Streets of Gold (40 page)

“Paris, eh? Paris.”

“France,” Biff says.

“But now you play only in New York, eh?”

“I can’t get many gigs other places.”

“Jobs,” I explain to my grandfather.

“Mm, jobs. Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t last that long.”

“What doesn’t?”

“A career in jazz.”

“
How
long?”

“Five, six years. Seven the most. I’m just hangin’ on now, Mr. Di Lorenzo. I was on the way down long before this new stuff came in. I’m talkin’ about big money. I can still earn a living, more or less, but I don’t make big money no more.”

“What do you call big money? If you play jazz, what’s big money?”

“Well, I was pullin’ down three, four bills a week in the thirties, an’ that’s when people were starvin’, and I’m not nowhere near the piano player Tatum or Wilson is. I guess Art is still makin’... what? a thousand a week? But I ain’t sure how long that’s gonna last for him, not with this new jazz we’ve been tellin’ you about. An’ that’s just playin’ club dates; he makes money on his records, too, and other stuff.” I hear Biff lifting his glass. He drinks, I hear him swallow, he puts the glass back on the table and says, “Mr. Di Lorenzo, I get the feeling you don’ want no bullshit where it concerns your grandson’s prospects...”

“That’s right, no bullshit.”

“So, okay, I’ll lay it right on the line. I already told you he’s a good musician. I don’t know where he’s goin’ yet, but lots of young kids comin’ up today don’t know where they’re at, either; this bop ain’t so easy as you think. You hear Bird play, you want to go out an’ hang yourself, I’m not kiddin’. He’s that good, he’s that brilliant, you just want to go kill yourself. Instead, you try to do on
your
instrument whatever he’s doin’ on his saxophone, an’ that’s where it is today, and Iggie - if he keeps up with this — will have to do Parker on the piano, I s’pose, same way everybody
else
is doin’ Parker on whatever instrument they play. That’s where it’s at now; I can’t tell you how long it’ll last, but even when it’s gone, I know for sure it’ll have changed everything for keeps. What I’m sayin’ is I think Iggie’s got the chops, the hands, Mr. Di Lorenzo, and he’s got real feeling for what he plays, and I think he’s got a good head, too, but that don’t mean it’ll be easy for him.

“It won’t be easy ’cause first of all he’s blind. I know Iggie good enough to talk about his bein’ blind without fear of offendin’ him; I wouldn’t hurt him for anything in the world. But he’s blind, Mr. Di Lorenzo, and he’s gonna run into a lot of the same things colored musicians are up against. Not ’cause he’s colored, but ’cause he’s blind. He can’t read regular music, he can only read Braille, and that means he won’t be able to get jobs that are bread-an’-butter jobs to good paper men — men who can read music good. I mean, even if by some miracle some Broadway producer decided to hire Iggie to play for a big musical, and wanted to have Iggie’s part written out in Braille, even if that happened, why, Mr. Di Lorenzo, it would just be too much
trouble
for everyone concerned, they just wouldn’t be able to
cope
with a blind man in an orchestra pit, you understand me?”

“I understand you,” my grandfather says, and quickly covers my hand with his own.

“So let’s count that out as a possibility. Iggie ain’t gonna be called in by no contractor who needs a piano player to fill a chair on a big-band record date, and ain’t no radio station gonna call him up to do studio work, an’ he’s not about to get a rush call from the guy runnin’
Carousel
, just forget them as possibilities, okay? That means he’ll have to make it either as a solo piano player or with a small group, and I think he already knows solo piano is on its last legs; where jazz is at today is in the small group. He’s got to work hard, and get his bag of tricks together, and start himself a group makin’ the right sound in the right time and in the right place. An’ he’ll start makin’ some records with that group, and if they catch on, he’ll have it made. He gets a couple of hit records, he can count on some good club dates followin’ them, and some real gold playin’ and makin’ more records that’ll bring in royalties, and so on, it’ll keep mush-roomin’ for maybe five or six years, he can be pullin’ down, oh, say fifty thousand, seventy-five thousand a year while he’s on top. If he doesn’t just blow that gold, he can make himself some good investments so that when things begin to taper, when the records stop sellin’ because maybe another sound has come in, or another style, or another piano player comes up with the right thing in the right time an’ place, why, then Iggie’ll have enough to tide him over while he ain’t makin’ as
much
gold but is still playin’ here and there because people still know his name. He’s got to
make
it first, you understand. Lots of guys
never
make it.

