I can tell the world,
about this!
I can tell the nations,
I’m blessed!
Tell them what Jesus,
He has done!
Tell them
the Comforter has come,
and He brought
joy, joy, joy,
unto my soul!
So there we were after all, the four of us, reunited, Julia, Jimmy, Arthur, me, bound together, as it now turned out, for life, and with the addition of Ruth, who arrived, simply, and transformed the space which had been waiting for her.
Arthur and Jimmy are in the Dey Street loft, working on “Lift Him Up,” which is one of the numbers they are doing for Christmas, at one of the great Harlem tabernacles.
I rarely visited Arthur’s Dey Street pad, not because I didn’t like it, or didn’t feel welcome there, but because it was so much more his workshop than it was his home. That’s, suddenly, a chilling way to put it; I don’t think I put it to myself that way, then. If I say, I hardly remember what it looked like, that’s because of all the time I had to spend down there, putting things in crates and boxes, closing Arthur’s eyes.
It was on the top floor of a three- or four-story building. The inferior stories were occupied by various small businesses, visibly and swiftly entering bankruptcy, if one were to judge from the faces one sometimes saw. All day long, throughout the building, motors whined and rumbled, so that the building always seemed to be purring, like some great cat. After five or six o’clock, the purring ceased, the building, and the entire neighborhood, became silent and empty. Virtually no one lived down here. This was perfect for Arthur, who could experiment as loudly as he wished all night, and indeed, for that matter, all day. His music scarcely troubled the steady industrial roar.
It was marvelously retired and peaceful on Saturday after-noons; and this is a Saturday.
Oh,
the world is hungry
for the living bread.
Arthur sings this in a low voice, standing at the window, watching the shuttered windows of the luncheonette across the street. In front of it lean two winos, white, sharing a bottle, seeming not to care about the cold, though the frayed jacket of the one and the torn, black raincoat of the other afford them absolutely no protection. Wretchedness does not, so far as Arthur has been able to tell, appear to have the power to transcend race, or, more accurately, habit: white winos travel, in the main, with whites, and blacks with blacks. They appear to be utterly oblivious to everything and everyone outside their world, are aware of others only as a means to another bottle. They are a great mystery for Arthur, he wonders what hit them so hard, so soon—for many of them are young, their youth seems tentative and frozen beneath the shining sweat and grime.
The loft stretches the entire length of the top floor, halfheartedly divided by a clothesline with a sheet draped over it. Behind this sheet is the bed: a king-size mattress on a wooden frame, close to the floor, covered, in the daytime, with a heavy dark blue blanket, and many loud pillows. There is the bathroom, and the rudiments of a kitchen lean against the far, blank wall.
Lift the Savior up,
for men to see.
In the front of the loft are Arthur’s piano, records, tape recording apparatus, sheet music, books; all more or less contained, or controlled, by a system of wooden cabinets. There is a sofa, chairs, a big table. On the walls, photographs: Paul, Florence, Arthur, me; Arthur, with some of his friends, or co-workers; Julia; and, now, of course, Jimmy; an indifferent painting or two; and posters, like theatrical posters, announcing Arthur, announcing others.
Jimmy, wearing an old green jump suit, is sitting at the piano, fooling around, but also, listening to Arthur. Arthur is in blue jeans, a sweater, and sandals, and is walking up and down, combing his hair.
Trust Him,
and do not doubt
the words that He said:
I’ll draw all men
unto Me!
And Arthur goes behind the sheet, to the bathroom, to check on his hair, and to get rid of the comb.
Jimmy continues his investigations, very peacefully, with Arthur’s tempo ringing in his head. Arthur’s tempo is the meaning of the song, Arthur’s tempo, and the key he and Jimmy strike together. Or the song is revealed as it is delivered, and by the manner in which it is delivered. Sometimes Jimmy responds to Arthur’s line—his call—by repeating it precisely, sometimes he questions or laments, sometimes he responds from close by, and, sometimes, from far away. Sometimes they both feel imprisoned by the song, leaping to go further than the song, or Arthur’s tempo, allow: then they sweat hardest, learn most. There is always a beat beneath the beat, another music beneath the music, and beyond.
