Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground (25 page)

The close little room was generating a terrific heat. My T-shirt was pasted to my chest with perspiration and my shorts kept riding up between my cheeks. To make matters worse, Aunt Honey appeared in the doorway, sealing the exit with her girth. Huffing like a boiler about to blow from the effort of her ascent, she demanded to know what the ruction was about. Why weren't the ladies taking care of their clients below? But her first sight of Michael in the grip of his misguided infatuation brought her up short. She cocked her head to one side, causing her hairpiece to slide dangerously, and peered with interest through the slits of her flesh-sunken eyes. She cupped an ear, though the kid was still railing at the top of his ragged voice.

“Lawd hep us,” she exhaled with a thoughtful regard devoid of her typical bemusement. “Debil done got aholt a that boy's tongue.” She leaned back for a better appraisal, hands on her prodigious hips, her expression a struggle between consternation and disgust. Then up went her eyebrows, signaling a draw, as she asked ingenuously, “What it all is that he yappin about?”

Here Lucifer forced himself out of his slump and stepped forward to represent his brother. Hangdog though he was, he still managed to work up a little pantomime. First he aped Aunt Honey's hard-of-hearing, then flapped his arms one time in a show of befuddlement. It was his turn, it seemed, to play dumb.

“Sound to me like some kinda gal misry” was what he finally said. This struck me as a sort of tribute to Michael's new fluency: under its spell his fast-talking brother couldn't even manufacture the whole of a lie.

Despite the stuffiness of the room, I could hardly stand to tear myself away just before dawn. Still dopey with fascination, I wondered where was the harm if I stayed a little longer. Such unbridled diarrhea of the mouth couldn't be kept up indefinitely, and I thought I should see the thing through to its bitter end. Certainly nobody at the Baby Doll would mind my lingering. Wasn't I almost one of the family, so to speak? Chances were, my absence from the breakfast table on North Main Street would never even be noticed, and the same went for my attendance at the Market Square School.

A shudder passed through me, as if invisible fingers had given my shoulders a jerk, and I wondered what on earth I was thinking. I was thinking of breaking the ties to my old life for once and all, but it suddenly seemed a crime that it should be such an easy thing to do.

Late the next afternoon, before returning to the hotel, I stopped off at Mambo's Tonsoral just in case. Last night's mishegoss had probably passed with a little sleep—Michael would have had finally to sleep—and I would find the twins at work as usual. That's what I told myself, if only for the sake of my conscience, because the right thing was of course to wish for the dummy's speedy recovery. A speaking disorder like his could have debilitating results, and was nothing to fool around with. But when the chief barber told me I would most likely find Lucifer over at the Baby Doll, where his brother had taken ill, I practically rejoiced. I tore through the back yards to save the few seconds that the street route would have cost.

Michael still lay sprawled in his unchanged overalls, his back against the bars of the swayback bed, his arms and legs disposed like a discarded rag doll. His face was the color of charcoal and his voice, born yesterday, had already aged to a reedy bray. But his raving now seemed somehow less hysterical, more confined to the palpable particulars of his obsession. Having cast and recast his queen in such a variety of improbable roles, with himself alternating between savior and saved, he'd begun today to sharpen the focus. When I came in, he was extolling the various parcels of his beloved's anatomy like an auctioneer.

“… See them eyes she got, mo bluer than Silk the Sport sapphire cufflank such as he steal from out the belly button a Delilah. See that hair—hunnerd proof straight evenin sun pour through lace britches. She got them titty like sand dune, and I'se a teenintsy A-rab ringmassah, lead my flea circus ca'van through the valley a they shaddah, cross her middle while she giggle the conniption, make fo the waysis fo winter set in…”

Crowded into the corner by the ministrations of the ladies, some of whom had spelled the nurses of the previous night, Lucifer hunkered disconsolately. His turned-around cap gave the impression that he was wearing his long face on the wrong side of his head. How else account for such an unheard-of show of grief? In some respects, you could have said that the wise guy looked as much the worse for wear as his blabbering brother. When I squatted beside him, I had to strain to hear him mutter what may or may not have been intended for my ears.

