“He probably is, but you can’t go back there. Eaton’ll throw you out on your ear.”
At the side of the table appeared Taft Eaton, still fuming. “Goddamn it, Mary, I can’t serve you. If the cops find you in here they’ll close the Wren.”
“Say I came in to use the john,” she murmured. Pretending to ignore him, she began sliding out of her coat.
Eaton glowered at Nitz, who sat picking a bit of thread from his sleeve. “Don’t you buy her anything. Contributing to the delinquency of minors—you and Carleton. You ought to be in jail.” Taking her by the scruff of the neck, he said in her ear, “You ought to stay with your own race, where you belong.”
Then he was gone, leaving Mary Anne to massage the back of her neck. “Drop dead,” she muttered. It hurt, and she felt humiliated. But then, gradually, the pain left; and the need of Tweany resumed its usual dominance. “I’m going back and see if he’s there.”
“He’ll be out,” Nitz assured her. “Sit still…you and your hurry. Relax.”
“I’ve got things to do. Where was he last night?”
“He was here.”
“I don’t mean here; I mean afterward. I went over to his pad at two-thirty and he wasn’t home. He was out.”
“Maybe so.” Nitz dragged his chair around and returned to the listening couple. “Look at it this way, lady,” he said, addressing the woman, a plump, somewhat pretty blonde. “Would you call Stephen Foster’s stuff folk music?”
The blonde considered at excessive length. “No, I guess not. But it was based on folk themes.”
“That’s my point. Folk music is not what you have, but how you go about it. Nobody can plop himself down and write a folk song; and nobody can get up in white tie and tails in some plush cocktail lounge and sing a folk song.”
“Does anybody sing folk music, then?”
“Not now. But they did, once. They sang, they added verses, they put together new material constantly.”
She became aware of the nature of their discussion. It had to do with Tweany, and they were attacking him. “Don’t you think he’s a great folksinger?” she demanded, addressing the blonde. In her world, loyalty was a vital pillar. She could not understand this veiled undercutting of a friend; it seemed her responsibility to defend him. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I’ve never heard him. We’re still waiting.”
“I’m not talking about Tweany,” Nitz said, evidently aware of his moral lapse. “Not particularly, I mean. I’m talking about folk music in general.”
“But this Tweany is a folksinger,” the blonde said. “So where does he stand?”
Nitz uneasily sipped his drink. “It’s hard to say. I’m just the intermission pianist…a mortal.”
“You don’t like his stuff,” the blonde’s companion said with a knowing wink.
“I’m a bop player.” Nitz reddened and avoided the girl’s accusing glare. “To me, folk music is like Dixie: a dead horse. It stopped growing back in the days of James Merritt Ives. Show me a folk song that’s come down since then.”
She was quite angry now; the need to defend Tweany, to keep the greatness of him intact, made her bristle and say: “What about ‘Ol’ Man River’?” Tweany sang “Ol’ Man River” at least once a night, and it was one of her favorites.
At that, Nitz grinned. “See what I mean? ‘Ol’ Man River’ was written by Jerome Kern.”
He broke off, because at that moment there was applause, and Carleton Tweany appeared on the raised platform. Instantly, the girl forgot Nitz, forgot the blonde and everything else. The conversation fell into a vacuum.
“Excuse me,” Nitz murmured. He crawled back to his piano, dwarfed, she observed, by the huge figure of Tweany.
“For my first number,” Tweany rumbled in his furry singsong, “I will sing a work that expresses the bitter terror of the Negro people in their ages of bondage. You may have heard it before.” He paused. “‘Strange Fruit.’”
A flutter of excitement stirred the room as Nitz picked out a few opening chords. And then, his arms folded, his head down, forehead wrinkled in contemplation, Tweany began. He did not raise his voice or shout; he did not bellow or snarl or shake his fist. Thoughtful, deeply moved, he spoke directly to the people around him; it was a highly personal communication and not a concert rendition.
