The Troubled Air (18 page)

“That’s mighty downtown,” Atlas drawled. “That there’s a long ride on the underground for jes a little spot of conversation.”

“Stanley,” Archer said loudly, “will you please spare me the carry-me-back-to-old-Virginny dialect? I’ve got to see you. For your own good. It’s important. Now, where’ll you meet me?”

“Well,” Atlas was still drawling, with the same undertone of malice and amusement, “I got a puffictly nice sittin’ room, right up heah in lovely old Harlem. I’ll get the hens off the settee and the pig out from under the television and we’ll have things just as shiny as a three-hundred-dollar coffin by the time you get heah.”

“What’s the address?” Archer asked curtly.

Atlas chuckled, victorious. Then he gave Archer the address, in a clear, well-modulated voice that sounded as though its owner had been graduated from Harvard.

“S
O,” ATLAS WAS SAYING, “THEY HAVE ME TABBED AS A REAL RED TYPE
of feller and they want to retire me from competition, is that it?”

“Just about,” Archer said. He had wasted no time in telling Atlas the reason for his visit. Atlas had sat relaxed in a big leather chair, moving a moccasined foot gently back and forth from time to time, listening without a word. Occasionally Archer thought he caught the hint of a smile on the comedian’s face, but his attitude had been grave and attentive. The living room was large and neatly furnished in imitation early American pieces. There was a small upright piano with a few photographs of Negro entertainers and athletes on it, inscribed to Atlas. The apartment overlooked a small park and Archer could see scraps of dirty snow still clinging in spots on the brownish earth. Atlas was dressed in gray flannel trousers and a dark-blue wool shirt, open at the collar. He was wearing bright-yellow wool socks and they made little flashes of color when he moved his legs.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Atlas asked, looking curiously, and with a hint of secret amusement at Archer. “Am I supposed to get up and say I’m just a dirty old colored man and I confess everything and I’ll be a good nigger from now on if you don’t whup me and I promise to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” every night before going to bed?”

“You do whatever you want to do,” Archer said.

“Did you take that long ride in the subway just to tell me that, Clem?” Atlas asked. He spoke mildly and he seemed perfectly at ease. The scar marks looked neat and leathery on his cheeks in the cold north light.

“I came up to see if I could help,” Archer said. “To see if there was anything you wanted to tell me that might clear this up. We have almost two weeks to work in before …”

“Two weeks,” Atlas nodded reasonably. “How long have I been working on the program, Clem?”

“You know as well as I do. Three years.”

“Going onto four. And now I get almost two weeks to clear this up, like you say. That’s what I call real generous of you, Clem.”

“Listen, Stanley,” Archer said, feeling as he always did with Atlas, at a disadvantage, “I’m not doing this. If it were up to me, this wouldn’t have come up at all.”

“You mean you wouldn’t mind if us Reds took over the Government and razorcut ol’ Mr. Hutt and raped all the white girls?” Atlas asked in mock astonishment. “That comes as a real surprise to me, Clem. It surely does.”

What a satisfaction it would be, Archer thought grimly, to punch that cool, grinning man right in the nose. “Look, Stanley,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady, “I’m involved in this as much as you.”

“They got you marked down in their books, too?” Atlas grinned more widely. “Why, those boys don’t miss sparrow drops, do they?”

“No,” Archer said, beginning to feel that it was hopeless, “they haven’t got me marked down. Nobody’s accusing me of anything.”

“Jest you wait,” Atlas said comfortingly, “you’ll be invited to the party one of these days just like everybody else.”

“I’m trying to save the program,” Archer said earnestly, trying to break through the shield of Atlas’ mockery. “I’m trying to save as many people as I can. I’m trying to figure out what kind of position I have to take.”

“I get it,” said Atlas. “You didn’t take that subway ride to help me. You came up here to get me to help you.”

“All right,” said Archer wearily. “Put it that way.”

