Uncle Tom s New Cabin

 
On the empty streets of the French Quarter, an elderly Afro-American man shuffled dejectedly towards the bridge over the Mississippi River. His sickly slenderness, dirty, greasy curls of long-unwashed hair, his skin covered with small creases, dried up, on his hands and heels, left no doubt that this elderly black man is homeless.  He was dressed in rags: worn, ripped shorts, a dirty faded T-shirt and sandals patched up in places with duct tape rounded out the portrait of the unlucky man. But everything would have been understandable if it hadn’t been for one thing that didn’t fit into the general picture at all: It was an object in sparkling gold and hanging on a leather cord dangling over the skinny old man’s chest – a saxophone. He was followed by a mongrel, limping on her back paw, as bedraggled as her owner, with the same curls of black unwashed fur, which caused a remarkable resemblance to the old man.
Old Tom turned around, whistled, calling on the straggling dog, gave her an almost toothless smile and thought it was not for nothing that he called her “Sis” (sister).
It’s a day of big and small preparations: Tomorrow is Good Friday... This year it’s a special Friday... My God! How that fatal Friday upended his life, turning his soul inside out! After those terrible events, old Tom didn’t want to live, and how was he supposed to? For whom? How do you erase it, gut that day from your memory? But...
Today he will go to the barber, his old friend Sam. Every Thursday night, he gives Tom the bits of soap left over from his clients, a not very blunt razor and an almost empty bottle of cologne – just enough for a few sprays. Because Friday – that is the day of the family meeting.
Uncle Tom (as everyone in New Orleans called him) lives in an old tent tattered from wind and heat, humidity and dust, full of holes – that is his home. Above the tent, which is secured by some kind of aluminum wire, is a broken piece of board with the words “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” written in green paint. 
There, beneath the bridge, are all his belongings: a large stack of folded cardboard boxes, Coca Cola cans and empty glass bottles (for rainy days in case they don’t give him any change), a shabby mat for Sis (or what’s left of it) and... the main treasure – a saxophone case that held all the most precious things left of his wayward life. It is there that he keeps the most precious thing – the memory of a life filled with love, the memory of Her and Him. From that happy time, only one living thing is left, and he does not part with him for a moment – his friend Dolfo (named after the creator of the saxophone Adolf Sachs). It was he, Dolfo, who helped him not go mad and continue to live, who gave him someone to visit and please his family...
First, as always, old Tom bathes Sis in the Mississippi’s dirty water. And before it gets completely dark, he’ll shave by looking at his distorted reflection in Dolfo.  And when it gets dark, Uncle Tom will go down to the water to bathe:
First of all because he is not visible from the bridge, and second, the night sky of New Orleans veils the murky waters of the river teeming with a swampy stench.
And early in the morning, on Friday, Uncle Tom will open Dolfo’s case and... will start his favorite ritual: For 8 years, in both the heat and the cold, in the rain and the wind, he has played for them.
From Dolfo’s case he takes out black leather trousers and a vest, a bright purple shirt and black and white lacquer shoes-shnoobs, a gift from the owner of the famous “VASO” jazz club where Uncle Tom loved to play. Yes! And now Sis is wearing the purple butterfly – it’s her accessory; she starts...
Then they are on their way, walking to Cemetery #3, the oldest in New Orleans, for almost an hour and a half. 
He and Sis reach it around 8:00 am, before the eye of heaven wakes up the asphyxiating humidity. Uncle Tom takes a deep breath; the relatively cool air with velvet tenderness flows into his lungs, giving him the necessary oxygen, so a performance can begin for them, for his beloved family. And what’s more, he talks, tells, shares the unbearable burden of loneliness.
When the outlines of the grayish crypt roofs appear in the distance, Sis, limping, will start to run.
He picked her up one night, still very small, two years ago, when a tram ran over her paw stuck in the groove of the track. Uncle Tom was spurred by the strange sounds that made goosebumps run over his body: He heard a heart-piercing aria. Somebody seemed to be singing about the state of their own soul.  He went toward the sounds and stood transfixed... The little dog wasn’t howling or whining... She sang with tears – tears of loneliness, tears of hopelessness and despair. He cautiously released the dog’s disfigured paw, and, under the bright light of the full moon, he saw the sparkling tears of an unhappy animal – those were tears of hope.  Then he gave the vet all his money, all $800 he had saved to pay for fixing the crypt. The vet didn’t cheat him, and Uncle Tom never regretted it. 
