The organ fell silent, interrupting Patrick’s daydream. He picked up the booklet again from the narrow shelf in front of him, but before he had time to look inside, music burst out from the speakers in the corners of the room. He recognized the song just before the deep black cheerful voice rang out over the crematorium.
Oh, I got plenty o’ nuthin’,
An’ nuthin’s plenty fo’ me.
I got no car, got no mule, I got no misery.
De folks wid plenty o’ plenty
Got a lock on dey door,
’Fraid somebody’s a-goin’ to rob ’em
While dey’s out a-makin’ more.
What for?
Patrick looked round and smiled mischievously at Mary. She smiled back. He suddenly felt irrationally guilty that he hadn’t yet told her about the trust, as if he were no longer entitled to enjoy the song, now that he didn’t have quite as much nuthin’ as before. More. / What for? was a rhyme that deserved to be made more often.
Oh, I got plenty o’ nuthin’,
An’ nuthin’s plenty fo’ me.
I got de sun, got de moon,
Got de deep blue sea.
De folks wid plenty o’ plenty,
Got to pray all de day.
Seems wid plenty you sure got to worry
How to keep de debble away,
A-way.
Patrick was entertained by Porgy’s insistence on the sinfulness of riches. He felt that Eleanor and aunt Virginia would have approved. After all, before they became masters of the universe, usurers were consigned to the seventh circle of Hell. Under a rain of fire, their perpetually restless hands were a punishment for hands that had made nothing useful or good in their lifetime, just exploited the labour of others. Even from the less breezy position of being one of the folks wid plenty o’ plenty, and at the cost of buying into the fantasy that folks with plenty o’ nuttin’ didn’t also have to worry about keeping the Debble away, Eleanor would have endorsed Porgy’s views. Patrick renewed his concentration for the final part of the song.
Never one to strive
To be good, to be bad—
What the hell! I is glad
I’s alive!
Oh, I got plenty o’ nuthin’,
An’ nuthin’s plenty fo’ me.
I got my gal, got my song,
Got Hebben de whole day long.
(No use complainin’!)
Got my gal, got my Lawd, got my song!
‘Great choice,’ Patrick whispered to Mary with a grateful nod. He picked up the order of service again, finally ready to look inside.
7
How nauseating, thought Nicholas, a Jew being sentimental on behalf of a Negro: you lucky fellows, you’ve got plenty o’ nuthin’, whereas we’re weighed down with all this international capital and these wretched Broadway musical hits. When an idea is floundering, Nicholas said to himself, practising for later, songwriters always wheel out the celestial bodies. De things dat I prize, / Like de stars in de skies, / All are free. No surprises there — one couldn’t expect to get much rent from a hydrogen bomb several million light-years away. It was hard enough persuading a merchant banker to cough up a decent rent for one’s lovely Grade II listed Queen Anne dower house in Shrop-shire, without asking him to drive to the moon for the weekend. Talk about too far from London, and nothing to do when one got there, except bounce around while the oxygen runs out. There was such a thing as the way of the world. Sixty per cent of the Titanic’s first-class passengers survived; twenty-five per cent of the second-class passengers, and no one from steerage. That was the way of the world. ‘Sure is grateful, boss,’ simpered Nicholas under his breath, ‘I got de deep blue sea.’
Oh, God, what was going on now? The ghastly ‘Spiritual Tool Box’ was going up to the lectern. He could hardly bear it. What was he doing here? In the end, he was just as sentimental as silly old Ira Gershwin. He had come for David Melrose. In many ways David had been an obscure failure, but his presence had possessed a rare and precious quality: pure contempt. He bestrode middle-class morality like a colossus. Other people laboured through the odd bigoted remark, but David had embodied an absolute disdain for the opinion of the world. One could only do one’s best to keep up the tradition.
For Erasmus the most interesting lines were undoubtedly, Never one to strive / To be good, to be bad—/ What the hell! I is glad / I’s alive! Nietzsche was there, of course, and Rousseau (inevitably), but also the Diamond Sutra. Porgy was unlikely to have read any of them. Nevertheless, it was legitimate to think in terms of the pervasive influence of a certain family of ideas, of nonstriving and of a natural state that preceded rule-based morality and in some sense made it redundant. Maybe he could see Mary after the funeral. She had always been so receptive. He sometimes thought about that.
Thank goodness there were people who were happy with nothing, thought Julia, so that people like her (and everyone else she had ever met), could have more. It was virtually impossible to think of a sentence that made a positive use of that dreadful word ‘enough’, let alone one that started raving about ‘nothing’. Still, the song was rather perfect for Patrick’s dotty mother, as well as being an upbeat disinheritance anthem. Hats off to Mary, as usual. Julia sighed with admiration. She assumed that Patrick had been feeling too ‘mad’ to do anything practical, and that Mother Mary had been asked to step in.
Really, thought Nancy, it was too ridiculous to turn to the Gershwin brothers when one’s own godfather was the divine Cole Porter. Why had Mummy wasted him on indifferent Eleanor when Nancy, who really appreciated his glamour and wit, might have had him all to herself? Not that Porgy and Bess didn’t have its glamorous side. She had gone to a big New York opening with Hansie and Dinkie Guttenburg and had the best time ever, going backstage to congratulate everybody. The real stars weren’t at all overawed by meeting a ferociously handsome German prince with a severe stutter, but you could tell that some of the little chorus girls didn’t know whether to curtsy, start a revolution, or poison his wife. She would definitely include that scene in her book, it was such a coming together of everything fun, unlike this drab funeral. Really, Eleanor was letting the family down and letting herself down as well.
Annette was stunned, as she walked down the aisle towards the lectern, by the appropriateness, the serendipity and the synchronicity of that wonderful, spiritual song. Only yesterday she had been sitting with Seamus at their favourite power point on the terrace at Saint-Nazaire (actually they had decided that it was the heart chakra of the entire property, which made perfect sense when you thought about it), celebrating Eleanor’s unique gifts with a glass of red wine, and Seamus had mentioned her incredibly strong connection with the African-American people. He had been privileged to be present at several of Eleanor’s past-life regressions and it turned out that she had been a runaway slave during the American Civil War, trying to make her way to the abolitionist North with a young baby in her arms. She’d had the most terrible time of it, apparently, only travelling at night, in the dead of winter, hiding in ditches and living in fear of her life. And now, the very next day, at Eleanor’s funeral, a man who was obviously the descendant of a slave was singing those marvellous lyrics. Perhaps — Annette almost came to a halt, overwhelmed by further horizons of magical coincidence — perhaps he was the very baby Eleanor had carried to freedom through the ditches and the night, grown into a splendid man with a deep and resonant voice. It was almost unbearably beautiful, but she had a task to perform and with a regretful tug she extracted herself from the amazing dimension to which her train of thought had transported her, and stood squarely at the lectern, unfolding the pages she had been carrying in the pocket of her dress. She fingered the amber necklace she had bought at the Mother Meera gift shop when she had gone for darshan with the avatar of Talheim. Feeling mysteriously empowered by the silent Indian woman whose gaze of unconditional love had X-rayed her soul and set her off on the healing path she was still following today, Annette addressed the group of mourners in a voice torn between an expression of pained tenderness and the need for an adequate volume.