“There’s things he’s gonna have to deal with whether he makes it or not. They’re all part of jazz, and you might as well know the whole story, you said you didn’t want no bullshit. He’s gonna be playin’ mostly in clubs. And there’re gonna be whores in lots of those clubs, because that’s where whores hang out. Even if he don’t run with whores, there are gonna be
other
women, they dig musicians, I don’t know what it is. And he’s gonna be traveling around a lot playing these clubs, and I got to tell you marriage and music don’t go together, I been married and divorced twice myself, though I ain’t even sure the last divorce is legal. And there’s gonna be gangsters in lots of them clubs because gangsters
own
most of them. And there’s gonna be booze, because like I told you before, booze and the piano
do
go together. There’s also gonna be dope, because lots of these new musicians comin’ up think dope’s gonna help them play like Bird, an’ even if they
didn’t
believe that, there’s always been dope around jazz music, I know guys who were usin’ cocaine when I was still playin’ in Kansas City, that’s just the way it is. I already told Iggie I’d break his arm if he ever went near no narcotics, and I think he knows I’m not kiddin’ him.

“But all these bad things in jazz ain’t what should be concernin’ you, Mr. Di Lorenzo. What you should be thinkin’ about are the
good
things. And they got nothin’ to do with makin’ a lot of gold, or becomin’ famous, or whatever. They got to do with the way playin’ jazz makes you
feel
. Pee Wee Russell once told somebody — he’s a clarinet player, Mr. Di Lorenzo — he once told somebody the moment of truth comes for him each time he stands up to take his chorus, that’s the most important thing in his life. Well, it
is
, Mr. Di Lorenzo. It’s jumpin’ in the middle of the ocean. It ain’t swimmin’ out gradually, it’s jumpin’ right out to where you can’t see no land no more, it’s usin’ everything you know to stay afloat and to swim however far out you think you can, and then like magic you get whisked right back there to shore again, and you wrap it all up with a big yellow ribbon, and there you are, and you feel good and clean and happy all over, and there ain’t many things I know that can make you feel that way in life, Mr. Di Lorenzo, there just ain’t many I know of.”

My grandfather has been silent through all this, and he is silent now for several more minutes. Biff lifts his glass again. I sense he is a bit uneasy; perhaps he thinks he’s gone too far. He is not at the piano where he can jump into the middle of that ocean he described, and swim out as far as he dares. My grandfather is, to him, an unknown quantity. He waits.

My grandfather says, “I never talked to a colored man before. I don’t understand why you should care about Ignazio.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Biff answers. “Used to be a nice, friendly feeling in jazz, Mr. Di Lorenzo. Used to be you
played
. That’s changin’. And maybe I got to change my
style
to keep up with what’s comin’ in, but, man, I don’t have to change the way I
feel.
I got to get back on the stand,” he says. “You goan stay for another set?”

“Yes,” my grandfather says.

He orders another glass of wine and listens while the band plays a set that includes “A Dizzy Atmosphere,” “Anthropology,” and “Keen and Peachy.” As they play, I think Yes, I will make between fifty and seventy-five thousand dollars a year, and yes, I will cut records and I will make sound investments so that when another piano player comes up with the right sound in the right time and place I’ll have enough to tide me over and I’ll still be playing because people will remember my name.

Iggie Di Palermo, I think.

They will know my name, and they will remember it.

I will
make
it.

I will not be one of those guys who never make it.

“Pffffff,” my grandfather says. “What
noise
.”

By Christmas of 1945:

1. My mother had been visited on earth by the Virgin Mary, who displayed a worldly wisdom unbecoming to the Mother of God, almost destroying a happy family in the Bronx, and causing an innocent house painter to suffer the lifelong torments of Stella’s silent treatment.

2. My Aunt Victoria, at the age of sixty-four, had finally found herself a husband, a widowed Sicilian pig farmer who lived in New Jersey with five hulking sons, spoke barely a word of English, and reputedly beat her regularly with a sawed-off rake handle.