Sis usually runs up to the vault, breathing fitfully, impatiently scratching with her front paws – she is ready to enter. Uncle Tom takes two white roses out of the womb of Dolfo, puts them on the first step of the vault, kisses the names of his relatives, sits down and begins to tell everything from the beginning.
Then he starts playing...
When Sis first heard Carlos Santana’s song “EUROPA” performed by Gato Barbieri, coming from the flung open windows of a French restaurant, she stopped, rooted to the spot, held her breath and... sang. And how she did sing, with the drawn-out tenderness of a dog’s wou-wou, hitting the exact tone of the saxophone’s fleshy timbre, bringing passers-by to a stunned stop, and attracting the attention of everyone who was relaxing in the restaurant. It happened three days after the operation; the vet hadn’t even promised her complete recovery. Old Tom cried and said she’ll survive! It was then that he called her Sis, recognizing her as his soul mate, a divine gift as consolation.
Since then, every Friday, Sis has opened the concert.      
As soon as the first drawn-out chord of “EUROPA” rings out, she closes her eyes-orbs, and, after spreading her shaggy ears, puts her whole canine soul into a magical duet with Uncle Tom.
Then Uncle Tom plays “Michelle” – a touching song by the Liverpool four, which he sang for every birthday of his one and only beloved wife Michelle. He covers his wrinkled eyelids slightly and looks at the swinging velvet of Spanish moss hanging from tropical trees, recalling the divine hands of Michelle. If it wasn’t for that passerby, the second-rate corps dancer who left her alone, pregnant, at the mercy of fate, the prediction made by Peter Martins, the leader of “New York City Ballet,” that “soon a new ballet star would be born and her name is Michelle,” would have become reality.  But by contrast, if it hadn’t happened, Tom wouldn’t have approached the girl standing on the very edge of the Brooklyn Bridge, whose intentions left no doubt.
He grabbed her at the very last moment, and she collapsed into his arms and fainted. Tom took her to his room where he lived with his grandfather, who had become everything to him after his parents died.
And then Michelle gave birth to a boy as beautiful as she was. Tom loved him at first sight, just like he loved Michelle.
Tom adored Michelle and the baby George, named after the talented dancer and balletmaster George Balanchine. He never dreamed that one day the beautiful white Frenchwoman Michelle would reciprocate his feelings. It was enough for him to see his grandfather’s happy face and a smiling mother and son when he returned home from his day job as a waiter. In the evening, Tom went to a second job at a jazz club, where fans and connoisseurs of jazz came to listen to the virtuoso music of the young saxophonist. He worked tirelessly, with pleasure, as long as there was no violation of his understanding of the most valuable thing for him – the family, which he did not have before the fateful meeting with Michelle.
Once, quietly opening the door after a night’s work, Tom, who had forgotten about his birthday, came in and saw a shining Michelle hand him a large box. It was a strawberry cake that turned his life upside down with just one message on a little card - “Tom! I love you! Marry me!” He will never forget that feeling of boundless happiness – never experienced, never felt, and most importantly, never expected. The key to happiness is the cherished postcard, which found its place in a small nacreous box, the only memory of his mother.
All these 8 years of oppressive loneliness, on his birthday, Tom felt pain, aching, drilling into his soul with a sense of abandonment ... and before his eyes, behind the moving veil of winding Spanish moss stood the image of Michelle dancing with the strawberry cake in her hands.
And today, Good Friday, is his 60th birthday, although he looks like a very old man. How much he would like to be with them, his family.
As long as he plays “Michelle,” Sis doesn’t interfere with the performance: These moments are just for him, Uncle Tom; he remains alone with his love. Sis, flatting her whole body, lies on the grass, as if she is shrinking, understanding the sadness of her master’s heart. And then he takes a breath and plays his son’s favorite song – “Georgia on my mind” by the genius Ray Charles. Starting when he was still in the cradle, baby George fell asleep to the soothing sounds of this song performed by his father. It initially became a lullaby and later a favorite song for his grown-up son. It always made George happy. He believed that only his beloved father, Tom, could play this delightful tune so soulfully.
Uncle Tom used to enjoy playing for his son. But now, for 8 years, a silent stream of bitter tears flowed from the yellowed eyes of his unlucky father, leaving wet rivulets on the sides of Dolfo. Sis always added emotion to this melody by using one letter - “U-u-u.”
Thus, every week, on Friday, the elderly Afro-American with the mongrel began his tribute early in the morning. The inhabitants of the area waited for them: some of them, sitting at the crypt of their relatives, came to listen to the beautiful music; others brought food; some even asked him to play at the funeral of their loved ones – and for them Uncle Tom played for free, just asking them to pray at the crypt of Michelle and George.
