The Magic Keys

by Albert Murray

  I let it go at that because I decided that he was really only musing about some note he had made or was planning to make on one of the scratch pads that I assumed he always carried either in his jacket pocket or along with the other papers in his briefcase. I remember thinking that maybe it was somewhat like people translating what they think they are hearing when they listen to a foreign language. Their vocabulary reveals the limitations of their conception of things. (Which suddenly reminded me of old Joe States looking at somebody out on the dance floor and whispering, Man, don’t tell that cat he ain’t swinging, He really feels like he’s swinging his old butt off, and he can’t even stay in time with most of them other folks out there. It’s all in his own head, man, he said. And then when he said, You got a textbook word for that kind of psychological jive, Schoolboy, and I said, I don’t know, maybe solipsism, he said, No better for him.)

  We were standing at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street. And when I stuck out my hand before heading for the bookstore, and he said, So what about yourself?, I assumed he was asking more out of the good manners of his down-home upbringing than out of any genuinely personal curiosity, So all I said was that I was checked into graduate classes in the humanities at New York University after two plus years of knocking around to accumulate a little graduate scholarship supplement, among other things.

  At that time I didn’t mention anything at all about the time I had spent with the Bossman Himself. It crossed my mind, but I decided against saying anything about it, not only because I didn’t remember him as having any special interest in that kind of music back on the campus, but also because there was no reason to expect him to have any special curiosity about any particular details of my background. When I had mentioned that I was from the outskirts of Mobile, for instance, he didn’t say anything about the marching bands of the Mardi Gras parades or about jook joint piano players or about itinerant guitar players. Which didn’t surprise me because when I thought about him and music I really thought of conservatory musicians who tended to regard road band and nightspot musicians as being inadequately trained entertainers.

  As he turned to continue his way on up along Fifth Avenue, he said, Well, welcome to the city of the fables and the fleshpots, man. Then he said, Maybe we can get together and swap some lies long and short about the old country. I’m in the phone book.

  And when I said I just might take you up on that, he said, Some down-home lies in and out of school, foul mouth or fancy tongue, about all this stuff. And I said, I’m for it, man.

  On my way on along Forty-seventh Street, I suddenly realized what I could have said about my roommate whom Taft Edison probably would have remembered from the band cottage during my freshman year, because from time to time my roommate would rejoin the French horn section of the marching band because it was being expanded for some special upcoming event, such as a trip up to Chicago for the halftime show during the annual football game with Wilberforce at Soldier Field.

  Which, however, was only partly the reason I arrived at 41 West 47th Street thinking of the one and only self-styled Jeronimo as in Geronimo and also Hieronymus as in Bosch whose real name was T. (for Thomas) Jerome Jefferson, also known on campus as The Snake, as in snake doctor and snake oil salesman, because a tent show magician claiming a diabolical contract is what Herr Dr. Faustus came across as in a bull session in which I referred to him as the best of all possible roommates that first September. Of course, “best of all possible” was a phrase I got from him, who got it from Voltaire’s “best of all possible worlds” in Candide and by which he assumed Voltaire meant things good and bad as they actually are because such is life in our time, but by which I meant and still mean that you couldn’t have dreamed of having a better roommate if you had gone to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cambridge, or Oxford.

  The brief encounter with Taft Edison was reason enough for my train of thought, but even so who else if not my old roommate back in Atelier 359 would pop into mind as you stepped down from the sidewalk and into the entrance of Gotham Book Mart? Not even Miss Lexine Metcalf, who in this instance would come after Mr. Carlton Poindexter.

  V

  One late morning about a week after I overtook Taft Edison on the way up Fifth Avenue that afternoon, I looked up from my usual place in the south reading room in the library and saw him standing at the checkpoint on his way in. I stood up and raised my hand and he nodded and headed toward me, and when we met in the center aisle he said he had stopped in to double-check a few details in the Americana section, which was at the south end of the reading room in those days, and also to invite me out for a midday snack and chat if I could spare the time. And I said I could and ended up spending most of the afternoon with him.

  That was when I found out that when we had parted at the corner of Forty-seventh Street the other time he had continued on up Fifth Avenue only as far as Forty-ninth Street. Because at that time that was where he did what he did from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. every week Mondays through Fridays; because what he was using as his writing studio at that time was a book-lined back room of an exclusive jeweler’s showroom on the eighth floor of the Swiss Building on the southwest corner of Forty-ninth Street.

  I said, Hey, man, I said, Hey, goddamn, man! I said, This is some little cubbyhole you’ve got yourself up here, man. And he said, Man if I ever get enough of this stuff ready to start publishing it nobody’s ever going to want to believe that I was up here cooking it up in a place like this. If they don’t try to put me in the nuthouse.

  And that was when he also said what he said about trying some of it out on me before long. Me being not only a down-home boy but also a graduate student in liberal arts by way of becoming a literary type myself.

