Collectibles, page 22
I want to grab the records and run away, but I wouldn’t be hard to find.
LaTanya comes back typing on her phone. “Devil . . . sent . . . the . . . rain . . . blues . . . value,” she says.
No, no, no, no, no. If Nancy gets any idea what this record is worth, she will end up wanting a million dollars. This is crazy. If I don’t end this fast, I might not get the record at all.
“Look,” I say to Nancy, “I owe you an apology. The Charley Patton record is valuable. LaTanya is right. I wasn’t thinking clearly. ‘Yes! We Have No Bananas’ is such a great song that I didn’t take the other record into account. Let me pay you what I can.” I reach under my shirt and unbuckle my money belt. I pull off the belt and offer it to Nancy. “Here. Take it. This is all I have to pay you.”
Nancy looks at me, looks at Eugene, looks at LaTanya, looks back at me as if this is some kind of trick. She takes the money belt from me and unzips it. She fingers the thick stack of $100 bills.
“Mister,” she says, still looking at the money, “I believe we have ourselves a deal.” Then she hesitates and says, “What would you give me if I waited until 2029?”
“A deal is a deal,” I tell her. I stand up and pick up the records to see if she will object. She looks at the records, then the money, then the records again, and she doesn’t say anything. I wonder if I am capable of walking to my room without tripping and falling and breaking the Charley Patton record. Ordinarily, I would wait until the end of the day to go to my room, but this is the greatest moment of my life. I must hear this record right now. I cannot wait.
I say, “Thank you, Nancy. If you would like the rest of my waffle, you are welcome to it. Now if you will excuse me, I have a record to listen to.”
Then I leave before she can change her mind.
∗ ∗ ∗
As if the first two stanzas of “Devil Sent the Rain Blues” are not challenging enough, its third stanza may seem—at first—to come from a completely different song:
Followed sweet mama, to the burying ground.
Followed sweet mama, to the burying ground.
I didn’t know I loved her, till they laid her down.
Stanza one: weather. Stanza two: travel. Stanza three: death of a woman. (Note: His “sweet mama” is not his mother!) The listener grasps for connections, and possibilities emerge. Could Charley’s “sweet mama” of stanza three be the God-sent sunshine of stanza one, and is her death the Devil’s rain? In stanza two, did we not know Charley’s mind because even Charley would not know that he loved her until her burial in stanza three?
And then, in stanza four, there is so much water:
I been to the ocean, peeped down in the deep blue sea.
Been to the ocean, peeped down in the blue sea.
I didn’t see nobody, looked like my sweet mama to me.
The Devil’s rain has become an ocean, a deep sea of sorrow, and Charley can stare into the Devil’s waters for as long as he desires (or rather, sapped by sorrow, weakly “peep”), but he will never see his woman again because even if the Devil’s waters recede and God’s sun shines, a dead woman in the ground is still a dead woman in the ground.
∗ ∗ ∗
Heart racing, I make it to my room without tripping or dropping the records. I put the syrup-dripped “Yes! We Have No Bananas” on my bed, and I take Charley Patton to the desk where I have set up my phonograph. I am horrified to see that the record is wet with my sweat, and I pat it dry with a chamois cloth. I slip the disc onto the spindle, and I start the turntable spinning. When it reaches full speed, I lower the needle onto the record.
A gentle static begins. I hold my breath and wait for the sound of Charley Patton’s guitar and then those immortal words: Good Lord send the sunshine, Devil he send the rain. I know what I will hear, but not really. No one has heard this song as I am about to hear it, clear and loud and vibrant, for nearly one hundred years. Eventually, I may let other people hear it too, but maybe not. I have earned this for myself alone.
And then the music starts, but not a guitar. I hear horns, insipid horns, the smug horns of a novelty song. I stand frozen, incredulous, mind racing, for more than a minute before the vocal finally begins: Yes! We have no bananas!