Today, Uncle Tom stays longer – it is an anniversary, and he wants to spend this day alone with his family, doing his part, playing Dolfo, without Matthew, who often accompanied Uncle Tom to the cemetery.
Matthew came into Uncle Tom’s life almost right after Sis.
He immediately told Michelle and George about the talented 17-year-old guy from a rich family in Texas. The first time he saw the cool curve of the golden instrument and heard the enchanting sounds of the saxophone, the young man “was forever enslaved to the charm of his metal boss,” as he put it. Matthew’s father did not take his son’s hobby seriously, writing off his passion for the saxophone as a teenage caprice. For two years, his father tolerated the “wail” of the disgusting instrument, in the hope that his son, after graduating from an elite school, would continue his studies at one of the prestigious universities in order to run the oil empire later.  His son’s statement that he was going to devote himself to music, the saxophone, pissed off his father so much that in a fit of rage the latter smashed the delightful instrument on the floor ... As he told the story, Matthew said that his father became a murderer in his eyes that evening – he killed the cherished dream of his only son. The same day, locked in his room, the 15-year-old son managed to escape from his parents’ home in the middle of the night. He had no money or documents, but Matthew knew where he was going – to New Orleans, the kingdom of jazz. Hitchhiking to get there, he did all sorts of dirty work along the way, from car washing to cleaning. Eventually, he managed to get to the “promised land.” It was summer time; he could sleep in the church yard or on the marina until he earned a living with the instrument. He had one dream, and he worked hard to achieve it. He was even lucky enough to play in a bar where he was offered a steady job: during the day Matthew worked as a dishwasher and in the evening he played with a jazz band. He saved on everything, combed through the scraps from the tables at the restaurant, slept in a back room, where, under a wobbly floor board, he kept all the money he had earned. This lasted for 10 months, until the police came and arrested one of the waiters for selling drugs: in Matthew’s absence, the guy had stored the narcotics in the back room. They confiscated not only the drugs, but also Matthew’s hard-earned money, closing the door on the boy’s cherished dream. The owner didn’t believe Matthew was innocent and threw him out of the bar. The same evening Matthew joined the homeless army and got pretty high on marijuana... his soul became indifferent to everything; he broke down...
One day, Uncle Tom saw the white boy lying in the dust and stoned out of his mind. That day, he dragged a weak Matthew to his cabin. He fed him as much as he could, bought clean bottled water and laid the poor guy in his tent. In a few days he managed to bring him back to his senses, and the boy trusted the old man and told him his story. Uncle Tom promised he would make music with Matthew, but extracted a promise from him that he would kick the drugs.
The elderly man couldn’t forget the boy’s delight when he handed him his Dolfo: He cried and put his lips to the instrument. Since then, they’ve almost always performed together, the three of them Uncle Tom, Matthew and Sis. Sitting on the sidewalk of the French Quarter, they both comforted and surprised the public. The text on a piece of cardboard, “Thank you for the music,” generated them some income so they didn’t starve. Of course, the scents of the nearest restaurants often made their stomach growl and triggered hunger fantasies. However, through the years of deprivation, every homeless person becomes accustomed to suppressing unrealistic desires and concentrating on what is available. On the back of the cardboard, the text also read, “Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged.” Every time tourists were surprised by Uncle Tom’s skills and asked why he was homeless and didn’t work, he stopped playing and slowly turned the piece of cardboard. After reading the words, the inquirer lowered their eyes.
On Sundays they went to St. Louis Cathedral for mass, and afterwards they went to the promenade, near Caf; du Monde, where there were no queues day or night and many tourists.
That Sunday morning Matthew was substituting for tired Uncle Tom when suddenly he perked up, shuddered and took flight. He resurfaced late at night, looking around stealthily. When he had calmed down, he apologized to the old man and explained his flight: He had seen his father’s security chief and two guards in the crowd. Uncle Tom asked Matthew to consider returning home; after all, his father is certainly looking for him. And that means he loves his son. You should not let go of people you love and are loved by.  You may never meet them again. However, the young man shook his head and said that he would never forgive his father for the humiliation he had endured.
Then Uncle Tom poured hot tea in paper cups, put the still unfinished donuts scrounged from Caf; du Monde on the cover of the magazine and for the first time spoke about his pain...
 
