Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (66 page)

I didn’t need to play the tapes anymore to hear the tinniness, I could see it in every face at every club at every stop along our swing from New York to Los Angeles. I unpacked some of my books on Judaism, books I hadn’t looked at in almost a year. “Humility depends upon both thought and action. A man must be humble at heart before he can adopt the ways of the meek. Whoever wishes to conduct himself humbly without being humble at heart is only an evil pretender and in the company of those hypocrites who are the bane of mankind.” It was like a finger wagging at me, telling me what I knew was wrong, but not how to fix it.

Rabbi Nussbaum asked, “Why, Sammy?” and as I heard his voice I was aware that it was the first time he’d spoken for at least an hour.

“There’re a hundred reasons.”

“Give me just a few.”

“I want to make a change in my life, in my thinking—a complete overhaul.”

“And you sincerely believe that conversion would be the thing to do it for you?”

“Rabbi, it’s
got
to!” I was embarrassed by the loudness of my voice—the desperation it revealed. “Rabbi, I’m not going to bore you to death with my problems but I’ve got to have something to grab ahold of, something solid that I can depend on.” I stood up and leaned across his desk. “I know what I am and I don’t like what I am; I know what’s in the books and I
like
what’s in the books. I want to change but I can’t do it alone. I’ve been trying to be a Jew in my heart but that’s not enough. I can’t stay on the outside looking in. I’ve had that all my life, Rabbi, and I just can’t go that route anymore. I’ve got to get on the inside where I can feel it and participate in it. I know there’s more good in people and in life than I can see and I’ve got to find a way to see it, to make contact again. I’ve read and I’ve studied and I’ve called myself a Jew. Everything you said. I’ve tried to feel like a Jew, I really have, but I know it can’t work until I know I really
am
a Jew. Please. Don’t turn me away.”

I sat down and leaned my head against the back of the chair,
staring at the ceiling. There was a long silence, then I heard the desk drawer open and close. He wrote something on a sheet of paper and slid it across to me. It said: “Sammy Davis, Jr. is a Jew.” He’d signed it. He wasn’t smiling or waiting for me to laugh, as if it were a gag, yet obviously it wasn’t the real thing. I read it again, stalling, trying to understand. “I don’t get it, Rabbi.”

“Do you feel any better? Different? Does this solve any of your problems?” He crumpled the paper and dropped it into a wastebasket. “I hope you’ll forgive the dramatics, Sammy. I was only trying to illustrate that I cannot make you a different person merely by signing a piece of paper.”

“Then it’s a turn-down, right?”

For an instant his eyes showed pain. “Sammy, try to understand that you’re as much as asking for a diploma instead of the education it represents. If I let you delude yourself into believing that you have found what you need then you’ll stop looking and it will never be yours to serve you as we both believe it can. You’re grasping wildly for something to keep you afloat and I want urgently to give it to you. I’ll clear my calendar to suit your needs, I’ll give you all the time you need, I’ll do anything to help you, but I will
not
give you a meaningless piece of paper and let you walk out of here believing it to be your lifeline. I will not encourage you to hold onto something which has no substance and cannot possibly support you.”

“Well, that’s all fine and I appreciate what you mean but it’s not like I just read a pamphlet on Judaism and I came over and said, ‘Hey, I wanta be one of these.’ This has been going on for years with me. I’ve read the books by the dozens, I believe in the ideas—I can recite them to you.”

He stood up and looked out the window for a moment, then turned to me. “The first time we met I told you not to expect to find Judaism in books, I warned you they would give you the philosophies and the theology but that it was up to you to translate them into religion. Do you remember?”

“I think so. I’m not sure.”

“Well, I’m sorry to say that it hasn’t happened. Further, you’re looking to Judaism as a quick cure for your problems. You’re coming to me for a bandage to cover a sore, a crutch to lean on, a pill to remove a headache. But Judaism is not a symptomatic cure. It cannot be taken internally like a tranquilizer. On the contrary, it must start from within and work its way out. Judaism is a philosophy,
an approach to God and to life, a way of thinking, a state of mind. As a scholar of that philosophy I can help you to understand our principles, I can lead you to them, but only you can adopt them as your own. A rabbi is only a teacher. I don’t speak to God any more than any man can speak to Him. I can’t put religion into you. All I can do is help you to find it and then sign a paper attesting to the fact that in my opinion you have found this particular approach to life. But I cannot make you a Jew. Only
you
can do that. And you have not yet done it.”