I want to believe that, in my excitement, I have somehow managed to put the wrong record on the turntable, but I know it isn’t true. I force myself to look at my bed, and there is “Yes! We Have No Bananas” with syrup dripped on top. Looking back at the phonograph, I see a spot on the spinning record where its label is coming unglued. I pull the needle off the record, I pull the record off the turntable, and I pull the loose edge of the label. The label comes away clean, and beneath the black label for “Devil Sent the Rain Blues,” I find a blue label for “Yes! We Have No Bananas.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Stanza five. Whatever was clear is clear no more:
One of these mornings, you know it won’t be long.
One of these mornings, baby, know it won’t be long.
You going to be mistreated, and I’ll have to leave your home.
Charley seems to be talking to his woman, but didn’t she die two stanzas ago? Have we moved back in time, or has Charley moved on to a new woman? And what is Charley telling us about himself? Why is he so certain that he is going to mistreat her (and soon!), and why does he bother to hide behind the passive voice only to admit with his next breath that his abusive behavior will force him to leave? The song is still tragic, but Charley is no longer the victim.
And now the final stanza, the same line three times, almost:
I’m going away, mama, don’t you want to go.
I’m going away, mama, don’t you want to.
I’m going away, mama, don’t you want to.
Charley is leaving, which suggests that he has mistreated the woman from stanza five. Why does he bother asking if she wants to go? Why would she choose to go anywhere with the man who has mistreated her? (If she’s still alive, that is!) And why does Charley repeat the same line not twice but three times? He is out of arguments. He is begging, but weakly. He does not have the strength to repeat “go” after the first line, or perhaps he no longer has the temerity to suggest specifically what she might want to do. In either case, we leave Charley, abusive Charley, with the Devil having taken control of the weather, of life and death, of him. In the end, therefore, he can do nothing but helplessly, hopelessly repeat himself.
Charley Patton is not given.
Charley Patton is earned.
∗ ∗ ∗
My own calm surprises me. Later, I can grieve over the memory of the Charley Patton record that never was, but first I have to get my money back. And not just the money I gave to Nancy. I intend to get my $100 back from Eugene, too.
I throw the bogus Charley Patton record onto the bed, and I walk to the door of my room. I take a deep, centering breath before I open the door. I walk to the elevator, press the down button, and take another deep breath. But that’s it. I cannot stand here and wait.
I run to the stairwell and down a flight of stairs and down two hallways before emerging in the lobby. Of course, Nancy and Eugene are long gone, so I go to the desk where LaTanya is on the phone. She raises an index finger for me to wait, and I try to catch my breath.
As my breath slows, LaTanya smiles and nods, waiting for her caller to stop talking. She holds up a finger to me again, laughs noiselessly, and rolls her eyes. With her free hand, she mimics a mouth opening and closing and opening and closing over and over and over again. Finally, she says, “Thank you so much for calling to let me know. You have a lovely day, now.” As she hangs up the phone, she says, “Is everything okay, Mr. Bracey?”
“Nancy stole my money,” I tell her. “I need to know where to find Nancy.”
“Who?” LaTanya says.
Did she not hear me?
“Nancy,” I repeat. “The woman who was just here. The woman who got arrested for eating a waffle. The woman who sold me the records.”
LaTanya smiles and says, “I’m sorry, Mr. Bracey, but I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
Chin Yong-Yun Meets a Mongol
S. J. Rozan
* * *
Many people would not think I am the kind of person to know a Mongolian. I suppose this is not foolish. New York City is rather poor in residents from that country. Those few who come here have settled in Queens, while my home is in the Chinatown of Manhattan. Although my eldest son lives with his family in Flushing, which is in Queens, I have not to my knowledge encountered Mongolians while visiting them. Also, for many centuries China ruled Mongolia rather unpleasantly, as I understand it. Though that relationship ended a century ago, a new one involving damage to Mongolian grazing land by Chinese mining companies leaves Mongolians continuing to see Chinese people in an unfavorable light.
None of this was of any concern to me, or known to me at all, until my middle son, An-Zhang, introduced me to his friend Tomorbaatar.