 
They moved from New York to New Orleans when one of Michelle’s friends opened her own dance studio and offered her a job. 
George had always been a good student. After finishing school and graduating from college, he decided to become a lawyer.  At the time, Michelle had to quit her job for health reasons – hypertension was crushing her. George had worked part-time at college. Uncle Tom’s income alone was not enough to pay for it. On that day, news that George had been recruited into the army, which guarantees soldiers partial payment of tuition after service, had the effect of a bomb exploding. The parents panicked – there were wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, right?!
But it was too late, the contract was signed.
After his son’s departure, Uncle Tom mostly saw the expression of constant anxiety in Michelle’s beautiful eyes. From time to time, there were letters from him. And the last letter came from Afghanistan, from the military hospital: not far from George, a mine had exploded; he had miraculously survived, but the amputation of his left leg was unavoidable.
After a while, George returned: a once tall, handsome, statuesque man with huge blue eyes stumbled around on crutches. Soon he was given a wheelchair and an allowance for the loss of his leg. However, not only did he forget about studying, but also about respectable work. He fell into a deep depression, never left his room, and became outwardly old and weak. Every night, his father played his son’s favorite pieces for him.  It was only then that you could see a slight twitch of the lips, reminiscent of a smile.  Tom knew George had dipped back into the happy memories of his former life.  What happened to her son, completely undermined his mother’s health, and a month later Michelle was paralyzed. But Tom did not give up; he worked day and night, buying expensive drugs, and paying for the services of famous specialists. Michelle’s condition improved: she began to move slowly, leaning on her cane and began to speak a little, though her speech was not clear. 
One day he met a bassist friend who was aware of Tom’s difficult situation and offered him the chance to perform at well-paid concerts in Chicago. Tom was happy – he’d earn enough money to take Michelle and his son on vacation. Before he left, his son rolled his wheelchair into his parents’ bedroom, hugged his father tenderly and said the words that ripped Tom’s heart into millions of happy pieces - “You are the most wonderful man I know! And I am the luckiest son, who loves you immensely!”
Every day after their death, in order not to forget the sound of his son’s voice, timbre and sensuality, Tom resurrected in his memory that moment, those few seconds of paradisiacal happiness.
A few days after leaving, something happened that shattered his very understanding of life – Hurricane Katrina. It extinguished Tom’s unquenchable optimism, washed away all hope in one wave. Tom’s devastated heart was filled with universal indifference, leaving him only the strength to cope in the open air and visit the cemetery. 
Tom felt a chill when the news announced the major catastrophe. His heart stopped beating when their house appeared on the TV screen, with the dirty waves of the Mississippi beating against its walls, pieces of furniture, parts of broken trees and other rubbish circling around it.
God only knows how he managed to return that same night. The whole quarter was flooded with eight feet of water. Most people were on the roofs of their houses. Oh, my God! How are mine, who will help them climb on the roof? She can barely walk, he doesn’t have a leg!
Rescue helicopters circled the quarter, carrying people to safety one by one. Tom tried not to hear people screaming for help, he thought only of saving his wife and son.
Suddenly someone called out to him. He turned around and saw a neighbor, Pete, and remembered that he worked for a helicopter company giving tours for tourists in New Orleans. As soon as Pete’s helicopter lifted Tom into the air, his heart was flooded with hope.
He saw them on the roof of the house: She, curled up, is holding on to her son’s wheelchair with her healthy hand; and He is hugging the television antenna with both hands to somehow prevent the wheelchair from slipping.  Thank God, Tom thought somebody must have helped them. When George saw his father in the door opening of the helicopter, he yelled in joy, “I knew you’d save us, dad!”
Only for half an hour did the hope of rescuing loved ones warm Tom’s heart trembling with the chill of terrible fear. He remembers every second of what happened. For 8 whole years, remaining alone with himself, he scrolls through the horror movie in his head, asking himself the same question for the thousandth time – what did he do wrong???
But just as Michelle raises her head to look into Tom’s eyes, there is a crack, and part of the roof, with George in the wheelchair, with the groan of weakened metal, slowly slides into the swampy abyss...
The only thing that Tom has time to shout is, “Hang on, son!”, which is drowned by the collective screams of the neighbors’ watching them. The wheelchair goes straight to the bottom, but George almost lands on a closet door floating underneath him, and is able to climb onto it. This lonely raft floating on the surface of the water will prompt joyful applause from all those who are following the developments. Well done! Well done! – comes from all sides. We have to get Michelle up faster, Tom thinks.
Then he sees everything in slow motion: somehow Michelle, who has unwound herself, waves to Tom with a smile and reunites with her only son in the murky waters forever.
The rest is dark...
Their remains are found a few days later, when the water starts to recede.
A friend of George’s gives a farewell speech and confesses that George wanted to surprise his father by taking his last name, Parker. Uncle Tom couldn’t have given his last name to a son for whom he wasn’t a father by blood.
Michelle’s ashes were with Tom for another year and a day. Matthew did not know that the endless rows of mausoleums and crypts in New Orleans’ cemeteries, towering above the ground, were not the extravagant taste of the city’s inhabitants. Groundwater and the swampy terrain often inundated the city. Therefore, the ashes of one relative are buried with the those of another, but not before a year and a day.
Uncle Tom completed his confession with the words from the Bible: “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” 
 
