Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (36 page)

“A toast,” he said, “to our baby, little Leo—we're glad you came back to us, baby, and don't you be making no more journeys like that in a hurry, do you hear?”

We laughed again. We had to laugh, perhaps I most of all. I said, “May I propose a toast? Let
me
propose a toast.”

“Hear, hear!” said Barbara.

And then, for a moment, I did not know what to say; and I looked at them and they looked at me. I met the eyes of Alvin, my understudy. Alvin was a very good-looking black, or, rather, colored cat, a little bit older than I, and bigger than I; and I am not good-looking. I abruptly understood, as though I had just come back from the dead—which was, after all, nearly the literal truth; and a tremor went through me; I saw Barbara's face, and I was incredibly aware of the sun coming
through the curtains—that I had been wrong in supposing that Alvin did not like me. It wasn't that. It was just that I fucked up his sense of reality. He did not know why what, as he supposed, had happened to me had not happened to him. According to the order which had created him and in which, for all his stridency, he yet absolutely believed, he had been dealt a much better hand than mine. This meant, for me, that Alvin did not know the ruthless rules of the game, and since he really did not know what had happened to me, did not know what had happened to him. As long as he did not know this, no one and nothing could help him. He would spend his life envying the blood in the shoes of others. I remembered myself trying to say this to Christopher. And I dropped my eyes from Alvin's, thinking of Christopher's response, and thinking of Caleb. I had supposed that Alvin disliked me because I am a better actor than he. And I
am
a better actor. But in that fact, precisely, lies hidden the unspeakable question, the unendurable truth.

“It is not important,” I said, “to be an actor. The world is full of actors—most of them don't know that they are acting. And it's not important to be a star—most stars can't act.” I stopped. They were still watching me. I had struck a more somber note than I had meant to strike. I looked for Barbara's face, and Pete's face. Their faces reassured me. They knew their boy. It had cost them something: and they would never let me see the bill. “Well,” I said, “if those things are not important, let me say that it
is
important—it is beautiful—to know, when you stand on your feet again, that so many people are glad to see you standing. I'm glad to be back.” I raised my glass. “But if you hadn't wanted me back, I might very well not be here. Let me drink to you,” I said,
“and let me thank you for holding on to me. I'll never forget it.” I had no more words, and I drained my champagne glass. They stomped their feet lightly on the floor, for their hands were not free. Barbara drained her glass as I drained mine, and set it down and clapped her hands. It was—somehow—the most extraordinary sound.

“We've got to send the prince home in a few minutes,” Pete said. “Who wants more champagne? We got one more bottle.”

Then, I sat on the bed and I looked at my records, the records they had bought for me: Sam Cooke and Mahalia Jackson and Ray Charles and Miles Davis and Nina Simone and Joe Williams and Joe Tex and Lena Horne; and I thought what a comfort they would be to me, what a ball I would have with them in the south of France, where I would now be going, to sit in a borrowed villa and think over my life and recover my health and eventually read the script and sign the contract which would bring me back to work again. I realized that I was frightened. This would be the first time in more than twenty years that I had not, in one way or another, been working. When a worker is not working, what does a worker do? I knew that I was chilled by the fear of what I might find in myself with all my harness off, my obligations canceled, no lawyers, no agents, no producers, no television appearances, no civil-rights speeches, no reason to be here or there, no lunches at the Plaza, no dinners at Sardi's, no opening nights, no gossip columnists, no predatory reporters, no
Life and Loves of Leo Proudhammer
(in six installments, beginning in this issue!), no need to smile when I did not want to smile, no need, indeed, to do anything but be myself. But who was this self? Had he left forever the house of my endeavor and my fame? Or
was he merely having a hard time breathing beneath the rags and the rubble of the closets I had not opened in so long?

Amy sat down on the bed beside me. She said, “I suppose you've heard the rumors?”

“I never listen to rumors,” I said, “and if you want to stay alive in this business, you won't, either.”

