Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

by James Baldwin

  And what I did that day, I really don’t remember. It took me a long time to get dressed and get out of the house. Once out of the house, I had no idea what to do. I walked into a cafeteria and got breakfast. I remember carrying the tray to the table, looking at the breakfast, swallowing the milk, and walking away. The man sitting opposite me looked at me as though I were completely mad, and I certainly couldn’t blame him. Recklessly—I rather felt that this was the very last day of my life—I took a cab to Broadway; to the theatrical section of New York, that is, not having the courage to go downtown to my own theater. I wandered around these sordid and frightening and beautiful streets—Little Leo. On the great white way—and made the very great mistake of walking into a movie called My Son, John. I have no idea why I did it, having never had any respect for Leo McCarey’s work, and having always been totally impervious to the charms of Miss Helen Hayes. She’s always impressed me as an aging, not very bright drama student, perfectly suited for Christmas pageants, preferably someplace in Vancouver. She always makes me think of football rallies and there was indeed a great deal of football talk, as I remember, in this exceedingly shameful and depressing film. It was just about the worst thing I could possibly have done that day. That movie made me ashamed of human beings and ashamed of my profession and I thought, My God, if this is what is supposed to happen to me, I swear I’ll go back to the post office. It was more shameful than anything I’d ever had to do with my fucking menial tray. I walked out into the streets again, to find a cop beating up some poor man in the gutter. My Son, John. I walked into a bar, wondered if I dared have a drink, ordered a beer, sat there. It was only five in the afternoon. On any other day, it would have been seven. I sipped my beer and three or four hours later, it was only five-fifteen. I thought of going uptown to escort my father and mother to the theater, but I knew that such an effort was thoroughly beyond me. In fact, there was absolutely nothing I could do except stew on the back of the stove until showtime. Our curtain was at eight, and I was due at the theater at seven. I left the bar, and wandered around. I wished I’d had a friend to talk to, or some refuge where I could have hidden. It was awful to walk around these streets this way, all dressed up, and carrying my terrible secret, which was that I wasn’t really Leo Proudhammer any more and hadn’t yet become Morgan Evans.

  At the stroke of seven, I arrived at the theater, over which was hanging the desperate chill of death. Konstantine had been called before the guardians of the American safety, and would be going to Washington in a few days. He told me this very quietly when he came into the dressing room. And it must be admitted that not even this dragged me any closer to the real world. I heard him, and I cared, but I heard him and cared from very far away.

  Presently, we all stood on the tiny stage, the stage manager with his watch in his hand. There was an incredible silence. Bunny, holding on to Miss Moffat’s bicycle, looked at me and smiled, very faintly. The Negro girl, Geneva Smart, who was playing Bessie, and who was very good, swallowed hard, once, and then stood perfectly still. The stage manager said, “Places, please,” and we stood there. Then he gave me my cue for “Down in the Dungeon,” and I began to sing in this silence, feeling, from beyond the curtain, something sweeping up to me, life sweeping up to me, and carrying me and my song. I finished my song, and got into the wings, and the stage manager, after a moment, said, “Curtain,” and the curtain rose, and we were on. That is, they were. Morgan doesn’t appear until the second scene.

  I watched, and it seemed to be going well. There seemed to be a lot of Negroes in the audience, you can always tell if you know the way Negroes react and the kind of things they react to. They laughed a lot at Miss Moffat, and they liked her, and they applauded when she said “this part of the world was a disgrace to a Christian country.” Bunny was very energetic and very good and the atmosphere was very alive and electric. They were carrying the play, the audience, I mean, and that’s what you always pray will happen. Then, the scene was over, and I and the four other “nigger boys” took our places and started to hum. The curtain rose.

