What if Mephistopheles was just some guy from his old hometown that Faust hadn’t seen in years, but trusted because of that association with what seemed to be a deal too potentially good to pass up? Such a refashioning of the legend might look a little like “City of Refuge.” In fact, it might look a good deal like this short story.
Like Faust, King Solomon Gillis has a desperate need to fulfill. He’s on the run for his involvement in the killing of a white man down south which, when you are a black man, is a certain death penalty without benefit of trial. The opening image of the story is of Gillis standing on a street blinded by the sudden glare of sunlight which he hasn’t seen since he took a seat for ride on the “terrifying subway train.” From the purgatorial darkness of the subway, Gillis finds himself dazed by the lightness of potential and possibilities offered by his dreams of Harlem fueled by the mythic stories of its existence as the only haven in the country for black Americans, especially those escaping the historical oppression of the south.
To paraphrase Rick Blaine in Casablanca, of all the sidewalks in all the cities in all the world, why did the first person Gillis should run into in Harlem be someone from his small town back home who hasn’t been seen or heard of since he shipped off to France after being drafted to fight in the war: Mouse Uggams.
Mouse. Mephistopheles. The similarity in names is not mere coincidence. Mouse is the Mephistopheles to the latter-day Faust which is King Solomon Gillis. Mouse will proceed to tempt Gillis with an offer that contains conditions which should raise the suspicions of Gillis, but which are not suspicious enough to justify being turned down. Gillis walks into the hands of Mouse with his eyes neither completely wide open nor shut tight. In the Faust legend, Mephistopheles is not—as if sometimes mistakenly thought—the devil himself. He is instead merely one of the devil’s legion of demons; he’s an employee in hell, not the CEO.
In this story, Mouse serves the same purpose and the devil appears in the form of Tom Edwards, former train baggage handler turned owner of one of the “oldest and rattiest cabarets in Harlem.” Entering this devil’s domain requires that Gillis once again say goodbye to the brilliant sunlight of the world above and descend into the underworld by descending “a narrow, twisted staircase until, with a final turn” he winds up in a basement where vision already hampered by dim lighting is made all the worse by the persistent haze of cigarette smoke.
“City of Refuge” comes to its violent, tragic climax in that cabaret where Mouse delivers Gillis to his boss and Gillis calmly accepts that he has made his way straight from purgatory into fires of hell.
