Dancing in the Dark (11 page)

He sits in nigger heaven and looks down at his West Indian son. At first he does not recognize him, and then, when he does, his stomach moves. This bewildered creature with a kinky wig, long ill-fitting white gloves, a shabby dress suit, oversized shoes, a battered top hat, sleeves and trousers that are too short, a mouth exaggerated by paint, this real funny nigger is his son? This coon with big eyeball-poppin’ eyes is his child? He now understands why the boy has suggested that his wife stay at home and recuperate from the seemingly endless train journey. What has happened to his Bert? His Bahamian son who would sit patiently with him for hours and
study
the manner in which chickens threw dust behind them with their webbed feet. Father and son were inseparable. And then he brought the boy to Florida, and then on to California, in the hope that his child might achieve an education in the powerful country to the north. But this is not his son. This
Shylock. This grotesque simpleton shuffling about the stage who seems to be forever trapped in foolish predicaments. This buffoon. This nigger.

At the curtain call, with applause thundering in his ears, Bert looks straight out at the orchestra stalls and bows deeply. He gracefully receives the noisy evidence of their approval. However, as he straightens up at the waist he realizes that his heart is heavy with shame, and try as he might he cannot bring himself to look up and acknowledge his father. Upstairs in nigger heaven.

H
e remembers the tall eleven-year-old boy whose father insisted that he still wear short pants, and who stared at the swath of foam that the ship was cutting into the tranquil waters of the Pacific Ocean as it edged a slow passage along the far coast of this new country. Above him the wind charged between the clouds, creating space for the lines of migrating birds who were returning north to where it was still cold and where snow clung stubbornly to the trees. The birds would soon realize their mistake. Back then young Bert discovered that he had no fondness for ocean voyages, and all these years later he remains uncomfortable when presented with only a watery horizon. These days he spends the greater part of his time downstairs in his cabin reading his well-thumbed copy of John Ogilby’s
Africa
, and his wife is content to sit with him and minister to his needs. Elsewhere on the ship, the members of the Williams and Walker organization seem to be raucously enjoying themselves for he can occasionally hear their revelry, but he prefers some measure of detachment.
His wife has assured him that his company will not interpret his absence as a sign of either distance or aloofness, and that they will understand that he needs to rest, and so, during this saltwater crossing to England, he has seldom ventured out on deck. Handsome meals of various meats and vegetables are brought to his cabin on a silver tray, and sometimes, when the moon is bright and the ocean is unruffled, he and Mother will saunter upstairs, and cautiously slipping her arm through his, Mother will anchor herself to her husband and together they will promenade on deck. The white passengers know exactly who he is and they nod as the colored couple stroll by. After all, he is a man who is leading his own theatrical company—a man who has performed fifty-three times on Broadway.

Later, when alone in his cabin with his slumbering wife, he listens to the intoxicating rhythm of the sea. His toes stir for there is music in the light babbling of the swell as it laps against the hull of the vessel. He and his fifty so-called elite of coon performers have set out on a novel voyage for England, where Williams and Walker will present
In Dahomey
in the West End of London, and then tour the country with the production. Williams and Walker are doing well, and Bert has moved his parents into their own place and done everything he can to ensure that they feel settled in New York City, and he has made it clear to them that they must stay for as long as they wish. Relations between himself and his father remain somewhat strained, but neither one of them has found a way to address the troubling issue of the son’s choice of career. Embarrassment hovers, like an unwelcome visitor, between the pair of them, but nevertheless the son has bought his father a barbershop business on Seventh Avenue, only a few doors from his own home, and to begin with he would occasionally wander by the parlor for a trim and shave. Having taken up a
seat in the waiting area he would look proudly at his father’s hands as they skillfully controlled both scissors and razor, and then it would be his turn to ease his way into the big leather armchair and sit quietly as his father pumped the metal lever with his foot and adjusted the seat downward. Having done so, the older man would tip the chair back, only slightly, but just enough so that the son felt helpless, and then he would produce his special pearl-handled razor. For a second the son’s eyes might meet those of the father and the doubt would return. Although neither of them had ever acknowledged the source of the discontent that now existed between them, the son understood that it was probably he who should broach the uncomfortable subject, but by the time he was ready to do so it was generally too late, for his pop’s slick hands would already be at work around the chin and neck, and the nature of the procedure meant that conversation was now impossible. However, whatever frustration his father was suffering from seemed to be safely locked away inside of him, and if silence was the price to be paid for the existence of a perplexing, but loving, peace between them, then the son was prepared to endure silence. Bert looks at his wife, who despite the gentle movement of the ship continues to sleep tranquilly with a hat fastened tightly to her head. He lights a cigarette and reopens his Ogilby, but he notices that his toes continue to dance to the music of the sea and it disappoints him that he appears to be helpless to arrest the nigger in him.

