Cane - Jean Toomer (top 50 books to read txt) 📗

tight street skirts they set free, jab the air and clog the floor in rhythm to the music. (Lift your skirts, Baby, and talk t papa!) Crude, individualized, and yet⁠ ⁠… monotonous⁠ ⁠…

John: Soon the director will herd you, my full-lipped, distant beauties, and tame you, and blunt your sharp thrusts in loosely suggestive movements, appropriate to Broadway. (O dance!) Soon the audience will paint your dusk faces white, and call you beautiful. (O dance!) Soon I⁠ ⁠… (O dance!) I’d like⁠ ⁠…

Girls laugh and shout. Sing discordant snatches of other jazz songs. Whirl with loose passion into the arms of passing showmen.

John: Too thick. Too easy. Too monotonous. Her whom I’d love I’d leave before she knew that I was with her. Her? Which? (O dance!) I’d like to⁠ ⁠…

Girls dance and sing. Men clap. The walls sing and press inward. They press the men and girls, they press John towards a center of physical ecstasy. Go to it, Baby! Fan yourself, and feed your papa! Put⁠ ⁠… nobody lied⁠ ⁠… and take⁠ ⁠… when they said I cried over you. No lie! The glitter and color of stacked scenes, the gilt and brass and crimson of the house, converge towards a center of physical ecstasy. John’s feet and torso and his blood press in. He wills thought to rid his mind of passion.

“All right, girls. Alaska. Miss Reynolds, please.”

The director wants to get the rehearsal through with.

The girls line up. John sees the front row: dancing ponies. The rest are in shadow. The leading lady fits loosely in the front. Lack-life, monotonous. “One, two, three⁠—” Music starts. The song is somewhere where it will not strain the leading lady’s throat. The dance is somewhere where it will not strain the girls. Above the staleness, one dancer throws herself into it. Dorris. John sees her. Her hair, crisp-curled, is bobbed. Bushy, black hair bobbing about her lemon-colored face. Her lips are curiously full, and very red. Her limbs in silk purple stockings are lovely. John feels them. Desires her. Holds off.

John: Stage-door johnny; chorus-girl. No, that would be all right. Dictie, educated, stuck-up; showgirl. Yep. Her suspicion would be stronger than her passion. It wouldnt work. Keep her loveliness. Let her go.

Dorris sees John and knows that he is looking at her. Her own glowing is too rich a thing to let her feel the slimness of his diluted passion.

“Who’s that?” she asks her dancing partner.

“Th manager’s brother. Dictie. Nothin doin, hon.”

Dorris tosses her head and dances for him until she feels she has him. Then, withdrawing disdainfully, she flirts with the director.

Dorris: Nothin doin? How come? Aint I as good as him? Couldnt I have got an education if I’d wanted one? Dont I know respectable folks, lots of em, in Philadelphia and New York and Chicago? Aint I had men as good as him? Better. Doctors an lawyers. Whats a manager’s brother, anyhow?

Two steps back, and two steps front.

“Say, Mame, where do you get that stuff?”

“Whatshmean, Dorris?”

“If you two girls cant listen to what I’m telling you, I know where I can get some who can. Now listen.”

Mame: Go to hell, you black bastard.

Dorris: Whats eatin at him, anyway?

“Now follow me in this, you girls. Its three counts to the right, three counts to the left, and then you shimmy⁠—”

John:⁠—and then you shimmy. I’ll bet she can. Some good cabaret, with rooms upstairs. And what in hell do you think you’d get from it? Youre going wrong. Here’s right: get her to herself⁠—(Christ, but how she’d bore you after the first five minutes)⁠—not if you get her right she wouldnt. Touch her, I mean. To herself⁠—in some room perhaps. Some cheap, dingy bedroom. Hell no. Cant be done. But the point is, brother John, it can be done. Get her to herself somewhere, anywhere. Go down in yourself⁠—and she’d be calling you all sorts of asses while you were in the process of going down. Hold em, bud. Cant be done. Let her go. (Dance and I’ll love you!) And keep her loveliness.

“All right now, Chicken Chaser. Dorris and girls. Where’s Dorris? I told you to stay on the stage, didnt I? Well? Now thats enough. All right. All right there, Professor? All right. One, two, three⁠—”

Dorris swings to the front. The line of girls, four deep, blurs within the shadow of suspended scenes. Dorris wants to dance. The director feels that and steps to one side. He smiles, and picks her for a leading lady, one of these days. Odd ends of stagemen emerge from the wings, and stare and clap. A crap game in the alley suddenly ends. Black faces crowd the rear stage doors. The girls, catching joy from Dorris, whip up within the footlights’ glow. They forget set steps; they find their own. The director forgets to bawl them out. Dorris dances.

John: Her head bobs to Broadway. Dance from yourself. Dance! O just a little more.

Dorris’ eyes burn across the space of seats to him.

Dorris: I bet he can love. Hell, he cant love. He’s too skinny. His lips are too skinny. He wouldnt love me anyway, only for that. But I’d get a pair of silk stockings out of it. Red silk. I got purple. Cut it, kid. You cant win him to respect you that away. He wouldnt anyway. Maybe he would. Maybe he’d love. I’ve heard em say that men who look like him (what does he look like?) will marry if they love. O will you love me? And give me kids, and a home, and everything? (I’d like to make your nest, and honest, hon, I wouldnt run out on you.) You will if I make you. Just watch me.

Dorris dances. She forgets her tricks. She dances.

Glorious songs are the muscles of her limbs.

And her singing is of canebrake loves and mangrove feastings.

The walls press in, singing. Flesh of a throbbing body, they press close to John and Dorris. They close them in. John’s heart beats tensely against her dancing body. Walls press his mind within