Arthur comes back, his hair looking, as it should, extremely combed, and they go to work: not only on “Lift Him Up,” but on the other two numbers they are scheduled to sing for Christmas, which is, now, a little more than a week away. For a wonder, the phone does not ring, all the afternoon long, as they rehearse, call and respond, call and respond. This sound rings through the canyon of the darkening, deserted street, as night comes down.
And, if I,
be lifted,
up, from the earth,
I will draw all men
unto Me!
Around seven thirty, eight o’clock, Jimmy throws up his hands, yawns, and disappears behind the sheet, to go to the bathroom. Arthur also yawns, somewhat astonished by the hour—he has been on his feet all afternoon—walks to the window, peers through the pane into the empty street, then lights a cigarette, and throws himself on his back, on the sofa.
Jimmy returns with a beer and a Scotch. He hands the whiskey to Arthur, then sits down on the floor, the back of his head against Arthur’s knee.
He reaches for Arthur’s cigarette, uses it to light his own, then hands Arthur’s cigarette back to him.
“So—man—how you feel?”
“I feel like we moving. But sometimes, I don’t know—I’m not sure—I know where.”
Jimmy drags on his cigarette. “Yeah. Sometimes I feel that.”
Arthur pulls himself up, putting his feet on the floor, and leans forward, holding his drink between both hands.
“But I don’t mind feeling that,” says Arthur. “In fact, I dig that. It’s a little scary. But maybe, that’s what I’ve been looking for.”
“You ever think,” asks Jimmy, “of branching out from gospel?—you know, blues, ballads, all the other music you got in you.”
Arthur says, after a moment, “I’ve thought about it. People ask me that all the time.”
“No kidding. But—I’m not people.”
“Touché. But: gospel’s my home.”
Arthur says this haltingly, with wonder, as though he is translating the words as he speaks.
“Oh, come on, baby, you left home a long time ago, you ain’t nothing but a gypsy—you made me leave my happy home.” Then, he turns his head, laughing, to look into Arthur’s face—he has caught himself by surprise. “Hey, dig. For example. We could do something great with that.”
Arthur sips his whiskey, and looks at Jimmy, from a very great height.
“You. Are. Sick. Two cats, two black cats, and we supposed to be the noble motherfucking phallic savage, doing that number? Why don’t we do “What Did You See in Her?” ’
They both crack up, but Jimmy is persistent.
“Man, I am not suggesting that we turn ourselves into a freak show, and try to conquer the freak market. I’ve had my day in that market, that zoo, you didn’t get back here; believe me, a moment too soon.”
He rubs his cheek against Arthur’s knee for a second, then straightens, and sips his beer.
“But we could get away with ‘Since I Fell for You.’ You won’t be singing it to me—it’s not a Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald toothpaste ad”—they both crack up again—”it’s a recollection, a barroom confession, you’ll be singing to all the other people out there, and I’ll just be bearing
witness. Hey—listen—”
He rises, and goes to the piano. The chord he strikes echoes his introduction to “Just a Closer Walk”: for a moment, Arthur, sitting still on the sofa, is not certain he knows where Jimmy is heading. Then, the melody resolves itself, comes to the fore. Arthur moans it, sitting on the sofa—he sings the last lines:
I guess I’ll never see the light
I get the blues most every night,
since I fell for you.
Arthur’s last note is Jimmy’s last note, something like the last note struck on a drum: the piano makes no comment. But the last note continues to gather in the strangely summoned silence.
Jimmy turns on the piano bench, grinning at Arthur.
“That wasn’t too bad. We could get that together.”
“Only,” says Arthur, after a moment, “I don’t get the blues—since I fell for you.”
“Oh, shit,” says Jimmy, “I never thought of that,” and walks back to the sofa and takes Arthur in his arms.
After a moment, Arthur puts his hands on Jimmy’s shoulders, pushing him up, in order to look into his eyes.
“When you talk about the song, man, what you really mean—is—you don’t want to be consoled—you don’t want”—he laughs, but it is a very dry laugh—“no consolation.”
“Maybe,” Jimmy says, and he laughs, too, “I can’t get none.”
“If you can’t get none,” Arthur says, “you don’t want none.”