  I’ve done lots of plays since then, some of them far more successful, but I’ll never forget this one. There is nothing like the first cold plunge, and any survivor will tell you that. When the curtain came up, I knew I was going to vomit, right here, in front of all these people. The moment I delivered my first line, “No, miss,” I knew I was going to be all right. And you can tell, from the other actors and from the audience. Bunny and I were working very well together, and some very, very nice things happened in our scene at the end of the first act, when she has read Morgan’s composition and invests him with a sense of his potential which he has never had before. I played that scene for all that was in it, for all that was in me, and for all the colored kids in the audience—who held their breath, they really did, it was the unmistakable silence in which you and the audience re-create each other—and for the vanished Little Leo, and for my mother and father, and all the hope and pain that were in me. For the very first time, the very first time, I realized the fabulous extent of my luck: I could, I could, if I kept the faith, transform my sorrow into life and joy. I might live in pain and sorrow forever, but, if I kept the faith, I would never be useless. If I kept the faith, I could do for others what I felt had not been done for me, and if I could do that, if I could give, I could live. Our scene ends the first act, and the curtain came down, and they gave us a mighty hand. We rose with the tide generated in the hall by Konstantine’s experiment. Our last scene came, and I think we played it well. I know we played it well. The curtain fell, and we heard this tremendous roar from the people. Konstantine stood in the wings, with this smile on his face. He grabbed me and kissed me and pushed me away and the curtain rose for our curtain calls. We went out in the order which we’d been assigned, and I came out next to last. There is no baptism like the baptism in the theater, when you stand up there and bow your head and the roar of the people rolls over you. There is no moment like that, it is both beautiful and frightening—they might be screaming for your blood, and if they were, they would not sound very different. I bowed and bowed, while the colored kids in the audience stamped and cheered, and I turned to bring on Bunny. She came and we stood there together and bowed and the curtain fell and I went off, leaving Bunny there alone. The curtain rose and fell, and Bunny smiled and bowed. But Bunny was a pro, and a very nice woman, and she reached out her hand for me again and Connie put his knee in my behind and pushed me on. They were standing and cheering. Bunny and I bowed together and the curtain fell and Bunny went off and then the curtain rose again and I was out there by myself. And all the years of terror and trembling, all the nearly twenty-six years, were worth it at that moment. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t seen my mother and father in the audience. I had been playing for them, oh, how I wanted them to be proud of me! But I hadn’t thought about them at all. For awhile, it didn’t seem that the audience would ever let us go, the curtain rose and fell, and, I don’t know why, a certain fear began knocking in my heart. I tried to see if they were there. But they were not there. I would have known. Red was there, with his wife. I saw them standing and clapping.

  The curtain fell at last, for the last time, and then we were in our dressing rooms, and the mob came pouring in. The colored kids came in, and I signed autographs for almost the first time in my life. Variety was there, and they said I’d been tremendous, and looked at me with wonder; that wonder with which one, eventually, must learn to live; it is the way the world will always look at you. Red came in, and his face was like a fountain. He kissed me, not saying anything, and his wife, laughing and crying, kissed me. It certainly looked like one more of our boys had made it. Life magazine was there, and they made an appointment to interview me. A star is born, they said—wow! The East Side Explosion, they called me. Hilda was there. I hadn’t seen her for years. Sally was there, with the man who was going to be her husband. I had a telegram from Steve—how in the world had he known? And a telegram f
rom Barbara, who was on the West Coast, making her second movie, the movie which won for her, in the supporting actress category, her first Academy Award. Oh, yeah. We kids were going to make it, all right. But Caleb wasn’t there, and my mother and my father weren’t there.

  By now, it was midnight, too late to go uptown and too late to call The New Dispensation House of God. So, I tried to throw everything out of my mind, and walked with Konstantine to the cast party, which was being held in Chinatown. I was exhausted, with the particular, peculiar, and exhilarating exhaustion only a performer feels. I knew I had been good. I had been very good. I could feel it in Konstantine’s very quiet pride. I had not betrayed him. I had not betrayed the play. I had not betrayed myself and all those people whom I would always love, and I had not betrayed all that history which held me like a lover and which would hold me forever like that.

