The Fugitivities Read online

  Nathaniel lightly touched his shoulder, not too hard, but with enough pressure to make sure the boy would feel his hand through his coat.

  “Hey, kid.”

  The boy moaned.

  “Look at me.”

  Jonah turned over, his face nearly plastic from dehydration.

  “Where the fuck am I?”

  “You in my house. So let’s get one thing straight. You follow my rules. And I only got three. Rule number one: Watch your mouth. Only person that cusses in this house is me. Keep that up, and you’ll find your way out my door with my foot in your ass. Rule number two: This ain’t a flophouse. Don’t mess with none of my furniture. You get yourself together and stay off my rug.”

  Jonah sat up. The full force of head-spin and nausea hit him with a wrenching dizziness. “Okay, okay,” he said. “What…what’s rule number three?” he asked, swallowing back a hint of bile rising in his throat.

  “Rule number three: When I ask questions, I better get straight answers. I saved your ass from a long night in the Tombs—you can thank me later. For now, we gon’ get you back on your feet so you can go about your business. And while we’re doing that, you best keep in mind that you a guest in my house. I did you a favor, so you better do as I say. Don’t give me no lip, and don’t get any ideas. Here, take this Advil. Bathroom is down the hall on your right.”

  Jonah returned feeling less nauseated. His head raged with pain, particularly behind his eyes. There were other pains on his body too, bruising pains he’d have to locate later. His large host offered him a tall, greenish beverage.

  “What is this?”

  “That there is the good stuff. I call it Nate-o-rade, it’s a secret recipe. Gets you squared away quick, never lets me down.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Nathaniel. You can call me Nate. You’re Jonah.”

  “How did yo—”

  “Cause I’m Kojak, black. It’s called photo ID. In your wallet.”

  “Right, sure. And you make your own Gatorade—you into fitness and stuff?”

  “Fitness? Man, I learned to make this shit before Gatorade even existed. I was a pro athlete, fourteen years shooting hoops in the league. Didn’t you notice?”

  Nate gestured at the photos and plaques on the wall. Jonah had vaguely registered the museum-like clutter but hadn’t mentally brought the content into focus. Now he stood up gingerly and gazed around the room. There his host was, in a Celtics jersey, suspended in midair, going for a layup, a defender with outstretched arms trailing behind him; and there, dribbling with spiderlike angularity; standing with fans and celebrities, holding a trophy of a man helping his teammate up.

  “What award is that?”

  “Teammate of the Year. Got that during my final year on the court.”

  “And when was that?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “Why did you leave? You don’t look that old.”

  “Blew out my knee. Any other questions?”

  “What do you do now?”

  “Coach.”

  “A lot of ballplayers seem to go right into coaching.”

  “This is more of a new development. I went overseas for a while after I retired.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “France.”

  “No shit! Oh, sorry…I guess what’s funny is that I’m from Paris…well, kind of. I mean, I’m American, but I grew up there.”

  “No shit? So what you back in New York for?”

  “My life was too easy, I guess. I was just watching movies all day. I sort of had a girlfriend, but, well…it’s complicated.”

  “Sounds cushy. Why did you leave?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I do—but it’s hard to explain.”

  “We got time.”

  As the young man got to talking, Nate examined him closely: the lightness in the eyes, his bony frame, the odd accent. Jonah. An errant prophet washed ashore. What had overcome him to pick this boy up and bring him home? Was it his spiritual thing, his compassion? Was it refusing to see another young brother get taken to jail like that? Whatever the reason, Nate concluded that Jonah’s appearance was significant, a crosscurrent in the flow. It was instinctual; there was something about the young man that made him want to know more. He let Jonah talk (the brother loved to talk), and now he was going on about the situation he had left in Paris. And the things he was saying convinced Nate in the rightness of his thinking. Because the words spoken in his living room were taking him back, way back, across the ocean to that same city, to that place and time in his life that he could never entirely forget, but that he thought, at least he had once, that he’d left behind for good.

