The Metaphysical Ukulele (5 page)

“It's Christmastime in the city.”

Before she could reach any kind of verse or even complete the chorus, the executive stopped pounding. The silence became too loud. Pat's editor opened the closet door. The executive stepped outside and said, “You're all fired. All of your projects are dead.”

Because Pat's previous novel had been a major critical success and a minor financial one, the executive did not completely kill this novel. Instead, he sent it over to Bantam's Spectra line. Though the book was neither fantasy nor science fiction, it was marketed as such. Pat saw her
Strange Toys
in the windows of airport bookstores and under the rolling papers in Los Angeles newsstands. The critics still loved it. Diane Wakoski professed a desire to live entirely in Pat's imagination.
The Los Angeles Times
declared it a vessel of zeitgeist and used it to find meaning in the Iran-Contra hearings. And, of course, in the final act solidifying its doom, it won that year's Philip K. Dick Award.

After the Philip K. Dick Award, publishers insisted on more science fiction from Pat. Since she hadn't written science fiction to begin with, she could not write more. For Pat,
science fiction was little more than Albert Einstein's hair.

Pat looked at the publishing industry, at all their activity, and said, “Naw. This isn't the human race.”

She returned to her home office and wrote novels, one after the other until they were stacked like firewood for an arctic winter. Art, Pat decided, was what she did for herself. When the novels numbered too many, when they collected at her feet like so many swords on a Tarot deck, she decided to write bigger novels.

She embarked on an opus about Lewis Carroll and the Rossettis. For more than a decade, the Pre-Raphaelites haunted her. It was a pleasant haunting.

Now, eight hundred pages into her opus on the Pre-Raphaelites, the face of Dante Gabriel Rossetti haunts Pat. The Tarot deck that, for so long comforted and guided her, slithers in the high grass of her subconscious. Among the ramparts of brown bags in her home office, she finds the ukulele that can help her through this. He sits alone. The grain of his wood has grown darker with the years, but it still looks like the short fur of a pug. He pouts, put out by his years under the geological strata of Pat's office. Pat scoops him up anyway. He's too cute to stay mad for long.

The high priestess of Pat's coven had given vague instructions:
revisit the past long enough to find that lost source of comfort, then release the past. Fare forward.

Pat takes her ukulele outside. They sit together in a chaise longue. Stars are hard to find in this inland valley east
of Los Angeles. The moon grows ever rounder, ever oranger. It is too large to be innocent.

In a sad and sweet minor key, the ukulele sings the source of Pat's dilemma. The problem is not Dante Gabriel Rossetti but that her friend, a fellow writer with whom Pat had been discussing her Rossetti novel, decided to write a Rossetti novel of his own. It was shorter and shallower, language thin and hollow as the reeds along a drainage ditch. But it was finished first and published and of course became a best-seller. He told Pat not to worry, that her novel would be different than his. Pat's ukulele sings the words that Pat keeps asking herself:

How could he?

Pat's publisher has told her not to worry. He assures Pat that her book will be better. The ukulele knows like Pat knows that this publisher is little comfort. While there will be no big German takeover of his publishing company and no editor will lock him in a closet, it's because Pat's publisher is too small for media giants to notice under their toes; too small for editors, even. He works alone in the back of his cluttered two-bedroom apartment, serenaded by the screams from the speed dealer next door.

His talents lie somewhere outside of publishing.

He's told Pat that her writer friend is nothing but a Patricia Geary clone with needlessly complex plots. Pat's ukulele knows better. He sings:

We need no consolation prizes.

Without moving from the chaise longue, Pat and her ukulele travel back through the night, passing from wherever they've been to wherever they're going.

The ukulele nuzzles up against Pat's shoulder and the heat from his song is one kind of cure.

And so is the sun, soon to rise.

Encouraged, she keeps traveling on.

The Five-Cornered Square

1.

Dick ushered in a surprise visitor, a tall, blond man in a gray flannel suit. His hair was slick with pomade, the back of his neck still pink from a barber's razor. “Chester,” Dick said, “this is David Schine.”

