someone said.

Harry smiled. “Go. Just once and you'll see what I mean. It's like the very touch of the sun, in some insidious way, planted a seed deep inside you. You may hate Africa with all your heart, the way it is now, and the way the white folks like it; you may rant and rave about how bad it is, but you seldom turn down a chance to go there.” Harry laughed somewhat self-consciously. “It's in your skin, you see.” Everyone at the table laughed again, heartily.

Max couldn't concentrate; his thoughts kept flying off. He put Harry's letter on the bed and lit a cigarette. He glanced at the window. About one o'clock. He wondered what Michelle was doing downstairs. It seemed quiet. They shouldn't have had those drinks. In the old days, yes. Lunches in New York, seeming to fly down Madison Avenue after three martinis and two stingers. The old days when no one was ill, and liquor and cigarettes put a fine edge on any part of the day, even in the morning, if you found yourself with nothing to do. He remembered drinking warm beer at eight in the morning in Kano in northern Nigeria, when the temperature was already over 100°. Max frowned. He was drifting again. He brought Harry's letter back before him. Was it true? Had he never heard of Alliance Blanc? The letter continued:

The Alliance first joined together not in the Hague, not in Geneva, not in London, Versailles or Washington, but in Munich, a city top-heavy with monuments and warped history. Present were representatives from France, Great Britain, Belgium, Portugal, Australia, Spain, Brazil, South Africa. The United States of America was also present. There were white observers from most of the African countries that appeared to be on their way to independence. The representation at first, with a few exceptions, was quasi-official. But you know very well that a quasi-official body can be just as effective as an official one; in fact, it is often better to use the former.

I don't have to tell you that the meetings, then and subsequently, were held in absolute secrecy. They were moved from place to place—Spain, Portugal, France, Brazil and in the United States, up around Saranac Lake—Dreiser's setting for
An American Tragedy
, that neck of the woods, remember? America, with the largest black population outside Africa, had the most need of mandatory secrecy. Things were getting damned tense following the Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools in 1954.

20

PARIS—NEW YORK

1954 May 17! How they celebrated that day! They gathered at the cafe the morning of the 18th more briskly than usual, glancing searchingly at each other, the Paris, London and New York papers clutched nervously in their hands.

“Don't mean a thing.”

“Looks like some very powerful shit to me, man. That ‘with all deliberate speed' means just that.”

“But you know Charlie and Miss Ann ain't going to sit still for that—their kids in the same classroom with black kids.”

“Charlie ain't got no choice. The
Court
says
YEAH
!”

“No, man; it's got to be a fake-out.”

“Wonder how they're taking the news back home. Max, write to us when you get back, hear? Goddamn these papers; I want to know what our people are saying about it.”

“Those peckerwoods—there'll be another Civil War.”

“Or a stateside Mau-Mau uprising.”

“All right, let it come then.”

“Yeah, with you three thousand miles away.”

Laughter.

“Suppose it turned out to
really
be something?”

“And we didn't celebrate. Let's celebrate, because it might
start
a whole new bag back there. A whole new day.”

“That makes sense. Sure, let's order a little taste.”

“If it's the real thing, I might have to pack up and go home.”

“Time enough for that. Time enough.”

At the end of the celebration, which lasted two days, in and out of bars and cafes and restaurants, Harry had driven Max back to Le Havre. Max's leave was up; his book was finished. “When are you coming back, Max?”

Max countered with, “When are you coming home, Harry?”

“Never mind. Just put the blocks to them, man.”

“You too, Harry.”

Passengers pushed and shoved against them. “I probably won't be coming home at all. This is home now, for better or worse.”

“Not ever? Not even now?”

“A man could raise hell there now, yes,” Harry said. Then proudly, “But you'll all have to look back to me.”

“Dawes too?” Max asked.

“Him most of all.”

“Give Charlotte my blessing, the kid too. And Michelle.”

“Yes, of course. You'll come back, won't you?”

“Maybe. How can you tell?” Max walked Harry to the gangplank; the ship's signal had blown.

“Back to work,” Harry said with a sigh. “Keep your head low and your chin covered.”

New York remained unchanged, a testimony to its strength against the minds of millions of people who leave it every year and expect that with their departure, something about it will change. When the ship had come into the harbor, he thought of the people he wanted to call right away. But once unpacked and having checked to see that his subtenant hadn't ruined the place, Max decided there was no one he wished to call that day, and he dug out the liquor he had hidden and fixed himself a drink.

He expected and received no trouble from Michael Sheldon. Senator Braden's Un-American Affairs Committee had been washed away by the eloquence of a lawyer from the Midwest. His third day back, Max called Shea. He had to talk about the
Pace
job before reporting to the
Century
. Shea invited him to dinner at his apartment that night. The apartment was in the upper floors of a new building on lower Fifth Avenue, and Max arrived in a belligerent mood. He had had a shoving match with the doorman who had blocked his passage and asked in a nasty tone who Max wanted to see; finally backed off and allowed him to get on the elevator. As soon as he'd shaken hands with Shea, he started to complain. Shea listened, his face flushing. He called downstairs and ordered the doorman to come up. And apologize. “I don't give a damn what the house rules are,” Shea said loudly. “When you see Mr. Reddick, you let him in without a word. You tell the other doormen too. If I have any more trouble like this, I'll have your head.” The doorman flushed. He didn't know if this was one of the elaborate games the liberal tenants sometimes played or not. If it was, Mr. Shea played rough. If it wasn't, what the hell was he going to do if some nigger waltzed through the door and cleaned out the whole place? This one looks like every other one. The doorman apologized; he'd take the matter to the agent.