“That’s never true,” says Jimmy, and looks at Arthur, and takes him in his arms again.
And this time, Arthur holds Jimmy as though one of them is about to die. He holds on, holds on, he does not want to hurt the boy, does not really want Jimmy to feel, to bear, his weight, to endure his odors, to drown in his tears. Yet for no reason that he knows, as he holds on to Jimmy, he begins to weep great, scalding, salty tears, tears deeper than tears produced by pride, humiliation, tears deeper than any vocabulary. He does not know why he is weeping. He is astounded by the force of his tears, astounded that he cannot stop, amazed that he can weep at all, and in the arms of a boy: for Arthur, too, is the elder brother.
Jimmy curls his green, jump-suited body around Arthur’s arms and legs, puts his face against Arthur’s salty face, his fingers uncomb Arthur’s hair, he says nothing, just holds on.
Slowly, Arthur’s body ceases to shake, but he does not relax his hold on Jimmy. For a very long moment, they do not move at all. The canyon is absolutely still: proving that there can be peace in the valley.
Then Arthur looks up into Jimmy’s face.
“Hey.”
“Howdy.”
“It were mighty nice of you to take me in.”
“Weren’t a fit night out there, for man, nor mule.”
“What’d you do with my mule?”
“He over yonder. Fast asleep.”
“You sure?”
“Well—last time I looked”—and they laugh, laugh, now, as hard as Arthur cried, and in the tremendous luxury of their private space, free, on each other, to stretch out.
“You hungry?”
They laugh again.
“Come on. Be serious.”
But they keep laughing.
Yes. But what is Arthur doing, lying on his back, on the floor of the basement of that London pub?
I have tried, every which-a-way, not to go there, and yet, I haven’t tried as hard as Arthur tried, Arthur, who simply, finally, saw it coming, saw that he couldn’t avoid it, had been running toward it too long, had been alone too long, didn’t trust, really, any other condition. Jimmy came too late.
But if I say that, I’ve got, equally, to consider the possibility that Jimmy came too soon, was a part of his landscape, if not a part of his life, from the very beginning of that life. According to Arthur, he never noticed Jimmy when they were children; but he noticed him enough to be nice to him, on that far-off Sunday afternoon, when his mother slapped him. He noticed him enough for Jimmy to know that he was noticed; and who knows how that helped Jimmy through his valley? Which, furthermore, certainly, called him down too soon. Or too early, or too late. I don’t know. I’m left with what I don’t know.
It would simplify matters, perhaps, if I could say that we don’t know what we don’t want to know: but I, we, are not that simple. We know. Almost everything we do is designed to protect us from what we know: consider the uses to which we put the troublesome past tense of the verb.
So if I say, I’m left with what I don’t know, I could, equally, be saying, with tears in my eyes, I knew! But, Lord, how I hoped I didn’t know—how I hoped my hand could hold up the sky!
Well. Let us go back to the loft. There they are, on the sofa still, they are not laughing now. They are very quiet, in each other’s arms, and Dey Street is absolutely silent. Arthur or Jimmy has drawn the black monk’s-cloth blinds. The only light in the room is the light around the piano, and the very faint light, filtering through the bedsheet, from the kitchen.
Jimmy asks, “You hungry?”
Looking down into Arthur’s face, relentlessly uncombing his hair, allowing all of his weight to rest on Arthur.
“I’m starving—now that I think of it.”
“You want to go out?”
“You want to go out?”
Jimmy shifts his weight, pushing both of them deeper into the sofa, rubs his cheek against Arthur’s, murmuring, “I asked you first.”
“Shit. Do we have to go out?”
Jimmy laughs, one hand tangled in the hair at the nape of Arthur’s neck. “No. We got eggs and pork chops, some leftover red beans and rice, and a chicken wing.” He leans up. “Bread, a little stale, but I can heat it up, you know. Some beer, a little whiskey. I mean—we don’t have to go out, not unless you just want to go out.” He grins. “I can get it together, now.”
“You want me to help you?”
“I’ll nibble on the chicken wing, that’s all the help I’ll need. Ill let you set the table.”
They both laugh.
Then they both look over at the table, which is piled high with the debris of the afternoon’s work.
