He spent all of yesterday touring Manhattan… first thing after breakfast the ultramodern Chrysler Building and the Empire State fortress… both a brisk stroll from the hotel… the Independent subway line to Bookstore Row in the Village, Wall Street, Bowling Green… the Aquarium at the little fort at the island’s southern tip… he walked to the foot of Brooklyn Bridge, imagining Crane’s steps, Whitman’s ferry crossing… rang his hotel from a nearby booth to find out if anyone had rung him… a cab then train to the Public Library’s main branch on Fifth Avenue… trekked up to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Rockefeller Center… snapped photos, ate a late lunch at an automat… sipping a cola and polishing off a bowl of soda crackers and chicken noodle soup… watching the patricians and penniless stream past the window… on the street he struck up a conversation with a Puerto Rican… who gave the names of restaurants to visit in East Harlem… a walk east to Madison’s haberdasher shops, where he bought handkerchiefs and a scarf… and the Interborough up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art… he could only manage the exhibit of Hogarth’s prints… so exhausted he stumbled out into the violet street… no time left to visit Harlem… no messages waiting at his return… in the hotel lobby he called a painter friend of Carlos’s… to meet for a meal tomorrow… he had dinner in his room, began reading… through his gathering poems… he penned a letter to Salvador but crumpled it… thought he might see what lurked out in the darkness… signs, stars, blue tattoed letters… but slumber gripped him and he was out… he returned to his hotel after leaving the chatty Guadalajaran… and a Broadway matinee of Porgy and Bess… he was searching for the right words to describe it… the songs kept pealing deep inside him… silence vast and frozen… a message from Langston awaited… Querido Xavier, deseas cenar conmigo esta noche?… he called the number and a woman answered… she would pass on his message, for this evening at 7:30 pm… he set the clock and lay down… at 7 he rose and washed up… changed into fresh underwear, shirt, the socks he had hung to dry… a pale lavender tie purchased in a store on College Street… at 7:25 he headed downstairs… expecting to see the American standing there… he sat in a comfortable chair and waited… he had brought a copy of Maeterlinck’s poems… he flipped through, barely reading, as his watch hand spun… at 8:04 Langston walked in, palms extended in greeting… his face gay and fuller, sporting a mustache… he spoke in Spanish, almost formally at first… Xavier replied in casual English..apologies upon apologies, there were issues at the theater… a dramatic piece beginning in a week… too much to explain right now… did the visitor want to dine near the hotel… go downtown to the Village… Xavier suggested Harlem… Langston mentioned it was sixty blocks north, but they they could take the train… there were restaurants still open… he had one in mind in particular… if Xavier was game… the visitor urged that they take a taxicab… he had a little stipend… he would pick up the fare… the doorman hailed one for them… they climbed in and pitched right into conversation… Langston asking about the various people he had met last spring… the writers, painters, theater… the social and political conditions in Mexico… he offers some gossip about the celebrities… he met in Los Angeles and during his stay in Carmel… like the hearthrob Ramón Novarro… Xavier describes the experience of Gershwin’s musical… he is one of the finest composers, Langston says… not a colored man but he has something of us in his soul… in no time they reach Harlem… where the buildings shrink and the faces brown…
At Robert Johnson’s Dixie on 133rd St. they climb out… Langston leads his guest into the mid-sized restaurant… they cut up in here, he laughs, and I mean cut up… Xavier doesn’t understand the idiom but laughs too… a fox-faced maître d’ ushers them to a table… the dining space is not especially full… but all there are, Xavier notes, are black people… no one gives him more than a glance, though several greet Langston… I have to be on my best behavior, he whispers, grinning… though you can get away with quite a bit in here… Xavier again fails to grasp what he means but savors that smile… the wall of reserve he observed in Mexico City has fallen… a bandstand, empty but with some instruments, hunkers off to the side… I was trying to think of all the people I want to meet you… but I have been so busy with this play and all… it is a budding disaster, not that that matters… is it on Broadway, Xavier asks… yes, at the Vanderbilt, it’s