Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground

by Steve Stern

  Maybe he thought it was better to be empty-handed, gesticulating like an idiot, when you pleaded your case before a royal court. The sight was astonishing enough in itself, but even more remarkable, if the pert tilt of her head was any indication, was that the queen seemed actually amused. This went for Lamar IV as well, who’d arranged his squiffy features to approximate concentration, leaning forward lest he miss a word. Several other members of the court within hearing did likewise, all of them beaming with rapt indulgence at the nervy kid.

  Had I been guilty of having too little faith? Come to think of it, why shouldn’t Lucifer’s patter, which worked so well on the street, be even more persuasive up here in the thinner air? Who said Michael’s situation couldn’t have a happy conclusion? Once convinced of the philanthropic import, what was to prevent this shining entourage from rising en masse and making an impromptu royal progress down Third Street from the Peabody to the Baby Doll Hotel? Surely stranger things had happened.

  Maybe I’d sold her short, this mistress of Michael’s dreams. Maybe she was a lady of charity and social concern who was personally not above slumming. She was the ultimate good sport. Or was it just that she was easily amused? Because, in the midst of the cheeky kid’s song and dance, she seemed, just as easily, to have become bored. Whatever interest she’d taken in Lucifer’s performance had evidently run its course. Unburdening herself of a sigh, she looked suddenly testy, her expression degenerating into an impatience bordering on outrage. Turning sharply to the left and right, she signaled that the joke had gone far enough: it was time for someone to remove the offense. This was when Lucifer chose to fall to his knees.

  Almost simultaneously I heard a piercing shriek from the table beside me. I went so far as to utter an audible “Nu?” but still couldn’t bring myself to look. Then I looked. A small enamel bowl, slid from my tray, had plopped upended onto the pale, strapless shoulder of a garlanded debutante.

  “What’s that!” she cried (a little irrationally, I thought), twisting her neck to watch rills of mayonnaise plunging down the close-pored slope of her décolletage. Because it was all I could do to be literal under the circumstances, and meaning no disrespect, I politely informed her, “It looks like slaw.”

  A vein pulsed in her velvet-chokered neck, and she flushed a color that, even in the failing light, rivaled the red of the overhead lanterns. She plucked the bowl from her shoulder like some gross sucking insect and slammed it down on the table in disgust. With his napkin her escort assaulted the little mound of coleslaw that remained perched on her bare shoulder blade. As if he’d knocked off a chip that she’d placed there in defiance, this only served to rekindle her wrath. Looking around for some further means of expressing her vexation, she raised herself to give me a stinging slap across the cheek. She shrieked again to see how my complexion had come off on the palm of her hand.

  Her escort got to his feet to take charge, then looked like he wasn’t sure what he was taking charge of. Inclining his head, which was the pink of strawberry ice cream in the inverted cone of his party hat, he frowned as he examined my cheek. I could feel how the young lady’s fingers must have left their half-chevron of parallel markings, which the gent seemed to find familiar but couldn’t quite place. He leaned back for a better appraisal, giving my nostrils a rest from his essence of Wild-root and Sen-Sen. Then he folded his arms across his belly, cradled snugly in the sling of a watered silk cummerbund.

  “We wheel get to the bottom a thee-us, son,” he said, drawling so mellifluously that I couldn’t tell whether he meant to threaten or console. Nevertheless he seemed pleased with himself, as if he’d spoken for all honorable men. He was building toward such a fine indignation that it was almost a shame to see him so upstaged, but at that moment the debacle behind the royal table had captured the attention of the entire banquet.

  Lucifer had finally gone too far. He’d grabbed Queen Marva June by the arm—intending what? To topple her from her throne and drag her out by the hair? With the kind of hold usually associated with victims of drowning, one of the waiters had locked his hands around Lucifer’s chest. He was lifting the kid from his knees in an effort to detach him from the white woman. It was an action repeated from his side by King Lamar himself, who, without leaving his chair, had taken advantage of her predicament to embrace his beleaguered queen about the bust. He was himself clasped from behind by a concerned peer of the realm, a spruce young man who looked as if he in turn wanted assistance—someone to help him hang on to the king, or at least to correct the cant of his bow tie. It was a full-fledged tug-of-war, in the middle of which stood the moonlighting mayor of Beale Street, his comportment, as ever, unimpeachable. Trying to pry loose the colored kid’s fingers from the lady’s alabaster wrist, he might have been presiding at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. His attitude suggested it was all in a night’s work.

