Atlantis: Three Tales by Samuel R. Delany Read Free Book Online Page B

was All-American Halfback in 1917 and 1918.”
    â€œFirst he was a football player—when he was at Rutgers,” Clarice explained. “
Then
he was a lawyer. Then he became an actor.”
    â€œWell,” Hubert said, “I can’t imagine his being a very good lawyer, then. Where’d he go to law school?”
    â€œColumbia.”
    â€œPeople are going to try and stop that play from going on,” Hubert said. “You just watch.”
    â€œThere’s a statement in here by the actress,” Clarice said. “She thinks it’s an
honor
to be in the play.”
    The picture was . . . well, uncomfortable making. But maybe that was because you just didn’t
see
pictures like that.
    â€œIs that man dreamy—or is he dreamy?” Clarice asked. “Oh, Hubert—!” she added. Because Hubert was frowning. “I’m
teasing
you!.”
    Still, in March Clarice dragged them off to see Robeson in Nan Stevens’
Roseanne
, over at the Lafayette Theater. “We’ve
got
to go!” she insisted. “It’s only playing for a
week!
” On Saturday afternoon they met before the yellow, horizontally striated walls with the other Negroes at a Hundred-thirty-second Street and Seventh Avenue. In their gloves, scarves, hats, a lot of people must have read the articles that had been appearing. There’d been a slew of them since the first one—and the picture had been reprinted by now in half a dozen papers. Clarice said: “This is surely a lot more people than usually come to this sort of thing.” She took a hand from her fox muff to rub one knuckle on her nose.
    The tickets were thirty-five cents. The matinee was supposed to start at two-thirty, but it was almost quarter to three before they let people in. And a tall, West Indian looking—and sounding—man called out something, very loudly, about “a C.P.T. matinee,” which made some people laugh.
    â€œOh, that’s
terrible!”
Clarice whispered. “Come on, let’s go inside. I’m freezing!”
    Before the curtain went up, a stolid, brownskinned man, Mr. Gilpin, head of the Lafayette Players, came out and made a speech saying the Lafayette was the only Negro dramatic company in the country; and if the audience liked what they were doing for the colored community, they could make extra donations in the lobby. Clarice leaned toward Hubert. Sam heard her whisper: “You read that article in
The Messenger
I showed you . . . ? Where Lewis got on them so for only doing white plays with black actors . . . ?” In the light from the stage, Hubert nodded.
    Then Gilpin went back in through the curtain. A moment later red drapery pulled aside from the stage.
    Robeson played a Negro preacher—it was hard to see him, at least at the beginning, and not think of Papa—whose actions became more and more sinful. And he was certainly wonderful. When he got excited, his voice filled the theater. He seemed half again as big as most of the otheractors, and he moved around, towering, handsome, like some half-wild, wondrous animal barely caged by the set. Canvas walls and mâché trees shook as he strode by. Indeed, the glee, the wild joy with which he embraced his sins—drinking, crap shooting, shirking his Sunday sermons, and finally falling into the arms of a no-account Negro woman and getting her with child—made those weaknesses seem almost like some socially rebellious strength. Finally, though, his congregation turned on him. He was only saved in the end by a brave black woman—Roseanne—who’d been in love with him all along and who made an impassioned speech to the black people, who’d gathered to lynch him, about his humanity and his weaknesses and how
his
weaknesses were really
their
weaknesses. (Robeson spent a lot of time on his knees in the play, though not the actress.) But in comparison to