“Brothah Michael, he ain't eat nothin, don't know nobody. Just woofin—tongue be steady flap like I don't know what. Like a whip done whale his trouble mind to jelly. Go to sleep runnin his mouf, talk in his sleep, wake up his mouf still run…” Here, while I still wasn't sure that he knew I was next to him, he surprised me by speaking my name. “Mistah Harry,” he said in that tone he reserved for asking the dummy's advice, “what we gon do?”

I was stunned that his desperation had reduced him to the point of deferring to me. “But I thought you wanted him to talk” was all I could think to reply.

“This ain't talk,” he explained with a patience that I was clearly trying. “This woofin.”

“So why'd you have me bring him all those books?” I wanted to know. Just what had he expected would come of putting literature in the hands of such a feeb?

The wise guy was looking at me like what did my question have to do with the price of eggs. “Cause he like to read,” he said simply. That's when I saw in his eyes that I understood something he didn't. With his street wisdom of a ragged-trousers Daniel, Lucifer had yet to get it. He still hadn't made the connection between Michael's insatiable reading and his current unhinged state.

He hung his head, crumpling in his corner as if somebody had wadded him up and tossed him there. “Jus seem like my lil brothah have done splode,” I heard him say.

I was disappointed that the ordinarily unsinkable Lucifer should give in to such shameless sulking, and I suspected that he was feeling as sorry for himself as for his brother. He was mourning the loss of his shadow, who'd taken the spotlight away from him. He even looked physically smaller to me, as if he were shrinking in direct proportion to the unchecked swell of his brother's delirium. Never before had I been inclined to take Lucifer to task, but I thought he was fair game for it now.

“Shape up, why dontcha,” I exhorted him, the way Dr. Watson might cajole Sherlock Holmes out of a cocaine funk. “Get hold of yourself, man! You're Lucifer, named after angels and all that.”

He gave a snort like a nasal full stop. “Name after evil angel,” he brooded. “Name ain't nothin but my daddy's joke, do I even got a daddy.”

This was the limit. “Ye gods,” I sighed in exasperation, “sometimes I think I just don't know you at all.”

At that, Lucifer cut his eyes back toward me again, though only for the instant it took him to declare, “Mistah Harry, you ain't never know me.”

The ladies, meanwhile, continued their doting on Michael. They dabbed his parched lips with cheesecloth soaked in Essence of Van Van and Royal Crown soda, then circled him with sheets to hoist him over an enamel thunder mug. They hummed to him as they massaged his neck—though if you didn't know better, you might have mistaken their humming for encouragement instead of an effort to calm him down. They administered the odd home remedy, trying in vain to get into him a little crow's meat in sardine oil, or a julep of mashed snakewort and tuckahoe mold, renowned for its sedative properties. They placed a knife under the bed to cut the cord between the boy and whatever jimjams had taken over his tongue.

Under Sister Pacify's direction, they poured his specimens into a bowl of egg whites and topsoil. They brushed the mixture in weird ideographs on the wall over his head, then covered the bowl with a page of Scripture, which they put at his feet. But mostly they debated the virtues of this or that, of jimweed paste and saltpeter poultices versus horse leeches or cupping glasses or mustard and Jack of War enemas. (I seconded enemas as having been good enough for Harry Kaplan in his grandmother's day, though nobody took much note.) They argued so much among themselves that you might reasonably have accused them of trying to stall Michael's recovery.

It was a suspicion I'd had ever since the gentlemen callers had started checking up on the twin. The word was out on the prodigy of the Baby Doll, and the word was that Michael's babbling had certain benefits. As I'd heard more than one of the ladies mention, it helped prime their clients for the act of love.

Not that you could have read much in the way of amorousness in their expressions, the same poker faces they'd worn straight from the clubs. Spitting out their plugs of Red Man, they let it be known that they were skeptical about whether the kid's condition was naturally induced. They placed bets: Was it reefer, dreamstick, witch hazel, or Lady Snow that had rattled Michael's cage? They put money in a kitty that would go to the one who came closest to estimating just how long the boy's jaw would keep flapping. Some bet on which would expire first, the speaker or the speech.