  Meanwhile the harried young queen was no longer making a pretense of self-control. Her eyes were utterly given over to horror. Her immoderate whoops and yelps had stopped the band.

  So this was it, the absurd and pathetic end of the wisenheimer’s once illustrious career. Oh Lucifer, that it should have come to this! The banquet guests would no doubt agree that lynching was too good for him. They would probably pull him to pieces, like the popular musician in one of my cousin’s stories, with their bare hands. They would afterwards wear his dried parts, the party favors from this red-letter occasion, as lucky charms on their bracelets and key chains. Thus resigned to the worst that might befall him, I watched helplessly as the twin was made to let go of the object of his brother’s desire. I saw, though it didn’t sink in, how he wrenched himself out of the clutches of his would-be captors, leaving his empty jacket in their hands. It wasn’t until he’d hotfooted it past me, chiding, “Mistah Harry, you slow as mule blood!” on the way, that I understood Lucifer had broken free.

  Taking heart, I said so long to my serving tray, which I let fall with a resounding clatter to the patio tiles. Before I had managed to jar myself into motion, however, I was overtaken by a pack of puffing gentleman guests. Galloping after the wise guy, they were throwing off any impediments to speed, shedding tuxedo jackets and sashes, letting paper hats fly where they might. Several of the waiters, dispatched by their captain, had also sprinted forward. They kicked out their legs in suspiciously stylized strides, after a fashion that looked more suited to a cakewalk than to giving chase. But even they had a head start on me in pursuing the twin.

  This is not to say that anyone was close to catching him. Making a beeline across the footlighted dance floor, he swerved only to avoid one of the escorts (who, in his attempt to tackle the elusive twin, had skidded on his boiled shirtfront across the floor). He hurtled a railing and cut across a corner of the mock-up piazza while band members snatched their instruments out of his way. Shagging it over the gravel that bordered the formal terrace, he lifted his knees like he might be about to take flight—and did. He bounded into the air, landing kerplunk on the tin-plated parapet that surrounded the hotel roof.

  Backlit now by the huge neon sign straddling the hotel’s opposing wings, Lucifer struck his stance so purposefully—jerking his cap out of a back pocket to pull it on—that the host of pursuers were brought to a sudden halt.

  I figured that this was a calculated effect. What was also calculated was the way that he looked behind him toward oblivion, then back toward the hostile mob, as if weighing alternatives. The kid sometimes pushed make-believe to such lengths, though, that you couldn’t tell it from the real thing. My kishkes having tied themselves in knots, I cried out, “Don’t you dare!”

  But mine was not so dissimilar from all the other angrily raised voices. Apparently set on preventing him from cheating them out of his retribution, the banquet guests were bellowing in varying degrees of rancor. Much as I wanted to reach the kid, like everyone else I was glued to the spot. Still, I was a little encouraged that, while I couldn’t see his face too clearly, I thought I could make out a trace of his
devilish grin. Then he turned his back on the whole affair and was gone.

  My ribs slammed shut like a trap sprung over my heart. Surging forward along with the gentleman guests, who cautioned their dates to stay put, I stumbled over the gravel to the parapet. Leaning against the bird-fouled tin for support, I hid my face in my hand. I was in no hurry to look down the long stories toward the crumpled body at the bottom of the shaft. Flanked as I was on either side by irate tuxedos, I still thought I could hear him calling: “Mistah Harry, you bout to miss the boat!”

  I uncovered my eyes, though my brain took its time in corroborating what they saw. He was waving his cap at me from a fire escape catty-corner to the Plantation Roof, across a chasm some ten feet below.

  “You birdbrain!” I started to yell at him. “You pinhead stovelid jungle-bunny momzer coon!” I was that glad to see him. Removing my glasses to wipe my eyes, I delivered myself of a gut-wrenching sob. I clutched the wall again, braced against the event of some joker’s congratulating me on a fine choice of epithets. But everyone else was too busy spitting curses of their own.

