CHAPTER 29: OTHELLO

I do perceive here a divided duty.

Desdemona

As there wasn’t much of a crowd, I bought a ticket for a seat in the fifth-row center stage. In college I’d seen the movie version of Othello staring Lawrence Olivier playing Othello in blackface. At the end of the film, the business majors, except yours truly, had to be awakened by the humanities majors, all prissy, complaining the snoring interfered with their hearing the actors. I recalled being fascinated by the evil Iago. I’d experienced the same curiosity in college over Lucifer in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, sent plummeting out of the heavens with his cohort angels into the depths for challenging the Almighty. When I expressed this interest in evil to Vincent, who was in the same college class and hated every second of it, he told me I was too weird to be his twin. That might have been the day I stopped talking to Vincent about my interest in literature.

In tonight’s production, the Moor was being played by a Black. I did not say Negro. Did you hear that, Dila? Desdemona was white, and Emilia was Adila Agbo. Iago could have been Mexican, and were it not for the dark hair looked somewhat like Sweets’ – with the same facial structure, same cunning eyes. That wasn’t fair. Sweets eyes weren’t really cunning, but in the process of helping him, he’d become somewhat more sinister to me, no longer my pop’s savior, and local Robin Hood.

When Emilia entered the stage, in Act II, I clapped, which the people sitting around me didn’t appreciate. But I think I got Dila’s attention, and that’s all that mattered. I vowed to restrain myself for the rest of the play. But that didn’t last because when Iago, talking to Cassio, said of his wife:

“Sir, would she give you so much of her lips

As of her tongue she oft bestows on me

You’d have enough,”

I joined in laughing with the rest of the audience but didn’t stop when they did, which earned me a lot of shushing noises.

In the final scene when Emilia told Othello how she found the handkerchief and gave it to Iago was a stellar piece of acting by Dila, I thought, but then I was prejudiced, a strange way of thinking about it given the circumstances.

Emilia slumps to the floor murdered by Iago. Othello kills himself and Iago is condemned to be executed. Good riddance, I thought. These days, liberals were proposing doing away with the death penalty, citing there was no evidence that it deterred killers. Maybe so, but I believed that there were people like Iago and worse out amongst us who had, by their violent acts, lost the privilege of life. My brother Mario and I had gotten into a discussion about the death penalty shortly after his return from Vietnam. He was against it. I’d argued that his position didn’t make sense since he’d just come back from killing a whole bunch of people, many of whom were probably no guiltier of a crime than he was. That had shut him up, but I could tell I’d hurt his feelings. After the curtain fell, and the applause ended, I followed the audience into the lobby. Coffee and drinks were still being served, so I ordered a glass of red wine and waited. I had no idea how long it would be before Dila and the other actors arrived. I nursed my drink. Time ticked by. The lobby cleared out except for people I figured, like me, were waiting for the actors – friends and family most likely. I’d finished my wine by the time Dila emerged, arm in arm with one of the actors, a real flamer-looking guy. She didn’t see me as she walked past, but I heard her complaining about some idiot in the audience clapping inappropriately. She released him with a kiss on the cheek and walked to an older couple, both wearing long African gowns similar in style and color to the one Dila was wearing at the vigil, except the man had an embroidered white cloak slung over his shoulder. Both wore their hair in Afros, and the older women was Dila thirty years from now. They were smiling. So was Dila.

Ah, shit, the parents. Now, what was I going to do? I hadn’t come down here for an amateur performance of Othello. I moved slowly to my right into Dila’s line of vision, hoping she would see me. What she’d do once she did was anybody’s guess. I waited, edging this way, then that way, trying to look cool, but unobtrusive, until she spotted me.

Which she did. Her eyes widened in surprise, and her lips formed the word, Victor. I bowed, and began walking slowly towards her, casual-like. As I did, she shook her head and those beautiful, lush lips formed the word, no. I’ve never been very good at accepting that word, so I continued walking. When I arrived, I turned on my biggest used car-dealer-smile.

“Miss Agbo, I thought your performance tonight was brilliant.” Before she could come up with a response, I turned to the man and woman I assumed were her parents. “Didn’t you think so? Truly wonderful. A performance worthy of Stratford on Avon.” My obsequiousness was sort of making me sick.

“You mean Upon Avon, don’t you?” the woman said, and I knew I’d made some kind of mistake. Not knowing what it was, I said, “You must be Dila’s mother. The resemblance is uncanny. And you, sir, her father. My goodness, you’ve got to be real proud. My name is Victor Brovelli.” I stuck out my hand.

The man looked at me like I was a lower form of life, which was okay, since that’s what lots of people feel used car salesmen are anyway. By contrast, the mother’s original frown turned into a thin smile.