“But I think I have.”

“Sammy, that is your desperation speaking, not your intellect. You didn’t walk in here and say, ‘Rabbi, I’m a Jew because I think and feel as one.’ You didn’t ask me to certify something which has already taken place within you, you’ve asked me to make it happen.”

I avoided his eyes, knowing he was right, that I’d kidded myself it could work and taken a wild stab, like everything I’d been trying. It was embarrassing and I tried to laugh it off but the sound I made wasn’t pleasant. I didn’t feel very pleasant. “Well, I guess that’s it folks. It’s turn-in-the-books time.”

His voice softened. “Sammy, it’s entirely your choice, but you have such a feeling, such an understanding for Judaism that it would be a pity to have come this far, and then abandon it.”

“Rabbi, I don’t have much time left.” I hated the melodramatic sound of that. “What I mean is I leave for Vegas in a few days. You don’t suppose we could swing it by then?”

He sat down behind his desk. “Isn’t it time for you to stop fooling yourself?” I looked away. “Sammy, think back over our conversations. You’ve told me about friends you have but have not, about happiness you should have but have not. We’ve talked for hours and you’ve itemized all the points of your life, ticking them off one by one. And what do they add up to? A twenty-four-hour-a-day vacuum with the single exception of your career. Hasn’t it yet occurred to you why your life is like this? Isn’t it likely that your career is the only thing to which you have given of yourself, that your audiences are the only people you have ever placed before yourself? By your own admission you’ve bought most of your friends and you’ve never had a relationship with a woman that was based on anything but carnal desire. You’ve built a gaudy house of cards and now you look around in surprise at seeing it topple. You
see chaos but I can be more objective. I see justice. You’ve worked hard at your profession, you’ve been true to it and you became a star. But you gave no thought or consideration to anything else, so you have nothing else. Should I let you approach Judaism in that same way? Would I be doing you a favor if I were to help you create another pitifully vacuous experience? And this one would be the worst of all. Where would you turn when your last resort has failed?”

“I’ve got a better question. Where do I turn now?”

“To yourself.”

I stood up. “I’ve been there. There’s nobody home.”

“Try again. You’re the only person capable of shaping your life. Don’t just read the books. Practice them. Don’t just come to services and say prayers which are pointless unless they reflect a life which emulates the ways of God. I shouldn’t have to tell you these things. You know them. If you believe in our philosophy then follow it, give it a fair opportunity to serve you.”

“Rabbi, there’s nothing I’d like better. I’ve been trying for years but it just doesn’t seem to take. I guess I must be in pretty bad shape.”

He stood up and walked across the room with me. “There have been worse. There have been men who didn’t know they were in bad shape. There have been men who didn’t have the power to alter their thinking.” At the door he said, “Neither I nor Judaism would suffer if you tried it and it failed. Only
you
would lose.”

“I was going to ask you when you think I’ll be ready but I guess that’s a ridiculous question. It sounds like I’m trying to cook a chicken.”

He smiled. “You’ll know before I do. You’ll become a Jew long before I put a piece of paper in your hand. And although I look forward to that day, you will not be the slightest bit better a Jew than you were the day before. As a matter of fact when you know you’re ready you won’t even rush in here to get the certificate. You won’t need it then because you’ll have what it represents.”

The car seemed to be moving up Sunset on its own. What was I supposed to do until then? I’d stopped for a light and I found myself staring at greying walls and the unlighted front of a building on which a cheaply painted sign advertised:
Available for Bingo and Banquets
and as the maze of thought cleared I realized I was looking at Ciro’s. I tore my gaze away, not wanting to see the club dead
but it was too late and I saw the phantoms of a great couple of years: people who had once stood in line along that block, the image of myself on that stage, a figure with hope, strong and alive with the vigor of success, energized and propelled by the love of being loved. The light was still red but I pressed my foot on the gas and as the car roared away the image of what I used to be was joined by a Halloween-like figure jerking convulsively up, down, sideways, racing furtively in a circle which kept growing smaller and smaller….