called Mulatto… like your poem: “Into my father’s heart to plunge the knife / To gain the utmost freedom that is life”… Yes, though there’s a fuller story, actors, the whole deal… I’m sure it is brilliant and I hope to see it… If you only knew what they were doing to it… but let’s talk about something else, like your studies at Yale… they chat about Xavier’s classes… his desire not just to write but understand the theory of theater… to know drama’s extensive history… do they teach you about rich white Southern dictators, who fancy themselves producer-directors… Xavier is not sure exactly what or whom Langston means… is this the father he wrote the poem about… he notices two fey men at a table, observing them… Yale is one of the most elite schools, Langston continues… they make sure not to let many, really any Negroes in… Unsure what to say Xavier sips his water… at another table he spots a woman’s leg rising along the line of her table partner, another woman… the waiter glides up to take their order… a minute more to choose, please… Xavier asks questions about Harlem… when he’ll be returning to Mexico… Langston promises a tour of Harlem and the rest of the city when Xavier comes back… the drinks, then the main dishes arrive… the meal is passable, but there’s the ambience… all the restaurants, like the people up here, are suffering badly… Xavier nods, affirming things are tough in Mexico City too… we’re still waiting, Langston adds, on President Roosevelt to help us, and I mean us… we’ll even take Presidente Cárdenas if he isn’t too busy… both laugh and launch into a discussion of poetry… the poets of Mexico first, Langston lists all he knows, Cuesta, Gorostiza, Torres Bodet, Ortiz de Montellano… then other poets leaving their mark in the Spanish language, Darío, Vallejo, Guillén… the Chileans Mistral and Neruda… especially the ones committed to the cause of political, economic and social liberation… the Contemporáneos are not Communists, Xavier responds, but are quietly striving to transform Mexican literature… what does he think of Borges, Langston asks… the avant-garde without a political compass can easily become reactionary… Xavier assures him there is no danger of this among his group… you must read Alfonso Reyes, Gutiérrez Cruz… what of the poets of Harlem, of America… he has heard of some of the names but not many others… Cullen, yes, a master stylist, Douglas Johnson, the powerful McKay… Nugent, never heard of him, Bontemps, no, Grimke, Walrond, Brown… he withdraws a little notebook and his fountain pen… he has to ask Langston to repeat a number of them… then the white ones, Crane, why of course, Crane came to Mexico a few years ago… Eliot, certainly, so erudite and forbidding… Pound, Williams, he is familiar with these, yes, and Bénet, Sandburg, Robinson, Millay… Stevens? No. Moore? No. H.D.? No… most are politically retrograde… the whole passel including Hillyer, Coffin, as well as the Southern Agrarians (though Ransom is a good poet) and the rest not worth mentioning… there are poets with far better politics, like Fearing, Rukeyser, Davidman, Beecher… does he know any American poets who are of Mexican descent or write in Spanish… he will send Xavier some issues of the newer periodicals he has appeared in… they talk of Gide, Wilde, Proust… through their ideas of poetry… what makes it so necessary always… especially now, even more than novels or essays… like plays it is, Langston says, an immediate and economical way of reaching the masses… promoting the ideas that will foster and allow revolution to flourish in society… look at the bloody lesson of Mexico, Xavier says… one should exercise caution when invoking that term… he views poetry’s role and power as more modest… poetic language always carries the seed of something revolutionary… merely by being a testimony to one’s always complex and difficult interior journeys… in language you need to lose yourself… to recover yourself… yes, Langston says, that too, so true… still talking, they finish dinner, another round of drinks… Xavier mentions an early train back to New Haven… over Langston’s gentle objections he pays the bill… the male couple, now openly holding hands at their table, offer familial approval… we are not afraid of night..the next one will be my treat… they walk down to 125th Street to hail a taxi… shoulder to shoulder, fingers grazing… Xavier offers to have the cab drop him off… then abruptly says why don’t you come back downtown with me… have a final nightcap and relax… Langston muses a second, then agrees… there are places in Times Square where we can get a drink… I have a bottle of whiskey in my room…