The Man Who Cried I Am (22 page)

She went to a nearby cabinet and opened it and pulled out a worn leather briefcase. From her purse she took a key. She laid these on a sideboard. “I will have a whiskey,” she said. “This is all too depressing, to talk of love and death in the same breath. You, a whiskey?”

Max felt his head going forward and in a panic he jerked it back up. It took him the greater part of a second to focus and see if Michelle had been watching him. No. “Yes, I'll have one,” he said. How many times had he seen junkies and cops standing within three feet of each other on Eighth Avenue and 125th Street, the junkies nodding just as he'd started to, and the cops pretending not to see.

“Water,” she said, “or soda?”

“Plain.”

First she brought the whiskey and then the briefcase. She lay the key gently in his hand. “You rather than Charlotte, Michelle?”

“Yes, of course. Yes.”

“Almost from the first, wasn't it?” Max remembered the letters: …
and man, there is this French chick, with red hair! (You had one yet?) I've never known a woman like her
…

Michelle smiled shyly. “Yes, almost from the start.” She looked into her whiskey glass. “You should have seen him
then!
” she cried fiercely, and Max saw that she was sobbing once more. Her voice began to wash back and forth over Max. Her gestures with her hands (whiskey splashing in light brown arcs) were like frightened little birds springing in a hundred different directions. Her face lighted up. She tossed her head. “He was like a breath of fresh air when he came, like the first strong smell of spring skipping along the Boulevard St-Michel. His eyes were big with seeing, and his heart, oh, Max his heart! it was big enough to catapult this world to the moon and farther! We thought him the first true American existentialist, and I will never forget what he said at a party: ‘Existentialist? what is that?' Of course, he was kidding. But two of his books, I forget which ones, made us see America through eyes we'd not used before.

“He was very much in demand. He went to many parties and came to know Jean-Paul—he had just published the second book of his
Le Chemin de la Liberté
—Simone, Albert, Jean Françoise, André.” Michelle laughed, throwing up her feet. “And at one party he met your American star, the eh, eh, the bullfight man? Yes, of course you know who I mean, but Harry would not talk to him, said, ‘No American writer can be called great unless he deals with American themes, problems and aspirations. That man could write about losers so well and not even really know any; he went here and there to find them and all the time they were right beneath his feet. Millions of them.' We needed that then, with the war not long over and Dienbienphu still before us. We needed the confidence of someone who had taken more of a beating than we, generations and generations of beatings, and who could still see
le chemin de la liberté
. So Harry was not a good existentialist and sometimes we think Jean-Paul, beneath it all, is not either. Yes, France rolled out the red carpet as you Americans say, and I met Harry at one of those parties. My husband, you remember, was quite close to the Ministry of Culture. I saw Harry's wife then and many times after. She seemed—petulant, that so many people were concerned for her husband's work and concerned for
him
. I could tell right away she was not very good for him. What do you do to writers in America?”

Michelle had had two more drinks by now, Max noticed through the soft, cottony gray cloud that waited to envelop him. Concentrate, he told himself, but he also told himself that perhaps a nap would do him good. It was still early; he would get back to Amsterdam in good time. Perhaps Michelle would even drive him there and take the train back.
Do something!
Open the case. Pandora's box, maybe. He thought he was laughing. Pandora's
box
. Were those Greeks clever! Talking all that hip Harlem trash for centuries. Pandora's
box
. Yes, indeed. How did it go: “For Pandora carried a box which she was forbidden to open; it would bring misfortune to man.” Wow, Michelle, let me open your box.

“… Max! You're not drinking!” Michelle reached for his glass and he slipped his hand over her wrist. Brown and white, he thought. Nice. She took the glass. “I'll get you another and together we'll drink one to Harry.”

“No, Michelle,” he said. He tried to rise, but gave it up and crashed softly back in his chair. The cottony gray fog now swept over him in thick, choking gusts. “No more Michelle.” He fingered the key to the case. It slid through his fingers as though it had been coated with graphite. He wanted to get a firm grip on it and he wanted to scratch himself at the same time. The nodding and the scratching—well, he knew what that was.

