The Man Who Cried I Am (5 page)

“I have?” Harry asked innocently. “I don't remember. Do you have an example?”

Sheldon pulled some cards from his pocket. “This is one of your quotes: ‘Senator Braden's Committee has driven Americans into the far corners of fear.' Another: ‘America ought to try communism, just once.'”

Harry said, “On the second one, I thought I said, if everything else fails, America ought to try communism of some kind because capitalism, hand in hand with the American dream, just doesn't work; there are too many people deprived of their rights to vote and to work. That's what I said.”

“But there were others,” Sheldon said, and he read them back with measured, self-confident cadence. The phrases sounded familiar to Max. Who at the cafe would turn Harry's words over to the U.S. Government?

“What do you want me to do?” Harry was asking.

“We'd appreciate it if you weren't so critical. Publicly. You're only hurting yourself. The alternative is trouble, pure and simple.” Sheldon smiled. The Senator's assistant reminded Max of every upper echelon vice-squad cop he'd ever seen. The face was regular, the hair combed just right, the shoes were shined and he wore a dark blue suit, of course.

“No,” Harry said. “I plead freedom of speech. I'll speak my mind wherever I am and whenever I choose to. We're in France now, not America.”

Sheldon stood up. “Your mouth, Ames, can be made to stay shut.”

Harry taunted, “L'il ol' white boy.”

“That's your whole problem, this race thing.”

“L'il ol' white boy.”

“Bolton Warren thought he was pretty tough, too, but we got him down to Washington. He took the stand but he didn't say too much. We adjourned, took him to another room, read him the material in his dossier, and he hasn't stopped talking to us yet.”

Max waited while Harry roved through the past with Warren. Warren had gone to Spain to be in the Brigades and had had heavy flirtations with the Party, but who the hell hadn't?

“Are you threatening me, Sheldon?”

“In the name of Senator Braden's Committee, I warn you that your passport may be revoked if you continue the way you are.”

“That's what is going to happen if I don't stop my coffeehouse chatterings?”

Sheldon smiled and widened his stance. “Look at it like this, Ames. My visit can be official or unofficial. I was passing through Paris anyway. It's up to you. But remember your former affiliations with the Party; remember your affairs with several white ladies of some reputation before you left America. Further, don't count on the French so much. They are becoming less and less enchanted with you. A word to the wise should be sufficient. The French, for all their slogans, are becoming modern. Liberty, yes; equality, yes, of a sort; fraternity—with their women—highly questionable.”

A cherubic smile spread slowly over Harry's face. “You'd reveal all my sordid affairs, would you?”

“Only if we had to and only to the right people.”

“Gee,” Harry said, and Max recognized the word as the prelude to the ultimate put-on. “I wonder if you'd do me a favor. You've really got me by the balls, Sheldon. You know Max Reddick, the
other
American Negro writer? Let's face it, Warren's over the hill, so that leaves Max the
other
Negro writer, right? Copacetic as we used to say. Anyway, look there in that closet will you, behind the curtain?” Sheldon did not move. “Max is behind that curtain, you bastard, and he's heard every word you said. In fact, he has taped them and taken them down in shorthand. Didn't know Max knew shorthand, did you? Well, he's one of them bright colored folks. Max!”

Hastily Max had set down the bottle of Scotch and sauntered through the curtain. “Hiya, Sheldon, what's new?”

Sheldon had left quickly and angrily, threatening to destroy them both if ever they stepped foot in the States again. They had laughed for fifteen minutes until Harry remembered to look at the Scotch. When he did, he cried, “Max, you greedy sonofabitch, I'm gonna catch hell! There's nothing left in the budget for Scotch for a whole month! You bastard, oh, you rotten black bastard! Did you see the look on that boy's face? Skin me, man,
skin
me!” And they had smacked palms ringingly.

It wasn't funny later. Later, Max and Harry reasoned that if Michael Sheldon was interested, someone else was too, the fink at the cafe. So, it had all started with a U.S. Government agency and worked its way down to Braden and his committee. And the Spanish Government managed to let Harry know that it wasn't at all happy about the series of articles he had written on the Franco regime. A number of West Africans had started to cut Harry dead because of what he said about them. And generally, the Communists of Europe distrusted him. After all, he had quit the American Communist Party. Harry wrote about all of them; he talked about them. He danced barefoot on a hot stove lid, but no one knew it then.

