Dunfords Travels Everywheres Read online

  William Melvin Kelley

  Dunfords Travels Everywheres

  William Melvin Kelley was born in New York City in 1937 and attended the Fieldston School and Harvard. The author of four novels and a short story collection, he was a writer in residence at the State University of New York at Geneseo and taught at The New School and Sarah Lawrence College. He was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for lifetime achievement and the Dana Reed Prize for creative writing. He died in 2017.

  BY WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY

  A Different Drummer

  A Drop of Patience

  dem

  Dancers on the Shore (short stories)

  FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2020

  Copyright © 1969, 1970 by The Estate of William Melvin Kelley

  Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Aiki Kelley

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 1970.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Portions of this book originally appeared in Playboy magazine, copyright © 1968 by H.M.H. Publishing Co., Inc., Negro Digest and L’Arc.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:

  Name: Kelley, William Melvin, 1937–2017.

  Title: Dunfords travels everywheres / William Melvin Kelley.

  Description: First edition. | Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1970.

  Identifiers: LCCN 70118849

  Classification: PZ4.K285 Du PS3561.E392

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​70118849

  Anchor Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9781984899378

  Ebook ISBN 9781984899385

  Cover design by The BearMaiden

  Interior illustrations © Aiki Kelley

  www.anchorbooks.com

  ep_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  By William Melvin Kelley

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  I dedicate dhis Book

  t’Jessica Gibson Kelley

  n Cira Tikaiji Kelley,

  two o’dFamily’s many Travelers.

  The Futurafrique, flight-furbished ebony astride

  velvet-paved miles, vies with the

  sunflower magnificence of the

  Oriens, challenges the snow-lily

  diadem of the Europa……

  —MELVIN B. TOLSON

  The language in which we are speaking

  is his before it is mine…

  I cannot speak or write these words

  without unrest of spirit.

  His language, so familiar and so foreign,

  will always be for me an acquired speech…

  My soul frets in the shadow of his language.

  —JAMES JOYCE

  We slept in that bush, but when it was about two o’clock in the night, there we saw a creature, either he was a spirit or other harmful creature, we could not say, he was coming toward us, he was white as if painted with white paint, he was white from foot to the topmost of his body, but he had no head or feet and hands like human-beings and he got one large eye on his topmost. He was long about ¼ of a mile and his diameter was about six feet, he resembled a white pillar. At the same time that I saw him coming toward us, I thought what I could do to stop him, then remembered a charm which was given me by my father before he died.

  —AMOS TUTUOLA

  1

  BOY! CHIG! Wake up and move over. Please.”

  Sunday: Chig Dunford, Frank, Lane and Wendy shared the small sedan’s backseat; Ira, driving, Marian beside him, and Cleurdia rode in the front. Under hot plastic, Chig felt the steel ribs of the automobile’s side against his left hip; he did not answer.

  “Hey, Chig, you deaf? Move over.” Lane laughed. “Wendy’s hips are sharp as needles.”

  The car’s passengers squirmed, knowing the story. Lane had slept with Wendy for three months. Then, at the beginning of the summer, she had broken off their affair, but had taken no one new. She and Lane continued to see each other at little Gallery openings, at the Café of One Hand for Sundays of softball. All agreed that she acted decently toward him. But Lane kept snipping at her, especially about the pointed edges of her body; today, her hips.

  “Nothing to move over to, Lane. You’ll just have to suffer.” Immediately, he regretted using the word, suffer. He did not know if Wendy found him attractive, but hoped she did, and tried always to say things that pleased her. Now, foolishly, he had agreed with Lane about her hips.

  “Hold your shirt; we’re getting there soon.” Ira had never slept with Wendy. He had lived with Marian for two years. Besides, Wendy seemed not to like men who grew mustaches.

  “I’ll bleed to death before that.” Lane went cleanshaven.

  “That’s not a bad way to die.” Chig could not see Wendy’s face, only her bare legs, two sets of knees away in the cramped backseat and very long, tanned the color of natural beige leather. For the past few weeks, she had been in Spain, had just returned, looking healthy. This Sunday, she wore yellow shortshorts.

  Lane had not answered. Perhaps by commenting openly on their bodies, Chig had gone too far.

  He had created a silence, and tried to decide whether or not to speak. Usually, when one of his friends created a silence, Chig would break it. This time, he would have to wait until their feelings subsided and one of them spoke.