Chet neither stood nor offered a hand to shake. He greeted the blond man with only the slightest of head nods. Schine and Dick Wright both remained standing on the bare wooden floor. Only open space separated them. From where Chet sat, he could see through that open space and onto the modernist painting hanging on the old white plaster wall.

Schine was only interested in Dick. Without preamble, he said, “What do you know about a man named Randall Jarrell?”

“That you think he's a communist,” Dick said. “And you think I know him.”

Schine's eyes widened. He reached inside his jacket.

Chet hadn't noticed any conspicuous lumps under Schine's wide lapels, but he wasn't taking any chances. He slid a switch-blade out of pocket and held it in his thick
hand. The switch-blade's hinge twinkled in the Parisian light pouring in through the window.

Schine's hand emerged from the coat again, holding only a notepad and pen. “So you do know this Jarrell?”

“I didn't say that,” Dick said. “I only said that you thought I did.”

“We have information from several sources that Jarrell had been a member of the John Walter Reed Club. Ever see him there?”

“I was never a member of that club,” Dick said.

For the first time, Schine turned to Chet. “What about you? You a communist? Were you part of the John Walter Reed Club? Do you know Randall Jarrell?”

Chet's thumb gently caressed his switch-blade casing. He stared at Schine's green eyes and said nothing.

“What's your name again, boy?” Schine asked.

“It's not boy.” Chet flipped open the switch-blade and scratched along his jaw line with the dull side.” And this isn't America, you fay mother-raper.”

Dick laughed in his big, magnanimous way.” Well, now.”

Schine's ears flushed from pink to burning red.” Are you threatening me? Are you nigger commies threatening me? Do you have any idea who you're talking to?”

It was such a white remark. Chet had done his seven and a half years in the Ohio State Penitentiary. He'd lived through riots and fires and rapes on the inside. This G-man dandy was nothing to him. He let the afternoon light dance off his blade.

Schine continued his rant. “We had Langston Hughes on the floor of Congress. He said he regretted his un-American activities. He sat right there next to his lawyer, like a good nigger, and told us all what a commie piece of shit he'd been. If we can do that to Langston Hughes, what do you think we can do to you?” Schine pointed at Dick Wright. “Do you think you're Langston Hughes?” He pointed at Chet Himes. “Do you think you're Langston Hughes?”

Chet shifted in his seat as if to stand. Dick stepped forward and placed a gentle hand on the broad, padded shoulder of Schine's suit. Schine twitched under the touch. “David,” Dick said. “I've written all I have to say about my communist affiliations. That's all you're going to get from me. Now you better move along before Chester puts that blade in you and we all end up sorry.”

Schine huffed through his nose but kept his teeth clenched. His whole face had turned a burning red. His blond hair poked out of his scalp like sparks coming off a fire. Dick steered him back toward the dining room and the front door of the flat. Schine didn't resist.

At the door, Dick said, “If you genuinely want to know what a communist is, David, you should read Chester's novel
Lonely Crusade
. You might learn something.”

Schine jotted down the title in his notebook. “What you should really do,” he said, “is refresh your memory about Jarrell.”

Dick pushed Schine out the front door with enough force to make sure he got out but not enough force to topple
him. “You stupid son of a bitch,” Dick said. “You think you can threaten me.” He shut the door behind.

When Dick made it back into the living room, Chet just looked at him. He said nothing.

Later that afternoon, Richard Wright and Chester Himes met James Baldwin on the terrace of Les Deux Magots in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Baldwin sat with his legs crossed, nursing a small cup of coffee. His round black face was glistening like an eight-ball. He wore a beige gabardine suit and no hat over kinky tufts of hair a few weeks overdue for barber's shears. A smoldering fire lay just beneath the surface of his muddy brown eyes, ready to flame into a blaze.

Without greeting Baldwin or introducing Chet, Dick called out, “Garçon.”

The waiter affected an air of apathy while leaving his post and setting a course straight for Dick.

“Two whiskeys,” he said, and only then turned to Baldwin. “And what are you drinking?”

