“The seas will rise and our cities will be swallowed by the oceans... The air will grow so hot we won’t be able to breathe. The world will be remade for Him, and His kind. That white man was afraid of indifference; well, now he’s going to find out what it’s like." [p. 146]
New York, 1924: Charles Thomas Tester -- known on the street as Tommy -- is a mediocre jazzman, a devoted son, and an expert in the art of showing the world what it expects to see.
He's an accomplished hustler who knows enough to remove a single page from the arcane volume he's delivering to an old woman in Queens. He's convincing enough a musician to attract the eye of a wealthy white man who wants music at a party he's throwing. But he is a Negro in a white man's world, and given the choice between two evils, he chooses an eldritch vengeance.
This novella is a response to H P Lovecraft's The Horror at Red Hook, which is full of racism, xenophobia and 'the polyglot abyss of New York's underworld'. Lovecraft's protagonist, a police detective named Malone, also appears in The Ballad of Black Tom (in which his character is somewhat more rounded and likeable) but he's more witness than actor.
Tommy Tester's New York is as diverse and multicultural as Lovecraft's 'polyglot abyss', but Tommy's at home in it. He knows the rules, knows which aspect of himself to present on any occasion. He isn't going to let white folk grind him down as they did his father. But the police, the companies, and the institutions of 1920s New York are ready to quash anyone who doesn't know their place.
Police brutality, men murdered for the colour of their skin, the Sleeping King, and a grieving young man with a straight razor that used to be his daddy's: The Ballad of Black Tom feels horribly relevant. As well as the overt racism that confronts Tommy at every turn, I found echoes of climate change (see the quotation above) and a dialogue with Frankenstein: Tommy is only a monster because society made him so.
Powerful, fascinating and grim. This was the fourth of Tor's 'Reimagining Lovecraft' novellas that I read, after Hammers on Bone, The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, and Agents of Dreamland. All four are now available in a single volume, Reimagining Lovecraft: Four Tor.com Novellas.
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