| Apr. 29th, 2006 @ 07:23 pm Two Moments |
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Two moments are stuck in my head. In one moment, I am sitting down with Amalia in a large auditorium, the vast space filled with the susurrus of excited whispers as everybody watches the lit stage in anticipation. In the second I am seated outside in the sunshine after lunch with my Aunt Katya and Vovo, the three of us awaiting my mother on Lincoln Road, watching people pass by, Katya busy fussing with her dog Pelucia, Vovo intent on not smudging her cream slacks on the stone rim on which we sit.
Two moments. Amalia and I slump low in our cinema styled seats talking and joking as we await the concert to begin. At one point she pauses and asks me, quite succinctly and deliberately if I will get up and dance later on. I smile and assure her that I will.
In the sunshine, my grandmother turns to me, having caught sight of a homeless man sitting a few yards down from us along the stone rim, and asks me to go and give the man four dollars. I turn and examine him briefly – a white man, in his forties perhaps, with a sharp face and wearing John Lennon spectacles. He’s drinking a cup of water and sitting quietly, oblivious to the stares he gets from those who pass him by. I frown, and turn back to my grandmother, who’s carefully fished out the dollars from her purse.
A man steps up to the microphone, and people cheer erratically. He greets us all in Spanish, in English, in French and Portuguese. He smiles and tells us sincerely how excited he is by tonight’s performance. These two singers have just swept all the awards in France with the CD they made with Manu Chau last year. Two blind musicians from Mali, a married couple that met as teenagers in a center for the blind. People applaud, and when his voice grows loud, as he turns clapping to welcome them to the orange and red lit stage, we rise to our feet, applauding wildly.
Vovo presses my arm and before I can answer Katya leans over, shaking her head. Don’t give him the change, she says. Buy him a sandwich, or buy him an ice-cream from the parlor across from us, but if you just give him cash you could be feeding his vices. What if he buys drugs? What if he buys alcohol? Cigarettes? Vovo’s face grows stubborn. She doesn’t care. Give him the dollars, she bids me, and I shake my head. I’m too lazy, and not up for the embarrassing exchange of giving a man money he hasn’t asked for.
The two musicians are guided out to the fore of the stage, both dressed in beautiful African robes. Their black shades gleam in the lights, and their smiles are wide. Four other musicians come out, taking up bass guitar, sitting at the drums, at the keyboard, and the last, a dreadlocked man with a hard face like Seal but with a luminous smile takes up his place in a percussion stand, surrounded by drums of all kinds. The couple greet the crowd, their English limited and heavily accented, but the crowd applauds through it all and they start to play. The music is infectious, rhythmic, and soon everybody is dancing, moving to the aisles for more space, to press closer to the stage.
Listening to my grandmother and aunt argue about the four dollars, I lean back and see two bicycle cops stopped just ahead, both of them talking quietly into their walkie talkies. They’re heavy set men, in their early thirties, clean cut and with broad, undefined shoulders. I watch them, idly curious. They seem intent on something, but I can’t tell what. A third man joins them, a police man in standard uniform, silvered hair and bright eyes, is jaw locked in determination.
“Are you feeling alright?” Asks the man, his voice large, rich as honey, as warm as sunlight. The crowd roars its assent. “Are you ok?” He asks through his smile, his accent so strange, and we’re all dancing and laughing. He asks these two questions at the beginning of every song. Amalia dances before me, and my hands are on her shoulders. The man laughs into the microphone, and says, as he has every time, “Then let’s dance!”
The cops move quickly and suddenly. One moment they’re off by the bushes, talking to each other, the flow of pedestrians on either side of Lincoln Road constant and colorful, and then they’ve surrounded the homeless man who’s risen to his feet in protest. It happens so quickly I miss their first exchange, but then the man is crying out loud in rage and denial, “No! I’m tired of this shit! No! I didn’t do nothing! No!” The silver haired cop places a handcuff around the man’s wrist smoothly, and orders the man to turn around. “No, fuck you! I just asked for a coffee! I’m fucking tired of this shit!” The cops grab him, one taking each arm, and he begins to spasm and flail, his glasses knocked askew on his face. Katya, a mere yard from this, stands quickly with fluffy white Pelucia in her arm. We all stare in shock.
At some point during the concert, several parents who were up close to the stage have placed their toddles on it so that they can sit on its edge. They’re young, but the music is so good that they stand and begin to dance. Their antics draw nearly as much attention as that of the performers. One little girl, no more than three or four, dressed in a white wedding dress and red Dorothy shoes, begins to leap around, pausing every once in awhile to drop to all fours, extend her left leg stiffly out behind her, and then roll down onto her back around it to kick her legs above her like a rock star jamming on a guitar. A second little boy is so intent on just moving that he leaps, jerks around, pogo sticking from leg to the next, throwing in jumping jacks and occasionally simply leaping and bringing both knees to his chest over and over again, his face very focused and serious. The kids cavort and twirl like dervishes, and the bass guitarist, laughing, comes over to join them and play his guitar.
The three cops are joined by another, and the four of them begin to wrestle the homeless man to the ground. He’s kicking as hard as he can at them, but he’s too confined to do much other than yell. “Call my dad,” he screams over and over again, his voice thick with loathing and sarcasm, “George Bush! Call my dad George Bush! He works for the CIA!” I get up, and force my stunned Vovo to get back, to get away from this violence. They wrestle him to the ground, and one of them places a knee in the small of his back as he works the man’s second arm back and into the cuff. The homeless man’s words degenerate into screams of pain and outrage. Lincoln Road has stopped. Everybody sitting at the street side cafes and restaurants are staring openly, food forgotten before them. Pedestrians with BEBE shopping bags held limply stare openly. It’s horribly intimate, this moment, shared with all these strangers as we stare at his man’s arrest. It feels like driving past a car accident, the pace of traffic making you complicit in forcing you to look, preventing you from accelerating. Suddenly angry, I turn and walk away.
“World Peace!” Shouts the man into the microphone, and people applaud. “Liberte, fraternite!” he shouts in French. “Peace and love for everybody!” The music is good, the rhythm infectious, the good will flowing and suffusing the dark fastness of the auditorium. Everybody sways and dances, faces upturned to the blind couple, roaring back their approval. It feel so obvious, to good, so natural. Liberty and peace and love for everybody.
The homeless man is dragged away. Vovo asks me what he did. I tell her I don’t know. Vovo states that he had just been sitting there drinking his water, and I shrug. I’m angry, irritated. Katya tells Vovo that we don’t know what he might have done before, or if the cops knew him, or anything. But he was drinking his water, says Vovo, four dollars still clutched in her hand. The cops said something about his throwing coffee at somebody, says Katya, and shrugs as she turns back. Seven cop cars have arrived down the side street, and the homeless man has disappeared into their midst. His little bag, with a coffee thermos, a book, a rolled up magazine and whatever other possessions he might have had has been left abandoned on the stone ledge where he had been sitting. Vovo points it out, and I nod. A man walks up, short and wearing a warm orange shirt, and takes the bag. He walks slowly over to the cops down the side street, and gives them the bag. One of the cops places it on top of the cop car, and turns his attention back to whatever another cop had been saying. |
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