  He turned away, looked out the open window. They travelled up the Beulward dol Touras, one of a kind of long, broad avenue Chig had found in every European city he had visited. But Chig considered Beulward dol Touras, lined with tall oaks, more majestic than most.

  Many cafés fronted the beulward under the oak trees. In each café, by use of a bell-bedecked white wire supported at one end by a ring in the outside wall of the café, and at the other by a white standard, the management had divided the sidewalk tables into two sections.


  On the right side of the ringing wire, the native men and women of that country wore suits, jackets, pants, dresses, skirts and shirts in hues and mixtures of blue and red. On the left side, the natives wore combinations of yellow and red. Neither side’s colors appeared all bright, or drab, all new or all old; but when Chig squinted, the colors blended that way.

  One of that country’s oldest traditions, many foreigners found it difficult to understand. None of the natives on either side of the wire owned wardrobes composed entirely of one side’s colors. In the morning, each native in the country would pick an outfit for that day. He might choose blue-red or yellow-red, making himself, for the day, an Atzuoreurso or a Jualoreurso.

  In the street, each native lived the day his morning choice had dictated. The government reserved parts of the subway and autobus for Atzuoreursos, parts for Jualoreursos. Employers divided their offices and factories in this way. No citizen worked at a permanent desk or machine. Each used that section of the room where The Morning Choice, Lua Madjona Cheursa, had led him. Most married couples wore the same colors, to ride public transportation or take coffee together. Some couples did not, leading separate lives until they had returned home, locked their doors, and disrobed.

  Four or five of Chig’s twenty or thirty friends had tried to live by the tradition, dividing their closets and making their choice. But soon, each and all found it impossible to continue; some situation always developed which forced them to cross the white wire. Still, they tried their best not to disturb the natives. If, as a body, they attended a movie or a play, they would decide beforehand to dress either Atzuoreurso or Jualoreurso.

  Sunday, for softball, they chose Jualoreurso.

  Marian turned to look at him, forgave him first. “Are all the windows open, Chig?”

  He had rolled down his window at the beginning of the ride; salty exhaust from the cars ahead cooled his face. He nodded.

  Marian’s unbuttoned pink shirt did not hide her large, soft breasts, little more than the nipples under a small yellow bikinibra. “You think I’ll get a real tan today?”

  “It all depends on the sun, Marian.” He always felt uncomfortable when his friends talked about skin.

  “I wish I had an all-year tan.” Her teeth had grown in crookedly. She had told him her braces pained her so much that she tantrumed until her parents ordered the dentist to remove them.

  Chig smiled, the only thing to do. “You might not like it, Marian. It’s all right to get a tan at the resort. But it ain’t so good to arrive there with one already.”

  They all laughed, especially at his ain’t. Serious people, they had all come to Europe for very much the same reason: home troubled them.

  “Anyway, you’re really a beautiful color, Chig.” An artist, Marian used a lot of brown in her work. Several times, he had visited her and Ira at their studio in the Old City.

  “I wish more people felt that way.”

  All of them nodded, except Cleurdia, a native. Sometimes she seemed not to understand them. When a person talked directly to her, she caught almost everything. But when the conversation did not involve her, English held less meaning for her than the barking of dogs.

  Marian rested the tip of her chin on the top of the front seat, hiding her breasts for the moment. “But still, things are getting better, aren’t they, Chig?”

  “Sure. Don’t you think so, Chig?” Lane leaned forward, answered for him, then waited for his answer.

  They all waited. He wondered what would happen if he did not answer, but dared not risk it. “Well, the President is pushing some strong stuff through Congress.”

  “That’s true,” Frank agreed. He sat squeezed between Chig and Lane. “The man is a master-politician.”

  “But that’s not what Chig meant when he said things were getting better.” Lane had forgotten that he answered Marian’s question. “But what about the human heart, Chig?”

  They studied him, all except Cleurdia.

  “I think he understands the human heart. And he knows he can’t change it overnight. He said recently that the future is built on the framework of the past. He’s probably building a legal framework first.” He hoped they would begin to talk about the President, much admired by people their age.

  Most times, Chig tried to answer their questions, to help them understand the experience of Africans in the United States, the pain of slavery, the shame of segregation, the frustrations of integration, and all the rest of it. But this Sunday he wanted only to play softball and store up sun. Summer had almost ended and soon, a long European winter would darken the city. He wanted to take in as much sun as possible.