  * * *

  When Jonah spoke, the words rushed out of him and Nate struggled to keep pace as the young teacher bolted through sentences like hopscotch boxes, quick in his form, leaving a pattern in the air that was easy to see but hard to follow.

  He told Nate about the work of a projectionist, the one who operates behind the scenes to bring the movie to light. There was always a moment before a screening when Jonah was alone. He would catch himself scheming, coming up with some fantastic occurrence that might indefinitely prolong his stay in the funk of the little booth. It was a space of half-lights, murky and warm. He enjoyed threading the film quickly and efficiently through its zigzag of sprockets and gates. If something went wrong, the film could get caught, a nightmare scenario that any projectionist worth their salt would prevent at all costs. Only when the picture was up could he feel his blood relax, and his mind begin to idle. In the booth he could see and not be seen. The eyes reached out across the dark where the stories rose and fell in the alphabet of variable light. A dry oven-like heat radiated from the lamphouse. The fractious chatter of rotors and film reels generated a gentle dharmic drone. The bulky frame of the mid-century projector loomed overhead like a mammoth lately fossilized; one of those vanished beasts that went down to drink of cool water at the Seine, whose bones came up when they dug out the tunnels of the Métro.

  Jonah had taken the job fully aware of how it would look. Film was on its way out; the fact that it was dying gave it an old-world authenticity that made it all the more attractive. He had been aware from a very young age that everything cool was archaic, defunct, retro. If it had handles, bulbs, dials, all the better. It was a way of styling yourself as not entirely on board with the futurists, the programmer dorks who had grown up friendless and who had since secured their revenge by ascending to positions of unfathomable power and wealth. They still couldn’t dance, but it didn’t matter. They were remaking the entire world in their image. They wrote the code and the rest would have to follow it. Like them, Jonah had been born just early enough to see something of the previous world before it disappeared, enough to have a nostalgic attachment that was useful only insofar as it could be converted into quaint mementos of that lost world, notes of tasteful decay or bygoneness. Landing a gig as a projectionist seemed like the most successful thing he could have done, at least in that regard.

  But the job wasn’t necessarily as easy as it looked. In the tiny Parisian movie houses, the projectors were cranky old machines, and one needed a nimble hand just to keep them going. The film came on platters like shellfish. He shucked them, holding the strips up like X-rays, pinching them carefully along the sides, looking for damage and dust, for splices or punctures along the soundtrack. There was an absorbed solemnity to the work. The ultimate test was in motion; he waited for the cue marks on the flying filmstrip, those bright cigar burns in the corner, enjoining the projector to bring two pieces of the story together. His heart rate slowed as the moment to change reels approached. He imagined a single frame on its Z-shaped voyage, around the big platter, up to the roller, then down to the film gate, where the intermittent sprocket held them, one by one, twenty-four times every second, each slice of light a still pictu
re, like the frozen gestures of the saints projected daily by the sun through the oculi of the cathedrals.

  One evening, he learned that his assignment was to project a documentary about an obscure jazz pianist. He had never heard of the film or the director or its subject; likely it had screened once at Deauville before getting dumped on them by one of those obscure cultural functionaries who followed the seasonal junkets across the globe. The titles scrolled, and the name of the subject appeared in a bold, modern font: Quiet Genius: The Life and Music of Phineas Newborn, Jr.

  He checked his watch and called down to the office. They were ready. He set the action in motion. The film leader wound through the reel, sending a crazed scribble across the screen. With a soft pop, the picture came up.

  Jonah squinted in the viewfinder and sharpened the focus. With a sudden self-conscious check, he realized he was looking into the grain of a black man’s skin, right about his neck. He looked up from the viewfinder at the face staring back over the shadowy rows. On the screen he took in the man’s smooth brown facial features, boyish, shy, an aristocratic demeanor and a faint trace of anxiety in the expressive eyes framed by a pair of thick, horn-rimmed glasses. A fine trace of sweat glistened on his brow. Phineas. The musician gazed down at his instrument, the flight of keys reflected in his lenses.