When he had finished telling them the story of life in the South, there was silence. Nobody clapped; the people clustered around waited with fearful expectancy, as Tweany considered his next communication.
“My people,” he murmured, “have suffered greatly in their chains and tribulations. Their lot has not been a happy one. But the Negro can sing about his privations. This is a song from the heart of the Negro people. In it he expresses his deeply felt sufferings, but, at the same time, his genuine humor. He is, innately, a happy person. What he wants is the simple things of life. Enough to eat, a place to sleep, and most important, a woman.”
Carleton Tweany thereupon sang “Got Grasshoppers in My Pillow, Baby, Got Crickets All in My Meal.”
Mary Anne listened tensely, following every word, her eyes on the man a few feet from her. In the last months she had not been close to Tweany; except for these public moments, she had seen little of him She wondered if he was singing to her; she tried to find in his words some special reference to herself and things they had done together. Bland and withdrawn, Tweany continued to sing, not noticing her, apparently unaware of her.
Beside her the blonde listened, too. Her companion was uninterested; sunk down in a brooding heap, he squeezed and pressed a piece of wax that had dripped from the candle.
“For my last number,” Tweany declared when he had finished, “I shall sing a composition that has found special favor in the hearts of Americans, both Caucasian and Negro. It is a song that unites all of us in memories as we near the moment in which we celebrate the birth of One Who died to redeem us all, whatever our race, whatever our color.”
Half-closing his eyes, Tweany sang “White Christmas.”
At the piano, Paul Nitz plunked chords dutifully. Mary Anne, as she listened to the tune grind along, wished she could tell what was in the minds of the two men. Nitz, hunched over at the keys, seemed merely bored—as if he were pushing a broom, she reflected. She felt indignation at Nitz’s betrayal of artistry. Was that all it meant to him? As if he were on an assembly line…she hated him for betraying Tweany. It was an insult to Tweany; he could show some feeling. And Tweany—what, if anything, was he thinking?
It seemed, almost, as if there was a cynical smile on Tweany’s face, an emptiness that could have been the most muted kind of contempt. But contempt for whom? For the song? But he had picked it. For the people listening? As he sang—or rather muttered out the lyrics—Tweany’s expression began to undergo a metamorphosis. The detachment began to fade; in its place appeared a fervor. His voice took on a throbbing sublimity, a grandeur that grew until he appeared to be vibrating with pain. There was no doubting his emotions: Tweany loved the song. He was terribly moved. And he was communicating that to the audience.
When he had finished there was once more the interval of silence, and then the applause exploded wildly. Tweany stood, shaken, his face impassioned. Then, gradually, grief sank and the half-cynical listlessness returned. Tweany shrugged, straightened his expensive hand-painted necktie, and stepped to the floor.
“Tweany!” Mary Anne called shrilly, jumping to her feet. “Where were you last night? I came over and you weren’t home.”
With a faint twitch of his eyebrows—two lines of expressive, cultivated black—Tweany acknowledged her existence. He stepped over to the table and stood for a moment with his hand on the chair Nitz had vacated.
The blonde said: “Why don’t you join us?”
“Thank you,” Tweany replied. He rotated the chair and seated himself. “I’m tired.”
“Don’t you feel good?” Mary Anne asked, concerned; he did look wilted.
“Not so good.?
??
Nitz dropped down beside him and said: “I hate that goddamn ‘White Christmas’ worse than any other tune in the business. The joker that wrote that should be shot.”
Sadness overcame Tweany. “Oh?” he murmured. “Do you feel that?”
Sipping his drink, Nitz said: “What do you know about the sufferings of the Negro people? You were born in Oakland, California.”
The blonde, to Mary Anne’s annoyance, leaned forward and addressed Tweany. “That song about grasshoppers…that’s an old Leadbelly tune, isn’t it?”
Tweany nodded. “Yes, Leadbelly used to sing that, before he passed away.”
“Did he record it?”
“He did,” Tweany said absently. “But it’s not available now. It’s more or less a collector’s item.”
“Maybe Joe has it,” the blonde said to her companion.