“Welcome back to New York,” Shea said dryly. “You can see that things haven't changed that much.”

“No,” Max said. He sighed with relief. He had been so close to corking that sonofabitch right in the mouth, so close. Max looked around. Shea had a view of the Avenue down to the Washington Arch. He's done well, Max thought, very well. And here I thought
I
was raising hell in a couple of shabby rooms in Paris. Hell, I
was
doing better. Max had forgotten about the opulence one can find inside even an ordinary building in New York. If I had been white, he thought … Shea fixed him a drink. “Look, Max, we can talk about Paris and Harry after you tell me your decision about
Pace
. We're most anxious to know. We expect things to start popping around here with the Supreme Court's ruling on desegregation. I'll be candid with you: We want Negroes on the
Pace
staff. Sooner more than later, everyone's going to look around and find that they aren't clean; they won't be able to point to the South. We want to start with someone who knows the South, who knows something about the Negro mood, generally. I'm telling you this. At the office someone else would tell you something a little different, but it would amount to the same thing. Also in the future is a desk in Africa—maybe. This Mau-Mau business has us half expecting the whole continent to go. You'd get first crack at this if it came about. Now, you'd work out of New York, in National Affairs, but when you're on assignment, you'd work with bureau people in that area. You'll have to learn our systems, but that's a small problem. What do you say, Max? You can name your price.”

Max named it. It came spinning off the top of his head, nudged by the doorman and Shea's current luxury; it had no basis in reality. Max looked boldly at Shea. His hair was the same gray; yet he seemed to be growing younger instead of older. The white boys get all the breaks, Max thought, knowing it was a thought to be laughed at. Max wondered how it was with women for Shea these days. He hoped he would have the good taste not to go into it, even if he got high. Shea nodded. “That's in the ball park,” he said.

Max swallowed his drink. In the ball park? In the
white folks'
ball park! His father had had to work over five years to make what he was going to make in one. What was this, a welcome to the white folks' ball park? Max wondered suspiciously, What if I had asked for more. Would I still be in the ball park?

Shea went to the telephone and when he came back he said to Max, “Congratulations. You're on the
Pace
staff now. I only wish I could have done the same thing a few years ago when I was on the paper. Now, I guess, you'll have to talk with Berg over at the
Century.
”

“Christ knows we can't pay that kind of money,” Berg said. “Well, I knew it; it was inevitable. They all sit back and wait and then they buy out the poor bastard who made it possible. What am I to do, stand in your way? How? It's a free country, more or less, and maybe now we start on the more part. Tell you what, though. If you get tired of that East Side crowd, come back. I'll give you a little raise, but it won't be
Pace
money. Is that a deal?”

They shook on it.

(Lillian, look. Look at it, Lillian, the money. Look! Goddamn it!)

Max felt like an object rather than a new employee when he reported to Shea his first day. Max shook hands with at least fifty people, but remembered none of their names, only their titles: “‘Back of the Book' editor”; “books editor, you'll want to remember him.”

Sure, Max had thought.

“National Affairs editor, Mannie Devoe. You'll be working under him.” “Photo editor; he'll assign photographers to you when you need them.” “News editor.”

Six floors, Max thought, as he and Shea wound through offices and back to elevators and through offices again. Six floors and one black face. That wasn't true. Here and there, emerging suddenly from around doors and desks, he'd seen Negro women. They were researchers or research assistants. Max had seen three, but he had seen no black faces at the news desks. Oscar Dempsey, the editor, who wore colored shirts with bold stripes and white collars and neatly knotted ties, assured Max, however, that “with your reputation, you can count on a by-line occasionally. We know that it's one thing to have a college kid come in who isn't used to having his name stamped on what he's written, and another thing to have a novelist and newspaperman who's used to having what's his labeled. We can run boxes, can't we, Kermit, with say, three hundred lines and Max's name?”

“Sure, no problem.”

“Yes, there is,” Dempsey said. “He's got to have news.” He laughed and his huge yellow teeth bucked out.

“That goes without saying, Osk.”

Dempsey offered Max a cigarette. “Seriously though, I'm glad you joined us. This is more than an experiment, you know. It's what
Pace
believes. We want qualified people of any kind here; the pace of the world demands it.”

Dempsey did not like air-conditioning. His window was open and the street noises raced up the walls of the buildings and rasped into the office. Shea sat idly, toying with a cigarette. For Shea, Max thought, the fat was in the fire. The great democratic experiment had begun. If it flopped,
Pace
would turn the hose on him. Max only half heard Dempsey tell his secretary to reserve a table for three at a French restaurant. Dempsey resumed talking about
Pace
and its aims. I'm not a child, Max thought; I don't need the pep talk. A new white employee, Max guessed, would only see Dempsey from a distance or at a urinal in the men's room. Oh, well, it's a part of the program, when you invest that kind of money in a new Negro employee, a pioneer, a “first Negro first.” And the Negro got his money in part because he listened to the boss. Big deal.
Pace
hadn't even given him an application form to fill out in 1946. Now Dempsey expected him to be ten times better, cleaner and more honest than those he had been afraid to upset by hiring him eight years ago. Just because he was black. And they were sweating, Dempsey, Shea and Devoe. Paying good money to
sweat
. What dumb, poor, misguided, do-gooding bastards. Damned if I'd pay good money and sweat too, Max thought. You pay good money, ordinarily, so you wouldn't have to sweat. I'd sure as hell know what I was getting. And in spite of all that they must know about me, all of it, now they look at my skin and don't know what they're getting. White folks. Jee-
sus
!