Somebody had put another dime or quarter in the jukebox, and now a big raucous voice was belting away at a number which instantly got everyone there clapping and swaying on their seats. A few even joined in the singing, swinging to the beat, snapping their fingers at no one in particular, and before long, they were shouting, eyes shut tight, as lustily as the local star in the slot, only being much more bodily there, their combined voice filled out the place more than the smoke cloud from their cigarettes.
‘Not so loud, folks,’ Becky appealed to them.
‘Hell,’ one said ‘is there a damned place a man can blow his top without some kind of cop showing up?’
‘What do you want to blow your top for anyway?’ Sam smirked, ‘When the goddam bottom of it stays solid from the light of day?’
‘Those of the Black Moslems don’t like such music, nor drink,’ I said, again very tactless. ‘They say both make you sleep.’
‘You pity us very much, don’t you?’ the young man who had bought me a drink pinned me down.
‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.
‘He should hev a long time ago, young man,’ an elderly woman came in. ‘I been hearing all that’s said here this night, and don’t you go away thinking I don’t. We brothers and daughters meet here as one family. But it don’t look you like our ways, least of all, our drinking and singing habits.’ I made to say something but there again was Sam.
‘Don’t say nothing,’ he raised his balmy palm. ‘Every sinner got a right to get boozed before the moon turns round. Don’t they in Africa – or ain’t that the country you from?’
I said yes. ‘Then, let’s drink all together as one family,’ he held up my hand. ‘None of us, not with all the blessed Indian and African tribes behind us, can push the Kennedys off their high seat, can we?’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘There he goes!’ someone said in disgust. ‘The fellow’s come from Africa to do our fighting for us.’
Fortunately, there was no fighting that night. Some more money had gone into the music box, and the very first disc to fall into place, a twister, whipped quite a few couples there up on their feet. The gentleman, who had earlier let me in, came up to me, with a cigarette burning close and dangling dangerously between his lips. He was something like the floor-manager of the place and now wanted me to join in the dance and forget my argumentative ways.
‘I don’t know how to dance,’ I said.
‘You – an African? you kidding.’
‘Sincerely, I don’t.’
‘Oh, you just feeling superior or what?’
‘Shy, maybe,’ a woman laughed. ‘Oh, I know these fighting men.’
‘Come, I’ll show you,’ the floor manager offered, and more ash fell off his cigarette on both our fronts. ‘It isn’t hard at all. Well, brother, do you smoke?’ I said no, that I used to be a three-pack-a-day man. At which he said I certainly must have terrific will-power, and when I protested it was nothing to do with will-power, that on the contrary the taste of a cigarette had stopped my smoking it after a bad cold two years back, he said: ‘Never mind, brother. What matters is that you still can put out a fag under your foot, or can’t you?’ So saying he dropped the stump burning closer still between his lips and asked me to stub it out on the floor. I did his command and he was lavish with commendation for me.
‘Now, what did I tell you? You can dance as well as any of us. It’s just boiling in the blood of us black people. You just keep moving like you’re putting that cigarette out all your life-Yes, that’s all the motion, man, and you see, the pretty baby is all yours!’
Back in my rooms, because I still was wide-eyed and restless and unable to read, I tried to clear the backlog of my mail. But it was useless; the only letter I began and addressed to my brother in India, I finished several days after. And when sleep came at last, it turned out to be one nightmare featuring my brother and James Meredith all mixed up in one terrible role and struggle for identity and survival, a nightmare short but self-repeating and more live than anything I remember on screen or stage. So that all I did on waking up shaky from bed was put the seal of my hand on the brand new piece that had forged itself in the automatic boiler of my subconscious even while I slept:
Last night, times out of dream,
I woke
To the sight of a snake
Slithering in the field, livid
Where the grass is
Patched, merged up where it runs
All shades of green – and suddenly!
My brother in India, up, stick
In hand, poised to strike –
But ah, himself is struck
By this serpent, so swift,
So silent, with more reaction
Than a nuclear charge …
And now this morning with eyes still
To the door, in thought of a neck
Straining under the sill,
I wake
To the touch of a hand as
Mortal and fair, asking