  That’s when I began to think—as the wise guy still waited, urging me to take the leap—that I wasn’t so glad to see Lucifer after all. He had some nerve inviting me to risk my neck, especially when I could just as easily stay where I was, under cover of the general acrimony. Across my cheek I could still feel the debutante’s smarting handprint, exposing me as neither one thing nor another. If I wanted, I’d have bet I could back up crabwise into the kitchen; I could wipe off the blackface, put on a funny hat, and come out to join the party. Having passed for a darkie, I could certainly impersonate my own kind, more or less.

  Lucifer shrugged a mighty shrug and started down the fire escape alone. Myself, I began to slink backwards, meaning to take advantage of the foofooraw and disappear. But what I was doing, I was coming to my senses, I was losing my mind—take your pick. I was backing up to give myself room to take a run at the wall.

  While you couldn’t exactly say I bounded onto it, I got a leg up just the same. I raised myself slowly until I was standing erect on the tin, which shuddered like distant thunder from my trembling. I was leaning out over dizzy nothing, shouting at Lucifer to hold his horses, wishing that someone would for God’s sake stop me before I did something rash. They should try and stop me if they dared.

  Then my legs were churning in midair for a purchase. My waiter’s jacket billowed about me, providing resistance (I could have sworn it) against the velocity of my descent. How else could you explain the way that drop seemed to last some considerable fraction of forever? Long enough for people gazing out of hotel windows to remark in passing the nearly aerodynamic boy.

  I hit the steel slats of the fire escape with a brain-shuddering ping-ing-ng, my legs collapsing under me, knees striking the platform studs, which tore my pants. Frantically I set about taking stock of my broken bones, of which there seemed so far to be none, though my knees could have used a little first aid. “Mistah Harry,” came the voice of patience under pressure, and I looked up to find Lucifer standing a couple of steps below me, offering me his hand. Still somewhat addled from my landing, I thought he wanted to give me an amiable shake, mazel tov on the occasion of having made such a valiant leap. But no sooner had I extended my own hand than he latched on to my arm, and for the umpteenth time that evening—indifferent to my abrasions and before I could even get properly to my feet—the wise guy began to drag me in a blind rush behind him.

  Only this time there was a difference: instead of pushing deeper into trouble, we were making good our escape. Realizing this left me silly. It tickled me further that the guests were continuing to hurl abuse, which rained over us as harmlessly as ticker tape. As I banged down the steps behind Lucifer, sliding along the railing on my belly whenever I could, I was seized with uncontrollable laughter.

  At the bottom of fifteen ringing flights, a horizontal staircase tipped us gently into the street, where we were discharged like a pair of wobbling dreidels. Even from that far below the hotel roof, you could hear the band cranking up another tune—the old standard “Bye-Bye Blackbird,” if I wasn’t mistaken. Then we were beating it down Third Street, the music growing ever fainter, diffusing into the surfy sounds of traffic like an orchestra on a sinking ship.

  We didn’t slow down until we’d reached an alley off of Gayoso Street, where we practically fell out, winded from our dash. Leaning against a wall, I kept on cackling—between healthy gulps of air—over the amazing handiness of our escape. Now that we were clear of it, the whole episode seemed to have been one colossal hoot. Shvitzing buckets, I tore off my waiter’s jacket and began to wipe my face, then cracked up again at the sight of the jacket smeared with black stains.

  Bent over, panting, hands braced on his knees, Lucifer resisted joining me in my hilarity. Full of fellow feeling, however, I stepped over and gave him a friendly slap on the back. Instantly he began to whoop it up with an abandon that put my own wheezing laughter to shame. He heaved and quaked, hugging himself to keep from splitting his sides. It took me a minute to understand that this was not a happy noise he was making, that the wise guy was bawling desolately.

  “I have done fail!” he cried out at length. “It a judgment on me, I done rurnt what ain’t never be fix!” He began to curse himself, striking his forehead with the heel of his hand, increasing the cadence with every name he called. “I’se a mosshead…gator bait…suck-hind-tit…eight rock…momzer…coon!” Then he turned and banged his head against the brick wall. Here, as if he’d decided that this was the ticket, he backed up a couple of paces, about to repeat the process with a running start.