Around the third day of his raving, there having been no perceptible improvement, a couple of the ladies invited their sorcerer of choice to have a look. It happened that Macedonia, a lynx-eyed octaroon, and the esteemed Dr. Washington Legba A-men arrived at approximately the same time. Briefly listening to Michael's palaver, they made pious judgments, beginning what amounted to a competition, each attempting to outdo the other in the fancifulness of his analysis. One attributed the twin's febrile condition to an alignment of planets nobody ever heard of, while the other named a specific demon loa and the organ it occupied. They were engaged in a full-blown contest of dueling methodologies—the one exhibiting symptoms of a divinely inspired palsy, the other chanting hermetic syllables sounding vaguely like pig Latin; the one flinging moondust, the other rattling painted bones—when Aunt Honey turned up to shoo them both away with a broom.

Still reluctant to admit that Michael's infirmity might be serious, Aunt Honey was nevertheless fed up with the superstitious carryings-on of her girls. So in the end she called in a respectable physician. A frosty-faced little man with a genteel cough, he complained that this was not the sort of house that his idea of a house call brought to mind. He implied that the distinction would tell in his fee. Turning the dummy's eyelids inside out, he squeezed his wrist and inquired discreetly about his bodily functions or the lack thereof. He nodded and hemmed professionally but preferred to reserve his judgment until a more thorough examination could be made. When the proprietress ventured to ask when that would be, the doctor suggested that, frankly, it might behoove her to consult a specialist.

“Speshlist in what!” boomed Aunt Honey, upon which the doctor stiffened, as if it were beneath him to have to labor a technicality, and bade her good evening.

Another doctor, this one in fact a specialist in the area of internal disorders, was brought in for a second opinion. Taking one quick baffled look at the patient, he recommended that Michael be transferred to a hospital for observation. Whether she'd lost faith in the medical profession or was balking at the expense, Aunt Honey failed to see the urgency. For one thing, the colored infirmary, built by Mr. Crump to the greater glory of his name, was reputed to be a pest-ridden hole. It was said that there were dozens of patients to each grubby ward and sometimes more than one to a bed, that they languished with undiagnosed diseases beneath pipes from which the tails of rats flicked indolently. The sick, regardless of their extremity, were generally acknowledged to be better off at home.

Anyway, since no negative prognosis had actually been pronounced, it was just as easy to assume the danger would pass. Whatever had gotten into the dummy would surely have to get out again. And that—despite the gathered momentum of his mouth and the evidence of his physical decline—was the attitude that prevailed.

When the rumors of her ward's strange affliction had begun to attract the curious, Aunt Honey threatened to close her doors, until she realized what this would mean. So while she still reserved the right to grumble at the men who visited Michael's bedside, she never made noises so loud as to discourage their patronage. Ultimately her practical turn of mind won the day. First she had her girls record the time their clients spent in the dummy's aphrodisiac presence. They were instructed to add the time to the customer's tab at the rate of a nickel a minute.

Enthused by the windfall profits, the utilitarian proprietress began to see the virtue in enhancing her ward's notoriety. Sometimes she spoke of removing Michael to the parlor, where the air was more breathable and he could be more properly cared for. But in the end she decided against it, judging that the sight of him downstairs during business hours would disrupt the normal trade. Besides, it would be easier to regulate attendance if the twin was kept confined to the tiny room.

With whetted ambitions, Aunt Honey took to her front stoop. Posting herself spraddle-legged in a wicker lawn chair, she barked at the passers-by, “Lady an gemmun, step up see a dumbo got the gift a gab!” As her pitch only served to promote general bewilderment, she then got hold of a sandwich board, intending to paint a slogan that would describe for the potential customer exactly what awaited him inside. Unfortunately, she hadn't the knack of inventing a neat turn of phrase, and as Lucifer was still sunk in his torpor, she began to pick the brains of hotel guests. This was when I came forward. Wanting to demonstrate my usefulness, I'd come up with an advertisement that I thought was both catchy and to the point.

“It's Alive! It's Alive!” I submitted. “The Love-Struck Loquacious Wonder of the Negro Underworld!” But Aunt Honey only asked me whether I was lost or what.