Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou [101]
On opening night the backstage silence was unusual and ominous. Dressing-room doors were not only closed but locked. When the five-minute call was given we all went quietly to our places; not even a whisper floated over the dark stage. The rustling audience was stilled by the gradually darkening lights; they applauded the conductor's entrance and the overture began. The cast remained apart and I felt a little afraid. Suppose Gloria lost her voice, or Annabelle couldn't hit her high coloratura note. Just suppose I tripped over someone's foot on my entrance. I was coiled tight like a spring and realized as the curtain rose that every other member of the cast had also wound themselves up taut for a shattering release.
The moment the curtain opened the singers in concert pulled the elegant first-night audience into the harshness of Black Southern life. When Robbins was killed, the moans were real (didn't we all know people who, unable to talk back to authority, killed a friend over fifty cents?). The entrance of the white policeman was met with actual fear (wasn't the law always on the side of the mighty and weren't the jackals always at our heels?). The love story unfolded with such tenderness that the singers wept visible tears. (Who could deny this story? How many Black men had been crippled by the American oppression and had lost the women they loved and who loved them, because they hadn't the strength to fight? How often had the women submitted to loveless arrangements for the sake of bare survival?)
The first smiles of the evening were shared during our bows. We had sung gloriously. Although we faced the audience—which was on its feet, yelling and applauding—we bowed to compliment each other. We had performed Porgy and Bess as never before, and if the La Scala patrons loved us, it was only fitting because we certainly performed as if we were in love with one another.
We arrived in Rome on a late spring afternoon. I arranged my bags in the hotel room and went downstairs to find a telephone directory. In Paris, Bernard Hassel had told me to go to Bricktop's if I ever got to Rome. She was a living legend. He said Bricktop, Josephine Baker and Mabel Mercer had been the high-yellow toasts of Europe in the thirties. They hobnobbed with the rich and the royal, and although Mabel had gone to the United States and Josephine was semiretired, Bricktop still owned the most fashionable night club in Rome.
When night fell I walked down the Via Veneto, past the outdoor tables of Doney's Restaurant and into the next block where a small simple sign BRICKTOP'S hung over the door.
I opened the door and found myself standing behind a pudgy broad-shouldered man and a heavily made up woman whose brown hair was frosted blond. A small, very light-skinned, freckled woman with thin red hair stood facing the couple.
“On dit que vous avez bu trop en Cannes. (They say you've been drinking too much in Cannes.)” She frowned and her French accent was as Southern and sweet as pecan pie.
The man said, “Please, Brickie. I promise not to drink tonight. My word of honor.”
Her scowl relaxed when the man's companion added, “I won't let him have a thing, Brickie. We'll just watch the show.”
Bricktop called a waiter. “Come here and take King Farouk to a table.” My ears almost rejected the name. “But don't give him a drop. Not one goutte.”
The couple followed the waiter and Bricktop signaled to me. Her face was closed.
“Are you alone?”
I said, “Yes.”
“I'm sorry, miss. But I don't allow ladies in here unescorted.” She started to turn away.
I said, “Miss Bricktop, I am sorry too. I have been waiting for six months to come here and meet you.” It was flattery, but it was also the truth.
She walked closer to me and stood straight. “What are you doing in Rome?” The question was asked cynically, as if she thought I might be a traveling prostitute, and her