Harlem Redux (12 page)

“Okay, you say you didn’t see her for months, but somebody else must’ve seen her, talked to her. You knew Lilian’s other friends.”

“I don’t run in them circles. Rats and dicties don’t mix. What’s between the Hamiltons and the McKays is special.”

“Yes, it is.” He took her hands in his. “But what about the poetry meetings at the library? That was common ground.”

“Lilian dropped out. Cut off everybody. The folks who saw her on the street said she was like ice. Told them she’d never liked their work. She said she’d had her fun with the literary crowd. Now she was into a better class of people. Turns out, she’d taken up with some rich ofay. You know the kind. A ‘Negrotarian,’ as Zora Neale would say.”

David’s dark eyes widened. Anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston had coined the term “Negrotarian.” It reflected the cynicism of black artists who were mildly uneasy with or outright distrusted the motives of their white patrons. Some Negrotarians were devoted philanthropists; others merely sought the thrill of being trendy. Some were members of that spiritually Lost Generation—they stopped off in Harlem on their way to Paris. The more profit-oriented Negrotarians looked at blacks and saw green: They calculated money when investing in art, literature, and entertainment with fashionable African-American themes.

“So, who was Lilian involved with?”

“A woman named Nella Harding. Ever heard of her?”

He thought for a moment. Then it came to him. But if that was the woman, then—

That must’ve been one odd friendship.

Nella Harding, the Nella Harding he was thinking about, was the kind of person to have attracted Gem—and repelled Lilian.

“What was Lilian doing with somebody like that?”

From Rachel’s expression, he could tell that she thought him naive.

“Listen,” she said, “a lot of Negro writers would like to ignore Nella, but she’s got Mister Charlie’s ear. She’s got what they call ‘influence.’ Big time. She can open doors with a phone call. Even someone like Lilian, who had money and connections, has to kneel before Mister Charlie, sometime. Don’t you see? The jigs have got to try to use the Nellas of the world, but ain’t none of us stupid. We all know that they’re using us, too.”

6.
    
Nella’s Party

Nella Harding’s latest proud product was a prime example of what Rachel meant.
Ebony Eden
was supposedly based on Nella’s experiences in Negro Harlem and it was a best-seller. Everyone was talking about it, but few would admit to having read it. The book’s plot was simplistic and rudimentary: A cabaret singer falls in love with a jazz musician, only to see him constantly betray her with other women. One night, in a fit of drunken jealousy, she shoots her lover and his friend, and then turns the gun on herself.

Not a single critic, black or white, deemed the book to be of literary value. One newspaper dismissed it as “cheap romance, colored cafe-au-lait.” But stores couldn’t stock it fast enough to keep customers happy. One of New York’s culturati had written a book, and what a book! It promised to tell all about a secret and deliciously sinful Negro world. Sales went over the top.

Blacks denounced Nella as a literary voyeur. Some accused her of having exploited the Harlemites who trusted her in order to swell her pocketbook. The more generous Nella said had tried to serve two masters at once: She had pandered to the lurid curiosity of her white readers and to the ethnic pride of her black ones.

David had read the book. His judicial mind noted that
Ebony Eden
did take in High Harlem, with its genteel brownstones and polished grammar. The book’s characters were distilled caricatures of Harlem’s more colorful figures. Nella even took a poke at her fellow whites: Her husband, Nikki, appeared thinly camouflaged as a white missionary who was “astounded to discover jungle bunnies” who debated contemporary German literature, were intimately acquainted with Dadaism, Kandinsky, and Bauhaus realism, and were multilingual and widely traveled. But David quickly perceived that what Nella viewed as positive in blacks was what she saw as “primitive,” and that this is what she emphasized. Nella depicted a black world characterized by rapacious lust, primordial superstition, and impenetrable stupidity. David found the book worse than insulting—it was demeaning. He could understand, however, why white critics found it fascinating.

“As propaganda for the so-called ‘New Negro,’ the book speaks volumes,” said one.

“Volumes of nonsense,” said the Negro press. “For us colored,
Ebony Eden
is the equivalent of taking one small step forward and two giant steps back.”

Despite the uproar over
Ebony Eden,
or in some corners because of it, Nella remained Harlem’s most welcome “Nordic.” With her decided gift for always being at the right place at the right time, her penetrating presence was hard to avoid. She and Nikki had become point men for fashionable white America’s fascination with black Harlem. They regularly escorted wide-eyed visitors to speakeasies, rent parties, and cabarets. The Hardings liked having Harlem come to them, too. Their “mixed” parties—long, languid, liquored evenings where black artists mingled with white society—were the talk of the town. The Hardings were giving a bash at their house in the Hamptons that evening. When the operator put through David’s call to Nella that day, she told him to join in.

“I’d prefer to speak to you alone,” he said.

“So would everyone.” She laughed. “Just come and we’ll see what we can do.”

As David stood before the Hardings’ imposing front door that Saturday evening, unease weighed like bad cooking in his belly. He was running a risk by showing up at such a trendy gathering. Suppose someone from the Movement was there? There could be questions.

But he had to talk to Nella about Lilian. That overrode every other consideration.