“Yes, we are Dila’s parents,” she said, in the same lilting voice as her daughter. “And we are definitely proud of our daughter. Shake the man’s hand Kahil.”

Papa Kahil towered over me. I guessed around 6’7” or 6’8”. His face was wide with high prominent cheekbones. His skin color was the color of mahogany. He had long eyelashes over dark piercing eyes. Dila got the green of her eyes from her mother. Papa Kahil stuck out his hand, but he didn’t look real happy doing it. It was a firm grip, which seemed to me he held too firmly and too long and meant to be slightly painful. I tried not to act like my bones were breaking. All the while Dila was looking back and forth from her parents to me. I couldn’t tell from her expression whether she was angry or amused.

When Kahil let go of his death grip, I stepped back and said. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to tell Dila how much I enjoyed her performance before I headed home, well not exactly home. I’m going up the street to Ettore’s and have a drink and a bite to eat. Say, you folks wouldn’t care to join me. Still early. Best calamari in the East Bay.”

I was out there on the end of the branch, over the abyss and hoping I wasn’t sawing myself off. “You’d be my guests.”

“Mother and father, Mr. Brovelli is the automobile dealer that sold our organization a van recently.”

“We’re pleased to meet you, Mr. Brovelli,” the mother said.

“Yes, ma’am. A very reliable van, I’m sure the . . .

Before I could finish, Dila interrupted. “You know, mother, how the PeaceLinks have needed a good vehicle to move our workers around the city. Mr. Brovelli gave us an excellent discount.”

Okay, I got the picture. “The PeaceLinks are a worthy organization,” I said, placing an emphasis on the name. My brother’s girlfriend works for PeaceLinks. She recommended The Brovelli Brothers’ Used Cars. That’s where I met your daughter.”

“Well, It’s been nice meeting you young man,” Dila’s mother said. It was a dismissal.

I stood my ground.

“Yes,” the father said, which could have meant anything but not happy to meet me was the tone I got.

Dila was making small gestures with her chin that were signals, like get lost Brovelli. Failed plan, I thought, but it had been worth a try. After telling Dila again how much I enjoyed her performance, I said my goodbyes. Dila’s father looked relieved. Dila’s mother’s smile was long gone. I walked out of the theater feeling like a failure.

• • •

I was not lying when I told Dila and her parents that Ettore’s served the best calamari in the East Bay. I had just been taken my first bite. I took a sip of a very nice Chianti, wondering what in the hell had I been thinking. Dila’s parents looked like African royalty. I wasn’t sure what African royalty looked like. The last movie about Africa I’d seen was a few years back called Zulu about a squadron of British Soldiers surrounded by thousands of Zulu Warriors in South Africa. All the Zulu chiefs wore leopard skins and carried long shields and short spears. I’d also seen African Queen with Humphrey Bogart, but the natives in that movie were pretty primitive. What did I know about Africa? What did I care about it, for that matter? Until Dila came into my life - and that had been totally by chance - my relationship to African-Americans had only been as customers. The only friend of color I ever had was in high school, and he was Mexican. I forked a piece of calamari and concentrated on eating. A moment later a shadow fell across my table. I looked up and saw Dila Agbo smiling down at me.

“Do I get my own plate?” she asked.

I leaped up, dropped my fork, damn near knocked over the table, regaining my balance, all the while grinning like an idiot. I pulled out a chair. She sat down. I waved at the waiter and ordered more calamari - and her own plate. She took a sip of my wine and said she’d have the same. This was Berkeley, so we weren’t drawing any attention except from a group of older white guys who looked like they might be football coaches. They were frowning. Si fottano tutti, fuck them all, I thought.

“So what did you really think of the performance?” Dila asked.

I answered in the native tongue, “Favoloso, profonda, e straziante.” Okay, I was showing off.

“Got the first two. What’s the last word mean?”

“Heart-wrenching.”

“What did I tell you about my bullshit meter, Victor.”

“Look,” I said, “You were splendid. I mean it. Too many of the actors, I don’t know, seemed a little stiff. I don’t know much about acting. I do know from my business if you’re not sincere and relaxed, customers pick up on it.” I thought maybe Dila would be offended, comparing actors to car salesmen, but she nodded in agreement. For a moment we sat in silence, then I asked, “Your parents don’t know you work for the Black Panthers, do they?”

“My parents would freak if they knew. It’s not that they are anti Black Panthers, they’re only worried about the guns and stuff.”

“Guns and stuff is an understatement. I saw some pretty powerful looking weapons. One in particular, was in the back seat of your car.”

“I know what I’m doing. I knew from the start that the Black Panthers advocated self-defense. I’m licensed to carry firearms.”

“It’s more than that,” I said. “The Panthers really will pull the trigger. They think we’re the enemy.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“White people.”

Dila gave me a quizzical look. “So, Victor, who tipped you off during the riots? How come your business wasn’t trashed?”