3. Pino Battatore’s son, Tommy, had either jumped or been pushed to his death on the elevated tracks of the Third Avenue El one black September midnight. The police found four thousand dollars in cash in the inside pocket of his jacket, together with a large collection of policy slips. When the cops told Pino his son had probably been involved in the numbers racket, Pino told them they were lying bastards.

4. My Aunt Bianca’s boyfriend, Rafaelo the butcher, had dashed into her corset shop one bright October day shouting, “Bianca, he caught me, he caught me!” scaring her half out of her wits till she realized he was making reference to the man upstairs, who had just stumbled upon the butcher in bed with his wife. My Aunt Bianca, who’d been working on a brassiere, belatedly stuck her sewing needle into Rafaelo’s left buttock, thereby effectively ending their relationship.

5. My Uncle Dominick’s unmarried, sixteen-year-old daughter had got herself pregnant by a detective in Brooklyn, where Dominick now lived next door to his wife’s parents, who ran a pizzeria on Coney Island Avenue.

Now
that
, my friends, is the stuff upon which soap operas are built. I made it all up. But only because I wanted to prove I could easily find a job writing for CBS if ever I became arthritic and couldn’t play piano anymore. I’m also about to make up what happened on that Christmas Day in 1945. You’ll know it’s another lie the moment you read it.

My grandfather’s house was abnormally cheerless. We had none of us grown accustomed to Tony’s death; I doubted if we ever would. My Uncle Dominick was spending Christmas Day with his wife’s family in Brooklyn, and Aunt Victoria was in New Jersey with her sadistic pig farmer, and Uncle Joe had canceled (again) his promised trip from Arizona, and Pino was in mourning and would have considered it sacrilege to have played the mandolin. When the telephone rang, my Aunt Bianca rushed to answer it, hoping (I think) that it was the butcher. “Iggie,” she said, “it’s for you.”

I got up from the dining room table. I had been sitting very close to my grandfather, because he’d been oddly silent all through the meal, and I wanted to touch him every so often, just to make sure he was there and all right. I touched him now as I went to the phone, just rested my hand on his shoulder for a moment, and he covered it briefly with his own, and then I went out into the hallway and put one finger in my ear as I picked up the receiver, hoping to drown out the clatter of the women doing dishes in the kitchen.

“Hello?” I said.

“Iggie?” a woman asked. She was black.

“Who’s this?” I said.

“You don’t know me,” she said. “Biff ast me t’call. Said I should try the Bronx first, an’ if you wasn’t there, I should look up Lorenzo,
Di
Lorenzo in Harlem. Is this Iggie?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Biff’s sick,” she said. “Can you come down here right away? I don’t know whut t’do.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“Well, like you know, man.”

“No, I don’t know. What is it?”

“Well, like can you jus’ come down here right away?”

“Have you called a doctor?”

“No,” she said. “Can you get here right away, please?”

“Well, what...?”

“Please, man,” she said.

“Where are you? Canal Street?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” I said. “Tell him I’m on the way.”

I put the receiver back on the cradle, and went into the bedroom for my coat.

“Who was that?” my mother said.

“Biff’s sick. I have to go down to Canal Street.”

“Does he know you’re blind, your nigger friend?”

“He knows it, Mom.”

“So why is he dragging you out of the house on Christmas Day?”

“Che successe?”
my grandfather asked.

“Biff is sick,” I said.

“
Where
did you say you’re going?” Aunt Bianca asked.

“
Canal
Street,” my mother said.

“I’ll take a taxi, don’t worry about me.”

“I’ll go with you,” my father said.

“I can get there okay, Pop.”

“Let him go, Jimmy,” my mother said. “The hell with him
and
his nigger friends.”

“I got the cab right downstairs,” Matt said. “You want me to drive you down?”

“Thanks, Uncle Matt, I’ll be all right.”

“Iggie,” my grandfather said.

“Yes, Grandpa?”

“Stat’ attento,”
he said. “Be careful.”

“I will, Grandpa.”

I went downstairs, and stood on the corner outside the
pasticceria
, waiting for a cab heading downtown, raising my cane whenever
any
kind of vehicle approached. I must have been standing in the cold for perhaps ten minutes, regretting having turned down my Uncle Matt’s offer, when suddenly an automobile pulled to the curb.