“I’ll be there!” I hung up. And I was there, in no time. I ran those seven blocks past needle-head Applejackers slamming into each other as they waltzed their junky waltz in front of bebop music stores, past asthma-inducing bookshops and a zillion bistros, I ran them faster than I’d run any distance before; in terms of speed, I ran one-hundred-thirty-second notes, arpeggiated. I ran up the rickety alley steps to the Dutchman’s loft, which was above Potato Head Blues. She answered the door.
“Raj’neej, he’s in the bedroom, walking him.”
“Have any milk—?”
“For the cat, yeah—”
“—Forget the cat, boil some.” I hurried into the bedroom, where Raj’neej was trying to walk Chango around the room. He was dragging him over his shoulder. Chango, though a foot taller than Raj’neej, must have been thirty pounds lighter… and Raj’neej was a bit on the Bantam Weight side himself.
Chango looked like one of those El Greco paintings of the dead Nazz, all gone to gray and rigor mortis.
I went into the crapper, and found the needle, filled with blood. And the heroin. I tasted the heroin. Looked at the matches. At the spoon. At the matches. And flushed that junk down the toilet.
I then smelled a sweet jasminy perfume, which was odd. The perfume couldn’t have been Dutchman’s, too bourgeois. Dutchman always used an after-shave. Maybe, I thought at the time, it was from one of Dutchman’s apocryphal girlfriends.
And I heard a distant buzzing noise, like a band playing far away, or underwater, on another world. And, just like Raj’neej, when I tried to focus on the music, it faded.
I took the needle to Dutchman, along with the spoon: “Get rid of it. Take it down the alley and dump it.” The milk was ready. “I’ll take this.”
I took the pan. Into the bedroom. “His pulse, it’s light,” Raj’neej told me.
I heard the front door close. “Lay Chango on the bed.” His muscles were slack, his breathing was coming slowly—but it was coming, he wasn’t too cold, or sweating too much. I lifted the eyelids: the pupils had followed Sputnik into space.
“He showed up, and we told him about the gig.” Raj’neej was blowing it. “He said he needed Dutchman’s bathroom to clean up.”
“Go to the kitchen and get a cup. Put sugar and cocoa in it.” I got a towel from the bathroom and wet it, and began to slap Chango’s face with the tip—nothing hard. No response. Nada. Raj’neej came back with the cup. I took it from him and mixed it with the hot milk.
I noticed I’d left a scorch mark on the dresser. Oh well. I mixed the cocoa and milk, stirring it. “Raj’neej, take the towel and slap Chango’s face—” He did so, too vigorously. “Lightly. We want to wake him up, not beat him up, at least not until he’s over it.”
I drank the cocoa, slowly. It was good.
Raj’neej looked up at me drinking the cocoa. He shined it on, and kept slapping Chango; it was working. Chango mumbled.
I heard the door open and close. And caught a glimpse of Dutchman’s skirt as she walked past the doorway, one of those ruffled numbers a Puerto Rican might wear. But not Dutchman. No, that dress was just like what I’d seen that afternoon, just like what Raj’neej had seen at the Queen of Night’s. It had to be nerves, seeing things like that. Then I smelled that perfume again. Chango muttered an oath in Spanish.
“Let’s get him up.” I held him by one shoulder and Raj’neej held him by the other.
I had taken my coat, which was designed for New England winters or summers in San Francisco, and draped it over Chango Chingamadre. We walked. To the living room. Back through the hall, to the bedroom. Back to the living room.
“My gig starts in an hour,” Raj’neej whined.
“We might get him well enough to play. He’s not too bad.”
At one point, when we were in the bedroom, we heard the door open. Dutchman had returned with pots of coffee.
We pumped Chango full of coffee. And after he had thrown up a hearty dinner, we pumped him full of more. And more coffee. We kept walking, finally deciding to walk Chango down the stairs, down around the corner, to the front of the Potato Head, and inside, for more coffee. The Potato was busy.
Rasputin was minding the bar—it surprised me, the decency of the gesture. Of course, he was chatting up a nice lady. We drank more coffee. Raj’neej used the pay phone to ring a cab.
The pay phone rang. Rasputin answered.
He gestured to me. I went and picked up the phone. I was late. First set starts in five minutes. I told them I’d had to help Dutchman take a friend to the hospital, and asked Lou if they could do the first set without me. It’ll be funny for a trio playing with only keyboards and drums. I reassured them I would be there for the second set.
I was wrong.
* * * *
The cab arrived and took Raj’neej and Chango Chingamadre off to the club date, in some Uptown space. They too missed the first set. At least they made the second. And managed to bring the house down on the third.
Not that I’m complaining.
I was going to run back to my place, to get my bass. Dutchman asked me if I could come upstairs. For a drink. To help her calm down. She was a lonely dyke. And I was her friend. How can a friend refuse?
“Do you remember a few years ago, when we were still ‘underground’?”
I sighed: “Those days were intense. Too intense, for M.E.”
She laughed sympathetically. “Yeah.” Then, took a bottle of cabernet from her wine rack. “And that wild poetry reading, where Ginsberg showed up?”