“Now,” Atlas smacked his lips judiciously and looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling, “let’s us see what we-all can do to help the white folks. Would it be more convenient for your taste if I call up Mr. Hutt right now and tell him I am a red, raving Communist and I get my instructions every morning direct from the Kremlin? Or would it make it more homey if I just said I’m just a poor dumb colored boy that just barely learned to read and write, spellin’ out the Emancipation Proclamation we used to have hangin’ in the privy out in the yard back home, and I been duped and led into evil ways unbeknownst to myself by a lot of red foreign Jews from downtown? Or maybe it would be more suitable if I got up on my hind legs and yelled and hollered and rolled my eyes and said, ‘May Jesus strike me dead this minute if I’m tellin’ a lie! I’m as innocent as a newborn lamb and I hate the Communists like snake poison because they’re leadin’ us poor black children into the ways of sin and temptation.’ You just tell me,” Atlas said, smiling, “and I’ll say whatever you like, because my aim is to please.”

“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough,” Archer said, hating the man. “You’re on the verge of being fired from every program you’ve ever played on. You won’t get another job. You’ll be finished. You won’t earn a cent. Now, for God’s sake, stop joking!”

“Money ain’t my primary interest in life,” Atlas said lazily, “so I can afford to joke. I been working a long time and I don’t go in for fast motor cars or fast ladies and there’s a standing rule around this house that my wife don’t buy ermine more than once a year. So I got a cushion. A nice, fat cushion. Just for occasions like this. I own two buildings on Lenox Avenue and I’m silent partner in a very nice bar and I got some bonds that’d look sugar-sweet in anybody’s bank vault. So I got what you might call a steady income, Clem, and I don’t have to take guff at all. Nobody’s guff. No guff from the sponsor, no guff from any white magazine writers, no guff, excusin’ the expression, from you. If people get nasty, maybe I’ll just pack up with the old lady and take off to France. Spend those francs. I was there during the war with the USO and I was attracted. I even got a running start on the language.
Cherie,”
he said, grinning
“je cherche du cognac, s’il vous plait.
Let them yell all they want about me back here, I’ll be reading the Frog newspapers.”

“If you run away,” Archer said, “without defending yourself people’re bound to believe the worst about you, Stanley. Eventually you’ll want to come back and work. An actor lives on his reputation, and he’s more vulnerable than other people; he’s got to be more careful …”

“Is that what you believe?” Atlas peered bleakly out of his chair.

“I don’t want to believe it,” Archer said wearily. “I’m forced to.”

“I get the same story from some of my friends,” Atlas said quietly. “Only not about being an actor. They’re colored and they say a colored man has to be more careful than anybody else. Maybe you’re thinking a little of the same thing yourself, Clem?”

“No,” Archer said, wondering if he was telling the truth. “I’m not.”

“That’s good. I don’t like people who think colored folks ought to make sure to act like angels at all times, just because we’re what you might call unpopular in certain quarters. First of all, it ain’t possible. It ain’t possible for actors and it ain’t possible for blacks. And if it was possible that’d be the worst thing of all, because then people’d have a real grievance against the race, if they went around behaving better than everybody else. They’d be so holy they’d be swinging from every lamppost. And then, as a voting citizen, I’d be against it because it’s un-American.” He grinned coldly, confident and unmoved, taking his time, lazily enjoying playing with Archer. “In the United States of America, the man says here, everybody’s born free and equal. Don’t say nothing about black men or actors on the radio or anybody. It just says everybody. That means we all got the equal right to be mean or dirty or obstreperous with everybody else. We got the same license to get into trouble as anyone else. I don’t notice no quota system in the jails. Folks who run the jails, they’re firm believers in the Constitution, they say, Sinner, you broke the law, we got a spot for you, we don’t care who you are.”

“Stanley,” Archer said impatiently, “we could talk like this all day and never get anywhere.”

“I was just lettin’ my mind ramble around among the possibilities,” Atlas drawled. “I feel playful today. Now, I suppose what you really want to know is—am I or ain’t I.”

“If you want to tell me,” Archer said.

“First, let’s us look at the reasons why a colored man might decide it’d be a smart idea to be a Communist,” Atlas said, crossing his legs comfortably with a flicker of his yellow socks. “Give us a understanding of the subject,” he said gravely, “in case we get asked about it some time.”

I’ll never get anything out of him, Archer thought; he’s got color on the brain; he never thinks about anything else.

“Right off,” Atlas said, “the Reds come to you and they say, You’re as good as anyone else, we don’t notice what shade you are. Comes the Revolution, you’ll be just like everybody else. They’re happy, you’re happy. They’re miserable, you’re miserable.”