“Maybe,” says Arthur, “I’ll let you set the table, while I get into the pots.”
“Or,” says Jimmy, “we can eat in the kitchen, and leave all that where it is, until tomorrow—it’s all going to end up there tomorrow, anyway.”
He kisses Arthur lightly, leans up, stands up, pulling on his jump suit.
“Just lie easy till I call you, baby.” He picks up Arthur’s glass. “I’ll freshen your drink.”
And he disappears behind the bedsheet.
Arthur remains, in the dim light, on his back, on the sofa, in the loft in which, in fact, he has always lived alone. He had hoped, for a long time, that Crunch would come to visit him, even, perhaps, come to stay. Then he had begun to see that Crunch would never do this, that he could not: neither come to visit, nor come to stay. This was not because Crunch did not love him, but for a more terrible reason.
It cannot be said that he is listening, but he hears Jimmy, humming in the kitchen: somewhere, that is, behind the halfhearted partition. The melody eludes him, comes and goes, like a headache, but he knows that he has always known it.
Jimmy comes back with a fresh drink. Arthur sits up, putting his feet on the floor, and Jimmy puts his drink in his hands. Wordless, humming, he disappears again.
Arthur sits staring at the black monk’s-cloth-covered windows. There is a sound in the street, someone shouting, or singing, from far away. A car door slams, this brief, brutal blow ringing through the canyon.
Arthur rises, walks to the window, and looks through the blinds. The street is as empty as it has always been, and as silent. Well, some brutally isolated figure seems to shuffle, slowly, around the near corner, out of view; not so very far away, tourists are beginning to clamor, at the Fulton Fish Market. Chinatown is within walking distance. He knows: he has walked the distance often enough.
He scratches his chest, he sip
s his drink, and wonders if he knows enough to know that he is happy.
For he is happy, even though he feels, obscurely, that happiness is not his right, that he has no right to be happy. He does not know why he has no right to be happy, and this is why he thinks of Crunch. He was happy, once, with Crunch, as Jimmy is happy, now, with him—the tune Jimmy is humming, in his fashion, is “Didn’t It Rain,” and he has, apparently, cut up some onions to go with the pork chops on the fire.
Arthur knows, too, furthermore, that he is not Crunch, any more than he is Jimmy, or that Jimmy is the other, younger, Arthur, and that Julia cannot be a threat to their love: perhaps: insofar as he knows now, or can know now. Love takes many forms and faces, and Julia, so far as Arthur can see, loves Jimmy, and no one else.
I could have told him that the truth was rougher than that, but time, distance, speech, and ourselves, are as real, as unanswerable, as love.
Arthur, nevertheless, is astounded by his happiness. It is as though someone, by mistake, gave him a wallet containing a fortune, thinking to do him a service, persuaded that they had seen him drop it. The wallet does not belong to him: but it is in his hands now, and the friendly stranger has vanished around the wintry corner. There is no one on the street to whom he can explain his dilemma, no one, certainly, to whom he can give the wallet: indeed, he cannot stand here very much longer, like a fool, holding the wallet in his hands. He will become an occasion of sin, in others. Whether he deserves it or not, he is happy, and what can he do with the money but spend it?
He thinks of Crunch, perhaps, because—this is not the way he puts it to himself, but it is something like this wonder which holds him at the window—he has never thought of joy as being a potential of the air one breathes, or of happiness as being as simple, for example, as the light in Jimmy’s eyes when Jimmy looks at him, or Jimmy’s utterly irreplaceable walk, or the two indentations just above Jimmy’s buttocks, placed there, obviously, for Arthur’s thumbs, and for no other reason—what other reason could there possibly be? Jimmy’s teeth, and Jimmy’s grin, his many odors—which are so many signals—his stormy and sometimes weather: clouds lifting, clouds gathering, stars, planets, milky ways, moons like craters, craters like moons, the sun, daybreak, nightfall, the rising and dropping of the sea, the dialogue of planets—all, within the narrow frame of a twenty-one-year-old boy, who, furthermore, wants the world to know that he belongs to Arthur. As, indeed, he does: Arthur has enough sense to know that he cannot drop the wallet in the gutter, cannot, as others might put it, drop the money and run.