  Just then the senior projectionist, a man named André, came in to check the feed on the projector.

  “Salut, Joe,” said André.

  He called Jonah Joe, like so many other French people did—happily and over Jonah’s objections. His passport read Jonah Raymond Winters. His parents sometimes called him Ray, and sometimes J.R. Joe was the diminutive of Joseph, not Jonah. André didn’t seem to care.

  André snapped some technical questions at him as he patted his rail-thin body down in search of tobacco. He wanted to know if Jonah knew anything about le grand jazzman. Without hesitating, Jonah lied. It was a reflex—he always lied if asked about something he didn’t know about black culture. He knew they would never dare to call him on it. André invited him to come down to the lobby for a drink once the picture was up and running. Jonah quickly explained that he wanted to keep a close eye on the feed, which, truthfully, had been somewhat finicky that week. André appeared pinched, or simply baffled, and abruptly left.

  Jonah trained his eyes back on the screen, where Phineas was now playing piano. From time to time, the camera cut to focus on his hands. Massive black fingers filled the screen, rising and falling on the ivories. A heavily accented voiceover described a tumultuous life in decline, a squandered talent. A montage sequence revealed the musician’s unraveling, falling prey to inebriation, predisposed to mental breakdown. Still photographs drifted in hesitant suspension. Down and out in New York, Memphis, Philadelphia. In this sequence, there was no music, and the only sound in the theater was the flutter of the projector itself.

  The movie ended with an interview, a coda of sorts. An interviewer with a thick Italian accent asked, “Mr. Newborn, you have many fans here in Europe. Tell us about your first solo European tour. What did you think of it?” Now Phineas spoke, and his granular Southern voice reached out and seized hold of Jonah in his booth.

  Well, I always did dream of arriving one day in a city. Some place far away from America. Some place where nobody would know my name and I wouldn’t know nobody else and I could just be who I am, the finest pianist that ever came out of Tennessee. When I recollect those days, what I think of is how fast everything happened at that time in my life. Like I was no more than a little flea caught up in some mighty circus. That’s how I think on it now. But you can’t imagine the feeling, at the time, what it was to make that trip. Where I was coming from. I remember arriving in Europe. I can see it clear as yesterday. Boy, I knew I had arrived, too. I’d made it, and with a recording contract to my name. And over there, the women and the men all dressed so nice, but best of all nobody asked me my business like I had none. And no “colored” water fountains. I could walk down the swankiest boulevard just as tall as the next man. I really felt so blessed to be alive. But you know, I think maybe it’s always like that when you arrive for the first time in a city, the shock of things could be different. Like hearing Bud Powell for the first time. See, I never think of a city without thinking of music. For me there’s no Paris without hearing Bud. So every new city is an opportunity to change your ear. You might catch the light in the trees more. The rhythms of life arrive with a strange off-kilter sensation, and the artist has to try and make something of this new arrangement, to catch the changing signs of the new world in their flight.

  Could you tell us, Mr. Newborn, what year was this?

  That was nineteen hundred fifty-eight. I had released Phineas’ Rainbow, and the people at RCA wanted me to do a European tour to promote the album abroad.

  What about your early life? You had a difficult relationship with your father, yes? Could you tell us some things about that?