The dressing room is the one place where he is able to think clearly, for the silence and privacy suggest to him the sanctity of a church. The dressing room is a place where he can sit alone and remember all that has gone before, and imagine all that is still to unfold. The mirror is the most important part of the room. The mirror and the lightbulbs. Plenty of bright, gleaming lightbulbs
arranged tastefully around the perimeter of the mirror glass. And a door with a good lock to it. Two chairs, please. One in front of the mirror, and a softer chair where a man might relax and read a newspaper or a book and enjoy some peaceful contemplation. These few items are all a man needs in his dressing room. At the New York Theatre, at Forty-fifth Street and Broadway, where they played
In Dahomey
, he enjoyed a perfectly adequate dressing room. Whenever he needed privacy he simply locked the door and withdrew from everybody. A major New York critic had penned a favorable notice of the show, but the man described the star as an amiable coon who possessed “magnificent white grinders in a cavernous mouth.” Every evening, having washed his face and applied the towel, a despondent Bert stared into the mirror but he failed to see the amiable coon with the cavernous mouth who the influential critic had described.

George enjoys decorating his dressing room with large and some-what vulgar bouquets of sweet-smelling flowers, but Bert does not care for this kind of ostentation and so he seldom visits with George. In fact, Bert does not care for lace cloths, or perfumed water, or soft plump cushions, and there are always far too many people in George’s dressing room, but George understands his partner’s difficulties with strangers. When George wishes to talk with Bert he frequently travels to his colleague’s dressing room with a liquor bottle in one hand, and he is always careful to lock the door behind him before he sits down. He understands that if they are to talk, it is he who must visit Bert’s quarters, and so slender George, with his perfectly oval face and clothes that would grace a prince, grins at Bert and places his insubstantial weight on a creaky wooden chair and then lights his cigar and pours them both a drink as he makes ready to engage his partner.

.   .   .

“Bert, you really want to take the show to London?” George pulls eagerly on his cigar. “I thought you didn’t care for sailing on water. Man, I thought you just wanted to stay here and work on another show.”

Bert picks up George’s bottle and pours them both a second shot of whiskey. They clink glasses.

“If the Englishman wants to see
In Dahomey
, then maybe we should show the Englishman what we got.”

“So what you think we got, then?”

Bert laughs now—slow, rumbling laughter that rocks the room. George’s eyes light up.

“Come on, man, what you think we got that the Englishman needs to see? Besides high-toned women, fine music, fresh comedy, and all the dance stepping in the world?”

“Well,” says Bert, as he swirls the whiskey in his glass, “I figure that’s plenty to be going on with, don’t you? I’m ready to ease on over there and show the Englishman what we got.”

“You ready to cross water to do so?”

“Ain’t no other way of getting there.”

“Maybe the English will treat us with a little more respect.”

Bert continues to laugh. “George, you think they could treat us with less?”

Bert remembers his short week in New York vaudeville just before the opening of
In Dahomey
. He remembers sharing the bill with Maurice Barrymore, who, having finished his own act, liked to stand in the wings at every performance and peruse Bert’s technique, but this scrutinizing never troubled Bert. Everybody took from everybody else, and he saw no reason why this man should be any different. However, Barrymore’s studiousness annoyed the stagehands for Barrymore was not supposed to admire a man like Bert. Over the years, Bert has endured many
problems with ill-bred stagehands, but nothing to match the difficulties that he encountered during this short week. A particularly rough-hewn man asked Barrymore if he really liked the nigger coon, but Barrymore simply glared. As Bert came offstage, and passed by them both, he heard the boorish stagehand say, “Yeah, he’s a good nigger, he knows his place.” Without breaking his stride, or looking at either man, Bert replied, “Yes, a good nigger knows his place. Going there now. Dressing room one.” Barrymore punched the stagehand in his mouth. Later, when George heard about the incident, he was livid, but Bert would not talk with George, or with anyone, about the unsettling episode.

Well, Bert, if the choices we got is working on another show, going back to vaudeville, or going to England, then let’s go to England. Another show can wait a while, but I don’t got your stomach, Bert, so I sure as hell won’t be doing no more vaudeville, no sir, not me. I reckon that George Walker is better than working with iron jaw acts, and regurgitators and acrobats straight from the ships, and long-limbed girls from burlesque who don’t understand that there’s no place in vaudeville for bare legs and foul language. America got those Wright boys up in the air, and automobiles rolling down the streets, and some kind of baseball World Series, and this is a new country for everybody, including the colored man. Damn it, we’ve gone beyond getting up there three or four times a day, even if they do give us prime billing. Everything in goddamn vaudeville is always rush, rush, rush, with the Jews playing the Germans, and the Germans playing the Irish, and the Irish playing the Chinese, and everybody thinking they can play colored because what’s a poor colored man going to do to stop them? We coloreds got to be doing more respectable work like
In Dahomey
instead of playing damn-fool happy creatures who between steamboat arrivals just pick cotton or fry fish until it’s time to slouch off again and tote some cargo and sing
some coon songs. Williams and Walker done gone beyond vaudeville. We got to take our time and do what we do with style.
In Dahomey
is the thing, Bert, and no reason for us to be rushing to produce another show, or for you to be going back to no foolish vaudeville. We should do like you say and take our colored tails across that water to old London and show them what we got.

Bert always takes dressing room number one, while George establishes himself in dressing room number two. This is the way that it is, and neither man has ever discussed the subject, and if George has any cause for complaint, then Bert has not heard anything about it. George refills their glasses with whiskey and Bert proposes that they drink a toast. To England, and to their forthcoming salty voyage, during which, each evening, they will temporarily lose the sun on the other side of the sea.