Each of my four sons is quite accomplished. It is only my daughter whose work is disreputable (though in her field she is considered successful, of course). Because I am not an educated woman, the work of three of my sons in science, medicine, the law, are things I am proud of though I don’t understand them.
An-Zhang’s accomplishments are in a field whose very existence baffles me, however. He photographs food.
I opposed this when he began. I insisted it makes no sense to expect people to pay for pictures of food they will never eat. An-Zhang’s roommate, Tony, assured me over an excellent dinner of whole grouper steamed with ginger that I was correct. Such an expectation was unreasonable. Nevertheless, he said, reasonable or not, people in America can be counted upon to have a particular fascination with photographs of food. Possibly, he suggested, it is because so many in America are on slimming diets that they feel they must limit their enjoyment of food to their eyes.
Tony is a fine cook. I have recently shared with him a few of my late husband’s recipes, the simpler ones. He prepares them almost as well as I do, though of course my husband’s cooking outshone us both. I had not previously, in the nearly twenty years since my husband passed into the next world, revealed the contents of his kitchen book to anyone. But Tony’s eagerness to learn, added to the level of skill he already displays, convinced me. Plus, later in the year he is to marry my son.
My husband was one of Chinatown’s legendary chefs. He looked forward to teaching our sons’ life partners the fine points of Cantonese cuisine. He never got that opportunity. My two married sons have chosen wives who are wonderful women in all respects, but, being busy with their careers, neither has the time to devote to cooking on the level of my husband’s kitchen book. Having recently been to my husband’s grave to discuss with him the fact that in An-Zhang’s case his partner will be a man, but a man intensely interested in cuisine, I now know my sharing the recipes is something he wants me to do.
In the beginning, I was unpersuaded by Tony’s argument on the subject of An-Zhang’s career. Nevertheless I allowed myself to agree that my son should be given a chance to see if his choice would bear fruit. Not that my agreement actually mattered, as we all knew. If I had not been able to prevent my daughter from following a career as a private detective, what chance did I have of influencing my son’s choice of photography subjects? But it was kind of them to offer me the illusion of influence, as it was kind of all my children for a number of years to maintain the pretense that Tony was nothing more to An-Zhang than a roommate. They worried that the truth would upset me.
I have known for years, of course. I am not a person who likes to pry, but I am not unobservant. Many things are done in the modern world in ways clearly inferior to the old ways. I consider it my duty to point this out when necessary. Therefore my children often do not give me credit for advanced views. In this case, however, I had only to consider the needs of my son to see the suitability of this match. An-Zhang is an artist with little practical sense. He must be taken care of. Tony is well suited to this task. He seems, in fact, to enjoy it. Also, although young people often act as though they have discovered the sunrise, two young men—or two young women—making a life together is a tale as old as the Southern wind.
Happily, that mutual subterfuge is now in the past. The wedding is being planned. The young men are about to embark upon a happy future together. Which in a roundabout way brings me to Tomorbaatar.
“Very pleased to meet you, Chin Tai-Tai.” Tomorbaatar used the Chinese form of respectful address, though he spoke in English. He bowed in the small entryway of my apartment. Smiling, he handed me a lovely cellophane-wrapped basket of clementines, then removed his shoes. He was a tall, handsome man, with high cheekbones.
“Hi, Ma.” An-Zhang kissed my cheek. Speaking in Chinese, he said, “Tom says he’s pleased to meet you.”
“I understood that, thank you.” Another fiction I’ve let my children believe is that my English is extremely poor. As a person who does not like to boast, I’m the first to admit my command of the language is not what anyone would call excellent. I don’t speak English except when I must. It’s not a pleasant language, full of hard-edged noises. Given a choice, who would not prefer the musical notes of Cantonese? Still, only a fool could live in America as long as I have without developing a certain level of understanding of the language. Over the years, however, it’s served me well to let people assume that level to be lower than perhaps it is.