  I hardly remember the party, except that Connie was grave and triumphant, and I got a little drunk and tried to make love to Geneva Smart, who had the good sense to laugh at me, but very nicely. We got some of the reviews, and the reviews were extraordinary. They said very nice things about me, “incandescent,” “unforgettable,” “an actor not merely seasoned, but highly spiced”—shit like that. A lot of it came out of pure embarrassment that Konstantine was being called to testify. But we certainly looked like a hit, and it was clear that we were going to run for longer than seven performances. As it turned out, we ran for over eight months, and were the talk of the town and I was sometimes the toast of the town. I did some television. I was signed for a movie. I began doing night clubs and records. When The Corn Is Green closed, I did my first movie and then I did a play in England and came home to do a revival of Cabin in the Sky on Broadway, which was a tremendous personal triumph for me. I had made it. I looked back and I wondered how I got over.

  But I got a telegram the morning after the opening of The Corn Is Green, telling me that my mother had been carried to the hospital. While she was dressing to come to my opening, she had a stroke and fell into a coma from which she never recovered consciousness, and she died two days later. Caleb spoke at her funeral, and the choir sang “Get Away, Jordan.” My father just sat there. It was the first time I had seen him in a church. And I must say for the old man, in spite of the fact that he was so lonely now, and in spite of the way Caleb went on at him about his soul, he never relented. No, he went his own way, and sometimes stood on the avenue, listening to black nationalist speeches, and he was a faithful client of the black nationalist bookstore. After I met Christopher, he and Christopher would spend hours together, reconstructing the black empires of the past, and plotting the demolition of the white empires of the present. It was good for my father, who adored Christopher, and was good for Christopher to find someone that old whom he could trust and admire. I sang, alone, for my mother, a song she had sometimes sung to me: “Mary, Mary, what you going to name that pretty little baby?”

  Pete left very soon after dinner, and Barbara and I sat before the fire, as calm, I thought suddenly, almost, as two old people.

  They had sent the telegram and the money order to Christopher while I had been soaking in the tub.

  “How do you feel?” Barbara asked.

  “Fine. Sleepy. Like a cat.”

  “You look like one. Curled up there like that. A tired tomcat, finally come home.”

  “But not a spayed tomcat?”

  She laughed. “Oh, no. I know that’s been your fear, but it’s never been your problem.”

  “But I’ve been a problem for you very often, Barbara, haven’t I?”

  “I don’t doubt that you will be again, Leo,” she said, and smiled. “I’ve also been a problem for you. But we’ve come through so far, and we will again.” She paused. “It isn’t, our story isn’t—isn’t a story anyone would have chosen to live. But, I had to ask myself, Barbara, would you change it if you could? Would you? And I had to realize that I wouldn’t. So—that’s all there is to that.” She rose, and kissed me on the forehead. “And now, my dear invalid, I must put you to bed. You must sleep until you wake up—that is, no one’s to wake you. I have a date for lunch, but Pete will be here in the morning, and the maid will be here, too.”

  “All right, princess,” and I rose. I had to say it: “I thought you might be a little afraid of seeing Christopher again.”

  Barbara laughed. “Good Lord, no. How could I be afraid of anything, Leo, after all those years of storm and strife with you?” Her face changed. “What happened between Christopher and me happened because of you. We both know that. You haven’t got to know it. And we both love you. We both know that. Now, go to bed.”

  We kissed each other—like brother and sister. “Good-night,” I said.

  “Good-night, my dear.”

  I turned into my bedroom and undressed and got into bed. Barbara was right; I was very tired. I was very peaceful, after our long storm. Barbara had done something very hard and rare. As though she had known I would need it, and would always need it, she had arranged her life so that my place in it could never be jeopardized. This room in which I lay had cost her more in the way of refusals than she would ever tell; perhaps it had given her more in the way of affirmation than anyone would ever know. The incestuous brother and sister would now never have any children. But perhaps we had given one child to the world, or helped to open the world to one child. Luckier lovers hadn’t managed so much. The sunlight filled the room. I heard voices, muted, laughing, in the big, wide room. My watch said ten to one. I went to my window and opened the blinds. It was a very bright day, and I suddenly wanted to be out in it. I went into my bathroom and stripped naked and stepped under the shower. For some reason, I thought of Paradise Alley. I laughed to myself, and I sang. I put on a sweater and slacks and walked out into the big room. Pete was sitting on the sofa, laughing, there was a suitcase near him, and Christopher, long and black, and dressed in a black suit, was talking on the phone.

