Part 23 (1/2)
”I don't know if I can hold up my end all in French,” he said.
”That's okay. Do the best you can.” I then began to speak in my senior-year seminar French accent, enunciating clearly but keeping my vocabulary colloquial, everyday: ”First off, tell me what you're doing over here, if it's any of my business. Are you in school?”
”No. I got a little bit of money after my mother died-insurance-and I just headed straight over here. I'm planning to be...”
”Be what?” I asked when he hesitated.
”Famous maybe.”
I cracked up.
”Well, you sure can play that violin. Is that what's going to make you famous?”
”Yeah. Well, yes and no. I want to do something with the music, sure. But I'm also taking notes for this book I'm thinking about writing.”
”No kidding? What kind of book?”
”About black people in Paris. Musicians mostly, but others too-dancers, soldiers, poets, whoever I come across. And not just the big ones like Josephine Baker and Wright and them. I mean people who worked to get over here and would do anything to stay. They were excited-proud to be here. Not like tourists, you know? Like there was something really at stake for them. People like me.” He paused there. ”And you.”
I couldn't help it. I was f.u.c.king happy he had included me.
”I want to walk around in their footsteps,” he continued, ”look up their friends and families, if they had any, visit the places where they lived. Give them their due. It's hard to do something like that-start over in a strange place. Hard. Lonely. Scary. There's more than one way to be a black hero-to me, anyway. I want to tell people how admirable some of those folks were.”
”Formidable,” I said. ”So there is a little of the race man in you after all.”
His face went scarlet around the edges. But, thankfully, he laughed rather than bristled.
”Where'd you study music?” I asked.
”I went to Curtis.”
”You're from Philadelphia?”
”No. Detroit, originally.” There was a sourish expression on his face.
”Sounds like you didn't like it much.”
He shrugged. ”Wasn't just Detroit. I didn't like anything that much in the States.”
”I can hear that,” I said.
I wanted to say something more than that, but I couldn't quite form the words yet. The permutations of our relations.h.i.+p to the whole of America were endless. You could hate white people but not hate America. You could come to terms with the racism but never accept the insipid culture. You could view our disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt as a kind of ma.s.sive swindle-all that blood, sorrow, loyalty, hope, and patience deposited over the centuries, and the check keeps bouncing. You could simply self-destruct. Like I said, endless. I figured I'd hear the particulars of his take on the thing soon enough.
”Like Baldwin said, 'I had to get out before I killed somebody.' Is that how you felt?”
”Something like that,” he answered, not looking at me. ”More than likely, if anybody was gonna end up dead, it would have been me. Like I told you before, I'm hardly anybody's idea of fierce. Keep in mind that when I was little I used to have to walk home carrying a violin. And these thick gla.s.ses. It was like wearing a sign that said KICK THE s.h.i.+T OUT OF ME.”
”Kids are real nice to each other, aren't they?” I said, chuckling, but angry too. I was thinking about my friend Aubrey's treatment at the hands of some of our peers. ”Who was it that saw your musical stuff and put you in school?”
”My mother. She could talk you out of your teeth. Got me scholars.h.i.+ps to everything. We didn't have much. My father died when I was seven.”
”What was she like, your mother?”
”White. Which made things even more interesting than they might have been.”
Yeah, I thought as much. Aggressive as our DNA is, there were still little hints of the other in his face. ”Tell me more,” I said.
I divided the last of the coffee between our two cups. Boy! did I want a cigarette.
”Well, like they say, nothing lasts forever,” he said. ”You get over yourself, one way or another. I stopped running from fights. And the fellas stopped wanting to fight me around the time we all discovered s.e.x. See, the girls liked me.”
I grinned. ”Yaaay, Andre! So you went from being the four-eyed sissy to the neighborhood p.u.s.s.y magnet.”
”You got it. For however brief a time, I was a hero.”
”Fierce at last!” I raised the fist to him.
”No, I told you, I'm not. But I'll tell you who was. My mom. I don't know how she did it, exactly, but she's the one who-” He stopped there and didn't talk again until he had drained his cup.
When he spoke again, his voice had become thick. ”A lot of things make me want to kill. And a lot of things I just don't give a f.u.c.k about anymore. All I care about now is becoming excellent at my work and being legit over here. Getting my papers, steady gigs, an apartment, whatever. 'Cause I am not going back. By the way, that was a load of c.r.a.p I gave you about being a legal resident and having a permit, just in case you didn't already know.
”About the only thing that makes me want to fight now is other people telling me who I am and what I ought to be doing and who I ought to be doing it with.”
”You mean you don't like having your blackness challenged?”
”My blackness is not open to challenge. My father was black, so that means I'm black. Period. I guess what I mean is, my people deserve to be honored by me, and I'm serious about doing that-but I deserve some honor too, right? Who doesn't?”
”Yeah,” I said. ”Who doesn't? Are you all on your own now? No family?”
”No.”
”How long have you been in Paris?”
”Five months.”
”Made any friends yet?”
He shook his head. ”Not really. Just some guys I met playing around town. The place I'm staying at belongs to one of my profs, but he isn't there now. I'm subletting from him.”
”What are you-”
He cut me off. ”Just a minute! Hold up! Question after question after question. We're only talking about me. I want to know something about you and your stuff.”
”You will, you will,” I said. ”Tell you what. Wait for me in the cafe downstairs while I get ready.”
”Ready for what?”
”We're going to get seriously drunk.”
”Are you joking?”