Agent 6

Bradhurst Harlem West 145th Street

The night was as hot as the day. Red-brick walls baked in the full glare of the sun leached the heat back out, slow-cooking the residents. For about an hour either side of sunrise there was some respite, when the bricks were cool and the sun wasn’t yet beating down, the only time of day that was fresh and human. Jesse sat on the window ledge with no expectations of a breeze. Outside the sound of children playing ball or skipping ropes no longer cut the air. Having sold its day’s stock the clam wagon was pushed off, arthritic, rusty wheels creaking into the distance. Beggars, who’d set up position next to it in the hope of catching loose change, were moving off, breaking into different directions, looking for somewhere to sleep or for new places to beg. The card players took their games from the shade onto the sidewalk, on fold-out flimsy tables. Those who’d slept during the day came alive with the night. There was drink and dope and laughter – the light side of the night, the first drink, the first smoke and it was always a good time. Later the fights would start, the arguments and shouting, the women crying and the men crying too.

Jesse watched the street evolve into darkness as the last of the sunlight seeped away. This was his entertainment now, for they no longer owned a television set, sold it years ago. They didn’t miss it. They didn’t want to watch the programmes it showed, the music that was aired, suspicious of the powers that controlled it, powers that would block him being on television in a heartbeat. Jesse wondered about the other men and women he might have known and loved if their careers hadn’t been swallowed up by a disapproving state. How many artists, musicians, writers, painters, had been lost to fear? He wished he could bring them together, these lost souls, sit them round his table, pour them a drink, hear their stories, listen to their troubles and delight in their talents.

Anna was dressed for work. She was on a late shift, working for a restaurant that stayed open twenty-four hours a day. Nine at night to nine in the morning was a shift that not even the younger waitresses volunteered for. Anna claimed to prefer it, saying the heavy night-time drinkers always tipped better than the daytime diners and they never sent any of the food back. She stood by the door, ready to go. Jesse got down from the window ledge, taking her hands. She asked:

– Have you decided?

– I don’t know. I just don’t know. Standing on the sidewalk outside the United Nations, giving a speech? I’m not proud, Anna, but it’s not like an invitation to perform at Madison Square Garden. It’s not what I had in mind for us. I don’t know how I feel about it all.

– Jesse, I can’t take tonight off, not at this late notice, I’ve got to work.

– I don’t even know if I’m going, so there’s no point you waiting around.

She was uneasy.

– I don’t want you to think that I’m against it, should you choose to go.

– I know that.

– I’d never ask you not to do something when you believed in it, when you thought it was the right thing to do.

– Anna, what’s wrong?

She looked like she was about to cry. It was only for a moment, a ripple of emotion across her face, and then she recovered her composure. Anna never cried.

– I’m late, that’s all.

– Then don’t waste any more time worrying about me.

Anna kissed him on the check, but instead of pulling away, she remained close by his face, whispering:

– I love you.

Those three words were too much for him to bear right now. Jesse looked down at the floorboards, his voice faltering.

– I’m sorry, Anna. For all this trouble, for all this…

She smiled.

– Jesse Austin, don’t you ever apologize to me, not for what they’ve done, not for something that was never your fault.

She kissed him again.

– Just tell me you love me.

– Sometimes ‘I love you’ doesn’t sound like it’s enough.

– It’s all I’ve ever wanted.

She let go of him, straightened her clothes, opened the door and hurried down the stairs, without looking back and without shutting the door behind her.

Jesse waited by the window. Anna appeared on the street, snaking her way through the card games on her way to the restaurant. Almost out of sight she stopped, turning back and waving at him. He waved back and by the time he’d lowered his hand she was gone.

It was time to decide. He checked his watch. There was only an hour until he was meant to address a group of unknown demonstrators. He didn’t even know what they would be demonstrating about. In all likelihood they would not recognize him and he’d struggle to be heard. The concert started at nine. According to the Russian girl it only lasted seventy minutes. Jesse tapped the face of his handsome watch bought in better times. As he pondered on whether to accept the invitation, the memory of another watch crept into his thoughts, a watch he’d never worn. It had been given to him at the very start of his career while he’d been on his first national tour. The manager of the concert hall had been so pleased with the unexpected success of the performances, three sold-out events in the town of Monroe, Louisiana, that he’d presented Jesse with a handsome box, containing a nicely made watch with a leather strap with MADE IN MONROE embossed on the back. Jesse didn’t remember too much about the watch itself but he remembered the manager very well. The man had knocked on his dressing-room door after the final performance, snuck in with the stealth of a mistress. Anna had been in the room and witnessed the manager nervously offering Jesse the watch as a token of his gratitude before hurrying out again. Jesse had laughed out loud at the odd manners of this pleasant man until he’d noticed that Anna wasn’t laughing. She’d explained that man wanted show his gratitude, he just wasn’t able to show it in public. He couldn’t come onto the stage at the end of the show and give Jesse the watch. He couldn’t invite them to dinner sie he didn’t want to be seen with Jesse and Anna in a restaurant. He could employ Jesse to sing, he could be seen applauding, but as soon as Jesse stepped off that stage he couldn’t be seen near him. It was a fine watch, a handsome watch, par ticularly for a young man who’d yet to make much money, but Jesse hadn’t kept it, leaving it behind in the dressing room with a note: Dinner would’ve been plenty.