Squaring his shoulders, he pressed the doorbell. A chime rang deep within the house. Within seconds, a butler opened the door and ushered him in with a gracious bow.

David stepped into a spacious entryway softly lit by clusters of small gilded sconces. There was a high, wide arch at the other end … waves of warmth from human bodies gathered together ... voices raised in hilarity ... the babble of excited chatter.

He took a deep breath.

The butler eased David out of his coat and led him through the archway to the salon. David paused on the threshold.

To have said the room was overdone would have been kind.

It was huge, at least three times as large as the McKays’. And whereas the McKays’ was restrained, tranquil, and patrician, this one was grand, golden, and glittering. The walls were covered with brocaded ice-white silk framed by slender gilded moldings. The same silk hung in deep folds at the ceiling-high windows, and it was drawn back to reveal gold lining and a trim of gold braid. Padded sofas and fat cushions, all upholstered in white with gold brocade, were placed about the room. Small table lamps with diamond tears dripping from the shades provided soft highlights and threw shadows over other corners of the room. The white, the touches of gold, and the sparkling lamps made all the perfectly tailored tuxedos and perfectly styled frocks seem even more perfectly sophisticated.

One-quarter of the people wearing those tuxedos and frocks were well-heeled blacks, easily recognizable from the theater world. The rest were whites: socialites, local politicians, and Harlem club owners.

Negrotarians,
thought David,
a whole room of them, gathered under Nella’s roof.

The Hardings had decorated their party with Negro artists who were the darlings of every critic’s pen. The actress Selena Ashburn, who boasted that she could drink any man under the table, stood holding an empty flute glass in one hand and a plate of appetizers in the other. Roland Pierce, the fabled jazz musician, was talking to friends in one corner. The poet Julian Woodstock was telling a joke in another. His group also included the opera singer Sylvia Burroughs, composer Geoffrey Gerard, and Broadway comedian Fannie Howell.

No one from the Movement,
thought David with relief. But then a little voice said:
No one you recognize.
He recalled that he’d had little chance to become acquainted with the New York office staff before being sent south.

David felt as set apart as a dead man walking among the living. So much vivacity and sparkling wit, it exhausted him to see it. The hum of happy voices irritated him. Anger flashed through him.

So many of them must’ve known her—

His sister had been dead three weeks and now these people were carrying on with asinine jocularity. As though nothing had happened. As though the world was still right. As though he weren’t a man who was walking on the ceiling.

What was he doing here? How long would he have to hold out in this room of blinding, burnished, specious smiles? Not a single guest was standing alone. All stood in small conversational rings. There were no outcasts. Every guest had been carefully chosen for his or her ability to fit in. Apparently, to stand alone, as he preferred to do, would be unforgivable.

But then his observant eye picked out several tense faces hidden behind the grins of forced glee. The Hardings had indulged in a certain malevolent sadism. They’d invited the most hated critics of several artists in the room— then mercilessly abandoned them to one another.

David became aware of a warm presence nearby.

He turned at the touch of fingertips on his elbow. A sweetly scented woman had materialized at his side. Their eyes locked. He had never seen eyes like hers: a deep sapphire blue, set under long, black lashes and slender plucked eyebrows. Captivating eyes, mesmerizing. But for all their wide-open charm, they held an unmistakable shrewdness. Despite their apparent warmth, they chilled him: a knowledgeable woman, but predatory. Her platinum-blond hair was done in finger waves that framed her face. It was a lovely face, like a doll’s, but faint rings under her eyes and a certain hollowness to her cheeks hinted at an excessively indulgent life. Despite this, her hair still glistened and her ivory skin had a soft luster. Her lips, painted a deep burgundy, were the only points of intense color on her face, and they were moist and provocative. Her shimmering gown could have been liquefied gold, the way it flowed over her curves. She was, without doubt, one of the most alluring women in the room, but she left him cold. She smiled, flashing two rows of tiny polished teeth.

“I’m Nella. You must be David.”

Her voice was husky. She was standing quite close to him. Her scent, a heady mixture of Chanel, gin, and cigarettes, enveloped him. She extended her hand and he took it. Her hand was small and soft––

Like a leopard’s paw––
with smooth, sharp nails that gleamed in the demi-light.

“Touched that you could make it,” she purred. “I was very sorry to hear about Lilian. She was a lovely girl. I miss her.”

“You knew her well?”

“Not really.”

“But—”

“We’ll discuss it later.”

He examined her with astute eyes. She was the kind of person who amused herself by collecting people, throwing them into an arena, and watching them rip one another to shreds. Well, he had a reason for being at her house and it was not to perform like a slave in her personal Coliseum. She
would
speak to him. It might take time, but she would. Meanwhile, he would try to be as superficially sociable as the rest of her guests.

She lit herself a cigarette, grabbed herself a fresh glass of gin from a passing waiter, and made sure he had a drink too. Then she led him over to a corner sofa, where once settled she studied him over the rim of her crystal glass under suggestively half-closed eyes.

“I heard that you’re marvelously attractive but utterly unapproachable. Does the description fit?”