Max and Margrit were walking now along the Singel. His pace was slow and Margrit had slowed to match it. There were no flowers out that time of night. He was tiring and he had to get up early, but now they were going to see Roger. The pain was coming again in long, stomach-turning spasms.

“We'll take a cab back from Roger's,” Max threw in. He watched Margrit nod. “Isn't your boyfriend going to be a little upset with you tonight?”

“Yes,” she said, “he is, but he will understand.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, thinking to himself with humor, You bitch, Margrit.

3

AMSTERDAM

When Roger Wilkinson opened his door, to Max Reddick he was the picture of the writer as a failure. Max pushed Margrit forward into a dingy flat, and he shook hands with Roger who seemed both surprised and embarrassed by the unannounced visit.

But Roger broke into a smile and said, “Sit down, you folks, if you can find a chair. You lookin' pretty tired, Max. You been down to Paris? For the funeral? Yeah?” He was rustling through some bottles. “Ain't got much here. A little beer, some Genever.” Roger smiled through his reddish beard. “How'd you find me? You see I've moved.” He'd always left his places of residence a mystery. “I'm into my thing,” he would explain, and vanish, and in Europe, the black artists went along with your wish to be left alone, most of the time. Until you started to make it, then they came back to bug you back into failure. “You should have let me know you were coming,” Roger said.

“Ah, well,” Max said, accepting a beer. “What's new?”

Roger cleared his throat loudly and glanced around the room. “You know, man, the same old thing. Trying to make it, you know.”

Max nodded. Roger had been in Europe a long time. He had written three novels, which he had been unable to sell. Roger was wound up in himself, Max had concluded. Roger for Roger.

“Articles?” Max asked. Roger was one of those writers who, whenever race riots broke out back home, was summoned hastily by the local magazine or newspaper editors to explain what was going on. “
Le célèbre écrivain noir américain Roger Wilkinson explique pourquoi les noirs des Etats Unis
…” With a photo of Roger bearded and pensive,
artistic
, surveying the accompanying three-column picture of rioters.

“Well, they keep me in bread. But here in Holland, man, getting money out of Hans Brinker is like forcing your way into Fort Knox. They tight with the change, man. Tight.”

“Yeah-yeah,” Max said. He had known Roger back in the States. Then Roger had come to Europe. To be free. He'd returned to New York briefly then back to Europe for good. He knew all the European capitals, having lived in them at one time or another, until he settled in Amsterdam. He would have preferred Scandinavia; the women were the most handsome in Europe. But it was too cold.

“Listen,” Max said. “I'm not in town for long. Just came up to see Margrit. Have to get back home.”

“You're not going to stay a while, Max? What a drag, man. Really.”

“Yeah. Do you know Alfonse Edwards?”

Roger feigned drawing away from an unwholesome object. “
That
cat! Well, yes and well, no. I mean I'm not up tight with him; no one is. I see him around when he's in town. That's about all.”

“Do you know where he's staying?”

“I hear he's in a hotel. What's happening, Max?”

“I don't know. Margrit tells me he's writing.”

Roger drew a dirty fingernail through his beard. His hair was very thick, but no one would mistake him for an African; his complexion was too light. “I
guess
he writes. I've
heard
that he writes. He loads up a car with articles and drives around Europe selling them to papers and magazines. You know, crap all
pre
pared, and about half of it plagiarized. I mean, these people over here just don't know.”

“Does he make it, like that?”

“He must. Always wearing some boss shit and got some fine fox on his arm. He
must
be making it.”

“Yeah,” Max said.

“—and he eats very well,” Roger added.

“Is he a fink?”

“A fink. No, man, he's just got his hype going and it's working. If the government planted a fink, wouldn't they make him to be one of the boys, you know, not sharp, an artist, starving, trying to get all the pussy he can. Now, Edwards, he's just a little bit away from everybody. Uncle Sam don't work that way. In the middle, right in the middle.”

