Caryl Phillips - Dancing In The Dark

Metheney’s opens at noon, every day except Sunday. First, Clyde D unlocks the door and then he steps back so that the smell of the previous evening can pass him by and hurry on down the street. When it is good and gone he enters the gloom, knowing full well that Metheney will be upstairs sleeping off the night before. The man has never learned how to do much of anything except turn off the lights and stagger in the direction of the stairs, but sometimes he is carrying too much liquor to even manage this and he makes a bed of the floor. Once Clyde D came in early and found one of Metheney’s wooden-faced whores pushing bottles of liquor into a bag and ready to make her getaway. Clyde D looked down at the floor and he could immediately see that old Metheney was passed out cold. He imagined that the girl had already stuffed Metheney’s takings into her pocketbook, having previously slipped something into Metheney’s gin so that he wouldn’t hear nothing, or know nothing, and now it was down to Clyde D to put his unwashed morning self between the girl and the door and take back the man’s money. Keen to avoid a beating, the frightened girl suddenly offered Clyde D what rightfully appeared to belong to any man who was hungry enough to take it, but Clyde D recoiled from the sour bursts of her breath in his face, and then he snatched back the money and the liquor, before pushing the girl out into the street and setting about his business. After first sweeping the floor (careful to avoid Metheney), and then pushing back the tables and dropping the chairs into place, he stepped behind the bar, where empty bottles and filthy glasses were lined up and ready for his attention. Metheney stirred and rubbed a gnarled hand into his face and then, without saying a word, he dragged himself to his unsteady feet and lurched in the direction of the wooden staircase, which groaned under his weight. Mercifully, this morning, Metheney is already upstairs, no doubt still asleep, with his mouth wide open, and sprawled across one of his girls who specialize in late-night secondhand love. The first customers of the day usually wander in while the bar top is still sopping wet from Clyde D’s having wiped it down, and they take up their silent seats and order without having to say a word. During the early-afternoon hours it is best not to make too much noise, for Metheney does not like to be roused from his slumber, but there is usually little danger of this for Metheney’s is not a talking kind of place.

By the time the evening regulars start to come in off the street, Mr. Williams is usually ready to leave. After all, for Mr. Williams, Metheney’s is little more than a fleet detour on his way back home from midtown business. However, on the days that he must perform, Metheney’s is a place that Mr. Williams might wander into for a late-afternoon drink before returning home to change his clothes. Before he leaves he looks up and sees two men in wide-brimmed hats who nod in his direction as they enter the premises, and then they respectfully ignore him. They watch as Clyde D reaches over and places their drinks before them, and they grope at the drinks without so much as a hint that they have a tongue in their now unshod heads. Eyes drift upward to where Metheney is now stirring himself, his clay feet banging against the floor as he lumbers to the corner and urgently relieves himself into an enamel pot so that the noise of the piss echoes like rain on a tin roof. This is all part of Metheney’s routine, and if he happens to have company, then Metheney’s clay feet will move more eagerly back in the direction of the bed, and at first slowly, and then with more vigor, the whole structure of the ceiling will begin to shake as the boss attempts to finish off what he had started the night before. Eyes return to drinks that are now levered toward open mouths. All is right with the world. Clyde D knows that soon it will be time for him to be replaced by Metheney, and he looks across as Mr. Williams slowly pushes his long frame upright. He can tell by the languorous way that he moves that tonight the local celebrity will be onstage in midtown. Tonight Mr. Williams will be a star on Broadway, a man whose pitiable gait is to be applauded. Shylock Homestead in Williams and Walker’s production of In Dahomey , telling a few hapless jokes and doing a little plaintive singing and some clownish dancing. But that will be later. Clyde D watches Mr. Williams closely and can see that the performer’s veins are already buzzing with the dull grandeur of whiskey. Mr. Williams stands tall in Metheney’s and reaches for his hat, and all eyes look up and silently bid him his daily farewell. They watch as he moves with deliberation toward the door, and as he opens it Manhattan rushes in to meet them, and then he shuts Metheney’s weather-beaten door behind him and all eyes return to the task in front of them. It will be a long night.

The short walk home generally sobers him up, but during the past weeks these few dozen steps have become inexplicably difficult for this thirty-year-old man. Once upon a time he would close the door behind him and pull his jacket tight before setting forth with confidence. The harsh late-afternoon light, and the noise from the street, usually put the edge back into his mind, but these days he often wanders aimlessly, consumed with a fear that tonight, in front of hundreds of strangers, he might lose his way. The few dozen steps have multiplied, and he frequently discovers himself in unfamiliar streets gripped with a sudden panic that he might now be late for his onstage appointment. It sometimes occurs to him that he should walk directly to the theater, but he knows that his wife would not like this. She always insists that he clean up and change out of his relaxing clothes before making his appearance at the stage door, and he does not like to argue. But people notice him walking, with a vertical plume of smoke climbing from his cigarette up toward the sky. They can see that these days his few dozen steps are taking him all over the neighborhood, but nobody feels free to talk to him, not even the pushcart man who dusts his fruit with an old brush and each day is tempted to offer an overripe peach or a bruised apple to the weary-looking Negro. When he returns home, Mother looks the other way and he understands that once again he has failed her.

He finds it difficult to achieve any peace in this new house, but he does not complain to Mother. When troubled he simply pulls on his coat and picks up his hat and he walks the twenty paces to Metheney’s and sits by himself. In Dahomey is doing well, and he and George continue to collaborate with Mr. Jesse Shipp, with whom they are working hard to sharpen up every aspect of the show. Theirs is the first all-Negro production on Broadway — real Broadway — and everybody is talking about it. Bob Cole and Ernest Hogan are jealous, but even they are talking. Everybody is talking. Just thirty years of age and he is starring in a musical show on Broadway. What more could he want?

Only this morning, he and George, together with Mr. Shipp, made some minor changes to the script of In Dahomey . The two stars remembered everything they could from the time when, back in San Francisco, they were encouraged to impersonate Africans. They talked endlessly to Mr. Jesse Shipp about their memories of these Africans, about how they walked and how they talked, and Mr. Shipp made notes and promised to add these new elements to his script. In Dahomey , starring Williams and Walker. Two real coons. Beyond the corner of Market Street. Beyond the Midway Plaisance. Beyond Cripple Creek. Married men in New York City, nurturing their dreams, but Bert longed to ask George about his dreams for he wondered if his partner shared his own obsession with journeying. He did once ask George if he had ever been on a ship and George simply laughed and poured them both another drink. They were on a Pacific Union train at the time, and through the window they could both see a horizon that was ragged with low mountains. “A ship?” exclaimed George. “A colored man like me don’t need no ship when I’ve got this whole wide country to roam free in.” But this was before gold-toothed George was beaten by the rabble, and thereafter began to noisily proclaim what they both already knew to be true, that America wasn’t so wide and free after all. For a colored man, that is.