In the conversation that followed, Tomorbaatar spoke in English. To be courteous, I did the same. At the start he occasionally lifted his eyebrows, waiting for An-Zhang to translate.
“I ask son when need translation,” I told him. “Please you continue.”
Smiling, Tomorbaatar did so. First we spoke of the health of various family members of all concerned, as was polite. Once I’d heated the water for the second cup of tea the young men arrived at the reason for their visit.
“Tom has a situation, Ma,” An-Zhang told me, settling back in his chair. “We thought you might have some advice.”
Of course I’m always ready to offer advice to my children when asked. I often do it when I have not been asked, because people are frequently unaware that they’re in need of guidance. But one’s children—even children as filial as mine—being stubborn, I am rarely asked. When I am, I become skeptical. In this case I suspected that the true reason for their visit was something else—or something more.
“I’m Senior Cultural Attaché at the Mongolian Consulate,” Tomorbaatar said, smiling as he accepted more tea. He smiled a lot, I noticed. Earlier, my son had told me it was the way of Tomorbaatar’s people to face life with good cheer.
“Seems a Mongolian can always find something funny in a situation, Ma,” he’d said, when he’d spoken of bringing his friend to see me. “They like to play jokes. They love it when you play a joke on them. Like Ba used to. They stick by their friends, too, the way Ba did. We’ve gotten pretty close. I think you’ll like him.”
Now, in my living room, Tomorbaatar continued, “I’ve been here for five years. Early on, I met . . . someone special. In fact, Andy introduced us.” My son grinned at this use of his English name. “This special person adds to my happiness.”
I sipped my tea. It was a refreshing jasmine, one An-Zhang particularly likes. I said, “But still, there is problem.”
“Not with—” Tomorbaatar glanced at my son. An-Zhang nodded encouragingly. Tomorbaatar said to me, “Not with him. My friend.”
“Ah. I see. An-Zhang, Tony, you, friend, all same. But still, problem. Parents don’t like?”
Tomorbaatar seemed to relax. “My parents don’t know. My friend is Chinese. Chinese-American, I mean. I’m not sure which would be worse, that I’m gay or that I’m seeing a Chinese man. As long as I’m here it’s fine. I go home a couple of times a year, they ask me when I’ll settle down and marry a Mongolian girl, I come back here. Eventually I’ll have to tell them, I guess, but this has been working well.”
“But you come for advice. What kind advice? About should marry boyfriend?”
Tomorbaatar laughed. “No, Chin Tai-Tai, thank you. The problem is with my new boss at the Consulate.”
I waited.
“There’s a book,” he said. “The Secret History of the Mongols. Have you heard of it? It was commissioned by Genghis Khan. You’ve heard of him?”
“Have not heard of book but who does not know name Genghis Khan?”
“The Secret History was meant only for the ruling class to read. It’s more than a history. It details food, clothing, customs, rules, myths, legends, folklore—it’s a treasury of details about Mongol life in the period when the empire rose.”
“Sound very interesting.” I was starting to understand that Mongolians like to tell stories. I’m not an impatient person, but I was curious to know why my son had brought his friend to see me. “If looking for book, do not have.”
An-Zhang grinned once more. Tomorbaatar laughed. “No, no, of course you don’t. I don’t either. That’s the problem. May I have more of this wonderful tea?” He held out his cup. I poured for him. “My new boss, the Consul, doesn’t like me. My first boss was great, but she’s gone back. This one doesn’t like that I’m gay, that I have a Chinese boyfriend. I know he wants to send me back. But I’ve been careful to go above and beyond in my duties, making a lot of friends in New York, finding people to sponsor Mongolian musicians and artists to come here and American ones to go to Mongolia.”
“He looks good in a tuxedo, Ma,” said my son. “He brings in money.”
“This very American, I think. Most important looks, money.”
Tomorbaatar gave a cheerful shrug. “So he hasn’t been able to get rid of me. But he doesn’t like it. It burns him that a gay Chinese-loving guy is the face of Mongolia to a lot of people.”
I looked to my son. “Burns?”