Dila made her point, and I was happy to concede. “I promise never to tell your parents.” I said, sealing my lips with a twist of my fingers. Dila’s calamari arrived and her wine. Explaining to me that she was famished, she tucked in, and we remained quiet for a while. Goddamn, she was beautiful, I thought. Those eyes were hypnotizing. Maybe I was in a trance. I recalled reading a poem in college about a woman who took her men captive to an elfin grot. She closed their eyes with four kisses is all I could remember. I’d settle for one kiss from Dila.

For an entree, I ordered lasagna. I would have ordered linguine con vongole, my favorite, but the clam sauces is rich in garlic, and I was hoping. . . Hope, springs eternal, right? Dila ordered Veal Parmigiana.

I poured more wine.

“There are some guys over in the corner staring at us,” She said. “You want me to go over and straighten them out?”

“They’re pretty damn big. You might need that carbine you’re totting in your car.”

Dila laughed. Oh how that fountain bubbled over with laughter. I started laughing. Soon we were holding our napkins over our mouths, both of us laughing for different reasons. Damned if I wasn’t smitten. Smitten, yeah, smitten. Whoever says smitten these days?

When we calmed down, Dila turned around and stuck her tongue out at the football coaches, and we burst out laughing again. She was a hell raiser, and I suspected she would never stop being a hell raiser. When we’d run out of laughter, I asked Dila about her and her family and she told me her story.

She’d graduated from Cal Berkeley last spring with a theater arts and communications degrees and was taking a year off to be more active politically. She played the piano well and until last year sung in her church’s choir. About the Black Panthers, she explained that despite their rep for violent confrontation, it seemed to her that they best represented today’s black youth. Pointing to herself, she said, “I’m part of that youth.” The other two activist organizations, as far as she was concerned, were Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, and the OAU that stood for Organization of African Unity, founded by Malcolm X.

She went on to tell me about how her father and mother had raised their children to be Pan-African, meaning that they should be aware of and proud of their West African heritage. Before she was born, her father had sponsored a tour to West Africa of a group of prominent black businessmen, writers, and political leaders, where he had learned that his roots began in the country of Benin. Although he’d returned energized about his African background, he refused to join the radical movements, claiming that in the United States the only power that mattered was who controlled wealth, a concept, which made a lot of sense to me. I almost interrupted to say, Right on, dad but luckily I didn’t. From the way she went on about her father, I could tell she had mixed feelings about him. Perhaps it had something to do with the scarring.

“But he changed your name.”

“Yes, to what he believed was our traditional African name, Agbo. My parents gave me a traditional female Benin first name “And,” she hesitated, “when I reached puberty, Father had me scarred.”

I said, “I don’t see any scars.”

“They’re not on my face.”

“Where are they, if it’s not too personal?”

“Just below my stomach. It means I’m strong enough to be a mother. You know, if you can take the pain of the scarring, you’re ready for the pain of child birth. My mom went along with it but she wasn’t happy.”

From the tone of her voice, I couldn’t tell if she was angry at her father or not. I was horrified, but tried not to show it. In the next sentence she answered the question I wouldn’t ask.

“I’m not mad at him. It was all about finding an identity and a culture to go along with it that wasn’t all about slavery. It didn’t really hurt very much. He might have gone a little extreme, but a lot of older Blacks his age were as conflicted as he was. He still is, probably. You saw the African robes. When he’s in his African mood, he actually wears them to his office.”

I nodded my head. I knew a little about culture, my pop being a good example of a man who prided himself on being Italian, and more specifically a Napolitano.

She told me a little about her mom, a graduate of Howard University, who went on to get her law degree from the UCLA.

“Okay, Victor,” she said. “That’s enough about me. Tell me about your family.”

I had a ton of questions for Dila I would have liked to ask, but didn’t. I began the Brovelli family story with Big Sal and my mom meeting at a wedding. She’d been the maid of honor. I named my older siblings and their children. I spent some time on Mario, Vietnam and his girlfriend and PeaceLinks. Dila said she approved of PeaceLink’s work. Considering she worked there I told her, to which she replied with a smiling, “Touché.” I explained how Vincent and I took over the car business. Dila was a good listener, nodding her head, smiling, encouraging me to delve. I delved. Into my pop’s obsession with family and onore, my concern that Vincent was becoming a little too politically conservative. I did not delve into Winona’s murder and aftermath. I wasn’t ready to admit to my part in the crime.

When I finished, she asked, “How’s it feel being a twin? I’m an only child.”

Being a twin is so natural that I’m surprised when people are curious.

I began with the first thought to cross my mind, “Being a twin is always having each other’s’ back. One time when we were kids, we were punching each other. . . “

She interrupted. “Why were you punching each other?”