He’d never been booked there to play again.

Anyone could love a person while they were singing and dancing on a stage. Jesse had learnt this lesson when he was seven years old. He and his family had been living in Braxton, Mississippi, before they’d made the decision to move north. Autumn 1914, a night so hot that after walking no more than a hundred paces Jesse’s shirt was as wet as if a cloud had followed his every step. His mother and father had made him promise that he would stay inside tonight, they both had to work and they were leaving him alone. But just last week, they’d run out of wood and his father had scolded him for not pulling his weight around the house and Jesse didn’t want to be told off again, deciding it would be better to find some more wood. So he’d been collecting timber without too much trouble since everything on the forest floor was a dry as thatch, bark coarse in his hands. Twigs crunched underfoot, the snap of dry wood, noises that echoed through the trees. Though he’d never admitted as much to his family, he’d always been afraid of the woods – his imagination ran free, his mind played tricks on him. He’d call himself silly. Sometimes he’d even call himself silly out loud.

– Jesse, don’t be scared. There’s bugs and mosquitoes in these woods, that’s all there is.

But when he stopped talking the sound of voices continued. He shook his head as though there were water in his ears. The voices continued, not one, but two or three.

– You’ve done it wrong!

– Like this!

– Stand there.

– Help me over here!

– That’s it.

– Get the camera ready!

He moved in one direction, deeper into the woods and the voices became softer. He changed direction, heading out of the woods, towards town. The voices became louder. He should’ve run home. He should’ve dropped his bundle of wood and run but he carried on, following the sounds.

Coming to the edge of the forest, not far from town, Jesse was surprised to see a large crowd, surprised since his parents had been so vocal in ordering him to remain inside that night when it seems so many other people were doing just the opposite. The crowd had their backs turned to him, in a semicircle, maybe one hundred in total; less like a crowd, he realized, and more like an audience. Those at the back and on the edges were holding burning branches, flickering lanterns, stage lights spitting red sparks into the night sky. They needed the lanterns since there wasn’t much moonlight, only a glimmer every now and then when the heavy clouds lumbered out of the moon’s way. Jess thought that this was a well-dressed group of people, considering they were in forest. There were women in crisp dresses. There were girls wearing matching outfits. The men wore shirts, tucked into their pants. It was like they were dressed for church, or the theatre. Some people were fanning themselves with straw hats, ladies were shooing away mosquitoes and flies with dainty swipes of their dainty fingers, but Jesse could see the sweat stains on their backs; they weren’t so different from him after all.

They hadn’t noticed little Jesse, standing silently behind a tree – his arms full of wood, his hair knotted with leaves, his clothes as scruffy as if they’d been knitted from the foliage on the forest floor. The audience were captivated by what was happening in front of them but Jesse couldn’t figure out what could be so entertaining this far into the woods. He was too short to see what was happening and he didn’t dare move from behind the tree for the audience was all white and it wasn’t wise to interfere.

As though a spell had been cast, every single man and woman and child in the clearing looked up into the trees at exactly the same time. Jesse looked up too, hoping to see a firework, a burst of brilliant stars. Instead, he saw what they had gathered to watch – it was a dance, two legs dancing in the sky; a jerky dance, not like one he’d ever seen before, a dance where the two black, shoeless feet didn’t touch the ground, a dance without rhythm and without music, a silent dance that lasted no more than a minute or two.

By the time those legs were done with their dance, Jesse had crushed all the twigs in his arms and his shoes were covered in ground-up bark. A man in the audience lifted up a bulky box camera and a bulb flashed, burning bright for an instant and exposing everything hidden by the night. To this day Jesse wondered why the man waited till the end to take his photograph. Maybe he didn’t want to miss a moment of that entertaining dance.

When the young Russian girl had asked him earlier why he’d sacrificed so much for Communism, when strangers and friends and families had asked him why he couldn’t shut his mouth about politics and enjoy the money, he’d never told them the truth. What had turned him into a Communist? It wasn’t the hatred his family encountered when they’d moved to New York, or the insulting things that anyone had ever said to him. It wasn’t the poverty, or the struggle his parents had faced just to make ends meet. On the opening night of his first major concert, onstage in a crowded auditorium, looking out at the well-heeled white people clapping as he danced and sang, he knew that they loved him only while his legs moved to a rhythm and only while his lips made song and not speech. Once the show was over, once his legs no longer danced, they wanted nothing to do with him.

Being loved onstage wasn’t enough. Singing wasn’t nearly enough.