“That’s very likely the way it would work out,” Archer said. “You’d be permitted to share in the general misery.”

Atlas nodded vigorously, as though Archer had just said something enormously clever.

“Right. I don’t doubt for a minute but that you’re right, Mr. Archer,” he said. “And that’s mighty attractive doctrine. We’re all in trouble, but it’s the same trouble. That’s real promising, just to begin with. So then, they set out and prove they ain’t just talkin’ to stir the wind. They make a big fuss to get colored folks to live in white neighborhoods, they make up committees to see the mayor, they send down nice white girls to explain it to us at cocktail parties, they invite us in to join what they call cells and we can all go out and get our heads knocked in together by cops on picket lines. They send a candidate to the city council and he turns out to be a colored Boy, and he’s on the National Committee besides. They’re not kiddin’ at all there, are they?”

“No,” Archer said. “They’re not.”

“Very attractive,” Atlas said. “You got to admit that.”

“There’re a lot of other organizations,” Archer said, “that have Negro members and are trying for the same thing.”

“Uhuh.” Atlas nodded again. “But they’re all just a little polite. They sign things, they make nice speeches—but, when it gets tough, they don’t really kick up any trouble. And one thing you got to hand the Reds, Clem …” Atlas chuckled. “They sure do kick up trouble.”

“I hand it to them,” Archer said grimly. “They know how to do that.”

“For example,” Atlas said, “me. I ain’t doing bad. At least,” he smiled softly, “till today I wasn’t doing bad. The dough was coming in; people laughed at my jokes as though they was paid by the company; I got a nice enough house.” He looked around at his possessions consideringly. “In the summertime you can look out and see a tree.” He indicated the window. “Free enterprise. I got more dough than you and Vic Herres, say, put together …”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Archer said.

Atlas shook his head warningly. “You white boys just too rash with yo’ dollar bills,” he said. “Still, Herres, he lives on Park Avenue; he can walk to the studio if he wants. You live down in the Village, a real agreeable neighborhood. Can you imagine what would happen if I went to the renting man at Vic Herres’ house and I said, I work around here, this is real convenient, give me a nice apartment with southern exposure, never mind the rent because I’m loaded.” Atlas looked at Archer mockingly. “Can you imagine the reception? And on your block, Clem,” Atlas inquired innocently, “you got a lot of colored families as neighbors?”

“There’s no answer to that, Stanley,” Archer said, “and I’m not going to pretend there is.”

“The Reds,” Atlas said slyly, provoking Archer, “they say they got an answer.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you’re a Communist, then?”

“I ain’t trying to tell you anything, Clem,” Atlas said. “I’m just rustling around among my souvenirs. Anyway, it might be a little hard for me to be a Communist. I’m a capitalist, like I told you. Two tenement buildings and a half interest in a bar. And gilt-edged securities piled up like snow drifts in the vault. You look at my income-tax return some day, Clem, and you’ll see how hard it’d be for me to be a Communist. Not impossible, of course,” Atlas said tantalizingly. “But hard. And many ways, I’m not so fond of everything they do. They ain’t 99 and 44/100ths percent pure themselves. They’re out for something of their own and they latch onto us because we got our troubles and they can score some runs off of that particular pitching. They pretend to be a lot more interested in us colored folk than they really are. We are what you might call incidental income on their original investment. Sometimes we get to looking real hard at each other and wondering whether we’re using them or they’re using us. It ain’t as easy to tell as a person might think, looking at it from the outside.”

“Stanley,” Archer said, “there’s more to it than the Negro problem and you know it. They stand for a lot of things and do a lot of things that have no connection with Harlem.”

“Foreign policy?” Atlas shrugged carelessly. “Labor unions? I’m too busy to bother. My foreign policy is maybe I’ll move to France and take up blowing a trumpet again, like in the old days. And maybe I’ll spend a couple of nights at home and have a kid or two. I ain’t in the mood for no more colored kids in this country. It don’t fit in with my principles.”

“Listen, Stanley,” Archer said desperately, feeling that he was adrift, “practically, what do you intend to do? Do you want to fight? Do you want to defend yourself?”

“How do you do that?” For a moment Atlas seemed absolutely serious.