“The”—I busted every time I remembered it—”the crackers.”
“I sent Chingamadre to get crackers; give him the money, and he comes back with every safecracker in Manhattan.”
“And the cops thought there was a burglars’ convention going on, and stormed in and broke the glass window and the mirror, and stole the brass eagle from your espresso machine.”
“I thought Chango’d stolen it, for the longest while.”
We talked about other times, and drank the wine, and went to bed. I am not sympathetic to those who subscribe to the Diddle And Tell school, the We Did It In Our Clothes school, the We Did It In The Shower school, the We Did It On The Kitchen Table school. (Nor would I confirm the existence of a Middle English tattoo on her fanny: Brid Liveth.) Dutchman was a dyke.
* * * *
The next night we were tearing through our second set, and I saw someone seated by the stage:
Dutchman. Dutchman in a dress.
She wore these gorgeous silver glad rags that caught all available light and tossed it back like confetti. She hadn’t come to see me do a gig in quite a while. I dedicated the next song to her. And she bought us a round of drinks.
Then I dedicated the next song to her, and she smiled. But no drinks came forth.
And then another party came in. They also sat by the stage, two tables away from Dutchman. I saw that dress again, the phantom dress, so resplendently Latin, and looked at the face… which I was certain had to be beautiful. But all I saw was two emerald eyes that said,
hello,
and the more I tried to focus on her facial features, the more I was only able to see the eyes, which said,
you make the most gorgeous music I have ever heard, please join us at our table,
I turned away and caught a look from my pianist—he looked worried. He mouthed something. I read his lips:
“Queen of Night.”
I glanced back at the table; the Queen of Night’s consorts were tall and gaunt junkys in tight-fitting penguin suits, with expressions that spoke of heaven or the morgue, rictuses of joy. The Queen of Night caught my attention again, and would not let go. I liquesced in her gaze, her gaze, which said,
come to my place, your music is lovely but it could be even better, you’re better than your companions, you could be vamping,
and I looked back at her, and she must have detected some resistance, because she said,
yes, I have a bordello,
and my bordello has many rooms… be my lover, and I’ll cradle you in my beautiful breasts, give you money or anything else you need, and you will be worthy to sit in on the best, most secret music—
And the spell was broken; boy, was the spell broken.
Dutchman walked over to the Queen of Night’s table, and threw a drink at her, and said,
get out of the club, get out now.
Then one of the Queen of Night’s consorts said words, and Dutchman replied that they weren’t the only ones in New York with some connections. No one’s lips moved, but I heard the dialogue, and I’m sure anyone within ten feet could hear it. All of this happened quickly, so very quickly —the pianist and drummer had begun to really wail as Dutchman had gotten up. And the Queen of Night rose; she held no rancor, was dispassionate, as if the Dutchman had beaten her fairly in a game of croquet. But the Queen of Night had a grave dignity. Before the audience was hip to what had gone down, the Queen of Night and her consorts were departed.
After the final set, while having a final round at the bar, Dutchman turned to me: “You’re moving in with me.”
“What did you say?”
“Wipe the drool from your mouth, and don’t get any delusions—it’ll be the couch for you; it’s just that I might have pissed the Queen of Night off; it might be a good temporary measure, protection.”
“Chango wasn’t so protected at your place.” She frowned as I recounted Raj’neej’s Indian vampire lore, and his visit to the Queen of Night’s. And how it tied in with my having seen the very phantom dress the Queen of Night wore, seen it, not once, but twice. And about the phantom smells.
“I think he’d be safe now.” She headed for the Ladies’.
I stared at her: “What? How?”
She didn’t hear. “Might be an idea: get him a sleeping bag.”
* * * *
Chango didn’t make the Potato Head scene after that, so I had not only the couch but the whole Dutchman living room to myself.
Two weeks later, we heard from Raj’neej that Chango Chingamadre had flipped out, jumped out of the cab suddenly when they were on their way to meet Miles Muthafucking Davis. That he’d run into the traffic screaming about secret music and been hit by a Mack truck.
Again, I smelled the phantom perfume, glimpsed the phantom skirt, heard the opening and closing door and the secret music… but only as a memory. And, after all, I was beginning to tell myself, that was just superstition and hysteria rearing their uncool heads.
And it wouldn’t bring Chango Chingamadre back to us.
Nobody could afford to do a decent burial. Besides, his old lady is in potter’s field.
We Three Were Three No More.
The Dutchman moved to Sausalito, north of San Francisco. She owns three restaurants and lives on a houseboat with two Korat cats and a seismologist who’s also a licensed therapist specializing in tarot therapies and future-life regressions. In her spare time, the Dutchman also supervises a rape crisis hotline.
I, M.E., I live in Los Angeles, which is kinder to my arthritis than New York. I write film scores, which is a living, a very good one. I got an Oscar nomination five years ago. I’m not holding my breath waiting for another.
If I’m North, then we do pasta. If she’s South, we do sushi.