  My father was a musician. But my father used to say, “You got to walk the valley by yourself.” I truly believe he hated the idea of me getting into music like he did, but I never had it in me to give something up if I liked it, and I loved playing music from the day I was born. I’d say I got my stubbornness from him. Sure, between us, it wasn’t always easy, you know? But it wasn’t in him to back down, to give up, to settle. He was the one who told me, “You just remember, boy, none of your forefathers never jumped off no slave ship.” He was a tough man. Had to be. Born down in Georgia in the Reconstruction. A terrible time, and we see how it still is. The whites were stringing black folk up in trees and they might set you on fire for any damn thing. When I was a boy, I remember folks talking about Elbert Williams. He had started working to help the blacks vote in our area and before long they found his body face down in the Hatchie. Well, I never thought about it as something that could change. Other than music it was all I knew. Father was a music man, a drummer known all round Memphis. Made a name for himself good enough that he figured mine should be the same as his. I remember how him and Tuff Green would come stomping through the house after a night at the juke and my mother would cuss the both of them out till they were forced onto the porch. They would keep on hollerin’ back and forth for hours it seemed and I lay awake listening through the walls. They might be playing off the banister or a chair with a wooden spoon or just clapping their hands and that was better than transistor radio. Sometimes they would get to singing an old blues number or a jug-band tune. That was like water to me and I took to it. Beale Street was right there in my house. Jelly Roll was my little night music. My father he trained me to follow in his footsteps and work in his band. But I knew that I wanted to make my own way and to do that I would have to be better than good and get noticed out east in the big cities. So I put my two little hands together and I prayed. I asked the Lord if He would only let me I was going to become the greatest piano player Memphis had ever seen.

  You mentioned Jelly Roll Morton. Who are some of your other influences?

  How much time you got? Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Ellington. The great Ahmad Jamal. But of them all, I most admired Art Tatum. The only smart thing I ever heard a critic say—and this was a white critic, mind you—he said, “When you listen to Art, you feel like a bird-watcher who stumbles across a sky full of kingfishers.” That stayed with me. Now, you know, Art was very nearly blind. From birth, I believe. But he could see music clear as sunshine. Far as I know he never practiced, never needed to read a sheet of music. He just sat down and played. It was like the notes were there for him all the time, like he could see them all at once. As a musician, you didn’t want to go up after him. It wouldn’t make sense. He didn’t leave nothing for you. Anything you could think of he already knew it, and he had the sweetest rhythmic understanding of the instrument I ever heard. No one, I mean no one, could play like Art. I don’t believe anyone ever will.

  What about yo
urself? What is unique about your style?

  Let me play you something, let’s see…You hear that? That’s Billy Strayhorn. See, I can get that color because Strayhorn is a genius and he’s in love with the sound. Then all I need is for the keys to be ready, and then you’ve got to be ready for them. That ways you bring kindness to the hammers as they fall. You keep them yearning at all times. That’s why the sound you hear is what we call lush, the way Billy wanted it. Now I could be playing in Rome or Los Angeles, it don’t matter; when I’m ready, I’ll always be sitting right there in my old house in Whiteville, Tennessee. Where you can hear the locomotives of the L&N goin’ down the line and the voices of my aunties and uncles talking about the rent man and cooking up the fish fry. To me that’s what style is. It’s the presence that lives around the notes, the part of your playing that tells the listener this is how my music sees the world, how it lives in it. It’s like what happened one night when I was playing a gig in Copenhagen. After the show, I see these two cats with horns waiting for me; it was Albert Ayler and Don Cherry. They had come to see me play so I invited them up. And I’ll never forget this, Albert came on the bandstand and started doing a spiritual. And I heard this sound. It had that unbroken fire, the way before you become known, when you’re still practicing, woodshedding as we like to call it, there’s this naturalness, this fearlessness, before you’re discovered by the commercial world and they put you in that whole mess. Well, I could hear it in the man’s sound, all that love. And to me, it was like the Word came back, and I had that feeling of when I was very young and my parents would take us on Sundays to church. And it’s this feeling you get in a Baptist, holy-type church, when everyone feels the Spirit in the room, and people become happy, they call it. And some people even speak tongues. But it’s this feeling of the Spirit holding the room, and it happened that night with Albert too. He took hold of us. And I felt his Spirit, the world of the ancestors talking to us through him. And that’s really what our thing is all about. Getting to that place where the sound touches you, and the shadows of the valley flicker, and you’re moved, touched by the source of things, the love that brings all things back.