“Coffee,” Baldwin said.

“Better make that three whiskeys,” Dick said.

The waiter glided back toward the bar. Dick grabbed a chair at Baldwin's table and swung it under him. He waved a finger between Baldwin and Chester. By way of introduction, he said, “Chet, Jimmy. Jimmy, Chet.”

Baldwin stood from his chair and offered Chet a hand. “James, please,” Baldwin said. “Not Jimmy.”

Chet shook his hand and took a seat.

“You know about Baldwin?” Dick asked Chet.

“We have a friend in common,” Chet said.

“Who? Me?” Dick asked.

“Well, then, we have two friends in common. An old college friend of mine from Columbus, Jesse Jackson. Left a wife and kids in Ohio to go to Greenwich Village and write children's books.”

“Sure,” Baldwin said. “I know Jesse.”

“But do you know this mother-raper across the table?” Dick asked Chet. “This Jimmy Baldwin of Harlem, New York?”

Chet shook his head.

Dick went on. “Then I'll tell you. This little punk come to me and tell me he want to write a novel about God and the black man. I get him eighteen hundred dollars from Harper & Brothers to type that damn thing up. But the money run out before he finish, so I get him another nine hundred. I even pass it on to my editor over there at Harper & Brothers. Edward Aswell. You remember this, Jimmy?”

Baldwin shifted in his seat. He lifted a spoon and dropped it in an empty mug. The porcelain and metal clinked. “Please,” Baldwin said. “It's James.”

The waiter arrived with three whiskeys. Chet ordered a second for himself before the waiter could leave the table. Whiskey was rare in Paris in these post-war days. Chet had learned how to drink gin or brandy as a substitute. But Dick was on fire this afternoon. He'd brought Chet along as a witness to his performance as the big man on the Left Bank,
the king of the soul brothers in the Latin Quarter. That meant Dick would have to pay for the big man drinks. Chet downed his whiskey and tuned back into the conversation.

“Then did you see the second time he attacked me, in
New Directions
?” Dick asked.

“I read it,” Chet said. Baldwin's essay had been published back-to-back with one by another young black writer, Richard Gibson, who'd used his platform to attack Chet.

“And now this punk mother-raper has the nerve to call me and ask to borrow five thousand francs. If he pays me back for the first twenty-seven hundred dollars by writing essay after essay attacking me, how's this ungrateful son of a bitch going to repay my five thousand francs?” Dick turned and addressed Baldwin directly for the first time.” What the fuck do you have to say for yourself, Jimmy?”

As it turned out, Baldwin had plenty to say for himself. “First off, it's James, not Jimmy. You good and goddamn well know that, Dick. Second off, you fucked it up for the rest of us. Chester. Me. All these soul brothers up and down the Latin Quarter and in Harlem and across the States. You wrote my story in
Black Boy
,” Baldwin said.” You wrote every black boy's story. You didn't leave anything for me or any other black writer to write about.”

A large group of American expatriates and French artists joined the trio of writers at their table on the terrace. They'd recently left a cocktail party that Chet and Dick had waved off for this confrontation with Baldwin. Dick and Baldwin filled in the expats and artists on the argument. A
few took Dick's side. Most, seeing Baldwin so young and small and vulnerable, sitting like a trapped mouse to Dick's big cat, took Baldwin's side. Chet drank whiskey and stared across Rue Bonaparte at the steeple of the Église Saint-Germain de Prés. The white bricks of the church turned a burnt orange in the waning sunlight. Chet lost the flow of the conversation.

When the waiter was too slow with his next whiskey, Chet wandered into the café. A house band had just finished their set. They sat around the stage waiting for plaudits that would never come. Chet himself had hardly heard them over the street sounds on Boulevard Saint-Germain and the din of expats, artists, and writers arguing over The Negro Problem. He approached the band and tried out his French. “
Je suis très content de vous avoir
.”

