Clifford's Blues

EARLY BIRD BOOKS

FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

BE THE FIRST TO KNOW—

NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

Clifford's Blues

John A. Williams

Dedicated to those without memorial or monument

Aguacero

beautiful musician

unclothed at the foot of a tree

amidst the lost harmonies

close to our defeated memories

amidst our hands of defeat

and a people of alien strength

we let our eyes hang low

and untying

the tether of a natal anguish

we sobbed

—Aimé Cesairé, “Blues of the Rain”

trans. Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith

Hey Jayson
,

September 21, 1986

It's me, Gerald Sanderson—Bounce—and this stuff is for you. Justine and I are practically just off the plane with it. We were in Europe this summer picking up our daughter who was doing her junior year abroad and ran into this old German guy in Flensburg near the Danish border. Strange story. We stopped not far from where we were going to stay that night so I could take a leak. This guy was there. I couldn't really understand him, but it seemed that during the war Black American soldiers hadn't killed him when they could have. He was grateful, but maybe they should have put him out of his misery. I mean, the guy was a mess. He left this box at the desk for us
.

Tank suggested we look you up and get this to you, since you're the only writer we know. (Says you owe him for throwing that block of his that let you score the only touchdown of your life in high school.) I know it's been a long time since we've seen each other, but I thought this was important enough to say hello with. What you have is a copy. We have the original if you want to see it, but it's been written on every kind of paper you can imagine—tissue, glazed, schoolkid tablet, wrapping, end pages of books, in pencil, ink, crayon—man, it was a mess to copy. If you even look at the original, it starts falling apart. It had been wrapped in an old smelly raincoat with the rubber dried and cracked off
.

You should have seen us coming through customs with it; they probably thought we had 200 pounds of dope. I told customs it was research (I finally did get my master's in history). They rummaged around, asked the boss, made phone calls, and so on. Man, they make it tough for you to get back home. The Germans, when I told them it was research on Black people in the camps, they were glad to let it go
.

Jay, this is a diary written by a brother, a piano man name of Clifford Pepperidge. Played with Sam Wooding, which was way before both your time and mine. Clifford was in Dachau. Yeah, Dachau. We drove there and checked it out. Even now the space—it's the size of about ten stadiums; I mean it's huge, and if you include the fringe around it that is now filled with young trees, it becomes a third larger. It's a museum now. We saw pictures of some other brothers, too. Couldn't tell if they were us or Africans. Now I wonder just how many other Black people we never heard a peep about were in those places. Dachau must have been a bitch. I can't imagine what all those other camps were like. The way I figure it is this: the old soldier giving this to us, our knowing you, is a spooky triple play. Old soldier to Bounce to Jay. Not an accident. Maybe a mysterious way
.

You know the Benny Golson tune “I Remember Clifford,” with lyrics by Jon Hendricks? I know it was for Clifford Brown who died in 1956, but when I play it now, I think of Clifford Pepperidge. It would be great if you could do something good with this. I'm not trying to lean on you, it would just be great. Justine sends greetings to you, your wife, kids, and grandkids. I'm told you got a bunch of them. Any of them good ball players? My ball club is going to be weak for the next couple of seasons, and if I don't get some talent bopping into this school, I may have to teach history full-time. Maybe it's time for that, anyway. Playing ball doesn't serve the same function it did when you were a kid or even when I was. It's all about money now, not teamwork or building confidence. In any case, I know this season my mind's more on Clifford than anything else and how maybe that bell that rang for him is starting to ring again. I know you know exactly what I mean. For
the
ball game, except that it isn't a game
.

You should know that we've all enjoyed reading your books, especially our daughter, Liz, who would love to meet you. All our best to you and yours. Give me a call when you've finished. No hurry; after all, it's been in the box for forty-one years already
.

Sunday, May 28, 1933

My name's Clifford Pepperidge and I am in trouble. I'm an American Negro and I play piano, sometimes, and I'm a vocalist, too. I shouldn't be here, but they didn't pay any attention to me when they brought me. Didn't listen when I was in Berlin, either. I am in Protective Custody, they call it. They've said I'll be out as soon as they finish their investigation. I hope so. God, I hate this place. As soon as I do get out, I'm hauling ass back home. I don't care what it's like. They never did this to me in New York, and until I left Storyville, after they closed it down, I managed not to have anything to do with the John Laws. That's what back home was all about—playing music and keeping away from trouble because it was always looking for you. Damn. I'd even go back South to get out of here. Any place but here. It could be worse. I could be over in the camp. There's a sign on the front gate:
Arbeit Macht Frei
.