“Ask him,” her companion said, without enthusiasm. “You’re in there enough.”
The discussion of folk music resumed, and Mary Anne managed to catch Tweany’s attention.
“You didn’t say where you were last night,” she said accusingly.
A cunning smile settled over Tweany’s face; the usual film glazed his eyes until they were a dulled, dispassionate gray. “I was busy. I’ve been rather occupied, the last few weeks.”
“Months, you mean.”
Half-listening to Nitz and the blonde rambling on about Blind Lemon Jefferson, Tweany asked: “How’s the Pacific Tel and Tel?”
“Lousy.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
In a clear voice Mary Anne informed him, “I’m going to quit.”
“Already?”
“No. Not until I have something else. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“You wish you were back at the furniture place? Ask them—they’ll take you back.”
“Don’t kid me. I wouldn’t go back there on a bet.”
“Suit yourself.” Tweany shrugged. “It’s your life.”
“Why did you throw me out when I came to you that day?”
“I didn’t throw you out. I don’t recall doing that.”
“You wouldn’t let me move my things over. You made me keep a separate address, and after a week you wouldn’t let me stay all night. I had to get up and leave—that’s what I call being thrown out.”
He regarded her with wonder. “Are you out of your mind? You know the situation. You’re under age. It’s a felony.”
“If it’s a felony to do it at three o’clock in the morning, it’s a felony to do it in the afternoon.”
“I thought you understood.”
“If it’s a felony—”
“Keep your voice down,” Tweany said, with a glance at Nitz and the couple. Now they were involved in a discussion of contemporary atonal experiments. “That was only—now and then. Not a thing they could catch.”
“Now and then? Temporary?”
She was furious, really furious. Because she remembered what it was convenient for him to forget: that specific day he had taken her into his apartment, the two of them lost among the clutter that filled the rooms, two living creatures bedded together among the pack rat’s hoard. And the hot summer sun baking the flies that crept up the windowpanes…lying, the two of them, slippery with sweat, covered by nothing, spread out on the bed with the glare blinding them into an indolent, careless stupor.
There, in that high loft, they had eaten their breakfast, had shared the old bathtub, had cooked and ironed, had roamed naked through the rooms, playing the little piano, had sat, in the evening, listening to the radio, staring into the red button of its dial light, the two of them combined on the couch, on the sagging, dust-sodden couch.
Although, according to Tweany, she was not much good that way. She had learned—been taught—to rest her weight on her shoulder blades and not on her coccyx; that way she could raise her hips higher. But other than purely muscular tensions, she had developed no responses; the experience brought her nothing, and nothing was what she gave back.
It was, to her, very like the time the doctor had stuck his metal probe into her nose to break off a polyp. The same pressure, the same too-large physical unit forcing its way inside her; then pain, and a little blood, and the crickets chirping in the grass of the yard below the window.
Tweany said she was no good: small and bony and frigid. Gordon, of course, had no opinion; he expected nothing but concavity, and that was what he got: no more and no less.
“Tweany,” Mary Anne said, “you can’t pretend we haven’t been—”
“Don’t get upset,” Tweany said silkily. “You’ll get ulcers.”
Mary Anne leaned toward him until her small, tight face was almost touching his. “What have you been doing the last two months?”
“Absolutely nothing. Except my art.”
“You’re staying with somebody. You’re never at home; I waited one night all night and you didn’t show up. You didn’t come home.”
Tweany shrugged. “I was visiting.”
Next to them, the discussion had become heated. “I never heard of that,” Nitz was saying.
“You could have,” the blonde told him. “Don’t you have a radio? Every Wednesday night Joe has a program over that San Mateo good-music station. Listen to that. He writes up his material; he likes to do it all himself.”
“I tried listening to that stuff,” Nitz said, “but I can’t get with it. It’s—old.”
Lapsing into silence, Mary Anne withdrew into her own thoughts; the conversation meant nothing to her.
