The Fugitivities, стр. 43
It turned out she was not only leaving him. Laura said in her note that she was heading to South America, that she needed to get away, and it was a trip she had always wanted to make. He took no comfort in her faint apologies, but he couldn’t bring himself to hold the decision against her. After all, he had felt the same urges and made his own moves when he had the chance. Coming to Paris, he had wanted to acquire knowledge that he felt he lacked. He had learned enough. The affair with Laura, the life at Cité Lamartine, the stories of Apollinaire, all the recent past took on the force of wisdom, the last of it dashed with pain. The whole freewheeling world be damned. He knew where he belonged. He wasn’t going to hit the hardwood again. He was too old for that. But he could take the young boys from his neighborhood and teach them to play ball. He could live in the streets of New York with his people and hear those voices again and share those burdens and make something out of the places that made him. Mixed with the hurt that she didn’t have the courage or the desire to confront him in person was an ironic sense of relief. He had lived the dream of a black man abroad in Paris. Now he had to complete the other half of that curious pilgrimage: return to the native land.
10
Under the high ceilings of a Tremont Avenue duplex, the young teacher and the retired hooper examined each other closely. Both had listened; both had talked. They enjoyed sharing memories. Across space and time they were connected by so many experiences that connected at odd angles, like crooked street corners. Nathaniel had let the floodgates open within. Talking brought relief and even a little thrill from realizing how crisp his recollection of those days remained.
They had indulged their inward feelings and most private remembrances in the manner of people who believe they will never meet again. Now there was a hesitant energy of expectation between them.
“I’m supposed to go down to South America soon,” Jonah said suddenly. Nathaniel squinted, as he gauged this new knowledge.
“You serious?”
“Next week. Flying down to Rio with a friend.”
“You mean for the summer?”
“I don’t really know. I didn’t buy a return ticket. I think what I want right now is just to get away from it all, just sort of be invisible…”
But he stopped because Nathaniel was chuckling to himself.
“You want to take off somewhere for a bit. Okay, and then what? It’s chess out here, you gotta have at least one or two more moves than that!”
Jonah rubbed his temples.
“I mean, truthfully, I don’t know that I’m cut out for this teaching thing. And there’s all these places I never been before. I feel like if I don’t get to them now, I never will. I’ll get stuck in something, maybe something I don’t even really like but that I feel like I have to do.”
“I hear you. That’s what you want. But just remember, at some point it’s not going to be about you. At some point you’re gonna have to make it about something bigger than that.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yeah, I mean no disrespect, but like, why?”
Something in the tone of this set Nathaniel on a different track. It wasn’t that he didn’t have enormous sympathy; in a way he’d been just the same even if their life chances had nothing to do with each other. But he couldn’t shake the feeling rising in him now that this brother was off course.
“I’ll tell you why. Because there’s a city right here that needs help. There are children born in this city everyday who are being thrown to the lion’s mouth. No education. No opportunities. Damn near half the kids who grew up on my block either dead or in jail, and everybody’s lives scarred. You don’t really know nothing about that, do you? You don’t know what it feels like to look out every day on the same broken streets and know that if you can’t play ball or rap, you never going nowhere. What you know about that?”
“I ain’t arguing that though.”
“You ain’t arguing but you ain’t saying nothing neither. And I’m calling you on your bullshit, pardon my French. You’ve had this amazing life. You’ve had this perspective. You have it all—the sheer possibility to do and be anything you want. Now you telling me all you can do is go hide somewhere with your Ellison blues? You gotta own up to some things. You a grown-ass man. It’s time to take a look around and take this thing seriously, figure out the reality of the moment. I know that ain’t easy. Trust me, I get it. It took me coming back here, back home, to see how privileged I was, and how much trouble my people, our people, are in. And it’s deep. I know you’re smart enough to see that. But do you know that?
“Well, I totally get where you’re coming from, but see I feel like—”
“Excuse me, brother—but you educated. Not just educated, but worldly in ways most of our people will never get to be. Don’t you see how important it is that you share that knowledge with a younger generation?”
“But that’s the thing, why does it have to be me? You got the media, the corporations, the politicians—what the