Robert was in love with New York.
He was only twenty-one, just out of college, when he’d left Oregon. Frederick had written such colorful letters describing his life in the city. The bars—Chumley’s or The Golden Swan—where one might run into E. E. Cummings or even Eugene O’Neill. The impromptu parties in Macdougal Alley. The fabulous subway system. Shazaam! Frederick wrote, “And there you are on 92nd Street!”
Robert called himself a poet. He told me that in Oregon he used to write long, mournful poems full of futility and snow. But now, in New York, his poetry had changed. He found the city more exciting and magical even than he had dreamed. At the Metropolitan Museum or the New York Public Library he ran up the steps two at a time. He prowled around the Upper East Side, imagining himself lord of the Morgan mansion or the Frick mansion. He did sound very much the poet when he told me of how he felt that New York was like a changing vista of gardens. Greenwich Village was ragged and weedy, a wandering meadow of wildflowers. The Upper East Side was a clipped and ordered world of topiary, blocked hedges, and perfect rosebushes. But Harlem—Harlem was tropical, a regal display of rare orchids and birds of paradise.
Robert was having a love affair with all of the city, but his deepest affection was for Harlem. Everyone was so free in Harlem! He loved the laughter, music, poetry, and dark, smoky clubs. He loved all the people: the women who sang and wrote and painted, women with large personalities who loved other women; the men who sang and wrote and painted, men who wore ginger-lily perfume and loved other men. Robert carried around a notebook and wrote paeans to this new world.
Such cosmopolitan hymn
Was meant to be the mission of mankind,
That all around appears in Harlem here
Unfettered and unhampered, and becomes
The liberal justice of the body-soul
Shrouded in colors of close beauteousness.
I tried not to think of Diccon when I read Robert’s poetry. I knew what his opinion of this young American poet would be.
Robert had discovered that the center of intellectual life in Harlem was a narrow walk-up at 2114 Fifth Avenue, Gumby’s Book Studio and home to Mr. L. S. Alexander Gumby. All the poets and novelists and artists seemed to meet there.
Gumby was a natural-born collector of information. He’d been keeping scrapbooks since he was a young boy. “Mr. Scrapbook,” people called him. He was always happy to show off his trove of artifacts—slave records, autographs from Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, letters from Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker. He had thousands of pages, all organized by theme: “Prominent Negroes,” “Ethiopia,” “Football,” “Radio,” “Negro Business.” He had exhibited his collection all over the East Coast.
At home, during unofficial times, Gumby dressed in bright kimonos, rising late to sit by his fireside table with its starched white tablecloth and silver coffee service. On the street he wore a formal suit, pale-yellow gloves, and a diamond stickpin. He carried a brass-topped walking stick.
It was at Gumby’s that Robert met Bruce Nugent, a flamboyant artist and writer. It’s also where he met Roy de Coverley. Roy was a poet, too, newly arrived from the West Indies. When I met him I thought he was rather beautiful—silken and willowy. Roy took to Robert, the eager boy who came from a land he could not imagine, a gray land of forests and fog and cold. Robert, short of money and living like a vagabond, moved into Roy’s apartment.
All that spring, Robert and I ricocheted back and forth between the Village and Harlem. In the Village, we went to different speakeasies all the time. Chumley’s or The Grotto or the Fronton Club. But in Harlem we almost always went to The Sugar Cane Club on Fifth Avenue, just three blocks up from Gumby’s place. Roy would often join us. We’d stand outside the Sugar Cane while the invisible man in the booth decided if he’d let us in. Finally, the heavy, creaking chain would lift, the door would open, and in we’d go. When the chain dropped behind us in a great crash I always imagined that we had just missed being guillotined.
It was black in the entryway, and we felt our way down a dark and narrow stairwell to the basement, a crowded, underground heaven smelling of smoke and booze and exotic perfumes. Revolving lights played over the room, casting slowly changing hues, blue to red and back to blue again. Wood tables were pushed haphazardly against the walls to make room for the three-piece band that played in the corner. There was always a crush of dancers on the floor—men in striped silk shirts and tan, square-toed shoes; women in jewel-colored, low-cut dresses. We all shuffled and kicked and threw our arms skyward while the band played jazz tunes like “Black Bottom Stomp.” The colors round the room flared up and fell like silent fireworks.
Sometimes, when the band played the opening notes of a slow song, a woman would step out from the crowd and stand in front of the musicians. She was short and fleshy, and she’d stuffed herself into a tuxedo. Her lips were deep-ruby red. She would sing “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” and if you closed your eyes, you’d swear it was Bessie Smith herself.
Oh lord without a doubt
Nobody wants you
Nobody needs you
Nobody wants you
When you’re down and out
Her voice, the words, filled me with a sort of sweet melancholy. Robert and I danced to the song—or, to be more accurate, we moved languidly across the floor—and I was dizzy with bathtub gin and Robert’s heat, and the reds and blues blurred down to a slow purple haze.
There was a solace in those Harlem nights. For so long with Diccon, I had felt uncomfortable. Fearful. I had tried too hard. With Robert, it was easy. I never had to think; it was all a lark. I wondered if perhaps I’d never been myself at all until I met him.
Robert and I flew together across the heavens. That’s how it seemed to me.
We made love one warm night, just as spring was turning to summer. Giddy with weed and gin and a night of carousing, we returned to my studio in the early-morning hours. I put my beloved La Traviata “Sempre Libera”—on the gramophone and danced without inhibition around the room.
Happily I turn to the new delights
That make my spirit soar.
I never could remember how it happened, exactly, but there we were, wrapped around each other on the Oriental rug. It seemed quite natural, really, just as in all things with Robert. I do remember that, afterwards, he played with my hair, mumbling about Ophelia. I remember that he left before dawn.
? ? ?
Tonight, if we talk, what of this can I tell Lorenzo?
I could tell him his father was such an interesting man, that he was quite fun to be around. That he was very good-looking, and had a lot of friends. Just like you, Lorenzo.
I could tell Lorenzo that I am sure he inherited only the very best parts of his father.
margery