“It’s not old. It’s still going on; the same material you’re doing, only they don’t call it by the same name. Milhaud, up in Oakland. And Roger Sessions is at Berkeley; go listen to him. Sid Hethel is at Palo Alto; he’s about the best there is. Joe knows him…they’re old friends.”
“I thought it was nothing but Mozart,” Nitz said.
The blonde continued: “On Sunday, when the shop is closed, Joe has a two-hour record concert. You should go.”
“You mean people just walk in?”
“Fifteen or so people show up. He plays atonal, early baroque, whatever they want.” With a flicker of her blue eyes she glanced up at Tweany. “I saw you there; you showed up once.”
“That’s so,” Tweany admitted. “You brought out a tray of coffee for us, halfway through.”
“Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Very much. That’s an extraordinary shop he has.”
“What’s that?” Mary Anne said sharply. She woke up, then: the conversation had ceased to be abstract. Now it was dealing with reality, and she began to pay attention.
“The new record shop,” Tweany said.
Mary Anne turned to confront the blonde. “Do you know that man?” she demanded, recalling in a rush the record shop, the looming shape of the man with his vest and gold watch and tweed suit.
“Joe?” The blonde smiled. “Oh, yes. We’re old friends of Joe’s.”
“Where’d you meet him?” She experienced a kind of horror, as if she were being told about some personal crime.
“In Washington, D.C.”
“You’re from out of town, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” the blonde said.
“He’s really on the level!” Her distress was real, again. But after four months it no longer had the same urgency. It had thinned as it receded into time; it was not immediate.
“Joe has been in the music business all his life,” the blonde said. “His aunt sold harps in Denver during the Spanish-American War. Joe worked for Century Music in New York, in the twenties. Before you were born.”
Brooding, Mary Anne said: “I don’t like it in there.”
“Why not?”
“It gives me the creeps.” Not wishing to discuss it, Mary Anne said to Tweany: “When are you going to leave? Are you doing another set or not?”
Tweany pondered. “I believe I’ll go lie down. No, I won’t do another set. I’ve done enough for tonight.”
The blonde was still studying Mary Anne with interest. “What do you mean? Why do you say that about Joe’s store?”
Struggling, Mary Anne answered: “It’s not the store.” That was certainly true; she had loved the store.
“Did something happen?”
“No, nothing.” She shook her head irritably. “Forget it, will you?” All at once the fear came back, and she said to Tweany: “Do you really go in there?”
“Certainly,” Tweany said.
It seemed difficult to believe. “But that’s the man I told you about.”
Tweany had no comment.
“Did—you like him?” Mary Anne asked.
“A gentleman,” Tweany stated. “We had quite an interesting talk about Bascom Lamar Lunsford. He played an ancient Lunsford record for me, cut around 1927. From his private collection.”
Bewildered by this double set of images, Mary Anne said: “You never told me you went in there.”
“Why? What’s the importance?” Tweany seemed unconcerned. “I go wherever I care to.”
Paul Nitz could no longer keep quiet. “You suppose he’d give me a few pointers?” he asked.
“Joe has worked with a number of young musicians,” the blonde said. “He gave me a great deal of help—he got some pieces of mine published. Right now he’s plugging a kid he heard singing up in San Francisco at one of the North Beach joints; he’s been taping his routine and trying to get one of the lp companies to press it.”
“Chad Lemming,” her companion said.
“What sort of approach does he represent?” Tweany asked with professional interest.
“Chad does political monologues,” the blonde said. “With a guitar. Sort of rhymed commentaries on the present state of affairs. Thought control, Senator McCarthy, topics like that. Would you care to hear him?”
“I suppose,” Tweany said.
The blonde got promptly to her feet. “Come along, then.”
“Where?”
“He’s at our place—he’s staying with us until he goes back up the peninsula. He’ll only be down here a few days.”
Mary Anne watched with dismay the response of Carleton Tweany. What was happening was obvious, but she could think of nothing to do. And then Nitz, mild, eyes half-shut, came to her rescue. “You’ve got another set, man,” he said.