Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

He half pushes and half flings an alabaster off of him, and his feet flee beneath him. In the shouting and running he has no time to stop and see what damage he has suffered. (He tastes blood.) No time. He twists quickly left, shrinks his body to push it through a hole cut in a hedge, then comes upon uneven ground running across patches of dry grass, his head light, his mouth dry, his saliva thick and bitter, sound building and breaking inside him. But the noise behind him is loud and wilder now. Looking back over his shoulder, he sees that the first of his pursuers is near. Run even if he can think of nothing to give him safety, no hiding place.

The ground erupts. Planters unearthed. Up from a hidden seam in the blackness. Their garments shining clean. They spit dirt free from their mouths. Lick and restore luster to their boots. Both time and anti-time. All he can dream and then some — foot stretching into yard, yard stretching into furlong, furlong stretching into mile, mile stretching into league, a line of bodies that extends to the horizon. (Does the world really reach that far?) A future promising that it can hold far more than the past could ever hope to. A world to get lost in.

Minutes slip through his hands, and hours fail to raise his feet. Where you going to run to? Why not escape down the path that lies in the direction you were heading, south? Paths stretching in all directions, hidden inevitabilities. Yet and always yet.

He blinks words. Can’t help but hear the faint rumbling behind his eyes, some unseen whole taking shape.

And he thinks, I’ve lost him. I’ve finally lost him. No earthly way he can bear the loss, not now, not ever.

Although she had been living in a third-floor apartment at 6 Gracie Square for a decade or more, none of her neighbors knew her name or knew where she was from. No designation either family or Christian was ever put on her postal box or doorplate. And the neighbors say she never answered the bell and that her groceries were left in the basket set for that purpose outside her door. Moreover, although up to twenty families resided alongside her in this unpretentious five-story red-brick apartment building located on a quiet cobblestoned street with thick-trunked trees perfectly spaced and aligned as if on parade, the fact that a blind Negro was living in her apartment with her was known only in humor and disgust. Indeed, her neighbors considered her barbarous in electing to live with a Negro, even if they were too well bred and polite to tell her so.

Sightings of the Negro were few and far between. Last summer, several of the neighbors saw the woman lead him to a closed carriage, and the same neighbors witnessed them return in their carriage at summer’s end.

On several occasions, the superintendent was summoned to her apartment for maintenance or repairs, but he never saw the blind Negro, only heard him moving around in a far chamber. Saddled with the tools of his trade, the superintendent would go about his work, while the Negro’s mistress — thin, tall, angular — watched him openly and frankly in her plain velvet blouse and ordinary skirt, her face creased into a look of distrust. One time when he was performing some odd job, the superintendent heard the Negro throwing a tantrum somewhere in the apartment and claims that the Negro’s mistress grew ashamed and blushed.

Some claim that the woman almost never entered the Negro’s room since he detested human contact. However, whenever he let her enter, she would take the opportunity to clean what she could and wipe dust from the chair, the bureau, and the bedposts with slow quiet movements of her bare fingers. While she cleaned, he would stand silently at the window with his back turned to her and his afflicted arm stiff at his side.

The neighbors say that for the entire decade that the woman lived at 6 Gracie Square, they had become accustomed to hearing piano music coming from her apartment at all hours of the day and night. They would be in the middle of one activity or another when the music would suddenly begin, and they would listen attentively and respectfully, a disciplined and discriminating audience, even as they carried on with whatever they had been doing.

Then one day, several people passing on foot along the street heard big windows unlock with a clang above them and looked up to see the Negro plunge out onto the balcony and lean over the railing with his head cocked at some sound. After a minute or two, he went back inside. The big windows shut, and he was seen no more that day, or any other day that anyone can remember. But once he was back inside the apartment, they recall hearing piano music, a tune that none of them recognized. Soon thereafter, the music stopped. And no one ever heard it again.

May 31, 2013

Zanzibar

Here, I wish to acknowledge some of the people who uplifted me in more ways than one during the many years it took me to write this novel. Thanks and praise to Myrtle Jones, Binyavanga Wainaina, Lore Segal, Joe Cuomo, David Mills, Reginald Young, Bayo Ojikutu, Duriel Harris, Jacqueline Johnson, Randy Levin, Tucker Hyde, Steven Varni, and Terese Svoboda — dear friends who I trust with my life.

Special thanks to Robert Polito, Michael Anania, Beatriz Badikian, Elizabeth Borque, Fernando Ruiz Lorenzo, Doreen Baingana, Wanjiru June Wainaina, Ed Pavlic, Calvin Baker, Junot Díaz, Edwidge Danticat, Caryl Phillips, Grandmaster Masese, Zanele Ndolvu, Tyehimba Jess, Sandra Goodridge, Fran Gordon, Pamela Fletcher, Randolyn Zinn, Scott Dahlie, Grant Jones, Dr. Brenda Greene, Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Mohammed Naseehu Ali, Malaika Adero, Mikhail Iossel, Ramon Garcia, Josephine Ishmon, Kitso Kgaboesele, Matthew Sharpe, Laura Pegram, Josip Novakovich, Jennifer Baker, Sherwin Bitsui, Aleksandar Hemon, Ishmael Reed, Colin Channer, Paula Kling, Elisheba Hagg-Stevens, Shalini Gidoomal, Suhaila Cross, Aldon Nielsen, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for their love, support, and encouragement.

Special thanks to Martin Donoff, Rene Steinke, David Daniel, and the entire Fairleigh Dickinson crew.

I am grateful for the guidance of my elders, fathers by another name, for the wisdom in their words and ways: John Wideman, Sterling Plumpp, Quincy Troupe, Arthur Flowers, David Henderson, Keorapetse Kgositsile, and Stanley Crouch.

Thanks to my agent Cynthia Cannell and all the good folk at Graywolf Press, especially Fiona McCrae and Ethan Nosowsky, for their book smarts.

Thanks to Creative Capital, the Dorothy L. and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, the Whiting Foundation, the Ernest J. Gaines Foundation, and the Norman Mailer Center for their patronage.

A very special thanks to my wonderful kids, Elijah, Jewel, and James, who are a daily source of joy and inspiration and who make me eternally proud. And to the source, my mother, Alice Allen, who taught me how to keep on keeping on and how to make a way out of no way.

Last, this novel would not be possible without the music of the usual suspects (Jimi, Miles, Bob Marley, Trane, Bird, Muddy, and Mahalia), but also the music of some recent discoveries, namely Oumou Sangare (the world’s greatest singer), Soriba Kouyate, Ayub Ogada, Cesaria Evora, Dawda Jobareth, Miriam Makeba, Richard Bona, Tool, and last but not least Blind Tom, whose life and music transformed me. The circle shall not be broken. Into light, into history …

Carved Door in Darkness (page 4) is from Sally Price & Richard Price, Maroon Arts , Beacon Press, 1999 ( Les arts des Marrons , Vents d’ailleurs, 2005). Reproduced with permission.

Ancient Dhow (page 100) reproduced courtesy of Robert Barnett Photography.