Matthew hugged Uncle Tom: in this embrace was all his love for the elderly man. He suddenly realized what he meant to him.  For it was Tom who not only kept him from falling, but he was also his father, his friend and his mentor...
That night, Uncle Tom extracted a promise from Matthew that he would reconsider his attitude toward the situation.
 
Well, and today, Uncle Tom doesn’t know that he’s in for a surprise when he gets back from the cemetery. Matthew knows that today is his idol’s birthday: recently, he picked up Uncle Tom’s driver’s license, which was lying in the dust near the “cabin.” When Matthew looked at the date of birth, he was very surprised that Uncle Tom would be 60 in a couple of months. He would have thought he was 80. 
It was already evening when Sis and his master were coming back from the cemetery.  The lights of the fires under the bridge where the three of them lived attracted the attention of the elderly man – he was worried. But when Sis, haltingly dashing ahead, rushed back cheerfully squealing, the elderly man calmed down.
Suddenly there was a chorus of voices: the people there sang the most popular song in the world - “Happy Birthday to You.” Uncle Tom’s feet trembled traitorously when Matthew, with a huge box in his hands, came out to meet him and said, “Strawberry cake from Michelle and George.” For the first time since the day of their meeting, the young man heard Uncle Tom’s loud laughter in between sobs: the shimmering fire of two candles on the cake consecrated the cream inscription – ”Live long, our beloved husband and father!”
The whole homeless brotherhood honored the elderly man with their presence. Everyone brought something with them. Almost until sunrise, music rose from the bridge to the ears of the inhabitants in the French Quarter... 
When the guests split up early in the morning, Tom hugged Matthew and confessed that for the first time in 8 years, his pain seemed to have retreated a bit. And the young man answered that he would save up money and build Uncle Tom a new cabin.
Matthew went to bed in the tent because Uncle Tom wanted to finish the rest of the cigar he had been given on the riverbank. Today is his “day off”; Matthew and Sis will work.
They found Uncle Tom in the evening: Leaning against a tree trunk, smiling gently, he seemed to be happy...
In Dolfo’s case, Matthew found Uncle Tom’s “will” – a letter for Matthew. The homeless brotherhood gathered and once again witnessed the nobility of the old man. Uncle Tom bequeathed all his property to Matthew: Dolfo, and Sis, and his stage costume, and his mother’s nacreous box with the surviving photos and postcard of Michelle. In one sealed envelope, Tom left money for his funeral, and in the other, money for Matthew to buy a ticket home.
The whole town buried Uncle Tom. Dolfo’s honey sounds poured all over the area: dressed in Uncle Tom’s concert costume, barely holding back tears, Matthew walked and played like never before. Ahead of the procession, with a purple butterfly around her neck, Sis hobbled importantly, holding a white rose in her teeth.
 
A couple of months later, visitors to the cemetery noticed that a thorough reconstruction of Uncle Tom’s and his family’s vault had begun. The crypt began to change. The walls were wrapped in white marble, with winding Spanish moss falling from the top, covering the entire crypt from the roof to the base. Then, on the roof of the crypt appeared a beautiful cross, woven out of three letters – T, M and G. But it was the last detail that caused ecstatic delight: from under the snow-white cascade of marble lace with Spanish moss, as if from behind a transparent curtain, you could see, in black granite, wrinkled hands covered with swollen veins... And those statuesque fingers, in the grotesque of eternal movement, held the instrument with the “golden” side – the real glittering saxophone.   
 
And one day, early in the morning, the French Quarter woke up to the sounds of a saxophone. They came from Cemetery #3. “EUROPA” rang out, and, in unison with the melody, for the whole quarter, the wou-wou of the singing dog was heard. The eyes of passers-by witnessed an amazing scene: a beautiful young man in a black costume played spectacular music. His white shirt was decorated with a black butterfly and his legs were dressed in white and black lacquer shoes-schnoobs.  Next to him was a dog with a purple butterfly on its neck, sparkling in the pure splendor of her black curls.  At the most beautiful crypt in the cemetery was the inscription “Uncle Tom’s New Cabin.” On the last step of the crypt, there is a huge wreath with the words “Thank you, Tom, for Matthew,” on the mourning ribbon.  A man’s gray head bows over the wreath. Tears of gratitude from the happy father drop on the tombstone with the inscription - “If thou knowest how to love, thou shalt not return unto dust.”               
    
 
 
 
 
                April 2019 New Orleans