“Tremonisha, are you saying that World War Two happened because Hitler was trying to pass for white?”
“Overzealous assimilation, it happens all the time.
“Becky is wrong about the German women. When he pulled up to a station the women in the town would line up for a chance to sit in his lap for a couple of minutes. He was their pimp. He told them to give him babies and they did, and those babies died in Russia and France. They’re just like these white women over here. Allow themselves to get sweet-talked and seduced. Look at all of the white women who voted for this war-monger and apartheid champion, Reagan. That’s why Becky’s wrong.” Apartheid? Ian thought. Tre gave lectures at Women’s Centers where no men were allowed. What about that apartheid?
She paused for a moment and drank from the glass.
“I think your version of what happened in Nazi Germany is far superior to Becky’s,” he said, trying to stay on her good side.
“Becky’s not too much of an intellectual. I think that she went to school in California. But she’s a go-getter all right. Sure, Jim’s genius brought in the grants, but Becky’s administrative abilities kept the Lord Mountbatten in the black.”
“How do you suppose that Jim’s disappearance will affect his operation?”
“She didn’t care about him. Thought he was arrogant. She just used him to pull in Jewish contributions, but now I understand that this lady in Long Island is going to pay some of the bills they used to pay.”
He noticed her knee bobbing. “Did you know that the doorman downstairs is Randy Shank?”
She was shocked. Her eyes became gleeful. “I thought he looked familiar. Isn’t that the nigger who used to dress up like Tom Mix and entertain tourists down in the Village during the fifties? Rent-a-nigger. A dollar a nigger?”
“Yes. He rented himself out to parties for a dollar. But you have to understand it was hard for black writers in those days, Brashford says. Randy played bongo drums in Washington Square Park during the day, and wrote at night. He paved the way for all of us.” She covered her mouth and began to laugh. He looked around at her Danish furniture, blond tables, and lacquered black chairs. Her desk with the post-modernistic lamp. He looked at the original Afro-American paintings on the wall. Even with this affluent apartment, her money and fame, she was making fun of the brother while he was down.
“I thought he said that he was never going to return to America.” She laughed some more.
“He’s really bitter,” Ball said. “He blames you and Becky for what happened to his career. Said Becky rejected his play for political reasons and that he had to leave Europe because as soon as your play and Johnnie Kranshaw’s books started to get translated into foreign languages the women in those countries began to hate black American men, as if they didn’t have enough problems. Says you even have women in Sri Lanka mad at them.” She started to laugh. He wanted to grab her and shake her to make her stop laughing. It was a laugh of revenge, of hatred.
He left her that way and headed to the lobby. Shank was sitting at his doorman’s desk reading a newspaper. He saw Ball and jumped up.
“Getting back to our conversation about the Jews.” Oh, no, not again, Ball thought. “There’s really no such thing as a white Jew. Real white people call Jews and the Arabs sand niggers behind their backs. Back in the 1900s and 1910s in this town they called the Russian ones Asiatics and Orientals. You couldn’t pick up a paper in those days without reading about some Jewish pickpocket or pimp, and when they weren’t doing that they were committing arson and poisoning horses.” Ball tried to move out of the building, but Randy Shank blocked his way, insistent that he hear his tortured and odd theories. “They let them be white now because they serve the white man by keeping an eye on us, monitoring us, providing him with statistics about us, and interpreting us to the white man. The white man don’t care about them. They didn’t care if they burned up in the ovens, Roosevelt, Churchill, these American Jews even, nobody gave a damn. In the old days they even passed immigration laws to keep them out of the country.”
Ball pushed him out of the way as the author of a collection of poems entitled My Secret Enemy: Me shouted at him, “THE JEWS! THE JEWS!” He was screaming. Randy followed Ball to the outside of the building, where Ball hailed a taxi. “Yeah, you fast all right, fast like you told us a long time ago, Ball, but I didn’t know that you were that fast, that you would side with these bitches, these collaborators who are aiding our enemies in destroying us.” Three or four cabs passed by. “You’ve broken ranks. They’ve made you into some kind of feminist.” One pulled up. Ball jumped in. “They’ve made you into some kind of girl.” Ball started to get out of the cab and kick his ass, but he had more important things to do. The cab leaped forward.
13
One night Ian was having plot problems, so he sauntered on over to Tre’s, as he was beginning to call her. Randy Shank grumbled something as he walked in, perhaps still smarting over their last encounter. He went up to the elevator. As he approached Tre’s apartment he heard somebody going upside somebody’s head. He rushed to the door. It was open. He ran in and inside, a thin, wide bubble-eyed-looking man had Tre over the sofa’s back and was strangling her. Ball grabbed the guy and threw him against the wall. The guy begged off. He was a wretched sight. He seemed to have slept in his clothes and his hair was wild and crazy, and he had on some weird clothes and shoes. Must be a musician, Ball thought. Then he recognized him. It was Dred Creme, the alto sax man. He was recently the subject of a long, difficult-to-read piece in one of the downtown art journals. He’d heard that Tre and Dred were tight. The only word the guy seemed to be sure of was “bitch.”
“Hero. A hero.” Dred started to reel and clap sarcastically. He could tell that the guy was high on something. To her he said, “I’m coming back later or I’ll see you on the street. And when I finish with you you’ll think that what that Flower Phantom did was mild.” He staggered out of the apartment, but not before pausing to look Ball up and down. Ball matched him eyeball to eyeball. After Dred left, she walked up and put her arms around Ball’s neck. He could feel her protuberances and her crevices. He wanted to gently let her down and gingerly fuck her on the couch right there, but then he decided that he didn’t want to mix drama with sex. She finally let him go and sat down. He went over and sat on the sofa.
“He’s always up here asking me for money to…to score with. He’s snorted so much that he has to have surgery on his nose.”
“Mind if I ask you something?”
“No,” she said, “what is it? First, let me fix you a drink.”
“I’ll have grapefruit juice,” Ball said. She went into the kitchen. He heard the mixer going. He heard her pouring the drinks. He looked at the coffee table, which had been moved to the side because of the struggle. On top was a book entitled The Complete Works of Amy Lowell, and next to that was a biography of Jane Austen, and knocked to the floor by the struggle, pages open, was Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Zora Neale Hurston wasn’t a joiner but Tremonisha and others had claimed her as one of their own (though being middle-class Christian women at heart they wouldn’t touch the Vodoun parts). They had joined Zora and joined her until she was all joined up. He picked the book up. She brought the tray back in and set it down on the table. They began to sip from the glasses.