Hours passed, it seemed, time telescoping as if it had resigned itself to the play of mirrors. Michelle was still standing motionless, the glasses of whiskey in her hands. Max blinked. The attaché case on his legs suddenly became unbearably heavy and his knees began to quiver. The cold sweat was back, popping out on his forehead. He thought he smiled at Michelle. Finally, he thought he was putting the key in his pocket. “Michelle,” he seemed to be saying from some distance away. He cleared his throat and spoke louder. “Michelle, I must lie down for a little while.”

“Max, what is it?” She did things before she came to him. Putting the glasses down? “What is wrong? Of course you can lie down. I did not notice until now, I was so busy thinking of myself with Harry. But come.”

Max leaned on her when he finally got to his feet. He leaned on her and felt her breasts pressing into his chest. With an unsteady hand he touched one, slipped his hand around on it until he felt the nipple.

“Stop. Be a good boy, Max. Give me the case to carry.”

“I can carry it.”

They struggled up the stairs. “I hope this doesn't disturb any plans you might have made.”

“No, no, it is quite all right. Shall I get a doctor?”

“No, Michelle. I know what is wrong.”

They were near the top of the stairs now. “What?” Michelle asked, gently pushing aside the hand that sought her breasts in slow motion. They paused, breathing heavily. Max took his hand from her breast and tilted her chin to his mouth and clumsily kissed her. “What is wrong with me is what is wrong with all of us. I'm simply dying. Like you. Like everyone.”

“Shhh,” she said, helping him into the bedroom, to the bed and then removing his shoes. “Why do you make such jokes, Max? You do worry me. Another kiss, Max? Oh, Max, should we get so? A little one, Max, no more.”

Max was being washed up in it, the unzipping of her blouse, the mute struggle to unclasp the brassiere, the wide, heavy-tongued kisses and finally, the stark, white, fat breasts tumbled out and hung formlessly before him. Michelle had remained motionless, as if sensing that this was something he must do, and he sensed that and stopped. Yes, he had wanted a redhead. Tenderly, he placed her breasts back inside her blouse. He heard a long dry stroking somewhere. He listened very carefully and heard sparrows in the yard downstairs. Then he knew what the sound was, the rubbing of a giant limb against the house. Breathing deeply and not looking at him, Michelle raised herself from the bed. “It is not much good without the love, Max, is it? After a while, the clichés have meaning once again.”

“Yes, Michelle.” Pain had been riding hard between Max's buttocks, now it was subsiding. Max started to fall between the gray clouds as Michelle's voice came distantly to him. “There is an awful smell, Max. Do you smell it? Could a small animal from the garden be caught in the eaves and rotting? Max, do you think so?” She snapped her brassiere and zipped up her blouse.

“I don't know,” Max whispered.

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Sleep, Max.” Then she went out, closing the door behind her softly. He heard her going slowly down the stairs. The smell, the cancer smell of rot and death. Sort of sweet, sort of heavy, sort of like being near a corpse on a battlefield and not even seeing it. The senses, like those of a beast, remember the smell of death. Max winced in pain and fear. Now he was just like anyone else. Mortal. Stinkingly mortal. Until Michelle had spoken he had pretended that the smell was not his.

His falling was slow and he did not know whether it was from the morphine and whiskey or the inevitable cachexia or all three. Why couldn't he have died on one of those wet, naked Italian mountains? There were so many
decent
ways to die, so many
acceptable
ways to die. It would have been romantic to die of drink after Lillian. Or pills. A hunting accident. (“I thought he was a deer, Mr. Coroner.”) Starvation in the richest city of the world in the year of our Lord, 1947, the same year Harry Ames arrived in Paris like a breath of spring.

15

NEW YORK

Max had read Harry's letter in the Pork Store while he was waiting for the man to wrap up the ham hocks. Harry was having a ball in Paris. That redhead he always wrote about. And all the famous French writers he'd met. Goddamn, Max thought, I'd like to talk to that Camus. That's a tough cat. That Harry. Luck. Now Max was walking back home, through a late September sun. Pretty soon ol' Hawk would be on the scene and all these cats standing on these corners lying and crying would have their asses cut a duster. The corners would be clean. Yes, sir. You could always tell when winter came to Harlem. No
body
on the street.

