I used to come across him banging away on various street corners, a gang of loafers gathered round. Realizing he was my neighbor, these meetings always gave me rather a turn. Now, to tell the truth, he was not a bad musician—an extraordinary one, in fact, when, late of an afternoon, and for his own pleasure, he sang to his guitar, sang ghostly ballads in a grieving whiskey voice: how terrible it was for those in love.
“Hey, boy, you! You up there …” I was you, for he never knew my name, and never showed much interest in finding it out. “Come on down and help me kill a couple.”
His balcony, smaller than mine, was screened with sweet-smelling wisteria; as there was no furniture to speak of, we would sit on the floor in the green shade, drinking a brand of gin close kin to rubbing alcohol, and he would finger his guitar, its steady plaintive whine emphasizing the deep roll of his voice. “Been all over, been in and out, all around; sixty-five, and any woman takes up with me ain’t got no use for nobody else; yessir, had myself a lota wives and a lota kids, but christamighty if I know what come of any of ’em—and don’t give a hoot in hell—’cept maybe about Rhonda Kay. There was a woman, man, sweet as swamp honey, and was she hot on me!
On fire all the time, and her married to a Baptist preacher, too, and her got four kids—five, countin’ mine. Always kinda wondered what it was—boy or girl—boy, I spec. I always give ’em boys … Now that’s all a long time ago, and it happened in Memphis, Tennessee. Yessir, been everywhere, been to the penitentiary, been in big fine houses like the Rockefellers’ houses, been in and out, been all around.”
And he could carry on this way until moonrise, his voice growing froggy, his words locking together to make a chant.
His face, stained and wrinkled, had a certain deceptive kindness, a childish twinkle, but his eyes slanted in an Oriental manner, and he kept his fingernails long, knife-sharp and polished as a Chinaman’s. “Good for scratching, and handy in a fight, too.”
He always wore a kind of costume: black trousers, engine-red socks, tennis shoes with the toes slit for comfort, a morning coat, a gray velvet waistcoat which, he said, had belonged to his ancestor Benjamin Franklin, and a beret studded with Vote for Roosevelt buttons. And there is no getting around it—he did have a good many lady friends—a different one each week, to be sure, but there was hardly ever a time when some woman wasn’t cooking his meals; and on those occasions when I came to visit he would invariably, and in a most courtly fashion, say, “Meet Mrs. Buddy.”
Late one night I woke with the feeling I was not alone; sure enough, there was someone in the room, and I could see him in the moonlight on my mirror. It was he, Mr. Buddy, furtively opening, closing bureau drawers, and suddenly my box of pennies splattered on the floor, rolled riotously in all directions. There was no use pretending then, so I turned on a lamp, and Mr. Buddy looked at me squarely, scarcely fazed, and grinned. “Listen,” he said, and he was the most sober I’d ever seen him. “Listen, I’ve got to get out of here in a hurry.”
I did not know what to say, and he looked down at the floor, his face turning slightly red. “Come on, be a good guy, have you got any money?”
I could only point to the spilt pennies; without another word he got down on his knees, gathered them and, walking very erectly, went out the door.
He was gone the next morning. Three women have come around asking for him, but I do not know his whereabouts. Maybe he is in Mobile. If you see him around there, R., won’t you drop me a card, please?
I want a big fat mama, yes yes! Shotgun’s fingers, long as bananas, thick as dill pickles, pound the keys, and his foot, pounding the floor, shakes the café. Shotgun! The biggest show in town! Can’t sing worth a damn, but man, can he rattle that piano—listen: She’s cool in the summer and warm in the fall, she’s a four-season mama and that ain’t all … There he goes, his fat mouth yawning like a crocodile’s, his wicked red tongue tasting the tune, loving it, making love to it; jelly, Shotgun, jelly-jelly-jelly. Look at him laugh, that black, crazy face all scarred with bullet-shot, all glistening with sweat. Is there any human vice he doesn’t know about? A shame, though … Hardly any white folks ever see Shotgun, for this is a Negro café.
Last year’s dusty Christmas decorations color the peeling arsenic walls; orange-green-purple strips of fluted paper, dangling from naked light bulbs, flutter in the wind of a tired fan; the proprietor, a handsome quadroon with hooded milk-blue eyes, leans over the bar, squalling, “Look here, what you think this is, some kinda charity? Get up that two-bits, nigger, and mighty quick.”
And tonight is Saturday. The room floats in cigarette smoke and Saturday-night perfume. All the little greasy wood tables have double rings of chairs, and everyone knows everyone, and for a moment the world is this room, this dark, jazzy, terrible room; our heartbeat is Shotgun’s stamping foot, every joyous element of our lives is focused in the shine of his malicious eyes. I want a big fat mama, yes yes! He rocks forward on his stool, and as he lifts his face to look straight at us, a great riding holler goes up in the night: I want a big fat mama with the meat shakin’ on her, yes!
NEW YORK (1946)
It is a myth, the city, the rooms and windows, the steam-spitting streets; for anyone, everyone, a different myth, an idol-head with traffic-light eyes winking a tender green, a cynical red. This island, floating in river water like a diamond iceberg, call it New York, name it whatever you like; the name hardly matters because, entering from the greater reality of elsewhere, one is only in search of a city, a place to hide, to lose or discover oneself, to make a dream wherein you prove that perhaps after all you are not an ugly duckling, but wonderful, and worthy of love, as you thought sitting on the stoop where the Fords went by; as you thought planning your search for a city.
Have seen Garbo twice in the last week, once at the theater, where she sat in the next seat, and again at a Third Avenue antique shop. When I was twelve I had a tiresome series of mishaps, and so stayed a good deal in bed, spending most of my time in the writing of a play that was to star the most beautiful woman in the world, which is how I described Miss Garbo in the letter accompanying my script. But neither play nor letter was ever acknowledged, and for a long time I bore a desperate grudge, one which was indeed not dispelled until the other night when, with an absolute turning over of the heart, I identified the woman in the adjoining seat. It was surprising to find her so small, and so vividly colored: as Loren MacIver pointed out, along with those lines one scarcely expects color, too.
Someone asked, “Do you suppose she is at all intelligent?,” which seems to me an outrageous question; really, who cares whether or not she is intelligent? Surely it is enough that such a face could even exist, though Garbo herself must have come to regret the rather tragic responsibility of owning it. Nor is it any joke about her wanting to be alone; of course she does. I imagine it is the only time she does not feel alone: if you walk a singular path, you carry always a certain grief, and one does not mourn in public.
Yesterday, at the antique store, she roamed around, quite intent about everything, not really interested in anything, and for one mad moment I thought I might speak to her, just to hear her voice, you know; the moment passed, thank heaven, and presently she was out the door.
I went to the window and watched her hurrying along the blue dusk street with that long, loping step. At the corner she hesitated, as if uncertain which direction she wanted. The street lights went on, and a trick of glare created suddenly on the avenue a blank white wall: wind lashing her coat, and alone, Garbo, still the most beautiful woman in the world, Garbo, a symbol, walked directly toward it.
Lunch today with M. Whatever is one to do about her? She says the money is gone finally, and unless she goes home, her family refuse absolutely to help. Cruel, I suppose, but I told her I did not see the alternative. On one level, to be sure, I do not think going home possible for her. She belongs to that sect most swiftly, irrevocably trapped by New York, the talented untalented; too acute to accept a more provincial climate, yet not quite acute