Tues., June 7, 1933

I'm a calfactor, a houseboy, and I am stuck here in Dachau with no way to get out. Except that if I'm a good enough houseboy my luck may change. That I doubt since Malcolm, to save his ass, double-crossed me. That's got to be what happened. Met him after playing in the Schwarze Kater in the Friedrichstrasse. Then he showed up at the Kater and usually sent me drinks. We recognized each other. Well. Malcolm worked at the American embassy. We got to be quite good friends, as he would say. He had a marked fondness for me and I played to it. He had money, lots of it. Even a popular colored entertainer who'd played and sung with the great Sam Wooding didn't make the money Malcolm already had. Family's rich. We used to sit around Sunday mornings in silk bathrobes, drinking champagne, trying to figure out who it was we'd brought home with us from Kurfurstendamm, where everyone was good-looking, or from Nollendorfplatz, where everyone was not. It really didn't matter to Malcolm as long as I was there to join in the fun we always had, although the cocaine was really hard to come by with the Nazis running things.

Hitler became Chancellor, so the Brownshirts made it, and Finck's Katakombe, where the Shirts used to loiter, has become a very popular place indeed. A-men and Z-men used it a lot. These are agents and squealers for the Nazis. You never knew when they were at a party, until the next day when someone stopped by to tell you that Frankie or Teddy had been arrested with a Protective Custody warrant as a member of an unpopular category. It was getting awful around Berlin; it was getting quiet in the Kater. The spirit was gone from the Friedrichstrasse, the Kurfurstendamm, the Jagerstrasse, the Behrensstrasse; the Conferenciers didn't make jokes about the Nazis any more, and they introduced the performers with less flair and fancy than they used to. It was like the way it used to be once you stepped across the line from Storyville.

I wanted to get away. I was dreaming of snakes all the time, and anyone from New Orleans knows that when you dream of snakes, you've got enemies. But Malcolm didn't care. He didn't give a damn. Told me I had nothing to worry about because I was an American and he was an American diplomat. And fool that I was, I believed him. We were still in bed on that Sunday morning when they came and found us naked as the day we were born. That was April 23. Malcolm declared “diplomatic immunity.” They carried me away while Malcolm was saying, “Don't worry. I'll have you out soon.” He took my passport. I haven't heard anything from Malcolm since. It looks like I don't exist. They say the embassy claims it has no record of me. But I was somebody in Berlin. At least I thought I was. So I figure that Malcolm got rid of my passport and the record of my check-ins, and that means I had no contact with him. Of course the cops know different. They arrested me in his flat, but I suppose Malcolm fixed even that. If Almighty God walked into Hitler's office without signing in, then as far as the Germans are concerned, He did not walk in.

Wednesday, July 5, 1933

The camp used to be a munitions factory, they tell me. Some of the buildings and sheds are still standing. There are nine barracks inside the wall and ten outside. The ones outside are fenced around with barbed wire and are guarded. Almost no trees; a few white birches, I think, and pines. Hot sun everywhere. No shade. They expect to keep 5,000 prisoners here.

Dachau is a labor camp. No one here knows anything. Nobody cares to know anything. Never thought I'd be so close to where I played a couple of dates—Munich, in Schwabing. If I'd had any sense, I would have got the hell out of Germany then, with the Nazis running all over. More obnoxious than in Berlin. Goddamn Bavarians.

I came in a van from Berlin. A long drive, and they let us out only once to piss. Threw bread and sausages in the back. Arrived here midmorning. Seems like years ago, but it's not quite six weeks. The
SA
and the
SS
cursed us out of the van into the sun. Gangs of men in gray uniforms, some harnessed like horses to big rollers and carts, moved back and forth, raising dust; they groaned and grunted. Most of them had red triangles fastened to the right pants leg; others had green, and some of those fellas looked as tough as the robbers and dope fiends in east Berlin. A few wore pink triangles, and when I saw those and looked into the faces of the men wearing them, I knew what was going to happen to me. I couldn't work like that. I played the piano. I sang songs. Everywhere I looked in those few minutes before my group was called, I saw men working harder than anyone I ever saw working on a chain gang. I started to shake. I couldn't help myself. Another group was coming out. I tried to read hope in their expressions, but there was none, not on a single face.