  “That’s probably right, Chig.” Lane spoke. “But how do you feel now, today?”

  “Today, we just have to throw ourselves open to all human beings.” Marian sighed; she had explained this many times before. “We have to spread our arms wide and embrace everything people have to give.” She addressed Chig. “And then reflect it in our art.”

  Lane stared at her for a moment. “Ya, sure, I suppose so.” He hesitated, then suddenly turned moderator. “Let’s hear what Wendy has to say.”

  Wendy leaned forward, from behind Frank and Lane, into the window’s frame. The wind rippled her yellow silk blouse, whipped strands of long black hair across her cheeks. “You remember, Lane. We’ve talked about it before. That night you said you didn’t mind if the Coloreds had better jobs and schools and houses, but that, remember Lane? you resented race-mixing. And we talked and talked. We were looking at the sun come up over the rooftops, and finally I made you see that one of a man’s most important rights is to marry anyone he pleases, no matter what color. Remember that night? When your room-mate went to Paris?”

  “Ya. Sure.” Lane nodded. “The human heart.”

  2

  “BUT HE UNDERSTANDS THAT.”

  “Who understands what, Marian?” From somewhere below Ira’s yellow-red plaid shoulder, Chig heard the smack of his hand on Marian’s thigh.

  “I mean the President, Ira.” She answered him, then all of them: “The President.” She nodded.

  “What about him?”

  “He understands, Lane. About the human heart.” She bounced in her seat as she spoke. “He’s not like the rest of them. He’s not a politician.”

  “That’s not true. He’s a master-politician. He really is.” Frank sat up straight. Costumed completely in brownish-red, shirt and pants, except for a yellow ascot, he looked almost elegant. “I mean he understands the system. He’s not innocent.”

  “Mother says the same thing.” Wendy whispered; smoke rose behind Lane’s head.

  Frank turned toward her, the back of his head neatly trimmed. “I didn’t mean it that way, Wendy. I meant he’s not politically innocent. He’s spent thirty years in the service of government. He understands how it works. He has a vision of where he wants the future to go. He’s not just holding the line.” Frank compared governments at that country’s Uneveurseto Netswonal, spoke the language well enough to do so. One night, several months before, his stomach filled with red wine, he had confessed to Chig that at twenty-six, he remained a virgin. “And he’s a master-politician, which I said before.”

  Wendy reached across Lane and stroked Frank’s hand with her fingers. She wore a pale gold wedding ring on her right hand. “I believe I haven’t made myself clear, Frank.” She smiled; Chig loved her smile, her dimple. “That was only when he first got to Washington. Later, he settled down. He and his wife often spend the weekend with some of Mother’s friends. I really agree with you, Frank. And you’d like him too.”

  “So you know him real well, huh?”

  “I honestly didn’t mean to brag, Lane. He’s Mother’s friend’s friend.” Inside the loose silk blouse, she took a breath. “I’ve only spoken to him exactly twice in my life, at some teas my parents and I attended. And he was very
pleasant. But perhaps your parents know him better.”

  “They never met him.” Lane’s father grew tons of wheat somewhere between Chicago and Cedar City; Chig had never known exactly where. “But they know the Vice President, very well.”

  “Now he’s a politician!” Frank commented, beginning to laugh. “I mean in the spirit that Marian meant.”

  They did not often laugh at Frank’s jokes.

  “I still don’t know how he even got nominated.” Marian stared over the back of the seat, down into Lane’s lap.

  “Here we go again!” Lane slid forward to the Vice President’s defense. “You people always talk about how corrupt mid-westerners are. Corruption was invented before there even was a Midwest, right on the old East Coast. So don’t tell me your Mr. President of the Younger Generation is a lily either!”

  “Nobody said he was a lily, Lane.” Ira leaned back, shouted at the roof of the car. “He makes deals. But not half as many—”

  “That’s not true. He was rich before he was elected to anything.” Frank fingered a pimple on his jaw. Like dragon’s heads, two pimples seemed to erupt for every one he burst. “He didn’t have to make any deals.”

  “Don’t be stupid enough to believe everything they tell you in school, Frank.” Lane paused. “Everybody’s a little corrupt. Right, Wendy?”

  “Of course, Lane. But I don’t believe I’ve heard as much gossip—”

  “That’s only because he covers his tracks better. He’s a smart one.”

  “That’s just the point,” Ira and Marian chorused.