The tenor sax player turned to his band mates and said something. Chet could only make out the words “
américains noires
.” This set his hackles up. The sax player turned to Chet. The warm smile lighting his thin pale face and the twinkle in his deep-set blue eyes squared it. “You must forgive an uncultured Frenchman such as myself, but I do not understand English so well.”

Chet didn't try his French any more that night. “What is it you said about
américains noires
?”

The sax player ran a finger along the cuff of his baggy trousers. “We only wondered if all
américains noires
spoke such English?”

Before Chet could answer, all of the band members shot
out questions.

“Are you from Harlem?” the drummer asked.

“Are you an American artist? Are you famous?” the bass player asked.

“Are you a GI still here? We want American GIs to go home,” the drummer said.

“What instrument do you play?” the sax player asked.

“Do you know crimes? Can you teach us crimes of Harlem?” the pianist asked. The rest of the band nodded in agreement. This was the core of the issue, the question that needed answering.

Chet raised his forefinger to the waiter. Enough whiskeys had flowed from the bar at Les Deux Magots for the waiter to get the order and assign a tab for it.

“Do you want to learn greatest con running through Harlem?” Chester asked.

The band gathered around him as if he were a microphone at a recording session, eyes alight.

“It will cost you,” Chet said. “Five thousand francs.”

The band members alternately reached into their pockets, each individually excavating dust and lint and nary a franc.

The sax player jumped onto the stage, rustled through some gear, and came back with a small instrument in a black case. “We are short of cash this month,” he said. “But we can trade you this ukulele for a story. It's worth five thousand francs at any pawn shop.”

Chet slid the ukulele under his seat. He reached into
his wallet, flipped through several thousand-franc notes, and found an American ten-dollar bill. He showed the bill to the band. “First, you get one of these and one American hundred-dollar bill. Then you get a mark. A real dope. You tell him American bills have a special chemical makeup. You can raise a ten-dollar bill up to a hundred-dollar one. You bring him to a flat that's not your own. The flat has to have an oven. This is important. Another one of you has to act like a scientist. When the mark comes to your flat, wrap the ten-dollar bill in a tube, like American toilet paper comes in. Put that tube into the oven. Wait five minutes, then reach into the oven and pull out a different tube, one that you put in there earlier with the hundred-dollar bill. Show him that. He'll believe that you can raise tens into hundreds. Then you tell the mark to gather up as many ten-dollar bills as he can. When he comes back, you put all his tens into tubes and into the oven. While you're waiting, a third guy comes in, claims to be an American from the treasury department. The two of you run. The third guy catches the mark, gets him to bribe his way out of the fix, then lets him run. Next thing you know, you'll have an oven full of ten-dollar bills and a nice bribe to go with it. The mark will be none the wiser.”

“And then you cook the tens into hundreds?” the drummer asked.

“A hundred is fifty thousand francs,” the bass player said. “If you take them over to Pops on the Champs-Elysées.”

“No. You don't cook the tens,” Chet said. “You keep
them. It's a con.”

“I didn't know you could raise American tens into hundreds. Where do we find the scientist?” the pianist asked.

“It's just a chemical,
oui
?” the sax player asked.

“No. It's a con,” Chet said.

“What chemical is it?” the drummer asked.

“Does everyone in
Les Etats Unis
know this trick, or only the people in Harlem?” the pianist asked.

“You have to know the chemical,” the bass player said. “What's the chemical?”

Chet pulled his new ukulele from under the chair and tucked it under his arm. “Mix baking soda and vinegar,” he said. “Shake it up in a bottle first.” He stood and patted the sax player on his shoulder. “So long, my friends.”

Back on the terrace, the crowd had broken up, but Dick and Baldwin still fought. Empty whiskey glasses littered the small café table. Baldwin's rage glowed purple. His ass floated inches above his seat. His fist pounded into his hand. “The sons must slay their fathers,” he said. “The powers that be have never allowed more than one black at a time into the arena of fame. The sons who want in must slay their fathers.”

Dick laughed. Chet didn't laugh with him. Nothing was particularly funny. Baldwin sat back and coughed it out for a third time. “The sons must slay their fathers.”