Margrit was watching Max. What is the matter with him, she wondered. The hand with which he was holding the beer glass trembled suddenly, and Max casually lowered it to the table. But Margrit had seen it. She wished she could be glad he was ill, but she could not; she had got over the past and had even been pleased to see him again. She never thought she would be. She was still attracted to him; the mystery that seemed to be him when they first met to a substantial extent was still there. Perhaps in a way the reason for that
was
because of that big, ponderously walking Negro who led a column of liberating black Americans through the streets of Groningen. Groningen was a city you left just as soon as you realized that the people in it were more German than Dutch. He had walked, Margrit remembered, with a wide step, and there was a grin on his face and chocolate bars were sticking out from his pockets. She had broken loose from her parents and, with a group of other small children who waved the tiny American flags their parents had kept hidden, had raced into the street. The big black man picked her up and laughed, gave her candy and put her down again. Max had said, once when she talked about that day, “Well, the world starts whirling for different people for different reasons and at different times. I'll thank that guy if I ever see him.”

“More beer?” Roger asked. “Man, I'm really sorry I didn't know you were coming. We coulda turned one on.”

“Your first book, we'll turn one one. You'll be coming home then, I guess?”

“Yeah, I guess it would be time enough then.”

Max thought back to when he had ever thought to quit writing. All the time. Roger never thought about it and should have quit a long time ago. After a while, Max thought, all the talk of writing, all the advice, is nothing if you haven't got it yourself. With Harry, they seldom talked about writing or even other writers. That was mostly because they were always talking about women or The Problem at home. It was also because Harry was secretive with his French and British and American writer friends if they were the good ones. Max never knew just who they were; they would show up at a party, and by the way Harry talked with them Max would know that they had been friends for a long time. Harry didn't really like to share things. Like Roger, still looking very young, but starting to age in a strange, distant sort of way, didn't like to share himself either. And chances were, Max mused, that Roger did have a bottle tucked back somewhere, for a very special piece of ass that he had to impress. He didn't bring the bottle out because he had to have his revenge for the invasion of his privacy. In that privacy, Max knew, he was picking dried snot out of his nose, rubbing it into his pants and thinking hard thoughts on a world that refused to read his works. Mostly, he was feeling sorry for himself, whether as a Negro or a writer, Max didn't know. As a Negro, he hadn't suffered, hadn't Armied in the South, hadn't been hungry, and he had never gone south of Manhattan. Roger's Negro anger was ersatz; ersatz, but useful. If he hadn't been Negro, he would have had no reason on earth to raise his voice, or to want to write.

“Listen,” Roger was saying. “Shall we look for Edwards' hotel?”

Max spun the glass between his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“But I thought you were leaving, like,
zap!
”

“I have to take care of a few things first. Tomorrow morning I've got something to do and then we'll see.”

“Where you staying?” Roger asked, sliding his eyes toward Margrit.

“The American,” Max said, rising, catching pain midway up, but shuffling in his step so they wouldn't see.

“That's boss,” Roger said. His smile was twisted. “One of these days, baby, one of these days.”

“Got to stay with it,” Max mumbled.

“See you tomorrow? We can have a taste on the Plein. I'll stop by the hotel, okay?”

“Well, yeah, okay, maybe late in the afternoon.” Max started through the door after Margrit, then paused. “None of my business. But I talk to your father pretty often. Scribble a note so I can take it back with me. Something?”

Roger's face became blank, then stiff. He shook his head. Max knew that talk of Roger's father, for some reason, was off limits. “No, man, nothing.”

“Okay, Roger,” Max said. He reached into his wallet. This cat was just too much. Max thought of all the time he'd wasted with Roger. He found the check. “Catch, baby, he sent you a few bills. With love.” Max swung his arm in a soft arc and the check tumbled up out of his hand, twisted once or twice and started its green and white descent to the floor. “He's very sick,” Max said, watching the check and Roger's face at the same time. “He doesn't think you're a writer at all. He thinks you're pretending; he thinks you're afraid to go home and take your lumps with the rest of the spades.” Roger's hand was snapping at the check now. “Don't call me at the hotel, Roger, I'll call
you.
”