She laughed. She was a very, very attractive girl—not pretty exactly, but, then, I don't like pretty girls; but attractive, really attractive. Her teeth were a little big, and her face was a little too thin—she was very thin altogether, no hips at all, or, rather, the kind of hips that don't exist until you hold them. My body had been functioning all those weeks I'd been in bed, and, abruptly, seriously, I was terribly horny. I shifted a little bit away from her, more astonished than embarrassed. This particular aspect of Lazarus' return had not before occurred to me: but it certainly made sense. To come up from the place where one thought one was dead means that one becomes greedy for life, and life is many things, but it is, above all, the touch of another. The touch of another: no matter how transient, at no matter what price.

Then I remembered that I was nearly forty, and this frenzy, so I had been told, occurred in men of my age. I looked at Amy again. We had one very short, but very crucial scene in the play. We had been face to face for months, but I had never looked at her before. It scarcely seemed possible. I thought, You'll never work again, old buddy, you've had it, you've gone completely to pieces. I was looking at her face, but I was thinking of her cunt, of what it would be like to go down on this skinny little girl, how it would feel to hold her, to go inside her, how we
should move together, and how she would be when she came.

She did not seem to know what I was thinking. She said, “Well. The rumor is that they're going to halt production on
Big Deal
—they were just about ready to go, you know—until you're well enough to play the reporter.”

“That's quite a rumor,” I said. But I was pleased. A kind of chill made me cough. Barbara looked sharply in my direction, and so did Pete. Pete drained his glass, and Barbara picked up her mink. Alvin came over and sat down on the bed.

“I'm glad you're going to be all right, fellow,” he said. And he really meant it. He meant it as much as he could mean it.

“Thank you,” I said. But I was suddenly very tired. I thought, You've been ill and you're not well yet. I thought, Maybe you'll never really get well again.

“We got to clear this joint now, folks!” Pete cried. “We got to take the patient home!”

“Isn't it a
nice
rumor?” Amy asked. “Especially—you know—to take away with you?”

“What rumor?” asked Alvin.

I put my fist under Amy's chin, and smiled at her. “Rumors, rumors. It's sweet of you to tell me. But I'm afraid it'll be a long time before I'm ready to work again.” I looked at Alvin. “I'm going to go away,” I said. “I'm going to go back to the Mediterranean and sit there dressed in nothing but those loincloths we used to wear in Africa before the goddamn missionaries got there, and look at the sea and have some sweet girl take care of me and think about my life and walk up and down the beach
and read some of the books I've been saying I was going to read and roll in that sea and get burned in that sun and eat and eat”—Lord, how quickly I had got drunk!—“and maybe weep a little and pull myself together. But it won't be the same self. I guarantee you that.” I stood up because I didn't want Barbara to be embarrassed by suggesting that I stand up. “After that,” I said suddenly, for Barbara's sake, sober again, and smiling, “I might go back to work. Or I might join the church. Except there isn't any church.” I was not sober. I was very melancholy.

“There're a whole lot of churches, man,” Alvin said.

“Exactly my point,” I said, and straightened, really straightened this time, then bent to pick up my card and my records and my lions. “You've got to forgive me. Now, I've got to go.”

I bent, and kissed Amy on the cheek. Alvin stood, and we shook hands. Dr. Evin took the records and the card from me and Pete took the lions.

“Let's go, old buddy,” he said, and took my arm and we started for the door. But I stopped to kiss my dazzled little nurse on the forehead.

“Be good,” I said. “And come to see me soon—soon, I hope.”

“You know I will,” she said. “You know I will.” She looked dazed and radiant and cheerful—this poor little girl who had had to empty my shit and wash my ass and my cock and balls. She would touch, for many days, the spot on her forehead where I had kissed her. Her face taught me, on the instant, something of the male power and the female hope, something of the male and female loneliness, and it deepened, on the instant, my already
sufficiently bitter awareness of the bottomless and blasphemous hypocrisy of my country.

Then—as they cheered—we walked out of my room, Dr. Evin, and Barbara, and Pete, and I, down the corridor to the elevator.