My father was shouting and staggering around the living room, loaded again. Peewee was on the couch, crying. Another argument, another fight, the same atmosphere I’d felt a hundred times. He turned from Peewee and started toward Mama, his hand raised.

“If you touch her I’ll kill you.” He looked up, shocked by the roar of my voice. I was on top of him before he could open his mouth and as big as he is he might have been a piece of paper I was shoving toward the front door of the house, “Get out of here, get out of here.” He looked at me and ran out the door. I followed him to the street still screaming as he went down the road. “If you come back I’ll break your arms … don’t ever raise your hand to Mama as long as you live!”

I went back into the house. Mama was crying, Peewee was crying, Sandy and Suzette were crying. It was horrible and ugly. How could he pick on Mama? On Mama of all people. I picked up a table that had been knocked over, slammed the door to my bedroom, and sat on the bed, shaking. If it wasn’t my father, it was Peewee and Mama fighting over who’d use the kitchen. I’d built Mama a separate kitchen but it didn’t help. There was always something. I lit a cigarette and just sat there smoking, trying to calm down. After a few minutes I threw the cigarette into the fireplace. Peewee was alone in the living room. I patted her on the arm. “I’ll go get him.” The road was dark except for the small street light. I started running, afraid he might walk into a car coming around a curve.

He was sitting on the curbstone at the bottom of the hill, crying, “I didn’t mean it … I didn’t mean it …”

“Dad, come on. Let’s you and me go for a walk, huh?”

The air was cool and clean smelling and I could hear him breathing deep, trying to collect himself as we walked up the hill. “Poppa, all the fights … all that stuff … it’s all my damned fault. I
knows I got a good life but I wakes up every morning and I got nowheres to go, nothin’ to do … hell, I don’t even come up with the house money the way you’re still splittin’ with me and Will.”

“Dad, that’s ridiculous. Lots of men retire.”

“But on money they put aside for themselves, Poppa. I’m not my own man. I wasn’t going to tell you this but while you been on the road I been goin’ down to the Playhouse every day, workin’ out, gettin’ back in shape. I got the idea watching television, seein’ they don’t dance today like we used to. I worked out a good routine for a single and I thought up the name Sam Time—after how you never
could
do a time step.” He smiled nostalgically, “Anyway, I put this little act together and I figured some of the places we used to work might give me a break as an opening act. I called the ones I knew to be friends and told ‘em I had to use the name Sam Time ‘cause I didn’t want to trade on your name, plus I didn’t want people to say you cut me off, and damned if I didn’t set up my first date in Minneapolis. Five hundred a week, two weeks, with an option for two more. I planned the way I’d tell you was I’d send you a copy of the newspaper ad for ‘Sam Time’ and I was gonna mark it ‘That’s me, so stop sendin’ the checks, son. I’m off your hands.’

“Anyway, I got to town and went over to the club and there was this sign for ‘Sam Time’ but underneath in foot-high letters it said ‘Sammy Davis Jr.’s Father.’ ” He looked away, “I took the next train home.”

I put my arm around his shoulder and we walked in silence, then he said quietly, “All I knows is show business, Poppa. I goes to the track to kill the day and then I gets drunk to forget all the money I lost and it goes ‘round and ‘round and I guess I takes it out on Mama and Peewee and even the kids. God knows I don’t mean to …” He stared blankly up the road. “I guess there ain’t nothin’ can help a man when he’s seven’d out.”

The day we got to Vegas Will told me, “Sammy, I’m quitting the act. I had another examination in L.A. and the doctors say I can’t keep up. Truth is they told me I should stay home and rest but I’ll keep traveling with the act as manager.”

I’d expected it and I’d planned we’d open an office in L.A. or in New York and save the $20,000 a year in travel expense for him and Nathan. “Massey, maybe you should listen to what they say. If they think you should stay home …”

“No. Doctors don’t know everything about a man. They don’t take into account that if I had to stay away from show business I’d have nothing to live for …” Abruptly he snapped himself out of it. “Everything’ll be the same as always. We’re still the Will Mastin Trio except I won’t be on the stage. You’ll be doing a single.”