  I grabbed him by the belt loop and reeled him in. Flinging my arms around him from behind, I locked my fingers over his chest as I’d seen them do at the banquet. Quite honestly, I was embarrassed for all his carrying-on, not to say revolted by the combination of tears and snot dripping onto my sleeve. Beyond spoiling the fun, he was blubbering so woefully I was afraid I might break down and blubber too.

  But I hung on just the same, squeezing with all my might until he stopped trying to pull away. I squeezed the last squeak of caterwauling out of his system, until he’d subsided into hiccupping sobs, then silence. It was almost too easy, Lucifer’s surrender, and I wondered why, back before it was finally too late, we hadn’t tried the same maneuver on his brother.

  Not without a feeling of getting even for all the shoving I’d endured that night, I pushed the docile wise guy in the direction of the Baby Doll Hotel, then made tracks back to North Main Street in record time. I collected my schoolbooks from under a box hedge in Market Square Park and entered the apartment reading aloud from a biology text. I turned my head neither left nor right to see who might be home. Walking straight to my alcove, I made my voice—ad-libbing now about lipids, which I may have confused with limpets—manifestly drowsy. Then I nipped out the window into the nodding mimosa tree.

  Back at the Baby Doll, Lucifer had retired to his miserable corner again, and as for Michael, he didn’t look quite so beatific anymore. Now, when you looked at him, you might think to yourself: If this is love, kaynehoreh, keep it away from me. His fluttering eyelids were ragged as chewed thumbnails, and his cheekbones, above their deep hollows, had the bleached appearance of old rubber. His body in its dirty nightshirt was an empty hand puppet. For all the tender attentions of the ladies, never mind the adoration of the gawkers, the dummy showed no signs of pulling out of his decline.

  His voice, after more than a week’s worth of uninterrupted prattle, was reduced to the drone of a tiny faltering motor. Sometimes his visitors had to put their ears so close to him that you’d have thought they were listening for a heartbeat instead of words. But usually he was audible enough, and extravagant as ever in eulogizing his beloved. He stalked her through his relentless imaginings, conceiving whole Baedekers of peoples and places along the way—describing territories that, while they’d certainly never figured in his experience, could neit
her be accounted for by the breadth of his reading. Such an alphabet soup poured out of him that I sometimes pictured Michael’s mouth as a shofar from which tumbled something like the contents of Kaplan’s Loans.

  He showered his sweetheart with gifts, cloaked her in fabrics and anointed her with scents gathered from the place where Beale Street intersected (let’s say) farthest Bong Tree Land. He tracked her into terra incognita, where standard-hung castle walls beetled over sharecroppers’ shacks and jungle escarpments were terraced in cotton rows, where the Mississippi Delta flowed into the Sea of Tranquillity. He called upon a legendary lost tribe of hoofers and the devil’s brother-in-law to come to his aid, and saints from outside any recognized canon, with names like Ribeye and Mandrake Willie. But necromantic intervention notwithstanding, the erstwhile dummy was often heard to complain that he was losing sight of his queen. These days she seemed to give him the slip at every turn.

  It made you want to shake him, especially when you knew what she was made of, and say, “Michael, shmuck, get wise to yourself!” But the more I listened to the kid’s sick fancies, the more I believed he was only half mad. The other half was making some kind of a deathbed confession that it would have been a sin to muffle up.

  Now that the entire neighborhood had shelled out their hard-earned wages to view him, the spectator business had finally begun to fall off. Moreover, since the kid’s voice had lost much of its volume, the gawkers were growing impatient, if not bored, with the trouble it took to hear him. There was also the matter of his physical deterioration, the way his delirium no longer seemed to transfigure his mumbling bones. This everyone found plainly depressing. As a consequence, though never really resigned to the fact that his value as a meal ticket had come and gone, Aunt Honey gave up her promotional activities. She’d settled, along with her ladies, into going through the motions of restoring his health, or at least making him comfortable.