“I hope we will meet again,” said Dr. Evin. “I know you know I do not mean that the way it may sound.” He smiled.

“I would like very much to see you again,” I said. “You have been very nice to me.”

“Ah! that was very difficult,” he said, and smiled again. The elevator came, and he held the door and gave the packages he carried to Pete. “Good-bye,” he said to Pete, and “Good-bye,” he said to Barbara. There was a pause. Barbara kissed him on the cheek, and Pete, heavy-laden, smiled. “Take care of yourself,” said the doctor gravely to me. Then he allowed the elevator doors to close, and we started down.

“There'll be some reporters waiting downstairs,” Pete said. “I thought it was better not to have them come up.” He grinned. “Reporters and champagne don't mix.”

“We're going to be very tyrannical,” Barbara said, “and get rid of them in a hurry. Reporters. The most loathsome parasites on earth. If they had any self-respect, they'd find a rock and crawl under it.” The elevator landed, the doors opened. She took my arm. Pete preceded us.

There they were, about ten or twelve of them, with notebooks and cameras. There was a television crew in the streets. It's impossible to describe what it feels like to be facing a gang of reporters, to have the camera's lights
flashing around your head and in your eyes. It occasions a peculiarly subtle and difficult war within oneself. In a bitter way, the fact that one is half blinded by the staccato lights is a help, for it means that one can't see anything very clearly, especially not the faces of the reporters. If one really looked into those faces, one would certainly blow one's cool. But the war I mentioned is subtle and difficult—and, at bottom, base—because everyone loves attention, loves to be thought important. Here are all these people, the innocent ego proudly contends, here to talk to you, here because of you. You are, literally, then, one among countless millions. You are news. Whatever you do is news. But it does not take long to realize, at least assuming that one wishes to live, that to be news is really to be nothing; that the attention paid to one's vicissitudes is merely the most cunning way yet devised of making the adventure of one's life a farce. He woke up this morning, or he didn't—either way, it's a story—and he brushed his teeth or he didn't, and then he peed, or didn't, and then he shit, or he couldn't, and then he fucked his wife or his broad, or he fucked his boy or his boy fucked him, or they blew each other, or they didn't—it's a story, either way, any way: it is all, all, there in the eager faces of the reporters.

“How are you, Mr. Proudhammer! Good to see you on your feet!”

“Actually,” I said, unwisely, “I'm leaning on Miss King.”

Pete took the ball, and carried it. “Mr. Proudhammer, as you know, has been ill, and we can't have him leaning on Miss King too long. So, let's get it over with, quick.”

“Would you like a chair, Mr. Proudhammer?” somebody
asked, and before I could answer somebody brought me one. I looked briefly at Barbara, who nodded, and I sat down.

“We hear you're going to do the movie
Big Deal.
Is that true?”

“I won't be working for awhile. And no one's approached me about it yet.”

“What
are
your immediate plans, Mr. Proudhammer?”

“To go away and rest.”

“Where will you go?”

“I'll be in France for awhile.”

“Why France? Any particular reason?”

“I have friends in France. One of them has a house by the sea.”

“Big
deal!
” somebody said, and they laughed. The lights flashed and flashed, their faces gaped and grinned. I don't tire easily; but I was very tired now. My God, I thought, I must have been goddamn fucking sick.

“How do you feel about that, Mr. Proudhammer?—about
Big Deal?
I mean, a few years ago, they wouldn't have dreamed of putting a Negro in that part.”

“You must forgive me. I don't know the script.”

I thought of Christopher, and I almost said, Who is this mighty
they,
and
who
and
where
is Negro? but I thought, Fuck it. What these wide-eyed, gimlet-eyed, bright-eyed cock-suckers do
not
know is about to kill them. Before my eyes.

“Well, it's a role which could be played by any actor. I mean, it's got nothing to do with race.”

Don't blow your cool, said Leo to Leo.

“Oh? Then that's a great departure for the industry. I'm honored that they thought of me.”