I tell her how remarkably young she looks; it’s not a line. And she talks about plastic surgery, and I don’t know whether I believe her, because she has the beginnings of a secretive grin on her face. But no laugh lines. And we talk. Dutchman even talks about Chango (and, at times, we take turns weeping for him), but she refuses to discuss the Queen of Night.
Once we talked about a tombstone, which we could afford to go half-sies on. It would read: “Here Bops ‘Chango Chingamadre,” The Monkey Muthafuckah Of Thems As All.”
There was a problem. We had never learned his real name.
I ran into Raj’neej during a Playboy Jazz Festival… and he couldn’t recollect Chingamadre’s name either. He did recall how Chango OD’ed at the Dutchman’s. And how he found a strange lady crouched over Chango. And how when she faced him, he only saw green animal eyes. And that she’d itsplayed, walked through a wall, and he figured it was the reefer he’d just smoked.
I then told Raj’neej what I’d seen that night, and the next.
“Maybe.” Raj’neej folded his hands. “Maybe Chango’s dead old lady came for him, maybe she needed him more than we did. Or the Vetala claimed him. Or maybe we had what the French call a group delusion.” Raj’neej unfolded his hands, reached for his wine glass. “But maybe not.” He downed the Chablis in one gulp. “Have I ever told you about the ‘63 Newport Jazz Festival?”
“No, but we haven’t seen each other since ‘62.”
“Has it been that long… ? Well, I was producing a live album; we were recording everyone. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Mingus, Ella, Max Roach, Carmen McRae. And this act shows up—I’d forgotten who sponsored them—called the New Queen of Night, and these guys were dead ringers for the house band at the old Queen of Night’s…only, if they were the same cats, they had not aged a day. When they played, it was like the Re-Birth of the Cool, they had the audience and all of us backstage eating out of their hands… nothing ‘secret’ about that music—I tried to catch them after the set, I had an A & R gig for Blue Note, too. So I ran out to the back parking lot to offer them a record contract, and they were tearing out of there in a black hearse. Then later the recording engineer played the tape back, and all we heard was a faint sound, like the secret music crap Chango raved about, like what I heard at the Queen of Night’s. Only there was some percussion, not quite so faint, a clave beat. It was Chango. But no matter how that engineer twiddled those pan pots, the notes stayed faint, became a secret music again. It all made me think of old Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and how he never cast a reflection in a mirror.”
I slouched, felt drained by all the emotions Raj’neej had summoned. But I wanted to hear that music, hear Chango. “You still have the master?”
Raj’neej shook his head. “My engineer, he’d been a junky, but cleaned himself up, like you. He fell apart. Police found him OD’ed in Central Park, they found him by following the trail of master tape he left. I had another copy, but I erased it. Then threw the blank tape away.”
Raj’neej recounted every ghost story he’d ever heard, in India and, later, in Wales. On through the night, and into the cold eye of noon.
But he could not remember Chango’s real name.
So Chango it was, and Chango it shall be. But what about his grave, what about a proper marker?
Well, to hell with the Queen of Night, when Gabriel plays his secret music on his horn I’ll have it put on my tombstone:
Here Bop We Three:
Chango Chingamadre, Dutchman, & M.E.
<
* * * *
Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana
MICHAEL BISHOP
THE TRANSVAAL, 1988
A
N ELEPHANT blossomed in his headlamps. At two-thirty in the morning, on the highveld between Pretoria and the northeastern Transvaal, a doddering bull elephant—which had not been there—suddenly was there; and Gerrit Myburgh, a thirty-eight-year-old banker, knew that his imported cranberry Cadillac was going to hit it.
As hard as he could, Myburgh began braking.
The Cadillac, hydroplaning on his astonishment, slid into the elephant. Its rusks flashed like scimitars. Glass shattered. A bewildered, trumpeting bleat echoed over the landscape, and so much plastic, chrome, and steel crumpled around Myburgh that he knew the world had ended.
Well, fine. He was already in his coffin, the flashiest coffin a success-driven Afrikaner could ever want.
* * * *
Eventually, Myburgh untangled himself, crawled through a broken window, and got to his feet on the debris-strewn asphalt.
It was July, the torso of winter, as clammy-cold as it ever got in this part of the highveld, and his tailored suit
was a drafty ruin. His forehead was bleeding, there were bruises on his upper thighs, his left shoe had disappeared. Traffic on this stretch of roadway was seldom heavy, and at this hour his hopes for a quick rescue were laughable.
Myburgh turned about, searching for the elephant. “I hope you’re happy!” he shouted in Afrikaans, his words muting themselves in the drizzle. “You’ve turned my car into a pile of goddamned slag!” Even worse, he realized, his insurance assessor would never believe that he had hit… an elephant.
What the hell was happening? There weren’t any elephants in this part of South Africa. You had to go to a national park to see them. Out here, where a few bittereinder Boers resisted both state and corporate attempts to buy their land (the government to feed it into black “closer settlements,” industry to turn it into another hideous factory site), wildlife consisted of stray chickens, stray dogs, stray cattle.
Full Spectrum 3 - [Anthology] Page 52