  “Look who’s here!” Pete said.

  Christopher looked over at me. “He just this minute stepped out of his room,” said Christopher. “Yeah, just this minute. He looks all right, I can tell ain’t nothing wrong with him that wasn’t wrong with him before, you people are too much, I swear, got me all the way out here on a bullshit tip, you know how many affairs I had to cancel to make it out here? Shame on you! Shame, yeah, that’s what I said. What?” He laughed. “Well, you want me to spell all that to you when I see you? No, you don’t want me to do that, no, you don’t. Yeah. Pete’s got the address. We’ll be there. What? Of course, he’ll feel like coming, he ain’t got nothing else to do, don’t you know I’m here now? I’m his doctor, don’t know why you didn’t send for me before. Yeah, bye-bye, you have a nice lunch, you hear, and don’t you let them people jive you, you too sweet and pretty. Now, why you want to say a thing like that? You hurting my feelings, Barbara. Yeah. Old brother Christopher is on the scene now, baby, bye-bye, see you later.” He put down the receiver and smiled, and held out his arms. “Come here, Big Daddy. Look like you just can’t do right. I ain’t going to let you out of my sight no more. The minute you out of my sight, you got to go and fall flat on your face in front of umpteen million people. Shame on you!” He grabbed me and hugged me and kissed me. “I’m glad to see you, baby. I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” I said. “How’ve you been?” And then, “You look all right.”

  “I’ve been fine. The people is pretty sick, but I’m all right.”

  “Black Christopher!” Pete said.

  “Yeah, baby,” Christopher said, “black—just like Kenyatta, and all them folks.” He laughed again. “You better believe I’m black.”

  “It’s hard to doubt it,” I said, “when you put it with such force.”

  Christopher threw back his head, and laughed. “If anything was ever the matter with him, he’s all right now. I know your little digs. You mean, if I didn’t tell you I was black, you wouldn’t know I was black. I heard you. All right.�
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  It was good to see him, striding up and down this room, with his face so bright.

  “What do you want, big man?” Pete asked me. “You want some coffee? You ready for lunch?”

  “He shouldn’t be drinking coffee,” said Christopher, “that’s bad for his heart. Let him have some orange juice, or something.”

  “I thought maybe he wanted something hot,” Pete said humbly.

  “Well, let him drink some cocoa. Or some Ovaltine. He ain’t supposed to be drinking no coffee or tea.”

  “I think,” said Pete to me, “that you may have a problem.”

  “Couldn’t we compromise on coffee, with a lot of milk in it?” I asked.

  “Now, it’s your heart,” said Christopher. Then he looked out of the window, and smiled and blushed. “Just make sure you put a lot of milk in it—hell, I’ll do it, you won’t do it right,” and he suddenly walked out of the room.

  “When did he get here?” I asked.

  “A couple of hours ago. He must have packed his bags the minute he got the telegram. I told you he’d have been here already, if he’d had any bread.”

  “It’s nice of him to come,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Pete, “especially considering how many other places he has to go.”

  “All right, Pete,” I said.

  “I mean, just don’t go through your usual bullshit routine of thinking it was a great sacrifice or anything. It’s no sacrifice for a kid to come to San Francisco for the first time to see some people who love him. If you’d get such details as that through your mind, you wouldn’t be such a kid yourself, and Barbara and all of us would have a much easier time.”

  “Do I give you all such a hard time?”

  Pete laughed. “Now, if I say yes, what are you going to do? Leap out of this window, or go off and have another heart attack?” He laughed again. Then, he sobered. “You give us a hard time, man, when we watch you giving yourself a hard time. That’s all. You can’t hide nothing from us, and you damn sure don’t have anything to prove to us. We know you’re Leo Proudhammer. You don’t know it.”