Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Coffin lifted his chin in skepticism. Mr. Gross, I should warn you, if you are thinking about — but he said no more, as if he already knew what Tabbs was thinking and didn’t have the strength to offer any opposition. As you wish. At an hour best for you, kindly pay me a return visit on Friday.

Thank you, sir.

In the meantime, I urge caution, Mr. Gross. Coffin gave Tabbs an almost paternal look of concern. Take it upon yourself to be more circumspect.

You have my word.

I have your word.

You have my word.

He was gone too quickly. The day too hot and the road too quiet. He closed the door as much as he could — it was swollen, open as if this explained all, put motive to rest — hesitated in the hall and took his time about leaving the house — each stair a month, each landing a year — hoping the lawyer might call him back. Hard as he might try, he couldn’t quite bury his mistrust. He would never entrust his livelihood, his survival, into the hands of a white person, an alabaster. How easy to see beneath the theatrical disguises of their faces, the secrets and riddles behind their words. Perhaps Coffin was deliberately leaving him up in the air about his intentions? Even if this was the case — he never found out — he had no choice but to trust the lawyer, although he, Tabbs Gross, wished there were some way he could bring the lawyer’s true feelings to the surface. (Is it superabundance of heart or something else that makes him befriend, represent, and defend the — the great prediction, promise — last who shall someday be first?) As he slowly made his way downstairs, he realized that his reasons for being here, in this foreign land, were even remote to himself now. (A stranger.) How could he reveal to this white man, or any man for that matter, his purpose for his risky venture?

He started back for the hotel, determined not to show up in public again — I can take my meals in my room, I can have my meals delivered to my room, I need only leave my room to bathe — until Friday, two days from now. He would go about his day (that day and the next), thinking no more than usual. Understood that his decision to stay in town would involve (require, demand) two days of tense waiting. How would he manage it? (He still asks himself, How did I manage it? ) His story already stretched too far. Get this thing over with.

When did he first hear the name Blind Tom? 1859? 1860? 1861? Tabbs is not entirely sure. Tom was a regular topic of conversation on the Negro grapevine.

I would never pay a penny of my hard-earned salary to hear him, the well-dressed man said. This is the way of these alabasters, to present us in a bestial light.

You’ve got it all wrong, his companion said, casual dress, casual bearing. So what if the little blind nigger whirls around onstage. He’s probably just taking him some exercise cause those candlefaces keep him cooped up all the time, under their thumbs.

Although total opposites in dress, the two men walked loose-limbed and carefree. What you got to say about it, Tabbs? Are you attending the concert?

Like other Negroes, Tabbs had thoughts about Blind Tom — was he aiding the Race or harming it?—

What are your feelings about the war, Tom?

I am not afraid of bullets. They fly so fast.

— but he couldn’t come into words; whenever the subject came to his tongue he had difficulty speaking. His mind raced ahead.

Not a damn thing. Just like I thought.

Ah, don’t be so hard on Tabbs. He’s a real race man.

The men got a good laugh out of this statement. They continued on, Tabbs straining his ears trying to follow the argument as the voices faded with distance.

Tabbs had to admit, Blind Tom as a man, as a Negro man — well, he was still a boy, only thirteen years of age — was rather disappointing—

Tom, you keep up quite a schedule of travel. It would tax any man, young or old, Anglo-Saxon or Negro. Do you not get tired?

Be passersby.

— but his way with Bach, if one could believe the journals, was something to adore.

Indeed, hearing Blind Tom in actuality proved to be all he had hoped it would be, although he can no longer pinpoint the year when he first saw Tom in concert. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care to know. (The years don’t pass for nothing.) Only the concert itself remains firm in his memory. How would he describe it? Not unlike a body’s first entry into the ocean, smitten, salt-tasting skin hungry for more, sea secrets. Feel it:

Fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of the performance the gold and white auditorium was quiet and still virtually empty, the highest boxes and the gallery dark, almost invisible, while the best boxes, draped with long-fringed pelmets and velvet railings on the ground floor and at stage left and stage right, were only dimly visible. A few Negro attendants stood about chatting in the dress circle and the stalls, lost among the red velvet armchairs under the half light of the tiny flames of the huge dimly glowing chandelier, and the great red patch of the curtain that Tabbs hid behind was plunged in shade. He waited patiently, his anger bending to anticipation. At nine o’clock, the scheduled start, the main doors to the auditorium opened, uniformed Negro attendants bustling in with tickets in hand, directing a train of couples in front or behind, Mr. and Mrs. Candleface done up in formal ballroom dress, buoyant (floating and flying) in ballooning skirts and expansive tails, who nested down in numbered seats and began sweeping the auditorium with a leisurely gaze. (Who’s here? Who isn’t?) Only after all the alabasters were seated did the attendants allow the Negro ticket holders to enter — a crush of bodies — the gallery (Coon Heaven), way up above just beneath the rotunda ceiling with its fresco of naked women flying about in blue sky and muscular gods pitched in battle. The Negroes scrambling and fighting over the best seats, a din that caused the alabasters below to crane their necks and catapult hard glances and hot curses in their direction. Niggers! Could the alabasters actually see the Negroes they damned and cursed? The Negroes were only momentarily ill at ease, refusing to let environs spoil a good time. They expected a festive event, necessary break from their everyday chaotic and hierarchichal world. Aware nonetheless that they were in public and hence were under inspection — all eyes watching, all eyes on me —each man representing all men, each woman all women. All would suffer shame and setback should any one step out of line. So put your best self on display. Mind your p’s and q’s. Candlefaces!

He heard the manager’s voice, and carefully moved from his clandestine position behind the curtain. Took an innocent measure of the custodial closet before he stepped inside and closed the door three-quarters of the way. Confined so, he couldn’t help but smell his own body sharp and fresh in the rank empty darkness, clean light splaying through the parted door.

Listen:

Here is the piano in semidarkness, plates of light, planks of darkness, black keys and white keys. Here is the boy seated at the piano, a Negro like yourself. The boy center stage before a packed house, and you quietly wedged inside a custodian’s closet in clandestine repose — invisible, your stomach rumbles — with the door barely open, one long rectangle of vision, the boy there and you here, remote, far away — another time, another place — your eyes stinging with the effort to see over and around the broom and mop heads and handles, the buckets and pails and brushes and shovels and dustpans and hammers hanging from the walls, to look and cut through everything — one edge of the door frame, one edge of the stage curtain, the piano itself — separating you from the pianist a hundred feet away. Obscured, you think you catch a glimpse of his face behind the cantilevered slant of the raised polished lid. He brings his hands into position and begins the first selection, hands moving, casting a haze over his features, or perhaps it is the light shining down from the massive chandelier above — thousands of burning candles — that spins a web of glare that makes him so hard to see. You are skilled in fine general culture and know how to listen. Shut your eyes to skin and you are forced to admit that the performance is thoroughly in tune with the very best of European art, that the performer you are hearing is one of them , no doubt about it, a young virtuoso. He moves his body very little and has an odd way of bringing his lower lip up and letting it fall at short intervals, as a fish works its mouth while breathing. He seems to use only one foot, his right, in pedaling. And when he finishes the piece, he stands up from the stool, turns slightly toward the audience, and takes a quick bow. (Three seconds, four.) Then sits right back down on the stool and begins the next selection.