Max clutched his bag containing two smoked ham hocks. His mouth watered. It was his day to eat and waiting at home was half a pot of navy beans soaking in water. He had moved to a smaller apartment. It was really a room with a small closet and even smaller bathroom. There was a sagging, high-rise bed, a battered table and two chairs and a dresser whose veneer peeled every time someone in the building slammed a door. Max's savings were gone. Whiskey, he guessed, and flowers for Lillian's grave. There was the 52–20 club money and the ten percent disability. At home Max moved to the table where his manuscript lay very near completion. He hummed. If he had found a job, he wouldn't have finished the book so quickly; the book had kept him sane. Outside, downtown, they had rejected him completely and he had crawled back into his hole. Not to die, but to begin to live any way he could. Survival, Harlem style: when the wagon comes, every swinging goes. Morals in an immoral society? Later for them. One way or the other Max Reddick was going to make do, and further, make it. Hell, he had him some beans and hocks and was going to get him some money
and
some trim later.

Max washed off the hocks and placed one in the freezer compartment. The other he placed in the pot of navy beans after he had drained the water and replaced it. He put a pack of cigarettes on the table and sat down to work. He worked until the smell of the beans and hocks came from the pot, then he rose, tasted them, added seasoning and sliced an onion into the pot. The beans were getting soft and the hock was still in one piece, although its flavor had gone through the beans and colored them a light brown. Close to an hour later when he left the typewriter again, Max removed the ham hock, rinsed it off and placed it in a saucer to cool. Later he would wrap it in aluminum foil and place it in the refrigerator to be used the next day when he made kidney beans. And when he finished the kidney beans, he would use what was left of the hock for a pot of lima beans. That single hock would keep his beans seasoned for about six days. Then he would start on the other hock, using it just as judiciously with cabbage, string beans and collard greens. Two ham hocks and less than two dollars' worth of dried and fresh groceries kept Max going for half a month.

Luxuriously, he gorged himself on the beans and bread with thick slabs of butter. He wondered if he had not been Negro if he could have survived so well in a place like New York. He lit a cigarette and lay down. It was Saturday. From somewhere in the building he could hear a ball game in progress. Soon football would take over. Max liked it when it was quiet like this. He knew people were out, walking or sitting in the parks. Weekends made him feel better because hardly anyone worked. During the week he had to fight being embarrassed because everyone else in the city, it seemed, was hustling toward work while he dragged around at home. He had got over that. Those people out there, they had their thing and he had his. That's all there was to it.

The girl came later that afternoon. Her name was Regina. Max had met her on the ship the day Harry and Charlotte left. He had gone drinking with her and her date, Bob, until Bob had to catch a train home. To his wife and children. Max and Regina had had more drinks and he took her home, made love to her and a thing of sorts was begun. Max knew that she still saw Bob. That was all right because she knew he saw other girls. When she was troubled about Bob, she came to him. He would punish her for being involved with a married man. What greater punishment could there be than to be involved with a Negro man and giving him money?

Max had already given himself a name; he was a pimp without briefcase. When you pimped without briefcase, you borrowed money from the girl and the girl knew you'd never pay it back, and chances were, every time you met you'd borrow more money. Sometimes you apologized for not being able to pay the money back and if you did this right, not only would the girl not become middle class and bitchy and dun you for the money, she might even lend you more. Later, in Europe, they would call it macking.

Regina (Max remembered) had been in a quietly belligerent mood. “Beans and hocks again,” she said. Then she sighed. “If I were coming again I'd bring you a steak.”

“You're not coming again, Regina?”

“No, not anymore. I'm not even staying over tonight.”

“I see.” Max wondered what had brought it on. He had counted on the ten bucks. “Do you want to tell me why?”

“I don't mind, Max.” She touched his hand. “You don't think I know what I'm doing, do you?”