  And I said, Let me know and I’ll find the time, and he said, Maybe during some weekend, and I said, Just let me know.

  As I stood looking down through the window onto the low roof of the southeast corner building of Rockefeller Center, I saw that we were diagonally across Fifth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street from Saks and in the next block north was St. Patrick’s Cathedral and as far as you could see in that direction in the hazy midafternoon light there were more yellow cabs than any other vehicles weaving in and out of the traffic southward from Fifty-ninth Street, and there was also a steady flow of city Transit Authority buses pulling over to the curb every several blocks.

  He said, Man, I come down here on schedule every morning just like everybody else working in this part of town. I check in here just like punching the clock, he said. And I said that I had been surprised to find that he had given up the trumpet and music composition but was not at all surprised that he was working on a book, because I had kept coming across his name on the checkout slip in so many of the books I borrowed from the library, not only while he was there during my freshman year but also during the rest of the time I was in college.

  That was when I said what I said about the morning my roommate and I had circled over to the library on our way to our early English class period and found him already there sitting on the steps with his trumpet case between his legs and with an open book on his knees. And when I said I remember the book and it was The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, he said he remembered the book but not the encounter. And I said it was not a verbal encounter. I said I just happen to be the kind of freshman who was very curious about what kind of reading other than textbooks and reference assignments upperclassmen were doing. And so was my roommate, I said, and he knew who you were by name because he had already started going over to the band cottage to practice with the French horn section because he wanted to make the free trip home with the band when it went along with the football team for the annual game against Wilberforce in Chicago. I knew that you were waiting on steps for the doors to open because I knew you worked in the library, I said. Because I had seen you working at the main circulation desk.

  That’s all I said about that at that time and that was when he told me what he told me about how
he had come to have use of the Fifth Avenue workshop we were in. It was not really his, he said. It had been leased from the jewelry company by one of his very well-to-do friends, a writer who spent long periods away in Europe doing research for scholarly and critical books and articles on French, Italian, and German writers and artists.

  It turned out to be just what I needed to make me buckle down and really try to find out what I could do with some of this stuff I’ve been playing around with from time to time, he said. And then he said, Man, if I can get enough of this stuff to come off the way I think it should I just might be able to cause a few people to reconsider a few things they take too much for granted. It’s not just a matter of saying this is my way of coming to terms with this stuff, it’s more like saying Hey, this is another way that might be even better or at least a pretty good alternative. It really is a matter of trying to test the validity of one’s own sense of things.

  And, of course, you know I know that there are going to be some people out there who are going to think I’m out of my mind. Or wonder if I have a mind. But what the hell, man, that’s a chance I’m willing to take. After all, trying to do what I’m trying to do with this stuff is exactly what I put the horn aside for. I didn’t give up on that horn, man, he said. Hell, I can still make a living with it, but I’d rather be trying to do what I’m trying to do with this stuff, some of which I must admit sometimes sounds pretty wild, even to me. But I’m afraid it really does represent my sense of what life in these United States is like.

  Then, while I was looking at titles on the bookshelves and thinking of what I was going to say about some of the books of contemporary poetry and fiction I knew he had read in college, he stepped back out into the showroom and said something to somebody there, and when he came back and said what he said about what I had told him in the snack bar about the courses I was taking, that was when he also said, Man, I sure hope your class work is not going to keep you so tied down that you won’t have enough free time for us to get together from time to time when I get this stuff up to the point where I’m going to need to start running it by somebody.

  Somebody not only from down the way but also somebody who spent even more time in that neck of the woods than I did. And you might just be the one I suddenly realized that I should have been looking for. Somebody from down the way who’s also interested in what books are really about. Man, most of the grad students I run into up here seem to think of poetry and fiction mainly as raw material for research projects that will enhance their academic status.

  I said, I know what you mean, I really do. I said, Man, I think that was the first big thing I realized when I got to college. Some courses were about grade-point averages, but some were about the nature of things, and I don’t mean just geology, physics, and chemistry classes. All of that was obvious. I mean the way some of the liberal arts courses were taught. Man, I used to go to the library to work out academic assignments, but what I really did was get the class work out of the way so I would have more time free to get on with trying to find out what literary books were really all about, without being concerned about answering test questions about them.

  Then I said, Hey, speaking about research and homework assignments, as things down in Washington Square are going now, I’m pretty sure I can find time to listen to whatever you decide you’d like to run by me from time to time some weekends. Just let me know ahead of time. Not that I can promise any editorial expertise, but that’s not what you’re looking for at this point, is it? Anyway, you’re on.

  And he said, The main thing is that you’re not only somebody from down the way and was actually in that place part of the time I was there and even saw me there and actually knew about some of the books I was reading on my own along with all that music theory and all those required practice sessions, it’s not just that. Man, what I’m hoping is that just the experience of hearing myself reading some of this crazy stuff I’m playing around with to somebody like you, just might be all I need to keep me going in the outrageous direction I’m going.