“Doesn’t matter; that’s what male twins do.” I continued. “Another kid stepped in and hit me, believing he was helping my brother. Vincent was all over the kid in a hurry, and I jumped in to finish the job. Word got around that if we were fighting, it didn’t pay to take sides.

“Let me tell you a story that says everything about my twin. We were repossessing a 1965 Chrysler Imperial. The car was in a garage with chains on the doors. My twin figures he had about ten minutes max to get in and out. As he snapped through the chain with cutting shears, the chain snapped back and sliced off his forefinger at the knuckle.”

“My God,” Dila whispered.

I continued, “A wise man would have stopped and found help. Not Vincent. He wrapped the piece of his finger in a handkerchief, stuck the bloody hanky in his pocket, then turned his belt into a tourniquet. Keeping the belt tight, he rushed into the garage and repossessed our car, backing it out of the garage and driving with one hand to the nearest hospital where they sewed his finger back on.”

“You’re making this up.”

“As God is my judge,” I said. “You can always count on Vincent.”

“I’ll remember that if I ever lose a body part.”

“There’s no braver guy in the world than my brother.”

“You know you were pretty brave yourself when you stood up to the cops.”

I shrugged.

Dila lifted her wine glass. “Here’s to two brave Brovelli’s.”

She took a sip, the light of the chandelier directly above us momentarily causing her green eyes to glisten, the one more emerald than the other, like it had emerged from a richer vein of the earth.

Dessert menus appeared, saving me from the ancestral search. I ordered a raspberry gelato and she ordered a crème Brule. Both of us had coffee flavored with crème de mint.

I asked her if she thought there was some symbolism about tonight, considering Othello was about an inter-racial relationship. She said that was a little too, you know, coincidental for her. I told her I believed in coincidences. I didn’t tell her I also believed in miracles, the Holy Sacraments, the Trinity, and the ghost of Winona Davis.

The waiter brought me the check.

I asked Dila if we could do this again sometime.

She hesitated, then replied, “Why not? But let’s do it from now on in San Francisco. The East Bay is too close to home. My family would have a fit if they knew I was seeing a white man, particularly my father.”

“What was it that Desdemona said to her father?” I asked.

“I do perceive here a divided duty,” Dila answered. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This isn’t even Act I. I got to admit I like you Victor Brovelli but I’m not willing to go to war with my parents over you.”

I appreciated her honesty. I wondered what my mom and pop’s reaction would be to Dila and me. Not bad if they thought Dila was just another of my girlfriends. If it became more serious, there’d be trouble.

“You’re looking kind of startled, Brovelli. You don’t think whites have an exclusive on prejudice, do you?”

“Nah,” I said, lying. “You think I’m naïve? My brother and I’ve been doing business on East 14th for six years. We interact with blacks all the time. A few of my best friends are black.”

Out came that lovely bubbling laughter followed by, “Oh, Victor, Victor, listen to what you just said. If that’s not the most over-used cliché, it’s surely in the top ten. I can only count one white female friend and not a single white male.”

“Who’s your white friend?”

“A girl I met years ago at a summer music and theatre arts camp in Travis City, Michigan. We’re both grad assistants at the camp now.”

“A long distant friendship. Doesn’t count.”

“No, Renee’s finishing her senior year at Mills College.”

If I hadn’t gotten the napkin over my mouth, I’d have spit my coffee all over the table.

“What?” Dila asked. “Did I say something funny?”

I shook my head.

“We used to get together for coffee or drinks regularly,” Dila continued,” but with the political work I’ve been doing and her senior thesis, we’re down to once every couple of months. I miss Renee a lot.”

“Oddio, I thought.

I regained my composure, and we spoke a while longer about friendship. “Are we going to be friends?” I asked her. She didn’t answer, but her smile did for her.

By this time the restaurant had thinned out until we were the last people seated. I examined the bill. I dropped four twenties on the table, and Renee’s best friend and I left.

In the romance novels my sister used to read, couples would step out of a fancy restaurant after a romantic meal into a balmy moonlit night with a street musician strumming a love song on his guitar. But this was Berkeley, April, 1968 and what we encountered as we walked out of the door was fog, a couple of stoned hippies, and two police cars, sirens whooping full blast, hurdling down the street. And, from somewhere, too far away to understand, the sound of angry voices.

I walked Dila to her car. Small talk. Both of us nervous. I think we wanted to say more, about the night, about us, but didn’t. She leaned into me, and we hugged. No elfin grot, no kisses four, not even one, but Tennyson’s Knight couldn’t have been more in thrall than Victor Brovelli. Before getting in the car, she gave me her telephone number.

Dila said, “I told you, Victor, you’d be dangerous for my health.”

As she drove off, I thought, Victor, if you’re not careful, you’re about to leave your heart in San Francisco.