Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou [80]
“Get this fool off me, will you?” Ethel and I grabbed the man and untwined his arms.
“Hey, mister. What do you think you're doing?”
He struggled to regain his hold on Martha. “It's that I am loving Mistress Martha. Mistress Martha, I drink your eyes. I drink your nose.”
We freed our friend, and as we gained the security of our room and slammed the door we heard the man's muffled voice. “Mistress Martha, I drink your ears, your nose, your fingers. Mistress Martha, it's that I'm loving you. I am dying.”
One evening near the end of our Yugoslavian run, I felt I had danced particularly well, and although I might not have sung the music as written by George Gershwin, my fellow singers had greeted my harmonies with raised eyebrows and approved.
A young couple was directed to my dressing room. The man was a photographer and the woman a dancer. They spoke excellent French and complimented me on my dance. The husband asked to photograph me and invited me to their home the next evening for a pre-Christmas party. They said they would pick me up at the theater and would return me to my hotel after the party.
I considered the invitation. We had been told to stay within the allotted areas and I didn't relish the idea of calling down the wrath of two governments on my head. However, I was myself. That is, I was Marguerite Johnson, from Stamps, Arkansas, from the General Merchandise Store and the C.M.E. Church. I was the too tall, unpretty colored girl who had been born to unhappy parents and raised in the dirt roads of Arkansas and I was for the only time in my life in Yugoslavia. I divined that if I ever became rich and famous, Yugoslavia was not a country I would visit again. Was I then to never see anything more than the selected monuments and to speak to no one other than the tour-guide spies who stuck so close to us that we could hardly breathe? No. I accepted the couple's invitation.
Martha and Ethel warned me at the hotel that I had better not contravene the official orders. I tried to explain my reasons, but they either would not or could not understand. Like all company information, the news that I was going to a private party was common knowledge by noon the next day. Friends stopped by my lunch table cautioning me to change my mind. I thanked them for their advice.
Others came by my dressing room that evening to add their counsel to the general consensus. I was amazed when Helen Ferguson said the couple had invited her too, and that she was going to come along. She was one of the youngest singers in the cast, pretty and so petite she looked like a child. I said, “You know, we're not supposed to go away from the group.”
She said, “Listen, I'll never come to Yugoslavia again in my life. I want to talk to some of the people here so I can have some real memories.”
We waited outside the stage door and were surprised when a strange young man approached us. “Miss Ferguson? Miss Angelou?”
“Yes.”
“Please come with me. I am to take you to the Dovic party.”
We followed him around the corner to a flatbed truck which held about thirty people crowded together, laughing and talking. With their help, Helen and I climbed up and joined them. The man slammed the flap, ran around and started the engine, and we were off on our adventure.
The men and women were about our ages and they all spoke some French. They passed bottles of slivovitz around and we drank the fiery liquid and tried to talk over the motor's loud roar. Finally, the crowd began to sing. I couldn't follow the words, but the melodies sounded like Hungarian tziganes. They were heavy and touching. I was so busy listening that I was slow to realize that we had left the lights of Belgrade behind and the old truck was struggling along on a bumpy dirt road. The night was clear and cold, and in the bright moonlight the flat countryside looked familiar, as if I had seen it all before. I had to remind myself that I was behind