  And that was when I also told him about how my roommate and I had started reading books on the reading list for the special elective course on the novel for upperclassmen because it was being taught by Carlton Poindexter, who also taught our section of freshman English. Then I said, As things turned out neither of us actually took that class in the novel because my roommate transferred to the Yale School of Architecture after his sophomore year and the course was not available during my junior year, because Mr. Poindexter was away in graduate school on a special fellowship grant, because he was going to be the new librarian.

  And anyway, man, by that time the main thing for me was that other reading list that my old roommate and I had tacked on the wall of Atelier 359 by the end of our freshman year. And there was also all of those follow-up references in those wide-ranging anthologies and follow-up stuff to articles in current magazines.

  And then I also said what I said about spending all three of my college summers on the campus working as a hospital kitchen helper the first summer, as a power plant engineer’s unskilled assistant the second summer, and in the stacks of the library itself during the summer before my senior year.

  And he said, You, too? Because it turned out that he had also spent the two summers of his three college years working on the campus, first as a baker’s helper in the campus dining hall, and in the library, not only the next summer but also that next regular school year. Which is why I had not really been surprised when he said that he was trying to write a book, not a symphony or an oratorio. I had seen him with the band and sometimes he also wore his band uniform to work when he had to report to the library directly after playing for an early-morning cadet parade formation practice, and I also knew that he was an advanced student in the School of Music because sometimes he used to come to the library to do his copywork assignments with the sheets spread out before him at a table all by himself. But even so, I had remembered seeing him carrying library books across the campus far more often than I saw him with his trumpet case.

  Man, I said, I couldn’t even spare bus fare to Mobile, and the summer jobs that you could get on the campus were so much better than anything available to me down there, anyway. Man, those summers I spent working on the campus were just as important as the regular school term. Hey, come to think of it, those three summers now seem like the equivalent of three full terms. Man, with no formal class assignments between me and all those library books, and with new ones coming in all the time. Man, talking about the rabbit in the briar patch. And he said, I know what you mean, man. I know exactly what you mean. Then he said, They had some very good people in that School of Music down there, but as I look at things now, the best thing down there for me turned out to be the library along with the kind of informal sessions I used to have with Carlton Poindexter. Man, I still think of that library as something special. When you consider the fact that the main emphasis in that school was not that of a liberal arts college like Fisk, Talladega, and Morehouse—but when you remember how many of those younger profs were still doing advanced graduate work, maybe that had something to do with it. Anyway, that library collection suggests that there may well have been at least a few others down there like Carlton Poindexter who had a much richer background in liberal arts than was required by the courses they taught. And come to think of it, that was also true of the School of Music.

  Which reminded me that my old roommate and I had thought of Taft Edison as an upperclassman worthy of our special attention and some deference. Not only because his name was on the library checkout card for so many books that were not required for any course of study offered by the college program at that time, but also because on so many that were current and recent publications or were referred to in current and back issues of weekly, monthly literary magazines and quarterly journals.

  Man, he said, as he walked with me to the elevator when I told him that I had to be getting on back to the library to finish an assignm
ent for an early-evening class, speaking of the rabbit in the briar patch, did you ever get around to checking out Of Time and the River? And I said, I did, remembering that I had put it on my list because I had seen it on Mr. Carlton Poindexter’s desk after class one morning along with several other books by contemporary Southern authors.

  And when he said, Remember the section that he calls “Young Faustus”? and I said I did and that sometimes I also used to refer to my old roommate as Dr. Faustus after Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, which only led to his being given the dormitory nickname of the Snake as in snake doctor or snake oil medicine doctor of the tent shows. Because what the bargain that Dr. Faustus with Mephistopheles reminded the guys in that dormitory of was not the Marlowe, Goethe, and Gounod character that I had in mind, but the old satanic-looking tent show magicians who used to claim that they had pawned their souls to the devil in exchange for knowledge of secrets about the nature of things forbidden to other human beings no matter how gifted.

  That’s the way it got started, I said, but then later on, when they had to realize that for all of his straight A records, his conduct in class sessions was not at all that of an irrepressible academic eager beaver, but that of somebody who always sat in the back row and never volunteered to answer any question or join in any discussion and only answered only nonchalantly when called upon, the Snake nickname no longer referred to snake oil trickster but snake in the grass.

  Which gave him a reputation that did him no harm whatsoever when he went cruising among the upperclass coeds during social events, I said, and when the elevator door opened, Taft Edison had said what he said about hearing talk in the band cottage about a freshman known as the Snake because he had a very special recipe for chem lab cocktails that some of the musicians in both student dance bands liked to sneak into the parties they played for on campus back in those Prohibition era days.